Quebec Liberal MP Alexandra Mendes said Monday she’s heard from “dozens and dozens” of constituents over the summer telling her it’s time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step aside after nearly nine years at the top.
Speaking to Radio-Canada, CBC’s French-language service, on the sidelines of the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., Mendes said her constituents are “very adamant the prime minister needs to go.”
She said while she’s personally fine with Trudeau staying on as prime minister, “my constituents do not see Mr. Trudeau as the person who should lead the party into the next election, and that’s the message that I carry.”
“I didn’t hear it from two, three people. I heard it from dozens and dozens of people,” Mendes said. “He’s no longer the right leader.”
During the Liberal caucus retreat in British Columbia, Quebec Liberal MP Alexandra Mendès told CBC News that while she personally believes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should continue to lead the Liberal Party, her constituents don’t.
Mendes is one of a small number of Liberal MPs who have been willing to speak out publicly about ongoing dissatisfaction with Trudeau and his leadership.
Asked if she thinks the party would be better off with Trudeau gone, Mendes said: “Yes, that’s what I would deduct from all the comments that I heard.
“It’s not the Liberal Party per se that is the cause. It’s really the leadership of the prime minister.”
She said it “saddens” her to hear the anti-Trudeau sentiment.
“It saddens me that the prime minister isn’t being given the credit he deserves for the many, many wonderful things he did, or very good transformative things he did for Canada,” she said. “But, on the other hand, if I listen to my constituents, which is supposedly what we’re meant to do, yes, I have to say we would have to change leadership.”
With the government slipping in the polls and a crucial Montreal byelection a week away, the Liberal caucus is meeting in Nanaimo, B.C., where the future of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to be discussed.
If Trudeau isn’t willing to go, Mendes said, the party needs to get better at communicating what she describes as its many successes.
She said many Canadians simply don’t know about the government’s accomplishments over the past nine years.
Mendes said she will make her constituents’ position known to the prime minister when she and other MPs come face to face with him and the cabinet tomorrow for the first Liberal caucus meeting in months.
Some MPs were calling for such a meeting weeks earlier, but the party’s caucus chair Brenda Shanahan said it wasn’t possible because of “scheduling logistics.”
Mendes said she’s expecting other MPs to raise similar concerns after a tumultuous summer that saw the party lose a byelection in Toronto-St. Paul’s — a one-time Liberal stronghold the party had held for more than 30 years before Conservative candidate Don Stewart won it in June. Some Toronto voters said they saw the byelection as a referendum on Trudeau.
The party is facing other challenges as well. Its national campaign director quit last week and the NDP ended the supply-and-confidence agreement that has propped up the Liberal government for the last two-plus years.
The party is also in a three-way fight with the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP to hold onto LaSalle-Emard-Verdun, a once solidly Liberal riding in Montreal.