A Canadian prime minister who has outstayed his welcome, persistent inflation, a government bumped and bruised by scandal and a fired-up opposition leader itching for a public showdown.
It was against this backdrop, four decades ago, that Pierre Trudeau took his apocryphal “walk in the snow” and decided not to contest the next federal election.
After a shocking upset in a “safe” electoral district and with a looming possibility of a blowout in the next federal election, Justin Trudeau’s predicament closely mirrors that of his father.
But the incumbent prime minister says he has no intention of stepping down, despite mounting evidence the public is growing increasingly weary of both his tenure – and of his Liberal party.
In late June, Trudeau’s party lost a by-election for a seat the party had held for nearly three decades, foreshadowing what pundits say could portend the collapse of the party’s stronghold in Canada’s most populous city.
One honestly wonders what percentage of voters do, in fact, remember what Bob Rae was like in office. I don’t think most people are all that politically aware before somewhere in their mid-teens, which means that probably almost no one born after 1980 remembers politics during the Rae years. The number’s just going to drop from here on, so I don’t think “Remember Bob Rae!” is going to remain a useful rallying cry for the Conservatives for much longer, if it is even now.
Of course, they’ll just come up with a new one.