Trudeau discusses election, biggest failure on MP’s podcast

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OTTAWA — On a podcast hosted by one of his own MPs, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he believes his detractors are reacting to polls not policy, that his biggest failure in office was electoral reform and that it bugs him that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh didn’t call to end their deal.

Trudeau had a lengthy and candid interview with Nathaniel Erskine-Smith on the Toronto MP’s podcast Uncommons. Erskine-Smith has been hosting the podcast since 2020 and has had MPs from all parties as well as experts and past politicians as guests. Erskine-Smith has voted against his party in the past and said Trudeau did not have access to the questions in advance.

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Trudeau, who has been trailing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for more than a year, conceded that the coming election would be a significant challenge, but insisted he is going to keep the party advocating for the same positions it has held all along.

“This is going to be a much harder election than 2015. It always was going to be,” he said. “We’re going to continue, even double down on the things we know are going to get us to better; which is more protection of the environment, more inclusion of people.”

Trudeau has faced challenges from within his own caucus, with several Liberals privately saying it is time for him to go, while one MP, Wayne Long, has said so publicly. He has also faced calls to step down from former cabinet members.

Trudeau said no one in Liberal circles has accused him of having the wrong priorities or policies, but they are reacting to a bad polling climate.

“People who are saying, ‘oh, I’m not sure,’ would they be saying that if I was 10 points ahead in the polls right now.”

Trudeau conceded that the next election is likely to be a change election, but he said that is because the pace of the world is moving so much faster. He said the next prime minister will have to deal with some unexpected challenges, just as he has dealt with COVID-19, the first Trump presidency and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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“What we’ve seen over the past number of years is crises that nobody ran on,” he said. “We don’t know what crises are going to hit the world.”

He argued that is why it is important for voters to look beyond what a politician is promising and to consider what their broader values are. He said despite Poilievre’s 20 years in Parliament, the Canadian public doesn’t know him.

“We’ve been watching him and debating him and trying to counter him for years now, 20 years in the House. We know what he’s been fighting against. He hasn’t even begun to articulate what he’s fighting for.”

Erskine-Smith asked Trudeau about whether the party had effectively countered Poilievre, specifically arguing the Liberals should have done more ahead of the Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection.

“I can’t argue against that, particularly, knowing the result in Toronto—St. Paul’s. It certainly wasn’t what we wanted,” the prime minister responded.

Trudeau said one mistake in several recent byelections where the Liberals have lost was not giving their candidate enough time. He said he was the nominated Liberal candidate in Papineau for more than a year before his first election.

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Trudeau said his biggest failing in government was on the Liberals’ broken promise on electoral reform.

“If I could do things differently, I don’t know exactly how I would have, but I certainly would have done things differently around electoral reform,” he said.

Trudeau famously said the 2015 election would be the last under the first past the post system, a promise he broke on what Erskine-Smith said was one of the hardest days he has had in politics.

Trudeau said he favoured a ranked ballot approach where voters mark their first, second and third choice on a ballot. He said a ranked ballot would keep Canada’s system largely unchanged with the same ridings and even the same ballots, but just change it so voters put a number instead of an X.

He said proportional representation would lead to MPs elected without any connection to their community.

“I couldn’t move forward on something that might hurt Canada in the long term and be irreversible without having a broader level of support in the House.”

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Trudeau faces the possibility of an election soon, with the NDP having walked away from the supply-and-confidence agreement.

Singh announced he would be ripping up that agreement in a video posted online. The only notification the Liberals received in advance was an email.

Trudeau said the way the NDP handled the end of the deal was frustrating, because he thought he had a better working relationship with Singh.

“I sat down with him, and I actually developed a really good working relationship with him, and we’d have great conversations about a whole bunch of things.”

Trudeau said he would have expected Singh at least call to end the deal.

“I know that if I had chosen to end it, it would have started with a call to him,” he said. “For him to do that that way. It it bugged me, and it bugged me because I know these things matter to him.”

National Post
rtumilty@postmedia.com

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