My Take | A Conservative Canadian PM is likely to worsen tense China ties
Smart money is on Pierre Poilievre being country’s prime minister after next federal election, and this ‘Tariff Man’ will not be friendly to Beijing
Justin Trudeau came to power promising to extend economic links with China. The Canadian prime minister has announced his resignation amid the worst bilateral relations between the two countries in decades.
Much of it has been beyond his control, as Washington has demanded Western allies to fall in line in its intensifying rivalry with Beijing. But Trudeau and his ministers contributed to the deteriorating relations by their own inept handling, chief of which was Canada’s controversial arrest of Huawei Technologies’ No 2, Meng Wanzhou, in late 2018 at the request of the Americans for extradition.
With plummeting popularity in repeated surveys as many Canadians face worsening cost-of-living and housing crises, along with a labour market as bad as during the Covid-19 pandemic, calls for his resignation even within his own Liberal Party could no longer be ignored or denied.
It didn’t help that incoming US president-elect Donald Trump kept calling him Governor Trudeau and Canada the 51st state of the United States, making him look even weaker.
Trudeau will stay in place until the next Liberal Party leader is chosen. The Liberals will have to move fast as the opposition – the Conservative Party and the leftist New Democrats – are threatening to bring down the government, which could happen in the next two months.
The caretaker prime minister will need to quickly establish his or her appeal to Canadian voters before the next federal election. The latest poll this week sees the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, leading by at least 24 percentage points over both the Liberals and New Democrats. Poilievre, the kind of brash rightist leader that Trump likes, has been building support momentum with voters, with his news media allies practically treating him as the next prime minister.
It’s hard to see the new Liberal leader being able to close the wide polling gap before the next federal election, at least not with the four likely contenders being mentioned.
