In October 2015, Justin Trudeau stood at the podium in front of an adoring crowd of fans and took his vows. “Sunny, my friends, sunny,” he said, echoing the words of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s prime minister, more than a century ago.
The Liberal Party just won a landslide majority in the Canadian Parliament and Trudeauthe son of one of the high-ranking post-war leaders of the country, he exuded a mood of progressive liberal optimism.
On Monday, amid increasingly dark days of economic stagnation and political turmoil, he resigned as head of his own partya move that will end his tenure as prime minister and draw the curtain on Canada’s latest Trudeau era.
Trudeau’s commitment to social causes, gender equality, indigenous rights and the fight against climate change has brought him worldwide fame. Domestically, the story was different: years of political strife, scandals and a cost-of-living crisis eroded his credibility and ability to lead the G7 nation.
“Every bone in my body has always told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Monday.
But Canadians’ views of Trudeau — and of his father, who himself served more than a decade in two terms as the country’s prime minister — have always been deeply mixed. His supporters call him a role model Canada progressive values, he was reviled among conservatives, especially in the west of the country, where skepticism towards political princes was deeply ingrained.
In recent months, that skepticism has become the prevailing view among most Canadian voters, who have told pollsters that his time as leader should end.
Trudeau, 53, is leaving the political circle after months of pressure from within his own party to resign. On Monday, he asked Governor General Mary Simon – King Charles’ representative in Canada – to suspend parliament until March 24 so the party could elect a new leader.
“There will be a national leadership process in the coming weeks,” Trudeau said, without specifying who he was endorsing as a successor.
Canadian experts speculate that his former ally, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland — whose scathing attack on Trudeau as she quit her job from his cabinet last month deepened his political danger — he could be among those to replace him. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, said late Monday that he is considering a run for party leader.
But any new leader’s first order of business may simply be to stave off the party’s annihilation in an election that now looks likely in the coming months, with the opposition Conservative Party far ahead in the polls.
With no clear succession plan and no set date for the next election, Canada is entering a period of political uncertainty just as it grapples with a volatile neighbour.
Trudeau unexpectedly tried to position himself as an experienced expert in relations with Donald Trump fly to Mar-a-Lago in November after the incoming president threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian goods.
But Trump’s threats have sparked panic in Ottawa and major export provinces such as Alberta, and the president-elect has continued to repeatedly mock Trudeau online – including after his resignation on Monday – describing the Canadian prime minister as the “governor” of America’s “51st state”.
Beyond his own political difficulties at home, Trudeau’s resignation echoes the fate of leaders in other Western democracies, where high inflation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and concerns over immigration have helped push incumbents from power.
Semra Sevi, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said Trudeau’s reputation in the country has been irreversibly damaged by resistance from lower- and middle-income families to his pandemic policies and the mishandling of immigration policies that many voters believe fueled housing availability crisis.
The Liberal leader at one point trumpeted Canada’s openness to immigrants and asylum seekers, inviting cameras to film him greeting Syrian refugees at airports in 2015. In October, Trudeau vowed to crack down on immigration.
“Trudeau’s initial rise was largely built on his charisma and progressive image. However, over the years, his reputation has been undermined by perceived hypocrisy,” said Sevi.
Trudeau’s progressive policies have helped fuel opposition at home. He has promised ambitious measures against climate change and his federal government has imposed one of the most aggressive carbon taxes in the west, angering conservatives in Alberta, the western province that is home to Canada’s lucrative oil industry.
To placate those opponents, the Trudeau government also backed — and financed — a major oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. But his costs have soared and he has done nothing to stop western provinces from relentlessly attacking Trudeau over regulation and environmental policies they say are stifling economic prosperity.
There have also been controversies that have eroded public trust, such as Trudeau’s 2017 vacation to the private island of philanthropist and spiritual leader the Aga Khan. In 2019, allegations that he improperly intervened to defuse a fraud investigation at Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, now AtkinsRéalis, dented Trudeau’s moral authority.
Ultimately, said Robert Asselin, a former economic adviser in Trudeau’s government, a combination of poor governance, economic weakness and policy incoherence caused his demise.
“Trudeau approached the premiership as a storyteller and communicator, often leaving people with the impression that he was acting rather than governing,” Asselin said.
In the past 12 months, five ministers have resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet, and his Liberal Party has lost three safe seats.
Then came the bomb from Freeland. Once considered a personal friend of the Prime Minister, her resignation letter last month criticized the Prime Minister for “expensive political tricks” to curry favor with the public, such as a sales tax holiday.
The rebuke put the three-time federal election-winning leader on the line. Within days, the Liberals’ parliamentary ally, the left-leaning New Democratic Party, called on Trudeau to resign and said it would no longer support the government in parliament. The prime minister moved on Monday ahead of what appeared to be an imminent confidence vote that would topple his government and trigger a snap election.
Stephen Maher, author Princebiography of Trudeau, said that the leader’s political arc speaks of his extraordinary self-confidence, but also of the “presidentialization” of the role of the Canadian prime minister.
“Trudeau only has one gear. There are politicians who are able to turn around, change and tell a different story to extend their life. Trudeau is just, ‘Hey, here I am, love me’ — it worked for almost a decade,” Maher said.
An Angus Reid poll published on December 30 showed that only 16 percent of voters would support his party, while his disapproval rating reached 74 percent.
His Liberal government appears likely to be replaced — elections must be called sometime this year — by a conservative party led by Pierre Poilievre, a right-wing politician far ahead of Trudeau who also now has the backing of Trump ally Elon Musk.
It could mark a sharp turn in Canadian politics, placing the country in the camp of Western democracies staggering from progressivism into a new era of economic populism and anti-immigration.
Even so, Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s chief secretary from 2015 to 2019, said he will be remembered as the leader who resurrected his Liberal Party from the “political dustbin” after decades in opposition.
“It was an astonishing achievement,” he said. “The government grinds you down, 10 years is a long time. He is not the first person in power whose optimistic mood has been eroded by the government.”
