The Trudeau Circus Cannot Go On

When a simple social media post starts a tsunami, it's time to go

Happy New Year, and hope this finds you enjoying the start of 2025. Hope springs eternal as we make our New Year’s resolutions, including mine, which is to resume regular posts here. That was supposed to start Monday, not today, but alas, events, as they say, intervened.

It’s Friday, January 3, my one day off this week (yes, I worked New Year’s Day), and I am now spending it at my computer. Why? Because this afternoon, the internet blew up when I predicted that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would quit at 5 pm today. Unfortunately, the prediction was framed as fact by a well-meaning but misinformed radio host, whose post on X promptly went viral.

My phone began to ring with other media: what was my source? Would I talk to them too? Then the PMO weighed in with an official denial. Cue the sad faces on social media – apparently many people were breaking out the champagne.

It’s nice to be treated as some sort of oracle, but I am not one. All this brouhaha unfolded over a coffee bet with a friend that Trudeau will quit before the end of the holidays. When a radio producer called to book an interview about Trudeau for Monday, I said that might be too late, because my hunch is that he’ll quit earlier, maybe later today. And so, the dominoes fell.

Why Friday at supper hour? Logically, it’s a good time to go. Governments often drop bad news, including staff changes and departures, at that time, since voters are thinking about the weekend and not paying attention. The next best is a Monday evening, which is when former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty chose to throw in the towel in 2012 after nine years in power. McGuinty knew when to make an exit, and under a new leader his party managed to hang on to power for another six years. He didn’t drag out his departure but dropped the bomb and moved on.

Not so our current Prime Minister. Instead, he sticks around when his party is at 16% in the polls and a single tweet by a radio host in Quebec is enough to wreck everyone’s afternoon.

This absurdity illustrates why Trudeau must quit. Now. The entire political class and its conversation now revolves around the fate of one man. That is of course, a narcissist’s fantasy, that everyone is obsessed with him, talking about him, and hanging on his every word.

And at this point, only a narcissist would still be there. In the past ten days, Trudeau has lost the support of the Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic caucuses. The Liberal party caucus is meeting at 3 pm today to decide “a way forward”, presumably without their current leader. Mercifully for Trudeau, we don’t live in Russia, where he would have been shoved out a window long ago.

This circus must stop. Our government must turn its attention to other priorities. One in ten Canadians uses food banks. Too many people are jobless and homeless. And it’s going to get worse. President Donald Trump re-enters the White House on January 20, with a pledge to impose 25% tariffs on all our exports. His promise to deport 10 million illegal aliens could see a wave of refugees running our borders. And there is no sign that the federal government has a plan to deal with any of this.

The country needs an election that offers a real choice of visions, not a referendum on one man. Trudeau needs to leave, the Liberals need a new leader, and the voters need to have their say. And we all get to go back to our regularly scheduled programming.