Justin Trudeau has announced his resignation as Canadian Prime Minister in a tearful farewell speech outside his official residence. The Mail has more.
Justin Trudeau resigned as the Canadian Prime Minister on Monday to cap off a spectacular fall from grace just days before Donald Trump enters office.
The move came after weeks of pressure from his colleagues in Canada’s Liberal Party amid a significant, and growing, rift over how to handle relations with Trump in his second term.
Trump announced on social media after his reelection a plan to introduce a 25% tariff on goods from Canada, which led Trudeau into a frenzy to try and clean-up his relationship with the U.S. President-elect before he is sworn into office later this month.
The day after unveiling the idea, Trudeau, 53, immediately flew down to Mar-a-Lago to do damage control.
During that meeting, reports emerged detailing how Trudeau pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariffs and claimed it would kill Canada’s economy.
To this, Trump suggested that the northern neighbors could become America’s 51st state, and in following weeks mocked the Canadian leader by calling him Governor Trudeau.
The reason Trump wants to impose tariffs on Canada is to pressure Ottawa to do more to secure the border and stop leaking illegal immigrants into the U.S.
Trudeau’s resignation comes the same day that Congress will move to certify the 2024 U.S. presidential election results as a victory for Trump and cement his forward movement to retaking office.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Party in Canada set an emergency meeting for Wednesday to discuss how to handle the growing rift within the party, but Trudeau stepped aside before the gathering could take place.
During remarks at the Rideau Cottage residence in Ottawa, Canada on Monday morning, Trudeau made the announcement that he will step aside.
“I intend to resign as Party Leader, as Prime Minister, after the Party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process,” Trudeau announced in remarks delivered in English and then in French.
Before opening up to questions from reporters, Trudeau noted he’s a “fighter” and suggested how difficult it was for him to make the decision to step aside.
“I will always be motivated by what is in the best interest of Canadians, and the fact is, despite best efforts to work through it, Parliament has been paralysed for months,” Trudeau said, adding he couldn’t run a successful reelection while also fighting within the party.
Trudeau will remain in power until his party selects a new leader, which they will need to do before general elections in the fall, which polls indicate conservatives will win with Pierre Poilievre as their leader.
The father-of-three served as Prime Minister since November 2015 and resided at Rideau Cottage with his family. He and wife Sophie announced in August 2023 their separation.
He disclosed that he told his kids about his decision at dinner in Sunday night.
Trudeau’s tenure now ends at just over eight years in the PM’s office.
Worth reading in full.
It was inevitable, what with the resignation of his deputy last month, Canada’s soaring inflation and his plummeting approval ratings:
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party, led by once-in-a-generation political wunderkind Pierre Poilievre, is soaring in the polls:
Trudeau’s party may be hoping that if he goes now, with the Liberals still having until October to call a General Election, a new leader can prevent the Conservatives winning a majority, just as Jacinda Ardern’s resignation in January 2023, nine months before the New Zealand General Election, helped stop the National Party winning a majority.
By my reckoning, Trudeau is the last democratically elected leader who was in office during the pandemic and imposed a national lockdown to be defenestrated, either because their party has forced them to resign, or because they’ve been embroiled in scandal, or because they’ve lost an election. All of which strongly suggests that locking down wasn’t the political masterstroke they all thought.
This is bad news for Sir Keir Starmer. It suggests that people are fed up with radical progressive zealotry disguised as centrist technocratic managerialism (techface). How long before the Labour leader goes the same way?
Stop Press: The political obituaries are flooding in – and they’re not good! Here’s Tom Leonard in the Mail (‘Canada’s ‘insufferable tool’ Justin Trudeau resigns’). Will post more here as they come in.
‘Justin Trudeau was Canada’s worst ever Prime Minister‘ says Michael Taube in the Spectator. “Canada’s long national nightmare is finally coming to an end.”
The PM worked hard to persuade the U.S. and Mexico to include concepts like gender rights and Indigenous rights during Nafta renegotiations instead of focusing on the main issue, trade. He’s spent tax dollars like a drunken sailor: passing a crippling national carbon tax that’s left Canadians of all political stripes furious for years. Housing and heating prices have become unaffordable in many Canadian provinces. …
There was taking the knee during the Black Lives Matter protests in front of cameras and the media. There was the Freedom Convoy and disgraceful use of the Emergencies Act. There was allowing a Nazi to be applauded in Parliament. …
‘Farewell Justin Trudeau, poster boy of liberalism out of tune with rapidly changing world’ writes Con Coughlin in the Telegraph.
‘Woke Elvis Resigns’ is Matt Taibbi’s take at Racket News.
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