Trudeau staffers shocked as national campaign director announces resignation

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst announced on Thursday that he is resigning, the Toronto Star reported. Although he had preiously informed Trudeau, his decision was a shock to many of the prime minister's senior staff. 

The announcement is more bad news for Trudeau, who has been assessing the damage of losing his political partnership with the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader, Jagmeet Singh. Singh first announced Wednesday his intention to “rip up” the informal coalition with the Trudeau government.

Broadhurst’s decision has apparently taken Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, by surprise. Quoting an anonymous source, the Star said that Broadhurst had lost confidence in Trudeau and didn’t think he could win the next election. He invited the prime minister to find a replacement who believes that Trudeau can win reelection.

Other sources indicated that Broadhurst had admitted he couldn’t go through another federal election and that he didn’t think the Liberal campaign headquarters would be up to the task. That election, officially slated for October 2025, could come a lot sooner now that Trudeau is definitely in a minority government positon.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh reiterated Thursday his decision to end his party’s loose coalition with the Trudeau government, saying that this new political reality makes a federal election “more likely than before.” Singh had made the declaration Wednesday.

At a news conference in Toronto, Singh said, “The Canadian dream is fading. They're working harder than ever and falling farther behind. So many have lost hope, hope that they'll ever be able to buy a home, that health care will be there for them, or that they'll ever be able to retire, but they see the billionaire class is better off than ever,” Singh told supporters.

Broadhurst confirmed that his last day would be Sept. 30. In a statement received by the Star, Broadhurst wrote that he believed the next federal election would be the “most critical federal election campaign of [his] life,” and perhaps the last opportunity to vote for the Liberal Party’s “acceptable” policies “before it is too late to stop at our border a brand of politics that stokes fears and seeks to divide us with a vision of a zero-sum world where support for one person must represent setback for someone else.”

“Make no mistake, I am still committed to the Liberal Party of Canada and to the prime minister,” he wrote. “ … but it is time to make way for others and to find new ways to help.”

Trudeau remains under pressure from caucus MPs to produce some evidence of change in his government or at least try a cabinet shuffle. There have been calls for him to resign since a byelection loss this summer to the Conservatives in the once-safe seat of Toronto-St.Paul. Trudeau’s Liberals remain about 20 percentage points behind the Official Opposition Conservatives.

While Trudeau insisted at a news conference Wednesday that he didn’t want to focus “on politics,” the Liberal Party put out a post on X Thursday congratulating themselves on having their “best fundraising email of 2024.”

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