Transcript: Jen Gerson

My interview with The Line founder and editor

If you follow Canadian politics — and even if you don’t — you probably know that we are in a historic moment in this country. Just over a week ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he would be resigning as leader of the Liberal Party and that he intended to step down as prime minister as soon as a new leader was in place. Our Parliament is now prorogued until March 24, at a time of heightened tensions with the United States. My guest on the podcast this week is a veteran Canadian journalist. She returns to the show to unpack all of the mind-boggling developments.

Jen Gerson is co-founder and co-editor of The Line, a popular Canadian commentary platform.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: What a time it is here in Canada. At this point in my career, it's pretty hard to shock me. But this past week has shocked me. For listeners getting up to speed, Justin Trudeau held a press conference and announced that he was resigning as leader of the Liberal party and that he intended to step down as Prime Minister as soon as the new leader was in place. We're speaking on Monday, January 13th. To start today, Jen, for our listeners who may not be up to speed, or who may be outside of the country, can you summarize the insane developments of this past week?

JG: No, I'll miss something. The big important thing to realize is that Justin Trudeau, his leadership, has been operating on a knife's edge for about a year. The polls started to tank for him in late 2023. It's been, for the Liberals, a year of sustained — I could think of a rude word to describe it — but a year of sustained brutality on the poll front. Nothing they did seemed to turn the polls around. The general consensus from the public was, “We're done. You're done. This government is very tired. It's very old.” Justin Trudeau was receiving approval ratings that were dismal. People just don't like the guy personally. There has been chatter among the Liberals for many months now, and several attempted coups that went nowhere. Because there was a kind of hopeful sense that, “Well, if we could only get rid of Justin Trudeau, maybe we could turn this around and save the country from the bad man, Pierre Poilievre.” Right? A guy who's been trouncing them in the polls by 15 to 25 points, depending on the time of day.

This all came to a head with the election of Donald Trump. I think that among the Liberal consensus, there was a sense that, “If Donald Trump wins, yes, that would be bad. But then we could make Pierre Poilievre sound like Donald Trump, and we could use that as an election strategy to turn this around for ourselves.” That's not what's happened. What happened is that in early September, the NDP ripped up the Supply and Confidence Agreement, which was the cross-party agreement that allowed the Liberals to maintain this tenuous hold on governmental power for a couple of years now. But the NDP didn't agree to necessarily vote against the government, despite ripping up the supply agreement, which is sort of a complicated measure that we can get into for our American listeners — if they're really that interested. But the point is that essentially the government's future became very tenuous in September.

Then of course, Donald Trump is elected. Rather than Donald Trump's election leading to some kind of mass public revulsion of Conservatives or conservative politics, instead, what it led to was an almost imminent threat of 25% tariffs across the board in Canada. I think we're only just now starting to get a handle on what that actually might mean economically. So, there was a collective “Oh F” moment. The Liberal Party and the government has been in a place of continual chaos and stagnation since the fall. 

The imminent inauguration of Donald Trump and the potentially existential economic chaos that threatens to wreak havoc on our country has only been adding to this pressure cooker environment. And then of course, just before the holidays, we had the resignation of Chrystia Freeland, who was probably one of Justin Trudeau's most loyal ministers. She was castigated as the “minister of everything.” She was put in charge of multiple portfolios over the last 10 years. She really has been highly central to Trudeau's government, and she blew him apart with a resignation letter that highlighted a lot of the criticisms that people had about the Trudeau government and the way that it operates internally and externally for quite a long time. 

At that point, it was pretty clear to everyone — everyone but Trudeau, apparently — that he was in real trouble and really couldn't command the loyalty of the caucus anymore. But rather than just resign right away, which would have allowed the party some opportunity to run something resembling a credible leadership race to replace him, he decided to sit on it, go on a ski vacation over the holidays, and then put off resigning until January 6th. Now, I don't know if you want me to go all wonky on this one about why that's a mess, because I can!

TH: I know you can. I'm so excited that you can. I want to get to that. But first, I want to talk about Parliament being prorogued until March 24, and then I want to get into the Liberal leadership race. 

JG: That's also pretty crucial. 

TH: Our Parliament is shut down until March 24. We have already seen at least one legal challenge to this, backed by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. Democracy Watch says it will also pursue a court challenge. In your view, is this an anti-democratic move?