Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and his government were in serious trouble well before Donald J. Trump was re-elected in November.
After nine years in government, a housing and cost-of-living crisis, worries about immigration and a growing divide on culture issues, Mr. Trudeau, once the optimistic face of the liberal order, is on thinning ice.
Opinion polls show that, in national elections that must take place by the fall under Canadian electoral rules, Mr. Trudeau is unlikely to win a fourth term as prime minister.
Mr. Trump has tapped into this brewing trouble, even before taking office.
He has threatened to slap tariffs on Canadian goods, sending the country into panic mode. He has trolled Mr. Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great state of Canada,” putting his disdain on public display and triggering debates about how or whether Mr. Trudeau should respond.
And on Monday, Mr. Trump offered gleeful, acerbic commentary on the bombshell resignation of a top Canadian minister he had long disliked, showing that he is happy to mine this fraught moment in Canadian politics.
For Mr. Trump, this could all amount to poking some fun while pushing for a serious agenda of tariffs and border control; for many Canadians, this is a near-existential moment.
“He expects the government to change in 2025, so he’s just having fun,” said Gerald Butts, vice chair at the Eurasia Group consultancy and a former top adviser to Mr. Trudeau. “But his fun is creating chaos in Canada.”
Trudeau in Trouble
Much like the rest of the developed world, Canada has been grappling with a housing affordability crisis; an overwhelmed health care system with citizens facing long waiting times in emergency rooms and the offices of primary physicians; immigration levels that many believe are too high; and cultural polarization between conservatives and progressives amplified by social media and politicians.
When Canadians look for someone to blame, Mr. Trudeau is the obvious candidate, even if some of the problems they face are the responsibility of provincial or territorial governments.
A September poll by Ipsos put Mr. Trudeau’s approval rating at 33 percent, and a poll of polls, which tracks the averages of all available polls and is collated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, shows that his Liberal Party is trailing the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, by 21 percentage points.
Mr. Trump’s threat to slap a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods imported into the United States has added urgency and anxiety to this festering Canadian political malaise.
The two countries are each other’s top trading partners, and about 80 percent of Canada’s exports flow to the United States, so the impact of such tariffs would be catastrophic for the Canadian economy. (Mr. Trump has also directed the same threat at Mexico; the three countries have a free-trade agreement).
Mr. Trump has said that he would reconsider his tariff threat if Canada made serious improvements in managing the border between the two nations, which he and his advisers see as a security risk and a potential entry point for larger numbers of undocumented migrants.
On Tuesday, the Canadian government detailed a border plan to present to the Trump administration. The proposal, which is valued at 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($900 million) over six years, relies heavily on technologies to detect drugs and to watch over the 5,525- mile border.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, the country’s most populous province, said the looming start of the Trump presidency called for him and the other 12 premiers to “step into the breach” with a more active role in talks with the United States.
“We have to drive the conversation forward on the potential tariffs,” Mr. Ford said in an interview on Tuesday. Mr. Ford has been aggressively promoting the importance of Ontario, and Canada, to the United States — in a U.S.-wide ad campaign and in interviews with Fox News and other U.S. news outlets.
Mr. Ford has called for Canada to strike a bilateral trade deal with the United States that leaves Mexico out, and says Canada should threaten to slap its own tariffs on U.S. goods.
He has also suggested that Ontario, which provides energy to parts of the United States, could “turn off the lights” for 1.5 million households in New York State, Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Mr. Trudeau has tried to show he’s the best person to deal with Mr. Trump, particularly as he has done so during the first Trump presidency. He flew to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Mr. Trump in November, the first leader from the Group of 7 industrialized democracies to do so, illustrating that he could still sit at the table with the incoming president.
But being in Mr. Trump’s orbit can be a mixed blessing. Mr. Trudeau may have gotten a chance to make his case against tariffs and in favor of closer cooperation. But that hasn’t stopped Mr. Trump from mocking him on social media, delighting his followers who see Mr. Trudeau as a loathed liberal — or, as Elon Musk put it, “an insufferable tool.”
Dramatic Exit
It’s against this backdrop that Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, resigned on Monday, after being Mr. Trudeau’s key ally throughout his years in power and handling some of the country’s most challenging crises on his behalf.
For one, she renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with the first Trump administration. “We don’t like their representative much,” Mr. Trump said of her in 2018.
Ms. Freeland, in a stinging resignation letter, said Mr. Trudeau had attempted to demote her to minister without a portfolio, and she decided to leave the government instead. She is expected to launch a leadership bid for the Liberal Party — a process that her departure could precipitate.
At the heart of Ms. Freeland’s resignation letter was a Trump-related argument: She said that she and Mr. Trudeau had fallen out over “expensive political gimmicks,” a reference to his push for a sales tax holiday and sending checks to taxpayers, that would add to the deficit. Ms. Freeland said she wanted to keep “our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.”
Mr. Trump had a role in the breakup: Trouble between Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland seemed clear when he decided not to take her with him to Mar-a-Lago even though she led a government team the prime ministers assembled specifically to deal with the new Trump team.
Mr. Trudeau’s office did not respond to written questions.
On Monday evening, three weeks after that dinner, Mr. Trump welcomed Ms. Freeland’s resignation in a social media post: “The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau,” he posted on Truth Social. “Her behavior was totally toxic and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!!” he added.
An Election, but Which One?
With her departure, Ms. Freeland rocked the Liberal Party, but the rules, and time, are on Mr. Trudeau’s side: There is no mechanism to force him out.
Still, if other cabinet ministers follow Ms. Freeland out the door, he could find his position so untenable that he does call for a party leadership election. The new leader would become prime minister and take the country to the federal elections that must take place before October.
Mr. Poilievre wants Mr. Trudeau to call an election immediately, setting the stage for Mr. Trudeau himself leading the Liberal Party to what polls show would be a very likely crushing defeat.
Whichever route Mr. Trudeau takes, Mr. Trump will continue to loom large over Canadian politics.
“The next election will either be about Justin Trudeau or about Donald Trump,” Mr. Butts, of Eurasia Group, said.
If Mr. Trudeau takes his party to federal elections in 2025, the outcome will be a verdict on his stewardship of the country, he said. If someone else is in charge by the time the country goes to the polls, then voter perceptions about who can best negotiate with Mr. Trump — Mr. Poilievre or a new Liberal leader — will drive many people’s decisions on whom to choose.
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