On January 6, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Canada’s prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. This came less than a month after Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister and prominent member of Trudeau’s cabinet, resigned in December 2024.
Since the beginning of his term in October 2015, Trudeau has overseen nearly a decade’s worth of Canadian politics, including COVID-19 regulations, North American foreign policy, and confronting the country’s costs of living crisis. Looking back at his nine-year term, and considering the circumstances, was Trudeau a good prime minister? Furthermore, who should become the next Liberal leader and potentially, Canada’s next prime minister?
The Varsity asked four authors their opinion on Trudeau’s time in office and the future of this country’s leadership.
Trudeau created a home for immigrants
When I heard of Trudeau’s resignation, I thought it was inevitable.
As of January 13, the Liberal Party’s approval rating on CBC’s poll tracker was 21.5 per cent compared to the Conservative Party’s 44.5 per cent. Trudeau’s unpopularity came from his policies — many of which were a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased restrictions regarding travel. The freedom convoys — mass protests from the trucking industry following a mask and vaccination mandate — exemplified some Canadians’ anger with Trudeau and his COVID-19 policies.
I disliked Trudeau because I found him too ‘floppy’ on his policies. To me, it seemed like he never stuck to his beliefs. He would claim Canada is a land of immigration, then reduce the number of permanent residents admitted into the country while blaming “bad” actors for taking advantage of the system. Or think of the many promises made to Indigenous people he never kept, like the promise to provide clean water for First Nation communities in Canada which has yet to be manifested.
I am a first-generation immigrant, and I believe that Trudeau’s resignation will be overall beneficial for Canada’s progress. Yet, my father sees it as a tragedy. To my father, the Liberals’ poor policies did not outweigh the party’s benefit to immigrants.
During the height of COVID-19 in 2020, the Canadian government enforced public policies that created temporary pathways to permanent residency for migrant healthcare workers — policies that affected many immigrants like my mother. This ensured my family and others in my community could have a path to permanent residency and security. The Liberal Party, for all their faults, created an environment where immigrants felt comfortable migrating for safety, family, or employment. Under Trudeau, the number of immigrants rose, nearly doubling from the beginning of his start as prime minister in 2015.
I acknowledge the party’s unpopularity and the various reasons each Canadian has, but I also see the benefits he brought to marginalized groups. I think simplifying the nuances of his nearly decade-long run to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a disservice to those who benefitted and struggled under his tenure.
Emmanuella Nwabuoku is a first-year student at Victoria College studying social sciences.
Much Trudeau about nothing
I believe Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister was marked by a commitment to diversity and equity, both domestically and on the global stage. His leadership in these areas deserve praise, but it was also riddled with contradictions.
Domestically, Trudeau positioned himself as a progressive leader who championed inclusivity. His cabinet was the most diverse in Canadian history, featuring gender equality and significant representation from racialized and Indigenous communities. His government also introduced budgeting to advance sexual and reproductive health for countries around the world and expanded protections for LGBTQ+ Canadians.
However, I believe his commitment to Indigenous reconciliation was inconsistent. While he acknowledged the harm done to Indigenous communities in Canada, his government failed to meet key promises. This is particularly evident with access to clean drinking water in Indigenous communities and meaningful consultation on resource projects. For example, the Prince Rupert pipeline project in 2017 planned to go through unceded Indigenous territory, despite the hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs’ protests.
Internationally, Trudeau branded Canada as a human rights and multilateral leader. His administration renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, balancing economic interests of the entire North American region by eliminating all tariff and non-tariff barriers of trade and investment. However, his stance on the environment seemed to clearly lack: Canada ranked 62 on the Climate Change Performance Index, measured out of 67 countries and the EU.
On the other hand, I think his stance on being “good friends” with Cuba — as opposed to continuing the long-standing American embargo — reflects his ability to resist US pressure to isolate Canada.
But, I would argue his foreign policy was often more symbolic than substantive. While Trudeau condemned human rights violations in countries like Venezuela and Myanmar, his actions rarely extended beyond diplomatic statements and sanctions. This reflects a broader tendency in his foreign policy: advocating for progressive values without always committing the necessary political or economic capital to enforce them.
I see Trudeau’s tenure as marked by both missteps and moments of diplomatic finesse. While his government often fell short of its ambitious promises, he managed to defuse tense political situations better than previous administrations had or would have. His legacy will likely be remembered as one of ambition tempered by political realities: an attempt to reshape Canada’s identity constrained by the very system he sought to reform.
Avin De is a third-year student at Rotman Commerce studying finance and economics. He is an associate Opinion editor at The Varsity.
Trudeau has overseen nearly a decade’s worth of Canadian politics, including COVID-19 regulations, North American foreign policy, and confronting the country’s costs of living crisis.
Trudeau is the polite face of failure
To put it bluntly, I see Trudeau as the worst prime minister in contemporary Canadian history and argue that he ought to be remembered as such. His governance style was one that, I believe, threw caution to the wind in pursuit of high-minded, grand, and ill-thought-out policy aims. Millions of Canadians are now made to deal with the fallout intimately and daily.
I want to focus singularly on an issue that Canadian voters rank as being among the most pressing: housing costs. Since Trudeau’s election as prime minister in 2015, the disparity between inflation-adjusted home prices in Canada and every other G7 nation has grown by a staggering degree. In contrast, American home price rates — the second most expensive in the G7 — are still roughly 60 per cent cheaper than those in Canada.
During Trudeau’s tenure, Canada’s housing supply has remained steady, with roughly 200,000 units constructed a year and rental vacancy rates barely fluctuating. However, from 2018 to 2022, the country added an average of 500,000 new people to its population yearly. An overwhelming majority of this growth came from the increased immigration due to the administration’s policies.
This has made Canada the fastest growing country by population in the G7. The equation is rather simple: when there are too many people and not enough houses, prices soar. Perhaps he was simply ignoring the facts because they would have limited his self-congratulatory promotion of ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism.’ Or alternatively, he is a fool who ruined Canada’s housing market and immigration system without a solid rationale. All of these explanations are plausible, none are forgivable.
Hopefully, Canadians discard Trudeau into the trash heap of history and prevent anybody who aided him from holding political office ever again.
Sandro Galati is a fourth-year student at St. Michael’s College studying political science and ethics, society, and law.
Carney can do it instead of Trudeau
The most important discussion in any election for me is the economy. This is where Trudeau receives the most criticism — specifically about the high costs of living — but I don’t believe all of it’s deserved.
For one, he gets blamed for running massive deficits, but Canada has the lowest deficit in the G7. Inflation was indeed high in Canada, reaching 8.1 per cent, but this was caused by COVID-19’s supply chain issues. Further, inflation rates have since cooled to 1.8 per cent as of December 2024, lower than the goal of 3 per cent as set by the Central Bank of Canada.
I think people forget that the situation could have been much worse, especially if we had a prime minister like Pierre Poilievre in power. Poilievre wanted to cut COVID-19 benefits when people were already out of jobs and did not have money to spend — which, in my opinion, would have been a worse alternative since the economy can’t function if people don’t engage with it.
One common criticism I agree with was Trudeau’s immigration policy, in which he brought in over 471,771 immigrants in 2023. This large influx fueled further discontent among Canadian residents when housing prices were already rising. Some one-bedroom apartments are going for over $2,000 per month in big cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.
The dramatic increase in population — in addition to the remaining stress from the COVID-19 pandemic — is also partly responsible for causing a strain on the healthcare sector, according to the former prime minister himself. To illustrate, the average hospital wait time in Ontario in 2024 was 22 hours.
Two major candidates for the Liberal Party leadership are Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney. I don’t think Freeland can win due to her being deeply connected with Trudeau through her various previous roles in his cabinet. On the other hand, Carney has an impressive resume without the Trudeau baggage.
Carney has had experience with running Canada’s economy in times of crisis, such as through his tenure as the Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 recession up until 2013. Canada was able to avoid a major banking collapse, unlike every other G7 country. Furthermore, Carney worked in the corporate sector. This would have given him the necessary experience in dealing with Trump-like businessmen at a time when Canada is in a trade war with the US, who have proposed a blanket 25 per cent tariff on February 1.
Moeez Nasir is a first-year student at Trinity College studying life sciences.
