It’s Likely too Late for Sean Casey and the Liberal Party to Save Themselves

The downward spiral for Trudeau continues with Sean Casey being the latest member of the Liberal Party and a currently sitting MP that has asked Trudeau to resign before the next federal election. The polls continue to show that Trudeau is behind by a wide margin; all the while recent by-elections have confirmed that no Liberal seat appears to be safe for the moment. As of right now Casey is projected to lose his seat by a comfortable margin.

To say the Liberals are desperate would be an understatement. For many months they have launched a coordinated campaign trying to link Poilievre to Trump and accusing him of using American style politics. Seeing that it made no difference, Casey confirmed that many current MPs are working on a petition asking Trudeau to resign.

If this was started two years ago, it could be viewed in a better more principled light; but now, it looks incredibly opportunistic.

Liberal MPs and supporters of the Liberal Party simply need to accept that Poilievre will be the next Prime Minister of Canada. The focus should be on how to make the party viable four to six years from now; in the short-term, with all the scandals and poor economic indicators, there is simply no way to sell the party to voters convincingly.

Liberal MPs have nobody to blame but themselves; they essentially gave Trudeau a free hand and watched as he ran one of the most incompetent and corrupt governments in Canadian history. They tied the party to this one personality, and now it will be next to impossible to extricate themselves from him. Casey is a perfect exemplar of this; I spoke to him briefly a little before Trudeau was elected leader of his party. I asked him why he and his party were so eager to make Trudeau the leader considering he had no real record to point to or any significant accomplishments. His reply was that Trudeau was “young” and that was the only reason he gave me for supporting him.

The implication of this response was clear. It did not matter if Trudeau was capable of being Prime Minister or not, what mattered is that he could win. That is the only thing that mattered to Casey and most of the people working inside the Liberal Party. Is it any wonder then that the party is set to be decimated in the next election? If I were them, I would be glad I got to stay in power for so long. Considering all the scandals that have been exposed, I am sure most of them used the opportunity to profit handsomely from the orgy of spending that ensued.

So yes Trudeau should resign, but I see no good reason how the residents of Charlottetown could benefit by having Casey stick around. With his overwhelming support of Trudeau, Casey shares the blame for the rampant inflation that has crippled the standard of living of Islanders along with problems in healthcare and housing.

If islanders are going to start to tackle these issues seriously, then they are going to need leaders in their ridings that can examine these issues critically, not sycophants that simply regurgitate whatever their leader has to say. Perhaps I shouldn’t be this harsh, perhaps this is simply a critical fault of the Canadian political system; that giving the leader of a political party the opportunity to veto any nomination leads inevitably to servile, impotent MPs with very little to contribute.

Regardless, it seems clear to me that the Island is in desperate need of capable men that are not afraid to speak on the issues that really matter.