Is the reckoning day coming for Justin Trudeau?

Justin Trudeau is leading a government whose instability is becoming more and more apparent to all Canadians. Is he going to use repression, in a vain attempt to salvage his political career?

Protests are proliferating around Canada in a way that Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet never expected. In fact, none of the political class had any idea that that they were coming. Everyone was totally taken by surprises; for the federal government, taken aback, it got worse. The Cabinet Ministers were disoriented, not believing what they were seeing and likely expecting that it would go away. But it didn't. Turning to their leader, who overnight became proverbially beleaguered, they could not come up with any solution that might save them from humiliation.

Again, the shock was likely harder on Justin Trudeau than it was on the Cabinet, whose members the public ignore except when they make an announcement destroying their livelihood. Otherwise, they shrug their shoulders. It is life as usual: and that is why the Ministers were taken by surprise.

How did such a docile population, usually lacking the nerve to protest, come to organize a protest at the door of Parliament? More incredible, far from losing steam, the protests in Ottawa ignited more protests all over the country, with border checkpoints being hampered for an indefinite time.

How was it possible? What changed?

Even if the response,was obvious to those outside the "salons élégants" of Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, it was and still is a mystery to the political class, even if some have begun to have suspicions. Since no one in the Cabinet could think of a political solution not involving a full retreat--one that would be humiliating for the Ministers, the MPs, and the Liberal Party of Canada, concerned, they turned to the solution most obvious to them, which was also the most damaging: political repression.

This is already happening, an answer decided out of disarray and characterized by propaganda, provocation, and so far ineffective political repression.

Some cooler heads would have seen that the remedy proposed--propaganda, provocation, and repression--is an ineffective way to solve the crisis, a crisis of national proportions. However, the federal government, supported by the provincial and municipal governments, rushed in for this solution, only to find that it inflames the situation more and more from coast to coast. Justin Trudeau inflames the situation more and more from coast to coast.

Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet have painted themselves into a corner. Instead of admitting defeat, ending the crisis, they doubled down. Why?

It is not be be excluded that Justin Trudeau remembers what his father Pierre-Elliott Trudeau did in 1970, and will seek to emulate him, expecting even better results.

Justin Trudeau learned the meaning of "repression" from his father. What does this mean in particular? It means that he learned the history as told by family, high ranking bureaucrats, and ministers. In October 1970 a terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped and then killed one of their hostages Pierre Laporte, a Labour minister in the provincial Quebec government. The second hostage, Richard Cross, the United Kingdom's Consul General in Montreal, was released, unharmed. A third kidnapping attempt, against an employee of the Israeli consulate in Montreal fortunately failed. The Quebec Premier at the time, Robert Bourassa, called for help. Pierre-Elliott Trudeau responded. He deployed police and military to crush what was described at the time, in the language of the War Powers Act, as an "apprehended insurrection". The results? Hundreds of civilians were thrown in jail, arrested without warrant and, in some cases, tortured. The end of the crisis came with the murder of Pierre Laporte, the release of Richard Cross, and the exile of the terrorists to Cuba.

The crisis, however, failed to weigh like an albatross around Pierre-Elliott Trudeau's neck, as one may have expected. He even won the 1972 federal election, forming a minority government with the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP), led by David Lewis.

It is not to be excluded that Justin Trudeau expects follow in his father's footsteps. He may even consider that he will do better than his father, gaining a majority government.

Is there any indication that Justin Trudeau is going in this direction? Yes. He has already tried to involve the military in his scheme of political repression but they wisely refused to participate. And the military are a symbol of who is in charge. Justin Trudeau, like his father, has to rely on a collaboration amongst various strata of the political class strata, including at the provincial and municipal levels, as well as on the collaboration of police forces all around the country with on top political executive. These all have the mission, as well, to watch the protests and co-operate with his intelligence services.

It would be a mistake to believe that harmony reigns, and that they are undivided. It is easy to imagine that the collaboration varies from relatively good to recalcitrant and atrocious. It is not at all certain that all officers at the precinct across the country will engage with the same enthusiasm. Might we expect a strategy implemented without coordination, hesitantly, depending the particular police forces involved? To be sure, the intelligence services will have to do a lot of overtime watching weak-willed allies.

If that were not enough, Justin Trudeau also has to worry about his own Liberal Party, which is divided. Inside the Liberal Party, the bureaucratic party apparatus and their backers are likely considering how to oust him. He has, since the last election in September 2021, become a political liability. The replacement being considered, and likely the only option, is Chrystia Freeland. In Justin Trudeau's own camp, one finds Gerald Butts: advisor, confidant, friend, and above all, chief of the praetorian guard, supposedly shielding their commander and obsequiously serving him. Justin Trudeau can count on many Ministers and MPs. They are rightly convinced that they will not exist politically without him. He may even count, at least temporarily, on Chrystia Freeland, the only available short-term solution to the current problem from the standpoint of the Liberal Party's permanent bureaucracy.

The Liberal Party may be ready to prop up Chrystia Freeland as its next leader during a new, short-lived government leading to the next election: assuming she has enough sense to overcome her own fear of her boss, grabbing this opportunity to get out of the political obscurity where she currently resides. It will be important to let her be shown leading the government for a few weeks, giving her a veneer of leadership, and respectability as eventual Prime Minister. After this relative honeymoon during which all urgent problems will be pushed out of sight, the election has to take place. There seems only one way for Justin Trudeau to delay or avoid, for a short while, the brutal ousting that is coming his way. That is by increasing the pressure on the protesters, worsening the crisis and thus making a smooth transition impossible. This strategy is conceivable, and it must be the same that some of those around are considering it as a possible way to save their boss. Justin Trudeau is by himself, too bewildered and giving every appearance of increasing mental instability, to figure out such a solution. Even in a normal time, he would have difficulty; but today, under such intense stress, his ability to think clearly is at the breaking point.

Who will win the struggle inside the Liberal Party of Canada? How long will it be before the unavoidable conclusion becomes clear to the Government and to all the sitting MPs?

It is impossible to say precisely. But it is certain that Justin Trudeau's fate in the history books will be written with letters of infamy.