Trudeau announces resignation

Posted on January 16, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

New Years reflections and resolutions rarely play out so quickly and dramatically. On Jan. 6, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Canada’s prime minister. Once the Liberal Party selects its new leader, Trudeau’s tumultuous ten-year run will come to a close. He made the announcement on a cold, grey Monday morning in front of Rideau Cottage, humbly admitting that his time had come.

 After his announcement, he held a Q&A session with the press in which he conceded, “Anyone who has been watching politics closely over the last nine months will know that Parliament has been entirely seized by obstruction and filibustering and a total lack of productivity. It’s time for a reset. It’s time for the temperature to come down, for the people to have a fresh start in Parliament, to be able to navigate through these complex times both domestically and internationally.”

 “The reset we have is actually two parts: one is the prorogation, but the other part is recognizing that removing me from the equation as the leader who will fight the next election for the Liberal Party should also decrease the level of polarization that we’re seeing right now in the House and in Canadian politics,” he said, in a startling display of ownership.

 In a New Year’s Day edition of Alberta Minute, Premier Danielle Smith spoke frankly about her dissatisfaction with the state of play in Ottawa. “I would say the frustrating thing that we have is that we don’t have a Prime Minister who has a four year mandate, and as a result, he can’t go to the table and say, ‘You’ve got to deal with me, I’m not going anywhere.’”

“I think what we’re seeing is that the U.S. President Elect Donald Trump is kind of taking advantage of that situation and trying to go to Canada and goad the prime minister into a response,” Smith said. “So I have argued that we need to have an election, whether that’s to give the current prime minister a new mandate, so he does have that strength going to the table, or whether it’s because we need to get a new person at the table, I’d leave that to Albertans and Canadians to decide.”

 Smith chose her words carefully, and six days later her suggestion was realized. Facing impossible pressure from his party, the opposition, and Canadian approval polls, Trudeau held on until the holding on became indefensible.

Summarizing the hectic conclusion to 2024, Smith said, “There were a couple of days there where we didn’t even know who the finance minister was, and we didn’t know who the point person was to deal with the Americans on what is the biggest challenge to our trade relationship that we’ve seen in a very long time. So the premiers have tried to fill the gap there, but it would be really nice to have a federal partner that was focused on this.”

 Filling the gap will take some time, but by removing himself from the equation, Trudeau took the first necessary step into 2025, a step that could help solve Parliament’s “total lack of productivity” in the latter half of 2024.