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Ed pointed out this morning that this was coming. Initially word was that it would happen Wednesday but that obviously changed, perhaps because Trudeau’s plans leaked to the media last night. So instead of waiting two more days he made the announcement this morning. After nearly a decade in power, Trudeau is finally done.

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“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.

It has been obvious for a year, at least to anyone who can read a poll, that Trudeau’s Liberal party had no chance of remaining in power with him as its leader. He has been hoping he could turn those numbers around, but that’s not going to happen this time. He made an attempt to reshuffle his cabinet to change the subject a bit but his plan to demote his Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, really backfired.

Instead of accepting the demotion, Freeland resigned three weeks ago today and published a letter saying now was not the time for “political gimmicks.” She was referring to Trudeau’s plans to pause a national tax and send $250 rebate checks to millions of Canadians. Trudeau was trying to buy votes but by the end of the week in which his Freeland resigned, about a third of the MPs in his own party were calling on him to step down.

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What Trudeau is doing today is similar to what Joe Biden did last summer. He is stepping down to give someone else a chance in an election that is coming up soon. The exact timeline isn’t clear but today he announced he was shutting down (proroguing) Parliament to give his party a few weeks to elect a replacement who will run against Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives in the next election.

Addressing Canadians on Monday, Trudeau said the country’s governor general had accepted his request to prorogue Parliament – essentially a suspension that will stop all proceedings, including debates and votes, without dissolving parliament.

While a routine part of parliamentary procedure, it is sometimes used by governments to buy time during a political crisis.

This latest prorogation will freeze parliament until 24 March, just four days before a scheduled 28 March vote on supply to allow the federal government to operate.

It is likely the Liberal caucus will try to have their new leader in place by that date, though it is so far unclear how that leader will be chosen.

So instead of returning on Jan. 27, Parliament won’t be back until March 24 by which time the Liberals will have a new leader, a fresh face on a party most Candaians don’t want in power.

Mr Trudeau’s successor will inherit a smoking husk of a party. The Liberals face dreary electoral prospects after almost a decade in power, and the threat posed by Mr Trump’s threat to hobble the Canadian economy with a 25% tariff on all of its exports to the United States. A survey taken last month by the Angus Reid Institute, a pollster, suggests the Liberal Party is supported by just 16% of voters, compared with the 45% who support Mr Poilievre’s Conservatives. That represents a new low for one of the world’s most successful political organisations. The Liberals have been in power for 93 of the past 129 years.

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Who will the new leader be? The leading names seem to be Chrystia Freeland, the Finance Minister who kicked off this sequence of events with her resignation, and Mark Carney a former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He tweeted his thanks to Trudeau this morning.

Whoever winds up on top, conservatives will call for a vote of no confidence against them and it should pass (unless the NDP backtracks again). That means an election should happen sometime in April and unless some dramatic happens between now and then, Pierre Poilievre should be the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Trudeau’s announcement got off to a rough start as all of his prepared remarks literally blew away just as he was heading to the podium.

Here’s a bit of his speech.

Here’s Poilievre reminding voters that it’s not just Trudeau, it’s his party that is the problem.

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