Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that he will step down as leader of the ruling Liberals after nine years in the role, but will remain in his role until the party elects a replacement.
Trudeau, under heavy pressure from Liberal lawmakers to resign amid polls showing the party will be crushed in the next election, said at a news conference that parliament would be suspended until March 24.
That means an election is unlikely to be held before May and Trudeau will remain prime minister when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened tariffs that would cripple Canada’s economy, takes office on Jan. 20. .
“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I have to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best choice in those elections,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau, 53, took office in November 2015 and won re-election twice, becoming one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers.
But his popularity began to decline two years ago amid public anger over high prices and housing shortages, and his fortunes never recovered.
Polls show the Liberals will clearly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election due at the end of October, regardless of who is the leader.
Parliament was due to resume on January 27 and opposition parties had promised to overthrow the government as soon as they could, probably by the end of March.
But if parliament does not return until March 24, the earliest they could table a no-confidence motion would be in May.
Trudeau said he had asked Canada’s governor general, King Charles’s representative in the country, to prorogue parliament and she had agreed to that request.
Until recently, Trudeau had been able to fend off Liberal lawmakers concerned about poor poll results and the loss of safe seats in two special elections last year.
But calls for him to resign have escalated since last month, when he attempted to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest Cabinet allies, after she rejected his proposals to increase spending.
Freeland resigned and wrote a letter accusing Trudeau of “political tricks” instead of focusing on what was best for the country.
“Removing me from the equation as the leader who will fight the next election for the Liberal Party should also decrease the level of polarization we are seeing right now in the House and in Canadian politics,” Trudeau said.
The Conservatives are led by Pierre Poilievre, a career politician who rose to prominence in early 2022 when he supported truckers who took over downtown Ottawa as part of a protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
Trudeau’s popularity has declined in recent months, with his government narrowly surviving a series of no-confidence votes and critics calling for his resignation.
He has vowed to stay to lead the Liberals into elections scheduled for October 2025, but has faced more pressure from Trump, who has threatened a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.
Trudeau announced a major shake-up of his cabinet in late December, changing a third of his team in a bid to resolve political turmoil. In November, he traveled to Florida to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in an attempt to avoid a trade war.
But since then, the president-elect has also dealt humiliating blows against Trudeau on social media, repeatedly calling him the “governor” of Canada and declaring that turning the United States’ northern neighbor into America’s 51st state is a “great idea.” ”.
Trudeau, a latecomer to politics after working as a snowboard instructor, bartender, bouncer and teacher, was first elected in 2008 to the House of Commons to represent a working-class Montreal neighborhood.
In his first two terms as prime minister, he pushed reforms through the Senate, signed a new trade deal with the United States and introduced a carbon tax to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The married father of three also legalized cannabis, held a public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and passed legislation allowing medically assisted suicide.
