Justin Trudeau is stepping down.
Speaking in front of Rideau Cottage Monday morning, Trudeau said he will resign as Liberal leader and prime minister once his party chooses a replacement.
He also asked for and was granted by the Governor General a prorogation of Parliament until March 24.
“I intend to resign as party leader (and) as prime minister after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nation-wide, competitive process,” Trudeau said. “Last night, I asked the president of the Liberal party to begin that process.”
Trudeau said his party’s internal tumult made him unsuitable to lead it into the election.
“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,” he said.
Trudeau also cited a “paralysis” in Parliament as motivating his decision. Calls for his resignation have been mounting for weeks from within his own caucus and pledges from opposition leaders made his government unlikely to survive a non-confidence vote once the House of Commons returned later this month.
He said taking himself out of the equation will hopefully “bring the temperature down” and “decrease the level of polarization” in the House of Commons and Canadian politics.
Prorogation suspends all business of Parliament – including committees. The House of Commons public accounts committee was slated to meet this week on a Conservative motion of non-confidence in the government.
March 24 is the latest point until which the government could prorogue Parliament because the government will run out of money if a supply bill is not passed by the end of that month.
Trudeau said his biggest regret was not implementing electoral reform as he originally promised when first elected in 2015. He said he wished he would have changed the system to allow Canadians to choose a second and third choice on ballots.
“People would have been looking for things they have in common instead of trying to polarize and divide Canadians against each other,” he said.
The announcement comes just weeks after Trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned from cabinet just hours before she was supposed to present the government’s fall economic statement.
In her resignation letter, Freeland took shots at the prime minister, citing “costly political gimmicks” when Canada was preparing for a potential trade war with the US.
Following her announcement, Abacus Data polling found that more than half of all Canadians wanted an election to be called immediately, with only 11% saying that Trudeau and the Liberals deserve to be re-elected.
At the beginning of the New Year, Angus Reid Institute reported that voting intentions for the Liberals had fallen to a historic low, with only 16% reporting an intention to vote for the Liberal party in the next election.
The setting of his resignation is familiar to many Canadians as the front door of Trudeau’s Rideau Cottage was the scene of many government announcements during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
His resignation comes two weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Trump announced that on day one of his administration, he would levy a 25% tariff on all products from Canada until it secured the border against illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
