On January 6, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an announcement that political observers had been expecting for the better part of a year—he is resigning as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
The decision follows a prolonged and seemingly irreversible slump in Trudeau’s popularity levels, which has been persistent since summer 2023. Current polling suggests that if an election were to be held tomorrow, the Liberals and the NDP would lose almost all of their seats—relegating them to third and fourth parties in Parliament, respectively, behind a supermajority of Conservatives with the Bloc Quebecois as the official opposition.
Trudeau will stay in his role temporarily, until the Liberals have internally elected a new leader. In his resignation speech, he expressed hope that his move would “turn the temperature down” and “reset” Parliament.
He also announced that Parliament—which has been consumed for months in Conservative-led procedural squabbling—would be prorogued until March 24. Prorogation is a type of temporary suspension of parliamentary activities. It is distinct from dissolution, which would trigger an election.
Prorogation is more like hitting the reset button on all legislation. All bills that haven’t yet been passed are now dead and would have to start from scratch. Importantly this includes both the spring budget and the fall economic statement, along with all other outstanding house business.
“Both the spring budget and the fall economic statement are possibly best viewed as Liberal election platforms now,” says David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Trudeau likely chose to prorogue due to the fact that all three opposition parties—the Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, and NDP—have expressed that they would vote to bring the government down in a confidence motion. Because the Liberals don’t have a majority of seats, they rely on opposition party support, particularly from the NDP, in order to pass confidence legislation and keep the government running. A prorogation buys Trudeau and the Liberals some time to find a new leader, introduce them to the public, and prepare the ground for an election that everyone now knows is coming soon.
The move echoes a 2008 action by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who prorogued the Conservative-led minority parliament for two months when it became clear that he was going to lose a confidence motion. Behind-the-scenes haggling during the suspension allowed for the government to survive once parliament reconvened.
Trudeau’s move comes at a critical moment for the Canadian government, as incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to threaten severe and punishing tariffs on all Canadian imports to the United States, a move that would severely damage the Canadian economy. Trump reacted to Trudeau’s resignation on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, by repeating his refrain that Canada should join the United States as the 51st state.
Key legislation by the wayside
Beyond the political intrigue, the prorogation of Parliament means that key pieces of legislation and parliamentary business are now on hold, and unlikely to come back if the post-prorogation parliament votes no-confidence and calls an election.
Because any legislation that was partially in progress now needs to start over from scratch, any partially completed items will likely never see the light of day.
Changes to the capital gains tax inclusion rate—which would have seen investment profits taxed at a slightly closer rate as regular working income for the wealthiest investors—are dead in the water. The 0.13 per cent of Canadians who make over $250,000 per year in investment income can rest easy knowing that they will continue paying zero tax on 50 per cent of their investment income.
The federal proposal to impose a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry—Canada’s largest source of emissions by far—is now dead in the water. Most of the Liberals’ other climate policies are already well established and won’t be lost immediately with prorogation, although a Conservative electoral victory would likely turn back the clock on many of those measures.
“For better or worse, there wasn’t much in the way of major climate policy that will now be lost,” says Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a senior researcher focused on climate policy at the CCPA. “The unfinished oil and gas cap is a blow, but the regulations had been so watered down that they were unlikely to make a real world impact in the next five years.”
There’s a small bright side to all this—it also means that the 2024 budget’s big new military investments will be left on the table, which, at $10 billion, would have been the largest amount in years that the government has spent on war-making.
It also means that the biggest piece of new spending in the ill-fated Fall Economic Statement—a $17 billion corporate tax cut extension—will bite the dust.
Pierre Poilievre, for his part, has expressed a desire to dismantle not just the unfinished business of the Liberals, but also take apart some of the small gains that working Canadians have made over the past decade. In a nearly two-hour interview with right wing online media personality Jordan Peterson, Poilievre outlined his plans to slash the “socialist” programs of his predecessor government, claiming, without evidence, that social programs like health care transfer money from the poor to the super-wealthy.
Prorogation, then, will be the nail in the coffin for any unfinished business for this government. But unless something drastic changes, then the coming election will see any of this government’s policy achievements—from $10 per day child care to public dental coverage to tepid environmental progress—swept away unless bolted down.
An earlier version of this article stated that prorogation would cancel the Canada Disability Benefit because the benefit amounts were part of the Spring 2024 budget. However, the CDB was passed into law separately as a concept, and should therefore survive prorogation.
