Adam Scotti

By Lisa Van Dusen

January 6, 2025

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to step down as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party on Monday, marking the end of the Canada’s second Trudeau era.

“Friends, as you all know, I’m a fighter,” Trudeau said in a statement delivered outside Rideau Cottage. “Every bone in my body has always told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians.”

Nonetheless, after more than a year of worsening opinion polls, byelection losses, and the caucus disgruntlement produced by them — a narrative whose negative critical mass culminated in the bombshell departure of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on December 16 hours before she was scheduled to present, as finance minister, the government’s Fall Economic Statement — Trudeau announced that he has asked Governor General Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until March 24.

“I intend to resign as party leader, as Prime Minister, after the party selects its next leader in a robust, nation-wide competitive process,” Trudeau said.

That process, which puts the country’s governing party in a state of flux at a time when Donald Trump’s second presidency presents significant bilateral challenges — from the threat of 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports to fundamental differences on the world order and future of democracy amid Trump’s role as a disruptive ally of autocrats — is expected to include Freeland and former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney.

Freeland was at the peak of a successful career as a senior financial journalist and commentator in the United States and Britain when Trudeau recruited her in 2013 to run in a byelection in Bob Rae’s old Toronto Centre riding. That she would end up — as a former Financial Times editor — serving as Canada’s first finance minister, was all but ordained by her background as a journalist and author. That her dramatic departure from both that job and her role as Trudeau’s deputy were provoked by an attempt to replace her with Carney, a fellow Canadain who made his mark in the UK policy elite as governor of the Bank of England, added a level of irony to an already-mishandled political crisis.

Two recent polls, one from Spark and one Angus Reid, show Freeland with the most support among likely contenders for the Liberal leadership.

Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013, inheriting a party brand still tainted by the sponsorship scandal and years of leadership issues stemming from the Martin-Chrétien rivalry. He became prime minister in the fall of 2015, and, as Policy columnist Lori Turnbull wrote recently, proceeded to re-fashion the party, including by removing Liberal senators from the party’s parliamentary caucus.

“In remaking the Liberal Party of Canada in his own image, and in delineating a line in the sand between his father’s Liberal Party and his own, Trudeau was asserting his independence from the very name that made his political career all-but a sure thing,” wrote Turnbull. “The trajectory of the past year proves that there is a risk in basing a political party around a person rather than a set of values that transcend time and leadership. When the brand curdles, it is difficult to pivot.”

While the next federal election was scheduled for October 20, 2025, the pressure on Trudeau to step aside as Liberal leader and prime minister ahead of that date has been relentless for more than a year.

His successor will face Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has maintained a polling lead over Trudeau of 20 points and higher in recent months amid a trend of similar right-wing populist political leaders globally who have defied conventional wisdom, political gravity and, in Trump’s case, all precedents of electability and viability, to secure election outcomes that have, ironically, imperilled democracy.

On Monday, Trump surrogate Elon Musk responded to the news of Trudeau’s announcement with the tweet: “2025 is looking good.”

Policy Editor and Publisher Lisa Van Dusen has served as Washington bureau chief for Sun Media, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, senior writer for Maclean’s and an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.