(Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will shuffle his cabinet in the coming weeks as a handful of ministers have decided not to run in the next election, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The four ministers expected to leave cabinet — Carla Qualtrough, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Dan Vandal and Filomena Tassi — are not in major portfolios, and for now there is no sign Trudeau intends to make sweeping changes to his front bench.
But with brewing discontent in his caucus over the Liberal Party’s prolonged slump in the polls, the planned departures only add to Trudeau’s troubles as he prepares for an election that could come any time in the next year.
The cabinet shuffle is not expected to happen imminently and could even wait until after the US election, according to officials who spoke on condition they not be named.
Other ministers have already stepped down from Trudeau’s cabinet. In the past few months, Seamus O’Regan quit his job as labor minister because he didn’t intend to run again and Pablo Rodriguez left as transport minister in order to run for the leadership of Quebec’s provincial Liberal party.
Trudeau is under pressure to show his caucus a plan to erode the dominant polling lead enjoyed by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who’s been ahead by around 20 percentage points for more than a year now.
There have been numerous media reports over the past week that some Liberal lawmakers intend to challenge Trudeau at next week’s caucus meeting, either calling on him to resign as leader or to make a bigger shakeup in the people around him. The Liberals have yet to run a significant ad campaign against Poilievre, and Trudeau has not made any changes to his senior staff or to the highest-profile jobs in cabinet, such as finance and foreign affairs.
Trudeau has repeatedly said he does not want an election until the fall of 2025. But after his main partner in parliament tore up a power-sharing deal last month, an early election has become more likely.
Still, 50% of Canadians would prefer the next federal election to be held in 2025, while 30% want one to take place as soon as possible, according to a recent poll for Bloomberg News by Nanos Research Group. About 12% have no preference, 7% want a vote sometime in 2024 and 1% are unsure.
Nanos surveyed 1,058 Canadians by phone and online between Sept. 29 and Oct. 2. The margin of error is within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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