Main Edition
US
FR
January 7, 2025 - 7:00am
Justin Trudeau has resigned as the Liberal Party Leader of Canada, paving the way for a new leader to take the battered party into a federal election. The news should come as little surprise after Trudeau’s popularity slumped from 65% in September 2016 to a mere 22% today.
The Prime Minister had been facing calls from within his own party to resign for weeks, with the Conservative opposition party putting forward three non-confidence votes in the past four months to try and topple the minority government. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh had propped the Liberals up since their win in 2021, but on the last day before the Christmas Break, Singh vowed to bring forward a motion of no-confidence and trigger an election after Parliament returned on 27 January, 2025. Add to that the recent resignation of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former finance minister, and it became clear that Trudeau’s position had become close to untenable.
Now, the question becomes: who will the Liberal Party choose as their next leader? Before he announced his resignation today, Trudeau was set to appear before a special Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday where his disgruntled team was expected to pressure his resignation. Instead, this morning he asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament until 24 March, which will put the House of Commons on hold while the Liberals select a new leader to steer the party into the next federal election.
Potential contenders for Trudeau’s job include Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada, Francois-Philippe Champagne, former minister of foreign affairs, and Chrystia Freeland who polls best among Liberal politicians. However, even with Freeland leading the party, the Liberals would still trail Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives by 15 points.
Poilievre is widely expected to win the next federal election, with his party enjoying a historic 45% of support if an election were held today. He sat down with Jordan Peterson for a 90-minute podcast appearance last week, which garnered over two million views on YouTube. In it, Poilievre laid out his plans for Canada: investments in the energy sector, curbing sky-high immigration numbers, and reining in progressive-driven culture wars that saw Toronto’s Union Station overrun with pro-Palestine protests on New Year’s Eve.
On top of keeping his promise to get rid of the unpopular carbon tax, Poilievre also vowed not to go down the path of other conservative parties around the world, which ended up adopting neoliberal policies once they were in office. “This is the mistake that conservative parties around the world have made countless times,” he said to Peterson. “They think, ‘Well, anybody who’s got a conservative mindset is already voting for me so I can go off and chase the ideas of my political opponents and then everyone will love me because I’ll have the conservatives due to the fact I have the name “Conservative” and these other people because I’ve embraced their contrary direction.’”
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAs a Canadian, for myself, and on behalf of so many others, I am happy that the national nightmare is finally over, even if the shakes will continue until the stench that the sun king leaves in his trail fully dissipates.
It has been that bad!
But it is not over. Trudeau is still PM and Parliament isn’t sitting during one of the most significant political transition periods in history. I truly hope that Trump punishes Canadians for the stupidity of voting in this clown three times – and that the brunt of the damage falls on Ontario and Quebec.
Maybe Trump will drill baby drill, and the US won’t need Alberta ‘s oil, now that would be funny eh
It actually doesn’t work that way. The refineries in Texas are specifically designed to take heavy crude from Alberta. The US doesn’t have deposits of heavy crude. The refineries would have to be completely retrofitted to take light crude, which would take time and vast sums of money. I suppose they could get heavy crude from Venezuela.
“Sun King”? Son of something, but not the sun, and no king either. As for the stench, let’s hope it doesn’t last too long.
If you’re curious about Trudeau and politically masochistic or enjoy schadenfreude or maybe you just can’t help slowing down at accident scenes you could do worse than to watch Jordan Peterson’s latest YT interviews with Pierre Poilievre (as mentioned in the article) and Terry Glavin (National Post staffer). This ten year narcissistic train wreck is truly something to behold, a virtual textbook example of Thomas Sowell’s: The Vision of the Anointed. Even after using the Christmas break to come to the realization that the jig was up, Trudeau couldn’t bring himself to admit that perhaps mistakes were made. Oh no. Contrarians (read traitors) within his own party have made it impossible for him to carry on his good works for his fellow Canadians.
His fawning admirers in Canada’s MSM grudgingly admitted that it was difficult for Mr. Happy Socks to carry on when approval ratings were microscopic. Even then one admirer spun a ten year legacy of enviable accomplishments: fending off the Trump v1.0 threat, guiding Canada safely through the pandemic and uniting millions of Canadians in the joys of reconciliation and racial equality. Stomach-churning but expected.
Poilievre has a gargantuan repair job ahead of him. As he said to Peterson: “They had the party and I’ll get the hangover”.
Fidel Castro’s genes were bound to show their authoritarian influence sooner or later. Too bad it took Canadians so long to wise up.
Francois-Philippe Champagne — I like the sound of him — man of the people
He is a Liberal. Definitely not a man of the people.
not a Champagne socialist
I follow Canadian politics only at a very great distance, but I never could abide Trudeau (Jr). He always struck me as a spoiled brat who had everything handed to him on a silver tray. My nickname for him was Captain Preppie, after the character in the comic strip “Crock”. Needless to say, all my female friends loved him.
The Canadians are a peculiar mob, quite conservative in speech and humour but ready to follow any old new fad such as Hamasophilia. They have gone from being godbotherers to wishing a pox on everything that is sensible and sane. I was unsurprised by their choice of Nepoleon Fidelson and wish them all success under Poilevre.
Trudeau ultimate legacy will be his decision to import millions of people and the consequences from this mass migration (housing prices).
… And a healthcare system that is close to imploding, complete with uncle Apu and his extended family sitting in emergency because the little one has the sniffles, making for 8+hour wait times on a good day.
… And police that are spread too thin and neutered of their ability to serve and protect. 911 call response times average 22 minutes and police advise citizens that they are best to just leave their keys near the front door so as to provide thieves with an easier, less violent means of stealing the vehicle in their driveway.
… And overly congested streets and highways that are loaded with foreign drivers that are pushed through the driver’s permit issuing factory (how do they write the test when they can’t read/write/speak English or French one might ask?) and haven’t a clue how to pilot a vehicle on our roads, let alone our snow and ice covered roads.
…To say nothing of the fly-by-night trucking firms that operate 100,000lb transport trucks that fail roadside safety inspections at a rate of over 60%, but to whom the fines are just a the ‘cost of doing business’ and whose drivers are often inexperienced, underpaid, overworked and held hostage to the employment contract that allows them to stay in the country on a permit. Not only is this dangerous, but the long-established trucking outfits that operate with some level of integrity get priced out of their own market in our race to the bottom.
…How about the public beaches that look like the shores of the Ganges all summer long with people that cordon off large sections to ‘reserve’ the area for yet-to-arrive friends and family, where they’ll set up a tent and dig a hole within it, making a convenient private latrine in the sand for their group where they will also dump their days’ worth of food waste and cheap plastic inflatables before leaving town at the end of the day. The local kids love coming across these sites with their bare hands when building sandcastles. Not only is the public space disrespected, but the locals whose taxes pay to maintain the beaches are lucky to find a space to enjoy it themselves. And the small business owners lose out on revenue as the ‘new’ beachgoers bring everything in with them from the city and spend no money at the destination.
…And the kids/teenagers/students looking for summer work? Forget about it! Those positions are overfilled with international students whose job placement comes with taxpayer funded subsidies, making it too expensive to hire your kid at minimum wage.
…Or the illegal boarding houses, where they’ll buy the nice three-bedroom detached home in your quaint, quiet neighourhood and carve it into a 15-bedroom shanty with plywood walls, its occupants putting out a mountain of trash for collection each week and appropriating nearly every street parking spot with their curbside special $500 cars.
Oh, I could go on. And I haven’t even touched on real issues like protests and violence.
Diversity is our strength indeed…
While in blackface.
“Poilievre also vowed not to go down the path of other conservative parties around the world, which ended up adopting neoliberal policies once they were in office.”
Which, I guarantee, the fake Tories in the UK will do given the chance. So don’t. Vote Reform.
Apart from nepotism there is no obvious reason why or how Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada. He truly is the epitome of the average.
The biggest scandal perhaps in UK’s history, the rape gangs, And what does Unherd (despicable rag) do?
1. Deflect any criticism from Starmer.
2. Doesn’t even mention Musk’s accusations against him.
3. Send out a hit piece on Robinson. A figure who demonstrates, in real time, over the last 20 years the force of the media and the judiciary and the police, all combining to silence him.
4. A Kathleen Stock article to reflect that yes young girls deserve to get drunk if they want to.
I despise you Unherd.
If you’re going to troll, at least make it interesting or amusing.
You’re just a bore.
He’s got a point about Starmer though. His speech today was truly vile and should be addressed by Unherd.
How can feeling sorry for your own country be trolling?
The constant denigration of Unherd is simply the wrong target. Just hours after your typical rant in an.unrelated article, Unherd publishes another article – certainly not the first – which takes the issue of rape gangs absolutely full on.
That’s why you’re wrong about Unherd.
It was the same Left herd support.
My complaint stands. Why is Starmer off limits?
I’m beginning to wonder if RL is not a provocateur of some kind.
He is something.
What does that mean? And of what kind?
I am making the point and will continue to do so that Unherd supports the Left-consensus narrative of Gender, Race, Tolerance etc aka Woke, which all derives from Far Left Theory created in the 1990s.
There are no voices of the Right in Unherd.
And why is there no criticism of Starmer and this disastrous government?
I seriously do not get your criticism..unHerd has been at the forefront of promoting writers that hate all things woke and censorship…what are you reading? There has been ample criticism of Starmer and Labour even!!
I think they’ll probably publish some more stuff about it.
Its original MO was ‘slow journalism,’ meaning more in-depth, but less focus on Breaking News which is published elsewhere.
Until then you can continue writing your heart out in the comments
Not sure what that comment has to do with this article.
What’s this got to do with Canada? You’re commenting on the wrong article.
Late to his own resignation as only a nepo baby could be, Justin Trudeau always said that he was the anti-populist. In the end, the populus agreed. His fate was sealed by the certification of the election of Donald Trump. If liberals truly believed that Trump’s second inauguration would mark the end of democracy and the advent of Fascism, then they would recognise it as the reason why the Second Amendment existed, and they would take up arms to save their Republic. But instead, it has already taken down their poster boy on their own continent, ostensibly His Majesty’s Prime Minister. Oh, for own dear King’s cousin, Frederik X of Denmark, who has gone so far as to remove the three crowns of the Kalmar Union from his coat of arms in order to give greater prominence to the polar bear of Greenland.
Canadian is one of Elon Musk’s three nationalities, so he can at least claim some right to a say in who should be the Prime Minister of Canada. But he has no such right in Britain, where it is broadly the equivalent of Trudeau’s party that is standing up for national sovereignty. The Liberal Democrats are opportunists, but Ed Davey could be as opportunistic as he pleased if that caused him to decry the calls of an extremely well-resourced and high-profile member of an incoming foreign government for our own to be overthrown by insurrection or invasion. The putative invader already maintains an enormous, but very rarely mentioned, military presence on our soil.
British politicians’ ties to Musk are as objectionable as Tulip Siddiq’s to Sheikh Hasina. You cannot chose your relatives, but you can chose from whom you accepted the gift of a house, and you can choose to keep your political and family lives distinct. The Awami League has no connection to the British Labour Party. Yet Siddiq was part of its official delegation to the United Nations in 2011, as a member of its UK and EU Lobbying Unit. Labour Rightists normally go berserk at the suggestion of overseas ties to anything other than strictly defined “sister parties”, even ones, such as PASOK or the Irish Labour Party, that were practically defunct. But whatever Musk or his father may think, the United Kingdom is not an ethnostate for WASP descendants everywhere but not for anyone else. Condemn both Musk’s interference and Sheikh’s (that is her family name). Or have no credibility on either.
Elon Musk has every right to say what he wants about the UK and it’s politicians. We have every right to ignore him or, so it seems, deliberately to misdescribed his words as “non violent terrorism”.
The opinions of British and other European politicians on Trump have not been restrained by any such nicieties so I see no reason to expect anything different in return. My advice would be to treat it all with silence. These hysterical responses only encourage them.
Everyone was decrying Musk when he was backing Trump; now they are ‘all ears’ when he is slagging off Farage. The fickle UK media never ceases to amaze me.
The chains have been loosened around Canadians, if only a little.
I can only think of my poor country, four more years of Starmer. Aided and abetted by this disgraceful rag Unherd.
I do feel sorry for the UK – voting in ‘progressive’ fools just when everyone else is tossing them out.
What choice did we have? We had to choose between a party that deserved to lose and a party that didn’t deserve to win.
Don’t blame the electorate for the result, blame the Tories for making Labour look attractive by comparison.
Oh, and we did vote out progressive fools
Unfortunately I can only like your comment once. If I could do it ten times, then I would. That is exactly the way it was, and for me, the way it will be next time too.
I will not be going back to the Conservatives. Instead, the Conservatives will have to come, via reform UK, to me and the other three million or so like me.
If I was a multi-millionaire I would buy this rag and then bury it.
Start your own rag. Such is the times we are in. Starmer abetted by Unherd? I’m sure the editors would be astounded to know they wield that much influence in British politics.
You are very naive if you don’t understand the relationship between politicians and the media.