Maybe you’ve forgotten this thread I started on November 5, 2015. You participated in it. Here are the first and last paragraphs of the OP:
I’m just getting more and more enthused about this guy. Frankly the Liberal party as an institution has a chequered history, but Justin Trudeau is, to coin a perhaps ironic phrase, not your father’s Liberal Party. His cabinet was just sworn in, and Day 1 on the job begins. CBC has full coverage of the cabinet members which I think are all impressive …
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This is a picture of Trudeau, his wife and some of his new cabinet presumably walking to Rideau Hall on the day of swearing-in. McKenna is the one on the far left. There are autumn leaves in the background but, call me an old sap, looking at all those bright young people – and remembering what we had before – I feel like calling it “springtime in Canada”.
I was enthused about Justin Trudeau then, and to a large extent I still am today. I agree with all your points – he did manage Trump quite well, finalized a trade deal, and handled the pandemic much better than the US did.
I’m sorry to see him go, particularly at such a precarious time for Canada. But the fact is that he really is facing tough times – perhaps unsurvivably tough. Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be immeasurably worse than the first term, Canada’s economy is under threat, and Trudeau is under attack from all sides, including from within his own party.
In these circumstances he has chosen to resign. Maybe he had no real choice, and maybe much of the blame falls on attackers within his own party who undermined his leadership, but it’s going to leave Canada without effective leadership just as Trump assumes power. It’s sad, frustrating, and rather frightening.