Immigration Minister Marc Miller today called efforts by disaffected Liberal MPs to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “garbage” and said it would be better for the team to pull together to take on their main opponent: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
“Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country, and I think that is very dangerous,” Miller told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.
Miller, who is a close personal friend of Trudeau, also said the MPs planning a caucus revolt should come out of the shadows and tell the prime minister in person that they want him gone.
“I think they have to express themselves to his face,” he said. “I think you will see the vast majority of caucus and cabinet — the entirety of cabinet — is behind him.”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller says any time spent focusing on some Liberal MPs’ efforts to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country.’ Miller says Trudeau has the support of the ‘vast majority of caucus’ and the entirety of cabinet.
As national polls suggest the Liberal Party is headed for a defeat at the next election, some Liberal MPs are getting ready to confront Trudeau at Wednesday’s national caucus meeting over their dissatisfaction with his leadership.
After nine years in government, Trudeau’s popularity has plummeted.
The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over the governing Liberals — a margin that suggests dozens of Liberal MPs could be out of a job after the next vote.
The prospect of an electoral implosion has led some Liberal MPs to organize this effort to oust Trudeau.
CBC News has reported that more than 20 MPs have met in secret and signed a document committing themselves to trying to force Trudeau out of the party leadership.
It’s not just the polls that signal trouble on the horizon for the Liberals.
Trudeau and his team have lost two byelections in historically rock-solid Liberal ridings in Toronto and Montreal.
The Liberal candidate in another recent Winnipeg-area byelection posted one of the worst results for a governing party in Canadian history.
The party’s national campaign director quit in early September. The party took weeks to announce a replacement.
Four more of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have announced, or are expected to announce soon, that they will not run again in the next election, sources have told CBC News. That news comes after MP Pablo Rodriquez left caucus to sit as an Independent while running to lead the Quebec Liberal Party.
But there were no signs of dissent as Miller and other cabinet ministers gathered for their usual Tuesday meeting with Trudeau.
“I’m a member of his cabinet and obviously we support him,” said Housing Minister Sean Fraser.
Echoing Miller, Fraser said it’s Poilievre who’s the real problem.
“We are up against somebody who is campaigning on promises to deny access to free birth control for women, who won’t even get a security clearance to look into allegations about his own caucus members being engaged in foreign interference,” he said, citing Poilievre’s controversial decision to forgo getting the necessary credentials to review top-secret documents.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson suggested this latest attempt to take Trudeau out will fizzle.
“At the end of the day, we will have a robust debate, we will come out with, in my view, support for the prime minister and move forward with the election,” he said.
As for wayward Liberal MPs like P.E.I.’s Sean Casey, who has come out publicly saying Trudeau should go, Wilkinson said the Liberals are “a big tent party” and there’s room for dissent.
“We are not a bunch of robots like Mr. Poilievre’s axe-the-tax, build-homes, ride-the-donkeys that you see in question period,” he said, mocking the Conservative leader’s sloganeering.
“It’s important to have debates. You know, at this point, clearly in public opinion polls we are not leading. There is concern on the part of members of caucus.”
Health Minister Mark Holland said he doesn’t want to oust Trudeau, a leader he said can “take punches” better than anybody else.
“These are not easy times to lead. I don’t know anybody who’s having an easy time anywhere leading, but the prime minister has my full confidence and the full confidence of most of my colleagues,” he said.
