Canada: Justin Trudeau faces calls to resign as PM as party trails in polls

Even members of his own political party are calling on Justin Trudeau to resign as he is polling poorly and the public is furious about housing and inflation.

Thanks to a power-sharing agreement with a left-leaning opposition group, the prime minister of Canada might avoid elections until 2025, giving him some time to try to turn things around.

But given that polls show a strong desire for change among Canadians, that’s also ample time for Trudeau to step down or be driven from the Liberal Party leadership by his 158 agitated colleagues.

As Canada’s prime leader, Justin Trudeau, who has held office since 2015, says he is still “enthusiastic and relentless” about the job at hand.

For several months, surveys have indicated that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party is leading by ten to fifteen points and expanding almost everywhere. If those figures held true in an election, the 44-year-old opposition leader would probably win a sizable majority and bring an end to Trudeau’s rule.

He blamed Poilievre’s incessant focus on the economy and voter fatigue with Trudeau for the Liberal party’s decline.

The leader of the Conservative Party, who has been Trudeau’s most formidable opponent, has successfully channelled Canadians’ ire at the growing expense of living by coining the term “Justinflation.” “Everything costs more after eight years of Justin Trudeau,” is Poilievre’s catchphrase.

Poilievre is using social media to enliven his fan base. Recently, a video showing him chewing an apple and answering questions from a journalist became viral on X, the former name of Twitter. Elon Musk and Fox News praised the video. It had 1.5 million views.

Party excitement over his leadership has resulted in record funding, which the Conservatives have used to finance television commercials that feature his wife, children, and old hockey player pictures in an attempt to soften his image.

Conversely, Poilievre has only lately been the target of a fierce counterattack from the Liberals, who portray him as a Canadian counterpart of Donald Trump.

Trudeau and his advisors have stated in the open and in private that he has no plans to step down before the next election. His inner circle thinks that in order to convince people that Trudeau can still make progress in lowering living expenses, the government must weather the storm brought on by the spike in inflation.

Although inflation has decreased from a peak of 8.1% to 3.8%, Trudeau has begun to capitulate because to constant pressure over prices.

His trademark environmental policy is a national carbon tax, which he suspended last month on home-heating oil, an expensive and filthy fuel mostly used in Canada’s east-coast regions where Poilievre has attracted large audiences with his “Axe the Tax” rallies.

The action infuriated neighbouring province premiers and turned off environmentalists. When the carbon fee was implemented, Trudeau’s environment minister Catherine McKenna remarked, “It broke my heart.”

“The challenge with the decision is that it creates the impression that the affordability issue is pricing, which it’s not. It’s revenue-neutral. We give all the money back,” said McKenna, who left politics in 2021 and is the founder and chief executive of Climate and Nature Solutions. Pierre Poilievre, whose Conservatives are leading in the polls, has dubbed the sharp rise in the cost of living under Trudeau’s government “Justinflation.”

The policy is designed to cushion the blow for lower- and middle-class Canadians, most of whom, according to the government, get more back in the form of quarterly rebate checks than they pay.

The cost of housing has increased by about 70% in that time. The nation’s households are the most indebted of the Group of Seven, and a large number of them are currently making little to no principal payments on their mortgages due to the rapid spike in interest rates. Food and rent price rises continue to surpass headline inflation.

In an effort to boost home development, Trudeau and his cabinet have made a number of announcements this autumn. They have also met with the leaders of significant grocery stores to demand a plan to stabilise food costs. According to Dan Arnold, who supervised the Liberals’ research management programme throughout their electoral victories in 2015, 2019 and 2021, the issue is that many ideas are beyond Trudeau’s purview.

Trudeau would already be taking a risk by running again, even if the polls were more favourable. More than a century has passed since a Canadian leader won four elections in a row. After nine years in power, Trudeau handily defeated Stephen Harper, the final person to try.

After striking the agreement with the New Democrats and putting an end to rumours of a succession within his party, Trudeau came into the year in a strong position. He weathered the political storm brought on by the trucker protests in 2022, using his seldom-used emergency powers to remove barricades from US border crossings and Ottawa’s streets. A later legal investigation concluded that Trudeau was justified in his actions.