The prime minister’s resignation and threats from south of the border are shaking up Canadian politics
For years, Canadian politics revolved around support for or opposition to Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. His recent resignation after nearly ten years of in power was a shock that initially seemed to favour the Conservatives, who felt assured of an easy victory even in spite of their recent shift to the right.
But the return of Donald Trump to the White House created a second shock, as he began aggressively threatening tariffs and even questioning Canadian sovereignty. Together, these events have led to a decline in Conservative support as the Liberals pivot and many Canadians rethink their interest in right-wing politics. What these dynamics will mean for the future of Canadian politics will depend, not least, on whether the left-wing New Democratic Party can rise to the occasion by remaking itself to meet the moment and once again redefine the basis of Canadian identity.
The Long Liberal Let-down
The Liberals have seen a drastic decline in support since mid-2023, but anger at the outgoing prime minister and his party have steadily accumulated ever since the party’s initial win in 2015.
Immediately after the 2015 election, Trudeau destroyed much of the enthusiasm he had ridden to power by abandoning his signature promise to change Canada’s electoral system. At the time, he claimed this was due to a lack of agreement over which new system to adopt. However, he recently admitted what many long suspected: he killed electoral reform because the all-party commission and public consultations that were created to steer the reforms had not chosen his preferred system.
The new government also quickly came under fire for continuing many Conservative policies they had criticized while in opposition. They maintained the last government’s cuts to healthcare funding, yet continued blaming Conservatives for under-funding healthcare. They broke a promise to regulate methane emissions and kept the Conservative greenhouse gas emissions targets they had previously labelled insufficient, then failed to meet even those targets, leaving Canada with by far the worst record for emissions reductions in the G7. They also alienated environmentalists by approving a huge new LNG plant and spending 4.5 billion dollars to buy and build the TMX oil pipeline after private investors pulled out.
Liberal economic policies also disappointed many progressives, including two “middle-class” tax cuts in 2015 and 2019 that primarily benefited the rich. Trudeau also broke his promise to close a tax loophole used by the wealthiest tax filers after pressure from lobbyists. Another signature Trudeau policy, the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CBI), was meant to fund badly needed public infrastructure projects, but adopted a private finance model that doubles costs compared to public funding. Finance Minister Bill Morneau admitted this would cost more in the long run, but claimed it was done to lower short-term borrowing. Even worse, the CBI’s mandate and funding agreements prioritize profits for private investors, shift decision-making power to private hands, and promote commercialization and privatization of new and existing public infrastructure.
After ten years of Liberal government, Canada’s income inequality is at the highest level ever recorded, wealth inequality is growing faster than ever, and much of the recent progress on reducing poverty has been erased. But perhaps most consequentially for their electoral fortunes, the Liberals failed to act on the growing housing affordability crisis. The crisis stems from cuts to social housing by successive Conservative and Liberal governments in the 1980s and 1990s, which caused decades of under-investment and resulted in 14-year wait lists for subsidized housing, scant co-operative housing, and skyrocketing costs for market-rate housing. Today, average monthly costs of home ownership are around 60 percent of median income (over 80 percent in large cities, up to 125 percent for detached homes) and the wage needed to afford rent is well above minimum wage (more than double in large cities).
High rates of immigration have also produced ab unprecedented backlash, as many blame it for the housing crisis. The sharp increase was mainly driven by temporary foreign workers, a program the Liberals deregulated to meet business demand for low-wage workers, and by international students, which provinces (especially Ontario) relied on to fund higher education while keeping taxes and domestic tuitions low. The Liberals have now slashed study permits and cut both temporary and permanent residency permits, but the damage to the government’s reputation — and Canadians’ trust in the immigration system — has been done.
With respect to foreign policy, the Liberals preserved a controversial weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, initially claiming it was set in stone before they took power, but later admitting to finalizing it themselves. They kept the deal despite years of protests, lawsuits, and mounting evidence that the Saudis were using Canadian-made armoured vehicles to suppress civilian protests and wage war in Yemen. While the Liberals made a point of pausing the permits after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, they resumed exports a year later without any real accountability. This deal led to Amnesty International accusing Canada of violating international law and a UN report that accused Canada of fuelling the war in Yemen. Moreover, because the Liberals blocked efforts to improve oversight of future arms deals, Canadian companies still sell over 1 billion dollars of weapons to authoritarian states annually.
On top of these policy controversies, Trudeau has been dogged by a growing list of personal scandals. By the time Canada was hit by the same post-COVID inflation as most Western countries, public frustration compounded on a decade of simmering anger at Trudeau and his party. Early this year, the Liberals reached the lowest polling in their 158-year history and Trudeau’s approval hit an all-time low of -45 (19 percent approve/64 percent disapprove).
Making Canada Great Again
The collapse in Liberal support since 2023 has almost exclusively benefitted the Conservatives. The modern Conservative party was formed in 2003 by merging the moderate Progressive Conservatives and right-wing populist Reform/Alliance, and an informal divide persists to this day. The Conservatives must appear moderate and tolerant to win Red-Blue (Liberal vs. Conservative) swing voters in the East, while also appeasing right-wing activists and social conservatives in their mostly Western base. Since 2016, this base also includes a growing minority of “Maple MAGA” Trump supporters: 10 percent of Conservatives support Trump’s threat to annex Canada, while 25 percent are “open to it”.
The Conservatives are led by Pierre Poilievre, a Reform/Alliance member before being elected as an MP in 2004, who has always been solidly on the party’s right wing. Poilievre’s win in the 2022 leadership race marked a clear rejection of the previous leader’s moderation, as he was one of the first MPs to embrace the anti-vaccine “Freedom Convoy” that occupied Ottawa that winter. Poilievre has since shifted the party to the right, and made its approach significantly angrier and more aggressive.
Poilievre himself is primarily a fiscal conservative, but has walked a thin line on social issues and appealed more to the radical elements of his base and caucus than previous leaders. He has accused Trudeau of promoting “radical gender ideology”, repeated many right-wing conspiracies, appeared with far-right activists, and refused to discipline three of his MPs who met with an MEP from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Still, Poilievre has thus far stayed clear of abortion (abortion rights are much more popular in Canada than the US, although a vocal minority of Conservatives want it regulated) and generally avoids the racialized and anti-immigrant politics characteristic of today’s American Right.
Until last month, the Conservatives appeared to be headed for an easy majority. Poilievre made his party the go-to anti-Trudeau vote by blaming the PM for triggering inflation with a carbon tax and high public spending, creating urban disorder with loose bail and parole rules and lax drug laws, and causing economic stagnation and a housing crisis with over-regulation. Yet beneath the slogans are many unpopular plans: his promise to scrap the new pharmacare program enjoys 14 percent support, his seeming plans to scrap new dental care and subsidized day-care programs have 23 percent and 25 percent support, and his promise to “defund” (i.e. abolish) the Canadian public broadcaster, CBC, has just 11 percent support. Nevertheless, his central message for years has been “Canada is broken”, and at least until recently, many Canadians agreed.
The Left under Pressure
The left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) was formed in 1961 by the merger of the Canadian Labour Congress, still Canada’s main trade union federation, and the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The NDP gradually drifted towards social democracy (especially under recent centrist leaders), but the party always retained a large left wing — including several new self-declared socialist MPs — and current leader Jagmeet Singh has pivoted to the left since 2017.
The NDP is also linked to Canada’s labour movement: many large unions are formally affiliated with the party and union representatives have designated quotas in its governing bodies. Despite this, union membership has little impact on political support in Canada: public-sector union members lean NDP, but private-sector union members vote similarly to the general public, especially after recent Conservative gains.
Beyond the normal urban-rural divide, Canadian politics is highly regional and not well-captured by a simple left-right spectrum, meaning that the NDP competes with both Liberals and Conservatives in different electoral districts, known as ridings. The NDP often forms provincial governments, especially in Central and Western Canada, but it has never won a federal election — although it has come close. Instead, New Democrats have mainly exercised influence by popularizing ideas, pioneering policies at the provincial level, and extracting concessions from minority governments at the federal level.
In 2021, Jagmeet Singh signed an agreement to support the Liberal minority on confidence votes in exchange for key NDP policies, including banning replacement workers, paid sick leave, regular low-income support payments, subsidized day care, adding dental care and prescription drugs (“pharmacare”) to public health insurance, and more.
The healthcare expansion was especially significant, as it has been a core NDP goal for decades. Universal healthcare was pioneered in Canada by a provincial NDP government in 1962, and the federal system was created in 1966 by a Liberal minority under pressure from the NDP. Today, universal healthcare is a major source of Canadian pride, and the NDP’s role in creating the system is widely seen as its defining accomplishment — for which then-leader Tommy Douglas was later voted “the Greatest Canadian”.
Most of the NDP’s main demands have now been implemented, although universal dental care and pharmacare are still being gradually phased in. However, these policy wins have come at a cost: Singh is now widely seen as tied to Trudeau, despite “ripping up” their agreement in September, and his approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of -16 (38 percent approve/54 percent disapprove).
Singh’s defenders argue this is a cost worth paying to postpone an inevitable Conservative majority and buy time for dental care and pharmacare to be fully implemented so that they will be too difficult to roll back. His critics blame him for failing to capitalize on the Liberal implosion, pointing especially to a loss of working-class support to the Conservatives. Singh is also criticized for failing to convincingly mirror the public’s anger at the Liberals. As Canadian politics has grown more bitter, he has been tarred as a “champagne socialist” for his expensive clothes, watch, and car — which he explains as “social armour” meant to rebut racial stereotypes during his time as a lawyer.
The Last Straw for Trudeau
The first major shock to the political status quo was Justin Trudeau’s resignation. Many Liberal MPs had spent years trying to compel him to resign, but the final straw was the dramatic resignation of Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Days before she was to deliver an important but controversial economic update, Trudeau told her she would be demoted immediately afterwards, apparently to be replaced by Mark Carney. Instead of falling on her sword, Freeland resigned with a surprise public statement condemning Trudeau’s leadership.
This caused a caucus revolt that ended with Trudeau announcing his resignation as Prime Minister on 6 January, although he will stay on until March after suspending parliament to give the Liberals time for a leadership race. The winner of that race will become prime minister and then lead the Liberals into the next election.
The Liberal leadership race has three serious contenders. Liberal House Leader Karina Gould appears to be in a distant third place, but her grassroots campaign could see her over-perform expectations. Chrystia Freeland was initially considered a favourite to replace Trudeau, but has apparently alienated some of her caucus colleagues with the way she attacked the outgoing PM. Mark Carney, the man Trudeau sought to replace Freeland with, is very well regarded in Liberal circles, both for his Harvard and Oxford education and for his time as governor of the Bank of Canada, where he gained a reputation as a skilled economic manager during the 2008 financial crisis, before leaving to be governor of the Bank of England.
All three candidates are running to the right of Trudeau, promising to (mostly) scrap the carbon tax, reverse a recent increase in the capital gains tax, and adopt a more conservative fiscal policy. Carney in particular is positioning himself as a centrist, criticizing “the far left” who “see government as the solution to every problem” and fail to understand that “we can’t redistribute what we don’t have” — despite record-breaking income and wealth inequality. Never elected and not associated with Trudeau, Carney also portrays himself as an “outsider” — despite his 12 years as the top banker of two different countries.
Carney currently appears to be the favourite, but the race’s rules — ranked ballots and a weighted points system favouring small ridings — may yield unexpected results.
The Threat from Washington
The second major shock to Canadian politics has been US President Donald Trump’s continuous threats against Canada. At first, Trump called for 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico as a punishment for fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration, despite the fact that Canada accounts for 0.2 percent of fentanyl and 1.5 percent of migrants stopped at US borders. Trump also said the tariffs were to address the United States’ trade deficit, which he says is “subsidizing” Canada to the tune of 200 billion dollars per year. Yet, besides misrepresenting the nature of the deficit, he lies about the numbers: the US has a 41-billion-dollar trade deficit with Canada, or a 63-billion-dollar surplus if energy is excluded. The importance of Canadian oil and electricity to the US is why Trump quietly set tariffs on energy at only 10 percent.
However, Trump’s most concerning explanation is that tariffs represent “economic force” aimed at making Canada the fifty-first US state. His threats to absorb Canada (along with Greenland and the Panama Canal) were initially seen as disrespectful taunts, but his incessant repetition of the point has led many Canadians to take him seriously. Even Trudeau was caught on a hot mic saying he believes annexation to be Trump’s real goal.
On the eve of the deadline for the tariffs to begin, Trudeau gave a speech appealing to the US and Canada’s long-standing friendship, but also announced retaliatory tariffs mostly targeting red states and urged Canadians to remain united, boycott US goods and travel, and “buy Canadian”. A last-minute agreement secured a 30-day “pause” on the tariffs, but Trump has now reneged on the pause and announced 25-percent tariffs on steel and aluminium. He also claimed that Canada is “not viable as a country” and reiterated his plan to make it the fifty-first state.
These threats have led to an unprecedented level of anti-American sentiment in Canada: the US anthem is being booed at sports stadiums, American products are being pulled off shelves, there are widespread boycotts of American goods and travel, many have proposed cutting off oil and electricity to the US (which the government is considering), and even more radical ideas are being floated. There are also panicked discussions over diversifying the economy away from the US: a push to eliminate stubborn interprovincial trade barriers, plans to pivot towards Europe, and even suggestions of Canada joining the EU — an idea one third of Canadians support.
The constant instability, along with the looming threat of 25 percent tariffs on all exports, have created a sense of urgency. However, the unified “Team Canada” response has also spurred a renewed wave of patriotism. As recently as December, a historic low of 34 percent of Canadians said they were “very proud” of their country, yet two months later that figure was already up to 44 percent.
This shift has created a sudden distaste for Poilievre’s “Canada is broken” rhetoric just as the Liberal leadership change deprived him of his two main targets: Trudeau and the carbon tax. Besides sounding worryingly similar to Trump, Poilievre’s early responses to Trump’s threats were criticized as weak, accepting Trump’s framing, and attacking the Liberals and NDP in the same breath as ostensibly defending Canada. He was also condemned for accepting Elon Musk’s endorsement and asking Musk to invest in Canada.
After these fumbles, Poilievre has taken a step back from the public eye while the Conservatives scramble to find an angle to regain their momentum. Currently, several polls show a drop in Conservative support while only 26 percent of Canadians see Poilievre as the best person to handle Trump, versus 40 percent for Carney and 13 percent for Freeland. Whether or not this decline lasts until the end of the month, let alone until the election, it seems unlikely that the Conservatives will get the easy “carbon tax election” they’ve spent the last three years preparing for.
A New Canada and the (New) New Democratic Party
More back-and-forth between Ottawa and Washington over tariffs is almost guaranteed in the weeks to come. Reactions to these battles and Trump’s continuing threats by both political elites and the public will not only determine the dynamics of the next federal election, but may substantially reconfigure Canada’s politics, culture, and relations with the rest of the world.
In the short term, the Liberal leadership race concludes on 9 March, after which the winner will have two weeks as Prime Minister to set a new direction before Parliament returns on 24 March. It is hard to say whether opposition parties will topple the government right away, but the deadline for holding an election is October.
The Conservatives’ ongoing debate over how to (re)position themselves will also be significant. The party must decide how to react to Trump’s threats, a changing public mood, and a changing Liberal party. This will also require deciding how much room to leave for the MAGA-friendly elements of the party’s own base and caucus.
In the medium term, Canada may also see a revival of Québec separatism. The separatist Parti Québécois currently leads in the polls for Québec’s October 2026 election, and has vowed to hold a third sovereignty referendum after the 1980 and 1995 votes narrowly failed. Sovereigntists may get a boost from a strong Bloc Québécois federally, and even more from a Conservative majority, as Québec is generally more progressive than the rest of Canada and Western Conservatives hold a long-standing animosity towards the province, which they see as benefiting unfairly from asymmetrical federalism.
While the future of the NDP is the least clear of the three major parties, its new direction may be the most consequential for Canada in the long term. After years of being attacked by Conservatives for “propping up” the Liberals, the NDP finally committed to defeating the government after Freeland’s resignation, but Trudeau suspended parliament before they got a chance. Now, the media have switched to framing Singh’s desire for an election as undermining Canadian unity — a theme the Liberals are likely to seize on when parliament returns.
Even worse, falling Liberal support had benefited the Conservatives while the NDP stagnated, but now that the Liberals are recovering, the Conservatives and NDP are both in decline. This suggests the NDP was losing supporters to the Conservatives while gaining supporters from the Liberals, and now the latter are returning to the Liberals while the former remain with the Conservatives.
A lot can still happen before the election, but the NDP currently seems to be facing significant losses. Despite some early proposals from Singh and left-wing MPs, the party has not yet staked out a distinct position in the emerging political landscape.
Yet whatever the results of the next federal election, the NDP will almost certainly hold a leadership race in late 2025 or early 2026. Jagmeet Singh has led the party to major victories on key NDP goals: if dental care and pharmacare survive, they will be the greatest expansions to Canada’s social programs since the 1960s, and Singh will likely be remembered as one of the NDP’s best leaders. But he has led the party for eight years and is now controversial in and outside the party. So, the time has come for Singh to pass the torch and let members decide the future of our party.
The NDP will have many critical decisions to make about our identity and goals as a party. Should the NDP be an activist party focused on social justice issues, even if that means alienating many working-class supporters, or a labour party focused on delivering concrete benefits for working people — or can these goals be combined? As the Liberals shift to the right, should the NDP chase the median Orange-Red voter by moving closer to the centre, or should it return to its CCF roots? It will also need to confront a recurrent question throughout the party’s history: should it appeal to a broad base as a credible governing alternative, or embrace its role as Canada’s “social conscience” and focus on advancing radical policies through argument and advocacy, provincial government, and minority parliaments?
Finally, New Democrats need a new guiding purpose now that its long-standing goal of healthcare expansion has tentatively been achieved. The NDP has always been a party defined by big ideas, and members will soon need to lay the groundwork for its next era-defining project. If the history of universal healthcare is any guide, this new project may one day serve as the heart of the kind of renewed Canadian pride and identity that is suddenly in high demand.
Now more than ever, the NDP needs ambitious new ideas, and Canada needs ambitious New Democrats.
Joseph Gubbels is a member of the New Democratic Party and a student of political theory and public administration.
Top photo: Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. (Flickr)
