Canada’s Trudeau battles to hold on after deputy PM resigns

OTTAWA - The bombshell resignation of Canada’s deputy prime minister is spurring new calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose rock-bottom popularity is plummeting further amid opposition attacks and US President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

Ms Chrystia Freeland, after nearly a decade of being at Mr Trudeau’s side,

made the surprise announcement on Dec 17

, after disagreeing with him over Trump’s tariff proposals.

The move marked the first open dissent against Mr Trudeau from within his Cabinet and has emboldened his critics.

“As a country, we have to project strength and unity, and it’s chaos right now up in Ottawa,” commented Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

When the news broke, Canada’s provincial premiers were meeting over

Trump’s threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports

.

“This is not the best time to have a (power) vacuum,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said.

“I’d be looking at this wondering who the next leader is going to be” and whether the domestic political upheaval will derail Canada’s approach to Trump, Ms Smith added.

In her resignation letter, Ms Freeland, who was also finance minister, said the country faces a “grave challenge”.

More than 75 per cent of Canadian exports go to the US, and nearly two million Canadian jobs depend on trade.

Ms Freeland warned that the stand-off could lead to a “tariff war” with the US, and urged Ottawa to keep its “fiscal powder dry” while rebuking Mr Trudeau’s spendthrift policies.

She resigned just hours before she was to provide an update on the Group of Seven nation’s finances – a C$62 billion (S$58.5 billion) deficit that blew past her earlier projections.

According to ballot tracking conducted by Nanos Research released on Dec 17, Mr Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are ahead of Mr Trudeau’s Liberals by 20 points – 43 per cent to 23 per cent.

A small group of Liberal MPs who previously urged Mr Trudeau to step aside, hoping a fresh face could breathe new life into their beleaguered party, has reportedly ballooned and now represents one-third of the party caucus.

“Canadians want change,” lawmaker Yvan Baker told public broadcaster CBC, saying he believed it was “in the best interest of the country and of the party” to transition to a new Liberal leader before the next election.

“I think he needs to go,” said fellow Liberal MP Francis Drouin. “It’s time to clean house.”

Mr Jagmeet Singh, leader of a small left-wing faction in Parliament that had kept the Liberals in office before breaking with Mr Trudeau in late August, has also joined the chorus. “They’re fighting themselves instead of fighting for Canadians,” he told reporters. “For that reason, I’m calling on Justin Trudeau to resign. He has to go.”

Mr Trudeau appeared to brush off the controversy at a fund raiser on the evening of Dec 16, saying only that it had “not been an easy day”.

It would soon get worse, however, with the Liberals losing a fourth by-election in 2024, in British Columbia, and Mr Trudeau awakening on Dec 17 to a market slump.

‘Clown show’

Mr Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the Liberal minority government and force snap elections, doubled down. At a news conference, he called Mr Trudeau “a weak, pathetic prime minister” and the dramatic events of Dec 16 “a clown show”.

Mr Trudeau has vowed to lead the Liberals into the next election, which is scheduled for October 2025, but analysts say it could come much sooner.

“He has already taken many blows, but this time it is really difficult not to see it as a fatal blow,” said University of Alberta professor Frederic Boily. But he added that he would be surprised if Mr Trudeau resigned before Christmas as that would “create even more chaos”.

Crisis management expert Amanda Galbraith said: “If he insists on staying, the party apparatus will grind to a halt, people will leave. It would be death by 1,000 cuts and the damage to himself, the Liberal brand and the country is going to pile up.”

On Dec 17, the Toronto stock market closed down slightly after rallying later in the day, and the Canadian dollar fell to 70 US cents. AFP