THUNDER BAY — The Liberal member for Thunder Bay-Rainy River has “mixed feelings” about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to step down.
“It is kind of sad to see him go,” but the prime minister’s decision is “a positive step for our party and for the country,” Powlowski told Newswatch in an exclusive interview Monday afternoon.
Trudeau said Monday morning in Ottawa that he will leave the position of party leader and ask Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until March 24.
The governor general granted the prorogation request, allowing the Liberals to avoid a vote of non-confidence and choose a new party leader without an election underway.
Trudeau was elected party leader in 2013 and has been prime minister since 2015.
Why does Powlowski believe Trudeau’s resignation is good for the Liberals?
“Well,” the MP said, “the reality is from 2019 when I knocked on doors I had quite a few people tell me … ‘I like you, but you know I cannot-slash-will-not vote for Justin Trudeau.’”
And that anti-Trudeau sentiment has “grown pretty exponentially over the course of the last few years,” Powlowski said.
The physician-turned-parliamentarian said “a repositioning of the party” to a “more traditional centrist” orientation is likely with whatever new leader is chosen.
“The people have clearly spoken in Thunder Bay and across Canada that they’re tired of our present leadership, and that’s going to be changed,” he said.
“And it will not just be the leadership, it’s the whole orientation of the party that’s going to change.”
Powlowski said he hasn’t decided who will get his support for the party leader position but he’s looking for someone with “real integrity, a real heart and a real desire to do better for the country, to make the country a better place.”
The federal Liberals’ next leader should be someone who’s “more than just a career politician” – someone with broader experience than Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has “had no other life” outside politics, Powlowski said.
Powlowski compared Trudeau’s leadership of the country to a romantic relationship turned sour.
“Trudeau kind of crossed that bridge quite a while ago with a lot of the electorate.
“They decided they didn’t like him and it didn’t matter how many rose bouquets and candlelight dinners he wanted to have. They weren’t just having him back.
“So, I mean, that’s kind of the reality with him – the relationship is finished.”
Many Canadians would like to see the Liberals be “a little more conservative” fiscally, he said.
“I would also say socially I think the Liberal Party has wrongly been attached to the whole ‘woke,’ cancel culture, identity politics sort of thing. And I think that has certainly hurt us.
“I think the vast majority of people would probably appreciate more of a return to traditional liberal values.”
Powlowski said he thinks “a lot of people kind of blamed us for, like, cancel culture and stuff, but that was never the Liberal Party.”
Though he said “woke” isn’t in the Liberal brand, Powlowski also suggested Trudeau may have gone too far with identity politics in the government.
“I mean, yeah, the reality is (as) a white male in the Trudeau government … your chances of getting into cabinet were pretty dismally small, and partly because of the wanting to have gender parity.
“Is it more important to have gender parity than it is to have good qualified people in cabinet?"
