Justin Trudeau engineered his departure as Liberal leader and prime minister Monday in a manner calculated to be most beneficial to himself.
After nine years in office, he won’t have to face an angry electorate or an election he seemed certain to lose by a humiliating margin. He won’t have to endure a confidence vote, or answer for the crater in which he’s leaving his party, some 25 points behind the Conservatives and leaking support with each passing day. He can claim he wasn’t driven from office but chose to step aside of his own volition, though obviously still reluctant to depart. And he won’t have to disappear immediately into retirement, but, thanks to the prorogation granted him by the Governor General, can enjoy three more months at the top while the party scrambles to organize a competition for his successor.
His resignation speech delivered outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa showed a man as fully confident of his own qualities as at any time since becoming Liberal boss more than a decade ago.
“As you all know, I’m a fighter,” he declared.
“Every day since 2015 I have fought for Canadians, for you … I will always be motivated by the best interests of Canadians.”
He blamed his situation on political opponents rather than any of his own actions. Conservatives have been playing “petty politics,” disrupting and paralyzing Parliament while demanding he hand over documents he refuses to deliver. The House of Commons “needs a reset. People need to calm down.”
The closest he came to accepting responsibility was to acknowledge that things had become a bit uncomfortable within Liberal ranks over recent months, which have seen his government’s popularity go into free fall. Liberal candidates have lost a series of byelections, some by startling margins, while a steady stream of MPs declared they no longer planned to seek re-election and regional caucuses began openly calling for him to stand aside.
“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,” he acknowledged. That he might be an overwhelming factor in sparking those battles went unmentioned, though he conceded that removing himself from the scene “should reduce the level of polarization” on Parliament Hill.
In that he probably hit the mark. I’m willing to bet Liberal fortunes will enjoy an uptick with his departure, given that much of the venom directed at the party has stemmed from a deep dislike of its leader. His refusal to acknowledge that fact, or to openly deal with party discord over the past many months only served to increase the agitation. If nothing else, Monday’s announcement may kindle a sense of relief that the end has finally arrived.
Even while arranging a relatively soft landing for himself, however, Trudeau leaves Liberals in a perilous position. They have only weeks to organize a leadership race Canadians won’t see as hurried or fuelled by desperation, and with candidates who won’t come across as remnants of a discredited government. That will be difficult given most of the names already being mentioned have spent years defending and promoting government policies stamped with the Trudeau brand. That applies to Chrystia Freeland as much as it does to cabinet members Dominic LeBlanc, François-Philippe Champagne or Mélanie Joly, even if it was Freeland’s abrupt resignation that ultimately forced Trudeau’s hand. As he noted with seeming affection on Monday, Freeland spent a decade as one of his closest and most reliable loyalists. She would make an unlikely figure to promise a path much different from the one she spent a decade urging people to follow.
Whoever emerges as leader will have precious little time to sell themselves as a change from Trudeau before being hurled into an election. Prorogation ends on March 24, with heavy odds that a dissolution will quickly follow. While Trudeau managed to eke three years out of his minority government with help from the New Democrats, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s harsh response to his resignation — “The problem is not just Justin Trudeau. It’s every Liberal MP that looked down their nose at Canadians who are worried about high costs or crumbling health care … The Liberals do not deserve another chance, no matter who is the leader” — suggests any effort by a new Liberal boss to enlist his support is fated to failure.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, in a lengthy interview released on Friday, asserted that “The Canadian people — 41 million people — are not obliged to wait around while the Liberal party sorts out its s–t.” But that’s exactly what voters will have to do. The rest of the world is unlikely to go on pause during that period, nor are the issues that will remain unaddressed during that time: a broken immigration system, a desperate housing crunch, a spiralling deficit piling additional billions onto a record-level debt, or the seeming determination of Canada’s supposed allies in Washington to cripple the economy via a tariff war.
“We are at a critical moment in the world,” not only in Canada but across the globe, Trudeau noted. Decisions made in coming months will carry repercussions deep into the future, yet Canada will find itself ill-situated to make them. Trudeau will remain as a figurehead until March; an election will then eat up additional weeks of uncertainty. Poilievre has predicted an election is unlikely “before very late winter, early spring.”
That view may now prove optimistic. It took six months, from the loss of the St. Paul’s byelection in Toronto until Sunday night when he informed his children he was quitting, for Trudeau to accept his time had run out. It will be months more before a new start can be made and the country can start building a future. Trudeau leaves his party much as he found it, exhausted and deeply unpopular, its very survival open to question. He hands over a country divided, unsettled, abnormally pessimistic and uncertain of its place in the world.
It’s a legacy his replacement will have no option but to defend. One more difficulty the departing leader won’t have to face.
National Post