With Polls in Free Fall and a Caucus Revolt Brewing, Analyst believe the Liberals will Bet on Identity Politics to Distract Canadians From Nine Years of Failure
If you haven’t already, crank up Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again, because the Liberal Party is hitting all the same notes in their spectacular fall from grace. Rumors are swirling that today Justin Trudeau, the king of platitudes and bad policies, might finally call it quits after nine long years of setting Canada on fire and calling it progress.
So, why is Trudeau on the verge of resignation? Because he’s facing a caucus revolt. Apparently, some of these MPs weren’t thrilled they didn’t get picked for the very last liberal cabinet shuffle, (or maybe it has to do with the latest Anguis Reid polls) which is funny considering they’ve had years to boot this guy. Instead, they’ve spent their time smiling for photo ops and pretending the country isn’t spiraling into chaos. Now, with the next election practically on the doorstep—2025, people—they’re panicking. And it’s glorious to watch.
Let’s set the stage: the latest Angus Reid poll is catastrophic for the Liberals. They’re sitting at 16%—that’s not just bad, that’s “we’re going to lose half our seats” bad. For context, the NDP is at 21%, which is embarrassing enough, but the Conservatives are at 45%. These are Harper-era numbers, folks. Pierre Poilievre isn’t just winning; he’s running victory laps before the race has even started.
So, what are the Liberals going to do? Well, they have three options. Spoiler alert: they’re all terrible.
Option 1: Prorogue Parliament and Hold a Leadership Race
So here’s the Liberals’ desperate move: prorogue Parliament, delay governing, and launch a leadership race to distract Canadians from their failures. It’s a political circus waiting to happen. Every ambitious Liberal—Freeland, Carney, Champagne—will throw their hat in the ring, and none of them are ready to clean up Trudeau’s mess.
But here’s the kicker: the clock is ticking. The fiscal year ends March 31, and without passing Interim Supply, the government literally shuts down. A leadership race takes months, leaving the party paralyzed while Pierre Poilievre dominates the narrative.
A new leader won’t fix anything; they’ll just inherit a sinking ship and take the blame for the inevitable electoral disaster. This isn’t a solution—it’s a slow, painful march toward oblivion while Canadians demand real leadership.
Option 2: Force a Leader Down Our Throats
Here’s where it gets spicy. The Liberals could skip the drama and appoint a new leader outright—someone like Chrystia Freeland. This would be their Kamala Harris moment. They’d toss Trudeau overboard, slap Freeland on the podium, and scream from the rooftops, “Canada’s First Female Prime Minister!” The media would eat it up. They’d call it historic, groundbreaking, revolutionary.
But here’s the first roadblock: Trudeau doesn’t have to go anywhere unless he decides to. That’s right, folks—there’s no magical “kick him out” button in the Liberal Party rulebook. Even if half his caucus is banging down his office door with pitchforks, Trudeau can just sit back, flash his trademark grin, and say, “I’m still your guy.” It’s less of a democratic process and more of a monarchy with better PR.
Now, let’s assume Trudeau does step down because, let’s face it, his ego might be the only thing keeping him there. Enter Chrystia Freeland. The Liberals would roll her out as the savior of their sinking ship.
But here’s the problem: Freeland’s record is awful. She’s been Trudeau’s loyal sidekick for years, backing every bad policy this government has pushed. From the $65 billion budget blowout to fraudulent COVID loans to the carbon tax disaster, Freeland has her fingerprints all over this mess. She’s not a fresh start; she’s Trudeau 2.0, but with less charisma.
And let’s be real, the Liberals wouldn’t run on their record because their record is a disaster. Instead, they’ll double down on identity politics. Freeland will be the face of the campaign, and the talking points will be predictable: “Conservatives hate women. Conservatives will ban abortion. Conservatives are scary.” It’s the same broken record we’ve heard a million times before. It didn’t work in the U.S., and it’s not going to work here. Canadians are smarter than that.
Option 3: Let Trudeau Go Down with the Ship
Now, this might actually be the smartest move. Trudeau built this disaster. He deserves to be the face of the loss. Let him captain the ship straight into the abyss, take the hit in the next election, and then rebuild from the ashes. It’s not pretty, but it’s probably the cleanest way to salvage the Liberal brand long-term.
But we all know the Liberals won’t do this. They’re too arrogant, too desperate, and too addicted to their own spin. Instead, they’ll probably shove Freeland into the spotlight either through a leadership race or just by bypassing the vote and just giving her the reigns and let her ride the Titanic into electoral oblivion, and then act surprised when it all goes horribly wrong.
Trudeau’s Titanic, Freeland’s Fantasy, and the Liberal Pipe Dream
So, here’s what I expect to happen, and honestly? Good riddance to Trudeau. Nine years of turning this country into a woke, bloated, over-taxed shell of what it used to be—his time is up. But let’s be real, the Liberals’ ship hit the iceberg years ago. Now they’re panicking because it’s finally sinking, and they’re trying to figure out who’s going to be the face of the wreckage. Spoiler alert: none of their options are good.
Here’s their play: they’re going to pull the Kamala Harris switcheroo. Replace Trudeau with Chrystia Freeland, slap a big, shiny label on her as Canada’s “First Female Prime Minister,” and hope nobody notices she was the co-pilot of this crash. Freeland has been positioning herself for this moment for years. She’s stood right next to Trudeau, smiling, nodding, and championing the very policies that have made Canadians poorer, angrier, and ready to vote Conservative in record numbers.
But here’s what they don’t want you to know—and here’s what they won’t campaign on: the Liberal record. Why? Because it’s abysmal. Corruption? Check. They handed out COVID loans like Halloween candy, with billions lost to fraud. Deficits? Oh, just a casual $65 billion for 2024. Inflation? A raging fire that’s destroying Canadians’ savings and quality of life. Authoritarian measures? Let’s not forget freezing bank accounts during the Freedom Convoy protests. Big government? That’s not just their record; it’s their entire identity.
And with Freeland at the helm, that’s not going to change. What’s the plan? Double down on identity politics, of course. “Chrystia Freeland: Canada’s First Female Prime Minister.” That’ll be the headline. That’ll be the news cycle. And anyone who questions her? Sexist. Misogynist. Anti-woman. Oh, and here’s the cherry on top: they’ll pivot straight to abortion rights. Why? Because they think it’s the one play that still works. Ignore the economy. Ignore the housing crisis. Ignore the fact that Canadians are literally rationing food. Just scream, “The Conservatives hate women!” and hope it sticks.
If I were a Liberal strategist—and thank God I’m not—I’d tell them to shove Freeland down our throats now. Why? Because the leader of the Titanic isn’t making it out alive. Whoever takes over the Liberal Party right now is going down with the ship, no question about it. Freeland appeals to the Liberal base: the blue-haired Twitter warriors, the downtown elites, the latte liberals. That’s her crowd. But here’s the problem: that’s it. She’s not reaching the working-class Canadians who are sick of paying for Liberal failures. Hillary Clinton has more likability than Freeland, and that’s saying something.
So, yes, they’ll run her on abortion rights, paint the Conservatives as the boogeyman, and pretend Canadians don’t notice they’ve been absolutely terrible for nine years. But let’s be honest—this is a political kamikaze mission for Freeland. The election results in 2025 are going to be catastrophic for the Liberals. And once the dust settles, Freeland is finished. She’ll be the face of the defeat, the one who led the party into the abyss.
And that’s why the real Liberal leadership race starts after the election. Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, is waiting in the wings. He’s smart enough to know the Liberals need to burn to the ground first before they can rebuild. He’s the only one who can go toe-to-toe with Pierre Poilievre on fiscal policy. If the Liberals want to have a shot at relevance in 10 years, Carney’s their guy. Pair him with someone like Christy Clark as deputy liberal opposition leader, and maybe—maybe—they can reforge the Liberal brand.
But Trudeau? He should go down with the ship. He built this disaster. He’s the reason the Liberals are at 16% in the polls while the Conservatives are at 45%. Let him take the fall. Let the party burn, and let the next generation of upstarts fight over the ashes. Freeland can have her moment, her delusion that she can fix this, but she’s only walking into political oblivion.
So here’s my advice to the Liberals: pour the champagne, play the violin, and let Justin Trudeau captain his sinking ship. And hey, as the ship goes down, maybe Trudeau can declare himself a transgender woman to grab the first spot on the lifeboat—because nothing says progressive hero like skipping the line while the rest of the crew drowns in his mess.
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A new Ontario-wide survey conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of Canada Action finds strong public consensus that Canadian oil and gas revenues are critical to jobs, economic growth, and trade – and that Canada should lean into its energy advantage at home and abroad.
“Our polling feedback shows that a majority of Ontarians recognize the vital, irreplaceable role oil and gas has to play in our national economy. Canadians are telling us they want to see more support for the oil and gas sector, which is foundational to our standard of living and economy at large,” said Canada Action spokesperson, Cody Battershill.
The online survey of 1,000 Ontarians shows that more than four in five (84 per cent) respondents believe oil and gas revenues are important for creating jobs for Canadians and building a stronger economy. Additionally, four-in-five (80 per cent) support Canada developing a strategy to become a preferred oil supplier to countries, while Ontarians are more than eight times as likely to support as to oppose Canada supplying oil and gas, provided it remains a major source of energy worldwide.
“Building new trade infrastructure, including pipelines to the coasts that would get our oil and gas resources to international markets, can help Canadians diversify our trading partners, maximize the value of our resources, and secure a strong and prosperous future for our families,” Battershill said.
Also, nearly four-in-five (79 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important for keeping energy costs manageable for Canadians.
“Our poll is just one of many in Canada since the start of 2025 that show a majority of Canadians are supportive of oil and gas development. It’s time we get moving forward on these projects without delay and learn from the lessons of our past, where we saw multiple pipelines cancelled to the detriment of Canada’s long-term economic success.”
Additional findings include:
Four-in-five (80 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada supplying oil and gas, provided it remains a major source of energy worldwide.
Four-in five (80 per cent) of Ontarians believe oil and gas revenues are important when it comes to building stronger trading partnerships.
Nearly four-in-five (79 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important for keeping energy costs manageable for Canadians.
Nearly four-in-five (78 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada stepping up to provide our key NATO allies with secure energy sources.
Nearly four-in-five (78 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada increasing oil and gas exports around the world, about six and a half times more likely than to oppose.
Nearly four-in-five (77 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada providing Asia and Europe with oil and gas so that they are less reliant on authoritarian suppliers.
Nearly three-in-four (74 per cent) of Ontarians support Canada increasing oil and gas exports around the world, five times more likely than to oppose.
Nearly three-in-four (74 per cent) of Ontarians say oil and gas revenues are important to reducing taxes for Canadians.
More than seven-in-ten (71 per cent) of Ontarians support building new energy infrastructure projects without reducing environmental protections and safety.
More than six-in-ten (63 per cent) of Canadians say they are important for paying for social programs, including health care, education, and other public services.
Respondents were nine times more likely to say the government approval process for energy infrastructure projects is too slow (46 per cent) rather than too fast (5 per cent).
About the survey
The survey was conducted by Nanos Research for Canada Action using a representative non-probability online panel of 1,000 Ontarians aged 18 and older between December 10 and 12, 2025.
While a margin of error cannot be calculated for non-probability samples, a probability sample of 1,000 respondents would have a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Pathways Alliance CEO Kendall Dilling is interviewed at the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Monday, Sept. 18, 2023.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Carbon capture gives biggest bang for carbon tax buck CCS much cheaper than fuel switching: report
Canada’s climate change strategy is now joined at the hip to a pipeline. Two pipelines, actually — one for oil, one for carbon dioxide.
The MOU signed between Ottawa and Alberta two weeks ago ties a new oil pipeline to the Pathways Alliance, which includes what has been billed as the largest carbon capture proposal in the world.
One cannot proceed without the other. It’s quite possible neither will proceed.
The timing for multi-billion dollar carbon capture projects in general may be off, given the retreat we are now seeing from industry and government on decarbonization, especially in the U.S., our biggest energy customer and competitor.
But if the public, industry and our governments still think getting Canada’s GHG emissions down is a priority, decarbonizing Alberta oil, gas and heavy industry through CCS promises to be the most cost-effective technology approach.
New modelling by Clean Prosperity, a climate policy organization, finds large-scale carbon capture gets the biggest bang for the carbon tax buck.
Which makes sense. If oil and gas production in Alberta is Canada’s single largest emitter of CO2 and methane, it stands to reason that methane abatement and sequestering CO2 from oil and gas production is where the biggest gains are to be had.
A number of CCS projects are already in operation in Alberta, including Shell’s Quest project, which captures about 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually from the Scotford upgrader.
What is CO2 worth?
Clean Prosperity estimates industrial carbon pricing of $130 to $150 per tonne in Alberta and CCS could result in $90 billion in investment and 70 megatons (MT) annually of GHG abatement or sequestration. The lion’s share of that would come from CCS.
To put that in perspective, 70 MT is 10% of Canada’s total GHG emissions (694 MT).
The report cautions that these estimates are “hypothetical” and gives no timelines.
All of the main policy tools recommended by Clean Prosperity to achieve these GHG reductions are contained in the Ottawa-Alberta MOU.
One important policy in the MOU includes enhanced oil recovery (EOR), in which CO2 is injected into older conventional oil wells to increase output. While this increases oil production, it also sequesters large amounts of CO2.
Under Trudeau era policies, EOR was excluded from federal CCS tax credits. The MOU extends credits and other incentives to EOR, which improves the value proposition for carbon capture.
Under the MOU, Alberta agrees to raise its industrial carbon pricing from the current $95 per tonne to a minimum of $130 per tonne under its TIER system (Technology Innovation and Emission Reduction).
The biggest bang for the buck
Using a price of $130 to $150 per tonne, Clean Prosperity looked at two main pathways to GHG reductions: fuel switching in the power sector and CCS.
Fuel switching would involve replacing natural gas power generation with renewables, nuclear power, renewable natural gas or hydrogen.
“We calculated that fuel switching is more expensive,” Brendan Frank, director of policy and strategy for Clean Prosperity, told me.
Achieving the same GHG reductions through fuel switching would require industrial carbon prices of $300 to $1,000 per tonne, Frank said.
Clean Prosperity looked at five big sectoral emitters: oil and gas extraction, chemical manufacturing, pipeline transportation, petroleum refining, and cement manufacturing.
“We find that CCUS represents the largest opportunity for meaningful, cost-effective emissions reductions across five sectors,” the report states.
Fuel switching requires higher carbon prices than CCUS.
Measures like energy efficiency and methane abatement are included in Clean Prosperity’s calculations, but again CCS takes the biggest bite out of Alberta’s GHGs.
“Efficiency and (methane) abatement are a portion of it, but it’s a fairly small slice,” Frank said. “The overwhelming majority of it is in carbon capture.”
From left, Alberta Minister of Energy Marg McCuaig-Boyd, Shell Canada President Lorraine Mitchelmore, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell Ben van Beurden, Marathon Oil Executive Brian Maynard, Shell ER Manager, Stephen Velthuizen, and British High Commissioner to Canada Howard Drake open the valve to the Quest carbon capture and storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan Alta, on Friday November 6, 2015. Quest is designed to capture and safely store more than one million tonnes of CO2 each year an equivalent to the emissions from about 250,000 cars. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Credit where credit is due
Setting an industrial carbon price is one thing. Putting it into effect through a workable carbon credit market is another.
“A high headline price is meaningless without higher credit prices,” the report states.
“TIER credit prices have declined steadily since 2023 and traded below $20 per tonne as of November 2025. With credit prices this low, the $95 per tonne headline price has a negligible effect on investment decisions and carbon markets will not drive CCUS deployment or fuel switching.”
Clean Prosperity recommends a kind of government-backstopped insurance mechanism guaranteeing carbon credit prices, which could otherwise be vulnerable to political and market vagaries.
Specifically, it recommends carbon contracts for difference (CCfD).
“A straight-forward way to think about it is insurance,” Frank explains.
Carbon credit prices are vulnerable to risks, including “stroke-of-pen risks,” in which governments change or cancel price schedules. There are also market risks.
CCfDs are contractual agreements between the private sector and government that guarantees a specific credit value over a specified time period.
“The private actor basically has insurance that the credits they’ll generate, as a result of making whatever low-carbon investment they’re after, will get a certain amount of revenue,” Frank said. “That certainty is enough to, in our view, unlock a lot of these projects.”
From the perspective of Canadian CCS equipment manufacturers like Vancouver’s Svante, there is one policy piece still missing from the MOU: eligibility for the Clean Technology Manufacturing (CTM) Investment tax credit.
“Carbon capture was left out of that,” said Svante co-founder Brett Henkel said.
Svante recently built a major manufacturing plant in Burnaby for its carbon capture filters and machines, with many of its prospective customers expected to be in the U.S.
The $20 billion Pathways project could be a huge boon for Canadian companies like Svante and Calgary’s Entropy. But there is fear Canadian CCS equipment manufacturers could be shut out of the project.
“If the oil sands companies put out for a bid all this equipment that’s needed, it is highly likely that a lot of that equipment is sourced outside of Canada, because the support for Canadian manufacturing is not there,” Henkel said.
Henkel hopes to see CCS manufacturing added to the eligibility for the CTM investment tax credit.
“To really build this eco-system in Canada and to support the Pathways Alliance project, we need that amendment to happen.”
