By Lori Turnbull

January 2, 2025

After an epically cold political December highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s resignation from cabinet over her planned replacement by former bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s holiday season has been equally chilly.

In the absence of a secret-ballot caucus vote on Trudeau’s leadership that the 20-odd MPs openly asking for him to resign wanted before Freeland’s bombshell, the momentum for removing him has shifted to regional caucuses over the holidays, with reports of consensus in the Ontario, Atlantic and Quebec caucuses that Trudeau must go.

The latest Angus Reid poll indicates that the Liberals have the support of just 16% of decided and leaning voters, which provides further fuel for speculation about Trudeau’s departure. But, so far, he hasn’t budged and, frankly, even if he were to walk away tomorrow, he has waited so long that there is likely very little any other leader could do to turn things around.

Trudeau’s insistence on staying, despite personal approval ratings that would normally be enough to serve as the writing on the wall, owes to the fact that although the party bears the Liberal name, it has been Justin Trudeau’s party for years now. No one is going to kick him out of his own house, even when it is in chaos.

This sense of ownership goes back to when Trudeau became leader at the worst time in the Liberal Party’s history. Their brand was in the gutter following the Martin-Chrétien wars and the sponsorship scandal. They were reduced to third place behind the Conservatives and the New Democrats. The Liberal voting base was disenchanted and, in a multi-party system in which strategic voting is common and party loyalty is fleeting, Liberal-leaning voters had other places to park their votes. But Trudeau won the leadership by a landslide in the spring of 2013 and brought the Liberals to a majority government only two and a half years later. He did this by taking the hollowed husk of the Liberal Party and using it as a foundation to build a personal political movement.

He took strategic measures to make the party his own. For example, in a shock move in January of 2014, he kicked the party’s Senators out of the Liberal caucus. His public justification for this was altruistic: to democratize the Liberal Party, he insisted that all members of the Liberal caucus be elected (in other words, appointed Senators did not qualify). This move had the added political advantage of distancing the Liberals from the Senate expense scandal that was gripping the Conservatives at the time. But perhaps most impactfully for Trudeau, this breakup allowed him to cut ties with the Liberal Party’s past. Liberal Senators who had been with the party for years, some since his father, Pierre’s, time, whether as senior staffers for previous prime ministers, party presidents, or MPs themselves, were now out in the cold. They could not tell Trudeau what to do, nor could they act as a counterweight to the power of the leader, nor could they provide continuity by acting as a bridge to the Liberal Party of the past.

Trudeau’s insistence on staying, despite approval ratings that would normally be enough to serve as the writing on the wall, owes to the fact that although the party bears the Liberal name, it has been Justin Trudeau’s party for years now.

Though perhaps this was not widely appreciated at the time, the removal of Senators from the Liberal caucus was a significant step in weakening the party caucus in relation to the leader. There were only 34 Liberal MPs at the time, so removing the 32 Senators effectively cut the Liberal parliamentary caucus in half. This made it easier for Trudeau to shape the party as he wanted. He was almost starting from scratch. Early on, he set non-negotiable policy positions, including that Liberal MPs and candidates had to be pro-choice, and he brought friends and experts in to build the platform that the party would run on in 2015. As an extension of that, Trudeau has consistently prioritized the advice of external experts and consultants, such as former McKinsey executive Dominic Barton, over that of his MPs.

In preparation for the 2015 election, Justin Trudeau recruited a cadre of candidates – some high-profile and others lesser known – who were loyal to him on a personal level. Trudeau’s cabinet picks have included friends, peers from university, and members of his wedding party. His closest political advisors have been his best friends. These personal relationships have been instrumental in inoculating Trudeau even when things have gone badly.

Of course, not everyone in the Liberal caucus is a personal friend of Trudeau’s. The political rookies who won their ridings on his coattails feel a deep sense of loyalty and indebtedness to him because they owe him their jobs. But now, we are seeing the tables turn.

Trudeau is a liability for the Liberal Party rather than its savior. His political project is failing because he is out of popularity and political capital. His MPs are hearing from constituents who support them but won’t vote for Trudeau again. And, of course, the Liberal caucus did not give themselves the option of using the Reform Act, as the Conservatives did, because that would have been disloyal.

In remaking the Liberal Party of Canada in his own image, and in delineating a line in the sand between his father’s Liberal Party and his own, Trudeau was asserting his independence from the very name that made his political career all-but a sure thing. That fired a rocket through the party ranks about who was in charge. But it also framed the political fate of the party as his to own.

And the trajectory of the past year proves that there is a risk in basing a political party around a person rather than a set of values that transcend time and leadership. When the brand curdles, it is difficult to pivot. The leader does not feel deferential either to the party’s legacy or to its potential future. In a system that already puts too much power in the hands of the leader, personality-based parties become toxic.

Justin Trudeau has a choice to make about how to manage the dying days of his political career. He could prorogue Parliament to allow the Liberals to choose a new leader before the next election, but even if he does that, he’ll be on the ballot. Alternatively, he could prorogue Parliament not to quit but to give himself more time and to focus on the challenge of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A third option would be to seek the dissolution of the House and an immediate election. No matter what he decides, Trudeau is on track to bring the Liberal Party back to where he found it: in a diminished position in without a clear path forward.

Policy Columnist Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.