Justin Trudeau’s political crisis worsenswith more members of his Liberal Party publicly calling for the Canadian prime minister to step aside and give a new leader a chance before the 2025 elections.
Jenica Atwina Liberal who works as a parliamentary secretary to a cabinet minister, told a newspaper in her home province of New Brunswick that Trudeau should go and that she will not run for re-election if he stays.
Chad Collinsan Ontario MP, said about 50 elected Liberals — perhaps more — are part of a growing group that wants the prime minister to resign. Other anti-Trudeau Liberals have given similar figures. This would be equivalent to a third of the 153 Liberals in the House of Commons.
The resignation on Monday Chrystia FreelandTrudeau’s powerful finance minister and longtime deputy, was a major shock that has irreparably damaged the prime minister, Collins said in an interview.
Freeland stated that she had resigned after being told she was being moved to another cabinet position. Trudeau told him the news on Friday, three days before he was to give an important speech in which he would update the country on its fiscal and economic situation.
“I don’t know who is giving him advice. I can guess it. Not good advice”Collins said. “But the responsibility falls on him for the decisions he makes, and now we are seeing the consequences of what many would consider a very wrong decision.”.
“As far as who the successor is, I don’t know at this point if we could do much worse,” he said.
Trudeau, 52, has been under pressure for months to leave. In June, the liberals lost some elections specials in a Toronto district they had maintained for decades. In September, they lost a seat in Montreal in similar fashion. Soon after, about two dozen liberal lawmakers signed a letter asking him to leave.
But Freeland’s resignation, coming as the Canadian economy faces the threat of tariffs from the incoming Trump administration, has turned simmering discontent into a full-scale crisis for Trudeau. The prime minister has canceled all of his usual end-of-year television interviews and has said almost nothing publicly since Freeland’s resignation, apart from some brief comments at two Liberal events.
“It’s not just about one man, it’s about saving our party from a historic defeat”Wayne Long, another New Brunswick Liberal MP, wrote in an open letter on Wednesday. Polls suggest the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, is on track to win a majority government in the next election.
If Trudeau tries to stay, more Liberals will walk away from politics, Collins warned. “I think the risk you run is that you will have a skeleton team of experienced elected representatives.”
(With information from Bloomberg)
