Trudeau resigns, will stay in role until new Canadian prime minister takes over

(JNS) — Justin Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he will resign as Canadian prime minister after his replacement assumes control.

“I am a fighter, and I am not someone who backs away from a fight, particularly when a fight is as important as this,” he said outside his Ottawa home. 

“But I have always been driven by my love for Canada, by my desire to serve Canadians and by what is in the best interests of Canadians—and Canadians deserve a real choice in the next election,” he added, per the New York Post. “It has become obvious to me, with the internal battles, that I cannot be the one to carry the liberal standard into the next election.”

The progressive leader, who has been the Canadian head of state since 2015, has presided over a series of mounting crises, costing him much public support.

Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister, suddenly resigned on Dec. 16, adding to the prime minister’s alienation within his own government.

“Nothing has changed. Every Liberal member of Parliament and leadership contender supported everything Trudeau did for nine years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another four years, just like Justin,” stated Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian opposition leader.

“The only way to fix what Liberals broke is a carbon tax election to elect common sense Conservatives who will bring home Canada’s promise,” Poilievre added.

Trudeau’s tenure was punctuated by a dramatic rise in Jew-hatred and anti-Israel sentiment across Canada since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. 

“We have seen that antisemitism and hate crimes overall have risen dramatically in Canada by 150 percent,” Melissa Lantsman, a Jewish Canadian parliamentarian and deputy leader of the Conservative Party, told JNS in June.

Ottawa halted arms sales to Israel in March amid the Jewish state’s war against Hamas, which Canada has designated as a terror entity since 2002. 

Just over a month after Hamas’s attack, Trudeau said at a press conference, of Gazan casualties, that “the world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the Canadian leader on social media.

“It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust,” Netanyahu wrote on Nov. 14, 2023. “While Israel is doing everything to keep civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way.”

“Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones, Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint. It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime—targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians,” Netanyahu added. “The forces of civilization must back Israel in defeating Hamas barbarism.”

Poilievre has maintained a polling lead over Trudeau’s Liberal Party by upwards of 20 points and seems poised to capture a large majority in the next election.

Anthony Housefather, a member of the Canadian Parliament and the country’s special advisor on Jewish community relations and antisemitism, told JNS in October that Trudeau’s “heart is in the right place.”

“He is as upset about this surging antisemitism in Canada as anyone else. I’ve criticized publicly our government for not moving fast enough on these issues,” Housefather told JNS at the time. “I tried not to make my role partisan. I think in Canada, the Liberal Party and Conservative Party have strong voices and strong advocates for our community that are not Jewish, and ideally, we would have them in more parties.”