Mr. Erskine-Smith is getting all kinds of shout-outs today, but he seems to be at those pivotal moments. Maybe we can look forward to his intervention shortly here, before, as he said, he has to head to another commitment.
Now, to start to get into some of the political dynamics, I think it speaks to how we shouldn't be afraid of asking for some hard opinions and being able to question those who seem to be asked for their advice on significant matters. Here's where there's an intersection from Mr. Carney's resumé to where Mr. Carney seems to be at what many are suggesting....
This is not simply me as a rural Alberta member of Parliament. I'm not the only rural Alberta member of Parliament here and I'm certainly not the only Alberta member of Parliament here. It seems that there is a “draft Carney” campaign, if you will. There seems to be almost an undertone of how the Liberals are approaching the fledgling leadership of the current Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, who is down in the polls and faces frustration wherever he goes. It seems that there's even frustration from within the ranks of the Liberal Party, certainly within the backbench, and I found it really interesting.
If I could just opine on this for a moment, there have always been leadership questions. That's not specific to one party. One doesn't have to spend much time in Ottawa to know that to be the case, but what is very interesting is that over the last number of weeks—and months, rather—we have seen some very direct conversations about a post-Trudeau Liberal Party.
Now, there are, I would suggest, two dynamics to that. One is in the context of speculation from those who are probably not on the inside, so to speak. We have a scathing editorial written by, I believe, a former Liberal Party president. It talked about how Justin Trudeau is dragging the Liberal Party down to the depths of destruction. I'm paraphrasing. I don't have that article right in front of me, but I think it's a fairly accurate depiction of what was a very scathing article about Mr. Trudeau's leadership.
We have other open questions being asked by the press gallery about Mr. Trudeau's future. Certainly my constituents ask me those questions on a regular basis, and I can say confidently that my constituents are ready for a change. They're ready for a new prime minister and they're certainly not ready for another Liberal prime minister. We do have a solution to that, but I want to keep things focused, of course, on the issue at hand with Mr. Carney. What has been interesting to observe over these last number of months is how open questions about Mr. Trudeau's future and the leadership of the Liberal Party have not been slapped down, have not been refuted, and I think that I could suggest a couple of reasons for that.