Monday's scene fit the theme of Ms. Freeland’s resignation letter: that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is consumed with short-term self-preservation rather than doing what the country needs at a time of potential crisis. Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland speak at a news conference in Ottawa, on Oct. 1, 2018.PATRICK DOYLE/AFP/Getty Images
There isn’t much left for Justin Trudeau. Monday was a day of chaos in Ottawa of a kind that marks the end of a beleaguered Prime Minister. Just about everyone sees it.
It was the day Chrystia Freeland was to present a midyear mini-budget. Instead, she pulled the pin from a grenade as she walked out of Mr. Trudeau’s government.
Ms. Freeland quit her roles as finance minister and deputy prime minister, after Mr. Trudeau told her Friday he was planning to replace her as finance minister anyway.
She posted a resignation letter on X at 9:07 a.m., a scathing critique of a Prime Minister focusing on “costly gimmicks” to save his political skin instead of preparing for the “grave challenge” raised by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s threat of steep tariffs.
Mr. Trudeau’s struggling government is in a full-on crisis. Before our eyes, Mr. Trudeau’s premiership is writhing in its death throes.
For hours on Monday, it wasn’t clear if there would be a fall economic statement at all. There was no finance minister to deliver it. Reporters already locked up to read the documents waited for hours in the confusion.
Chrystia Freeland resigns from Trudeau's cabinet
Shortly after 4 p.m., Government House Leader Karina Gould slipped into the Commons to table the economic statement documents, but there was no one to give the speech.
Every opposition party declared Mr. Trudeau is done. But it was also clear many Liberal MPs agree: A renewed backbench revolt was brewing. Even cabinet ministers declined to express confidence in the Prime Minister.
Mr. Trudeau addressed a hastily convened caucus meeting, and most MPs came out in stony silence. “We’re not united,” said Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Chad Collins, who called for Mr. Trudeau to resign. There is more writhing to come.
The Liberal government had already been flailing, desperately seeking ways to win back support, including through a two-month partial goods and services tax holiday that struck even financially squeezed voters as a transparent gimmick.
Now Mr. Trudeau’s most senior, best-known minister has walked away, accusing the Prime Minister of frittering money away when the country should be keeping its powder dry to prepare for the potential disaster of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
That’s crisis for the government on top of crisis for the country.
But Mr. Trudeau and his aides spent Monday scrambling just to get through the day.
The scene fit the theme of Ms. Freeland’s resignation letter: that Mr. Trudeau is consumed with short-term self-preservation rather than doing what the country needs at a time of potential crisis.
She suggested the Liberal government is doomed to defeat, anyway, and should do the right thing for the country.
“Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end,” she wrote. “But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer.”
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could have highlighted Mr. Trudeau’s weaknesses more dramatically. She poked a sharp stick into his government’s wounds and rooted around agonizingly, leaving an unforgettable phantom pain with her resignation.
It echoed the kinds of accusations that Mr. Trudeau hears not just from Conservative opponents, but from disaffected Canadians: that the government is focused on short-term political survival, spending unwisely on popularity when the country, and Canadians, have bigger problems.
On top of that there’s the flailing symbolized by the remarkable homemade horror show that culminated in a finance minister walking away on mini-budget day.
Mr. Trudeau’s team had undermined Ms. Freeland since July, suggesting she was ineffective and might be replaced by former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. The Prime Minister had recently taken a new run at recruiting Mr. Carney, but the PMO also had run roughshod over the finance minister by insisting on fiscal policies she found hard to stomach.
And then on Friday, Mr. Trudeau told her he was set to replace her as finance minister – amazingly, telling her to present the fiscal update, complete with an inflated deficit, and then step aside. Having been thrown under the bus, Ms. Freeland objected to him backing it over her again.
Now Mr. Trudeau has a new finance minister, lifelong friend Dominic LeBlanc, the Mr. Fix-It in this Liberal government. It appears Mr. Carney isn’t coming. Housing Minister Sean Fraser was announcing his resignation when Ms. Freeland dropped her bombshell.
But it’s only Mr. Trudeau’s resignation that will be the talk now. His credibility, and any remaining idea that he can win re-election, have been mortally wounded. Ms. Freeland’s left with a blast that makes it hard for Mr. Trudeau to hang on through crisis.