Why Trudeau is Staying No Matter What

Patrick Gossage • November 5, 2024

Inexplicable times for sad Liberals. An almost universally disliked Prime Minister who is convinced he alone can save Canada from the dangerous Pierre Poilievre and nobody is going to convince him otherwise. Not the pathetic group of 24 anonymous MP’s who penned a letter urging him to resign, not His former campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst or a few cabinet friends who suggested to him it was time. Not anyone in his loyal Cabinet. The Polls show a vast majority of Canadians want him to resign, yet he is still PM.

The reasons for this suicidal loyalty are simple. As former CBC Ottawa Bureau Chief Rob Russo said recently on CBC TV’s Power and Politics: “He made a bunch of nobodies into somebodies.”  Of the 39 current cabinet  ministers the vast majority came out of relative obscurity to the first Trudeau cabinet of  2015, and only Bill Blair and perhaps Steven Guilbeault had major public profiles, Blair as Toronto’s police chief and Guilbeault as a well-known Quebec environmental activist. Chrystia Freeland was a high-profile journalist and editor here and abroad.

The huge Prime Minister's Office of course owe their jobs to Justin and enjoy a power far beyond that of previous PMO’s. Hard to give up. They even appoint the key players, the chiefs of staff in Cabinet Ministers offices. Imagine a Minister who knows the loyalty of his key staffer is divided between the Minister and the PMO! This PMO muscle flexing was unknown in my time at the PMO and its effects on delaying or killing the flow of ideas is serious. 


Lloyd Axworthy a powerful cabinet Minister in the Chretien government bewailed this practice in a recent Toronto Star piece: “Bill Blair at the inquiry into foreign interference inquiry revealed that he was unaware his chief of staff, appointed by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), had been holding a high-priority request from CSIS for his signature for weeks. Blair further admitted he wasn’t troubled by this clear lapse in ministerial responsibility. This shocking revelation underscored how the role of a minister has been undermined in recent years.” We might even assume that the chief of staff was acting after consulting the PMO.


Most of us are unaware of how much power is concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office. A 2007 study of 22 OECD countries found that Prime Ministers in Canada held more power than in any other country.


Andrew Coyne in a wonderful column recently described the inability of MP's to strongly urge the PM to reign this way: “Here they are too terrified in their desperation to rid themselves of a leader who has taken the party to the brink of annihilation, to so much as say their own names, lest the wrath of His Awful Majesty or his Most Awful Chief of Staff come down upon them.”


The chief referred to is of course Katie Telford a tactician whose early work was largely in Ontario politics. She takes credit for her organizational role in the 2015 election victory and has managed to outlive any previous Chief or Principal secretary to a PM by many years. She runs an office of hundreds who are credited by Ministers of running an effective bottleneck for approvals of new policies or initiatives by Cabinet members that are forced to pass through her bureaucracy. 


She also runs an effective screening of calls to the PM. Few get through to an increasingly isolated introverted PM. There is  story that even former PM jean Chretien could not get through the gatekeepers. Certainly, face to face or telephone calls with MP’s are very rare. 


Her huge “communications” section pumps out floods of daily releases occasionally of important appointments but more often vacuous tomes celebrating days like United Nations Day, Small Business Week, Persons Day or International Day of the Girl. The senior people in this office keep every MP and cabinet Minister “on message”. The PMO ever adjusting mantra focuses on the well worn Trudeau promise to help the “middle class and those working hard to join” it, and “continuing” such endlessly repeated initiatives as child care, housing construction, dental care, school food programs etc. “Investing in Canadians rather than cutting programs as promised by the Conservatives” Is the pitch falling on deaf ears. 


Interestingly the few dissident MP’s who spoke on record all bemoaned the lack of a new “plan” to win back support for the Liberals. A few days ago, one of the daily pitches for money from the Liberals landed in my e-mail, this one from Andrew Bevan, the newly appointed National Campaign Director: “I couldn’t be more excited to join the only team with a real plan to make life more affordable, strengthen our public health care, take bold climate action, and grow the middle class.”  It appears that more of the same is the “plan”!  His first TV ad reflects this.

I’ve pointed out before that we should not shy from looking into Trudeau’s private life to see why there has been so little positive convincing action to show real concern for suffering Canadians in the past year. Why the PMO has been largely reactionary. Truth could be that Trudeau could hardly not be affected by his marriage breakup and the effect it has had on his kids. He is human. 


Pundits have asked why there should not be a change at the top if Canadians have spoken loudly for the need for change. Fresh blood in the PMO seems unlikely, however needed. Trudeau is very loyal to those who brought him to where he is, even if he feels the loss of his more policy oriented Principal Secretary Gerald Butts who was a victim of  the SNC Lavalin affair. 


The largest exempt staff army in Canadian history is unlikely to birth new ideas. They have been appointed by the PMO and are largely young loyal Liberals. They and their Ministers rely increasingly on consultants to produce policy papers. Little chance of breakthrough ideas here. 

So, what do we have going forward. A PM whose “intoxication” with power won’t give it up and a supine Cabinet and caucus afraid to challenge him and a paucity of new thinking or plans to win back Canadians who have already made up their minds about the PM and the Liberals. The captain goes down fighting with his ship. The contrast with the renewal of the democrats in the US is depressing indeed.

Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views

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?"

A New Canada to Fight for Our Survival

By Patrick Gossage • December 29, 2025
There has been nothing like the mobilization of our country since we went to war against Hitler “for King and Country.” Now we are mobilizing in a new war against Trump’s depredations with renewed patriotic fervour. Our building a resilient sovereignty against the word’s most irrational and powerful regime - who believe we have no right to exist - will require an enormous dedicated and concentrated effort to redefine our nation. . Make no mistake. We are not seen as important in Washington, a lesson I learned as the Minister of Information at our embassy in the Reagan years. Like Trump’s disparaging attitude to Justin Trudeau, Reagan had little use for his crusading father, Pierre Ytudeau. The difference is that with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney r Reagan actually became a key figure in establishing the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA), signed in 1988. Ironically, it is precisely the success of this pact that led to 75% of our trade going to the US, a dangerous dependence which is now under extreme threat. The future of the successor to the FTA is at dtake. The US Canada Mexico Agreement (USMCA) is about to be renegotiated and is by no means secure. Bilateral trade discussions on the sectorial tariffs that are destroying our steel, automobile, aluminum and lumber industries were going well but were cancelled on October 23 after Trump, in a fit of pique was annoyed by Ontario TV ads using a Reagan clip to decry tariffs. Prime Minister Carney clings to the hope that these issues will be addressed in the context of the USMCA talks. They are supposed to begin in January. We live in hope. Make no mistake. Trump recently suggested that USMCA’s future was not certain. His strong belief that Canada would be better as a US state _ “and there would be no tariffs” – seems unshakeable. Perhaps the most striking evidence of what low repute Canada is held in the White House comes from Vice President Vance. He has publicly criticized Canada's our generous immigration policies, blaming them for the country's "stagnating" living standards and referring to our approach as "immigration insanity". Vance pointed to a chart from IceCap Asset Management showing that Canada's GDP per capita growth has fallen behind that of the U.S. and the U.K. in recent years. He argues this stagnation is a direct result of Canada's approach to immigration and not U.S. trade policies. He specifically targeted Canada's multiculturalism model, contrasting it with the U.S. "melting pot". Vance claimed that "no nation has leaned more into 'diversity is our strength’... immigration insanity “ than Canada". The White House recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) which also note how immigrants can destroy our democracies. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist signaled this: “It cites activities by our sister European democracies that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. “‘Should present trends continue,” it goes on, “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.” These views are totally inimical to Canadian values.  As is this, Trump’s most outrageous recent anti- immigrant outburst as reported by NBC : “For a second day in a row, President Donald Trump launched into a hate-filled rant against Somalia and Somali immigrants living in the US, saying they’ve “destroyed Minnesota” and “our country.” Minnesota, Trump said, is “a hellhole” right now. “The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country.“ The NSC also can affect Canada in its focus on the Western hemisphere. an area to be dominated by US interests. The US will secure critical supply chains in its own interests; and insists on the right of the US to have access to “strategically important locations.” The US National Security Council is to identify strategic points and resources in the Western hemisphere with a view to their protection and joint development with regional partners. Obviously, Canada as a source of critical minerals, will be under US scrutiny. Some observers fear that Trump wants Canada to become a “vassal state”. A December Toronto Star editorial states coldly that “Thanks to Donald Trump, we know that nothing about our country is guaranteed anymore, not our sovereignty, our democracy, our prosperity.” We now know the Canadian policies standing in the way of a new USMCA agreement. US Trade representative Jamieson Greer said our online Streaming Act, which will make profitable US streaming services support Canadian programming is a major irritant as is our sacrosanct supply management regime for dairy and poultry products. These both are very difficult bargaining chips for Canada to play. Trump’s love affair with tariffs is unlikely to subside so Canadian products may continue to be frozen out of the US. Prime Minister Carney’s ambitious strategy of finding alternate markets for these may work. And his new policy framework for rebuilding a successful economy, major infrastructure projects and attracting important foreign investment is a significant redefinition of our national political priorities. He enjoys wide public support for his strategy which also receives good business and media support. There is already some optimism about the economy in 2026 - take Bank of Montreal’s recent outlook paper: “We’re looking for a stronger economy in 2026 than 2025. Consumer spending has helped prop up the economy. The “Buy Canadian” campaign has helped, and more people are travelling closer to home. Also, there’s no question that federal government spending has also supported economic growth. As we move into the latter part of the year—boosted by firmer economic growth and lower population growth—we expect the unemployment rate to fall in the second half. “Canada’s position in the trade dispute isn’t as bad as it appeared earlier in the year. The average Us tariff rate on imports of Canadian goods is between 6% and 7%, compared to the 17% rate the U.S. charges the rest of the world on average. (these rates are goods under the existing CUSMA) Sectorial tariffs are heavily focused on certain targeted industries, such as steel and aluminum, lumber, and auto imports and non-USMCA auto parts. These are important sectors, but they represent a relatively narrow slice of the economy. “ In addition there is good news on the overall trade front. Canada’s trade swung to a surplus of C$0.15 billion in September 2025 from a C$6.3 billion deficit the month before and well above expectations for a C$4.5 billion deficit, Exports rose 6.3 C$ 64.231 billion, the largest monthly increase since February. Nine of 11 product sections posted gains. Metal and non-metallic mineral product exports jumped 22.7% driven by a 30.2% surge in unwrought gold; aircraft and other transportation equipment rose 23.4% and crude oil exports climbed 5.8%. We just may have a more resilient economy than we thought. Nevertheless, we cannot count on Trump agreeing to a new trade regime that is as good as the original NAFTA – and the cost of reducing tariffs on key sectors may be too high, Trump’s love for tariffs and distain for us won’t change. We can only hope that a smart, well connected and determined Prime Minister can rebuild an economy that will be immune to the vagaries of our neighbour.
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