Liberals’ popularity on wane in Canada

Iqbal Sidhu

There has been a sort of political coup going on in the Liberal Party for over two months. Justin Trudeau’s Justice Minister Judy Wilson-Raybould was allegedly demoted to the department of Veteran Affairs (ex-servicemen). It has been alleged that the PMO and the Prime Minister created undue pressure on her in an attempt to defer the prosecution of Quebec-based construction giant SNC Lavalin in a corruption case of 2015. SNC Lavalin’s executives had been charged with offering bribe to the former Libyan despot, Muammar al Qaddafi, and other officials to win development contracts.

The former Justice Minister has alleged that she was asked by the PMO to go easy on SNC Lavalin until a more lenient law dealing with corporate malfeasance, C-74, was passed so that the company could reach a compromise with the government. This happened right before the provincial election in Quebec and the upcoming federal election. The charge is Trudeau wanted to subvert the judicial process for electoral gain as a tougher penalty on SNC Lavalin would mean loss of jobs, and a subsequent effect on the poll performance of Liberals. 

Trudeau has been in Parliament since 2008, and his record as a member of the House of Commons has been less than stellar. Over these 11 years in the House: he has apologised — quite a lot — on matters ranging from the historical wrongs done by Canada, to apologising to a female member whom he had allegedly pushed with his elbow and for other variety of things. What majorly helped elevate him to the chair of the Prime Minister was his clean and progressive image in contrast to the outgoing Stephen Harper’s and, whether he may admit it or not, also his last name. Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre Trudeau was one of the most celebrated Prime Ministers of Canada.

Along with Trudeau, many else rode this wave of “clean versus the unclean” and were elected to the House of Commons. Out of the 184 Liberal MPs elected in 2015, 136 were first-time elects, including four south Asian MPs who went on to become ministers in Trudeau’s Cabinet. Leader of Government in the House of Commons Bardish Chagger used to be an event organiser, Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi a bus driver, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains a financial analyst and Defense Minister Harjeet Sajjan used to be an Army reservist. All four owe their success, at least partially, to Trudeau and his used-to-be clean image. Things are different now.

Most surveys in the aftermath of the SNC Lavalin affair indicate Trudeau is no longer as credible and trusted as he once used to be. The aura of a politician free from the vices and iniquities of contemporary politics is gone. Now that Trudeau is no longer the fairest-of-all and his apologies and public displays of emotions (mostly tearful) have started attracting mockery and ridicule where they once attracted empathy and compassion, it’s a million dollar question to ask if the Liberals would be able to — if not replicate 2015 — at least hold their own in the upcoming federal election. This environment of public incredulity, further atrophied by the ongoing SNC Lavalin affair, has jeopardised the career prospects of all those who got elected riding the Trudeau-wave, including his four Indo-Canadian Cabinet ministers. 

South Asian immigrants have always had a soft spot for the Liberals as they are the traditional centrists, and are accommodating of immigrants. The South Asian vote is going to decide many ridings in GTA and Greater Vancouver, and Trudeau has so far not made any blunders to anger this constituency — leaving aside his ridiculous trip to India in the beginning of 2018. But now there is another challenger on the fore in the form of Jagmeet Singh of NDP. While Trudeau may dress up as a glittery mannequin trying to emulate South Asian finery and display some atrocious dance moves remotely caricaturing Bhangra, Jagmeet is the real thing! Perhaps it is something the Liberal strategists should look at more closely: on how to keep Trudeau palatable to the south Asian voters without turning him into a ‘showpiece’ Liberal.