With the Liberals' consistently poor polling numbers, and rumours Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could be working to get former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney into politics, political strategists weigh in on whether the former central banker could be the answer to the party's woes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals remain deeply unpopular, currently trailing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives by as many as 17 points in the polls, after more than a year of lagging behind.

If an election was held today, the Conservatives would likely trounce the Liberals and cruise to a majority government, with polling aggregator 338Canada projecting the Conservatives would win 212 seats, based on the current polling data. The Liberals would win just 74 seats.

A recent poll by Nanos Research, commissioned by CTV News, found only nine per cent of Canadians say Trudeau is the most politically appealing option for party leadership.

Those abysmal numbers, coupled with the stunning decision last weekend by U.S. President Joe Biden to end his re-election bid amid mounting concerns about his own viability as a candidate, have the Ottawa bubble abuzz with speculation: Is a major cabinet shuffle on the horizon? Could Trudeau walk away? If he does, who replaces him?

  • bionicjoey
    81·
    2 months ago

    I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said here, but in what way is Trudeau a “technocrat”? The main conservative critique of him before his election was that his previous work was as a teacher and that he was too young to lead the country. One of his big claims to fame has been appointing cabinet positions based on identity rather than aptitude. I don’t see how you could claim that he’s a “technocrat”. He’s a fairly run-of-the-mill politician.

    If anything, Harper had a better claim to the title of “technocrat” since he had a background in economics, although he then went on to fill his cabinet with people who viewed the government as a stolen car in a chop-shop, so he wasn’t really a technocrat either.