punished To stay prime minister, Justin Trudeau

punished
To stay prime minister, Justin Trudeau has to win over the Greens and Socialists in Canada.
Justin Trudeau is now one of Canada's most unpopular politicians at federal level.
From this week Justin Trudeau has to show what wood he is really carved from. After losing his majority in the Canadian House of Commons on Monday, the former beacon of hope now has to fight for his post as prime minister. After all, he has a good role model: his father Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The latter had even lost its majority in parliament twice and then returned both times with an increased majority. Ultimately, he served as Prime Minister for a total of 15 years and has shaped modern Canada in the long term through milestones such as multiculturalism, bilingualism and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Not only in terms of his father's strength, the son is currently in a bad position: Justin Trudeau is now one of Canada's most unpopular politicians at federal level. He owes this to his lukewarm policy towards progressive and green voters as well as a series of personal missteps - for example in the corruption affair surrounding the engineering company SNC Lavalin and the debate about old Blackface photos.

Trudeau should have benefited from the pale cut by conservative chairman Andrew Scheer. Although he gained votes and seats, most Canadians could hardly make friends with him as Prime Minister. Under Scheer, the conservatives, with their emphatically climate-skeptical and at times religiously conservative demeanor, spoiled many voters in the liberal Canadian middle. And Scheer has also not remained scandal-free: at the beginning of October it emerged that he had lied about his professional training and that, in addition to Canadian, he also has American citizenship.

Trudeau maintained the lax climate goals of the previous conservative government and postponed their implementation.

The issue of climate has become an important factor in the election campaign, among other things, when activist Greta Thunberg visited Montreal and Alberta. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the Social Democratic NDP, had in a television debate Trudeau as "Mr. Delay ”and Scheer as“ Mr. Deny ”. Rightly so: Trudeau maintained the lax climate goals of the previous conservative government, postponed their implementation, and also nationalized an oil pipeline in western Canada to expand them. The progressive voters highly accredited Singh for proposing a different path in climate policy. Although they were completely written off at the beginning of the election campaign, the Canadian Social Democrats have shown that with an optimistic, young, diverse and clearly progressive profile, a resurrection of social democracy is quite possible.

Approval levels for Singh rose to nearly 60 percent, and the party stabilized around 20 percent in most parts of Canada. Paradoxically, since there were only 24 seats due to the tactical voting behavior and the campaign remained a total failure, especially in the province of Quebec, the NDP chairman now has a few difficult months ahead of him. He also depends on negotiating skills: how many of his ideas will he be able to get from the liberals?

Trudeau and Scheer, on the other hand, now have to fight competition from their own ranks. Scheer has to be asked whether his pale demeanor cost the conservatives the choice. It is also simmering on the right-wing populist fringe, even if the newly founded Peoples Party did not make it into parliament.

Whether Trudeau will be prime minister in a few months also depends on whether there are suitable successors in the Liberal Party. The headlights are now focused on Chrystia Freeland. The popular foreign minister has regained her constituency. And she has cleverly managed to stay out of the recent Trudeau government scandals. Your reputation, both at home and abroad, could help Freeland sooner or later to outdo the young prime minister. A change in the leadership of the Liberal Party should give the government new impetus and pose major problems for the opposition Social Democrats and Greens.

The Liberals will try to use the support of the Greens and Social Democrats to win back progressive voters.

These are now in a quandary. They cannot and do not want to replace Trudeau with a conservative minority government, so they have to keep the Liberals in office for the time being. The chairman of the Social Democrats has already made a list of six demands, as a key prerequisite for support from Trudeau: state drug insurance, stricter climate goals, a billion-dollar program for social housing, higher taxes on top earnings, an interest-free student loan, and so on Reduced prices for Internet and mobile phone services, which are operated like a cartel in Canada and are therefore comparatively very expensive. In addition, Social Democrats and Greens will probably insist on the change in the electoral system towards proportional representation. Trudeau made this promise in 2015, but then cashed it in again.

So the liberals will try to use the support of the Greens and Social Democrats to win back progressive voters. In this way, Justin Trudeau's father had repeatedly regained his parliamentary majority. This required tough power politics and also social-political engagement. Both seem to Justin Trudeau to be much less. And his image may already have suffered too much damage to get the curve inside the party.