ANALYSIS: Can Trudeau Expect Some Good News Amid a Rough Summer?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took multiple hits over the summer, with two major ones coming just before he faces a Liberal caucus eager to hear how he plans to start adding to the win column.
It’s the first time the entire caucus will meet after the surprise defeat to the Tories in the Toronto–St. Paul’s byelection in early summer.
Had nothing else happened since, the meeting would have likely been focused on taking stock of the defeat and planning to avoid a repeat.
There will be much more to discuss after what took place this week, with the NDP leaving the deal ensuring the Liberals remain in power, and a top party cadre calling it quits.
The Bloc Québécois holds more seats than the NDP in the House of Commons, and its leader Yves-François Blanchet said he’d be looking into what he can gain from providing support to Liberals on confidence votes.
There’s a high likelihood the NDP also doesn’t want a Conservative majority government before October 2025 when it can still extract some gains from the Liberals in exchange for support on key votes.
The NDP is also not high in the polls after over two years of supporting the Liberals, themselves trailing the Tories in voting intention polls by a large margin over an extended period. Another factor the NDP must consider in the near term is its provincial party wings battling for power in elections this October in B.C. and Saskatchewan.
All these factors make the Liberal position more tenable at this time, but the optics of being abandoned by a key partner and key staff is not optimal.
On that front, Trudeau lost his labour minister Seamus O’Regan during the summer after he stepped down citing family reasons.
Rodriguez is an MP from Montreal and the whole city is currently mostly a Liberal stronghold. Rodriguez and his party will be paying close attention to the Sept. 16 byelection in former Liberal cabinet minister David Lametti’s former riding of LaSalle–Émard–Verdun.
Higher unemployment amid rapid population growth could spell additional trouble for the Liberals as they seek to energize the economy and their political fortunes.