Chrystia Freeland’s resignation is another nail in the Liberal government’s coffin

Editor’s note: This article was written before Justin Trudeau announced his plans to resign as prime minister and Liberal Party leader.

Justin Trudeau’s mandate as prime minister has been living on borrowed time ever since the NDP terminated its supply-and-confidence pact with the Liberals in September.

The ensuing three months have only gotten worse for the government, with a wave of Liberal MPs demanding Trudeau to resign so that a new party leader can take the reins.

Despite the slew of internal and external pressures, Trudeau has, quixotically, remained firmly at the helm of a ship that is both taking on water and sailing straight towards an iceberg. It really does not help that the metaphorical first mate has recently abandoned ship.

As of Dec. 16, Chrystia Freeland has resigned from her cabinet portfolios of deputy prime minister and minister of finance — the same day she was set to deliver the fall economic statement.

Longtime Liberal cabinet member Dominic LeBlanc has since taken on the role of finance minister.

In her resignation letter, which she shared on X, Freeland stated that Trudeau wanted to move her out of the finance minister position — which she had held since August 2020 after Bill Morneau’s resignation in wake of the WE Charity scandal — and into a different portfolio.

Upon reflection, Freeland concluded that the U.S.’s incoming Donald Trump administration poses a dire economic threat to Canada and that she and Trudeau had been finding themselves “at odds about the best path forward” for the country. Being against this monumental challenge meant that she could no longer have a place in cabinet.

Freeland had been a cabinet mainstay since 2015 and was to Trudeau what C.D. Howe was to prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent in the mid-20th century — an unofficial “minister of everything.”

She weathered every scandal and affair that the Trudeau government had been embroiled in and accumulated a great amount of influence as what effectively amounted to Trudeau’s righthand woman.

Therefore, it cannot be stressed enough that, given all these aforementioned qualifications, her resignation after almost a decade of loyalty is a really bad sign.

That’s not to say her quitting Trudeau’s executive team is the harbinger of the current government’s advancing demise — it’s doom has been a sure thing since the end of the NDP’s confidence agreement and the Liberals not meeting the Bloc Québécois’s pension-hike demand by the Oct. 29 deadline.

Freeland’s resignation is just one of many blows to the continuation of the government, albeit a fairly strong and somewhat personal one to Trudeau.

There is no other way to put it but bluntly — it’s curtains for Trudeau’s premiership and government. He is out of options and allies.

The Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Québécois have all vowed to bring the government down in a confidence vote as soon as the House of Commons reconvenes this January. The number of Liberal MPs who want a leadership change has only increased since Freeland left cabinet.

At this point, it appears Trudeau is staying on as prime minister and party leader because it’s a sunk cost. Whether he stays or goes, the Conservatives are going to sweep the 2025 federal election regardless of if it’s held at the beginning or end of the new year.

A new Liberal leader would likely put the party base and caucus at some ease, but it is uncertain if that will save the government from a confidence motion or an electoral wipeout.

If the Liberal Party wants to govern again, it has no other choice than to ride out a Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative government and let the obvious scent of Justin Trudeau dissipate in the meantime. Like it or not, that is the only way forward.