OTTAWA – As a tearful Justin Trudeau outlined his plans to resign as Liberal leader and prime minister on Monday, he put the country on track for an early election featuring a new party flagbearer for the first time in a decade.
Once seen as the Liberal saviour who lifted a battered party brand up from the ashes, Trudeau came up against a groundswell of pressure from party rank-and-file to step aside as the public soured on his government and grew hungry for change.
The questions now are when exactly the election will come, and who will vie to become Trudeau’s successor, tasked with the herculean feat of raising the party back up from the depths.
After more than a year of plummeting poll numbers and surging pressure from within his own caucus to step aside, he informed Canadians on Monday he will step aside as soon as a new leader is chosen.
“This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” Trudeau said outside his official residence in Ottawa.
Trudeau said he reflected on his political future over the holidays and told his three kids about his decision over dinner Sunday.
He also said Gov. Gen. Mary Simon has agreed to his request to prorogue Parliament until March 24.
Trudeau had consistently signalled over the past year he intended to remain at the helm despite growing calls he step down. But the decisive blow that shattered his grip on the party reins came when Chrystia Freeland suddenly resigned as minister of finance and deputy prime minister on Dec. 16, after Trudeau had informed her he was going to move her out of the finance portfolio.
Her departure, hours before she was to table the fall economic statement in the House of Commons, sent shock waves through the governing party.
Questions about Trudeau’s future have swirled since support for his party began to tumble in 2023. The Liberals have trailed the Conservatives by more than 20 points for more than a year now.
Trudeau said he asked for Parliament to be prorogued because the House of Commons has been paralyzed for months through obstruction and needs a reset. This move will shutter the House for two months, wipe clear the current slate of legislation and delay any opportunities for non-confidence votes that could trigger an election until it resumes in spring.
“It’s time for the temperature to come down, for people to have a fresh start in Parliament to be able to navigate through these complex times domestically and internationally,” he said. “Removing me from the equation as the leader who will fight the next election for the Liberal party should also decrease the level of polarization we’re seeing right now in the House and in Canadian politics.”
Trudeau said he asked Liberal party president Sachit Mehra Sunday night to immediately launch a leadership race ahead of the next election.
Mehra said in a statement he will call a national board meeting this week to begin the process to select a new leader. Details about the timing of the race have not yet been announced, although Liberal MPs were briefed virtually Monday afternoon on the party constitution and next steps in the leadership process.
The spotlight now will be cast on long-suspected leadership aspirants such as Freeland, Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, former central banker Mark Carney, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne and a cast of others.
Candidates will have to scramble to launch speedy campaigns as they jostle under tight time constraints to organize and claim the mantle as the best to take on popular firebrand Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
A spokesperson said Poilievre is away on a family vacation and will respond to Monday’s events later this week.
Trudeau’s decision injected a hefty dose of optimism into Liberal MPs who were just recently at wit’s end over Trudeau’s insistence he stay on.
Montreal MP Anthony Housefather told The Canadian Press he believes there is still enough time for a new leader to establish themselves on the national stage and run a competitive election campaign.
“Nobody knows what the future brings or how well we’ll do, but I’m confident that we’ll do better in the next election because of this process and because of the opportunity to offer a fresh face with new ideas to the country,” he said.
Ontario MP and former cabinet minister Helena Jaczek said she felt a sense of sadness knowing this would be a “very hard decision” for the fighter in Trudeau, but she also felt relief, since it presents a chance for renewal.
Jaczek said between responding to the COVID pandemic and its aftermath, Trudeau may have become “unaware” of how Canadians feel on grassroots issues like cost of living.
“There were a whole lot of issues that perhaps we could have addressed a little more quickly,” she said.
Liberal MP Wayne Long said this marks Day 1 of the party’s rebuild and will give the party a fighting chance in the next election.
“This shouldn’t be a Pierre Poilievre coronation,” he said.
While the next election must be held by this October, spring or early summer are much more likely given the precarious minority Parliament that has all three main opposition parties pronouncing they’re ready to bring the government down in a confidence vote.
Poilievre sought to cast Trudeau’s move as a desperate political play by a sputtering Liberal party, whose MPs stood by their leader right up until he cratered in the polls and was no longer a viable candidate.
“Their only objection is that he is no longer popular enough to win an election and keep them in power,” Poilievre said in a statement. “They want to protect their pensions and paycheques by sweeping their hated leader under the rug months before an election to trick you, and then do it all over again.”
After supporting the Liberals through confidence votes last fall, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh first said Trudeau needed to resign on Dec. 20, after Freeland’s cabinet departure. Now, the NDP leader says his party will topple the government at the first chance, likely through a vote on the throne speech when Parliament returns.
“New Democrats will be voting against this government for an election where Canadians will have a choice,” Singh said. “It doesn’t matter who the leader is, the Liberals have let you down. They do not deserve another chance.”
In his nearly decade-long tenure as prime minister, Trudeau ushered the country through a global pandemic, renegotiation with the U.S. of Canada’s most important free-trade deal and a destabilized geopolitical environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Some of his most prominent policies have included introducing a controversial carbon-pricing regime that his political rivals campaigned against, legalizing recreational cannabis and introducing a ramped-up child-benefit payment based on income levels.
Trudeau’s close friend and former principal secretary Gerald Butts said in an online briefing by the Eurasia Group Monday that there’s not much Trudeau could have done differently to hold on, since most Canadian prime ministers have a political best-before date of 10 years.
“Sometimes in politics, the most difficult thing to come to terms with is that there are elements of your fate that are outside of your control and the clock is the No. 1 element,” he said. “He’s a historically consequential prime minister and history has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff over time.”
Trudeau’s decision comes two weeks before Donald Trump is sworn back into office as president of the United States and Trudeau will remain at the helm during what is expected to be a rocky start to Trump’s second term in the Oval Office. Trump has threatened to impose steep import tariffs on all Canadian goods the day he is inaugurated.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said after Trudeau’s announcement that Ottawa “must urgently explain to Canadians” how it will avoid economically devastating tariffs.
Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO Candace Laing said Trudeau read the room correctly and made the right call.
“His resignation marks a turning point as Canada tackles unprecedented domestic and international challenges,” she said. “Canada’s next prime minister must hit the ground running and be laser-focused on strengthening the Canada-U.S. trade relationship.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2025.
