By Sam Routley, Western University, The Conversation
Only hours before the release of the federal government’s fall economic statement, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland shocked Ottawa with the announcement of her resignation from cabinet.
By Canadian standards, Freeland’s resignation letter is nothing short of scathing, deriding what it calls the “costly political gimmicks” that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has increasingly been relying upon in its efforts to win re-election next year in an unambiguous reference to the GST tax holiday.
Her resignation comes weeks after steady reporting of internal strife and a looming cabinet shuffle. A steady stream of staff leaks from both Finance Department insiders and the Prime Minister’s Office indicated an inevitable confrontation was on the near horizon.
But few anticipated such a dramatic development. Both the tone and timing of Freeland’s resignation announcement seems deliberate and carefully designed to cause the most chaos and discord within the government. It seems to be not so much a statement on Freeland’s future as it is an attempt to remove a sitting prime minister.
Urgent implications
The implications are, at the time of writing, as pressing as they are multi-faceted. How many more Liberal MPs will join the calls for Trudeau’s resignation? Is Parliament set to call a confidence vote or to prorogue? And finally, how can Trudeau secure and rebuild his position over the holidays, or will he resign?
Freeland is not the first minister to resign from Trudeau’s cabinet. It’s quite normal, in fact, for cabinet ministers to pursue opportunities that seem brighter than the opposition benches when their party’s electoral fortunes start significantly dimming.
But Freeland’s departure hurts more than most. She was not only one of the most notable recruits by the Liberal Party’s new leader, Trudeau, in 2013, but she also quickly become one of the most pre-eminent members of the subsequent government.
She was very much the go-to cabinet member, taking on a succession of challenging portfolios. Her departure, as the opposition Conservatives will almost certainly argue, marks the most recent woman minister with a soured relationship with a prime minister who frequently speaks of his commitment to feminist principles.
What went wrong?
The main reasons for the break between Freeland and Trudeau are likely protracted, multi-faceted and contentious. But recent reports — along with Freeland’s resignation letter — suggest they had long-standing disagreements about the fiscal direction of the government, including the significant debt it continues to incur.
But the style of Freeland’s announcement is a clear sign that this is about much more than policy.
She has explicitly opted against the far more conventional and diplomatic tactic of quietly resigning — citing a need to spend more time with family — after releasing the fall economic statement. Her additional decision to run as an MP again also shows she has future ambitions within the Liberal party — just not with Trudeau at the helm.
It’s been an abysmal year for the Liberals. The government has been struggling, and continuously failing, to shift the narrative that it has little hope of winning another election.
Large segments of the population, it seems, have essentially concluded that the party — with a government in power for nine years and an unpopular leader — is bound to lose the 2025 federal election. Media coverage of Canadian politics has come to resemble a prolonged death watch as bedside observers keep their eyes on a patient who refuses to acknowledge that their time’s up.
Other than a Parliamentary vote of non-confidence or an unprecedented intervention by the governor-general, the only person who can directly remove Trudeau is Trudeau himself. Compared to other advanced democracies, Canadian prime ministers are often almost impervious to direct internal threats.
Historically, rivals within governments have relied on a variety of more subtle and prolonged tactics to force out a prime minister, including staffing the party with their own loyalists or acts of sabotage — anything to make the leader’s job more difficult.
Nevertheless, the real success of these tactics will always depend on the leader’s willingness to fight. Finance Minister Paul Martin’s internal fight against Jean Chrétien, for example, took several years, ultimately resulting in the prime minister’s retirement after 10 years at the helm.
Blizzard needed?
While parties operating in other parliamentary systems have built in their own checks and balances on their leaders, including caucus votes that are simple to organize, the only point at which a Liberal Party leader’s position can be formally put to a vote by members is after an election loss. This is enshrined in the party’s constitution.
It’s perhaps due to this reality, rather than any of his recent decisions or successes, that Trudeau’s been able to hold onto power.
Freeland’s move, then, is best seen as the most recent example of increasingly dramatic, though indirect, attempts on the part of members of the government or party to provide Trudeau with a dramatic wake-up call.
Whether her resignation is enough to accomplish this long-standing goal is yet to be seen. Perhaps, as was the case with the elder Trudeau, an Ottawa blizzard might help Justin Trudeau face facts.
Sam Routley, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
