Gerry Butts says Trudeau less likely to remain leader since Freeland quit

OTTAWA — A former chief adviser and close friend to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he doesn’t think Trudeau will stay on to lead the Liberals in the next election.

Gerald Butts wrote in a Substack newsletter that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s surprise resignation from cabinet last week dealt Trudeau a staggering blow that loosened his already tenuous grip on the party.

His post came the same day the Conservatives said they will move to bring down the government as early as the end of January, by first moving a non-confidence motion in a House committee that will sit Jan. 7.

Trudeau is said to be thinking about his future during the holiday break, as an increasing number of current and former Liberal MPs publicly call on him to step down for the good of the party.

Butts said Trudeau was “unlikely” to lead the party into the next campaign before Freeland’s stunning departure and is “now much less likely to do so.”

Just a week ago, Butts joined the Liberal Christmas party confab in Ottawa alongside Trudeau’s longtime chief of staff and close confidant Katie Telford.

Butts, who has been friends with Trudeau since they studied together at McGill University, and Telford were part of the original team Trudeau, helping craft both his leadership bid in 2013 and his first winning election campaign in 2015. Butts then served as Trudeau’s principal secretary during the first Trudeau term.

He wrote that the Liberals are back now to where they were before Trudeau took over the party in 2013, in terms of their popularity and voters viewing them as out-of-touch.

Butts, who did not reply to requests for comment on Friday, said in his article that Freeland’s sudden departure is bad news for the party and that it should prepare to hold a leadership race rather than anoint Freeland or anyone else as leader.

“If, as is now widely expected, Mr. Trudeau’s resignation is imminent, the only way forward is a real leadership race,” Butts wrote.

“If you want to know who can play hockey, put on a hockey game. It doesn’t matter who you think you support at this moment, we’ll all have a more seasoned view if we see these people in live action.”

Trudeau has multiple options should he decide that he will not lead the Liberals into the next election but none of them leave a long runway for a leadership race.

The longest option would see him prorogue Parliament for a stretch of time to give his party breathing room for a leadership race without having to face confidence votes that could force an election this winter.

But Parliament would have to return within a few months, meaning the Liberals would not have very long for campaigning compared to past party leadership races.

The last race that elected Trudeau as leader lasted nearly two years.

Eddie Goldenberg, who was chief of staff to former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien, wrote a column in the wake of Freeland’s surprise resignation arguing that a party leadership race would take too long to organize and properly execute.

He called for the Liberals to instead install Freeland as leader, after seeing her get a surge in support for taking a stand against Trudeau.

Butts is not the only one who thinks that’s the wrong move.

Trudeau’s former environment minister Catherine McKenna last week also argued the party needs a “short, serious leadership race” in a comment she made to The Canadian Press shortly after Freeland quit.

Public opinion polling in Canada has put Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre light years ahead of Trudeau for more than the past year, with polling aggregator 338 Canada projecting a Conservative majority of 232 seats by sweeping nearly everywhere but Quebec.

Butts said Freeland’s abrupt exit from cabinet also means the next election will probably come sooner rather than later next year — and that it’s even more likely now to result in a Conservative majority government.

Conservatives have agitated for the past year for an immediate election fought over Trudeau’s hallmark policies, namely his controversial carbon pricing regime.

Conservative MP John Williamson said Friday he will try to get the ball rolling early in the new year on a non-confidence vote that could topple the Liberal government in little more than a month.

Williamson, who chairs the public accounts committee, said in a social media post that he will put forward his non-confidence motion at a committee hearing on Jan. 7, and that the committee can later kick it over to the House of Commons to deal with once it returns on Jan. 27.

That could be voted on as early as Jan. 30, and could bring an immediate election if it passes.

Three non-confidence motions brought by the Tories failed in the fall. However, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said in the days after Freeland quit cabinet that he is now ready to vote down the government.

“The Liberals don’t deserve another chance,” he said in a letter posted to social media on Dec. 20, vowing that the NDP will put forward their own motion of non-confidence when parliament resumes and “vote to bring this government down.”

Williamson was not made available for an interview about the matter.

The Conservatives issued a statement Friday morning that said Singh should support their motion for an earlier vote and be prepared to live up to his words.

NDP House Leader Peter Julian said in a statement late Friday that his party will support the Conservative motion if it describes how the Liberals “let Canadians down.”

“In the past non-confidence motions passed at committee have not worked, so we will be ready with our own motion of non-confidence,” Julian said. “The NDP motion will send Canadians to the polls where they will have a choice between the Conservatives’ plan to cut in order to give more to CEOs; or Jagmeet Singh’s plan to fix health care, build homes people can afford and bring down the price of essentials — Canada’s first real government for the working class.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 27, 2024.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press