We tend to forget, as the years go by, that this is how it always ends. No one walks away in their own time. It always takes a push. If you have the drive and the luck and the ego to make it to the top, after all, it can be hard to accept that it’s ever really your time to go.
Justin Trudeau announced Monday that he plans to resign as the leader of the Liberal Party and as Canada’s twenty-third prime minister as soon as his party can select a replacement.
He should have done it earlier. But it was the right decision; by-mid December, in fact, it had become obvious that it was the only decision he could make.
Trudeau could have held on for another few weeks of intra-party sniping. He could have pushed the country into an immediate election.
But neither decision would have bought him anything but grief: More leaks and more painfully frank phone calls on the one hand; almost certain humiliation and defeat at the hands of Pierre Poilievre on the other.
No, quitting now — or at least announcing his concept of a plan to quit — was the best thing Trudeau could have done, not just for himself, or for his party, but for the country, too.
The next federal election, whenever it comes, will be a pivotal one. Poilievre is offering a new direction for Canada. The next campaign should be a competition between that vision, whatever you think of it, and clear and credible alternatives.
Any election with Trudeau on the ballot now would be a referendum on Trudeau himself — one he would lose, badly — and that’s not what the country needs.
That’s not to say another Liberal will necessarily fare any better against Poilievre. But it is certainly better for Canada that someone else, with a new vision, new ideas and a new team, try.
There will be time enough in the coming months to assess Trudeau’s legacy as prime minister, which is both more substantial and more complicated than his critics would have you believe. He led this country through Donald Trump’s first presidency and through the COVID-19 pandemic.
He established major new social programs — including the child tax benefit, national pharmacare, national dentalcare and perhaps most importantly, national childcare.
He kept his promises to legalize cannabis and medically-assisted dying, although his government’s failure to create a robust and moral framework for the latter remains a significant stain.
His failures, too, will be much picked over. He will leave behind an immigration and refugee system that remains overwhelmed, incoherent, and grossly unprepared for the coming challenges of a second Trump term.
He broke his vow to end first-past-the-post voting. (That he seemed, in his press conference Monday, to blame that failure on someone else showed a sad, and telling, lack of self awareness.)
He talked big on the environment and climate change (among other subjects) but, despite some progress, proved incapable of building and sustaining the kind of coalition necessary to get anything big, and lasting, done.
