Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walks through the streets of the capital before attending the APEC CEO Summit, a business event held in parallel to the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, on November 15, 2024.
Clever Vasquez | Anadolu | Getty Images
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not made a final decision but is increasingly likely to announce his intention to resign, a person familiar with his thinking said on Sunday.
After the Globe and Mail report, the same person told Reuters that Trudeau is expected to announce his resignation as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party as early as Monday after nine years in office. .
The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Trudeau’s resignation leaves the party without a permanent leader, as polls show the Liberals will lose a landslide to the official opposition Conservative Party in an election that is due to be held by late October. .
Sources told the Globe and Mail that it was not clear when Trudeau would announce his withdrawal plan, but they expected it to be before an emergency meeting of Liberal MPs on Wednesday. He said he is doing so.
Alarmed by a series of dismal polls, a growing number of Liberal MPs are publicly calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours. The prime minister’s regularly published schedule for Monday said he would participate virtually in a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Canada-U.S. Relations.
The Globe and Mail reports that it remains unclear whether Trudeau will step down immediately or remain in office until a new Liberal leader is elected.
There are growing calls for his resignation.
Prime Minister Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013, when the party was in deep crisis and fell to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.
If he resigns, it is likely to spark new calls for an early election to form a stable government capable of handling the next four years of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
A person familiar with the matter told the paper that the Prime Minister was in talks with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc about whether he would be willing to serve as interim party leader and prime minister, adding that if Mr LeBlanc intended to run for leadership, that would not be possible. He added that it would be.
Trudeau, 53, had successfully fended off Liberal MPs worried about losing safe seats at the polls and in two special elections.
But calls for Trudeau to resign have grown since December, when he tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest allies in the cabinet, after she opposed a spending increase. are.
Mr. Freeland instead resigned and wrote a letter accusing Mr. Trudeau of “political maneuvering” rather than what is best for the country.
Prime Minister Trudeau brought the Liberals to power in 2015 on a promise of a “sunny road,” progressive policies promoting women’s rights and fighting climate change.
But the day-to-day realities of governing gradually wore him down, and like many Western leaders, the need to deal with the effects of the pandemic took up much of his time.
Ottawa spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses and racked up a record budget deficit, but it did little to protect it from public anger over soaring prices.
Failures in immigration policy led to an influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, straining an already overheated housing market.
