Freeland Leaves With A Bang For Trudeau
Should we bring out the lettuce yet?
For readers outside Canada, the name Chrystia Freeland probably doesn’t ring a bell. But the news of her resignation this Monday has shocked many in Ottowa, which has called into question whether Justin Trudeau can hang on as Prime Minister, or even as party leader, until the election next year.
Freeland has been a key figure in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet: First appointed as the minister of foreign affairs, Freeland was in charge of renegotiating NAFTA with the US and Mexico after Trump ripped up the deal. After the 2019 election, Freeland was named minister of intergovernmental affairs and deputy prime minister. In August 2020, Freeland made history as the country’s first female finance minister and had to handle the economic impacts from the COVID pandemic to rising inflation.
What’s most notable about Freeland’s relationship with Trudeau is her close working friendship with the PM, often defending the Liberal party leader during scandals. That’s what has made her departure all the more damaging, and Trudeau’s position in power in more jeopardy.
In Freeland’s resignation statement, she cited disagreements with the PM on how to handle tariffs from a second Trump term, noting that “For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.” Behind the scenes, there are more subtle factors at play.
Firstly, Trudeau has been mulling a cabinet shuffle in recent days, trying to reboot the government amid deep unpopularity and the prospects of a second Trump administration. Since last week, reports suggested that Trudeau was trying to recruit the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney as finance minister, which means a humiliating demotion for Freeland.
Moreover, the economic disagreements go way beyond tariffs. Canadian outlet The Globe and Mail reported that Freeland and Trudeau were "at odds" over the government's plans for a GST (Goods and Services Tax) holiday, while plans to send out CAD 250 cheques to Canadians were criticized by opponents as transparent “ploys” to “buy votes.”
Adding fuel to the fire, Freeland resigned on the day she was scheduled to deliver a fall economic statement to Parliament. This was already bad enough politically until the statement was addressed on that same Monday, showing the federal deficit ballooned to 61.9 billion CAD and called for 20 billion CAD more in spending. Not great when Trudeau’s economic policy has been trying to give out economic incentives and breaks to try and woo dissatisfied voters.
If you are interested in more details about the domestic context behind Freeland’s resignation, this CBC News video helps a lot.
As someone interested in global politics, this small quote stands out.
Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end.
You can read this statement in two ways. The most literal one is that any administration will end, only time will tell when. But the more subtle one is a jab at Trudeau, nudging that the Liberal government he has been in charge of since 2015 is likely coming to an end.
To put it mildly, this has not been a great year for Justin Trudeau. The latest opinion polls show that 68% of voters disapprove of the current PM, while his Liberal Party is trailing the Conservative Party by more than 11 points. In a sense of how screwed Trudeau is come the next election, election polls predict the Conservatives will have a comfortable majority with 218 seats, while the Liberals might barely cling on with 50 seats in total, a Rishi Sunak-style electoral wipeout.
Even if Trudeau ignores the polls, recent by-election performances do not bold well. The Liberals lost a formerly safe seat in a Toronto by-election in June and lost another formerly safe seat in Montreal this September. On the day Freeland’s resignation caused a metaphorical bonfire in Ottowa, the Conservatives won another by-election in British Columbia. Moreover, the Liberal’s two-and-a-half-year coalition government with the New Democratic Party (NDP) collapsed in September after disputes on railway work stoppages.
Policy-wise, the Liberal government has failed to address the problems facing many ordinary Canadians. Affordable housing has become a sticking issue for Trudeau’s government since the pandemic, rising inflation and cost of living have only made people’s discontent worse. Immigration, despite being one of the Liberal government’s bright spots in the early years of Trudeau’s administration, has become one of the government’s greatest liabilities as “the Liberals failed to ensure that housing, education, and health care kept pace with demography.”
Observers have critiqued the Liberals’ fumbling with the carbon emission tax has generated a wave of populist anger against the policy, smartly used by Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre as a centerpiece of his campaign. Trudeau’s Canada spends only 1.3% of GDP on its armed forces, which coincides with Trump’s longstanding complaint that other countries freeload NATO fees to its allies. Speaking of Trump, Trudeau’s foreign policy strategy of kissing the ring at Mar-a-Lago has done wonders for his country (NOT), as the president-elect repeatedly mocked Canada as the 51st state and Trudeau as its governor.
Moreover, Trudeau’s branding and crackdown on his critics (See using emergency powers to suppress the trucker protests, despite some of them being nasty pieces of work), as well as cracking down on free speech, instead of adapting to new challenges only made things worse for the Liberal brand. The Economist wrote of Trudeau’s downfall from international liberal darling thusly.
Mr Trudeau’s journey from a centre-left hero to a toxic liability has lessons for mainstream politicians everywhere. His brand of sanctimonious, and sometimes illiberal, identity politics is no substitute for effective government. Unless leaders come up with practical answers to the problems that the electorate cares about, including the effects of mass migration and housing shortages, government by virtue ultimately alienates many more people than it inspires.
Calls for Trudeau to resign are not new. Opposition parties, like the Conservative Party, have long called for a general election, if not a Trudeau resignation. Just this October, a couple dozen Liberal MPs called for his resignation. What’s different this time is the wave of anger and discontent stemming not just from opposition parties, but from his MPs, including a former cabinet minister on the record.
Pierre Poilievre called for an immediate election, saying “What we are seeing is that the government of Canada itself is spiraling out of control right before our eyes and at the very worst time.”
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called for an election and dissolution of parliament: “Mr. Trudeau's government is over. He must acknowledge that and act accordingly.”
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters “Justin Trudeau has to go, he has to resign, and because of that all options are on the table." Most notably, Singh could call in a vote of no confidence, which will go as well as the no-confidence vote for Olaf Scholz.
Former justice minister under Trudeau turned critic Jody Wilson-Raybould said: “When the general is losing his most loyal soldiers on the eve of a (tariff) war, the country desperately needs a new general.”
Liberal backbencher Francis Drouin told Radio-Canada: “I've been a great defender [of Trudeau], but I just don't see how we move forward.”
NDP MP Charlie Angus made the best comment of them all, saying: "What the fuck? How does a prime minister, on the eve of a statement that we've been waiting for for months, deep-six his finance minister and think that things are going to be normal?"
Who knows what might happen next for Trudeau’s political career? By Monday night, CTV News reported Trudeau was considering his future as Liberal Party leader. He could resign as party leader and let a fresh face take charge, declare a snap election over the Christmas holiday, or he could continue sticking in his PM chair until the next election.
No matter what happens, and who leads the Liberal Party, come latest by October 2025, they will be facing a painful reckoning. Like many incumbent parties in 2024, the Liberals will lose badly at the next election, and Pierre Poilievre will become Canada’s next prime minister (Barring any unforeseen events).
In recent polling, Poilievre was seen by voters as the best leader to deal with Trump, and there are converging policy fronts the two men share. They both share a populist message that targets their voters’ frustrations, misrepresenting information that benefits their political construction of an anti-elite message, mainstreaming conspiracy theories, playing into the culture wars, and spending considerable time attacking their political foes and the media.
However, a key difference between Poilievre and many populists around the world is his tame messaging. Instead of rallying against immigration, Poilievre has supported immigration. His main policy pitches include building more homes, defunding the Canadian public broadcaster CBC’s English programming, and “Axe The Tax” in response to Trudeau’s carbon levy.
For liberal democracy advocates so far, Poilivere’s position is refreshing, in a good way. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote.
The Canadian Conservative Party has remained in bounds on issues of immigration and identity because going harder would be politically counterproductive (as the public disapproval of the trucker protest showed). Even amid the current concern about rising home prices, a majority of Canadians believe that immigration levels should be kept the same or increased.
If Poilievre is a tame populist, the people responsible for taming him were not the Canadian rich but rather the Canadian majority. His populism is primarily rhetorical — rather than system-threatening — because the Canadian system for limiting extremism is still basically intact.
The lesson for the rest of the world is that Canada is onto something. Several decades of official multiculturalism have helped it build up antibodies to the infection eating away at democracies as different as the United States, Hungary, India, and Israel. Liberals and democrats everywhere should be trying to think about how to build their own variants of this ideology at home.
With all incoming parties, winning the election is the easy part, taking action is an entirely different ballgame. Would Poilivere continue his tamer approach to governance? Or would he pivot to the mainstream populist agenda that has already influenced so many countries, including the one on Canada’s southern border?
Poilivere has spoken about countering Trump’s tariffs when they come, but can their similarities smooth things over? We have seen speculation that Italy’s Giorgia Meloni might be Europe’s charm offensive for a second Trump term, and Argentina’s Javier Milei being adored by the MAGA crowd in America, will Poilivere join the list of populists under Trump’s good graces?
All of that is speculation, but the tipping point to everything you have read above in the days and months to come might hinge on Freeland’s resignation. What happens next to the Liberals, the Conservatives, and indeed Canada’s future is rolling into gear right now.