Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 7, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba A2 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM O TTAWA — Gov. Gen. Mary Simon granted Justin Trudeau’s request Monday to prorogue Parliament until March 24, suspending activities of the House of Commons while the Liberals move to replace him as both Liberal leader and prime minister. The move means the legislative agen- da will be reset once the House of Com- mons reconvenes in March and some key pieces of legislation for the govern- ment may die on the order paper. Once the House of Commons re- sumes, there is the potential for work that ended due to prorogation be re- stored if opposition parties support a motion calling for them to resume de- bate where they left off. But there is no guarantee that ever happens as opposition parties are seek- ing to defeat the government entirely. The Online Harms Act, which was recently split into two separate bills, is among the pieces of legislation with a questionable future. The legislation aims to hold plat- forms, like social media sites, account- able for content that appears on their websites. This includes content used to bully, incite violence and promote hatred, which has been criticized for potential Charter violations. There is also risk for a court-ordered piece of legislation to grant citizenship to individuals born outside of the coun- try to Canadian parents who were also born in another country. The bill seeks to replace legislation passed by the for- mer Conservative government in 2009, but was deemed unconstitutional in 2023. A judge gave the government three more months to pass the bill in Decem- ber, but the current deadline of Mar. 19 will now be missed without another extension. A central piece of the last federal budget, increasing the capital gains tax inclusion rate, is also in limbo. The gov- ernment’s goal is to increase the rate individuals pay on capital gains above $250,000 from one-half to two-thirds, and for all gains for trusts and corpor- ations. The government did not include the change in the budget implementation act, instead opting to bring it in as sep- arate legislation. The relevant bill was not introduced as the House of Com- mons was caught up in a filibuster from late September until the Christmas break. Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu touted a bill that aims to en- sure First Nations communities have clean drinking water and the ability to protect source water as the closest the federal government has come to co-developing legislation with Indigen- ous Peoples. Seeking to replace a Con- servative bill, the First Nations Clean Water Act would ensure First Nations communities receive at least the same funding as other jurisdictions for water treatment, and recognize they have a right to clean drinking water. The Liberals also announced a bill that sought to create a modern treaty commissioner which would ensure the government was abiding by the terms in modern treaties with First Nations. Communities with modern treaties called for the creation of the commis- sioner for years, saying they had little recourse when the government failed to uphold its obligations. — The Canadian Press NEWS TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2025 VOL 154 NO 48 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 2025 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published six days a week in print and always online at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204-697-7000 CEO / MIKE POWER Editor / PAUL SAMYN Associate Editor Enterprise / SCOTT GIBBONS Associate Editor News / STACEY THIDRICKSON Associate Editor Digital News / WENDY SAWATZKY Director Photo and Multimedia / MIKE APORIUS NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL The Winnipeg Free Press is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to determine acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please send them to: editorialconcerns@freepress.mb.ca. If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the website at www.mediacouncil.ca and fill out the form or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information. 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Call or email before 10 a.m. weekdays or 11 a.m. Saturday City: 204-697-7001 Outside Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 press 1 6:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday-Friday.; 7 a.m. - noon Saturday; Closed Sunday TO SUBSCRIBE: 204-697-7001 Out of Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 The Free Press receives support from the Local Journalism Initiative funded by the Government of Canada Trudeau said he asked for Parlia- ment to be prorogued because the House of Commons has been para- lyzed for months through obstruction and needs a reset. This move will shutter the House for two months, wipe clear the current slate of leg- islation and delay any opportunities for non-confidence votes that could trigger an election until it resumes in spring. “It’s time for the temperature to come down, for people to have a fresh start in Parliament to be able to navigate through these complex times domestically and internationally,” he said. “Removing me from the equation as the leader who will fight the next election for the Liberal party should also decrease the level of polarization we’re seeing right now in the House and in Canadian politics.” Trudeau said he asked Liberal party president Sachit Mehra Sunday night to immediately launch a leadership race ahead of the next election. Mehra said in a statement he will call a national board meeting this week to begin the process to select a new leader. Details about the timing of the race have not yet been announced, although Liberal MPs were briefed virtually Monday afternoon on the party constitution and next steps in the leadership process. The spotlight now will be cast on long-suspected leadership aspirants such as Freeland, Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, former central banker Mark Carney, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minis- ter François-Philippe Champagne and a cast of others. Candidates will have to scramble to launch speedy campaigns as they jostle under tight time constraints to organize and claim the mantle as the best to take on popular firebrand Con- servative Leader Pierre Poilievre. A spokesperson said Poilievre is away on a family vacation and will respond to Monday’s events later this week. Trudeau’s decision injected a hefty dose of optimism into Liberal MPs who were just recently at wit’s end over Trudeau’s insistence he stay on. Montreal MP Anthony Housefather told The Canadian Press he believes there is still enough time for a new leader to establish themselves on the national stage and run a competitive election campaign. “Nobody knows what the future brings or how well we’ll do, but I’m confident that we’ll do better in the next election because of this process and because of the opportunity to offer a fresh face with new ideas to the country,” he said. Ontario MP and former cabinet minister Helena Jaczek said she felt a sense of sadness knowing this would be a “very hard decision” for the fight- er in Trudeau, but she also felt relief, since it presents a chance for renewal. Jaczek said between responding to the COVID pandemic and its after- math, Trudeau may have become “unaware” of how Canadians feel on grassroots issues like cost of living. “There were a whole lot of issues that perhaps we could have addressed a little more quickly,” she said. Liberal MP Wayne Long said this marks Day 1 of the party’s rebuild and will give the party a fighting chance in the next election. “This shouldn’t be a Pierre Poilievre coronation,” he said. While the next election must be held by this October, spring or early sum- mer are much more likely given the precarious minority Parliament that has all three main opposition parties pronouncing they’re ready to bring the government down in a confidence vote. Poilievre sought to cast Trudeau’s move as a desperate political play by a sputtering Liberal party, whose MPs stood by their leader right up until he cratered in the polls and was no longer a viable candidate. “Their only objection is that he is no longer popular enough to win an election and keep them in power,” Poilievre said in a statement. “They want to protect their pensions and paycheques by sweeping their hated leader under the rug months before an election to trick you, and then do it all over again.” After supporting the Liberals through confidence votes last fall, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh first said Trudeau needed to resign on Dec. 20, after Freeland’s cabinet departure. Now, the NDP leader says his party will topple the government at the first chance, likely through a vote on the throne speech when Parliament returns. “New Democrats will be voting against this government for an election where Canadians will have a choice,” Singh said. “It doesn’t matter who the leader is, the Liberals have let you down. They do not deserve anoth- er chance.” In his nearly decade-long tenure as prime minister, Trudeau ushered the country through a global pandemic, renegotiation with the U.S. of Canada’s most important free-trade deal and a destabilized geopolitical environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some of his most prominent policies have included introducing a contro- versial carbon-pricing regime that his political rivals campaigned against, legalizing recreational cannabis and introducing a ramped-up child-benefit payment based on income levels. Trudeau’s close friend and former principal secretary Gerald Butts said in an online briefing by the Eurasia Group Monday that there’s not much Trudeau could have done differently to hold on, since most Canadian prime ministers have a political best-before date of 10 years. “Sometimes in politics, the most difficult thing to come to terms with is that there are elements of your fate that are outside of your control and the clock is the No. 1 element,” he said. “He’s a historically consequential prime minister and history has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff over time.” Trudeau’s decision comes two weeks before Donald Trump is sworn back into office as president of the United States and Trudeau will remain at the helm during what is expected to be a rocky start to Trump’s second term in the Oval Office. Trump has threatened to impose steep import tariffs on all Canadian goods the day he is inaugu- rated. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said after Trudeau’s announcement that Ottawa “must urgently explain to Canadians” how it will avoid economi- cally devastating tariffs. Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO Candace Laing said Trudeau read the room correctly and made the right call. “His resignation marks a turning point as Canada tackles unprecedented domestic and international challeng- es,” she said. “Canada’s next prime minister must hit the ground running and be laser-focused on strengthening the Canada-U.S. trade relationship.” — The Canadian Press While Harper leaned into social conservatism, immigration and crime, Trudeau wrapped himself in progress and compassion. This was never more clear than on the evening of Oct. 19, 2015 — federal election night — when Trudeau quoted former Liberal prime minis- ter Wilfrid Laurier’s famous speech about “sunny ways” and proclaimed that “politics can be a positive force.” A decade later, and Trudeau’s sunny ways have been formally bludgeoned by the politics of rage. It’s really an international phenomenon: back-to-back shock waves from the pandemic and the inflation crisis combined to shake public confidence in incumbent governments. Voter turnout plum- meted, and those who are showing up have fully bought into the idea they are worse off in all ways, even when there is objective evidence to the contrary. Anyone who makes the mistake of saying that things aren’t that bad are instantly pilloried. Is that the epitaph to Trudeau’s political career? That he waited too long to fashion an effective response to the rage farmers? The Tories, led by Pierre Poil- ievre, quickly determined that riding the rage wave put them on the right side of public sentiment. If you felt angry and disadvantaged — and many Canadians did — Poil- ievre was there to agree with you and assure you things were even worse than you feared. Meanwhile, Trudeau naively dou- bled down on the messaging that helped him win the 2015 election. There are challenges, Trudeau would say, but nothing that we can’t overcome if we work together. Canada was the greatest country in the world, not the crime-infested, inflation-ravaged cesspool that Poilievre claimed it had become. There were many moments when it seemed that Trudeau simply could not imagine losing to a party and a leader who would distort, ex- aggerate and deliberately mislead Canadians about the performance of the Liberal government and the general state of the nation. The carbon tax made groceries unaffordable and, even if they were more modestly priced, people can’t afford the gasoline to drive to the grocery store. The Liberal govern- ment manufactured high inflation through reckless monetary policy. Trudeau has, through his indiffer- ence, allowed criminals to ravage the country. All these allegations are largely false but that doesn’t mean they are not persuasive. Trudeau ignored Poilievre’s relentless attacks right up until the moment he was forced to relinquish his sword and shield and surrender in disgrace. It must be said that Trudeau was not just a victim of a seismic shift in political sensibilities. The prime minister seemed addicted to self-in- flicted wounds that fit perfectly into Poilievre’s offensive. Every free trip to a billionaire’s tropical island, each time he or his ministers were found to be in a con- flict of interest, each snapshot of him in blackface helped reinforce the idea that Trudeau was an aloof elite with no affinity for the general public. Last May, I had the opportunity to interview him for an episode of the podcast I do with fellow Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair. It was our opportunity to ask the prime minister about whether he had any thoughts of stepping down. In that moment, Trudeau was unapologetically confident he would fight the next election. He said he didn’t have the time to think about “what if” it were time to stand down because he was fighting for Canadians. “I’m not thinking about ‘what if’ one day. I’m focused on today and tomorrow.” Clearly, tomorrow has come. It just wasn’t the tomorrow Trudeau was hoping for. dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca TRUDEAU ● FROM A1 LETT ● FROM A1 SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said taking himself out of the picture will scale back the level of polarization in Canadian politics. With House prorogued, key Liberal legislation may not pass ANJA KARADEGLIJA AND DAVID BAXTER OTTAWA — Attention is turning quickly in Ottawa to who will replace Justin Trudeau who announced Monday he will step aside as prime minister and Liberal leader as soon as a new leader is chosen. But some former Liberal advisers are split on how quickly the process should move. With Parliament set to resume March 24, there’s little time for Trudeau’s successor to actually lead before the government surely falls at the earliest confidence vote. But having a quick leadership race provides little time for the party electorate to get to know the candidates. No sitting MP has formally declared their intention to run but speculation is already buzzing in Ottawa about who may vie for the job. Among them are Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, whom the New York Times profiled last month as Trudeau’s potential successor and former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose shock resignation shortly before the Christmas break served as the catalyst for renewed calls for Trudeau to step down. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, House Leader Karina Gould, Transport Minister Anita Anand, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, and Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson are also all said to be kicking the tires of a possible run. Other high-profile candidates who may seek the leadership former B.C. premier Christy Clark and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who have both been subject to Conservative attack ads in recent weeks. In a statement, Carney said he is “encouraged and honoured” by the support he has been hearing from Liberal MPs and Liberals across the country who want the party to move forward “with positive change and a winning economic plan.” “That’s what it will take to defeat Pierre Poilievre, to get Canada back on track and to build the strong- est economy that works for all Canadians,” he said. “I’ll be considering this decision closely with my family over the coming few days.” Former Montreal MP Frank Baylis was the first to publicly declare his intent to seek the Liberal leadership in an interview Monday with The Hill Times. — The Canadian Press Liberals split on how leadership race should run ;