Ottawa, Jan 6 (Representative) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party on Monday due to a caucus revolt and dismal public opinion polls indicating his party is likely to be ousted by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, media reports said on Monday.Sources predict that Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau will announce his departure before a crucial national caucus meeting on Wednesday, the Globe and Mail reported. One of the sources, who spoke recently to the Prime Minister, said Trudeau realises he needs to make a statement before he meets the Liberal caucus so it doesn’t look like he was forced out by his own MPs, the report said. According to the reports, three sources are uncertain about the Liberal Party’s plans to replace Trudeau as leader and whether he will leave immediately or remain as Prime Minister until a new leader is selected. The Liberal Party national executive, which decides on leadership issues, plans to meet this week, likely after the caucus session. Trudeau’s advisers are considering his future as Prime Minister while a new Liberal leader is chosen, the Globe reported on Friday. A fourth source on Sunday stated that PM Trudeau is expected to remain in his position until a new leader is selected. However, several MPs have expressed a preference for an interim leader, including Alberta Liberal George Chahal. He wrote a letter to his caucus colleagues with that request last week. The party has two options: appoint an interim leader on the recommendation of the national caucus or hold a shortened leadership contest. The Prime Minister’s request to prorogue Parliament through a leadership contest, which constitutional experts argue is not guaranteed, is a potential issue. One of the sources said that the prime minister discussed with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc whether he would be willing to step in as interim leader and prime minister. But the source said that would be unworkable if LeBlanc, as expected, plans to run for the leadership.
Another of the sources said it makes sense for Trudeau to remain as prime minister until a leader is chosen so he can deal with the incoming administration of Donald Trump and his threat of 25 percent tariffs. A separate Liberal Party source said a leadership race would take at least three months, although the party constitution requests at least four months. Besides, the source said, a leadership race needs enough time to be a true contest. The national executive is aware that shorter timelines can lead to bad choices, the source said. The individual played down an interim-leader scenario, noting that no modern sitting prime minister has ever given over leadership in such a manner.Complicating matters is a scheduled March 28 vote on supply to allow the government to operate. The Prime Minister could make a request for prorogation before that date, the Liberal Party source said. According to reports, Trudeau has remained largely silent since Chrystia Freeland’s resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister on December 16, prompting renewed calls from Liberal MPs for his departure.She quit on the day she was to deliver her economic and fiscal update, citing concerns over what she called spending gimmicks, such as the GST holiday and $250 rebates, and a lack of seriousness in dealing with possible Trump tariffs, the report said. The Atlantic, Ontario, and Quebec caucuses have signalled that most of their membership no longer supports Trudeau remaining at the helm. Of the 153 seats that the Liberals hold in the House of Commons, those three regions account for 131 of them. The Prime Minister subsequently told MPs that he’d reflect on his future, and his inner circle made it clear just before the holiday break that he wouldn’t announce any decisions over that time period. During the past two weeks, however, Trudeau’s closest advisers have been consulting with senior Liberals about how it could work if Trudeau remained as leader and prime minister until the end of a leadership race to replace him, the report said.
Though there is yet no firm answer from Trudeau nor any concrete rules in place for a leadership race, talk of who might replace him and how they’d structure their own campaigns is already taking place.Prior to the Christmas break, the Globe reported that one of the questions that the Prime Minister was contending with was whether he still had the team behind him to stay on as leader. The fourth source, who has been in contact with Trudeau, told The Globe Sunday that if the prime minister steps down, it’s not because he doesn’t think he’s the right person to lead the party but rather because he came to the conclusion that the caucus is no longer behind him.In the wake of Freeland’s resignation, it was not immediately clear how MPs would respond, given that many in the Liberal backbench were unhappy with her performance as finance minister and advocated for her to be replaced. But the source said that over the past few weeks reports from regional caucus meetings and individual calls between MPs and the Prime Minister’s team have made it clearer that he doesn’t have the team in place any more. The source said their sense is that Trudeau knows that there’s no longer a path for him to stay on.Liberal candidates who are possible leadership contenders: Freeland, LeBlanc, former housing minister Sean Fraser, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Transport Minister Anita Anand, former central banker Mark Carney, and former B.C. premier Christy Clark.Polls over the past year have shown the Conservatives with a double-digit advantage over the governing Liberals. An Angus Reid survey, released Friday, suggests that under Trudeau, the Liberals only have the support of 13 per cent of voters, but those numbers do change if a new leader is in place.