The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is expected to announce on Monday that he plans to step down, local media have reported, after a snowballing leadership crisis during which he lost support from within his own party.
The prime minister’s office said he would speak about his political future from Rideau Cottage, his temporary residence, at 10.45 am. The press conference marks the first time that he will have answered questions from reporters since November.
On Sunday evening, the Globe and Mail newspaper cited three sources saying that Trudeau would quit as head of the ruling Liberal party, which in turn would bring to an end his nine years as prime minister at some point later this year. The 53-year-old became party leader in 2013 and has been prime minister since November 2015.
The paper said one of the sources had recently spoken to the prime minister and believed he intended to step down before an emergency meeting of party members on Wednesday, “so it doesn’t look like he was forced out by his own MPs”.
The Toronto Star said it had also confirmed that Trudeau was “expected to signal his intentions to step aside as early as Monday”, citing what it said was a senior source.
Trudeau’s popularity has plummeted amid record inflation, an acute housing crisis, high food prices and voter fatigue with incumbent politicians. Recent polling put the Liberals at 16% support, their worst pre-election standing in more than a century, with the opposition Conservatives coming out on top.
At the end of October, almost two dozen backbench Liberal MPs signed a letter calling on Trudeau to step down, with the party fearing a seismic electoral defeat in the federal election scheduled for next year.
His political horizons darkened in mid-December with the shock resignation of his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, who left with stern words for the prime minister, questioning his ability to guide Canada through Donald Trump’s “America first” economic nationalism, including a threat of 25% tariffs on Canada.
“We need to take that threat extremely seriously,” she said in a departing letter, which questioned whether the government understood the “gravity of the moment”.
Freeland, a former Financial Times reporter, had previously won praise for navigating the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation process during Trump’s first term.
The resignation of a key ally sent Ottawa into chaos and the fallout has resulted in the smaller New Democratic party, which had kept the Liberals in power, pulling its support for the prime minister.
Trudeau had attempted to placate the incoming US president, with a visit to Florida, where they posed for a smiling photo, and he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that he had promised Trump that Canada would shore up border security.
Still, days later Trump publicly mocked Trudeau, belittling him as the “governor” of Canada, as if his country were merely a US state rather than an independent nation, and musing that it could become part of the US.
Many Canadian observers now expect an election to be called for spring. It is unclear whether Trudeau would stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal leader is selected.
The former high school teacher and the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s best-known prime ministers, became Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was also faring badly, and his leadership was seen abroad as an example of stable, progressive power.
The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, has repeated his calls for an immediate election, saying: “The government of Canada is itself spiralling out of control.”
