Trudeau expected to resign ‘by Monday’ – report

The latest poll in Canadian from Angus Reid has the governing Liberals at 16%, in a result that could leave them with as few as 5 seats in parliament.

There have been a series of reports on various regional caucus revolts in the past few days and seems as though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has is on his last legs.

Now, Globe & Mail columnist Lawrence Martin tweets:

Everybody’s gearing up for Trudeau’s resignation announcement, expected by Monday.

The wording on that report is somewhat cryptic and he’s not saying that Trudeau will step down or exactly who is ‘gearing up’ or ‘expecting’ it. He’s certainly well-connected as a political columnist at Canada’s leading newspaper for decades. He recently wrote that Trudeau was ‘finished’.

At Polymarket, the odds of a resignation before February are at 50% (though the site isn’t open to Canadians). There is other smoke here as well with a report saying Mark Carney has reached out to ‘dozens’ of Members of Parliament for a sense of his leadership chances.

What’s tricky here is that the Liberal Party won’t likely have time to run a proper leadership race as opposition parties can topple the government at the end of the month. That could lead to a situation where an interim leader like Carney tries to limit the damage and then tries to leverage whatever success he has (the bar is low vs current polling) to try to remain as leader.

A separate report says the Liberal caucus will meet on Wednesday.