— Feature, Musings —12.29.2024 12:17 PM
My latest: 2025 predictions about the future!
Never make predictions, especially about the future.
So said baseball great (and quipster) Casey Stengel, and he was of course right. The prediction business is high-risk and low-reward.
The punditocracy loves making predictions, however, especially at year’s end. So who am I to buck a trend?
Here’s five of mine for 2025.
Justin Trudeau is going to leave.I’ve got several lunches riding on this one, so I’d better be right. My reasons? For starters, he’s been behind Pierre Poilievre’s Tories by double digits for more than a year. Nothing he’s tried has reversed his downward spiral.
Another reason: along with public opinion, he’s lost the support of most of the Liberal caucus, a sizeable chunk of cabinet, and every party in the House of Commons. Theirs is simply no viable path back to victory. So, sometime soon, he will say he’s written to the president of the Liberal Party to say that he plans to step down when a new leader is picked, give us all a Trudeau-esque wave, and then jet off to do some international sight-seeing. All at taxpayer expense, naturally.
The Liberals will have a leadership race and their numbers will improve. There’ll be plenty of contestants, too, the party’s present crummy poll numbers notwithstanding. Why? Because the Liberals firmly believe that the yawning gap in the polls is mostly about hatred for Trudeau, not love for Poilievre. And they’re not totally wrong about that.
Like Stephen Harper did in similar circumstances in 2008, the Grits will prorogue to avoid getting defeated in a confidence vote. That’ll give them some breathing room. Trudeau’s announced departure will boost their numbers, as will a leadership race. And then, with a shiny new leader at the fore, the Libs will get even more popular – because every new leader gets a bit of a honeymoon. But who will that leader be?
The new Liberal leader will be an outsider. That is, someone who isn’t in Trudeau’s cabinet, all of whom are too close to the blast radius. Outsiders always tend to do better in leadership races, particularly if a party has been in power for too long. Voters are looking for fresh faces, and so are party members. The Grit tradition of alternation between French and English leaders narrows the field even more.
That all leaves just three options. One is Christina Freeland, who executed a brilliant pirouette out of Trudeau’s circle, and has effectively become the leader of the opposition from within Trudeau’s caucus. Another is Mark Carney, who has been a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – and therefore a good guy to have around when facing the economic existential threat of Trump tariffs. The third choice is Christy Clark.
The Liberals want a female leader to offset Poilievre’s angry guy: Clark, a happy warrior, offers that. They’ll want someone who knows how to govern: Clark, a former Premier, offers that. They’ll want someone who has never been part of the Trudeau oxymoronic brain trust: only Clark offers that.
Christy Clark is the only viable alternative to Pierre Poilievre. Big question: does she speak French well enough?
Pierre Poilievre will win. Doug Ford will win. Notwithstanding everything above, the federal Conservatives are still going to win a majority. It won’t be nearly as big as it would be, were an election to be held today. But Poilievre is still going to win. He may not be the cuddliest guy to ever offer himself to the people, but the people aren’t looking for cuddly, these days. They’re mad as Hell at all incumbents, and they’ve had time to get used to the idea of Poilievre as prime minister. He’ll win.
So will Doug Ford. As my colleague Brian Lilley has reported, a debate is raging within Ford’s team about when to seek re-election – this Spring, or later. Either way, Ford will still win. Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie remains an unknown quantity, and the Ontario NDP (like their federal cousins) seem to be more preoccupied with Gaza than Guelph. Ford is routinely underestimated by his opponents, he’s coated in several layers of Teflon, and he’s morphed into the anti-Trump Captain Canada. He’ll win, too. Big.
The world will continue to orbit to the Right. A variety of factors are at play: an increasingly-dangerous world, which progressives seem unable to understand or fix. Anger towards political elites, who always tend to be pointy-headed political progressives. Frustration about the cost of living and porous borders, which have always been winning themes for conservatives.
For the next year, the Right will continue to dominate – and then, by 2026, the Left will come roaring back. Politics is pendulum, always swinging between Left and Right.
Which is always predictable, too!
Cristy Clark represents the much fawned-over “fiscally conservative / socially & culturally progressive” cohort who comprise barely 10% of the overall population but 90% of the wealthy establishment and media in Canada. And her French makes my ears bleed. Election outcome with her as leader: 15 seats, and her own seat wouldn’t be one of them.
I’d say say fiscally conservative and socially progressive actually describes about 65% of Canadian voters and about 90% of people who put red signs on their lawn.
Re French…. I think a small percentage of Quebecers are concerned about that… ROC is generally pleased to see the effort.
But that isn’t true at all. 90% of the wealthy establishment are crammed into that tiny demographic so their views are the ones most frequently broadcast and celebrated, making others (including many out of touch politicians) believe they represent the majority.
Abacus Data has studied this. Only 6% of Canadians fit into the Economic Conservative / Cultural Progressive bucket.
Their findings:
– Economic Progressive / Cultural Progressive : 24%
– Economic Progressive / Cultural Conservative : 22%
– Economic Conservative / Cultural Conservative : 16%
– Economic Conservative / Cultural Progressive : 6%
– Economic & Cultural mixed views : 27%
I am still laughing at this quote:
“The Liberal party will be an annoying neoliberal corporatist rump representing the luxury beliefs of old-money non-meritocratic inherited wealth in the most exclusive neighbourhoods of the 3 biggest cities.”
They were the folks(in conjunction with their homies in the MSM) that used to complain about Harper over their brandy snifters in their Rosedale mansions or while summering in the Muskoka or wintering somewhere near Mara Largo(if they weren’t in Davos). They wanted to rid the country of that “meddlesome priest”. They found a guy with a name and managed to persuade a bunch of Red Tories and others to vote against their best interests and install him as PM. Little did they know they couldn’t control him as we are seeing now. Hopefully they will be assigned to ash heap of history and we never hear from them again.
I predict Justin is going to call everyone’s bluff and keep cruising along as if everything is OK. The caucus will have to use its parliamentary privilege to just remove him the old fashioned way. Closed meeting. New PM addresses the nation 2 hours later. This will actually be a good thing for Canada since it will remind everyone of the power MPs already have. It will also be a fitting end to the 10 year Justin mess. A leadership born in madness most appropriately should end in madness.
He still thinks this still works. Released today.
https://youtu.be/BwlwSJ4KDY4?feature=shared
Yes, and this is an example of why he will be forced out. The usual routine of a leader resigning when it is sensible will not happen. He will push the envelope until the caucus duly informs the GG and the Speaker that Canada has a new Liberal Leader and Prime Minister. This will happen in a closed meeting, I suspect in the next three weeks or so. He will force them to use that legal path only reserved for desperate situations.
His leadership came about with no forethought at all re. the consequences of allowing a total incompetent into a position of authority. Canada and the Liberal Party are living those consequences now.
He will never leave voluntarily. He will only leave when the caucus forces him out, under a cloud of maximum disgrace, shame, acrimony and embarrassment to him and those around him.
I predicted that from the early days of his leadership, but I never thought Canadians would fall for the BS and accidentally allow him to become PM.
The Liberal Party National Executive needs to freeze funds for ads like this. They owe it to the members and donors to turn the taps off now.
You are a Liberal and didn’t fall for it. It still boggles my mind that any Red Tory fell for it. For that reason alone, I usually tune them out, particularly on their early views on Pierre. They are likely the part of the 6% Pedant refers to and would be all in for Christy Clark.
I still believe that Trudeau thinks only Trudeau can save Canada from conservatives and he visits the GG early in the new year – is it possible he could screw Singh out of full pension by setting an early February date? He is that spiteful of those he tells have wronged him.
Or… Götterdämmerung the Canadian edition?
Unless they carry him and toss his ass out on to the front steps Zoolander ain’t leaving.
If Clark (like Brad Wall) had left provincial office while still popular, then yes; she could’ve been the first premier in Canadian history to serve at least one full term and become PM. But because premiers have such high profiles (because of how much oversight they have over healthcare/education) there’s no way, for instance, she would even win the seats she needs to in BC to give the Liberals a fighting chance.
Christy Clark ah ha ha ha
Not bloody likely. Yes she pulled victory out of the fire in BC. Then had to govern, her tenure in BC was an unmitigated disaster. I would be surprised if she carried any seats in BC (where the Lib party is conservative) let alone won the Fed Lib leadership.
They’re pooched.
Folks are so done with this clown show.
Donors aren’t going to pony up, and that’s going to be the key.
They’ll be tootin’ across the county in mini vans.
Why do you think LeBlanc did not extend the donation deadline to political donations(I don’t think). You can make precisely the same argument that the extension is needed because of the strike. We are down in our end of the year drive but it’s still early!