Can History Save the Liberals from Themselves?

The Liberals were doomed.

Years of inflation, a stagnant economy and a prime minister who seemed out of touch with ordinary Canadians had finally caught up to the party.

The 1979 election of Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservatives should have spelled the end for Pierre Trudeau and marked the beginning of a new era of conservatism in Canada. Voters had just seen their standard of living decline for the first time in a generation and they witnessed the rise of a Quebec sovereigntist movement that threatened to unmake 112 years of Confederation. 

All on Trudeau’s watch.

Though they only formed a minority government, the PCs should have been able to manage their first year in power with little trouble. Trudeau was set to resign and, with no obvious successor in place, the Liberals would be too busy electing a new leader to obstruct Clark’s government.

But on the day of Clark’s first confidence motion — a budget vote — three of his MPs weren’t in the House. Two were out of the country on official business and a third was in hospital. Further compounding his problems, Quebec’s five Crédit Social MPs decided, at the last minute, to abstain from the vote.

Even so, the thought that the Liberals and New Democrats would pull Canadians into a second election in six months seemed insane. The Tories fell by a vote of 139 to 133, Trudeau came out of retirement and the Liberals trounced Clark in 1980.

The circumstances of history are once again conspiring to save the Liberal Party of Canada from the Liberal Party of Canada.

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Four months ago, every major poll in the country had the party down 25 points to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Five out of six Canadians wanted Justin Trudeau to resign and the poll aggregator Canada338 gave the Tories a 99 per cent chance of forming a majority government.

Then, a sitting American president threatened to annex Canada. That hadn’t happened in over 200 years.

Now — with Trudeau gone and a banker at the helm — the Liberals are in a virtual tie with the Conservatives. 

Mark Carney may be a rich man but he can’t buy this kind of luck.

***

In an ordinary setting, the Liberals should be getting their teeth kicked in by Poilievre. 

For over two years, the Tory leader has travelled across the country, galvanizing voters around three devastating words: Canada is broken. In one video streamed on his Facebook page, Poilievre lined up with voters outside a passport office in Ottawa, making a show of solidarity to the people stuck waiting six hours just to drop off an application. In another, he stands near a homeless encampment in British Columbia, detailing the human suffering he’s witnessed. 

For those of us old enough to remember Poilievre as the most vicious of Stephen Harper’s boys-in-short-pants, it was jarring to see him dominate the political discourse with such ease.

Because no matter how many million of dollars the Liberals spent on some version of “Yes, we’re bad but have you seen how fucking crazy this guy is?”, they had no answer to his message. The Canada we were promised — the one where you’ll get ahead if you just play by the rules and work hard — no longer exists. 

Roughly half of Canadians report living from paycheque to paycheque, with that number jumping to 57 per cent for those aged 35 to 54, according to a Léger study published in October. Meanwhile, a generation of homebuyers has been priced out of the market and those who can afford a mortgage are being crushed under a mountain of debt.

Canada’s household debt to disposable income ratio is 180 per cent. That’s the highest of any G7 country. For every dollar Canadians earn, on average, they owe $1.80 in the form of mortgage payments, car loans and credit card fees. In the United States, by contrast, that ratio is 100 per cent.

Over 2 million Canadians turn to a food bank every month just to keep from going hungry. That’s a 90 per cent increase from 2019 numbers.

As rental prices across the country have nearly doubled in the past decade, homeless encampments are now a fixture of life in every major Canadian city. In some pilot programs, provincial governments have outsourced the lodging of homeless people to private condo developers. 

Universal public healthcare, the crown jewel of this federation, is coming under attack in provinces across the country. Half of our healthcare system is funded by Ottawa, and the federal government has done little to discourage the provinces’ slide towards privatization. 

I don’t think Poilievre will fix any of this but he sees it. And because he sees it, he can turn it into anger, political donations and to a victory on April 28.

***

Over in Carney’s camp, the team is steering clear of anything substantive. 

The party’s first major ad buy of the campaign is a video of the Liberal leader wearing a Canada hockey jersey as he hee-haws with comedian Mike Myers, who is also wearing a Canada hockey jersey. They talk about Canadian things like Mr. Dressup and how to defend a two-on-one (you take away the pass). “Elbows up!”

During Carney’s stump speech in Newfoundland Sunday, he repeated the line about beating the United States at hockey and in the trade war. His slogan — Canada Strong — is exactly the kind of thing Liberals would snicker at if a Conservative came up with it. But we are in frightening times and this patriotism stuff is good business.

If Donald Trump escalates things or even just continues to weigh in on our politics, there’s a good chance Carney won’t have to do much campaigning. He’s a banker, bankers like stability, we don’t want to descend into fascism just yet so maybe just elect the banker.

I can empathize with that logic, but there is nothing terribly inspiring about Carney’s platform. 

Without the threat of annexation, would anyone really be excited about a $825 tax break for average families? Especially when you compare it to the billions that Carney just saved Canada’s richest investors by cancelling his party’s capital gains tax hike. And the Liberal leader’s plan to give first-time homebuyers a GST rebate on any property worth less than $1 million seems like it will only drive prices higher.

And while Carney visited Iqaluit before kicking off the campaign, promising a $6.7 billion investment in Canada’s north while dressed in traditional Inuit garb, most of that money is going to military contractors. Only $254 million has been set aside for critical housing infrastructure and other basic needs in Inuit territory.

In perhaps the biggest ethical test of our time — what the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International are calling a genocide in Gaza — Carney has shown no leadership. His handpicked chief of staff, Marco Mendicino, is one of only a handful of Liberals who voted against the government’s ceasefire resolution in December 2023. 

Mendicino has repeatedly opposed efforts by his own government to restrain Israel’s use of military force and starvation on civilians in Gaza. Instead of being marginalized for siding with a suspected war criminal, Mendicino is now one of Carney’s closest and most trusted advisers. 

“Marco is loyal, a good organizer and works like a dog,” one Liberal insider said. “His views on (Gaza) aren’t those of Carney’s.”

It is possible the forces of history will usher the Liberals back into power. But just as with Pierre Trudeau’s election win in 1980, it may only delay the inevitable. 

There is a reckoning around the corner and neither the Liberals nor the conservatives are ready for it. 

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