by RADHIKA DESAI
Canadians had been calling for him to go since 2021. Members of his own party had joined them by early 2024. In September, realising it was time to leave Justin Trudeau’s sinking ship, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, ended the confidence and supply arrangement that had been agreed with the diminished Liberal Party in March 2022 (reportedly delaying until he qualified for his parliamentary pension). By December, calls to resign were emerging from Trudeau’s own cabinet, which he was still delusionally reshuffling. His personal poll ratings had slumped to 22%, down from a peak of 65%. On 16 December, one of his few remaining allies, the deputy minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland abruptly quit. Her resignation letter-cum-application for the party leadership spoke of being ‘at odds’ over how to handle Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs. A few days later, Singh promised to table a no-confidence motion when parliament reconvened in the new year. Still, Trudeau clung on.
Only on 6 January, having evidently had the time to mull the impending parliamentary defeat and intra-party mauling over the festive season, did he at last announce his resignation. Trudeau leaves his party in historically poor shape. In power for 93 of the past 129 years, the Liberals now languish in third place at 16%, projected to take just 44 seats in the next election, due by October, but likely to be held in spring. The Conservatives, led by the suavely combative Pierre Poilievre, are polling at 45% and on course for a landslide. Trudeau has prorogued parliament until 24 March, giving the Liberals just two months to elect a new leader who will inevitably be seen as less than legitimate, handing Poilievre more grist for his campaigning mill.
Although a long time coming, Trudeau’s fall has been dramatic. He was elected in 2015 promising ‘real change’ and ‘sunny ways’ to Canadians wearied by a miserly and divisive decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. Eager to revive the Liberal Party’s fortunes, grandees like former finance minister Ralph Goodale, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge and rising stars like Freeland pulled out all the stops. Everything was on offer: increased public spending defying deficit dharma to create a ‘strong middle class’, social equity, climate change action, Indigenous reconciliation and replacing Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system with proportional representation.
Trudeau’s ‘I-don’t-read-newspapers’ lack of gravitas, hitherto a disqualification for high political office, suddenly became a virtue. He fronted the party’s progressive rebrand free of the baggage of personal convictions. As a former drama teacher and recreational pugilist, he acted the part and cut a fine figure. Electoral success catapulted him – young, telegenic and the son of the country’s most iconic Prime Minister – into Kennedy-esque celebrity. Vogue dubbed him ‘the new young face of Canadian politics’. He appointed a gender-balanced, diverse ‘cabinet that looks like Canada’. Asked why, he replied ‘Because it’s 2015.’
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