Justin Trudeau To Resign — The Latest Global Leader To Fall

OTTAWA — Canada’s Justin Trudeau era is coming to an end.

The three-term prime minister announced Monday morning that he plans to step down as prime minister and as party leader once the Liberals choose his successor.

Trudeau told Canadians in a televised address that although he prides himself on being a fighter, he will step aside because of the divisiveness and polarization around his leadership — including inside his own caucus.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” Trudeau said from a lectern outside the front door of his official residence on a frigid winter morning.

Trudeau chose a backdrop familiar to Canadians: his front door was where he addressed the anxious nation at least 80 times in the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a period of his rule where his popularity was high, unlike today.

Trudeau also announced that the governor general granted his request to shut down the Parliament until March 24, a move that adds to uncertainty in Ottawa ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House.

The prorogation of Parliament comes in face of Trump’s threats to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports to the U.S. — something he said he could do on his first day in the White House on Jan. 20.

Trudeau's announcement of prorogation ends the current parliamentary session and stops legislation and committee business in their tracks.

Prorogation is a blunt tool meant to allow Trudeau's inner circle to regroup following the recent resignation of the prime minister’s longtime finance minister and ally, Chrystia Freeland

Trudeau suffered a fatal blow in December when Freeland quit Cabinet in a stunning departure that capped a catastrophic year for the prime minister.

Many Liberal lawmakers lost the faith shortly afterwards, encouraging the prime minister to step aside for the good of his party — and his own legacy.

Trudeau addressed Freeland’s departure for the first time on Monday calling her “an incredible political partner” for much of the past decade. He confirmed he had wanted her to stay on as his deputy prime minister “and take on one of the most important files that not just this government but this country is facing.

“But she chose otherwise.”

The prime minister’s departure will leave Liberals scrambling for a new leader to take on Pierre Poilievre, Canada's ascendant Conservative leader.

In a pre-recorded video released on X, shortly after Trudeau’s announcement, Poilievre called for an immediate election. He accused all Liberal MPs of backing policies that have left the country “broken.”

“Their only objection is that he is no longer popular enough to win an election and keep them in power,” he said.

Trudeau is the latest victim in a global line of sinking incumbents — U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, France's Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for example — who left the global pandemic with a foot in the political grave.