Jeff Harrison, Quinte West cash-cropper and chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario

Trudeau resigns, farmers relieved

Farmers recall his achievements: a list of oppressive tariffs, taxes and regulations

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

OTTAWA — When Justin Trudeau finally announced his slow-as-molasses departure as prime minister in early January, Canada’s farm organizations generally met the news with stony silence and no public expressions of thanks to the deeply unpopular Trudeau for his years of service.

A look through the social media channels and websites of some of the bigger farm groups shows no acknowledgement of the impending resignation. Not even those organizations reliant on the supply management system.

Trudeau finally conceded on Jan. 6 that he will step down as Liberal leader and prime minister after his party chooses his replacement sometime before the end of March. The Canadian dollar rose 1.2 % on the news but settled back down within a day.

As part of his extended exit, Trudeau also prorogued parliament, effectively putting the nation’s business on hold to accommodate the Liberals’ leadership convention before an expected federal election likely decimates the party at the polls anyway.

“Excuse me, the Canadian people … 41 million people … are not obliged to wait around while this party sorts out its shit,” official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre bluntly stated, while arguing in favour of an immediate election.

Trudeau’s teary-eyed announcement followed his party’s dismal showing in the polls against the Poilievre Conservatives for more than 18 months and coincided with the added pressure of blockbuster tariff threats from incoming U.S. president Donald Trump. The Liberal melodrama reached a crescendo last month when a ham-handed Trudeau triggered the abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland by telling her she was going to lose her job to banker Mark Carney — but first she had to deliver a bad-news fall economic statement with a $61 billion deficit as her final act in the finance portfolio. Carney could then publicly swoop in as the antidote to her incompetence. Freeland decided to not play the humiliated fall guy, and her sudden departure shook the Liberal caucus.

Over the Christmas holidays, most Liberal MPs called on Trudeau to resign.

Liberal Party rural riding MP Francois Drouin (Prescott-Russell) was openly critical of Trudeau the day Freeland dramatically bowed out. “I think he has to go,” Drouin told a reporter.

Farmers who spoke with Farmers Forum wanted to see Trudeau given the heave-ho.

“A good leader should recognize their best-before date long before it comes to this,” Jeff Harrison, a Quinte West cash-cropper and chair of the Grain Farmers of Ontario, said.

“We try not to be partisan, but at the same time, it’s very clear that the current government has not recognized agriculture as the economic powerhouse that it is,” Harrison said.

He said he would welcome an election outcome that would eliminate the carbon tax “along with a lot of other regulations and a lot of other tax implications.” He mentioned as an example Trudeau’s fertilizer tariffs, describing them as “just as much of an impediment” to agriculture, although “not talked about as much.”

Grassroot farmers were relieved.

South Mountain-area dairy farmer Yann Bossel said that Trudeau “had no real economic prosperity program other than employing extra computers at the central bank doling out its manufactured money.”

“What a glorious day in the Dominion!” chimed in Lambton County crop farmer Robert Johnston.

Under the headline Woke Elvis Resigns, American journalist Matt Taibbi observed that the outgoing PM’s exit “completes an unprecedented popularity cliff dive, dropping from 65 % to an incredible 16 % approval rating over the course of a nine-year reign that men will chuckle over, from now through the end of time.”