Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signs a letter of condolence marking the passing of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on January 3, 2025. Photo credit: Reuters
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not made a final decision but is increasingly likely to announce his intention to resign, a person familiar with his thinking said on Sunday (January 5, 2025). .
Following the Globe and Mail report, the same source told Reuters that Trudeau was expected to announce as early as Monday that he would step down as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.
The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
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Mr. Trudeau’s resignation leaves the party without a permanent leader, as polls show the Liberal Party will lose a landslide to the official opposition Conservative Party in an election that is due to be held by late October.
Sources told the Globe and Mail that it was not clear when Mr. Trudeau would announce his withdrawal plan, but they expected it to be made by an emergency meeting of Liberal MPs on Wednesday. He said he was there.
Alarmed by a series of dismal polls, a growing number of Liberal MPs are publicly calling on Trudeau to resign.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours. The prime minister’s regularly published schedule for Monday said he would participate virtually in a meeting of the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations.
The Globe and Mail reports that it remains unclear whether Trudeau will step down immediately or remain prime minister until a new Liberal leader is elected.
There are growing calls for his resignation.
Mr. Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013, when the party was in deep crisis and fell to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.
If he resigns, it is likely to spark new calls for an early election to form a stable government capable of handling the next four years of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
A person familiar with the matter told the paper that the prime minister was in talks with Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc about whether he would be willing to serve as interim party leader and prime minister, adding that if Leblanc intended to run for leadership, that would not be possible. He added that it would be.
Mr. Trudeau, 53, had successfully fended off Liberal MPs worried about losing his safe seat at the polls and in two special elections.
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But calls for Trudeau to resign have been growing since December, when he tried to demote one of his closest cabinet allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, after she opposed a spending increase. There is.
Freeland instead resigned and wrote a letter accusing Trudeau of “political maneuvering” rather than what’s best for the country.
Mr. Trudeau brought the Liberal Party to power in 2015 on a promise of a “sunshine path,” progressive policies promoting women’s rights and fighting climate change.
But the day-to-day realities of governing gradually wore him down, and like many Western leaders, the need to deal with the effects of the pandemic took up much of his time.
Ottawa spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses and racked up a record budget deficit, but it did little to protect it from public anger over soaring prices.
Failures in immigration policy led to an influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, straining an already overheated housing market.
issued – January 6, 2025 7:41am IST
