Montreal, Canada – “Sunny roads, my friends. Sunny roads.”
So Justin Trudeau, smiling broadly and waving to a crowd of supporters, began his victory speech in 2015, just hours after his Liberal Party secured a surprise majority in Canada general elections.
“That’s what positive politics can do,” Trudeau said, pledging to usher in “real change” after nearly 10 years of Conservative leadership under his predecessor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Now, almost a decade after coming to power, Trudeau is stepping down as Liberal boss.
The decision effectively ends his tenure as Canada’s prime minister amid a wave of internal dissent, opposition pressure and weak polls ahead of the upcoming vote later this year.
“As you all know, I’m a fighter and I’m not one to back down from a fight, especially when the fight is as important as this one,” Trudeau said during a news conference in Ottawa on Monday morning.
“Canadians deserve the right choice in the next election. And it became obvious to me, with the internal struggles, that I couldn’t be the one to carry the liberal standard in the next election.”
It’s a dramatic drop for Trudeau, who has led the Liberal Party since 2013. He came into office with a series of lofty promises, from fighting climate change to strengthening social programs and helping Canada’s middle class.
But Monday’s announcement was no surprise.
Trudeau faced months of pressure from within his own party, where growing chorus Liberal MPs called on him to step down before the next election. He also had to contend with widespread public anger over his handling of issues ranging from grocery costs to housing.
Recently, a threat by Canada’s largest trading partner, the United States, to impose import tariffs of 25 percent has sparked a fresh barrage of criticism — and prompted one of Trudeau’s main political allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, resign.
“I think over time he will be remembered more fondly than now,” said Stewart Prest, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia.
“But there is a strange tendency for Mr. Trudeau to undermine over time the things for which he is best remembered, in his desire to hang on to power.”
Renewal of the Liberal Party
The Trudeau-led Liberals secured a majority in the 2015 Canadian election on the campaign slogan “Real Change Now.”
A former teacher and the son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the younger Trudeau, then 43, vowed to unite the country and end years of divisive politics under Harper, who had been in power since 2006.
“We conquered fear with hope. We beat cynicism with hard work. We have defeated negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together,” Trudeau said in his victory speech.
The centrist Liberals trailed the Conservatives and the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) ahead of the 2015 election. The party came third in the previous elections four years earlier.
“The future of the party seemed to be in doubt, and [Trudeau] brought back to life, so that in itself is a monumental achievement,” said Prest.
Yet amid recent political turmoil and growing public frustrations, the Liberals are once again “in a close relationship with the NDP,” the professor noted.
Recent polls show two parties hovering around 20 percent support heading into the next election, which must be held before the end of October. Both are far behind the Conservatives, WHO hour about 40 percent of public support.
“The Liberals have lost the support of a significant portion of younger Canadians, where until now they enjoyed a healthy margin of support,” Prest said.
“Younger and younger voters seem to feel alienated by the political system as a whole, by the economic system as a whole, and are willing to look for more radical options or those that promise more fundamental change.”
Promises and politics
Still, when Trudeau first took office, he enjoyed good approval ratings, especially among younger Canadians, as he began to implement his campaign promises.
In those early days, Trudeau drew widespread praise for, in one of his first moves as prime minister, introducing Canada’s first gender-equal government, evenly split between male and female MPs.
His first budget restored funding for the public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, and introduced a child tax credit. Trudeau too pledged help Canada’s middle class and tackle the climate crisis.
But as his time as prime minister wore on, Trudeau’s popularity declined. His Liberal Party won re-election in in 2019 and in 2021but both times as minority governments.
His time in office has had mixed successes and failures, said Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. As an example, she highlighted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
“In some ways, the best moment of the Trudeau government was during the first one [Donald] The Trump administration when they were able to use a pretty sophisticated strategy to be able to save the NAFTA agreement“, she told Al Jazeera.
“They were able to renegotiate, they were able to retain much of their access to the Canadian market, and they were able to navigate a series of economic circumstances that could have been very difficult for the country.”
Recently, the Trudeau government has also introduced a number of progressive social policies, including more affordable childcare and a dental care program. The latter was a key demand of the NDP, which – until September 2024 – was supporting himself liberal minority government.
“In an era where people despaired at the prospect of new national welfare programs, they were able to find a way forward,” said Young, who added that the measures may still be short-lived.
“I think they are all potentially vulnerable to a change in government. I don’t know when they will survive conservatives to take office.”
‘Two steps forward, two steps back’
But while he delivered on some of his promises, Trudeau also failed to deliver on others, including a promise to scrap Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system in favor of proportional representation.
Over the years, rights advocates have also criticized the Trudeau government for promising one thing and doing another.
For example, in the midst of America’s crackdown on migrants in 2017, Trudeau published on social networks that Canada will accept “those fleeing persecution, terror and war … regardless of your religion.”
But after Canada experienced a wave of illegal migration, the Trudeau government — under pressure from right-wing provincial leaders — responded by tightening restrictions on US-Canada border to make it more difficult for asylum seekers and migrants to apply for protection.
The Trudeau government has also recently linked immigration with rising housing costswhich is fueling a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, advocates said.
Another example of Trudeau’s “mixed legacy,” Prest said, was his government’s record on climate change.
Although Trudeau signed the Paris Agreement to address greenhouse gas emissions, he also supported several major oil and gas pipeline projects that pass through Canada, including the canceled Keystone XL pipeline in the USA.
Furthermore, while the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed in 2018 that the federal government can determine the price of carbon emissionsPrest said exemptions for certain fuels in eastern Canada “undermined” the plan.
“The carbon tax now appears to be almost dead as a policy option, so the country is two steps forward and now two steps back in any climate fight,” he said.
Indigenous relations
Another contentious issue during Trudeau’s tenure was his relationship with indigenous peoples.
At the start of his term in 2015, he called for “renewed ties between nations and nations”. emphatically that “there is no more important relationship for me – and for Canada – than the one with the First Nations, the Metis people and the Inuit.”
Eva Jewell, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and director of research at the Yellowhead Institute, a center for Indigenous research, said Indigenous people were initially “cautiously optimistic” about Trudeau.
Many hoped that he would fulfill his pre-election promises, she explained.
This included a promise to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated decades of abuse against indigenous children in so-called residential schools.
In 2015, Trudeau ordered a national inquiry disappeared and killed Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) across the country, and he later recognized conclusion of the investigation that the crisis led to “genocide”.
But Jewell said he failed to meet the goals set by the residential school commission.
“Ensure that [MMIWG] the inquiry gave him a certain confidence and hope that he would continue to fulfill [TRC’s] Calls to action. I think it ended up being one of the few things he followed through on,” Jewell told Al Jazeera.
“Much of what the Liberals have promised or said they are willing to do, [was] just a lot of window dressing really.”
Several conflicts have erupted as a result of Trudeau’s energy policy — and its effect on indigenous communities. For example, in 2018 the Trudeau government bought a controversial oil pipeline project despite determined opposition from indigenous communities.
Then, in early 2020, protests and blockades formed across the country to protest another pipeline project that would cut unceded indigenous territory Wet’suwet’en Nations. Despite concerns about the country’s territorial and water rights, Trudeau ordered the blockades removed.
“It was pretty clear around Wet’suwet’en and the Shut Down Canada movement that he was as colonial as any other prime minister,” Jewell said.
Deep divisions
Ultimately, Trudeau’s time in office has been marked by a global trend of increasing political polarization.
While Canada sailed the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic downturn, Trudeau has become the target of growing public anger over the quarantine measures, the increased cost of living and other grievances.
The situation reached a boiling point in early 2022, when right-wing groups organized themselves convoy of trucks and for several weeks they occupied the streets in front of the parliament in Ottawa to condemn the government.
“He’s really been a lightning rod for a lot of anger about a lot of things,” Young said, adding that the country also faces a “significant crisis of national unity” as Trudeau’s term comes to an end.
In parts of western Canada — where residents have historically felt excluded from the center of economic and political power in the east of the country — anti-Trudeau sentiment runs deep, Young explained.
In the oil-producing provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, for example, this intolerance is widespread, particularly as a result of Trudeau’s attempts to action on climate changeincluding an incentive to put a price on carbon emissions.
“The internal anger towards him is so deep that Trudeau is still a bad word and will be for another 20 years,” Young said.
“On the one hand, he really exemplified a Canada that is progressive and cosmopolitan… But at the same time, he left a country deeply polarized with counter reaction to [those] progressive politics.”
The real question at the end of the Trudeau era is whether the country’s shift to the right, as the polls show, will be permanent, Young added.
“Have we actually become a more conservative country in the past 10 years, which is quite possible?” Young asked. “Or is the pendulum swinging back as people perceive a Conservative government that intends to make really deep changes in public policy, perhaps?”
