The Liberals are in freefall. With this week’s Bloc Québécois victory in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun byelection, on top of the five-alarm byelection defeat in Toronto—St. Paul’s earlier this summer, Canada’s “natural governing party” returns to Parliament down two longtime urban strongholds.
The evidence, both from polls and reports of private inner-party conversations, is overwhelming that the problem is the prime minister himself. Yet, he refuses to leave and Liberal MPs have few mechanisms—particularly since they rejected the Reform Act at the beginning of this parliamentary session—to get rid of him.
