A former Liberal MP says the party is headed for an electoral humiliation in 2025 and has gone so socialist it could merge with the NDP.Dan McTeague, a Liberal MP in Scarborough, Ontario from 1993 to 2011 made his comments Thursday to a Leaders on the Frontier panel hosted by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy..McTeague said Trudeau's January 6 announcement he would step down before March was "probably a year too late." He expects the Liberal government will fall days after parliament resumes in March and Canada will have a new government in early May."This government's time is up. It's over. It's finished. They'll be lucky to retain second place in the next election," McTeague said, sarcastically giving them a "fat chance" of keeping 20 to 30 seats next electionThe panel was hosted by Frontier Centre president David Leis, vice-president Marco Narvarro-Genie, and Western Standard opinions editor Nigel Hannaford. Hannaford said Trudeau's announcement of his pending resignation was a "spectacular example" of serving "his own ends, rather than those of the country," leaving Canada vulnerable to U.S. tariffs as Trudeau stays on as a lame duck prime minister.McTeague agreed and said the government had actually been stalled since fall because the Liberals would not allow full disclosure regarding the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), now known as the Liberals' Green Slush Fund. He said the "financial weakness" of the country should have stopped Trudeau's grift and handouts, but no."People finally realize this guy's an empty suit. His policies are very dangerous. They're undermining our ability to make ends meet," McTeague said."The Liberals are now saying...maybe we shouldn't have gone so far to the left. Hello? Wake up. I mean, you knew this 10 years ago. You went along with it, and this is where the party finds itself in so much difficulty it cannot extricate itself," McTeague added.Parliament will be prorogued until March 24 to give the Liberals time to pick a new leader, but McTeague said even 700 days wouldn't be time enough to fix the party."It's the party brand that's taken a major hit. It'll be several generations before this party ever comes back to vying and making a successful attempt at running in any election," McTeague said.Hannaford said the next Liberal leader would be the Kim Campbell of our time, referring to the 1993 election where her Progressive Conservatives won just two seats. Navarro-Genie said the party will likely stay "out of office for some time" but not "disappear."McTeague said the party had a chance to meaningfully rebuild after 2011 when he and many other Liberals lost their seats under Stephane Dion. Instead, the party won on a "sugar fix" under Trudeau."We got a name, nice hair, great socks, great selfies, you know. And what it came down to, I think, for a lot of people, was the name, and people felt that they had an obligation to vote for it," McTeague explained. "You have Liberal Members of Parliament now saying, 'Hey, we went too far to the left.' No kidding, sunshine."Trudeau stayed on in circumstances where "no Liberal leader, including Justin's own father, would have stayed that long," McTeague said, owing to Justin Trudeau's own brand of "authoritarianism.""This is a prime minister who picked, hand-picked his candidates and his MPs to make sure they would never stand up to him," McTeague explained. "This is a very different party [than] in my time...which is now a complete failure and has disappointed the vast majority of Canadians."The former MP, who is now the president of Canadians for Affordable Energy, says past Liberal pragmatism on the energy file has been replaced by a dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He doubts the Liberals will re-emerge as a centrist, big-tent party."They're likely to merge with the NDP, because that's where a lot of these MPs are right now. They're socialists," McTeague explained. "Right now it's very much on the left, and that's seems to be where they want to stay."
