ANALYSIS: The Liberal revolt is about Trudeau, communications, and the carbon tax

Many Liberal MPs unhappy with their party's performance say change can only happen with a new leader, better communications and a plan to drop unpopular policies.

The hopes of an anxious Liberal caucus were first raised at the end of the summer of 2022 in the resort town of St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick.

Liberals had gathered that August for the first in-person retreat after the pandemic to confront a series of polls that found them trailing the leaderless Conservatives by a few points.

In September of that year, the Conservatives would find their leader, Pierre Poilievre, and now, two years later, the anxiety of 2022 has turned to the panic of 2024 with multiple polls showing the Liberals 20 points behind and facing an absolute rout if an election were held this fall. Many Liberal MPs who once thought they might survive on their own popularity are now facing the reality that they will lose their jobs because of the unpopularity of the same leader who helped them win back in 2015.

Liberal MPs were told at that 2022 caucus that there was a plan to turn things around. They were told the same thing when they met last month in Nanaimo, B.C., for this year’s summer caucus retreat. Indeed, applause could be heard from the closed-door meeting in the room at the conference centre in downtown Nanaimo when Trudeau’s director of strategic communications, Max Valiquette, presented his marketing plan for the months ahead.

Now many of those MPs complain that nothing was done after the St. Andrews meetings. And nothing has been done since Nanaimo.

The complainers say there has been no promised communications campaign, no change in policies, and no change in the way the PM and his senior aides interact with caucus.

Conservative campaigner Cole Hogan, a principal at gt&co, tracks the amount of money each party spends on Facebook advertising, figures which Facebook itself discloses about all political parties. For the week ending Oct. 5, the Conservatives spent $114,569 on Facebook ads compared to $3,086 by the Liberals and $1,240 by the NDP. Hogan has documented week after week of this kind of lopsided ad spending ever since that Nanaimo meeting and before it. The data reinforces the views of complaining Liberals that nothing has been done.

And while Liberal MPs were promised some sort of marketing campaign to boost their fortunes, the Conservatives produced slick TV ads that aired on legacy television networks. The Liberal response? Trudeau did a podcast with one of his own backbenchers and made an appearance on a U.S. late-night TV show.