Liberal MP Say Trudeau Must Go for the Good of the Country

After Canada’s Liberal Party lost a terrible by-election, a Liberal MP became the first current member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s caucus to call for him to step down.

Liberal MP Wayne Long said they needed new leadership “for the future of our party and the good the country.” “The voters have spoken loud and clear, and they want a change,” Mr. Long said from his seat in the New Brunswick legislature.

Long’s comment comes after the Liberals lost a seat in Toronto they had held since 1993 in a terrible by-election on Monday. Mr. Long has been an MP since 2015 and has said in the past that he will not be running for office again.

The National Post says that Ken McDonald, an MP from Newfoundland, responded to all of Mr. Long’s emails with “well said!”

In the past few days, other former Liberal leaders have also asked Mr. Trudeau to step down. Kate McKenna was one of them. From 2015 to 2019, she was Mr. Trudeau’s environment minister.

This party isn’t just about one person. “It’s about the values it stands for and making Canadians’ lives better,” Ms. McKenna said in a statement that she gave to the Associated Press.

It’s time for new ideas, new energy, and a new boss. The prime minister has a lot to be proud of. Christy Clark, who used to be the Liberal Premier of British Columbia, said something similar to the Toronto Star on Thursday.

“He doesn’t have the pull with voters he once had,” Ms. Clark said of the prime minister. “More importantly, he isn’t even able to motivate some of the people in the country who are most likely to vote for his party.”

Support for Trudeau Diminishing

There are a lot of reasons why Mr. Trudeau’s support has dropped a lot, including the rising cost of living. According to a new study by Ipsos for Global News, as many as 68% of Canadians want Mr. Trudeau to step down.

Also, there are more calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down, but a new poll shows that the Liberal Party is already too far gone for his exit to save it. The Angus Reid Institute released a poll on Monday that showed most people were already disappointed with the Liberal Party, no matter who was in charge.

An poll found that getting rid of the unpopular prime minister might not help the party’s chances in the elections.

There are a lot of polls that show that most Canadians are already planning to vote against the Liberals. An earlier this month study by Abacus Data found that support for the Liberal Democrats was so low that the party could end up in an unheard-of fourth place in the House of Commons.

During the same time period, an Ipsos study found that 68% of people wanted Trudeau to step down as prime minister.

But Angus Reid interviewers focused on the 37% of Canadians who were still “thinking about” voting Liberal in the next election. If you asked people what was most likely to keep them from voting Liberal, only 31% said it was because they didn’t like Trudeau.

48% of those who weren’t sure were Liberal because the party “hasn’t made progress on issues I find important.”

The poll also found that the Liberal Party’s luck would probably get even worse if it was given to one of Trudeau’s likely replacements.

Freeland and Mark Carney?

According to the poll, 12 people could take over as Liberal leader. The least likely was Carolyn Mulroney, who was a cabinet member under Ontario Premier Doug Ford. The most likely was Deputy Prime member Chrystia Freeland.

Only two names were slightly more appealing than Trudeau, even among people leaning Liberal: Freeland and Mark Carney, who used to be governor of the Bank of Canada according to the National Post.

The people who were not Dominic LeBlanc, Mark Miller, or Mélanie Joly were more likely to scare away Liberal voters who knew what they were doing.

“Overall, it looks like even a new leader would not be able to win over swing voters in the near future,” the institute wrote.

Trudeau’s personal popularity helped the Liberals win the election in 2015, but for more than a year now, he’s been bad for the party’s electoral prospects.

Trudeau’s personal approval rate is at an all-time low. The Angus Reid Institute’s Trudeau Tracker last showed that only 28% of people approved of him, while 66% did not. He’s also constantly losing popularity polls to Pierre Poilievre, which didn’t happen with Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole when they were Conservative leaders before.

According to the Angus Reid Institute study, the Liberals have reached the point where they can no longer avoid losing the next election by calling for a new leader.

It’s important to note that the study was done before the shocking results of the byelection in Toronto–St. Paul’s were known. On Monday, a Conservative candidate who wasn’t well known won a Toronto riding that had been one of the Liberals’ strongest seats for 31 years.

One person who watched said that the results showed that the Liberals could lose every single riding in the country in the next general election.

Source: AP, National Post