It is neither the place nor the desire of The Catholic Register to mouth off in the mode of political partisanship. But being Catholic, we are justified in piping up about death and resurrection.

By habit, we normally confine our commentary to the miracle of the Resurrection, that is Our Lord’s return to life after the Cross and the tomb. It’s worth recalling that, by its nature, the Resurrection involved the secular world. Post-Hell, He cooked a fish, and his disciples ate of it. QED.

In that spirit, we offer the following argument: The whole of the current Liberal Party of Canada seriously risks being a cooked goose unless it quickly recognizes that the danger it faces is inside the house.

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It’s more than a matter, as former Prime Minister Jean Chretien urged last week, of tacking toward the “radical centre” on policy and voter appeal. Chretien was absolutely, shrewdly correct in his call. But for all Justin Trudeau’s social warrior warts, the Liberal party itself has treated Canadians so contemptuously that it now courts the humiliating democratic demise suffered by the Progressive Conservative Party 31 years ago. 

Indeed, were electorally possible, the current iteration of the federal Liberal Party might go below zero standing in the House of Commons. True, the Westminster parliamentary system no longer lets parties count negative MPs. Yet given the national animus toward Trudeau and the Liberal party itself, it imaginably could do even worse  in 2025 than the Progressive Conservatives humiliating reduction to two seats in 1993.

Consider, for example, just released rules for the instant dog’s breakfast of the federal Liberal leadership contest to replace a prime minister who has somehow managed to resign without resigning until March 9.

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They are appallingly anti-democratic by any non-authoritarian country standard, and especially so for a party seeking ostensible democratic renewal. For starters, the fee to merely enter the race has been set at $375,00 – an increase of $300,000 or five times the cost of party permission to seek the last leadership. The entry cheque has to clear by Jan. 23 –two weeks after the rules were announced. 

Clearly, the intention is to financially restrict the “race” to self-selecting insiders already at the starting gate raising money and positioning themselves. Effectively excluded is the 99.99+ per cent of Canadians who might want to genuinely challenge for the leadership or seek a platform to press party reform. The number of sitting cabinet ministers falling over themselves to bail out of the leadership proves how effective the exclusion will be.

The pretext for such in-house jiggery pokery is tight time for a conventional leadership contest due to the March 24 deadline for a new Parliament. The Liberal Party must have a leader in place for the virtually inevitable spring election. Such inevitability, though, is a direct result of the federal Liberal Party allowing, through its pusillanimous passivity, the prolonged tomfoolery of our now suspended animation prime minister. 

The country has known for at least six months that Justin Trudeau’s day was done. Every week that he clung to office impinged the obligation to give Canadians a credible choice of electable parties. After 2024’s walloping byelection losses in Toronto, Montreal and suburban Vancouver, it was ludicrous to claim the combined weight of the national executive and 152 sitting MPs could not have forced a Trudeau exit stage left.

Yet now, like something out of a parody of the Chinese People’s Party “elections,” Liberals are rushing pell-mell to protect their status quo by feigning change through a haphazard, exclusionary, doomed leadership vote. In her departure speech, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland scorned the “gimmickry” of Justin Trudeau’s end game. Now we know how deeply such “gimmicks” debase not just the PM but the entire structure of his party.

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So, what, the countervail might go? It’s their Liberal party, and they’re welcome to it. True, but the greater truth is that despite the slap-dashery of this last minority government, Canada needs the Liberal Party of Canada. 

We need it, once it’s been taken to the woodshed every few years, to offer its historic “radical centre” alternative. Our system demands that as one party rises, the other falls. Put it this way: all Canadian Catholics have the Resurrection, but not all Canadians are Catholics or even Christians. They need resurrection in its secular, political form. For threatening that, however many seats it saves in 2025, the Liberal party deserves to wear goat horns for a generation.