OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Monday that he intends to step down as leader of the ruling Liberals after nine years in office but will stay on in his post until the party chooses a replacement.
Trudeau, under heavy pressure from Liberal legislators to quit amid polls showing the party will be crushed at the next election, said at a news conference that parliament would be suspended until March.
That means Trudeau will still be prime minister on January 20 when US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs that would cripple Canada’s economy.
Trudeau, 53, took office in November 2015 and won reelection twice, becoming one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers.
But his popularity started dipping two years ago amid public anger over high prices and a housing shortage, and his fortunes never recovered.
Polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October, regardless of who the leader is.
Parliament was due to resume on Jan 27 and opposition parties had vowed to bring down the government as soon as they could, most likely at the end of March.
But if Parliament does not return until March 24, the earliest they could present a non-confidence motion would be sometime in May.
Trudeau’s popularity has waned 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 on to guide the Liberals to elections scheduled for October 2025 but has faced further pressure from Trump, who has threatened a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland quit in December after disagreeing with Trudeau over how to respond to Trump’s apparent plan, in the first open dissent against the prime minister within his cabinet.
Later that month, Trudeau announced a major shakeup to his cabinet — changing one-third of his team in a bid to settle the political turmoil. In November, he travelled to Florida to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in a bid to head off a trade war.
But since then the president-elect has also landed humiliating blows against Trudeau on social media, repeatedly calling him “governor” of Canada and declaring that the United States’ northern neighbour becoming the 51st US state is a “great idea”.
Coming late to politics after working as a snowboard instructor, bartender, bouncer and teacher, Trudeau was first elected in 2008 to the House of Commons to represent a working-class Montreal neighbourhood.
In his first two terms as prime minister, he brought in Senate reforms, 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 legalised cannabis, held a public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and passed legislation permitting medically assisted suicide.
