Canada’s Justin Trudeau Should Resign

The problem with criticizing Justin Trudeau is not where to begin but where to end. Trudeau’s proclivity for gaffes and vulgarity was established long before he became prime minister. And this fluffy, insubstantial side even seemed like it might have an upside as he formed a government: as long as Trudeau focused on annoying stunts and virtue-signaling, he would have little time for screwing up the country. Sadly, however, his government’s long procession of scandals and missteps has proven that theory wrong.

Trudeau’s latest crisis is arguably the worst. The incoming Trump administration has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. unless Canada stops the flow of drugs and migrants over the border. The trade relationship between Canada and the United States is the largest between any two countries in the world. The total value of cross border trade was $926 billion in 2023, or roughly $2.5 billion a day. This reality should make any problem with border security a high priority for Canada; and any threat of tariffs is a national emergency.

How did Trudeau react? First, he had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which seems to have produced no result. Next, at the Equal Voice Gala for International Human Rights Day, Trudeau delivered a speech attacking the United States for failing to elect Kamala Harris and declaring himself a “proud feminist.” Then he executed a series of ham-fisted moves to reassign his minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, and replace her with Mark Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Freeland refused this demotion and tendered her resignation.

That all happened on the same morning that Freeland was to present a budgetary update known as the Fall Economic Statement, which was already weeks overdue. Whatever disagreement unfolded behind closed doors between Trudeau and Freeland likely concerned increased borrowing and spending on two cynical vote-buying schemes: a two-month holiday from the Goods and Services Tax, and a $250 rebate to families making less than $150,000 a year. What purpose is served by shoe-horning Carney into the government is not clear. But the latest episode seems to repeat an old pattern familiar from the SNC Lavalin scandal, in which Trudeau bullied and expelled his own female (and indigenous) attorney general from his cabinet for resisting pressure to cut a deal for a politically connected corporation facing corruption charges. In the event, the “feminist” Trudeau sacked the woman and replaced her with a more obedient male.

Hypocrisy and parliamentary turmoil aren’t the worst parts of the present situation, though. The Fall Economic Statement is effectively a mini-budget, meant to assess Canada’s finances going into the next year. The fiscal picture is grim: a decade of pointless borrowing and spending has left a deficit of $62 billion for the past year, $20 billion higher than the government had promised. The government does not appear to have made any effort to meet its NATO defense-spending commitment of 2 percent of GDP. And it has set aside a meager $1.3 billion for border security.

This is the work of a government that has long given up on everything but the instinct to remain in power and run out the clock to the next election. Trudeau’s Liberal Party has been a dominant political force in Canada for the better part of the last century. Its historical achievements include facing down Quebecois secessionism in the 1960s and 1970s, balancing the budget and restoring fiscal probity in the 1990s, and setting the country up to weather the global financial crash of 2008 relatively well. In fact, the 1990s Liberal Party stood for outright fiscal austerity, moderate immigration (though the system needed reform), fairly conservative social policies, and a renewed emphasis on national unity and soft nationalism after the 1995 Quebec Crisis. Today’s liberals would consider all this as dangerously right-wing.

The party of Justin Trudeau has mutated into something resembling a cult of personality. Its partisans spew such deranged vitriol online that CNN host Jake Tapper coined the term Tru-Anon to describe them. They cannot abide even the mildest criticism of Trudeau, whether it’s his elbowing a female opposition MP in the breast, groping a female reporter, or wearing blackface and singing the “Banana Boat” song more times than he apparently can remember. Meantime, the world is aware of Trudeau’s vicious attack on the truckers who converged on Ottawa in early 2022 to protest Covid restrictions. At Trudeau’s behest, Freeland invoked the draconian Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts. Trudeau also denounced his critics, however well-meaning, as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

But now the dam is cracking, and liberal partisans are finally calling for Trudeau’s resignation. His approval rating now flirts with Richard Nixon’s after Watergate. It will likely keep falling until he leaves and a new government is elected.

The longer Trudeau remains in power, the more unstable America’s largest trading partner and closest ally will become. Freeland’s resignation letter put it well. Now is the time, she said, to avoid “costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.” If Trudeau will not put aside personal vanity and lead Canada through the “gravity of the moment,” then he needs to make way for someone who will.

Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images