I’m sure lots of other people are thinking this too, or have maybe said it already on news shows I haven’t watched. I’m writing it down just so I can look back on it in six months and see how right, or wrong, or cynical (or all of the above) I am.
Canadian Finance Minister and deputy PM Chrystia Freeland resigned suddenly yesterday, hours before a fall economic update. She uncharacteristically issued a public distancing of herself from PM Justin Trudeau. This has kicked off a whirlwind of analysis about how Trudeau will handle this crisis.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s a crisis. Or, not a real one, anyway. I think it’s a planned crisis.
Months ago members of the Liberal caucus were asking Trudeau to step down as PM, a Biden-lite if you will. Then, suddenly, that noise seemed to fade. I suspect that Trudeau convinced a few core members of his cabinet to execute a plan. I posit that everyone in the Liberal leadership, including Trudeau, acknowledged he had to resign — he knows full well that national sentiment has largely turned against him. (To wit: you can go to any small town in Canada and see at least one pickup with a “Fuck Trudeau” sign hand-painted in its back window.) The Conservatives have also made attacking and mocking him personally a key plank of their platform, so I think the Liberals have a plan: to sacrifice Trudeau.
I believe the plan was to have Freeland create a mini-crisis (resigning hours before an economic announcement amidst Trump-induced trade panic) and publicly distance herself from Trudeau. If Trudeau steps down in the coming weeks or months, this positions Freeland as a mildly anti-Trudeau liberal when she (presumably) becomes the party leader and runs against PP. In the meantime, this mini-crisis presents the opportunity to move quickly and against convention, and $5 says Mark Carney finds himself parachuted into the Finance Minister role through some byelection or another. I guess they’d need another seat to suddenly open up but where would they get one of those OH WAIT.
So in this imagined scenario spilling from my ill-informed brain, the finance minister becomes someone even fiscal conservatives can get behind, and the Liberal party leader with name recognition and a history of standing up to Trump can campaign against the Conservatives — who have spent years campaigning by essentially calling Trudeau a poopyhead — with a plausible case that she doesn’t like Trudeau either.
Maybe I’m giving the Liberals too much credit for strategy, and the PM too much credit for selflessness. I’m probably wrong. But this is just what immediately popped into my head yesterday when I saw Freeland’s flex.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 