Good riddance to Canada’s worst Prime Minister ever. Conservatives will take power and seek a deal with Trump.
Trudeau to Resign
Reuters reports Canada PM Trudeau Is Likely to Announce Resignation
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is increasingly likely to announce he intends to step down, though he has not made a final decision, a source familiar with Trudeau’s thinking said on Sunday.
The source spoke to Reuters after the Globe and Mail reported that Trudeau was expected to announce as early as Monday that he would quit as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.
Trudeau’s departure would leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.
Sources told the Globe and Mail that they did not know definitely when Trudeau would announce his plans to leave but said they expect it would happen before a emergency meeting of Liberal legislators on Wednesday.
An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, have publicly urged Trudeau to quit.
If he does resign, it would likely spur fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a stable government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years.
But calls for him to step aside have grown since December, when Trudeau tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest cabinet allies, after she pushed back against his proposals for more spending.
Freeland quit instead and penned a letter accusing Trudeau of “political gimmicks” rather than focusing on what was best for the country.
A botched immigration policy led to hundreds of thousands of arrivals, straining an already overheated housing market.
Landslide Conservative Victory
FirstPost reports Canada PM Justin Trudeau may resign today, who can replace him till Oct election
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce his resignation as Liberal Party leader on Monday and may announce his plans to leave ahead of a key national caucus meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
Over the past few months, 53-year-old Trudeau has been losing support within his own party and facing a caucus revolt. Also, he and his party have been facing dismal public opinion polls that show Liberal Party will likely be swept out of power by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in a landslide victory if the elections are conducted now.
Canada polls are due in October this year, but if Trudeau resigns, it would spur fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years.
‘Great Deal’: Trudeau’s Conservative Rival Makes Energy Pitch to Trump
Bloomberg reports ‘Great Deal’: Trudeau’s Conservative Rival Makes Energy Pitch to Trump
Pierre Poilievre — the Conservative leader who is the front-runner to beat Trudeau’s party in the next election — says he could increase Canada’s exports to the US and strike a “great deal” with Trump anyway.
Poilievre sketched out an elevator pitch to the US president-elect during an interview with right-wing Canadian influencer Jordan Peterson, posted online Thursday. If elected, Poilievre said he plans to speed up approvals to build oil refineries, liquefied natural gas plants, nuclear facilities and hydro power. Canada has the ability to grow its electricity surplus with the US, helping to run the data centers that are essential to its booming artificial intelligence sector, he added.
“If you look at the history of President Trump, he negotiates very aggressively and he likes to win, but in the end, he doesn’t appear to have a problem if his counterparty also wins,” Poilievre said. “And so I think that we can get a great deal that will make both countries safer, richer, and stronger.”
But Trump should also be aware that Canada currently sells its oil and gas to the US at “enormous discounts,” Poilievre told Peterson.
The US trade deficit in goods with Canada was $50.5 billion through the first 10 months of the year. It would be larger, but Canadian crude is sold cheaply to US refineries, particularly in the Midwest.
“That is the true story — it’s the pathetic story — of our trade surplus, is that we’re actually handing over our resources, stupidly,” Poilievre said. “It’s not the Americans’ fault, it’s our fault, we’re stupid. And we’re going to stop being stupid when I’m prime minister.”
“The last thing he should want to do is to block the underpriced Canadian energy from going into his marketplace,” he continued, appealing to Trump. “In fact, what I would encourage him to do is to approve the Keystone pipeline,” he added, referring to a long-running Keystone XL project designed to ferry some 800,000 barrels a day from Alberta’s oil sands to southeast Nebraska, where it would link up with existing pipelines.
President Joe Biden revoked a key permit for that project after taking office in 2021, effectively killing it. Trump is in favor of Keystone XL, but there has been no sign yet that South Bow Corp., owner of the Keystone system, would want to revive it.
If Trump somehow stopped Canada’s trade surplus with the US immediately, American workers at refineries would lose their jobs and consumers would pay higher prices, Poilievre said. He argued that Canada should instead ramp up extraction of resources such as critical minerals that so both countries can get richer while weaning themselves off supplies from unfriendly states like China.
Poilievre said he would address US concerns about border trafficking and military spending, adding that a Conservative government would invest the planned gains of his energy-exporting strategy in Arctic security. Trump has long complained the US is being shortchanged by allies, and Canada is currently far short of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization goal to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense.
“I can fund a more robust military and continental defense if I have more free trade with the greatest economy the world has ever seen — and we can both win,” he said.
I am looking forward to a landslide victory by Tory leader Pierre Poilievre.