Calls are growing from within the Liberal caucus for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down as party leader — and some have pegged Chrystia Freeland as their choice to replace him.
Twenty-one Liberal MPs have publicly urged Trudeau to resign — many of them within the last week — after Freeland shocked Canadians on Monday by resigning as deputy prime minister and finance minister hours before she was supposed to table the government’s fall economic statement.
Among the Liberal MPs publicly calling on Trudeau to step down, a small number have come forward to throw their support behind Freeland.
“By design or by circumstance, her time of resignation has put her into the spotlight. And she appears to be the person around whom the caucus members can rally behind,” Ontario Liberal MP Chandra Arya told CBC’s Power & Politics on Friday.
Arya, previously a staunch supporter of Trudeau, became one of the latest dissenters of the prime minister with a letter he penned on Friday.
Since the sudden resignation of former deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday, 21 Liberal MPs have called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign. Power & Politics speaks to four MPs who have joined these calls.
He said his previous support stemmed from the lack of a “viable and reassuring alternative” but that Freeland has now filled that void.
B.C. Liberal MP Ken Hardie pointed to Freeland’s track record in cabinet, especially in dealing with the United States.
“Ms. Freeland, particularly because of the skill with which she dealt with Donald Trump in Trump 1.0, is clearly the one that I would choose to take the fight back to him again. She’s smart. She knows the drill with him,” Hardie told Power & Politics host David Cochrane on Wednesday.
‘No shortage’ of contenders
Freeland’s name isn’t the only one floating around as a possible Trudeau replacement, should the prime minister choose to step down.
Political pundits have also been discussing the merits of newly appointed Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former housing minister Sean Fraser before he stepped down from that position just prior to Freeland’s resignation.
“I was really sad to see Sean Fraser go, because he would have been at or near the top of my list,” Prince Edward Island Liberal MP Sean Casey told reporters on Tuesday.
He said, however, that there’s “no shortage” of people who could take on the role of Liberal Party leader “without the baggage of the prime minister.”
When asked if he would like to see Freeland launch a leadership bid, Casey said, “Yes.”
Most of the 21 MPs publicly asking Trudeau to go have not endorsed a specific candidate to replace him.
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Rob Oliphant, an Ontario Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, said he’s worked in that role for a number of cabinet ministers who he believes would fare well in the role of leader.
But he noted that Trudeau is still taking time to reflect on his position.
“I will give him a break and say please take the time, be thoughtful…. I won’t put a timeline on that for him. That’s up to him,” he told Power & Politics on Friday. “He’s still my leader, he’s my friend, he’s our prime minister. And I want him to take the time to do that and leave graciously.”
Freeland leadership bid speculation
While the prime minister reflects, nobody has publicly expressed an interest in taking over his role.
On Tuesday, Freeland wrote a letter to her supporters thanking them. She ended the letter with a message — “this will not be the end of the road” — that ramped up speculation about her own leadership ambitions.
That same evening, she attended the Liberal caucus holiday party. While Trudeau gave a speech addressing the growing rift in the party, Freeland stole the show.
Soon after his speech, Trudeau stood for photos with party members. To the right of the room, a line also started forming for photos with Freeland. When Trudeau’s time for photos ended, the line for photos with Freeland was still going strong.
A biography of Freeland was then released on Friday. The book was originally set to publish in February, but author Catherine Tsalikis said the events of the past week changed the timeline.
In it, Tsalikis referred to Freeland as Trudeau’s “most obvious successor.”
Catherine Tsalikis, author of the new book Chrystia, a biography of Chrystia Freeland, discusses her reaction to Freeland’s resignation earlier this week. Tsalikis says she spoke to Freeland’s sister who told her that ‘loyalty is one of her institutional strengths.’
When the biography was announced, the Globe and Mail speculated that it could be tied to a leadership run.
Tsalikis told Power & Politics guest host John Paul Tasker that the speculation “amuses” her. She also said that while Freeland declined to co-operate with her on the biography, she was able to speak to many people close to the politician.
Liberals polling low
With no word on whether Trudeau will resign and no official potential successors, there isn’t much data on how well Freeland — or anyone else — would fare in the eyes of voters.
Pollster Éric Grenier said the last numbers he saw on contenders were gathered earlier in the fall, and no contender yielded much of a bump in the polls for the Liberal Party.
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Grenier said Freeland was seen as a “replacement, a substitute” for Trudeau at that time, but he would be interested in seeing where the numbers now stand.
“With the kind of numbers we are seeing right now, it would be hard for the Liberals to start doing worse,” he told Power & Politics on Friday.
The Conservatives currently hold a 21-point lead over the Liberals.
A new leader might give a little bit of a bump to the reigning Liberals, but as polls now stand, it probably won’t be enough to keep them in power, Grenier said.
