There are not even three months ago, it seemed that Canadians could not wait for the end of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nearly decades as a chief. On January 6, he announced his intention to resign with surveys showing most of the deeply unhappy Canadians from the state of their country.
But as Mr. Trudeau, 53, is preparing to officially resign on Friday, his fortune took a remarkable turn thanks to a prolonged assault campaign against Canada by President Trump.
Thanks to prices that could lead to economic devastation and repeated verbal attacks against Canada’s sovereignty, Trump triggered a wave of patriotism, and Mr. Trudeau’s challenge and skills have helped rally the nation.
“Canadians are reasonable and we are polite, but we will not back up a fight, not when our country and everyone’s well-being are at stake,” he said after Trump has briefly imposed 25%tariffs. “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy because it will facilitate annex.”
Speaking to the president informally as “Donald”, Mr. Trudeau continued: “Even if you are a very intelligent guy, he is a very stupid thing to do.”
At such a difficult time, he will now give the reins to Mark Carney, a former leader of two major central banks, who was elected on Sunday by members of the Liberal Party of Mr. Trudeau to succeed the outgoing Prime Minister. Carney will be officially sworn in as the next Canada leader on Friday.
Until Mr. Trump launched his widths against Canada, who caused intense feelings of betrayal, anger and resentment, there was an increasing expectation that Mr. Trudeau could leave the Liberal Party as he found when he became his leader in 2013: a body may be headed for extinction.
The polls had always shown that the Liberals were poorly following the rival conservative party, the gap reaching as high as two figures.
Mr. Trudeau’s decision to resign began to reverse the slide. But it is Mr. Trump’s prices, against Canadian exports, his claims that Canada would be better if it became the 51st state, its references derive from Mr. Trudeau as “governor”, which radically changed the political landscape.
The Liberals have essentially erased the head long appreciated by the conservatives and the investigations show that Canadians say they believe that Mr. Carney would be better able to resist Mr. Trump than the conservative chief, Pierre Hairyvre. To capitalize on this momentum, Mr. Carney should soon call a general election which now promises to be more disputed.
While Canada faced a bellicosis Mr. Trump, Mr. Trudeau relied on the oral skills he used to reassure the country during the cocovio pandemic and that helped him in power.
His strength during a crisis is that “he suddenly comes strong, finds his feet and is able to articulate a type of response largely emotional rather than a technocratic response,” said Michael Atkinson, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
However, on the domestic front, Mr. Trudeau leaves a country deeply in difficulty, faced with challenges which will be complicated and expensive to approach, including housing costs and the rise in grocery prices.
The photo of Mr. Trudeau was much more pink after having resurrected the Liberal Party and led him to a decisive victory during the October 2015 elections. He made climate change, feminism, reconciliation with indigenous peoples, immigration and poverty of children priorities. During the pandemic, he introduced programs for workers and companies that have reduced damage to the economy.
But the mood towards Mr. Trudeau began to move when he was dealing with personal and political failures.
The revelations on his penchant to dress in the black face or the brown face before entering politics have undermined his support; He said he was “deeply sorry”, but many people made fun of his assertion that practice was generally not considered racist 20 years earlier. Some of the most sumptuous holidays he has taken also aroused criticism.
And Mr. Trudeau was widely considered to be intimidation of a woman from his government, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Aboriginal lawyer who was Minister of Justice and Attorney General. She refused to yield to Mr. Trudeau’s pressure to conclude an agreement with an engineering company based in Montreal faced with corruption accusations; Mr. Trudeau said he was acting to save jobs by fearing the company’s ability to submission international contracts if it had been sentenced to criminal.
Ms. Wilson-Raybould resigned from the cabinet and then was expelled from the Liberal Party.
But it was the portfolio problems that finally sent the popularity of Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals in a descending spiral, because his approach to “Sunny Ways” politics exhausted his welcome.
Pushed by the consequences of the invasion of the pandemic and Russia of Ukraine, the cost of living has skyrocketed in Canada. Inflation was a global problem – it has climbed higher and remains higher in the United States and Europe – but Canadian voters, like those from other countries, have not been inclined to absolve their roam leaders. In some large cities, a typical start -up home now costs $ 1 million Canadian dollars, which hinders economic mobility.
Mr. Hairyvre seized the vulnerability of Mr. Trudeau to rub it tirelessly, often using three -words simple slogans – like “Ax the Tax”, a reference to a carbon tax that Mr. Carney deemed to end – which seemed to be better suited to the national mood.
When Mr. Trudeau asked for party management 12 years ago, he told the New York Times that he was initially reluctant to continue the position due to “the amount of waste that would be thrown to me and my family”.
He referred to some of the difficult periods met by his famous father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was the Canadian Prime Minister for more than 15 years, before leaving politics in 1984.
“This is how politics is done these days, even worse than when I was a child,” he said in the Times interview. “I remember seeing my parents go through very difficult moments.”
Stressing Mr. Trudeau’s discolving call, the demonstration began with truckers who paralyzed the city center of Ottawa for almost a month in 2022 was for many of its participants both on the Prime Minister and on Pandemic Restrictions.
The black flags which included a vulgarity before the name of Mr. Trudeau always fly, if it is often faded and in tatters, in many rural areas.
Mr. Trudeau did not speak publicly about what he will do next. But those who know him suggest a priority will be his family, after his separation from his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, last year.
Marc Miller, the Minister of Immigration who has been friends with Mr. Trudeau since the age of 11 and the two have been classmates in Montreal, predicted that he would return to a private life centered on his three children.
“He probably wants to take the time to spread his brain,” said Miller. “It is probably unsatisfactory for anyone who is really impatient to hear his next steps, but this is where the current state of his thought is.”
In the past few days, however, Mr. Trudeau has been very clear about what is in the lead.
On Sunday, in a farewell speech to the Liberals, he reminded Canada that the fighting is sometimes necessary. Then he said two words that Canadians who love hockey immediately understood and who became a battle cry: “elbows.”
