Former B.C. premier Christy Clark has called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s to resign, urging Liberal MPs to lobby him behind closed doors to step aside if he doesn’t do it on his own.
Clark’s sentiments were spurred on by the damaging loss of long-time Liberal stronghold Toronto–St. Paul’s to the Conservatives in Monday’s byelection.
“I think the leader needs to be replaced,” Clark told the Globe and Mail in an interview on Thursday. “I think it’s time for him to move on to other, fairer pastures.”
Clark called the upset loss of the riding a pronouncement on Trudeau himself, rather than just the Liberal party, which until Monday had held the seat since 1993.
Clark noted that the seat remained under Liberal control under previous leaders like Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion, who suffered electoral losses, saying that voters have made it clear that they “don’t want the leadership of the party.”
“When parties start losing ridings like this one, that are really at the heart of their strength, it’s tough to make the argument that there doesn’t need to be change at the top,” said Clark.
In addition to a new leader, Clark also recommended that the party shift its priorities to economic growth.
”This government hasn’t been focused on economic growth, we’re sliding back in our standard of living,” she said. “The Liberal Party of Canada has to get back to being a party of job creation and of fatter wallets for Canadians.”
Clark advised returning to the kind of economic approach that Canadians came to associate the Liberals with under previous leaders like prime minister Jean Chrétien and subsequent prime minister Paul Martin.
Clark worked for Chrétien’s leadership campaign in 1990 and on the 1993 election campaign before joining his government as a staffer. She later served as the premier of B.C. from 2011 to 2017.
She downplayed any rumours of her making a potential federal leadership run herself, citing the fact that the position currently remains unavailable. Although she did say people have asked her to consider it.
Regardless of whether or not Clark runs, she believes that the Liberals are doomed to lose the next election under Trudeau’s leadership.
“At the moment, I don’t think the Liberals have a fighting chance,” she said. “If there’s no change, then it’s not going to get better.”
She urged Liberal MPs to begin speaking with Trudeau privately about the matter, saying that they “need to be thinking about the bigger picture for our party.”
The Conservatives have steadily held a commanding lead over the Liberals in the polls for the past year, with a recent Abacus survey giving them a 20-point lead over the governing party.
The main issue Canadians appear to be having with the Liberal party is its leader, with 58% of Canadians saying they held a negative opinion of Trudeau.
“If an election were held today, 44% of committed voters would vote Conservatives with the Liberals at 24%, the NDP at 17%,” reads the survey from April. “This 20-point lead is the largest we have ever measured for the Conservatives and the first time the Conservative vote share has hit 44% nationally.”
Despite this, Trudeau remains vigilant that the Liberals will enter the 2025 federal election under his leadership, telling CBC News in an interview from earlier this month that, “Canadians are not in decision mode right now.”