Justin Trudeau on Monday announced he would resign as both Prime Minister and leader of Canada’s Liberal Party. He has been under pressure to quit for months, amid poor approval ratings and weakened support within his party. The Liberals are predicted to face massive defeat in parliamentary elections later this year. Writing on the wall The optimistic political message and youthful charisma of Trudeau, then 44, propelled the Liberals to an unprecedented majority in Parliament in 2015. By December 2024, his approval rating had plummeted to a record low of 22%, according to polling by the nonprofit Angus Reid Institute. Support for the Liberal Party was down to 16% — which would translate into the worst electoral performance in the party’s 157-year history. “For two years now, pollsters have been telling us that Trudeau’s time is up,” veteran Canadian journalist Terry Milewski told The Indian Express on Monday night. No Canadian Prime Minister in the last half century has won a third consecutive term. Incumbents in the post have seemingly run out of steam around the 8-9-year mark in recent years. As Milewski put it, “people have enough of them in nine years or so”. Domestic discontent The discontent against Trudeau was fuelled by economic problems. Overall economic growth in his second term has been slow, unemployment has increased, wages have not kept up with record high inflation, and housing has become increasingly unaffordable. Inflation “is a government killer”, Gerald Butts, a political consultant at Eurasia Group who was principal secretary to Trudeau until 2019, told Bloomberg. “Like a lot of governments, they were slow to recognise both the fact of inflation and the remedies that were going to be required,” he said. While inflation has cooled from its 2022 peak, a series of political scandals have hit Trudeau’s personal popularity. In 2017, Canada’s ethics watchdog pulled him up for accepting gifts including holidays and private helicopter rides. In 2020, it emerged that Trudeau’s family had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by WE Charity, to which his government had just awarded a C$19.5 million contract. And in 2021, he was criticised for missing Canada’s first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to commemorate the lost children and survivors of indigenous schools because he went on a surfing holiday with his family. The government’s policy of allowing a record number of migrants lost public support after a post-pandemic surge in immigration overwhelmed the country. Trudeau has walked back on immigration to an extent, but this has perhaps been too little and too late to save the sinking ship. Losing party support Trudeau heads a minority government – his party won 153 of 338 seats in Parliament in the last election, and was propped up by support from smaller parties, most notably, the Bloc Québécois and Jagmeet Singh’s New Democratic Party. For the last several months, the PM has faced an ever louder chorus from within the Liberal Party to step down. In October, nearly two dozen Liberal backbenchers signed a letter demanding that he quit as PM. In mid-December, Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s close aide, stalwart deputy and Canada’s finance minister, resigned, politely questioning his capability to handle a second Donald Trump presidency in the United States. A number of Liberal lawmakers soon said it was time for a new leader. “Trudeau’s MPs have long been wavering, and not just those who wrote the letter. At the end of the day, there are only 153 of them, so once you start losing MPs, you just cannot hang on. If they’re (the MPs) done, you’re done. That is how a parliamentary system works. If Trudeau had not jumped, he would have been pushed,” Milewski said. What happens next Trudeau will remain PM until his party chooses a replacement. On Monday, he said that the Governor General, representative of the monarch, King Charles III, had accepted his request to prorogue Parliament, suspending all proceedings — but without dissolving the House — until March 24. This gives the Liberal Party time to choose a new leader, but it is not clear who that might be. Freeland, Transport Minister Anita Anand, and former central banker Mark Carney have been identified as possible contenders. The election to Parliament must be held by October 2025, but it could be much sooner. The principal opposition Conservative Party may be able to push through a motion of no confidence by May, which would trigger an election. The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, enjoy a huge 29-point lead over the Liberals, and will likely romp home regardless of who succeeds Trudeau as party leader. View from New Delhi India-Canada ties have been in the freezer since September 2023, when Trudeau accused New Delhi of orchestrating the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. A change of government does present chances of a thaw. “Simply by virtue of there being someone new in power in Ottawa there will be an opportunity to improve ties. From the Indian perspective, I would say they’ve caught a break,” Milewski said. “There will be some talks, perhaps a warmer atmosphere for bilateral engagement. They will try and sort out visa issues, resume the normal flow of diplomats, and so on.” Substantively, however, little is likely to change, Milewski emphasised. “The cat's out of the bag. Charges have been laid by the RCMP (Canada’s national police), and more charges will be laid. They feel they have solid evidence, which will come out in public over the next few years,” he said. Poilievre in November accused Trudeau of “sowing divisions” that led to clashes between Sikh separatists and Hindus in Brampton; however, he too had attended an event in August where pro-Khalistan and anti-India chants were made.
