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OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau is running out of time.
He has trailed in polls by double digits for nearly a year, and the outlook for the once popular prime minister is so grim that some old guard Liberals have been grumbling that maybe he should just step down and give someone else a shot.
To turn it around and win a fourth term, Trudeau has less than 17 months before he must hold an election and face off against an ascendant Conservative Party and its firebrand populist leader, Pierre Poilievre.
Trouble is, nothing he’s tried so far to improve his standing has worked.
“The Liberals have tried to basically throw the political kitchen sink at the Conservatives to find a way to narrow the gap,” said Nik Nanos, one of the country’s leading pollsters.
Trudeau’s difficulties, to some extent, mirror those of President Joe Biden and some Western European leaders facing populist rage in a world still struggling to shake off the inflation and lingering anger over pandemic lockdowns.
The longest-serving leader in the G7 also has some unique problems, including fatigue with the Liberal party after three terms and a series of scandals that have damaged Trudeau’s image. Many Canadians have simply tuned out the prime minister, said Quito Maggi, a pollster with Mainstreet Research.
“It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario for Trudeau because it almost doesn’t matter what he does or says right now,” Maggi said. “No one’s listening. It’s not the message: It’s the messenger.”
Trudeau’s efforts have included arranging visits to Canada by Biden as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who received a standing ovation in Parliament. “None of these things have changed the trend,” Nanos said.
The speculation over whether Trudeau might step down, at this point, remains just that — with neither the prime minister nor any of his aides or allies saying he has any intention of throwing in the towel.
But the moment he says he’s going, he becomes a lame duck and the leadership race breaks out — so it’s in his interest to wait as long as possible before saying otherwise.
Some think the window is closing on that option — with just a month or two left. Otherwise, a new leader would not have enough time to be ready for the looming election, which could be triggered any time before fall of 2025.
At every turn, interviewers press Trudeau on whether he really plans to remain at the helm with the ship sinking. Yet at every opportunity, he insists he plans to stick it out.
“The stakes are so high, and the moment is so real,” Trudeau told the “Freakonomics Radio” podcast.
Spoiling for a fight
If anything, the prime minister shows signs he’s energized by the coming confrontation with Poilievre, who has harnessed and stoked political frustration by telling Canadians their country is “broken” and it’s all Trudeau’s fault.
Trudeau laid out his motivations in a talk-show interview earlier in the year, where he described the coming election as a battle against “easy populism, anger and division that is so running rampant in every society around the world.”
“I could not be the person I am and choose to step away from this fight right now.”
Trudeau’s political origin story is grounded in the outcome of a 2012 boxing match, where he defied expectations by beating a muscular senator in the ring. Ask any Liberal in Canada, even the dispirited, they’ll tell you he performs better when on the ropes.
And he is keen to square off with his rival — a prospect that seems to excite his inner pugilist.
Poilievre, a populist attack-dog leader soaring high in the polls, embodies the very politics and values Trudeau opposes.
“Here’s someone that really, really cranks [Trudeau’s] gears, that he believes he can defeat,” said a former senior Liberal granted anonymity to speak freely. “He sees someone who’s actively going to undo everything he’s tried to achieve.”
Trudeau and his party have sought to link Poilievre to Trump by pointing to similarities in their rhetorical style and political playbooks, and pounced after Poilievre earned an endorsement from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The slogan-a-minute Conservative warrior spent the past year successfully turning the Liberal government into a punching bag over its complicated carbon tax and a nationwide housing crisis plaguing the same voters who first swept Trudeau into office.
At every turn, Poilievre’s Conservatives hound and goad and taunt the Liberals to call an early election, and take shots at anyone they think could be next in line for Trudeau’s job leading the Liberal Party.
Had the previous, more centrist Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, not been given the boot after the last election, Trudeau might be more inclined to call it a day, the former senior Liberal said.
“I don’t think O’Toole sparks that reaction in him.”
Waiting in the wings
The country’s political elite have speculated for months about who could replace Trudeau, and establishment Liberals have even said the quiet part out loud.
Sen. Percy Downe, a former senior adviser to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien called on Trudeau to step aside last year, a call that landed with a thud.
Former finance minister John Manley has compared Trudeau’s time in office to Seinfeld: a great show for nine seasons, but even it couldn’t net a tenth.
Earlier this year, a lesser-known lawmaker, Ken McDonald, broke rank and raised the idea of a leadership review, casting doubt over internal confidence in Trudeau — only to walk it back.
There is no obvious successor to the leader who brought his party from a distant third place to first in the 2015 federal election, making changing horses a big gamble.
“[Trudeau’s] group has completely stifled any kind of nurturing of that sort and not tolerated any dissent,” Maggi said.
Potential replacements keep popping up in news coverage amid frenzied speculation, but for a party once famous for its infighting, no one has tried to push him off the ledge.
“Back in 2015, when he took over the party, [Trudeau] changed the party to more of a movement,” Nanos said. “It’s hard to see a scenario where there would be a public dump-Trudeau movement.”
Big names within the Liberal tent are interested in the top job, but none has the full combo of x-factors that made Trudeau’s candidacy so potent: the celeb status, the narrative arc, his political dynasty, the top-notch retail politics game — the rizz.
“It’s not like oh, boom, if Trudeau is replaced by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, it’s back to neck and neck. It’s not working that way right now,” said Maggi, who is among the pollsters who have surveyed the public on potential replacements.
Sooner or later, though, someone will have to replace Trudeau.
Freeland has the strongest name recognition of the bunch, while the Conservatives, aiming to score points in Parliamentary debates, have billed Mark Carney, a former central banker to both Canada and the U.K., as the next in line after Trudeau.
Trudeau’s close friend, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who backed his leadership bid in 2013, and who returned to his job in recent years after taking a sudden leave due to a rare cancer, is the latest name floating around the capital.
But in the absence of signs of substantial organizing, much of the chatter looks more like fleeting hot goss and wishful thinking.
Pressure is on
Trudeau has spent the past year scrambling to dig himself out of his hole.
He tapped a new advertising spin master versed with millennials and Gen Z — key demographics he needs to bring into his party’s fold for a fighting chance.
Trudeau more recently rolled up his sleeves and criss-crossed the country for an unusual, weekslong campaign-style reveal of a major spending plan, aimed squarely at those two demographics and their financial pain.
The needle still isn’t moving.
That’s left him on an unusual tour of the podcast circuit, seeking out long-form interviews where he can explain himself and sell his tax-and-spend budget in a warmer environment than the hardball scrums with reporters around Parliament.
He still has options to try to reset the standings: shake up his Cabinet and top staff, change course on spending policies, launch a volley of attack ads.
Pollster Bruce Anderson of Spark Advocacy said voters suffering from Trudeau fatigue who are leaning toward his opponent are not locked in place.
“I see the market as being unsettled,” he said. “Our polling shows that there’s a lot of people looking for a less-right option than Poilievre and a less-left option than Justin Trudeau. This is part of the challenge that I think his progressive agenda has built for him and his party over time.”
Trudeau’s situation will only deteriorate heading into fall if his approval rating doesn’t improve, if fundraising dwindles, his caucus sours and more lawmakers announce that they don’t plan to run again.
“If the Liberal Party found itself in a situation a year from now, where it was 25 points behind in the polls, do I really think that they would get together at caucus on a Wednesday and say, ‘Yeah, let’s just keep going in this direction’? I don’t believe that’s how the chemistry of politics works.”
