Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he plans to step down once the Liberal Party has chosen a successor, bringing his time leading the country to a tumultuous end.
Trudeau, who became Liberal leader in 2013 and prime minister in the fall of 2015, announced his long-awaited decision outside his official residence, Rideau Cottage, on Monday morning.
Trudeau also said he asked Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until March 24, and she granted the request.
The Tories plan a vote of no confidence, and there must be an election by October, 2025. So the Liberals have only a short time to pick a new leader and get ready for an election. Hopefully it will go better for them than it did for us.
Foreign Office Briefing: Double-No-Seven vs. Brofeld
rikyrah
Goodbye, Mr. Trudeau.
Any Canadian wanna get into the weeds about this for us Americans?
lowtechcyclist
And justin time, too. ;-)
different-church-lady
In a nutshell, what’s the reason?
rikyrah
Another water is wet moment:
Bill Madden (@maddenifico) posted at 11:28 PM on Sat, Jan 04, 2025:![]()
![]()
https://t.co/ZoFVwcbfaE
Heather Cox Richardson reveals the tech brologarchs to be nothing but greed-driven autocratic white supremacists.
(https://x.com/maddenifico/status/1875776282119827942?t=65CQmABrZbX-DQnlK6m_-Q&s=03)
Suzanne
I have no doubt that he was imperfect and that there is plenty of valid criticism to be made. But Polievre, if he gets in, will be worse. By orders of magnitude.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: Really the only question is whether they think the white supremacism leads to riches, or if the greed and and racism are just coincidentally parallel paths.
matt
As I understand it the whole Canadian political system is scrambling to figure out how to respond to Trump’s demented tariff plan.
matt
@different-church-lady: inflation, thermostasis.
different-church-lady
@matt: Just like the U.S.
Suzanne
FYI, for anyone who wants to know more, there was an an episode of The Bulwark podcast from late last week that had David Frum as the guest. Please note that this is by no means an endorsement or an indication of my ideological alignment with Frum. But he is Canadian, and he gave a brief rundown of the issues that are leading to his unpopularity right now.
I need to find some other sources to get a more complete picture.
Old School
Melania is going to be really disappointed.
Professor Bigfoot
@rikyrah: I cannot stand the sight or sound of Jon Stewart anymore.
Everytime a “Daily Show” commercial comes on I snarl at it and flip that guy a bird.
“YOU’RE WHY WE’RE IN THIS MESS, MOTHERFUCKER!”
Old School
A Ghost to Most
@rikyrah: Convenient how she swerves around the whole christian supremacy thing.
Kathleen
@different-church-lady: Trudeau is too old. He needs to step aside for a shiny new model.
Ha Nguyen
@Professor Bigfoot:
YES!!! I hate Jon Stewart almost as much as I hate Republican politicians.
beckya57
Not a Canadian (I wish!), but this makes me sad. He’s been a good PM. My (very limited) understanding is that he was already on the ropes due to the world-wide anti-incumbent wave, and that the panic over Trump’s tariffs has made things even worse (finance minister resigned suddenly a couple of weeks ago). I suspect there’s also just a fatigue factor, as he’s been the PM for a decade. I think he’s doing the right thing, similar to Biden though without the age issue, ie taking the hit for his party and hoping a fresh face will be in a stronger position. Probably not going to work though. I think Canada is going to go MAGA in this election; IIRC their legal immigration rates are higher than ours, and that seems to inevitably prompt a backlash. I don’t think they have as many undocumenteds as we do, but legal status is lost on racists, unfortunately.
Professor Bigfoot
@A Ghost to Most: The conservative movement is fundamentally straight white Christian male supremacy, because straight white Christian men are naturally superior.
Every single thing the conservative movement advocates is in support of this one thesis.
Almost like they agree with Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech.”
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
He was quiet as a church mouse pissing on cotton from 2017-2021
and thought nobody would notice that he began piping up back when the Democrats won in 2020.
Gets on my last nerve.
dhd
@rikyrah: Never-ending housing crisis exacerbated by doubling down on bad policy decisions dating back to the 1970s, mostly.
To make a long story short it’s the same story as the US and the UK:
Stop financing affordable rental housing
Spend lots of money encouraging homeownership
??? (i.e. let the provinces/cities figure it out)
Affordability! (lol, no)
Poilievre, of course, promises more of the same, but somehow… more “conservative”, meaning instead of handing out tax incentives, he’ll just cut existing taxes, which will achieve the exact same nothing, except in the case of the carbon tax where it will *increase* the tax burden on low and middle-income people (who generally get more back in rebates than they pay).
And various other bullshit that doesn’t even merit explanation since it makes no sense at all.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rikyrah:
This is my shocked face.
Related, new piece in The New Republic along the same lines, at least in terms of techbros financing so called “moderate” political groups in SF:
https://archive.is/Rch0Y
Lotta astroturfing going on with national ramifications we see in other metro areas.
Matt
Plenty of posters here can take a bow for this as well – heckuva job folks, you really showed those hippies what-for by handing the whole country over to fascists.
UncleEbeneezer
I’m no expert but I read that (surprise) a relentless, online, right-wing disinformation campaign played a pretty big role in this. Canada is no more immune from it than anywhere else.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Same here.
CaseyL
Liberals and progressives both appealed to their citizenry’s better nature.
That was and continues to be a losing bet.
Llelldorin
@UncleEbeneezer: That tracks with what I saw when visiting my parents in Vancouver. _Every_ online add was “Axe the tax” (their slogan-for-idiots for the moment).
Citizen Alan
@Matt: In our defense, a lot of those hippies worked just as hard to deliver the country to fascists by undermining “Genocide Joe” and “Kamala the Kop” at every opportunity. You will never persuade me that the DSA is anything other than some combination of useful idiots for the Oligarchs and knowing Russian assets.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Matt:
You got elected Team Captain of the circular firing squad?
Never ceases to amaze me. Always more vitriol for the people who voted for a viable candidate against the fascist than for the people who voted for the fascist.
Doug R
@rikyrah: The wet fart of a human Pierre Poilievre has been ahead in the polling for 2 years for some inexplicable reason.
Justin Trudeau has been trying but a lot of Canadians have been tuning him out and now his cabinet is in open revolt.
I dunno what to say except this is NOT the time to go backwards on work on climate change but what happened in the USA doesn’t make me hopeful.
Except maybe one of the Liberal candidates strikes a chord with Canadians and helps point out what a miserable pandering POS PP is?
stacib
@Professor Bigfoot: Ah, so it’s not just me.
burritoboy
DSA is (partially) led by a group of techbro self-declared “Maoists”, who are both junior oligarch-adjacent and are closely connected to the PRC. (Which PRC is, of course, in a functional alliance with the Putin regime.) So, no, they’re not technically Russian assets….they’re Chinese assets. Unclear if that makes much of a functional difference.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Professor Bigfoot: Yup. Another white GenX comedian with oppositional defiance disorder and mommy issues. Yawn.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
Is this an open thread? Had a friend send me the clip of Deb Fisher(Nazi-Nebraska) being sworn in by Kamala Harris and Fisher’s dbag husband Bruce Fisher refusing to shake Kamala Harris’ hand. He’s ofcourse holding the Bible his wife used for the swearing in. I guess after that he’s going to use it to wipe his ass since he can’t even follow the basic tenants of the book.
RedDirtGirl
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: What a cockwobble!
rikyrah
Adam Schwarz (@AdamJSchwarz) posted at 7:27 AM on Mon, Jan 06, 2025:
Macron denounces Elon Musk’s “unacceptable interference” in European democracies by supporting “a new reactionary international”.
He’s the 4th European leader in the last day to speak against Musk following Olaf Scholz, Keir Starmer & Jonas Gahr Støre.
Action must follow words. https://t.co/B3yGBjNoef
(https://x.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1876259315113459812?t=sxHzK4UL-hGJhgzlzgMekQ&s=03)
rikyrah
Mike Sington
@MikeSington
Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles lays down the law for Trump’s second term, says there will be no drama: “I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star. My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.” Does she know who she’s working for?
https://x.com/MikeSington/status/1876306391826043117
emjayay
Mai Naem mobile ¹:
“….he can’t even follow the basic tenants of the book.”
Or its tenets.
cain
@beckya57:
I expect a worldwide backlash against Indian immigration. Apparently the Indian immigrants/students according to the Indian subreddits have been acting like assholes.
I don’t know where the students are getting their attitude from but it’s causing significant issues in Canada.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@emjayay:
(In best Emily Litella voice):
“What’s all this I hear about Biblical tenants?”
Nevermind.
scav
@rikyrah: Front-biting, appropriate second-guessing and grand-standing click-bait are the chosen imperial modes going forward.
Ksmiami
@cain: most of the Indian students come from affluent elite caste families and act like Vivek Ramalama ding dong. Not really surprising that there’s backlash.
Ella in New Mexico
I wonder how much Justin going to kiss the ring at Mar a Lago had to do with his losing support from his own party? Instead of standing up to Trump’s threats and helping Chrystia Freeland fiscally prepare for the tariff war he decided somehow Trump would spare Canada because he kow towed?
My husband thinks Trump has some dirt on Trudeau passed on by Russia. And his showing up to kissy face at MaL was the price he had to pay to keep it secret…for awhile.
Princess
@Suzanne: Agreed about Polievre. The only chance, and it’s a slim one, at, maybe not stopping Polievre but at least slowing him down was for Trudeau to step down. He should have done it months ago. Singh needs to step down too. He’s useless and my NDP friends are angry with him for promising to support Polievre’s non-confidence motion. He’s going to split his party and get wiped out if he stays in.
rikyrah
@beckya57:
What’s the ethnic makeup of Canada’s undocumented population?
Are they concentrated in one province, or are they spread out all over?
Princess
@Ella in New Mexico: I think it’s why Freeland resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet. And Freeland’s resignation was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made Trudeau’s resignation inevitable. (Given her role it would be the equivalent of Harris resigning from being Biden’s VP) There’s a lot of appetite in Canada right now for a leader who says FU to Trump and the US. Polievre won’t and Trudeau wasn’t going to.
Princess
@rikyrah: I would say they are all over and from all over. But undocumented isn’t the issue — in a way immigration itself isn’t the issue. The issue is housing. The issue is adding more people of any kind at all to a saturated housing market.
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami: Is racism against Indians A-OK on this blog now?
rikyrah
@Princess:
You don’t have an undocumented problem?
You have a legal immigration problem?
rikyrah
@Princess:
Wasn’t there an increase in international students from when the Orange Menace was first in office, and they started doing bans, and targeting international students? Wasn’t there a shift from applying to American schools to Canadian schools?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
No, it’s not.
Aussie Sheila
@Princess:
It’s the same in Australia. I don’t know that comfortably housed people grok just how acute this issue is in the Anglo sphere. I’m not familiar with the situation in the rest of Europe.
In Australia a disastrous taxation decision by the then conservative Howard government in the late 1990s has led to a crisis, particularly effecting the young, the elder poor and those on even average salaries. It’s a social, economic and political disaster.
Princess
@rikyrah: Yes, but concern with immigration doesn’t date from then. It’s really in the last few years, post pandemic.
Trudeau hugely increased the number of people who could immigrate legally. That was a good thing and it wasn’t immediately unpopular. But he didn’t account for all the stresses on the system that thousands of new people would cause. In addition to housing, healthcare is another area showing strains. People are also upset about the homeless (housing again but also mental health and drug policy).
Bryant T
Canadian here and I can give you an overview, but the actual situation is exceeding complex and involves a lot of inside baseball in how our system tends to work.
First of all, Canada followed the US in the same inflationary issues and vaccine denialism that the US did. However, unlike the US, Canada did not emerge as strong, and quite a few of the measures used to help individuals and small businesses bridge the gap during shutdown turned out to be penalizing in the end to many, due to a lack of proper forethought and delivery. Canada also didn’t experience the same level of employment boom, with our unemployment rate slowly but steadily climbing past 6.5%. Much like Biden’s issue, it fuels a narrative of Canadian businesses failing under the government’s policies, especially the carbon tax.
In Canada, the carbon tax has been what transphobia has for the US; a rallying cry across the Conservative base and Independents. Essentially, it is a charge on carbon emissions to encourage the shift to lower emissions and cleaner technology, with the funds collected returned to the provinces and business/individuals as a rebate. The Conservative media has done an excellent job is claiming this is the core driver of inflation and why both fuel and grocery prices continue to outperform the overall inflation rate. It is nonsense, of course, since the carbon tax accounts for about three cents per litre at the pump, but nonetheless, the ‘accepted wisdom’ has taken hold that the price gorging by our sadly monopolized national grocery chains and gas stations is due to the tax alone.
With these elements in the background, pushed by the media (BTW: our two national newspapers are old school conservative and hard right conservative respectively and happy to push out distortions of public policy to varying levels.), as well as a declining Canadian dollar, Trudeau’s Liberals have been under the gun since eking out a minority government in 2021. Since then, despite some just breathtaking levels of corruption, strong Conservative majorities have been won in multiple provinces, including Ontario and Alberta, who have used every tool in their kit to try and sabotage the federal government. What should be major scandals, including federal health fund transfers not being allocated to care, piecemeal privatization in associated services, criminal underfunding of post secondary education, and a series of pure idiotic boondoggles like Alberta trying to withdraw from the Canadian Pension Plan and set up a provincial replacement because of FREEDOM or something, like the Republicans, the seem to get a free pass on basically everything, while the choice of hotel for a minor Liberal party meeting is considered a front page worthy scandal.
On top of all of this, the Liberal Party is notorious for their ability to self-own, inflicting all kinds of damage over stupid minor blunders. It allows the media environment to keep pushing Conservative scandals off the front page for Liberal ones instead, and it allows the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre to stay on constant attack mode. Poilievre himself is a career politician who has never held a job that was not directly for a political party or from public office, although he’s gotten contacts and bulked up a bit so he can try and cosplay like he’s a former pipefitter as opposed to the Dilton Doiley style policy wonk he always has been. He’s also embraced the Trump approach by cozying up to far right figures like Jordon Peterson and blatantly lying over and over about basically everything. He’s a man with no principles, willing to say anything to get elected, and then happy to ignore those promises as needed.
The final straw is voter fatigue. Trudeau has been the PM for over nine years, and there aren’t a lot of either Premiers or PMs that last that long. He’ll be the third longest serving PM since his father left office in 1984, and the other two only lasted nine and a half years and a shade over ten respectively. At this point, he has no more time to redefine the narrative, and the Liberal Party sees the writing on the wall. Canadian political parties live in abject fear of a repeat of 1993, in which a perfect storm of events took the Progressive Conservatives from a majority government down to just two seats and essentially killed the party dead.
I think people are overstating those worries. I don’t think Trudeau could win an election, but Pierre Poilievre has been wrapped up in safe media for years now and on a general campaign is thin skinned, petty, and has the charisma of a rotting turbot, while for all his faults, Trudeau is still very good in a crowd and in a debate. The Conservatives still suffer from an extreme MTV problem – Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver – which have both a high number of seats and are solidly to the left politically, making it difficult to win a majority without inroads in them. Finally, Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP (A further left party) has proven to be a surprisingly ineffectual party leader, especially during the election cycle. The lack of willingness for both the NDP and Liberals to at least have some honest discussions in close districts means that the left of centre candidates will split 60% of the vote and allow the Conversative to win with just 40% has hampered both parties, but voters who are between the two, especially in the face of a possible Conservative government, tend to break back towards the Liberals as the more electable party.
With the government now prorogued for two months, the Liberals will select a new leader (if you want to lay some bets, your best odds as it stands right now are Chrystia Freeland or Mark Carney) and Canada will move into the election cycle. The Liberal Party will come in weaker than they’ve been since 2011 when the Conservatives formed a majority government, but there’s structural elements, as mentioned, that make a minority government more likely this far out. Once the race develops, all bets are off.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@emjayay: you made me laugh at my mistake. I am going to consider that a good thing today. Also too, FYI, Bezos autocorrects to Bozos on my phone.
Bazza
In Canadian politics, in the general case and with a few exceptions, we vote out whichever of the Liberals or Conservatives are in power after three our four elections because we’re tired of them and want a change.
Canadians are mostly worried about inflation and housing. Some Canadians correctly observe that the Canadian Federal government doesn’t manage housing and has limited options to do things about inflation, but the problems don’t go away, Pollievre talks about it constantly, and Trudeau doesn’t really have anything to say about it. After a decade in power and especially in the last three years it’s increasingly hard to see why Trudeau feels he should be PM or what he intends to accomplish there.
People want a change. The NDP aren’t a credible alternative (I wish they were and maybe they could become one but at least at the moment, they just aren’t). So, the Conservatives get to be in charge for a while.
Trump is a catalyst in the sense that Freeland understood that we are in a dangerous moment and Trudeau is not rising to meet it, which I think is the majority of the reason she decided to put in the knife when she did, but really Trudeau was past his expiry date either way.
sab
@Bryant T: When American jackals pine for life in Canada, I remember that y’all had twelve years of Steven Harper quite recently, and we only had eight of Bush the shrub and then eight of Obama who got us the ACA.
My impression is that parliamentary politics involves wildly swinging government policies, while America’s system is more shifting the overton window ( i.e. painfully gradual in any direction.)
sab
@Bryant T: Isn’t Mark Carney the RBC guy? Banking should be safe and boring?
David Collier-Brown
@UncleEbeneezer:
You got it! A few years back, the Conservatives went into a full-court press of “F**k Trudeau”, especially going after any good ideas he had. A significant part of the undecided then figured that Trudeau couldn’t do anything right, and anyone would be better.
It worked.
Kim Walker
I live here in Canada. Trudeau did lots of good things for the non-wealthy Canadians (dental care for moderate to low income, low-cost day-care, a really big monthly child allowance, reconciliation with Native peoples, etc). Provinces are another matter. They thought it would be a great idea to flood universities and colleges with foreign students who then might be able to immigrate legally on a permanent basis. And flood they did. So much flooding that private “puppy mill” colleges bloomed – especially in Ontario and BC. Those kids paid 3 or 4 times what Canadian kids paid and in most cases the private college diplomas were worth nothing as prerequisite to permanent resident status. That was a problem. Then there was a massive flood of temporary workers just as Covid was ending. Small businesses cried the biggest crocodile tears that no Canadians want to work. And that may have been true for about 10 minutes, but now the youngs and the permanent residents have sky-high unemployment rates. Immigration officials were instructed to ignore most of the guidelines and protections for the temporary foreign workers, and some of them have been horribly abused (sexually, stolen wages, overworked, sent home). So now there were no jobs, no housing and no health care. Horrible inflation caused by grocery store chain greed. It is estimated that over 50% in inflation went to the 4 or 5 grocery chains in Canada. Health care workers no longer in the public systems who may have been exhausted from Covid or perhaps the better lifestyle (wages, hours, scheduling) as traveling nurses and doctors. Provinces were, were of course bidding up the hourly wages with private health personnel providers. Tiff Maclem left the interest rate too low for years and then jacked it into the stratosphere. So no new housing was being built. Hundreds of thousands of various size units needed for people here in Canada now. Plenty of commercial buildings were going up in a situation where about 20% of the existing storefronts are vacant. So all in all it’s a mess. Even the roads are crappy. I think maybe Trudeau was trying to please to many people and interests. And many of those people were never going to be grateful.
Bryant T
@sab: Former Governor of the Bank of Canada during the housing crisis and then Governor of the Bank of England. He was widely credited with steering Canada through the 2008 crisis which had limited impact compared to other nations. He’s got significant domestic and international influence in economics and is seen as someone who can make Poilievre look entirely unserious in the economic realm. After all, Carney helped navigate the worst economic crash in 30 years while Poilievre was hammering the government for not heavily investing in crypto a few years ago.
Bryant T
@sab: It depends. We only had 9.5 years of Harper and only 4 years of that was a majority government, so it really depends on the make-up of the coalitions and Parliament. Ironically, many minority governments have been some of the most successful because there’s usually a need for coalition building, while majority governments can get stuck by internal issues or an unwillingness to assume full responsibility for legislation. But your point is correct. Canada is not the left-wing utopia that some Americans envision it to be.
schrodingers_cat
Doesn’t each province decide its own immigration policy? I remember companies in Quebec interviewing when I was in school.
evodevo
@stacib: Nope you’re not. I quit watching before he retired in 2015 – he got too both-sides for me even before the Trumpy maladministration.
AKA The Man
Dead thread, but I’ll end by saying that the Liberal backbiters who forced Trudeau to resign will regret it because Trudeau could have resigned after his shellacking to give the new leader a clean slate, but now the Liberals will have a new leader who will be leader after a thorough shellacking. Real Galaxy Brain Stuff by the only group that make the Democrats look like an organized political party. And I say this as a die-hard Liberal.