The End of Canada?

It’s finally Trudeauver. Yesterday, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.

He will leave office as the most famous Canadian leader in history, outstripping even the most talented and influential of his predecessors (do the names of Macdonald, Laurier, King, and Mulroney ring a bell to anyone outside Canada?). His looks, youth, and unwavering commitment to the shibboleths of progressive liberalism made him a global icon; his nearly ten years in power made him seem a permanent fixture of his country’s political life.

But the shine has worn off, and the end is nigh. After months of slumping popularity, Trudeau’s position has at last become untenable. The kicker came in December, when Chrystia Freeland—his finance minister, deputy, and, it may well be, successor—quit, citing differences with her boss over fiscal and trade policy. In a situation reminiscent of the 2022 fall of Boris Johnson in the UK, this high-profile resignation sparked a chain reaction: The head of the New Democratic Party, whose parliamentary support had been crucial to keeping the Prime Minister in power, announced he would introduce a no-confidence motion, and lawmakers in the Liberal Party itself began publicly calling for their leader to step down. 

Now that Trudeau has agreed to go, there is no shortage of explanations. He presided over an abysmally performing economy marked by high inflation and low growth; on a per capita basis, Canadians live in one of the world’s most indebted developed countries, with a housing crisis that makes America’s look mild by comparison. Beyond pocketbook issues, Trudeau’s signature policy stances—especially his enthusiastic support for mass immigration, determination to phase out fossil fuels, and abiding embrace of the ethos of DEI—have become toxic to much of his electorate. Nor did his heavy-handed response to Covid win him many fans (recall the Great Trucker Insurrection of 2022). And the man himself has been buffeted by scandal: groping allegations, garden-variety graft, and of course the infamous blackface incident (or rather, incidents). Finally, there is the simple fatigue his long and polarizing time in power has produced among the electorate.

But none of these things were enough, on their own, to end Trudeau’s reign. The proximate cause of his fall was a failure to handle the titan to the south—for it was the threat of economic warfare with Washington that gave Freeland her casus belli. 

Managing relations with the United States has historically been a Canadian acid test, and failure in this realm has doomed Canadian leaders before Trudeau. In 1911, the government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier foundered on the issue of an unpopular trade deal with the Taft Administration; in 1963, a dispute with JFK over hosting American nukes pushed John Diefenbaker out of office. Despite its immense territory, Canada is still a small country, and its fortunes have always depended on the benevolence and protection of great powers, first France, then Britain, and now the United States. This doesn’t have to mean surrendering sovereignty, or abasing the nation before its betters. Rather, it calls for a certain statesmanlike prudence, the ability to cultivate enduring relationships, distinguish the important from the unimportant, and obtain favorable results from a position of material inferiority. Trudeau’s haplessness in the face of economy-crippling tariff threats—issued by a president-elect who seems none too fond of him—suggests he lacks this touch.

In view of Trudeau’s nine years in power, this manner of political demise is perhaps surprising, especially when one reflects on how central the United States has been to the Prime Minister’s political identity. Many modern Canadians are intensely interested in U.S. politics, but few have done more to orient themselves around an American frame of reference than Trudeau. Indeed, one way of looking at his entire project is as the importation of, reaction to, and ultimately imitation of our politics. 

Consider that his core ideological commitments (the ostentatiously proclaimed feminism, environmentalism, etc.) were framed in opposition to the conservative movement, not of Canada (where it was, and is, socially liberal and fiscally moderate), but of the United States. After 2016, this became even more explicit. Trudeau was the anti-Trump, who would show the U.S. Canada’s progressive, diverse face. His domestic political opponents became Canadian versions of Trump—“wannabe MAGA maple syrup Conservatives,” as one of his surrogates memorably (and unfairly) put it. As Black Lives Matter demonstrations roiled the United States, Trudeau took a knee in Ottawa; after the tragic shooting in the Texas town of Uvalde, he restricted handgun sales in Canada; when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he pledged to defend abortion around the world. His government even got involved in the drag queen story hour kerfuffle, issuing travel warnings for U.S. states with laws “banning drag shows and restricting the transgender community.” Given this apparent desire to participate in American civic life, it is little wonder that our own president-elect has been so vocal about expanding the Union northward.

To give his party time to select a new leader, Trudeau intends to stay in office until March (even with someone else at the helm, the odds the next election will see a Liberal victory are long). So it is likely too early to fully take stock of his legacy. Nevertheless, the decision to LARP America instead of offering a positive, distinctive vision of Canadian nationhood will surely rank among his greatest failures. Trudeau offered nothing to those who wanted to maintain a unique, independent polity on the North American continent; even as the bonds of affection frayed up north (it is no coincidence that Quebec separatism has returned with a vengeance), his time, energies, and power continued to be channeled into hollow posturing. The result, ironically enough, is that Trudeau himself may have made the pitch for his country’s disappearance more eloquently and forcefully than Trump ever could. For if to be Canadian means simply to live in a kind of Blue America—albeit with fewer people, less wealth, and less influence—well, what is the point? In such a case, one would be forced to agree with George Grant, that greatest and most pessimistic of Canadian nationalists: “The aspirations of progress have made Canada redundant.”

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