Special Edition: Trudeau's resignation reaffirms his unyielding principle - self-interest over country

In waiting too long to reach the conclusion about his political future, Justin Trudeau has shown even on the way out, he will always be guided on self-interest ahead of both his party and his country

January 6th has now become a date of note for Canadians as well.

Yesterday, Justin Trudeau had announced his intention to resign as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and effectively as prime minister upon the selection of a successor for party leader.

To accommodate the Liberal leadership contest, Trudeau had also announced that Parliament will be prorogued until March 24th - meaning the business of the nation will be halted for months, awaiting resolution to the internal strife within the governing party.

While the resignation of a sitting prime minister is always a significant event in our political history, the circumstances and manner to which this has unfolded is unlike anything Canadians have seen before.

With Trudeau officializing his lame duck status, along with those interested cabinet ministers likely abandoning their respective portfolios in pursuit of the Liberal leadership, Canada is essentially without a meaningfully functional government.

And to have done this amid the looming threat of a recession-triggering tariff war with the United States is all the more astounding, given it is now unclear who represents Canada moving forward with the moral clarity and a mandate that an election would have afforded instead.

If this move was intended to provide stability in the face of uncertainty, all it did was achieve the opposite effect.

For instance, the Liberal Party of Canada has also been left with an uncertain process to select its new leader. Normally, the party's constitution stipulates that a leadership aspirant would require at least 90 days before the leadership vote to satisfy specific eligibility criteria. By that standard alone, a typical leadership race would span well over three months, yet prorogation is only until March 24, and with all opposition parties vowing to take down the minority government upon the return of Parliament, one would think this should dramatically shorten the timeframe of the race. Or does it? This remains unclear.

Furthermore, the registration rules around Liberal Party membership are too lax, as one does not even need to be a Canadian citizen to participate in electing a new leader. Given all we know nowadays with foreign interference, certain interests could infiltrate the selection of Canada's next prime minister, and so maintaining this unaddressed component of the party's constitution in the upcoming leadership contest is also fraught with problems and uncertainty.

Trudeau's rationale for prorogation was that Parliament was “seized with obstruction” by the Conservatives, paralyzing the House for months, thereby necessitating a reset. Yet, what is conveniently overlooked in this statement is that his government was ordered by Parliament to release all unredacted documents related to the impropriety with the Sustainable Development Fund to the RCMP, and Trudeau's refusal to do so ignited the very procedural impasse he now seeks to remedy with prorogation.

On that note, it is fitting Trudeau had chosen Rideau Cottage as his backdrop to make his announcement, as it was reminiscent of his weekly briefings to Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also where Canadians were reminded of his attempts to thwart transparency around the WE Charity scandal by proroguing then, or the withholding of the Winnipeg Lab documents during that period as well, all underscoring his contempt for the accountability function of Parliament.

Trudeau's resignation has been an incredible turn of events. Only one other time in Canada’s history has a prime minister been forced out by his own caucus, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and he was not remotely close to having the tenure or command of his party like Trudeau had. In fact, if one examines Trudeau's trajectory to power, he may have been the least likely leader to succumb to a similar fate to that of Bowell.

As Professor Lori Turnbull astutely recognized, Trudeau had made calculated moves early into his leadership aimed at giving him a stranglehold over the party, such as removing seasoned Liberal senators from caucus, as a way of eliminating any pushback mechanism on his leadership, while encouraging the inclusion of novice elected MPs with strict fidelity to the leader and his way of thinking. And yet, it was still the caucus that forced Trudeau's hand in making this decision, restoring the understanding that a party institution is larger than any singular leader, despite Trudeau’s best efforts to flip that understanding.

The caucus tried to make it easy at first for Trudeau to think about his future, especially following the by-election loss in Toronto-St. Paul's. But Trudeau’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the writing on the wall as early as a year ago, has now left both his party and country stranded to clean up the mess he has left.

In his resignation speech, Trudeau stated he always does what is in the best interest of Canadians. If that were indeed true, he would have been giving this speech over a year ago, which would have provided his party the necessary time to rebrand, or he could have called for an election that a majority of Canadians want, but instead has proven once again that his words ring hollow, pursuing only what is in his own personal interest, above all else. Consistent to the very end.