‘a Dumpster Fire, Wrapped Up In A Cluster’: Inside The Chaos Of Justin Trudeau’s Ottawa

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's week started with a crisis his opponents likened to a “gong show at the bottom of a dumpster fire, wrapped up in a cluster.”

Canada's three-term prime minister managed to make it to Friday when he announced a Cabinet shakeup triggered in part by the bombshell exit of Chrystia Freeland, who quit Monday as head of finance and deputy prime minister.

Trudeau spent the week holed up in his office, except for appearances at a couple of high-profile holiday parties where he sounded defiant and upbeat.

“It is the absolute privilege of my life to serve as your prime minister,” he told a gathering of his top donors on Monday — just 30 minutes after an emergency caucus meeting where MPs urged him to step down.

His office canceled year-end interviews and his press team ignored most media questions while Trudeau contemplated his next moves.

“We have a lot of work to do and that’s what we’re focused on,” he said after blowing by journalists after a Cabinet meeting later Friday afternoon.

Parliament does not return until Jan. 27 — days after Donald Trump’s inauguration. In theory, Trudeau has time to consider his options, but realistically he’s running out of time.

He could stick around to fight the next election, which could come sooner rather than later in 2025. Once MPs are back in their seats, opposition leader Jagmeet Singh has vowed to bring down the minority government with a no-confidence vote.

There’s no mechanism to oust the Liberal leader. Trudeau could announce plans to resign, sticking around until a new leader is chosen. It’s a process that could take several months. He could also prorogue Parliament in the new year — essentially pulling the plug on it — to buy the government more time.

He could step aside entirely and an interim PM would be put in place, a scenario so rare it would make history in itself.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been crushing Liberals in national polls for more than a year. Amid Trump’s return to the White House and looming tariff war, he’s amped up his calls for an election as soon as possible — a contest he’s expected to win in a landslide.

“Some feminist. The same week as Trudeau was insulting Americans for not electing a woman president, he was busy throwing his own woman deputy prime minister under the bus to replace her with a man,” Poilievre said of the “incredible, ridiculous, embarrassing” day. “You can't make this stuff up.”

Outside meeting rooms on Parliament Hill and inside Liberal holiday parties, POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen Liberal MPs, staffers and party members for insight into the chaos. They were granted anonymity to speak freely.

The mayhem started Monday, when Freeland quit as Canada’s finance minister hours before she was set to present a major economic plan. In the words of one official: Freeland dropped an “atomic bomb” on the Prime Minister’s Office.

Freeland’s exit note referenced weeks of tension with Trudeau over “costly political gimmicks” — a Yuletide tax holiday for Canadians — at a time when she said the federal treasury should be focused on a potential tariff war.

She used her exit to warn that how Ottawa deals with Trump “will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer.”

Trudeau informed Freeland last week during a Zoom call that he intended to replace her as finance minister. The party was rumored to be courting former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who has been flirting with the Liberals for a couple of years now. Many expect him to run for the Liberal leadership one day.

Trudeau offered Freeland a new role in charge of Canada-U.S. relations and was under the impression — through texts — that she was willing to take it on. It was not until Monday as his motorcade pulled onto the Hill that he discovered she was out. POLITICO has not seen the texts.

One senior government source told POLITICO Carney “switched up at the last minute” saying he wouldn’t join the Cabinet if Freeland wasn’t there.

By the time Trudeau walked upstairs to his office, Freeland had posted her resignation letter on X. Trump rejoiced in her resignation. One senior government source said the president-elect expressed dislike for Freeland, who helped renegotiate NAFTA, during his dinner with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago.

From then on through to Friday’s Cabinet shuffle, senior officials in the Government of Canada made it up as they went along.

Networks were airing live footage of Trudeau addressing the caucus at an emergency meeting at the same time his team was insisting he wasn’t in the room. He told the room there’s “two sides to the story” but has left his caucus widely in the dark, several lawmakers said.

Trudeau has been under pressure since his party lost a Toronto stronghold in a special election in June. Liberals have lost two more since, including a blowout in British Columbia on Monday — the same day Freeland resigned.

The Prime Minister’s Office has been trying to source the media leaks. Staffers say they don’t know who to trust. There were even tears this week. Transport Minister Anita Anand was visibly choked up. After a rare December Cabinet shuffle, some ministers' staffers are wondering if they’ll have a job after Christmas.

Freeland’s exit has reenergized the Liberal MPs who attempted a caucus revolt earlier this fall.

“Finally we’ve got somebody like Chrystia Freeland who has made a major move, and my hope is a lot of Cabinet ministers will start to speak up and say publicly what they all know: The prime minister’s political career is essentially over,” Liberal backbencher Wayne Long told POLITICO.

Trudeau’s struggles, both internally and in opinion polls, place him in a global line of sinking incumbents — U.K. Tory PM Rishi Sunak, France's Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

At the Liberal Christmas party on Wednesday, a photo line for Freeland rivaled the one for the PM. At a Liberal afterparty, it was all anyone could talk about.

When Trudeau’s new Cabinet was sworn in Friday, his top lawmakers urged the party to unite and refocus their frustration on a collective adversary: Donald Trump.