Should He Stay or Should He Go? Justin Trudeau's Political Future

Patrick Gossage • May 3, 2023

Justin Trudeau faces two more years of tough sledding with every

week bringing a new reputational challenge.

Recently trying to live down the latest demeaning revelation - whether about his father’s foundation, admitting he will never meet the 2% NATO promise of military spending, or the looming necessity of addressing Chinese election and political interference. Add to this the unrelenting attacks by Pierre Poliviere who assigns blame directly to Trudeau for anything “broken” in Canada, neatly blasted out in well-produced videos and daily in the House at high volume. One pundit said Trudeau suffers from being the “overexposed lightning rod” for everything going wrong in this country.


The question for the next two years is how this negativity will weigh on the now 50-year-old leader and have him considering whether or not to run for a fourth term.


Coronation week has not only seen Charles III crowned but at the concurrent Liberal Convention Justin Trudeau won’t be re-crowned but there will not be a whisper of opposition to his ongoing expensive prosperity, sustainability and inclusionary agenda.


Not a sigh about the fact he is quoted as saying Canada will not meet its NATO military funding objectives and is unlikely to meet its ambitious net-zero emissions target by 2050.


Nor will there be much probing about leaving a popular Conservative MP Michael Chong uninformed when a leaked CSIS document showed his Hong Kong family targeted by the Chinese government. 


No, all is well in Liberal-land and the fact that defeated Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was interviewed by possible  Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland and other possibilities are relatively rookie Cabinet Ministers hardly constitutes a reason for Justin Trudeau to lose much sleep.


It has been said by every known pundit that the Liberal party is his party now. In his image and his values. He is still the best retail politician in Canada with (unlike his father) a genuine ability to connect to anyone. 


And yet he is more than aware of his unpopularity with a large segment of the population, growing out originally from his tough vaccine mandates, and intolerance for the Ottawa convoy and what it stood for. And he is officially reviled in Alberta and Saskatchewan.


My close female colleague did media relations through David  Peterson’s  1990 campaign in Ontario when he lost to the NDP. There were protests at nearly every stop, forcing Peterson to sneak in back doors and up service elevators. It was very stressful for her and police, and damaging to the campaign. On TV, the rowdy protesters made him look uncomfortable and unpopular – which he was.


Trudeau experienced the same challenges in the last campaign. Campaign planners were unable to publicize events to keep gangs from following the tour. The famous stone thrower is just now going to court. It is inevitable that he will face the same demonstrations whenever we go to the polls again. 


It is important to remember that politicians are human and much as leaders like the perks, the constant nastiness, attacks and criticisms do get to them. I was with his father when he resigned after the 1979 defeat. He actually teared up on the way to the press theater where he told the gallery that they would not have him to kick around anymore.


Justin’s family is still relatively young, his daughter is 14 and his younger son is 9. How many powerful leaders have I told to say they are retiring to spend more time with their family? It’s a tried and true line and you never know if a beleaguered Justin Trudeau may be tempted to use it one day. Particularly if he felt he was the issue in ensuring a Liberal victory in the next election.


Yes - he has said he will stay and fight the next election, and no doubt relishes clobbering the outrageous Poliviere. The latter’s video collection of ridiculous outbursts will make amazing negative ads. But remember, no leader would make himself a lame duck by even hinting at thinking about retirement months and months before a possible election. 


I know it’s possible the “coalition “ with the NDP may break down forcing an earlier election than currently expected. In this case he would have no choice but to run.  But the expected election in October 2025 on the other hand does give Justin a chance to think of his future and perhaps take a walk in the snow like his dad that winter. Have he and his family had enough? That’s the question and while we don’t know we can speculate on conversations between Justin and his wife as the latest horror for him or his government breaks in the media, and Poliviere continues to blame all the country’s woes on him.

He does talk a good talk about long term goals which could take another term to see through. They rolled off his tongue with ease in a recent interview at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He said that despite the weight of uncertainty in the world, we were at an “inflection point’… there is a good path forward that can create good middle class jobs.” He used the VW battery plant as an example of how the strength of Canadian workers and  activist governments working together could  build a better future. 


We all yearn for the economy and our individual fortunes to turn around. They may slowly as we approach 2025. Can Justin and his government muster the industrial housing and health polices to give us hope? If he is sure he can, he will likely run again. He knows that the Canada we are looking at now is no legacy. 

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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