The announcement that Justin Trudeau did step down from the Canadian Office of the Prime Minister is a day that is significant to Americans. He did thus after last year’s attend to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago team brilliantly misfired.
In Palm Beach, in the late November, Trudeau had begged the once and future senator not to impose affected taxes on his nation, America’s largest trading partner. Trump retorted that Canada could become the country’s 51st condition and thus prevent the levies.
Trump continued to smear the head of state of Canada with the promise of independence on social advertising. Trudeau took the bait, so stoking further conversation and derision. ” There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada may be part of the United States”, he wrote on X.
Americans may be tempted to believe that Trudeau’s departure was more about Trump than about the peculiar taste of French politics, which can be challenging for non-cognitive people to understand at days. Trudeau’s social prospects have been hampered for some time, in fact.
” He had no selection”, Tara Dee Prince of British Columbia told the Washington Examiner. We “lost faith in him years ago.” ( She continued,” He did get pooped on too much” in popular discourse despite not being a fan of Trudeau and not voting for him. )
In May, Sutherland House, a Toronto-based publication, released a pamphlet titled Justin Trudeau on the Ropes. ” The new Conservative opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, has all but caved in Trudeau’s breast box in the beginning round”, former prime ministerial debate moderator Paul Wells wrote, and the numbers back him up.
Trudeau’s criticism numbers traded places with his earlier positive acceptance numbers in February 2021 and not recovered, according to the Angus Reid Institute’s long-running American opinion survey. 56 % of Canadians disapproved of the Liberal Party president when the more aggressive Poilievre won the Conservative Party’s leadership in September 2022. By December 2024, 74 % of Canadians disapproved, and his own party was in what amounted to a sort of passive-aggressive open revolt.
Instead of giving a significant financial information to the House of Commons, Chrystia Freeland, minister of finance and deputy prime minister, resigned from her position. ( After which she was moved to a less prestigious Cabinet position. ) Mark Carney, former head of the institutions of Canada and England and a possible potential Liberal Party standard-bearer, turned the work along. Dominic LeBlanc, the former secretary of fish, eventually accepted it.
Trudeau claimed he told his babies the night before that he was sharing what he was telling the people that day and that” Parliament has been paralyzed for times.” He had resign” as party leader, as perfect minister” just as soon as his party” selects its second leader through a robust, global, dynamic process”.
In front of the standard home Rideau Cottage, Trudeau stated,” This country deserves a genuine alternative in the next election, and it has become apparent that I cannot be the best solution in that election,” explaining his decision.
Parliament would remain “prorogued”, meaning out of session, until March 24, at which point a combination of Republicans, NDPers, and maybe even a couple Democrats are expected to fell the government through a no-confidence activity, setting up a May vote.
At this point, Conservatives are the odds-on favorite to win an outright majority, though they have been disappointed before by last-minute swings. Much depends on whether Canadians are generally sick of Liberal government or Trudeau.
NDP turns on Trudeau
Trudeau’s Liberal Party has formed three successive governments, spanning over nine years, but in only one of those did it win enough seats to form a majority government. It was largely able to pass legislation and budgets thanks to Jagmeet Singh’s unwavering support of the New Democratic Party.
Poilievre claimed that because of financial reasons,” Sellout Singh” was refusing to leave the government earlier. Singh was elected to Parliament in a riding in British Columbia that isn’t regarded as safe. The NDP leader’s claim that his government pension would not be refunded if he won the early election was allowed but lost.
Singh cast some doubt on that interpretation in a surprising Dec. 16 press conference, though his pension does vest in late February. ” Right now, Canadians are struggling with the cost of living. People can’t find a home that they can afford, I hear it everywhere I go. They can’t buy their groceries”, Singh began, sounding notes quite similar to Poilievre’s criticism of Trudeau’s economy.
Worse,” On top of that, we have Trump threatening tariffs at 25 %, which put hundreds and thousands of Canadian jobs at risk”, Singh said. And Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are focusing on themselves, not on these issues. They’re fighting themselves instead of fighting for Canadians”.
Then came the rhetorical frag grenade. ” And for that reason, I’m calling on Justin Trudeau to resign”, Singh explained. ” He has to go”.
Reporters, of course, had questions. Singh initially held them back with some bilingualism. ” I ‘m-going-to-do-it-in-French”, he said.
Why this hadn’t happened much sooner was one of the questions that the shouting reporters didn’t pursue. The NDP and the Liberals are sometimes coalition partners, but they are also rivals.
When Trudeau took over the reins of the Liberal Party, the Liberals were only the third-largest party in Parliament, behind the NDP and the majority Conservatives.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had three terms in office, had become ill-liked by Canadian voters. He made the decision to contest the 2015 election rather than appointing a replacement. This was a fateful choice that might have affected Trudeau’s recent decision to veer off.
It was arguably the NDP’s turn to try running things, but Trudeau’s entry changed everything. Justin was the closest thing that Canada had to a heartthrob and royalty as the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a former prime ministerial heavyweight. He used his celebrity to overthrow a dysfunctional party and slingshot the Liberals past the NDP and into Ottawa’s halls of power.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but the Liberal-NDP alliance was an odd one. In its messaging, the NDP would often criticize the Liberals as corrupt plutocrats. But in the day-to-day workings of Parliament, the two parties were joined at the hip. How that relationship develops, post-Trudeau and post-elections, is anyone’s guess.
Poilievre’s progress
What Conservatives would do in broad strokes in Parliament is something that observers in Canada and outside of Canada can be sure to guess. They will” ax the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, and stop the crime”, to quote Poilievre’s short and oft-repeated catechism.
The “tax” is the carbon tax, enacted in 2019 with yearly ratchets every April 1, a date that perhaps the drafters didn’t dwell on at great enough length. Poilievre contends that his party would repeal this tax outright because it has caused a lot of harm to Canadians.
In terms of housing, Poilievre wants to create sticks and carrots to encourage a boom in construction. His administration would reward or punish municipalities in Canada based on the number of new homes built each year.
Spending will be capped for the length of the government, with dollar-for-dollar reductions required for any new initiatives. Central banks are essentially required to fund their governments ‘ spending sprees, causing inflation. Poilievre is a bit paranoid about price increases, and he thinks the government should restrain its spending.
Poilievre has claimed that he is a kind of libertarian, and he pointed out the cost the Harper government incurred by opposing marijuana legalization. It was a significant factor that aided in electing young voters and putting Trudeau in office.
At the same time, he believes that two initiatives of the Trudeau government, the decriminalization of hard drugs and the watering down of bail requirements, spiked Canadian crime in a way that is simply unacceptable. His government would move to reverse.
Relations with the Trump administration are among other issues that are more complicated. Trump stated in a press conference on January 7 that he favors Wayne Gretzky as the next prime minister or perhaps the “governor” of Canada.
Asked about a statement by Poilievre denying that Canada would become a state, Trump said,” Maybe he won’t win, but maybe he will. I don’t care”.
Trump was a thorn in Trudeau’s side, and he won’t necessarily be easy to manage for Poilievre, either. The Conservative leader recently demonstrated that he has given this conundrum some thought.
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In an interview with psychologist and gadfly Jordan Peterson, Poilievre said,” We have an American president who has always put America first. ” He’s very blunt about it. I’ll put Canada first. The good news is that there is a ton of overlap between the two nations ‘ distinct interests and values. We’re both liberal democracies. We both value freedom. There’s no reason why we can’t both win”.
” If you look at the history of President Trump, he negotiates very aggressively, and he likes to win. In the end, he doesn’t seem to have a problem if his rival also wins. And so I think we can get a great deal that will make both countries safer, richer, and stronger”, the likely future prime minister of Canada added.
Jeremy Lott is the author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice-Presidency.
