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Top Liberal says Trudeau should step down as party leader amid dismal polling

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Senator Percy Downe

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

If the next Liberal Leader is able to bring the party back to the center of the political spectrum, Liberals have a chance of being reelected,’ Senator Percy Downe wrote in an op-ed earlier this week

Amid dismal polling numbers, a Liberal Party of Canada stalwart-turned-senator said the party needs to look for a new leader to replace Justin Trudeau.  

The comments were made by Senator Percy Downe, who served as former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s chief of staff, from 2001 to 2003. Downe was appointed a senator by Chrétien in 2003. 

On Wednesday, in an opinion piece for National Newswatch, Downe said that the “prudent course of action” is for another “Liberal Leader to rise from the impressive Liberal caucus and safeguard those policies [Trudeau] was actually able to accomplish.” 

“If the next Liberal Leader is able to bring the party back to the center of the political spectrum, Liberals have a chance of being reelected,” he wrote.  

Downe claimed that the party needs a new leader as it is the only one that has a “realistic chance of stopping a government led by Pierre Poilievre [the current Conservative leader].” 

Recent polling shows that support for Poilievre’s Conservative Party is hitting positive levels not seen since the early days of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Indeed, a Federal @338Canada model has the “Outcome Odds” for a Conservative majority government at 95 percent.  

Digging a little deeper, a recent Leger poll shows the Conservatives taking some 211 seats, a gain of 90 seats (well over the majority of 170 needed) with the Trudeau Liberals losing some 90 seats to win only 70 if an election were held today.  

According to Downe, the opportunity for a Poilievre government was “created by a lack of fiscal responsibility in the Trudeau government, and the damage it caused our economy is now showing up in the opinion poll numbers.” 

He also said that more centrist Liberal Party members became reluctant to support Trudeau after realizing they could not persuade him to spend less money.

“That naiveté was replaced with the realization that they were not a serious government when it came to the economy, that they simply didn’t care and would throw money at anything that crossed their mind. The resulting interest rate hikes, increasing cost of living, and huge debt didn’t seem to concern them,” he wrote.  

Despite calling for Trudeau to be replaced, Downe expressed a lyrical sentiment toward the prime minister, saying “many party members are also grateful that Justin’s greatest accomplishment as leader has been his success in recruiting multitalented Canadians to serve in Parliament.” 

Liberal heavyweight claims Trudeau could step down as early as February  

Downe suggested, in a recent Hill Times interview, that he thinks Trudeau could step down as party leader as early as February of 2024. This was in the same month in 1984 that Trudeau’s father, Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, decided he was not going to seek re-election. Later that same year, the Conservatives under Brian Mulroney won in a landslide.  

He claimed that there is a “possibility that under our first-past-the-post electoral system, Justin and the NDP could squeeze enough seats to form a minority government.” 

The Liberal Party, which has a minority government, formed an informal coalition with the New Democratic Party (NDP) last year, with the latter agreeing to support and keep the former in power until the next election is mandated by law in 2025.   

However, Downe noted about this possible outcome, that the “questions for Justin Trudeau are: given the divisions in our country, is that the best result for Canada, and is it the best result for Justin personally?” 

Earlier this week, Poilievre dared Trudeau to call a “carbon tax” election so Canadians can decide for themselves if they want a government for or against a tax that has caused home heating bills to double in some provinces.   

The controversy around the carbon tax “pause” came after Trudeau announced last week he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canadian provinces for three years. Trudeau’s announcement came amid dismal polling numbers showing his government will be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election.    

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2025 Federal Election

What Trump Says About Modern U.S. And What Carney Is Hiding About Canada

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“Reporters once asked legendary boxer Rocky Graziano why he hugged his opponent after the guy had pounded him senseless for 15 rounds. “He stopped punching me, didn’t he?” That sums up the reaction of Boomer voters hugging Mark Carney after ten years of having Liberals pound them. They can rationalize any amount of suffering.”

The two looming figures in the current “hurry up before they find out who Mark Carney is” election are Carney, the transnational banker/ climate zealot/ not-Trudeau Liberal, and Donald Trump. Yes, Pierre Poilievre is running against Carney, but Carney and the Gerry Butts braintrust are running against the U.S. president.

And not just POTUS 45/47. They’re running against the SNL cartoon figure embraced by Canada’s mainstream media outlets. Depending on the day the Toronto Star/ CBC/ Ottawa Citizen iteration of Trump is “stupid”, “racist”, “sex fiend” and, for this campaign, the boogeyman who will swallow Canada whole. While these scribblers and talking heads themselves are going broke, they imagine Trump as an economic moron collapsing the western economy.

All the clever Conservative ads, all the Carney flubs, all the revelations of election rigging by Chinese operatives— none of it matters to Canada’s Boomers huddled against the blustering winds of Trump. They call it Team Canada but it might just as well be Team Surrender to people who are willing to keep the Liberals’ Gong Show going for another four years.

As they say, you’re welcome to your own opinion, you’re just not welcome to your own facts. And the facts are that Trump and Carney are representative of their separate nations in 2025. Before we address the parachute PM Carney let us suggest that CDNs weaned on Stephen Colbert and John Oliver have little idea why Trump is the most impactful American politician of the century so far.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s Democratic comedian Dave Chappelle explaining why so many remain loyal to the former Democrat and reality TV star in the face of impeachments, criminal charges and yes, bullets. Chappelle, who lives outside the Hollywood bubble in Ohio, said, “I’m not joking right now, he’s an honest liar. That first (2016) debate, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a white male billionaire screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘This whole system is rigged.’

“And the moderator said, ‘Well Mr. Trump if, in fact, the system is rigged as you suggest, what would be your evidence?’ He said, ‘I know the system is rigged because I use it.’ I said ‘Goddamn’.

“No one ever heard someone say something so true. And then Hillary Clinton tried to punch him on the taxes. She said, ‘This man doesn’t pay his taxes,’ he said, ‘That makes me smart.’ And then he said, ‘If you want me to pay my taxes, then change the tax code. But I know you won’t, because your friends and your donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.’…

“No one had ever seen anything like that. No one had ever seen somebody come from inside of that house outside and tell all the commoners we are doing everything that you think we are doing inside of that house. And a legend was born.”

In short, Trump is what we want politicians to be. Aspirational, yes. But willing to act. We can take it. Yes, his truth is wrapped in multiple layers of balderdash and folderol. There is a preening ego. Self serving. Vainglorious. Opportunistic. Bombastic.

But he recognized that no one— GOP included— wanted anything to do with closing borders, ending foreign wars, levelling the trade barriers. So while Canadians whined, he took them on, and for that he’s been given two terms in the White House. You can understand why people wanted him dead last summer. He’s bad for the business he exposed in that debate with Hillary.

So Canadian liberals might sneer and condescend, but Trump’s answering to a legitimate voice in an America that was deceived and abused during Covid. And had a senile man as POTUS being manipulated by unseen characters behind the scenes.

Which begs the question: What in the Canadian character is Mark Carney answering to as he is dropped into the seat formally occupied by Justin Trudeau? The most obvious answer is Trump’s 51st state musings as he seeks to re-order the world’s tariff system. But what about repudiating everything he and his party stood for the past decade? How does that fit into the Carney identity?

While Trump has a resounding mandate to pursue the issues he campaigned on, Carney has a manipulated Liberal leadership contest, no seat and Mike Myers. Plus a media that owes its living to his party’s bribing them.

It would be hard to imagine more own goals than Carney’s record since the Liberals rigged his nomination. The China denials, the offshore tax evasions, the three passports, the renunciation of his entire work history, the re-hiring the worst of Trudeau’s cabinet, the bad body language… yet every gaffe increases his numbers in the purchased polls and the bought media. It will be an amazing story when it’s written.

But it’s not being written that way now. Because Donald Trump has activated Canada’s passion for authority and the expert class. While the rest of the world has awakened to the government’s deliberate manipulation of fear and white-coat reverence during Covid, Canada’s Boomers are still in awe of people like Carney. They still think the vaccines work. That The Science was behind it all.

So prepare for another 15 rounds of being slugged in the head by people who don’t have your goals in mind. Don’t say you we weren’t warned.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Canadian Police Raid Sophisticated Vancouver Fentanyl Labs, But Insist Millions of Pills Not Destined for U.S.

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Sam Cooper

Mounties say labs outfitted with high-grade chemistry equipment and a trained chemist reveal transnational crime groups are advancing in technical sophistication and drug production capacity

Amid a growing trade war between Washington and Beijing, Canada—targeted alongside Mexico and China for special tariffs related to Chinese fentanyl supply chains—has dismantled a sophisticated network of fentanyl labs across British Columbia and arrested an academic lab chemist, the RCMP said Thursday.

At a press conference in Vancouver, senior investigators stood behind seized lab equipment and fentanyl supplies, telling reporters the operation had prevented millions of potentially lethal pills from reaching the streets.

“This interdiction has prevented several million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl from being produced and distributed across Canada,” said Cpl. Arash Seyed. But the presence of commercial-grade laboratory equipment at each of the sites—paired with the arrest of a suspect believed to have formal training in chemistry—signals an evolution in the capabilities of organized crime networks, with “progressively enhanced scientific and technical expertise among transnational organized crime groups involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs,” Seyed added.

This investigation is ongoing, while the seized drugs, precursor chemicals, and other evidence continue to be processed, police said.

Recent Canadian data confirms the country has become an exporter of fentanyl, and experts identify British Columbia as the epicenter of clandestine labs supplied by Chinese precursors and linked to Mexican cartel distributors upstream.

In a statement that appears politically responsive to the evolving Trump trade threats, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul said, “There continues to be no evidence, in this case and others, that these labs are producing fentanyl for exportation into the United States.”

In late March, during coordinated raids across the suburban municipalities of Pitt Meadows, Mission, Aldergrove, Langley, and Richmond, investigators took down three clandestine fentanyl production sites.

The labs were described by the RCMP as “equipped with specialized chemical processing equipment often found in academic and professional research facilities.” Photos released by authorities show stainless steel reaction vessels, industrial filters, and what appear to be commercial-scale tablet presses and drying trays—pointing to mass production capabilities.

The takedown comes as Canada finds itself in the crosshairs of intensifying geopolitical tension.

Fentanyl remains the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Canada, with toxic supply chains increasingly linked to hybrid transnational networks involving Chinese chemical brokers and domestic Canadian producers.

RCMP said the sprawling B.C. lab probe was launched in the summer of 2023, with teams initiating an investigation into the importation of unregulated chemicals and commercial laboratory equipment that could be used for synthesizing illicit drugs including fentanyl, MDMA, and GHB.

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