Justin Trudeau’s announcement on Monday that he would resign was the last card that Canada’s deeply unpopular prime minister, who had set his party on course to lose a national election, had left to play.
The political levers he has pulled will give Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party a chance to reinvent itself without him. But they will also leave Canada weakened as it braces for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has threatened the country with tariffs that could cripple its economy.
It appears to be a gamble that Mr. Trudeau is willing to take.
To allow his party’s thousands of members to choose his successor, a lengthy process that will involve campaigning, Mr. Trudeau suspended Parliament until March 24. A general election is expected to follow.
Holding a party leadership election before a general one is par for the course in countries with parliamentary systems like Canada’s. Suspending Parliament to hold such an election is far less common. By doing so, Mr. Trudeau wards off the likely collapse of his minority government and gives the Liberals time to choose a leader unburdened by his dismal poll numbers.
But it means that in two weeks, when Mr. Trump returns to the Oval Office, Mr. Trudeau will be leading Canada as a lame duck, weakening the country’s hand in crucial negotiations with its closest ally.
“The prime minister stepping down means it will be hard for him to carry any meaningful mandate in negotiating with the U.S., and it doesn’t signal any unity within Canada,” said Xavier Delgado, a senior program associate at the Canada Institute of the Wilson Center, a Washington-based foreign policy research institute. “It’s not a great time for Canada to be in this situation.”
Mr. Trudeau’s opponents wanted a quick general election, which would let a new government with a fresh mandate — presumably led by Pierre Poilievre, whose Conservative Party has a commanding lead in polls — spearhead Canada’s response to Mr. Trump as soon as possible.
Mr. Trump has threatened to slap punishing tariffs on Canadian goods that could send the country’s economy into a recession and upend the North American trade pact established over the past few decades. (It would also be injurious to the U.S. economy; the two nations are each other’s biggest trading partners.)
The president-elect has persistently suggested that Canada should become part of the United States, calling it the “51st state.” He repeated his menacing joke on social media on Monday, after Mr. Trudeau’s resignation announcement: “Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social, promising no tariffs if Canada “merged with the U.S.”
Party first
When Mr. Trudeau became the Liberals’ leader, the party was in shambles. In the 2011 national elections, it finished third for the first time in its history. Mr. Trudeau, who assumed its leadership in 2013, is widely credited with raising it from the dead and leading it back into government two years later.
“The Liberal Party, such as it is, has been the Justin Trudeau party for more than a decade,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a research center. That has made it hard for the party to let go of him and for Mr. Trudeau to relinquish control, Ms. Kurl said.
But finally, on Monday morning, after weeks of pressure from within the party to resign, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged that his time was up.
“I truly feel that removing the contention around my own continued leadership is an opportunity to bring the temperature down,” he told reporters gathered in the freezing cold outside his Ottawa residence.
“It’s become obvious to me with the internal battles that I cannot be the one to carry the Liberal standard into the next election,” he added. Until the Liberals choose their new leader, Mr. Trudeau said, he will stay on in that role and as prime minister.
The party’s internal election process, which will last several weeks, will allow a handful of hopefuls to reintroduce themselves to the public, no longer as Trudeau associates but as individuals vying for the party’s and the country’s leadership.
“I think the Liberals are now clinging to the idea that there is no longer a path forward for him, but there is absolutely a path forward for someone else,” Ms. Kurl said.
Still, with the Conservatives leading the Liberals by 25 percentage points in recent surveys, the path that Mr. Trudeau bequeaths his successor is likely to be treacherous.
“Sixty or 90 days are not a long time to reinvent a party after 10 years in power,” Ms. Kurl said. “How many more rabbits are in the hat? How many more pivots are there?”
Brief relief
For many Canadians, Mr. Trudeau’s departure was a necessary condition if they were going to consider voting for the Liberals.
David Coletto, who leads Abacus Data, a polling company, said early research on Monday suggested that Canadians felt relief at the news of Mr. Trudeau’s resignation, and that his departure had the potential to shift attention away from his unpopularity.
“People are saying they feel relieved and optimistic about the prime minister stepping down,’’ he said. “That’s a signal to me that there’s potentially an opportunity for the Liberals to rebuild the relationship with Canadians.” But it is far from certain that this will happen, he cautioned.
While Mr. Trudeau’s departure can only improve the Liberals’ situation, analysts said, the country is unlikely to benefit from being practically leaderless as Mr. Trump takes office.
As the new president begins to push through his agenda — which has Canada in its cross hairs, with Mr. Trump having complained about border security, Canadian military spending and a trade imbalance — Canada will be trying to sort out who’s in charge.
“Canada would be strongest in dealing with the United States if it could unify around the message for its leader — and that would apply to any country,” said Mr. Delgado of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute.
Others were less concerned, suggesting that Canada’s dealings with the Trump administration would be a long game.
Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Mr. Trudeau who is now vice president at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, said no leader would be able to cut a deal with Mr. Trump on Day 1.
“Nothing irreparably bad will happen in the next three months,” Mr. Butts said. “We’re going to have Trump for four years; the next three months are not going to be the whole story.”
