Late Sunday evening, the news broke that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was planning to resign.

There is a national caucus coming up for the Liberal Party, and the prime minister knows that he is going to be absolutely roasted. While everyone else has known that his government was hanging by a thread, no one could gather a majority to push for a no-confidence vote. Then Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, who had allied with Trudeau to create a majority for him in Parliament, announced on December 20th that he would move forward with a no-confidence vote. The problem, as likely future prime minister Pierre Poilievre pointed out, is that Parliament was on break until late January and Singh wasn’t going to have to do anything right away.

Ha! Now that Parliament is closed and there is no chance to introduce any motion for months—until after you get your pension.

You did the same stunt in September, claiming you’d no longer prop Trudeau up. Then you went back on your word and voted 8 times AGAINST AN ELECTION &… pic.twitter.com/I40Jkw2NAW

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) December 20, 2024

Well, it does seem like NDP supporters are indeed pushing Singh to follow through, which has to tell Justin Trudeau that it’s all over. It seems that all he has left to do is try to save a little face by controlling the timing of his announcement.

The sources stressed that they don’t know definitely when Mr. Trudeau will announce his plans to leave but said they expect it will happen before a key national caucus meeting on Wednesday. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss internal party matters.

One of the sources, who spoke recently to the Prime Minister, said Mr. Trudeau realizes he needs to make an announcement before he meets the Liberal caucus so it doesn’t look like he was forced out by his own MPs.

The three sources said they are unsure about what the Liberal Party national executive plans to do to replace Mr. Trudeau as leader. They said it remains unclear whether he will leave immediately or stay on as Prime Minister until a new leader is selected. The Liberal Party national executive, which decides on leadership issues, plans to meet this week, likely after the caucus session.

Today, Trudeau succumbed to the inevitable, and resigned as the leader of the Liberal party.

The 53-year-old, who has been in power since 2015, said he plans to stay in his post until his ruling Liberal Party chooses a replacement in the wake of his stunning fall from grace.

“I am a fighter, and I am not someone who backs away from a fight, particularly when a fight is as important as this,” Trudeau said at a news conference outside his home at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa.

“But I have always been driven by my love for Canada, by my desire to serve Canadians and by what is in the best interests of Canadians — and Canadians deserve a real choice in the next election.

“It has become obvious to me, with the internal battles, that I cannot be the one to carry the liberal standard into the next election,” he added.

He may be resigning as Liberal party leader, but he will still be prime minister until the next election.

Grim polling has shown that his party would lose badly to the opposing Conservative Party, led by rival Pierre Poilevre, with him still at the helm for the next election, which has to be held by late October.

Canada’s Parliament, which had been due to resume Jan. 27, will now be suspended until March 24 — allowing the Liberal Party to hold a “robust, nationwide competitive” leadership race to replace him, Trudeau said.

He added that he had already asked the president of his party to begin the process of selecting a new leader.

“It’s time for a reset,” Trudeau said, adding that Parliament had been “seized by obstruction, filibustering and a total lack of productivity” in the past few months.

“It’s time for the temperature to come down, for the people to have a fresh start in Parliament, to be able to navigate through these complex times,” the PM said.

With the end of the Trudeau era in Canada in sight, people are responding with excitement. How do we know this? The Canadian dollar had a surge as the rumors abounded.

The Canadian dollar is soaring this morning on whispers that Justin Trudeau is finally stepping down.

Imagine: one man has dragged the loonie this low, and now the markets are already pricing in hope. Trudeau wasn’t just bad for politics—he was bad for the economy. pic.twitter.com/8HrYW87eXM

— Marc Nixon (@MarcNixon24) January 6, 2025

And if Trudeau thinks this will save the Liberal party, he is dead wrong. The Canadian red wave is definitely coming.

Nothing has changed.

Every Liberal MP and Leadership contender supported EVERYTHING Trudeau did for 9 years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another 4 years, just like Justin.

The only way to fix what… pic.twitter.com/YnNYANTs1y

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) January 6, 2025

Naturally, Donald Trump had to weigh in to troll Trudeau, because why not?

Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State. The United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned. If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 6, 2025

However, the ramifications for Canada are far-reaching, as Professor Jonathan Turley pointed out. The end of Trudeau could mean the renaissance of free speech in Canada after a decade of his crushing control.

With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the wreckage of the Trudeau government.

Canada has long been a country caught between two influences: the United Kingdom and the United States. It has shared DNA with both nations. Unfortunately, it has largely followed the British approach in treating free speech more like a privilege than a right.

That dubious tradition was magnified over the last decade by a wholesale attack on free speech deemed hostile, insulting or triggering for different groups.

In many ways, Canada has been a cautionary tale for many in the U.S., as the same voices of censorship and criminalization grow on our campuses and in Congress.

Trudeau has been the cheerful face of modern censorship. While exuding tolerance and inclusivity, he hammered conservatives and libertarians with draconian measures and perfectly Orwellian soundbites. In the name of tolerance, he proudly proclaimed intolerance for opposing views.

Trudeau shows how speech codes and virtue signaling are now chic on the left. In a town hall event, Trudeau chastised a woman for asking a question that used the term “mankind” and instructed her, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’ … because it’s more inclusive.” (He later claimed he was joking. If so, many of his policies have the same punchline and are no joking matter.)

In many ways, Trudeau’s true colors emerged in his crackdown on the trucker protests opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2022, a campaign widely supported by an enabling media. Trudeau invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze bank accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens, powers long condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada.

The anti-free speech apple did not fall far from the tree. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister used the predecessor to the act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.

Despite crushing the trucker protests, the Canadian parliament extended Trudeau’s emergency powers to allow him to continue to harass and threaten those on the right. Despite broad opposition, the Liberal Party, the NDP and other allies were able to muster 181 votes to keep authoritarian powers alive in Canada. (The Canadian courts later, belatedly, declared the Trudeau powers unconstitutional).

Many of the same legislators would later push to increase the penalties for certain speech crimes to life imprisonment.

One of the most tragically ironic moments for Canada came last year, when Trudeau’s government blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva because she has a conviction in Russia. She had been tried in absentia by a judge sanctioned by Canada for her exercise of free speech in Russia in condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.

Think about that. Canada was concerned because she violated anti-free speech laws that are similar to its own. The Russians convicted her of disseminating “deliberately false information,” and Canada convicts people under laws like Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada for efforts “to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”

That is why some of us spit out our soup in 2022 when Trudeau’s government condemned Cuba for its own crackdown on protesters, claiming that “Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” Trudeau also condemned China for cracking down on protests over COVID-19, the very subject of his own crackdown on the truckers.

Canada will not miss Justin Trudeau. Now we wait and see if Canadians are ready for a course correction by choosing the Conservative party and Pierre Poilievre.

Featured image: Presidencia de la República Mexicana – Visita Oficial del Primer Ministro de Canadá, Justin Trudeau, Wikimedia under CC BY 2.0 license; image cropped