Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement Monday that he would resign was the final card of Canada’s deeply unpopular prime minister’s decision to set his party on a path to general election defeat.
The political leverage he has pulled will give Trudeau’s Liberal Party a chance to reinvent itself without him. But they would also weaken Canada as it braces for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has threatened the country with tariffs that could damage the Canadian economy.
This appears to be a gamble Prime Minister Trudeau is willing to take.
To allow thousands of party members to vote for his successor, Trudeau suspended parliament until March 24 after a lengthy process that included campaigning. A general election is expected to follow.
In countries with a parliamentary system, such as Canada, it is natural to hold party leadership elections before general elections. Suspending Congress to hold such an election is much less common. In doing so, Mr. Trudeau averts a possible collapse of his minority government and gives the Liberals time to choose a leader without the burden of their own dismal poll results.
But this means that when President Trump returns to the Oval Office in two weeks, Prime Minister Trudeau will be leading Canada into a lame duck and weakening Canada’s influence in critical negotiations with its closest allies.
“The prime minister resigning means it will be difficult for him to exercise any meaningful mandate in negotiations with the United States, and that means no unity within Canada,” said Xavier Delgado, senior program officer at the Canada Institute. . The Wilson Center, a foreign policy institute based in Washington. “It’s not a good time for Canada to be in this situation.”
Trudeau’s opponents wanted a quick general election so that a new government with new powers – probably the Conservatives with a commanding lead in opinion polls – could take the lead on Canada’s response to President Trump as quickly as possible.
President Trump has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Canadian products that could plunge the Canadian economy into recession and upend North American trade agreements reached over the past several decades. (It would also harm the U.S. economy; the two countries are each other’s largest trading partners.)
The president-elect has called Canada the “51st state” and has persistently argued that it should become part of the United States. President Trump repeatedly made threatening jokes on social media following Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement of his resignation. “Many people in Canada would love to be the 51st province,” he said in a post on Truth Social. “us”
party first
When Mr. Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party, the party was in turmoil. In the 2011 general election, it took third place for the first time in history. Mr. Trudeau, who took over as party leader in 2013, is widely credited with reviving the party and returning it to government two years later.
“The Liberal Party has been Justin Trudeau’s party for over 10 years,” said Shachi Cull, director of the Angus Reed Institute, a research center. That makes it difficult for the party to let him go and for Trudeau to relinquish control, Mr. Cull said.
But after weeks of pressure from within the party to resign, Trudeau finally acknowledged Monday morning that his time was up.
“I truly believe that eliminating the controversy surrounding my own continued leadership is an opportunity to lower the temperature,” he told reporters gathered in the freezing cold outside his Ottawa residence.
“The internal battles have made it clear that I will not be able to deliver the Liberal Party’s standards at the next election,” he added. Trudeau has said he will remain prime minister until the Liberals elect a new leader.
The party’s internal election process, which will last several weeks, will allow a handful of hopefuls to reintroduce themselves to the public as no longer Trudeau associates but as individuals vying for leadership of the party and the country.
“I think the Liberals are now obsessed with the idea that there is no way forward for them, but there is a way forward for someone else,” Mr. Kurl said.
However, with the Conservative Party ahead of the Liberal Party by 25 percentage points in a recent survey, the path for Prime Minister Trudeau to hand over a successor is likely to be difficult.
“Sixty or 90 days is not a long time to reinvent a political party after 10 years in power,” Mr. Cull said. “How many more rabbits are there in the hat? How many more pivots are there?”
short relief
For many Canadians, Trudeau’s departure was a necessary condition for considering voting Liberal.
David Colletto, head of polling firm Abacus Data, said Monday that initial surveys suggest Canadians will be relieved to hear of Trudeau’s resignation and that his departure will likely divert attention from his unpopularity.
“People are saying they are relieved and optimistic that the prime minister is stepping down,” he said. “It’s a sign that there is a potential opportunity for the Liberals to rebuild their relationship with Canadians.” But it’s not clear whether this will happen, he warned.
Trudeau’s departure will only improve the situation for the Liberals, analysts said, but the country will not benefit from being effectively leaderless with Trump taking office.
With a new president in the crosshairs of Canada and President Trump beginning to push his agenda, including complaining about border security, Canadian military spending and trade imbalances, Canada will be trying to sort out who’s in charge.
“Canada will be the strongest country in our dealings with the United States if we can unite around a message for our leaders. And this will apply to any country,” said Delgado of the Wilson Center Canada Institute.
Others were less concerned, suggesting the Trump administration’s deal with Canada would be a long game.
Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau who is now vice president of consulting firm Eurasia Group, said no leader would be able to close a deal with Trump on day one.
“Nothing irreversibly bad will happen in the next three months,” Mr. Butts said. “We’re going to have four years of Trump. “The next three months won’t be everything.”
