Immigration minister calls efforts to oust Trudeau 'garbage'
'Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that's not spent on Pierre Poilievre,' Marc Miller says
Immigration Minister Marc Miller today called efforts by disaffected Liberal MPs to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "garbage" and said it would be better for the team to pull together to take on their main opponent: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
"Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that's not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country, and I think that is very dangerous," Miller told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.
Miller, who is a close personal friend of Trudeau, also said the MPs planning a caucus revolt should come out of the shadows and tell the prime minister in person that they want him gone.
"I think they have to express themselves to his face," he said. "I think you will see the vast majority of caucus and cabinet — the entirety of cabinet — is behind him."
As national polls suggest the Liberal Party is headed for a defeat at the next election, some Liberal MPs are getting ready to confront Trudeau at Wednesday's national caucus meeting over their dissatisfaction with his leadership.
After nine years in government, Trudeau's popularity has plummeted.
The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over the governing Liberals — a margin that suggests dozens of Liberal MPs could be out of a job after the next vote.
The prospect of an electoral implosion has led some Liberal MPs to organize this effort to oust Trudeau.
CBC News has reported that more than 20 MPs have met in secret and signed a document committing themselves to trying to force Trudeau out of the party leadership.
One of those who signed that letter, Liberal MP Ken McDonald, said Tuesday that the document shouldn't be interpreted as a "threat" toward Trudeau.
It's just a way of expressing a desire for leadership change, he told CBC's French-language service Radio-Canada.
McDonald also said Tuesday he's prepared to give Trudeau some feedback at Wednesday's caucus meeting.
"By speaking out and letting him know what some of us are feeling, I think it could help him make his decision," he said.
McDonald said that if Trudeau stays on despite the efforts to push him out, he will still sit as a member of the Liberal caucus.
Two other Liberal MPs who have publicly acknowledged signing the anti-Trudeau letter — Prince Edward Island's Sean Casey and New Brunswick's Wayne Long — also said Tuesday they are not willing to sit as Independents if Trudeau rebuffs their challenge to his leadership and stays on.
It's not just the polls that signal trouble on the horizon for the Liberals.
MPs are also anxious about Trudeau and his team losing two byelections in historically rock-solid Liberal ridings in Toronto and Montreal.
The Liberal candidate in another recent Winnipeg-area byelection posted one of the worst results for a governing party in Canadian history.
The party's national campaign director quit in early September. The party took weeks to announce a replacement.
Four more of Trudeau's cabinet ministers have announced, or are expected to announce soon, that they will not run again in the next election, sources have told CBC News.
That news comes after MP Pablo Rodriguez left caucus to sit as an Independent while running to lead the Quebec Liberal Party.
But there were no signs of dissent as Miller and other cabinet ministers gathered for their usual Tuesday meeting with Trudeau.
That meeting ran much longer than normal as some ministers offered strategies to calm a restless caucus, sources said.
"I'm a member of his cabinet and obviously we support him," said Housing Minister Sean Fraser.
Echoing Miller, Fraser said it's Poilievre who's the real problem.
"We are up against somebody who is campaigning on promises to deny access to free birth control for women, who won't even get a security clearance to look into allegations about his own caucus members being engaged in foreign interference," he said, citing Poilievre's controversial decision to forgo getting the necessary credentials to review top-secret documents.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson suggested this latest attempt to take Trudeau out will fizzle.
"At the end of the day, we will have a robust debate, we will come out with, in my view, support for the prime minister and move forward with the election," he said.
As for wayward Liberal MPs like P.E.I.'s Sean Casey, who has come out publicly saying Trudeau should go, Wilkinson said the Liberals are "a big tent party" and there's room for dissent.
"We are not a bunch of robots like Mr. Poilievre's axe-the-tax, build-homes, ride-the-donkeys that you see in question period," he said, mocking the Conservative leader's sloganeering.
"It's important to have debates. You know, at this point, clearly in public opinion polls we are not leading. There is concern on the part of members of caucus."
Health Minister Mark Holland said he doesn't want to oust Trudeau, a leader he said can "take punches" better than anybody else.
"These are not easy times to lead. I don't know anybody who's having an easy time anywhere leading, but the prime minister has my full confidence and the full confidence of most of my colleagues," he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from the CBC's Louis Blouin, Laurence Martin
