This week, Sen. Percy Downe went public with his views amid a downward trend in the polls, economic unease and rumour mills churning about potential Liberal leadership contenders readying to replace him.

In a radio interview on The Vassy Kapelos Show Thursday, Downe said he’s hearing from “many members of the caucus” who are concerned and consider the time between now and February as critical for the party to conduct some internal soul-searching about the best path forward.

“It’s quite widespread,” Downe said. When asked why no other Liberals have said publicly what he claims they’ve communicated privately, the senator said they can’t for a range of reasons, including the fact that the party leader signs their nomination forms.

    • ahugenerd@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m far from a Trudeau supporter, dude did us a dirty by going back on basically every single election promise except legalizing cannabis (i.e. the literal easiest thing to do), but who else do we have? And I’m not talking about just as a liberal leader. Name another halfway decent leader that might be a good option from any party. The last good option I remember is Jack Layton. It’s been a revolving door of losers, liars, hypocrites, and outright bigots ever since, and not a single ounce of integrity to be seen.

        • ahugenerd@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That website is unfortunately a bit of a joke. It’s a good idea on the face of it, but it counts every single promise as the same amount of importance, so creating a new learn to camp program for kids counts the same as overhauling the electoral system.

          It also counts the electoral system reform promise as kept, based on the verbiage of the promise, which was a promise to look at doing electoral reform. While that may be what was said, that’s not what we were all sold, and definitely counts as a broken promise.

          • bitwise@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            If I had been in his position, given the results of the survey, I wouldn’t have changed the system, either.

            It was a dead split among the possible choices, and any selection would’ve been attacked for it’s strategic political consequences, so he did the only fair thing which was nothing.

            Also, “counting promises as equal” is value projection. The severity or weight of each promise is subjective to each of us (single-issue voters are still a thing after all), so an unbiased, matter-of-fact counting is not a way of equally weighting them.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Yeah and similar to the Ontario Liberal who ran former Transport Minister Stephen Del Duca who was about as milquetoast as you could get… many options for LPC leader would effectively be slightly more socially minded conservatives.

  • droopy4096@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Trudeau got very cocky… Like PCs did in Alberts when they’ve got their asses handed to them in 2015. Doesn’y change the fact that there’s no single politician fit for the post. He’s just the best of the worst and I bet he knows it. Electoral system should have been fixed as he promissed, that’s when we could’ve had a chance now - forcet it. We’re staring at 4yrs with Cons until folks will get to their senses… or 8 if they don’t. Singh is OK but he lacks drive and charisma to overcome Trudeau and PP. We’re f@ck’d

  • voluble@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Even though I align with the party on most of their platform, I cannot vote for the LPC under any circumstances, due to their history of broken promises, scandals, ethics violations, horrible handle on foreign policy, blatant disregard for demographics that brought them Parliamentary majorities, lack of a constructive, modern vision for the nation, lack of sincerity, the list goes on and on.

    In light of all that, what is it about this particular moment that has Liberals getting their knives out? Of all the times to question a leader, why now exactly? Is this a polling thing? Am I out of the loop?

    • Powerpoint@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Even with all of that the Conservatives are far more dangerous at the moment and had far worse scandals. If we end up with another liberal minority where all leaders get ditched that would be great for Canadians. Only thing better would be electoral reform so we get actual proportional representation and don’t have to worry about the Conservatives constantly courting fascists

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I agree on the point that minority governments on the whole are a good thing for the country. Parties should be kept in check. I feel like my tax dollars are fairly spent when politicians are obligated to negotiate and develop consensus. All this incessant posturing in the House is a waste of every citizen’s time and money. But minority governments also lead to blood-boiling accidental absurdities like the BQ holding the reins on matters of national interest.

        I have to say that I’m tired of the fear narrative that gets reeled out around elections in this country. No major party has a view to radically transform Canada. In the grand scheme of things, the three major parties are moderate, and I’m not convinced that any of them are literally dangerous. And so, the bland fruit that grows from the tree of our national politics, while not lethally poisonous, is not necessarily nutritious either.

        electoral reform

        If only some fresh party leader would make that a key promise of their platform. Surely they would use their majority government to make good on that promise.

  • Oderus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Savage comment but a good one. Reminds of his father who famously said “watch me” when asked about deploying the War Measures Act.

    Trudeau has done a great job as PM.

    Bitcoin Millhouse will be a weak version of Harper and he’ll continue the Conservative tradition of hurting Canadians at the benefit of his supporters.

    Have we already forgotten all the scandals from the Harper Government?? There’s a reason we gave Trudeau a majority after Harper.

    • Powerpoint@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I’m good with another minority government with Liberals at the helm since NDP are pretty stagnant as well. Pierre Poilievre is garbage and hopefully another Conservative loss would force that party to split back up.

  • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Trudeau is basically handing the prime minister position to Pierre and I’ll never forgive him for it. The policies aren’t even materially worse than what Pierre would do (hard to limbo below that bar), but he’s just so disconnected from the optics of what he says and does.