The rising cost of living, openness to migrants, the housing crisis, an overburdened health care system, unemployment, helplessness in the face of Trump's threats - all of these have projected Trudeau's public perception. But how will Canadians remember him when the dust settles after the 2025 election? What will be the legacy of the Liberal leader's more than nine years in power?
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his departure from office on Monday. The politician will lead the Canadian government until the Liberal Party elects a new leader to take over the prime ministerial portfolio and lead the party to elections. Even if parliament - whose deliberations have been suspended until March at Trudeau's request - fails to pass a vote of no confidence in the government in its first session (the Liberals do not have a majority), elections must still be held in October at the latest. Today their clear favorite is the Canadian Conservatives - in the polls they have a lead of more than 20 percentage points over the Liberals.
It is not surprising in a liberal democracy for a politician to resign after more than nine years at the head of government. But the Canadian announced his decision at a very significant time, just over two weeks before Trump returns to the White House. It marks the end of an era politically - an era of progressive, or at least liberal, optimism, symbolized by figures like Barack Obama and other leaders who, even if they weren't particularly leftist, promised a range of progressive changes: on the environment, civil rights, racial justice, and were able to build winning liberal-left coalitions around them.
Half a year of trouble
The Canadian prime minister is leaving after weeks of humiliation, with Trump calling him "governor" on his social media and encouraging Canada to become the 51st US state. One of the reasons for Trudeau's troubles in his own party was a dispute over how the country should prepare for the Republican's announced 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports, which most economists believe would push the Canadian economy into recession. It is heavily dependent on exports, with as much as 80 percent of its exports going to the United States. Whether Trump carries out the threat is expected to depend on Canada's effectiveness (he has imposed the same condition on Mexico) in stopping illegal migration and drug smuggling into the United States.
However, Justin Trudeau's troubles began to escalate as early as June 2024, when the Liberals lost a by-election in Toronto, a district they had won continuously since 1988. In September, the vote in another theoretically safe district (they had been winning there since its creation within its current borders 10 years ago) - located in Montreal - brought another defeat.
Also in September, the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) terminated an agreement supporting the government. The Liberals won the 2021 election, but did not have an independent majority in the House of Commons - the fate of their government depended on votes from the left. The NDP cited Trudeau's approach to the railroad strike as the official reason for disengaging from the Trudeau cabinet, but in reality it may have been about the upcoming election and a desire to distance themselves from an unpopular government. At the same time, the NDP did not want an early election and was not ready to vote with the Conservatives for a vote of no confidence in Trudeau.
On December 15, 2024, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of Trudeau's closest aides for years, resigned. In an open letter, she accused the prime minister of underestimating the seriousness of the threat posed by U.S. tariffs, and instead of preparing the Canadian economy for them - primarily by reducing the budget deficit - she engaged in populist electoral tricks, such as exempting many products bought for Christmas (including Christmas trees) from purchase tax.
Five days later, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced that as soon as parliament returned to work after the holiday recess, his party would file a motion of no confidence in the government - which, with the support of the Conservatives, would force an early election. After Freeland's resignation, signaling a loss of support for Trudeau in his parent party, and Singh's declaration, the prime minister had essentially no move but to step down.
Beaten by a pandemic?
Even if it weren't for the problems of recent months, it would be hard to imagine Justin Trudeau leading his party to election for a fourth time. Only a third of those surveyed think he is doing a good job; 70 percent have a bad opinion of the state of Canada under his rule. Since the summer of 2022, the Conservatives have continuously had higher average support in the polls than the Liberals.
Canada's prime minister is another leader paying the political price for the economic problems caused by the pandemic. Although inflation is expected to hover around just 2 percent in 2024, Canadians still remember 2022, when it hit nearly 7 percent. But that's not all.
As the Financial Times reports, unemployment is on the rise in the country - now reaching 7 percent - and Canadian households are the most indebted among G7 members, making them particularly vulnerable to the effects of a possible recession. As many as 38 percent of respondents said their financial situation was worse in 2024 than in the previous year - the best result since 2021, but still one of the worst in the last 14 years of conducting similar surveys. As many as 2 million Canadians used food banks in 2024 - 90 percent more than in 2019. At the same time, in the second quarter of 2024, income inequality in Canada reached the highest in the history of measurement - for which the increase in investment earnings, flowing to the top 20 percent of earners, is mainly responsible.
Added to this are problems with the affordability of residential real estate, especially in large centers. The Trudeau government's "overly liberal" migration policy is widely believed to be co-responsible for this state of affairs. Today, as the New York Times calculates, about 20 percent of the population living in Canada was born outside the country, and more than 2 million people have entered the country in the past two years alone.
Migration was initially widely supported by Canadians, but in recent months the consensus has begun to crumble. The Trudeau government itself decided to introduce legislation in 2024 to make it more difficult for migrants who have been granted temporary residency to apply for permanent residency, but for frustrated citizens this is not enough.
Trudeau's legacy
The rising cost of living, openness to migrants, the housing crisis, an overburdened health care system, unemployment, helplessness in the face of Trump's threats - all of these have projected Trudeau's public perception. But how will Canadians remember him when the dust settles after the 2025 election? What will be the legacy of the Liberal leader's more than nine years in power?
As Prime Minister, Trudeau has always had a knack for symbolic gestures, attracting attention and eliciting applause from progressive public opinion around the world. In 2015, he formed Canada's first-ever government with equal numbers of men and women. He proudly celebrated the country's multiculturalism as a great asset. When Trump issued an executive order in 2017 closing U.S. borders to citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, Trudeau portrayed himself as the leader of a country open to refugees from all latitudes, cultures and civilizations. He also launched a national discussion of the Canadian state's transgressions against its indigenous peoples.
This is not worth ignoring - better insincere and little-changing nods to progressive values than policies that openly celebrate racial or national prejudice or misogyny. Nevertheless, the question of what Trudeau is really leaving behind is a legitimate one.
One of the Liberal government's priorities was supposed to be an ambitious climate policy. It has taken a number of measures to bring Canada closer to its emission reduction targets - but as the November 2024 report of the Federal Environment Commissioner showed, the process has been much slower than expected, and Canada is doing the worst among the G7 countries in meeting its targets.
One of Trudeau's main climate policy tools was an emissions tax with rebates for consumers. Today it is being furiously attacked by the Conservatives and portrayed as a source of high prices and a constraint on Canadian business growth. After a change in power, it will likely be abolished or severely curtailed.
Trudeau has also launched some social programs - the most important one involves reducing the cost of preschool care to $10 a day by 2026. For parents, this is a significant change, but for the iconic status the prime minister has enjoyed (especially in his first two years in office), it's not much. Trudeau has always tried to reconcile progressive social and environmental policies with status quo-sustaining economic policies - 2025 differs from 2015 in that there is very little space left for such solutions.
Poilievre is not quite the "Canadian Trump"
Perhaps Trudeau's greatest success will turn out to be that the ensuing right-wing-populist backlash in Canada after his rule will be much milder than that in the US or many European countries. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who is likely to become prime minister this year, undoubtedly uses populist language and pits simple people against liberal elites, and has gained popularity from his support for the 2022 anti-covid protests.
At the same time, as American "Vox" points out, Poilievre's populism is much more moderate than Trump's. Yes, he talks about the need to curb migration, but he justifies it mainly by the housing market situation, without demonizing migrants. The Canadian's populism is hardly nativist.
Although in a recent interview with Jordan Peterson - after five days it has nearly 3 million views - Poilievre nods to the alt-right guru when he talks about the need to move away from a "post-national" conception of Canadianness and affirm "the ethos of Canada as a country rooted in Western identity," it is clear that more than the "war on woke" politician is interested in deregulation, loosening environmental norms, dismantling the welfare state and state institutions in general. In the interview, Poilievre reiterates to Canadians: you can't realize your dreams, such as buying a house, because the fruits of your labor go to maintain a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy, and arbitrary regulations loop the development of business, which flees us to the States - and I will change that. He is more reminiscent of Tea Party activists from more than a decade ago than Trump.
Undoubtedly, Poilievre will be closer ideologically to Trump than Trudeau. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the Republican will forgive him on the issue of tariffs. All the while, we don't know how serious Trump's announcements on trade relations with Canada are, or how we should actually treat the announcements on the 51st state.
On Tuesday, at a conference at his Florida residence, the U.S. president-elect again weighed the merits of annexing Canada, complained about the cost of protecting the border with its northern neighbor and the unfavorable balance of trade with it. He ruled out the possibility of using military force, but not the use of economic coercive measures. This can hardly be explained solely by a desire to troll the ideologically distant Trudeau. With such a partner across the southern border, Canada's most right-wing populist prime minister may not be able to forge good relations.
