OPINION:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has resigned as leader of the Liberal Party after watching his approval ratings plummet from a high of 65 percent in 2017 to 28 percent in 2025.
Another far-leftist bites the dust. And his resignation comes as a pressure campaign that has waged for weeks to get him to leave 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,” Reuters wrote a day ago.
“An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, have publicly urged Trudeau to quit,” Reuters wrote.
Too bad, so sad.
“I have fought for this country, for you,” Trudeau said, in announcing his resignation. Yes, sort of. And himself. He’s much more fought the good fight for himself and his own political ambitions.
Trudeau, who’s led the Liberal Party since 2013 and was elected prime minister in 2015, held a 65 percent approval rating in 2017, according to Angus Reid Institute polling. It then fell hard, hitting about 33 percent in 2020. For a year, his favor with Canadians grew, spiking at about 50 percent before falling, falling, falling again, to his present 28 percent.
His resignation isn’t that much of a shocker.
Trudeau has been an open failure for some time.
In mid-December, from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board: “Justin Trudeau Nears the End in Canada.” His finance minister had already called it quits by then, calling out Trudeau publicly for failed economic policies — failures she saw would only grow worse under President-elect Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada. And Liberals in the party in general were facing fury from citizens over everything from rising housing costs to border challenges, as well as over Trudeau’s penchant for blaming everybody and anybody for the country’s problems.
From The Financial Post in mid-December: “For someone used to getting his own way for most of his life, public hostility, repeated failure and relentless bad news must be terribly trying for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. His government began in 2015 with high hopes and widespread good wishes. Now that it is all coming crashing down, he refuses to accept blame and either change course or resign — a personal shortcoming that has become a national problem.”
A mark of a good leader is someone who takes responsibility, who openly and with total transparency acknowledges failures, and who then takes the proper steps to correct those failures.
A mark of a poor leader is Trudeau.
He tipped his tyrannical ways in 2022.
That’s when Trudeau and his tyrants-in-arms went overboard with COVID mandates and told truckers they’d have to get the shots as conditions of continuing their trucking operations — as conditions of working — and that those who continued to participate in organized protests of the mandates, called “Freedom Convoys,” would see their bank accounts frozen and their truck insurance canceled. Out came the police to break up the trucking protests; out came the law enforcement operation to send the truckers who’d gathered and occupied Parliament Hill in opposition of the shot mandates back to their homes. It was one of the largest law enforcement take-downs in the history of Canada.
But Trudeau couldn’t even make an appearance.
He went into hiding.
“[In this] moment of incredible tension and division, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was absent from the public eye,” Foreign Policy wrote.
Such is the way of leftists.
“It’s reasonable to call Trudeau a modern-day socialist,” The Fraser Institute wrote in April of 2022.
Such is the way of socialists.
Leftists and socialists are great at the public relations — at the promises for hope and change and wealthy times for all. But they falter when their empty promises come crashing on their heads. They fail to accept responsibility for their own faulty and impossible promises, and instead of standing strong and taking the heat for what they themselves created, they cut and run. They run and hide.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said.
Yes. But the bigger problem with socialism is that it kills the souls of all who are victimized by its elitist leadership.
Trudeau was a pretty face who sang the diversity, equity, inclusion praises and preyed on the ignorance of Liberal Party voters with typical leftist climate change alarmism that taxed production and the producers — and that ultimately fueled a fall in living standards for most Canadians. Meanwhile, Trudeau continued to cozy with his Davos-like cronies and shelter himself from the financial storms his own policies created.
Liberalism. Socialism. Communism. Collectivism.
Government expansion always leads to the same road: a degradation in the economy and a demise of individual freedom.
Trudeau’s fall from grace is just as predictable. So, too, his exit. So, too, the soon-to-come leftist gaslighting that will eventually paint Trudeau as a success and that will eventually give rise to the next Trudeau-like leader. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And — luckily for leftist politicians — socialist-communist-leftist leaning voters everywhere are nothing if not ignorant of historical truths.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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