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Summary
• Trudeau announces resignation, will stay on as Liberal leader and PM until a new leader is chosen
• Trudeau to prorogue parliament until March 24
• Ruling Liberals trailing badly in polls, election is expected in the late spring
(Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces he intends to step down as Liberal party leader but will remain as Prime Minister until a new leader is chosen at a news conference today.
Trudeau’s departure will leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.
An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, had publicly urged Trudeau to quit.
Trudeau took over as Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was in deep trouble and had been reduced to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.
With his resignation today, it wwill likely spur fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a stable government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years.
Trudeau, 53, had been able to fend off Liberal legislators worried about the polls and the loss of safe seats in two special elections.
But calls for him to step aside had grown since December, when Trudeau tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest cabinet allies, after she pushed back against his proposals for more spending.
Freeland quit instead and penned a letter accusing Trudeau of “political gimmicks” rather than focusing on what was best for the country.
Trudeau propelled the Liberals to power in 2015 promising “sunny ways” and a progressive agenda that promoted the rights of women and a promise to fight climate change.
But the everyday realities of governing gradually wore him down and like many Western leaders, the need to deal with the effects of the pandemic ate up much of his time.
Although Ottawa spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses, racking up record budget deficits, this provided little protection from public anger as prices soared.
A botched immigration policy led to hundreds of thousands of arrivals, straining an already overheated housing market.
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