With Trudeau's Liberals in trouble, is Mark Carney the answer?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals remain deeply unpopular, currently trailing Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives by as many as 17 points in the polls, after more than a year of lagging behind.

If an election was held today, the Conservatives would likely trounce the Liberals and cruise to a majority government, with polling aggregator 338Canada projecting the Conservatives would win 212 seats, based on the current polling data. The Liberals would win just 74 seats.

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Trudeau himself appears to be dragging the party's popularity down.

A recent poll by Nanos Research, commissioned by CTV News, found only nine per cent of Canadians say Trudeau is the most politically appealing option for party leadership.

Those abysmal numbers, coupled with the stunning decision last weekend by U.S. President Joe Biden to end his re-election bid amid mounting concerns about his own viability as a candidate, have the Ottawa bubble abuzz with speculation: Is a major cabinet shuffle on the horizon? Could Trudeau walk away? If he does, who replaces him?

Is a cabinet shuffle enough?

If the Liberals are going to turn their electoral fortunes around, it's clear Trudeau and his government will have to hit a reset button.

One way to do that is a cabinet shuffle. As the Globe and Mail reported earlier this month, citing unnamed sources, Trudeau is working to recruit Mark Carney – the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – to cabinet, possibly to replace Chrystia Freeland as finance minister.

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Freeland, once widely touted as Trudeau's potential successor, has seen her own political fortunes slide. That same Nanos poll has her tied with Trudeau at nine per cent, down from 18 per cent in just seven months.

"Clearly Canadians are souring, specifically on her, and this has been a period of time that she has been out in front more so," Kathleen Monk, former director of communications to Jack Layton, said in a panel interview of political strategists on The Vassy Kapelos Show this week. "She was out there with the last fiscal update, she was out there with the budget, and clearly Canadians have reacted to that."

Kory Teneycke, former communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said he doesn't think Canadians would take notice of any cabinet shake up if it didn't include moving Freeland out of finance.

Even then, he said, it may not be enough.

"The electorate's mind is just so thoroughly made up about Trudeau at this point that I think shuffling a few chairs around the cabinet table won't make a difference," Teneycke said.

Scott Reid, former communications director to Prime Minister Paul Martin, said unless the Liberals are willing to do something that looks like genuine change – a new finance minister and a brand new economic approach that could include abandoning its consumer carbon tax – their electoral fortunes won't change.

"This is a government that is running as fast as it can, as hard as possible with its eyes squeezed shut into a great stone wall," Reid said. "It just isn't changing what it's doing."

If the Liberals do pursue radical change and it still doesn't affect their position in the polls, Reid said then it's time for Trudeau to step down.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to speak at a news conference in Vancouver, June 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns

If not Trudeau, then who?

Other Liberal ministers with rumoured leadership ambitions – including Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Housing Minister Sean Fraser – all trailed Trudeau and Freeland in the Nanos poll.

Of all the potential leadership candidates included in the Nanos poll, only one scored higher than Trudeau and Freeland: Carney.

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Nineteen per cent of survey respondents view him as the most politically appealing Liberal leadership candidate.

But is the answer to Poilievre's populist "everything is broken" brand of politics a former governor of the Bank of Canada?

"We don't know," Reid said in an interview with CTV News. "No one knows and it is impossible to know."

"Anyone who suggests that they do know is a flat out liar," he added. "He has a high, high ceiling, but there is no other potential would-be prime minister on the scene who is a bigger question mark."

"The guy could be a once-in-a-generation pick. Or he could flame out once he's actually in the pros," Reid also said.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have been preparing for a potential Carney-led Liberal party for months, claiming "it's clear" Carney wants to replace Trudeau.

In that vein, Conservative MPs demanded Carney appear before the House finance committee in the spring, during which they branded him as "carbon tax Carney."

Carney declined to testify.

The demand to appear before the committee followed a speech Carney delivered in April, in which he criticized the Liberal government's budget, while also taking aim at Poilievre's "everything is broken" rhetoric.

"The rallying cry of Brexiters was 'Broken Britain,' and their solution to take back control was actually code for 'tear down your future,'" Carney said during a keynote address at a Canada 2020 economic lookahead dinner.

"Starving the beast was Pierre Poilievre's reflexive response to COVID," Carney also said. "He saw a humanitarian catastrophe … as another chance to slash spending and cut taxes. When he shouts 'axe the tax' he is really whispering 'can the plan' and leaving us with nothing."

Shakir Chambers, a conservative strategist and principal at Earnscliffe Strategies, thinks Poilievre would welcome Carney as Liberal leader.

"Mark Carney is pretty much the epitome of an elite Liberal and they can paint him as that pretty easily," Chambers said in an interview with CTV News. "Carney's resume speaks to globe-trotting, all these international forums, speaking at all these events, going all in on the climate agenda."

"I think it's a very easy transition from saying it's all Justin Trudeau's fault to saying Mark Carney and the Liberals are to blame for what we're experiencing right now," Chambers added.

Chambers said he thinks the Liberal brand is simply too damaged after nine years in power for anyone to come in and turn the party's political fortunes around before the next election.

Trudeau is currently on vacation, which means Canadians will have to wait until August for any signs of whether, and how, the embattled Liberal leader will try to reset his party's fortunes.