Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation this week, setting off a scramble to replace him both as the country's head of government and as leader of the center-left Liberal Party, just months out from a federal election.

Trudeau won a sweeping parliamentary majority in 2015, but another election in 2019 reduced his party to minority status, though he was still able to form a government as the Liberal Party remained the largest in Parliament. Amid fallout from a limping post-COVID economy, a housing affordability crisis and battles over surging immigration, Trudeau and his government hemorrhaged support from both Canadian voters and erstwhile political allies.

Last month's abrupt and acrimonious resignation of Trudeau's chief deputy, Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, appeared to seal the prime minster's fate.

Trudeau's capitulation sets in motion an adjournment until late March, during which parliament is disbanded while Liberal Party members elect a new leader. After the leader is chosen, Trudeau will officially resign. Whoever replaces Trudeau has only until October, potentially, to re-position a wounded party for its reckoning with a mutinous electorate. And that is the best-case scenario: a probable vote of no confidence by a majority of the House of Commons would prompt an immediate federal election, giving Liberals almost no time to recover.

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Either way, polls indicate a historic drubbing in store for the Liberal Party, which at around 20% popular support is far behind the Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre, which is now approaching 45% support.

Rather than electing their head of government directly, Canadian voters in each constituency choose a member of parliament to represent them in the House of Commons. The leader of the party able to form a government — by virtue of holding a majority in the House of Commons, by toughing it out as the largest minority party or by forming a coalition — is then officially appointed by the British monarch's governor-general to form and lead a new government as prime minister.

The son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and a........

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