Pressure grew on Canada’s leader from within his Liberal Party over his handling of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed trade tariffs
Justin Trudeau has announced his resignation as Liberal Party leader. He will remain as Canadian prime minister until the party has chosen a successor.
It’s the end of a nine-year stint in office, as pressure grew from within his Liberal Party which is trailing significantly behind the opposition Conservatives in the polls.
Trudeau made the announcement from his Rideau Cottage residence.
“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process,” Trudeau said Monday. “This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I am having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.”
A row broke out inside Trudeau’s party after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced a proposal to introduce 25 percent tariffs on the country.
Trump pressed on with his taunts referring to Canada as the 51st state following the announcement.
“Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland unexpectedly stepped down in mid-December, citing differences with Trudeau on how to approach Trump’s presidency and tariff proposals.
Canada is due to hold a general election on or before 20 October.
Possible successors: Mark Carney
The former head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England is a Liberal who has been serving as an adviser to Trudeau for the last several months.
He has been after the leadership post for quite some time, according to the BBC.
Justin Trudeau’s fall from grace shows politics is an ugly game in every way
When Justin Trudeau became the Canadian prime minister in 2015, people were still using that thing called Facebook. I can remember well the frothing posts by female friends, none of whom could contain their excitement at the election of this hottie PM. Furthermore, they gushed at the notion that what made him hotter still was not only that he was young and handsome, he was a lovely liberal dude too, which made him even more super-duper guy.
(If my male friends had written about an equally attractive female prime minister in such a way, they might well have been canceled, but let’s park that.) As far as my friends were concerned – and to be fair, Trudeau had plenty of male fanboys – here was the perfect Generation X politician, and all would surely be well in his good hands.
Read more:
Justin Trudeau’s fall from grace shows politics is an ugly game for a handsome face
In just under 10 years, the prime minister of Canada has gone from the darling of the global liberal pack to a political pariah who has been forced to resign. Here, Guy Walters looks at his career and why his poster-boy good looks and slick style makes his fall seem much harder
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced his resignation. What happens now?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation on Monday, saying he intends to step down from the top job and as the leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party once a new party leader is chosen.
“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its new leader,” the 53-year-old leader told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa on Monday.
Canada’s parliament will be suspended until March 24 while a new Liberal Party leader is chosen, he also said.
Trudeau added that he has “one regret” – failing to reform Canada’s election process, ahead of a general election expected this fall.
“If I have one regret, particularly as we approach this election — well, probably many regrets that I will think of,” the outgoing leader said. “But I do wish we’d been able to change the way we elect our governments in this country so that people could simply choose a second choice, or a third choice on the same ballot.”
How did we get here?
Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party for 11 years and prime minister for nine, was facing a mounting set of crises, from Donald Trump’s tariff threats to the resignation of key allies and disastrous opinion polls. His resignation could be seen as choosing to jump before he is pushed, ahead of a general election to be held later this year that he is widely expected to lose.
Trudeau took the Liberals to power in 2015, promising “sunny ways” for Canada. He championed progressive issues like combating climate change and addressing historic abuses against Indigenous peoples, but the latter years of his premiership have been marked by rising economic discontent.
A viral confrontation with a steel worker, who criticized Trudeau for not addressing the high cost of living, captured the growing discontent among Canadians.
“You’re not really doing anything for us, Justin,” the worker remarked, highlighting a sentiment that resonated widely.
Trudeau’s government was also rocked last year by the surprise resignation of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, just hours before she was due to deliver her annual fiscal update.
In a blistering letter of resignation, she criticized Trudeau’s “political gimmicks,” likely referring to a two-month sales tax holiday and 250 Canadian dollar ($175) rebates for most workers.
Freeland said Canada could “ill afford” these policies, seen as a pre-election handout to claw back some voters, and coming as the country faces the serious prospect of huge tariffs which could be levied by the incoming Trump administration.
US President-elect Donald Trump, set to return to the White House on January 20, has said he will sign an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on all products coming into the US from Canada. Trump has also taken to belittling Trudeau and the country of Canada on social media, referring to the prime minister as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”
What comes next?
The Liberal Party national executive, which controls leadership issues, is scheduled to meet this week, likely after the caucus. Suspending parliament is designed to give the party time to choose a new leader.
Possible replacements include the former governor of both the Bank of England and Bank of Canada Mark Carney, foreign minister Mélanie Joly, and former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland.
The hope is that a new party leader could bring the Liberals out of their funk, before a general election set to be held on or before October 20. Current polls show Trudeau’s Liberal Party behind the opposition Conservative Party, led by the firebrand Pierre Poilievre.
“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,” said Trudeau on Monday.
Trudeau was elected three times, most recently in 2021, when he remained in power but lost his governing majority. Since then, Poilievre’s Conservative Party has built a lead over the Liberal Party of more than 20% in national polling averages.
Trudeau told reporters on Monday that Poilievre’s conservative vision “is not the right one for Canadians.”
“Stopping the fight against climate change doesn’t make sense. Backing off on the values and strength and diversity that Canada has always, always, worked to pull itself together on is not the right path for the country. Attacking journalists, the CBC institutions, that’s not what Canadians need in this moment. We need an ambitious, optimistic view of the future – and Pierre Poilievre is not offering that,” he said.
What others are saying
Reacting to Trudeau’s resignation Monday, President-elect Trump doubled down on the idea that Canada and the US should merge.
“Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State. The United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned,” he said on Truth Social.
“If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!” he added.
Poilievre, who has already found currency with the MAGA base, bolstering his position as a potential candidate for this year’s general election amid an incoming Trump administration, also seized on Trudeau’s resignation to make an offer to Canadian voters.
“Canadians can take back control of their lives and their country,” Poilievre said in a video post on X. “Take back control of our border. Take back control of immigration. Take back control of spending, deficits and inflation.
“We’ll cap spending, axe taxes, reward work, build homes, uphold family, stop crime, secure borders, rearm our forces, restore our freedom and put Canada first,” he said.
And Freeland, a possible contender to replace Trudeau, who said in December that she and Trudeau had “found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada,” thanked him for his service on Monday.
“I thank Justin Trudeau for his years of service to Canada and Canadians. I wish him and his family the very best,” she wrote on X.
Trudeau said at Monday’s press conference that he had hoped Freeland would continue as his deputy, “but she chose otherwise,” declining to provide more detail on their conversations.
Trump is going after Canada now – but everyone else is next
Four years after his supporters invaded the US Capitol, Trump is more powerful than ever
A joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes from his November victory rekindled chilling memories of the horror and fear felt by anyone who was in the US Capitol four years ago.
The ceremonial process clearing the way for Trump’s swearing in as the 47th president in two weeks also highlighted an extraordinary moment in political history in a nation where Trump is more powerful and popular than he’s ever been. A plurality of voters decided that despite his egregious conduct four years ago, he was the best option to lead the country until January 2029.
January 6, 2025, marks the most stunning political comeback in US history, and ushers in a new administration that could feature the president-elect’s most extreme stress test of the Constitution so far.
It also underscores the Democratic Party’s failures in convincing voters that Trump represents a mortal threat to the country’s democracy and that they had the answers to Americans’ economic struggles and concerns over immigration.
Americans made a choice in November, and even though he conjured a day of infamy four years ago, they picked Trump.
Whitewashing history
The congressional certification of Trump’s victory — over which his vanquished opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, presided — rewards an extraordinary effort by the ex-president, his supporters and the conservative media machine to whitewash what happened on one of the darkest days in US history.
Trump, with a storm of misinformation, has convinced millions of Americans of his lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Republicans have rebranded the January 6 rioters as “tourists,” persecuted victims and heroes, despite the hundreds of convictions handed down by courts. Trump has promised to pardon those found guilty over the attack. He launched his 2024 campaign with a recording of the National Anthem by the “J6 choir,” sung by prisoners jailed for their role in the riot. And he rebranded January 6, 2021, a “beautiful day” and a “day of love.”
This could hardly be more misleading. The truth of January 6 was told in shocking details by witnesses and law enforcement officers to a congressional select committee when the House was still under Democratic control. “It was carnage. It was chaos,” said Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer whose testimony was interspersed with footage of her being knocked unconscious by Trump’s supporters and who described slipping on the spilled blood of her colleagues. “I am not combat trained, and on that day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat,” Edwards said in June 2022.
While this was unfolding, senators and representatives were running for their lives, Trump’s supporters breached the Senate chamber and Secret Service agents hustled then-Vice President Mike Pence to safety as the crowd chanted for him to be hanged.
But by shrugging off his second impeachment over January 6, 2021, reestablishing his dominance over the GOP and winning a subsequent election despite multiple criminal indictments, Trump avoided paying a meaningful political price for his assault on democracy. When he won a nonconsecutive second term, he went from being a political aberration to one of the most significant figures in American history. Along the way, he skillfully portrayed attempts to bring him to justice for his transgressions as persecution, creating a political rallying effect. He’ll return to the White House as an even more powerful leader, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling arising from one of his legal cases that gives the president substantial criminal immunity for official acts committed while in office.
Most profoundly, Trump will send a message down through the ages that a president who refuses to accept the result of a free and fair election and who incites an attack on the Capitol can get away with it — and regain power.
An affirmation of the will of voters
Yet, the process of certifying Trump’s election win was also a reaffirmation of democracy. And Biden and Harris, in one of their final acts in office, are restoring a tradition of smooth handoffs between administrations denied to them by Trump.
Biden said Sunday this had been deliberate.
“If you notice, I’ve reached out to, to make sure the smooth transition. We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” the president told reporters at the White House.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Sunday evening, he also warned of the dangers of forgetting what happened four years ago.
“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand,” Biden wrote without naming Trump.
“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed,” he continued, adding that he has invited his successor to the White House on the morning of January 20 and that he will be attending Trump’s inauguration.
Unlike in 2020, the losers — this time, the Democrats — have not lied about election fraud, drawn up alternative slates of electors or called for a crowd to come to Washington to protest false claims of a stolen election.
“He led an insurrection, but the people have now voted and our job tomorrow, which is also January 6, is to implement the will of the people,” Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It’s the peaceful transition of power. So, Democrats and Republicans will come together tomorrow to certify those results … that’s what we do. That’s what America has done, and that’s what we will do on the Inauguration Day.”
The electoral certification of Trump’s win is a bitter moment for Democrats. And it highlights the party’s painful reality that it couldn’t produce a candidate in 2024 to beat a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, once-convicted ex-president who tried to burn down democracy to stay in power.
If the core purpose of Biden’s 2020 campaign was to purge Trump from American political life, then his presidency was a failure, whatever other achievements burnish his legacy. Biden’s decision to run for reelection, which came disastrously unstuck in a CNN debate that laid bare the brutal reality of his diminished capacity, helped set Democrats up for failure. And Harris’ inability to coin a convincing case for how she’d help Americans at a time of high prices and economic insecurity opened the door to Trump’s return to the Oval Office. She never sufficiently distanced herself from the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border or its insistence that an inflationary crisis was merely “transitory.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that voters hadn’t ignored what happened on January 6, 2021, but had made a judgment on what was most important to them. “I wouldn’t say that the American people disregarded this. They just had a different view as to what was in their interest, economically and the rest,” the California Democrat said.
How voters decided on Trump despite the horror of January 6
Trump, with his searing anti-immigration rhetoric, succeeded in painting his chaotic presidency as a kind of lost golden age, despite the scenes of violence and lawlessness that he conjured at its end.
The country indisputably took a step to the right in the 2024 election, toward Trump’s populist nationalism, even in many blue-leaning districts and cities. Trump won all seven swing states and became the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote, even if he fell marginally below a majority of votes cast. His claims of a historic mandate are exaggerated, but that’s unlikely to thwart his promise to use power to mount a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, wreak revenge on his political enemies and attempt a crackdown on the media. Republicans now control both the House and the Senate and will have the backstop of an often-supportive Supreme Court majority.
Trump’s triumph has left Democrats adrift, seeking a new message and wondering how they can connect with working Americans again. And the party is facing the reality that a plurality of voters preferred a former president who tried to destroy democracy to stay in power to their candidate. Sufficient voters seemed to decide that they’d prefer a strongman who better voiced their grievances than an alternative who warned that Trump was a threat to democracy.
With their warnings about Trump’s threat to constitutional values, Democrats found themselves in the position of defending a government and an establishment in which many Americans had lost faith, after years of foreign wars and the hollowing out of the blue-collar industrial economy.
This sense of the end of an ancient regime was reflected Saturday when Biden made the latest of his postelection jabs at Trump. He awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to recipients whom many Democrats see as embodying the democratic order that Trump repudiates. They included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016. Biden also posthumously recognized assassinated former Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, whose vaccine-skeptic son split with Democrats and his family and is Trump’s controversial choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. He also awarded the medal to former Michigan Gov. George Romney, a Republican and the late father of former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s last and most prominent critics in the GOP.
After the ceremony, Biden implied that despite Trump’s imminent arrival in the White House, the fight to save democracy would go on. “Let’s remember, our sacred effort continues, and to keep going, as my mother would say, we have to keep the faith,” he said.
Republicans warn nothing must thwart certification of Trump’s victory
The party that once prided itself on defending global democracy has, however, long since moved on, profiting from its denial of the events of January 6, 2021, which has helped Republicans vault back to power.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, keeping the gavel in a razor-thin victory on Friday, is already laying the groundwork to implement Trump’s ambitious agenda of strict immigration enforcement, tax cuts and slashes to the size of the federal government despite his tiny House majority.
Johnson has also changed his mind on the urgency of upholding the certification of electoral votes.
Four years ago, he was a key player in Trump’s attempts to subvert the result of a democratic election. Even after the bloody riot, the Louisiana Republican voted against the awarding of electoral votes to Biden in Pennsylvania and Arizona based on false claims of election fraud.
This week, however, he said nothing should get in the way of enshrining Trump’s win.
“We got a big snow storm coming to DC, and we encourage all of our colleagues, do not leave town, stay here, because, as you know, the Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6, at 1 p.m. so whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to making sure this is done,” he told Fox News on Sunday.
“We cannot delay that certification.”
This story has been updated with Congress’ certification of Trump’s win.
