Immigration minister calls efforts to oust Trudeau 'garbage'

Immigration Minister Marc Miller today called efforts by disaffected Liberal MPs to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "garbage" and said it would be better for the team to pull together to take on their main opponent: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

"Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that's not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country, and I think that is very dangerous," Miller told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.

Miller, who is a close personal friend of Trudeau, also said the MPs planning a caucus revolt should come out of the shadows and tell the prime minister in person that they want him gone.

"I think they have to express themselves to his face," he said. "I think you will see the vast majority of caucus and cabinet — the entirety of cabinet — is behind him."

As national polls suggest the Liberal Party is headed for a defeat at the next election, some Liberal MPs are getting ready to confront Trudeau at Wednesday's national caucus meeting over their dissatisfaction with his leadership.

After nine years in government, Trudeau's popularity has plummeted.

The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over the governing Liberals — a margin that suggests dozens of Liberal MPs could be out of a job after the next vote.

The prospect of an electoral implosion has led some Liberal MPs to organize this effort to oust Trudeau.

CBC News has reported that more than 20 MPs have met in secret and signed a document committing themselves to trying to force Trudeau out of the party leadership.

It's not just the polls that signal trouble on the horizon for the Liberals.

Trudeau and his team have lost two byelections in historically rock-solid Liberal ridings in Toronto and Montreal.

The Liberal candidate in another recent Winnipeg-area byelection posted one of the worst results for a governing party in Canadian history.

The party's national campaign director quit in early September. The party took weeks to announce a replacement.

Four more of Trudeau's cabinet ministers have announced, or are expected to announce soon, that they will not run again in the next election, sources have told CBC News. That news comes after MP Pablo Rodriguez left caucus to sit as an Independent while running to lead the Quebec Liberal Party.