Graceful Trudeau exit would benefit Canada if Tories win next election

The polls look dire for Justin Trudeau's Liberals. The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre have enjoyed a lead gusting up to 20 per cent for several months. The prime minister's personal totals are horrendous. These are 1984type numbers — bringing to mind not George Orwell's novel, but Brian Mulroney's demolition of the Liberals in that year. While the next election is some time away, it's hard to imagine a future in which the Liberals win more seats, let alone more votes, than the Conservatives. Yet we see little indication that Trudeau plans to resign.

Why not?

Hubris might be one reason. Perhaps Trudeau, one of life's favoured few, doesn't believe he can lose. Or perhaps it's the exact opposite. Trudeau may be sticking around because he realizes defeat is likely, and doesn't want the next Liberal leader to be sullied with an electoral blowout. He's taking one for the team.

There is a third possibility. Perhaps Trudeau knows he can lose the next election — and still remain prime minister.

You might well be asking: Huh?

In our system, the party that gets to form the government is usually the one that wins the most seats in the House of Commons. Because the largest party generally has the best chance of getting its measures passed by Parliament and commanding its “confidence,” the Governor General normally invites its leader to become prime minister.

However, the day after any election, the prime minister is still prime minister. Their role is then to sift through the electoral debris, assess the distribution of seats in the House, and advise the Governor General on whether they can command its confidence.

There is, therefore, a world in which the following occurs. The Conservatives finish first in votes and in the House, but capture only a plurality of seats. Trudeau tallies up the seat count and notices that the Liberal and NDP totals combine to outnumber the Conservatives. If he can secure the support of the NDP, he may still enjoy the confidence of the House. The two parties have shared a legislative coalition since March 2022. Why not keep it going?

In this world, then, Trudeau goes to the Governor General and advises her that he has the support of the House and therefore should remain prime minister. Bowing to long-standing constitutional convention, the Governor General agrees.

Presto! A fourth Trudeau government. So perhaps Trudeau is sticking around because he knows he need only hold the Conservatives to a plurality of seats. Depending on how the remaining seats break down, he may still be in the pole position. If this is indeed Trudeau's thinking, it is dangerous. Let me be clear: The above scenario is perfectly constitutional. The problem is political. This outcome would lock the Conservatives out of power despite “winning” the election by any normal metric.

Canadian conservatives share an informational and attitudinal ecosystem with the American right, in which Donald Trump's “stop the steal” lies have normalized the delusion that electoral cheating is rampant. Surveys already show that Conservative supporters are disproportionately hostile to institutions such as Parliament, bureaucracy, the judiciary, and mainstream (i.e., accurate) media. The 2008 Coalition Crisis already gave us one instance in which Conservative leadership leveraged widespread ignorance about constitutional norms to discredit perfectly valid parliamentary manoeuvres. This would be the same dynamic on steroids.

The scenario in which Trudeau “loses” the election, yet remains prime minister, is therefore a recipe for turbocharging the radicalization of the Conservatives into a party of anti-system, anti-parliamentary, anti-constitutional authoritarianism — much like today's GOP. Conservatives must feel that ours is an open system in which they have a fair chance to form government. Many already believe, without basis, that the system is rigged against them. We must not give them reason to do so.

In the event that the Conservatives win only a plurality of seats, then, the responsible course will be for the prime minister to resign with good grace. Any other result risks thrusting Canada into MAGA-style polarization between anti-system authoritarianism and liberal democracy. Let's hope that Trudeau has the wisdom to act accordingly.