Patrick James, University of Southern California
After weeks of speculation over his future, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign on Jan. 6, 2025.
His departure will bring an end to more than a decade of power for the progressive politician and once-darling of the liberal left. It follows infighting in his own party and a slump in Trudeau’s popularity to the point where he trails the leading opposition candidate by over 20 percentage points. But it can’t escape notice that the resignation comes just weeks ahead of a Trump administration – and after a barrage of personal slights and threats of punishing tariffs directed at Canada by the incoming Republican president.
The Conversation turned to Patrick James, an expert on Canadian-U.S. relations and Dean’s Professor Emeritus at USC Dornsife, to explain why Trudeau chose now to bow out – and what role Trump played in his departure.
The first thing to note is that Trudeau’s resignation is no real surprise to anyone following Canadian politics – the only real surprise is the timing.
At its heart, this is a personal political decision; the reality is Trudeau’s party was doomed in the next election – which is due to take place before the end of October 2025.
Barring any wild changes between now and the vote, the chances of Trudeau’s Liberal Party winning are as dead as a doornail. The opposition Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, are up in the polls by some 24 points.
The Tory leader, Pierre Poilievre, has done a reasonably good job at moderating his image from that of a hard right-winger – narrowing any chance Trudeau had of capturing enough of the center he needed.
My best guess is that, faced with this imminent defeat, Trudeau believes getting out now will insulate him and make it more likely that he can return to front-line Canadian politics further down the line, after a period of time in the wilderness.
While in the U.S. figuratively dead presidents rarely come back to life – with Grover Cleveland and Trump the only ones to return after a reelection loss – in Canada, there is a bit more of a tradition of political resurrection.
This stretches back to the country’s first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, who resigned in 1873 amid scandal only to be reelected five years later. William Mackenzie King served three nonconsecutive terms as prime minister in the first half of the 20th century. And Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, came back after losing the 1979 election to serve a fourth and final term in 1980.
But I feel with Justin Trudeau it is different. At this moment in time, his parliamentary career looks beyond rehabilitation. He is deeply unpopular and has enraged many of his loyal lieutenants – with the resignation of longtime ally and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in December adding to the pressure on Trudeau to resign.
And while inflation – a scourge of left, right and center incumbents the world over – no doubt played a role in Trudeau’s declining popularity, other factors are at play, too. Canadians generally feel that given the cards he was dealt, Trudeau still played a bad hand. Under Trudeau, immigration to Canada increased massively – and many blame this for a housing affordability crisis.
More generally, it seems like Trudeau, despite being the relatively young political age of 53, is out of step with politics at this precise moment in time. Trudeau, much like his father before him, is very much associated with identity politics, focusing on the perceived needs of certain groups over others.
[Abridged]
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