Leave the Sinking Ship Or Go Down with It : Two Leaders Face this choice

Patrick Gossage • July 9, 2024

US President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau are both facing the agonizing decision of either quitting their positions or seeing their parties and legacies obliterated in electoral defeat.

The pressure is enormous on both and is consuming all media. Speculation is rife as to who might replace these leaders, with both of them making absolute commitments to stay on, and as Trudeau says endlessly, to “continue to deliver for Canadians.” Both feel they have been traditionally underestimated; have shown they can get up and fight again - and are simply very resilient. There is a shared inability by both leaders’ offices to admit that there is any fatal weakness in their leaders.


In Biden’s case, despite millions observing his stumbling early in the recent Biden-trump debate, the ever-weakening defense is it was a one due to a cold and fatigue from overseas travel and not to be compared with the accomplishments of his productive three years in office. This is paralleled by Trudeau’s defaulting to his child care, dental care and housing initiatives when asked why he should stay on given his long lasting unpopularity in the polls.


In addition, he has explained at length that he is in a virtuous battle against the ascent of a virulent right wing threat on democracy, a claim destroyed by a recent long commentary by Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail. He pointed to the huge win of the left-wing labour party in Britain and the dispatching of the populist party in Poland (and now the left wing ascendancy in France). “It is more than a stretch for the Prime Minister to pretend his own troubles are part of some worldwide trend to instability, or to insinuate that democracy is on the ballot in the next election,” he writes. Or to suggest that Poliviere is the same threat to democracy as Trump.


In addition, both leaders are personally convinced that they alone are qualified to take on their more popular rivals. Trudeau, in particular, has characterized the coming electoral fight with rival Poliviere as one he could never back away from.


Interestingly both have had their characters assassinated by their rivals. This is the constantly repeated refrain from Poliviere on Justin Trudeau: “Trudeau is not worth the cost. After nine years he’s doubled the debt, doubled housing costs, increased debt by 80%...Canada now has the worst per person income growth in the entire G7, worst mortgage debt growth in all those countries, when will he realize that the more, he spends the worse things get?”


Trump’s attacks on Biden are even worse: “They're (the Biden administration) are just destroying our country, and if we don't take it back — if we don't take it back in '24, I really believe we're not going to have a country left."


Are we to believe that this kind of savage and bitter attacking of your opponent (Polivere was banished from the House for calling Trudeau’s policies “wacko”) actually is effective in maintaining your popularity? Apparently, it does. Our politics has come to this. Personal vendettas over policy.

Trudeau recently argued fruitlessly that his policy approach was admired by other world leaders, citing the Japanese prime minister, Trudeau reported as saying “he looks to what we're doing to build an economy that leaves no one behind.” The German chancellor he said, “talked at length about our values of compassion and diversity.” This in answer to Poliviere’s repeatedly calling Canada “broken”.


Both clearly will resist to the bitter end any call to resign. I have lived the basic truism of all national leaders – it is the hardest thing in the world to admit you have lost popularity and the time has come to quit. The staff around you whose lives depend on your staying argue that you can do it to the bitter end. And you believe you can. For Trudeau belling the cat will take major party figures or would be candidates to go public which is only beginning to happen.



And what can we speculate will be the nail in the coffin for either? In Trudeau’s case, a couple more months of disastrous polling showing a Liberal rout in an election a year away. I believe in the principle that no leaders go into an election sure to lose will play. For Biden one more public demonstration that his age makes him confused and incompetent will seal his fate.

Only then can come the crowning of new leaders that might just result in the continuation of progressive leadership in both countries.

Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views

Well-meaning Assault Weapons Ban and Buyback victim of poor timing and major opposition

By Patrick Gossage • April 14, 2026
In contrast to US inaction after almost weekly mass killings, it took one horrible shooting rampage at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, in 1980, to start the drive for public policy changes around gun control. But years delays between the mass shooting outrage and actual policy to rid the country of assault rifles doomed the eventual gun buyback program. The polytechnique horror was huge news in our relatively massacre-free nation. That December day, 25-year-old Marc Lépine stalked the hallways and classrooms of the École Polytechnique de Montréal with a semi-automatic rifle and murdered 14 women and injured another 13 people before killing himself. A year later, the Coalition for Gun Control was formed to push for stricter gun laws, led by survivors of the Montreal massacre. Later that year, the federal government passed Bill C-17, which imposed safety training and a mandatory waiting period to get a firearms licence-- not an effective means of controlling automatic rifles. Much later, in1996, Parliament passed the Firearms Act, Bill C-68, driven in part by a push for stricter gun laws following the Montreal massacre. The act created a national firearms registry and imposed new rules for obtaining a gun licence, including background checks. The former Conservative government, under prime minister Stephen Harper, abolished the long-gun registry, which it said placed an unnecessary burden on law-abiding gun owners. Quebec subsequently created its own provincial registry to replace it. It took another horrific killing nine years later in Nova Scotia to force Ottawa to take real action on miliary-style guns. On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations, killing 22 people before he was killed by the RCMP. On May 1, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following through on a 2019 campaign promise, announced an immediate ban on some 1,500 makes and models of assault weapons.. The Canadian government sought to follow New Zealand's lead when at the same time it announced the ban it promised a plan to force gun owners to surrender military-style firearms. But while New Zealand acted quickly, in 2019, Ottawa only launched a long awaited buyback program in 2026. In contrast, the government of then New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda announced its firearms buyback program shortly after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in March, 2019. In order to move quickly, New Zealand set up mobile units where firearm owners could get refunds in exchange for their firearms. They worked hard to get co-operation from gun owners. Meanwhile, here, the firearms industry and individual gun owners vigorously opposed the project, and it was delayed for years. The program was finally initiated this year with little of the sense of urgency it could have had right after the Nova Scotia killings. It has not been going well. In April, the federal public safety minister's office said more than 67,000 assault-style firearms have been declared by 37,869 firearm owners across Canada. That's just under half of the 136,000 firearms the government had budgeted for when it set aside aside $248.6 million for the program. The precise number of banned firearms in Canada is unknown due to the end of the long-gun registry in 2012. There are other deeper problems. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have indicated they will not assist with the program, meaning police are not co-operating as in New Zealand. Conservative MPs and firearm owners say the buyback is a wasteful exercise that targets law-abiding citizens. The original gun-control advocacy group, PolySeSouvient, blames “weak political leadership” for what it calls “poor participation” in the compensation program. It looks like Ottawa - to put it mildly - has blown the opportunity to really reduce the number of people-killing guns in this country.

Two Opposites – Mark Carney and Donald Trump

By Patrick Gossage • March 12, 2026
One of the major differences between these two men is that Carney understands the value of well-thought-out strategy, abundantly clear in his Davos speech, which laid out one for middle powers to deal with the end of a rules-based international order and the rise of hegemony. Trump's lack of strategic understanding is clear in his bumbling attempts to justify the billion-dollar-a-day Iran war. His overall tactic of “flooding the zone” – mounting a new initiative or major announcement every day, or even several times a day to ensure press and opposition can never catch up. This tactic has served him well – confusing the world and his would-be opponents into submission under a valley of activity and harsh opinions from the leader of the world. Contrast this approach to leadership from Carney. He is systematically building a nation less dependent on US trade by travelling the world building new alliances and trading partners. And in the scare of Australia giving substance to his idea of alliances with middle powers. All laid out in the Davos speech. It is instructive to appreciate how much Trump was irritated by the Davos speech. Carney got a standing ovation; Trump’s rambling lengthy diatribe did not. He won’t soon forget being so upstaged. He surely recognized an intellectual power he could never match. Carney is a realist and pragmatic when he stated recently “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” He is dealing with the world that is being reshaped by an irrational power-mad president, a world the powerful Stephen Miller said “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” Does Carney sometimes err on the side of supporting Trump likely to ensure that critical talks on free trade and tariffs have some chance of finding a sympathetic ear? Yes; first he seemed to fully support Trump’s war with Iran. He later made his support more nuanced, saying Trump’s actions were against the rules-based international order. He now says we will not get involved unless a NATO ally is threatened. But generally, Carney is highly rational in contrast to Trump’s self-centered irrationality. Take Trump’s bizarre ill-informed letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, who had no role in deciding if he got the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel obligated to think purely of Peace (he subsequently engaged in an ever expanding war against Iran). He then reiterated his demand for “complete and Total Control, of Greenland. Thank you!”. His late-night rants, complete with caps, on social media show a mind out of control. Thay are dutifully reported on US news media and often astonish with their non sequiturs and nastiness. One of his more unpresidential quotes came as he fingered White House drapes: “I chose these myself. I always liked gold." The big question for Canadians who are more and more disillusioned with the antics of the President: could these two opposite ever sit down and do a deal that works for Canada. The two do text, and Carney has admitted that in private Trump does listen. But there is also evidence that the trade people in the White House do not like Canada, and as Trump has said, we owe our very existence to the US. And we are “difficult”. They have said that the current trade deal is not good for the US and could be trashed entirely and -deals with Mexico and Canada could be separate and the current trilateral deal may be dead.  Canada was at the brink of reducing the heavy sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber when Premier Ford’s unfortunate ads during the Rose Bowl that featured President Reagan speaking against the usefulness of Tariffs led To Trump suspending talks. They only recently resumed. So can our world-renowned businessman and banker hope to sit down with the unpredictable and unstable President and cut a deal? Some hope that if we extend talks, the President, weakened by the midterms, the bad economic fallout from an unpopular war, and the fragmentation of the MAGA movement may be easier to deal with. On the other hand he may badly need a “win,” bullying big concessions out of Canada and reaping so-cabled benefits from a weaker free trade deal. There is a scenario where Trump gets a black eye if Carney simply walks away with the conviction, perhaps easily shared with an increasingly nationalistic and confident Canada that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” In any case, what a decisive and challenging future we face with Canada at play. Can Carney win for Canada against his opposite by losing a deal?"
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