Trudeau steps down, Canada rejoices

Justin Trudeau resigned as Canada’s prime minister and Liberal Party leader on Monday but will stay on in both roles until his party chooses a new leader. Clearly, he did not want to go, but his hand was forced by polls showing his party with only 16% support, which foreshadows an electoral wipeout. With his caucus in revolt, he had little choice.

Seldom in the history of Western nations has one man presided over such a record of failure for nine years. It will take Canada decades to recover if it ever does.

Who was Justin Trudeau? He was a spoiled rich kid and a narcissist. He inherited tens of millions of dollars from his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and never had to work a day in his life to earn a living. He has been a playboy, a sometime teacher, and a politician, but he has no significant achievements in his life outside of politics.

After attending a posh high school in Montreal, he got a bachelor’s degree in literature from McGill University in 1994 and a degree in education from the University of British Columbia in 1998. He came to prominence by delivering a eulogy at his father’s funeral in 2000 that caught the attention of Liberal backroom brokers. He had a pretty face, a famous name, and was clearly hungry for power. The Liberal Party had a front man and Trudeau had a job.

How will history judge his record? I suggest considering three main areas: the economy, civil liberties, and national unity.

First, consider his stewardship of the economy. It can be summed up this way: He made Canadians poor.

Monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto doubled under his watch from about $950 to more than $2,000. Housing is now unaffordable for the middle class due to inflation and made worse by uncontrolled immigration. His solution? A steady stream of government handouts designed to buy votes. But the giveaways only increased government spending, thus making the problem worse by driving up inflation.

In 2014, Trudeau famously stated that “the budget will balance itself.” But what did he mean in context? What he said was that if you grow the economy, the budget will balance itself. But this is true only if you curb spending at the same time. When pressed in that same interview on whether he would tolerate larger deficits, he said he would because “investments” are necessary to “jump-start” the economy. The basic flaw was his naïve assumption that a growing economy allows unlimited spending.

Since 2022, the gross domestic product per capita has been declining in Canada while going up in the United States with the resulting gap between the two economies at its widest point in nearly a century. Incredibly, University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe notes, “The U.S. is on track to produce nearly 50 percent more per person than Canada will.” The richest Canadian provinces now rank near the bottom of the list of American states. The Liberal government’s refusal to allow for the export of Canadian natural gas and its punitive carbon tax system has produced artificial poverty in what should be one of the world’s richest countries.

Second, consider Trudeau’s stewardship of civil liberties. He chose to undermine a thousand years of hard-won freedoms in the Anglo-Saxon tradition to humiliate those who dared to protest his destructive COVID-19 pandemic policies. Too proud to negotiate with the trucker convoy protest, he resolved to crush it by any means necessary.

On Feb. 14, 2022, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which was created for situations like war and threats to the very existence of the nation, to fight the truckers. He debanked and dehumanized ordinary Canadians who questioned his overbearing COVID restrictions. A little humility and compromise might have diffused the situation, but he preferred to unleash his inner authoritarian and suspend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Two years later, a federal judge ruled that there “was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act,” adding that “the government’s action was unreasonable and infringed on protesters’ Charter rights.” Yet, incredibly, Trudeau never expressed remorse and never suffered any consequences, except, of course, losing the support of the nation. For many Canadians, (including me), this was the tipping point.

Third, consider his stewardship of national unity. He pitted East against West, men against women, the poor against the rich, and the increasingly state-controlled media against the political opposition. He had one trick: divide and conquer. He never brought anyone together or facilitated consensus. All he knew how to do was to demonize the opposition, play one group against another, and leave the country in a fractured state with foreign conflicts being fought out on our streets and hostile foreign powers interfering with our elections.

A book would be needed to list all the bitter fruits of the past nine years. Crime is out of control. Scandal after scandal has plagued the government. Then there was the disastrous ArriveCAN app, which cost $60 million. The healthcare system is chronically underfunded while government money goes to Liberal Party supporters who obtain government contracts without competition. Supporters of terrorist organizations march in the streets and Jewish synagogues are repeatedly firebombed. Trudeau and his ministers responded by crawling to the mosques begging for support because there were more Muslim than Jewish voters. Legalization of drugs and “safe supply” programs contribute to the decline in mental health, as does the out-of-control gender ideology in public schools, which is institutionalized child abuse. Canadians long for the adults to be in charge once again.

But voters in 2015 handed the leadership of a G7 country to an inexperienced man with no qualifications, a huge ego, and no goal except power. A little more than nine years later, the full effects of this decision are being felt, and Canadians are hurting. Listen to this five-minute speech by Pierre Poilievre that puts it in perspective.

What has been destroyed may or may not ever be rebuilt. But today, Canadians are praying that God will heal a country in pain. Justin Trudeau’s resignation fixes nothing, but it opens a door.