Canada’s Second Trudeau: A Legacy of Half Measures and Mixed Results

Illustration by Will Allen

On January 6 2025, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned as leader of the Liberal Party. After nearly a decade in office, he will depart Rideau Cottage with historically low approval ratings, and with the Liberals trailing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party by over 20%. And yet, Trudeau won three elections and dominated Canadian political life for a decade. This article is an attempt to assess his successes and failures, his scandals, and the policies that defined the Trudeau era. 

Trudeau’s 2015 election victory might resound in history as his greatest achievement. Canada’s natural governing party had been reduced to 34 seats in the prior election, books were being written about how the Liberal Party was “dead”, and the youthful Party Leader was criticised as little more than the son of a famous former Prime Minister, coasting by on his good looks and name. Trudeau proved everyone wrong. Strong debate performances, energetic charisma, and a promise of real change won his party a strong majority. He started his time in office promising “sunny days”, and seemed to represent a new, positive vision for Canada’s future.

Trudeau can certainly point to some major victories as cornerstones of a positive legacy. Counted among his achievements can be keeping his election pledge to legalise cannabis; the introduction of the Canada Child Benefit, which lifted over 400,000 children out of poverty; and a dental program that provided care to over a million Canadians.

Trudeau’s government adeptly dealt with the United States during the first Trump administration. Trump’s protectionist tendencies represented a distinct threat to Canada, but when NAFTA renegotiations were demanded, Ottawa managed them effectively. The resulting US-Mexico-Canada Agreement was hailed as a victory for Canadian interests, and will likely be remembered as Trudeau’s biggest international success.

Nevertheless, he’ll also be remembered for a litany of controversies. Multiple blackface scandals aside, his progressive credentials were severely damaged by frequent tensions with female cabinet members. He tried to improperly influence then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC Lavalin affair, after which he expelled her and President of the Treasury Board Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus. Most recently, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose December 2024 resignation signalled the death knell for the Trudeau era, publicly attacked his “political gimmicks”. He won praise for the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but his heavy-handed response to the subsequent 2022 anti-vaccine mandate “Freedom Convoy” Trucker’s Protest will last long in the memory of his critics.

There is no doubt that Trudeau’s government has done more than any in Canadian history to advance climate action. Environmentalism was made central to the “image” of Trudeau’s Liberal Party. He campaigned heavily on climate, and shortly after taking office, declared that “Canada is back… we’re here to help” at the Paris Climate Summit, signalling his intent to make Canada an international climate leader. Under his leadership, Canada reduced emissions by 8.5% below 2005 levels, invested in clean energy, pushed for an international deal on limiting financing for fossil fuel projects abroad, and established new protected environmental spaces. 

The reality of his climate legacy, however, is messy. Trudeau’s climate strategy ultimately could not topple the realpolitik of governing a country with a large extractive fossil fuel sector. He continued subsidising the oil and gas industry and spent $34 billion on purchasing Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline. His flagship climate policy, carbon pricing, effectively a consumer tax on carbon, yielded limited results whilst providing an easy target for attacks against the government. The anger generated by the policy will outlast the Prime Minister and may put Trudeau’s climate advancements as a whole at risk. 

Trudeau reneged on reforming Canada’s voting system, presided over the doubling of the national debt, ran nine consecutive deficits, let government spending spiral out of control whilst housing costs skyrocketed. Trudeau’s disastrous approach to immigration, however, will be remembered as his government’s greatest failure, destroying the Canadian consensus on immigration.

For generations, Canada had a skilled immigration system that stood as a positive global example. Attitudes to immigration typically avoided the divisive political discourse common to Western nations. Around 250,000 immigrants arrived in Canada every year on average before Trudeau entered office in 2015, with most Canadians sharing positive attitudes towards the numbers and immigration in general.

The Liberal government set a course of annually increasing immigration numbers, reaching a high of 485,000 in 2024. Concerns over the already stretched housing market and healthcare system, surging unemployment rates, and the failure of immigration to tackle labour shortages undermined decades of support for immigration trending in the positive. 

The backlash has become so severe that it has severed the common consent around immigration. The number of Canadians believing immigration is too high jumped from 27% in 2022 to 58% in 2024, whilst widespread abuse of the Temporary Worker’s Program and international student visas, both radically boosted by Trudeau’s government, soured public opinion and media coverage.

So, how will history remember Canada’s second Trudeau? It is an apt question. Trudeau’s actual accomplishments are inseparable from unfulfilled promises. His progressive rhetoric and celebrity-like status masked his failure to deliver. He often epitomised style over substance. Personality over performance. When the historical record settles, Trudeau’s legacy will be defined as much by his half-measures as his genuine accomplishments and failures.

It's a mixed, cloudy legacy for the man who promised sunny days.