The Decibel - The end of the Trudeau era

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

After three federal election wins and just over nine years in office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation on Monday. Trudeau had been facing mounting pressure within his party to step down, after many months of polls showing dwindling public support for the Liberal party and several key by-election losses.Now, the Liberal Party has to choose a new leader while Parliament is prorogued.The Globe’s senior political reporter Marieke Walsh joins The Decibel to explain what led to Trudeau’s exit and what comes next as political uncertainty now looms over Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Over the holidays, I've also had a chance to reflect and have had long talks with my family about our future. So last night over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I'm sharing with you today. For months, people, including members of his own party, have been speculating about whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would step down. And on Monday, they finally got their answer. I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister. 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.

The Globe's senior political reporter, Mariko Walsh, covered the resignation and the months of turmoil inside the Liberal Party that led up to it. Today, she's here to help us understand what this means for the Liberals, for Parliament, and for Canada. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Marika, great to see you again. Thanks for having me, Manika. All right, so let's talk about what happened Monday morning, Marika, great to see you again. Thanks for having me, Manika. All right, so let's talk about what happened Monday morning, Marika. Trudeau announced his resignation in a press conference just outside of Rideau Cottage,

where he lives. Can you just tell us, like, what was that press conference like? Well, it will be actually a very familiar setting and visual for Canadians because it's the exact same setting that we saw in all of those pandemic press conferences. So kind of a strange throwback or reminder for the prime minister's office and his team to sort of set that stage. What really struck me about it was how he stood there alone announcing this huge decision. And it really speaks to just where he is in his own political arc and his own political career. He came to the Liberal Party's leadership and to power

and government all about team and talking about team, but also really talking about his family. And he is leaving acknowledging that the team is not behind him. And so it was a very stark sort of visual of him standing alone. At one point, even his speech blew away. It's freezing cold in Ottawa today.

It was just a really stark reminder that he is leaving office really alone, with his own party having really turned against him in a profound way in the last three weeks. And that's why he made this decision. Well, let's talk a little bit about that then. Like when he spoke on Monday morning, what did he say about why he's stepping down? Yeah. So he said he still has the fight, but that Canadians essentially deserve an election with a focused leader and he can't be that leader if he's dealing with what he called internal

squabbles or internal battles. So he really alluded to what we've been reporting over the last few weeks that he wanted to stay on as liberal leader. He believed that he was the right person still to lead the party despite the polling, despite all these metrics that show Canadians no longer felt that way, that he thought he was the best person to lead the liberals against the conservatives. But once your caucus has deserted you, you can't mount that challenge in the same way. You don't have the slate of candidates you need, and you're constantly distracted and thrown off your own agenda, your own message by your party. And so it just became untenable.

And that's what he publicly acknowledged. What was left unsaid is that voters, Canadians, have also turned against him. And that's actually why his party turned against him. He didn't acknowledge in any way the fact that voters have in several by-elections now very clearly shown their dissatisfaction with the government and with him. And we also have that in polling. So Trudeau said he was resigning, but he's actually not leaving right away. So Marika, what are the details of this?

How is this all going to happen? Well his announcement actually starts the clock on two races. The first is the liberal leadership race and the second is the general election that will now come soon after that. So what the prime minister announced on Monday is that he has asked the governor general to prorogue parliament. That means the work of the House of Commons and the Senate stops entirely. The parliamentary agenda, the legislative calendar is completely reset.

So all of the bills that we've been talking about that were delayed by the filibuster in the House of Commons, for example, they are all now dead on arrival. This is like the online harms bill, like capital gains, all of those then you're saying? All of those ones are now erased. And so he had to ask for prorogation because the liberals are in a minority government and the party couldn't risk having the government defeated while they're midway through a leadership race. But it also means that his own legacy, his own legislative

agenda cannot be completed while this race happens. So he will stay on as prime minister. The House and the Senate are on pause until the end of March. And at the end of March, the House will return with a new prime minister and a throne speech. And that will mark the end of the Justin Trudeau era. But that will also, in all likelihood, mark the start of a federal election campaign because the opposition parties on Monday

made clear that no matter who is the liberal leader, whoever replaces him, they will pull confidence. And there is a confidence vote after a thrown speech in the government. So Canadians can now expect a very rapid fire, fast liberal leadership campaign, a new prime minister, and then subsequently almost immediately a general election. So he's gonna prog until March 24th. Can we just explain the rationale here again? Like why do that? Why not just leave now?

When we talk about interim party leaders, it's often something that happens on opposition benches. And there's a lot more leadership races on the opposition side of the house and in those parties. So for example, people will be used to those discussions around when Stephen Harper lost the election in 2015, Ronna Ambrose was the interim conservative leader while the party elected a new leader. It's very different when the party that's in government is the one contending with this. So from our reporting in the last few weeks, we already knew the prime minister did not want to resign immediately and have an interim liberal leader. And that person would then replace him as prime minister while a new prime minister is being selected.

And you could argue that from a stability of government perspective and continuity of government that might not serve Canadians either, because then you would see a lot of change in leadership at a time that is particularly tenuous with Donald Trump's pending administration and the threats of tariffs and the need to respond to that. But it would just lead to a lot more upheaval. And it's not something we've seen with past resignations of prime ministers. For example, Brian Mulroney or Pierre Elliott True, Justin Trudeau's own father, when they announced they were resigning, they stayed on as prime minister until a permanent leader

of their party was selected. So Marika, let's look at what led to today. I want to take us back three weeks, the last time you and I were talking. This is of course when Christia Freeland resigned. How much does Trudeau's resignation today actually have to do with Freeland's resignation last month? It has everything to do with that resignation, but at the same time, it doesn't. And what I mean by that is that her resignation and how public it was, how sharply critical her

resignation letter also was of the prime minister and his leadership, really was the final straw that broke the camel's back. It really was that final push that emboldened caucus members who had been speaking privately, for example, to very publicly now call for his resignation. So in the last three weeks, at least two dozen MPs have publicly called for him to quit. That's about 16% of his caucus. That's a substantial number of people. And we know from our reporting that privately, more of them also wanted him to go. But I think the seeds were sown a lot earlier. And the seeds were sown another time that you and I spoke, and that was the St. Paul's by-election loss in Toronto in June. That was really the first

time the Liberals had a clear message from voters, not just from public opinion polling or from fundraising numbers, that Canadians had soured on them. They lost one of their safest, longest held seats in that by-election at the end of June. And it really was that first spark in the internal revolt that snowballed into Christian Freeland, that snowballed into the calls from other MPs for him to resign. I want to ask you just about some of your reporting in the last week or so here, Marika, because there was a lot going on and you and our colleague Bob Fife reported that Trudeau was going to step down the night before it happened, actually. You reported this on the weekend.

So I just wonder as much as you can tell us, like what were your sources saying about, I guess, what was going on behind the scenes there? Yeah, and our colleague Stephanie Levitz also played a big role in our reporting in the last few weeks. And it kind of, I think, has changed over that time since Freeland's resignation. What our reporting in the days that followed Freeland's resignation showed was that the prime minister was really up and down in his thinking.

Sources who spoke with him or were in contact with him or were in close contact with him told us some of them their takeaway from their conversation was that the prime minister was going to resign. But others did not have that takeaway. Others believed that he still wanted to stay on and that it was a question of exactly what we talked about earlier. This question of whether he has the team behind him in order to actually stay on. And so there was a bit of a push-pull, and you can imagine it's a huge decision.

He's been the prime minister for more than nine years. He's led the country through a lot of crises and chaos, and it is the end of one generation of government now for Canadians. So of course it's a big decision. It's one that he has been adamant that he would not be taking, right? So it's a huge change of heart as well for the prime minister. And so in that week, it was very up and down that first week before Christmas.

And the takeaway was that it was an open question. And we reported from senior sources at the time that he would take the holidays to make that decision. But that was not well received by liberals because liberals felt a sense of urgency. And the fact that he had decided to head into the holidays, leaving people guessing about his future left some liberals concerned that he was trying to buy time to stay on. Because of that, because of that sort of gap,

we saw, I think, more caucus leaks. If he had made that decision earlier, fewer MPs would have had the time or felt emboldened enough to make those comments, to ask for him to resign, to call for his exit, to call for a leadership race. So when we reported over the weekend that he was expected to resign before his Wednesday caucus meeting, it was really about him trying to still leave in some way on his own terms,

at least not looking like he was leaving in the wake of another finger wagging from caucus. You can have a big discussion about whether he is leaving on his own terms. I think most people think he's not. If he had wanted to do that, he would have had to leave several months ago, if not a year or a year and a half ago. But at least this way he could do it before having to face a caucus that was ever more hell-bent on seeing him take the door, take the exit. We'll be back after this message. So Marika Trudeau made this announcement Monday morning. What have the opposition

parties said in reaction to the news? What's been most interesting has been watching the evolution of Jagmeet Singh and the NDP over the last three weeks. So when we spoke in the wake of Freeland's exit on that Monday, December 16th, late in the evening, at that point, the NDP had left it very open that they could still end up supporting the liberals in their minority government, but that Trudeau had to go. By the end of that week, that had completely changed. It's completely forgotten now, but there was a cabinet shuffle right before Christmas. And on that same day, Jagmeet Singh announced

that actually they would table their own no- confidence motion in the liberals. And what he said now, um, on January 6th after the prime minister's announcement is that they will vote against whoever is the new leader. New Democrats will be voting against this government for an election where Canadians will have a choice. It doesn't matter who the leader is. The liberals have let you down. will have a choice. It doesn't matter who the leader is, the liberals have let you down. So that essentially makes the next federal election a fait accompli,

unless of course there's some procedural wrangling that we haven't foreseen yet from the new liberal leader, because the NDP were the holdout in giving confidence to the minority liberals. The Bloc and the Conservatives had already said they would not. Conservative leader Pierre Pauliev and Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet had actually very similar statements. They said whoever replaces Justin Trudeau does not change their legacy of this government's policies, does not, you know, it's essentially putting lipstick on a pig is their argument. I believe that Mr. Trudeau was right making the decision he made, even if it will cost us a few weeks before we get into elections, which is absolutely required.

They want to protect their pensions and paycheck by sweeping their hated leader under the rug months before an election to trick you and then do it all over again. And so they said they will not support whoever replaces him either. And that's why, as I mentioned earlier, we are not just looking at a liberal leadership race. We're also now looking at the countdown to a federal election. Yeah. And has there been reaction from the international community? I just wonder if other world leaders have made comments about this. Yeah, most notably Donald Trump, again, weighed in on Canadian politics, which he has done

several times now as Mr. Trudeau's own tenure became more precarious at the end of 2024. And he again made the case for making Canada the 51st state and said that would be one way to avoid the tariffs. I don't think any leader is going to be campaigning in the next federal election in the spring on this idea. But certainly we see again Donald Trump just needling the government and really poking fun and taking sort of advantage of this politically tenuous situation north of the border for his own fun. And what about reaction within the Liberal Party, Marika? I'm just wondering, do you get the sense, are people relieved?

Are they anxious with this? What's been the response? So some Liberals are pointing out the fact that the Prime Minister has made it very difficult for any successor to have really a shot at getting further ahead, at changing the dynamics that they face. The prime minister says that he, at his press conference today, was asked about this and he said he believes that there are strong leadership contenders in the Liberal Party who could take on Pierre Pauliev.

But certainly the challenge ahead is monumental and past precedent does not speak well for whoever is to take on this role. So we actually saw more and more polling coming out showing that the liberal's fortunes were going down in terms of seat count, that they could actually be reduced to a smaller seat count than they were after the 2011 election. That's really significant. When the liberals were decimated in the 2011 election, people began to write off the party. And Justin Trudeau, when he won the leadership and then won the 2015 election, was heralded as a savior. And

now a big question facing liberals is, does the party return to exactly where it was when he started. On the flip side though, there is a lot of optimism and hope from MPs. They're publicly expressing a lot of optimism and in some cases relief that this decision has finally come, that they're finally able to move on from what they believe was this untenable situation of the prime minister staying as a leader into the next election, and that they now have the opportunity to reset the liberal agenda and to present a new face and a new team to voters. For example, Wayne Long, who has been, who was really one of the first, if not the first MP in the summer

to call for the prime minister to resign, said there is relief, excitement, and anticipation, a chance to start new. So many liberals are talking about the opportunities now that they see and also interestingly talking about the need to bring the party back towards the center, that maybe they went too far left in rolling out this progressive vision and rolling out this progressive agenda and then also striking a deal with the NDP that led to even more spending and new government programs. Well, it does sound like there's a lot of things up in the air right now for the liberals, right? So, you know, you mentioned that a lot of people are trying to take more of a

positive tone here, but it does seem like there's a lot of people are trying to take more of a positive tone here, but it does seem like there's a lot of challenges. I guess I wonder, Marika, why would someone want to lead the liberals at this point? Why would you want to go into an all but guaranteed defeat basically in the next election? That is a great question, and I will quote someone else. Scott Reed was on CTV News. He's a liberal strategist, long-time liberal commentator. He was Paul Martin's director of communications and he said ego.

So you know, there is a certain amount of confidence that you need to get into politics in the first place. And there will always be people who will want to be prime minister who will want to take that shot and see what they can do with it. But I will certainly caution that when we were starting this reporting months ago now in the wake of the St. Paul's by-election defeat and then in the lead up to the Montreal by-election defeat, when we were doing then a story about why Justin Trudeau was staying, why he was defiant, some liberals were also saying, we need him to stay.

We can't risk the situation of Brian Mulroney quitting and then Kim Campbell replacing him and that party never recovering and being decimated to two seats. And so we do not know now where this goes, but the liberal caucus, the people who spoke out calling for his resignation, clearly thought there was more upside to an election campaign with a new leader than there was with Justin Trudeau at the helm. And

so in that context, they are the ones now saying optimistically that they have more hope, they see more of a future and more opportunity. So as it stands now, just very quickly, who are the leading contenders to actually replace Trudeau as liberal leader? Well, two of them are the people that took up a lot of the attention in our reporting in December, and that would be Christa Freeland and Mark Carney. And it's a super interesting turn of events, and it's why politics is so fascinating because prior to December 16th and Christa Freeland's resignation letter, she was not popular

within the Liberal Party or within the Liberal caucus. She was seen as one of the problems for the Liberal government and why they've struggled to communicate to Canadians, why they've struggled to appear tuned into the affordability crisis and caucus members were actually calling for her to be the one to be replaced. And then when the prime minister actually decided he was going to fire her as finance minister, how that rolled out was so badly handled that all of a sudden she went through a remarkable rebranding and became in some ways the unofficial ringleader of sort of the final revolt against the prime minister. How that plays out now is going to be a very interesting question.

Whether she is really able to change the dynamic from before December 16th is a big question, but certainly she is working the phones, she's looking at organizing. The other person who is the one to watch is Mark Kearney. He was the one who was supposed to replace her as finance minister. That clearly did not happen. He has never explained or publicly commented on our stories despite our efforts to get a comment from him about what happened and whether he was going to enter. Other names are Dominique LeBlanc, who was one of the prime minister's closest friends and is the new finance minister. So, finance just has everything to do with all of this. And other names that I'm curious if they do end up

entering the race, Melanie Jolie, for example, the foreign minister, Francois Philippe Champagne, the industry minister. Anita Anand has been talked about in the past, but seems to be a less likely candidate now. And another one is Chrissy Clark, the former BC Premier, who would be a whole other mix in this dynamic because she is not tied to the government policies the way that others are. Yeah. All right. So just lastly here, Marika, before I let you go, we're waiting now for a new liberal

leader to be chosen. Parliament is prorogued until March 24th. What exactly can we expect to happen when Parliament resumes at the end of March? Well, first, everything's going to happen before then. And by that, I mean, so much is still on the political agenda before we even hit that. Just Donald Trump's inauguration and whether he levels those tariffs and how the government responds to that and how in particular Justin Trudeau is able to respond to that given his weakened position as a leader on his way out are huge questions that have significant impact on the economy, on Canadians' pocketbooks, on businesses, small and large. So there's that to look for. And then there's also just this week and next week there's going to be a crazy Russian race among liberals to set the rules, to figure out what rule book they will follow, how they will actually get their house in order to have a leadership race in less than three months, which is a huge, huge undertaking. And then whoever that new leader is will have to select a new cabinet, have to find

more than 300 candidates to run in the next federal election, and prepare an agenda, a throne speech that in all likelihood will be defeated, triggering that next election. And that's just what we know is coming, Monica. We always know there's stuff unknown coming. So there is a lot still to come, but certainly Canadians, I think, should be prepared for an election this spring before the summer. Marika, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramen-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal

Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.