‘Every leader has an expiry date,’ says Vimy MP, adding it ‘came maybe even a year ago’
Reaction from at least one of the Laval-area’s Liberal MPs was quick earlier this week following news of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to resign the Liberal Party leadership, to step aside as prime minister, and to prorogue Parliament until a new party leader is chosen.
Parliament prorogued
“This morning I advised the Governor General that we need a new session of Parliament,” Trudeau said last Monday morning from the steps of the PM’s temporary official residence at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa. “She has granted this request and the House will now be prorogued until March 24.”
“This country deserves a real choice in the next election,” Trudeau added, noting he had asked the president of the Liberal Party of Canada to initiate measures leading towards the next election. Trudeau said it had become clear to him that if he had to fight internal battles, he could not be the best option in an election.
‘Right thing,’ says Koutrakis
“The prime minister did the right thing,” Vimy Liberal MP Annie Koutrakis said in a phone interview with The Laval News minutes after the announcement.
She said she advised her constituency association caucus members last week of her decision to join other elected Liberal MPs in publicly recommending to the prime minister that he should step aside.
“And many of my colleagues agreed with me,” she continued. “So, even though today is a bittersweet day for me, it was the right thing for the prime minister to do.
“My hope was that he would have come to that conclusion earlier,” said Koutrakis. “But at the same time, we needed to respect the fact that it was his decision to make and he chose to do it today, and we look forward to what comes next.”
‘Good of our country’
“It wasn’t easy for me to come out and ask for him to step down,” added Koutrakis. “But for the good of our country, for the good of our party, not any one person is bigger than the country and the party. He had to do the right thing.”
She said a meeting held last Monday afternoon by the Liberal Party of Canada’s national caucus would set off the internal mechanisms for the eventual choice of new party leader.
She was non-committal in terms of who she might be favoring at this early stage as the Liberals’ new leader. “I think there are many people within government who would make good leadership candidates, and I believe there are also quite a few from outside the caucus that would be interested,” she said.
Seeks a healthy debate
In the meantime, she suggested the process for choosing a new party leader should be positive. “I think that it’s healthy to have that kind of conversation and debate. I think it will allow Canadians to see what the choices are.”
As for Justin Trudeau’s legacy as prime minister, she said Trudeau “will be viewed kindly by history as a very consequential prime minister. But every leader has an expiry date. And unfortunately what we heard from Canadians is that the expiry date came maybe even a year ago. But, like I said, it was his decision to make and his alone and he made it today.”
While saying she hadn’t yet been formally approached by any potential leadership candidates seeking her support, Koutrakis acknowledged she had recently had “conversations with leadership hopefuls, but they have not openly asked me to support or to endorse any of them.”
Koutrakis’ election concerns
With an election call now just a matter of time, Koutrakis, who will be seeking her third term, said she has already begun putting her campaign team into place. “I am actively looking for my campaign office. We want to make sure that my constituents can continue to have faith in me and my ability to serve them.
“And I hope that they recognize that I’m a hard worker, and that I ran not because of status or status but that I ran because I’m not afraid of work and to roll up my sleeves to work for them. I hope that my constituents feel and recognize that and hopefully whenever the next election comes, they will allow me to continue serving them.”
No response from El-KhouryThe Laval News also reached out to Laval-Les Îles Liberal MP Fayçal El-Khoury for his reaction to the announcement last Monday. El-Khoury was unable to respond to us be deadline as he was about to board an airline flight in Florida early last Monday afternoon.
