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00:00With the battles having grown too big to fight, Justin Trudeau has brandished the white flag.
00:06Last night over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I'm sharing with you today.
00:14I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister,
00:19after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process.
00:28In-house tensions reached their peak three weeks ago,
00:31when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau's most loyal cabinet member, handed in her resignation.
00:38The now outgoing Canadian Prime Minister says he's asked the party's president to begin the voting process,
00:44as the Liberal Party will seek to restructure ahead of the general election to come before the end of October.
00:51I'm excited to see the process unfold in the months ahead.
00:57We were elected for the third time in 2021 to strengthen the economy post-pandemic
01:04and advance Canada's interests in a complicated world.
01:08And that is exactly the job that I and we will continue to do for Canadians.
01:16Trudeau's popularity among voters has waned post-pandemic,
01:20with Canadians unsatisfied with his measures to battle the cost-of-living crisis.
01:26Voted in as the country's second-youngest prime minister in 2015,
01:30Trudeau was at first celebrated for bringing liberal values back to Canada following a decade of conservative rule.
01:37But now, some studies have found that the Liberal Party is at its lowest rate of support in the country's modern history.
01:44While leaderless liberals focus on saving their jobs...
01:47While the leader of the opposition is twice as popular as Trudeau in the polls.
01:51An out-of-control housing emergency...
01:53Parliament will be suspended until the 24th of March.
01:57Justin Trudeau then announcing he is to resign.
02:00The Liberal Party in Canada is in search of a new leader,
02:03who of course will then become Canada's prime minister.
02:06Let's bring in for more analysis and more context,
02:09and perhaps a look into what the future might hold,
02:12Shachi Curl, president of the Angus Reid Institute in Vancouver.
02:16Shachi, thanks for being with us here on France 24.
02:18We appreciate your presence.
02:20Shachi, Justin Trudeau was elected with a great deal of enthusiasm,
02:26and obviously was very popular at the start.
02:28Is it just inevitable that a popular leader will eventually see it all turns to vinegar,
02:33or did he do something in particular along the way to make this happen?
02:36Give us a sense of that.
02:38Well, one cannot reflect...
02:40Thank you for having me, Bonsoir.
02:42One cannot reflect on his resignation today
02:49without thinking about those heady days.
02:51He referred to them himself as sunny ways,
02:54a time when the Liberals were riding very high in the polls,
02:58won a landslide in 2015,
03:00and his own personal approval numbers were in the high 60% levels,
03:06not just for one or two quarters, but for an extended period of time.
03:11And you're absolutely right.
03:14In Canada, over the last 50 years or so,
03:17a government lasts about a decade,
03:20maybe eight years, maybe nine years,
03:22maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter.
03:24But at some point, the milk turns sour.
03:28At some point, the best before consumption date passes.
03:33And in Mr. Trudeau's case, but also in the Liberal government's case,
03:37this is less about something in particular that he had done
03:43in terms of a very unpopular policy,
03:46and more about, number one, longevity and the fatigue factor,
03:51but two, also what I would call the wicked problems
03:54that have plagued governments across Western liberal democracies.
03:59Regardless of stripe, we saw a conservative government in the UK
04:03tossed out after a long period of time
04:06because people were feeling stressed around cost of living.
04:09We've seen the same problems in France.
04:11We saw the same problem in the United States just last November.
04:14And we are poised to see a change in government in Canada,
04:18in part because people do not feel like they have economic financial security,
04:22that they cannot get ahead financially.
04:25Was perhaps the re-election of Donald Trump
04:27the final straw for Justin Trudeau?
04:29Trump today saying that Canada should merge with the United States.
04:32That's one of Trump's possible solutions.
04:35Yeah, he's been saying that a lot.
04:37I can tell you that even conservative-leaning Canadians
04:41don't put much interest in joining the United States.
04:44And if Canadians were voting in a presidential election in the United States,
04:49they would overwhelmingly vote against Donald Trump,
04:52even conservatives north of the border.
04:55So Donald Trump's presence and re-election had an impact,
05:00but in an indirect manner.
05:02Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States,
05:09and to really expose and explain what a significant problem this would be for Canada.
05:16Canada and the United States have very close and meshed intertwined economies.
05:22This would be a 25% blanket tariff on Canadian exports.
05:27Disastrous for the Canadian economy.
05:30In theory, Canadians put more faith in the opposition leader's ability to handle Trump,
05:37but he is untested. He's never been prime minister.
05:40And I think that just has to do in general with support for the opposition leader.
05:45But what ultimately was the straw that broke the camel's back
05:50was the fact that Justin Trudeau, in a political attempt to gain some favour with Canadians,
05:58proposed a sales tax holiday.
06:01We had it for two weeks.
06:03Exempted federal sales tax on a number of items.
06:06And additionally wanted to send out sales tax rebate checks to millions of households.
06:12This prompted the former finance minister to say, look, this is not responsible.
06:19It's a political gimmick.
06:20It will cost government coffers too much money at a time when our,
06:25the Canadian economic situation is already fairly precarious if those tariffs come in.
06:32So I would say it's more indirect in terms of the Trump factor than direct.
06:39But it was very much about the tariffs that caused the finance minister to say,
06:44look, I'm done. I quit.
06:46Which ultimately really put the nail in the coffin for Justin Trudeau,
06:52who had been on a long slide downwards in terms of vote intention.
06:56But I can tell you that in the days following the finance minister's resignation,
07:01we saw the Liberal Party's vote intent fortunes drop, as was mentioned in the report just prior.
07:09It was our data that showed the party at 16 percent in terms of vote intention.
07:14This is the natural governing party, which they call it in Canada.
07:18The Liberals have been, and this would have been one of the worst outcomes for the party.
07:23And it also reflected one of the worst outcomes personally for the Liberal leader.
07:28Shachi, can I take you back in time a little bit to reflect about the name Trudeau?
07:32Because, of course, Justin Trudeau isn't the first of his family to be prime minister of Canada.
07:37When he was born, his father, his dad, Pierre, was the prime minister.
07:41I'm wondering how, and this is obviously a compare and contrast question, isn't it?
07:45How does he compare to his father? Both, of course, long serving prime ministers.
07:49How will he rank? One or two? I don't know. Give us your sense of that.
07:54You know, I think in general, and you can correct me if I'm wrong,
07:59but I find that politicians tend to do better in retrospective than they do in real time.
08:05So we've seen it time and time again.
08:08Even Winston Churchill lost an election in the postwar years.
08:12People were tired of him. And look at how much he is lionized today.
08:16Look at Richard Nixon, grudgingly respected or genuinely respected,
08:20although he, too, was drummed from office.
08:23So I think it's going to take a little bit of time to really understand Justin Trudeau's legacy.
08:29But he was a left of center, progressive beacon of light for, again, not just Canada,
08:35but much of the Western liberal world at a time when many European democracies
08:42and the United States were tilting to the right.
08:46I feel like now we're in a situation where electorates around the world don't really care
08:51who is right or who is left. They're just in a mood for change.
08:55And I think that is very much reflected in the data that we're seeing right now.
08:59One thing I want to point out about the opposition leader, Pierre Poliev,
09:03is that while his party is leading all opposition leaders and opposition parties by double digits,
09:12including the governing liberals, what's important to note is that he personally is not particularly popular.
09:19His unfavorable numbers are actually higher than his favorable numbers.
09:24So when we talk about a move towards the Conservatives,
09:28it's less about people sort of swooning for a popular leader and more about a desire for change.
09:35And so we've got a change now with the prime minister's pledge to leave and to elect
09:41and for the liberals to elect a new leader. And in some ways, I don't want to go too far in saying this,
09:47but in some ways it levels the playing field, but only a bit.
09:52Charity Cole of the Angus Reid Institute, president of that body, joining us live from Vancouver.
09:57Thank you very much, indeed, for that analysis, giving us a far broader context
10:01to the announcements of Justin Trudeau's resignation as leader of the liberals,
10:06therefore as prime minister of Canada. And it's all changed at the top there.
10:10Thanks again to Charity Cole of the Angus Reid Institute. Thank you indeed.