THIS IS AN UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Hello, and welcome to Wilson Center NOW, a production of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I'm John Milewski. Today, we're going to be talking about the ongoing political turmoil in Canada. And our guest is Xavier Delgado. Xavier is a program senior program associate with the Wilson Center's Canada Institute, where he also serves as research director for the Washington Forum on Canadian Economy Solving. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, John. Great to be back.
So so let's let's rewind the clock and go back to when did the downward spiral for Prime Minister Trudeau begin? Well, John, it's really been a slow decrease in popularity ever since he won his minority government back in 2021. Now, if you'll remember, his first minority mandate was delivered in 2019 after he won a majority government in 2015.
And then he tried to pull a quick one and called a snap election post-pandemic when he felt like liberal support was higher. Now, he didn't win very many more seats. I think maybe one or two seats changed hands between 2019 and 2021, and then the Conservatives started to gain support. Trudeau's popularity started to decline at first, steadily and slowly, but then more progressively.
As pandemic recovery dragged on, economic results weren't delivered to the level that Canadians were hoping for. And you fast forward to today when his popularity just bottomed out, especially amongst demographics that liberals have historically needed to win, which is super suburban voters and youth voters. When that happened, conservative popularity started to rise. You arrived at today when right before his resignation, he was around a 17% approval rating.
So it's a notable decline. But I think it's worth noting that he's been in power for almost a decade. That's around the life expectancy that you would expect for a prime minister of a liberal democracy in today's society. Yeah. Yeah. When you put it that way, it doesn't seem like such a fall, right? There is a life span.
The clock is always ticking. But let me ask you this, Harvey. You know, you have the advantage. You grew up in Canada. You now live and work in the United States. So, you know, you know, both political systems pretty intimately. What about the parallels? Are we talking about the same kind of polarization that you see in the United States, in Canada?
Does it break down similarly along the same ideological lines? Give us some comparison and contrast. Well, it's it's certainly been a tough year for incumbents. And I think it's not just isolated within Canada or the United States, for that matter. You see it all around the world, even in India, where Prime Minister Modi has been very popular. He I believe he lost seats in the previous election.
So it's a tough year for incumbents across the board. But that being said, we do see some of the similar stresses within the electorate, especially with economic recovery, post-COVID. We know that was one of the top two issues for voters in the 2024 election, which many saw as a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration's economic recovery policies. I think we've seen a lot of those same anxieties up in Canada, where inflation, lack of productivity and just a general sense of malaise.
post-COVID has been really a drag on Trudeau's popularity. And where are we right now? You know, the it almost feels like when we're waiting for the smoke to rise from the Vatican and have the announcement of who the new pope will be, Prime Minister Trudeau is still in office while we wait to find out who will who his successor will be.
I know by the time you and I are recording this on a on a Tuesday, this will be released to the public on a Friday. Will we have a new prime minister by then? What's the timeline look like? No, we likely won't have a new prime minister by then. But it is worth noting, John, that even at this point the Liberal leadership race to succeed Trudeau is underway.
For the US listeners who are a little less familiar with the parliamentary system, Canada doesn't directly elect their leader of government. That is the Prime Minister. It's the leader of the party that wins the most seats in Parliament. That was Justin Trudeau with the Liberal Party for the past nine years. But now that he's stepped down, the party itself gets to elect a new leader.
And because the Liberals still hold the most seats, not a majority, but the highest number of seats in government, that new leader will ascend to be prime minister. They're expected to announce the winner of the leadership race on March 9th, and then parliament returns on March 24th. They're currently in a period of paramount, which means the legislature is not sitting at this time.
But it's worth noting, John, that when they returned to parliament on March 24th, based on statements that have been made by the two biggest opposition parties, the conservatives and the New Democratic Party, there's a high chance the government will be brought down the date of their return or the day after, which means Canada would enter an election period right away.
The new prime minister might not even be prime minister for a full month before they're thrown into an election cycle. And how quickly would there be an actual vote if that were to occur? Well, it could take place anywhere between 36 to 50 days. What we're hearing, just purely speculative right now is mid-May, but it could take place as soon as April 30th if they choose to bring down the government on March 25th.
It could take place also at the end of May if they really choose to elongate and and have a long runway for an electoral period. At this point, there is no clear leader in the Liberal leadership race, though they still have to pick who their new leader is going to be. The top two candidates right now are Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland, just purely based off of the amount of endorsements that they've gotten from sitting MPPs.
But there's still a long runway to go and this race could shake up in the coming weeks. They're currently rolling out their policy platforms. They're going on the media trying to gain voter support. And I expect it's going to be a very tight race between the two top candidates and then a very tight race between the parties when we had the one.
The red eventually drops in March. So the the alternative to the scenario that you said could happen with a government dissolving almost as quickly as it's formed is that someone is able to put together a ruling coalition. Correct? That could that could well happen. Now, that's what's happened for the past few years. The Liberals and the NDP had a ruling, not a coalition, but a supply and confidence agreement where the NDP, the New Democratic Party, which sits politically to the left of Trudeau's Liberals, promised to vote in confidence of the government, which meant basically guaranteed that as long as the agreement was in place, the Conservatives and other opposition parties didn't have the votes to
bring down the government. That gave the Trudeau government a bit more of a guaranteed runway to continue legislating and leading on policy that was torn up towards the end of last year, just as anxieties around the economy continued to grow and drag down popularity for both the NDP and the Liberals. So the NDP has come out and said they're going to vote against the government at the earliest possible opportunity.
But there is a possibility that they double back on that, especially as anxieties continue to grow around the Canada-U.S. relationship and worries about what the new Trump administration is going to do by way of tariffs and trade policy. So given all that and it sounds like what you're saying and I don't put words in your mouth that we're not in the business of predictions, but right now the likelihood is that the first thing we talked about that you'll have a new prime minister and a new government, and then within 30 to 50 days roughly, you'll have new elections.
What what are the implications of all of this for policy and for ongoing governance? Well, there's huge implications of and I'll start with just the Canada-U.S. relationship, because it is Canada's most important bilateral relationship. It's the largest as the United States is largest trade partner, if you count services and goods. And the reality is that if we do consider, which I think is conventional wisdom in Washington, in the fact that the first 100 days of a president's term are the most effective and important because of what they prioritize and the momentum that they carry in post-inauguration, Canada's not going to have a government with a real mandate for the first hundred days.
If you take January 20th, which was yesterday at the time of recording all the way to the soon as possible time, that they could have an election, which would be, I believe, April 30th, at this point, that's exactly 100 days of President Trump's term, 60 days of which they're going to have a lame duck prime minister who said that he's already going to step down once a new leader is elected and the remaining 48 days, they're going to be in an election cycle.
It makes it really difficult for the Canadian side to navigate these tricky waters, especially with an administration that's already skeptical of the value that the United States is getting out of its trade relationship with Canada. And then if you look at the more global scale, John, it's worth noting Canada is also hosting the G7 this year. They're going to host it in Canada.
Ask, is Alberta in June or July? But because we're having a new prime minister come in who will assemble a new cabinet, we'll have an opportunity to set that G7 agenda and then be thrown straight into an election. It's not clear who's going to decide what the agenda priorities are going to be if it's the Trudeau government, his successor, or whoever wins in the next election, assuming it happens this spring.
It's unclear who's going to be attending the ministerial for a country that's hosting something as important as the G7, which Canada really does value as a global multilateral player. So it's a bit of a hindrance that there's so disorganized on their side just by virtue of domestic politics. Well, I mean, lots of uncertainty here. Here's you talk about the U.S. relations and how critical they are.
And, of course, newly minted returning President Trump has been rattling the tariff saber throughout the election campaign season. And here's what Chrystia Freeland, one of those front runners potentially for the PM job she had to say about this. She said a 25% tariff on Canadian experts is an existential threat to the country. She went on to say about President Trump, he wants to steal our jobs and drive away investment.
He's spoken clearly and repeatedly about making our Canada the 51st state, and he's threatened to use economic coercion to do so. We do have to stop him and we will. Is this it's pretty pointed rhetoric. Is this campaign rhetoric or is this a widely held belief among many in Canada? It's complicated, John. I think it's a little bit of both.
You're right to point out that Chrystia Freeland is campaigning right now and campaigning as somebody who can protect Canadians from the threat of the United States, as it's a good position for her to be in, especially because she was the trade negotiator during the U.S. N.S.A. impersonations, where she developed a reputation for playing hardball with the American side.
So it plays to her strengths to cast the U.S. Canada relationship in that light. Whereas if you look on the other side of things, there's still an enormous amount of cooperation that can happen between Canada and the United States. The Premiers Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta has been down here in Washington. She was here to attend the inauguration.
I think she ended up watching from the embassy's watch party and meeting with some officials on the sidelines has pointed to the similarities and the parallels between Alberta's strategy of energy dominance and the Trump administration's strategy of drill, baby, drill. So there's a lot of US synergies that can happen between them at the energy level. And then Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, has also been playing hardball with the Americans, saying that they're willing to have energy export controls, that they're willing to nix American liquor from Canadian shelves.
But he's also offered to say that Ontario and Canada at large can be great partners in building a fortress Canada, America, North America. When talking about competing with China and trying to keep Chinese investments out of North American supply chains. So it's a little bit of good cop bad cop on both sides, depending on whether you're campaigning, whether your province is well positioned to have a good relationship with the United States's new doctrines.
And whether you're sort of in the middle ground like Ontario is. But across the board, I think there's clearly some anxiety about where the Canada-U.S. relationship is heading, about what the United States could do on the terror front, but also some resolve on the Canadian side to to unite around some sort of common message. The real problem for the Canadians is that there's no federal leadership right now who has a mandate to deliver that message.
So in the coming weeks and months, as all of this plays out and sorts out until there eventually there is a new government in place, however long that takes. What are the specific areas that you're going to be keeping? You and your colleagues at the Canada Institute are going to be watching? Where are their the areas of vulnerabilities of major concern, of challenges, of things that could crop up during this period of I won't call it instability, but certainly uncertainty.
You can definitely call it instability, because I think uncertainty breeds instability. And that's especially the case in a bilateral relationship that has ties that are as integrated as Canada and the United States. What we're going to be watching out for trade is the obvious one. President Trump said on his first day in office that he plans to implement a universal 25% tariff on both Canada and Mexico as early as February 1st.
So that's definitely one of the fields that we're watching. And then down the line, the USMCA renegotiation slash review in 2026 is going to be a big one for free trade within North America. Some of the sleeper issues, though, it hasn't come up yet, but defense spending. President Trump has been very vocal about laggard defense spending amongst NATO's allies back when he was in his first administration.
Canada could hide behind the fact that most NATO partners didn't spend 2% of their GDP on defense. Now it's a much thinner club, and Canada stands out as one that doesn't even spend. I think 1.5% at this point has no plan to reach 2% by the end of the decade and is a really important founding member of NATO's as well as a continental security partner to the United States.
So expect that issue to rise up. And I'd also flag border security. Republicans in Congress, Republicans in the administration have been very vocal about their concerns about the flow of migrants and drugs across the northern border. Canada has just announced that they're spending over $1 billion on investments that are going to try and secure the northern border, including the purchase of Black Hawk helicopters from the United States.
But Trump's comments yesterday indicate that the administration still isn't happy with the level of commitment they're seeing from Canada. So I'd expect this to continue to be a hot button issue that can continue to flash up in the coming months. Well, we certainly have a lot to follow. But thank you for what was a terrific briefing today, Xavier.
I'm looking at my outline. I think the only thing I didn't get to ask you about is whether the Canucks would trade J.T. Miller to the Rangers, but that would be self-indulgent of the talk hockey in a public forum like John, I know you're a Rangers fan. Keep your hands off. Miller. He's a good guy and just wait.
He's got to be hoisting the cup in Vancouver in the next three years. So now there's there's a prediction. XIV, of course, speaks for himself and not the Canada Institute of 20. Take Stanley Cup winners. Xavi, thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you, John. I really appreciate it. Our guest has been Xavi Delgado. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Wilson Center now.
And if you want to keep informed on Canada and other matters, visit Wilson Center.com. Check out the Canada Institute. Xavi and his colleagues do wonderful work and you'll be smarter from their efforts. Thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoyed it and you'll join us again soon on Tell. Until then, for all of us at the center, I'm John Milewski.
Thanks for your time and interest.
