Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation this week, setting off a scramble to replace him both as the country's head of government and as leader of the center-left Liberal Party, just months out from a federal election.
Trudeau won a sweeping parliamentary majority in 2015, but another election in 2019 reduced his party to minority status, though he was still able to form a government as the Liberal Party remained the largest in Parliament. Amid fallout from a limping post-COVID economy, a housing affordability crisis and battles over surging immigration, Trudeau and his government hemorrhaged support from both Canadian voters and erstwhile political allies.
Last month's abrupt and acrimonious resignation of Trudeau's chief deputy, Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, appeared to seal the prime minster's fate.
Trudeau's capitulation sets in motion an adjournment until late March, during which parliament is disbanded while Liberal Party members elect a new leader. After the leader is chosen, Trudeau will officially resign. Whoever replaces Trudeau has only until October, potentially, to re-position a wounded party for its reckoning with a mutinous electorate. And that is the best-case scenario: a probable vote of no confidence by a majority of the House of Commons would prompt an immediate federal election, giving Liberals almost no time to recover.
Either way, polls indicate a historic drubbing in store for the Liberal Party, which at around 20% popular support is far behind the Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre, which is now approaching 45% support.
Rather than electing their head of government directly, Canadian voters in each constituency choose a member of parliament to represent them in the House of Commons. The leader of the party able to form a government — by virtue of holding a majority in the House of Commons, by toughing it out as the largest minority party or by forming a coalition — is then officially appointed by the British monarch's governor-general to form and lead a new government as prime minister.
The son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and a savvy self-promoter, the younger Trudeau enjoyed a long "honeymoon" phase after 2015 as a favorite of liberals passionate about climate change, electoral reform, reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous people and expanding the country's intake of asylum-seekers. But a series of embarrassing scandals — from a photo of Trudeau in blackface to revelations that he had interfered in a corruption case against a favored construction firm — and accusations of broken promises over those very same issues diminished his standing, while the 2019 federal election deprived him of his absolute majority in parliament.
After two frustrating years as leader of a minority government, Trudeau rolled the dice by calling a mid-pandemic election in 2021, falling short of a majority once again and only avoiding a much greater defeat due to political infighting among his opponents. This time, he entered into a supply and confidence agreement with the progressive New Democratic Party (NDP), which allowed him to form a government and pass his budgets, in exchange for Trudeau adopting some of its proposals.
Trudeau, unable to contain soaring costs and prod stagnant wages but insisting that his measures had prevented a worse situation, struggled to respond to the Conservative opposition. Led by Poilievre, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) has courted the support of working-class voters by blaming government policies, like a carbon tax, for the country's economic woes and professing sympathy for those hurting in populist language — language some critics say belies the failures of the previous Conservative government (of which Poilievre was Housing Minister) and regressive policies that would only worsen voters' plight.
But naturally, it was the government that faced the voters' wrath. In a series of special elections between 2021 and 2025, Liberal Party candidates faltered in what should have been strongholds like Toronto and Montreal.
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A few last-minute moves by Trudeau to placate the right, like a sharp cut to the number of immigrants allowed into the country, failed to arrest his party's slide. Trudeau's left flank also grew restive: Last September, his decision to break a railworkers' strike prompted the NDP to cut loose from its uncomfortable and ultimately damaging association with the Liberal Party.
“The fact is, the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people,” NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in a video address. “They cannot stop the Conservatives. But we can.”
Now unable to command a majority in parliament, a weakened Trudeau began facing calls from his own backbenchers to resign for the good of the party. The prime minister, seeking to break a century-long precedent by winning a fourth federal election in a row, clung on defiantly. Then at the worst possible moment for Trudeau, a victorious Donald Trump pledged to slap a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and services, driving yet another wedge into his government.
Freeland, the Finance Minister whose influence and wide portfolio has led the Canadian press to dub her the "Minister of Everything," disagreed with a slew of spending plans Trudeau hoped would claw back some popular support, calling them a "costly political gimmick" that would drain the "reserves we may need for a coming tariff war." Trudeau then offered Freeland a different position in the cabinet if she could not accept a budget deficit that would far exceed her own caps. Instead, she sent him a resignation letter.
While her letter did not pack the same bombast as the speech in parliament that brought down Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Freeland's December resignation exposed Trudeau's slackening grip and emboldened more Liberal MPs to call for the prime minister to follow suit. Poilievre, for his part, repeated his calls for an immediate election, saying: “The government of Canada is itself spiraling out of control.”
Trudeau, alone and shunned by his chief lieutenant, announced his own resignation three weeks later. "I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process," he told reporters.
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While the Liberal Party holds its internal contest, parliament is prorogued until March 24. No candidate has officially announced their entry into the race yet, but Freeland, her replacement Dominic LeBlanc, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne have all been named as potentially strong contenders.
Whoever emerges victorious will inherit leadership of a damaged party, premiership of a country beset by numerous crises as well as a potentially hostile neighbor to its south, and calls by all three major opposition parties — the CPC, NDP and separatist Bloc Quebecois — for an immediate election. If the three parties unite in a vote of no confidence upon parliament's return, Trudeau's successor will have to face an angry electorate by the end of spring.
Poilievre has said that if he became prime minister, he would cut government spending, end handouts to corporations and repeal Trudeau-era policies like the carbon tax, which was implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite his populist messaging (and criticism from the left that it's all just empty words), Poilievre is not often compared to Trump, a more vulgar kind of agitator who inveighs against immigration using much uglier language.
And while he would like to pursue a "great deal" on energy with the American president-elect, Poilievre has joined Trudeau, Freeland and other leading Canadian politicians in denouncing Trump's proposed tariffs as an "unjustified threat” on “our already weak and shrinking economy" and committing to economic retaliation "if necessary."
About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports and 85% of electricity imports are from Canada, according to The Associated Press. Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to its southern neighbor. Any trade war between the two countries would have disastrous effects on the economy and the costs of living for both of them, economists warn.
On at least one other issue, Poilievre can find agreement with Trudeau: Canada will not become the 51st state.
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