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"A Dumpster Fire, Wrapped Up In A Cluster": Inside The Chaos of Justin Trudeau's Ottawa

The prime minister is under pressure to step away. He says he's focused on work.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's week started with a crisis his opponents likened to a "gong show at the bottom of a dumpster fire, wrapped 
up in a cluster."

Canada's three-term prime minister managed to make it to Friday when he announced a Cabinet shakeup triggered in part by the bombshell exit of 
Chrystia Freeland, who quit Monday as head of finance and deputy prime minister.

Trudeau spent the week holed up in his office, except for appearances at a couple of high-profile holiday parties where he sounded defiant and 
upbeat.

"It is the absolute privilege of my life to serve as your prime minister," he told a gathering of his top donors on Monday - just 30 minutes after an 
emergency caucus meeting where MPs urged him to step down.

His office canceled year-end interviews and his press team ignored most media questions while Trudeau contemplated his next moves.

"We have a lot of work to do and that's what we're focused on," he said after blowing by journalists after a Cabinet meeting later Friday afternoon.

Parliament does not return until Jan. 27 - days after Donald Trump's inauguration. In theory, Trudeau has time to consider his options, but 
realistically he's running out of time.

He could stick around to fight the next election, which could come sooner rather than later in 2025. Once MPs are back in their seats, opposition 
leader Jagmeet Singh has vowed to bring down the minority government with a no-confidence vote.

There's no mechanism to oust the Liberal leader. Trudeau could announce plans to resign, sticking around until a new leader is chosen. It's a process 
that could take several months. He could also prorogue Parliament in the new year - essentially pulling the plug on it - to buy the government more 
time.

He could step aside entirely and an interim PM would be put in place, a scenario so rare it would make history in itself.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been crushing Liberals in national polls for more than a year. Amid Trump's return to the White House and 
looming tariff war, he's amped up his calls for an election as soon as possible - a contest he's expected to win in a landslide.

"Some feminist. The same week as Trudeau was insulting Americans for not electing a woman president, he was busy throwing his own woman deputy prime 
minister under the bus to replace her with a man," Poilievre said of the "incredible, ridiculous, embarrassing" day. "You can't make this stuff up."

Outside meeting rooms on Parliament Hill and inside Liberal holiday parties, POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen Liberal MPs, staffers and party 
members for insight into the chaos. They were granted anonymity to speak freely.

The mayhem started Monday, when Freeland quit as Canada's finance minister hours before she was set to present a major economic plan. In the words of 
one official: Freeland dropped an "atomic bomb" on the Prime Minister's Office.

Freeland's exit note referenced weeks of tension with Trudeau over "costly political gimmicks" - a Yuletide tax holiday for Canadians - at a time 
when she said the federal treasury should be focused on a potential tariff war.

She used her exit to warn that how Ottawa deals with Trump "will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer."

Trudeau informed Freeland last week during a Zoom call that he intended to replace her as finance minister. The party was rumored to be courting 
former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who has been flirting with the Liberals for a couple of years now. Many expect him to run for the Liberal 
leadership one day.

Trudeau offered Freeland a new role in charge of Canada-U.S. relations and was under the impression - through texts - that she was willing to take it 
on. It was not until Monday as his motorcade pulled onto the Hill that he discovered she was out. POLITICO has not seen the texts.

One senior government source told POLITICO Carney 'switched up at the last minute" saying he wouldn't join the Cabinet if Freeland wasn't there.

By the time Trudeau walked upstairs to his office, Freeland had posted her resignation letter on X. Trump rejoiced in her resignation. One senior 
government source said the president-elect expressed dislike for Freeland, who helped renegotiate NAFTA, during his dinner with Trudeau at Mar-a-
Lago.

Networks were airing live footage of Trudeau addressing the caucus at an emergency meeting at the same time his team was insisting he wasn't in the 
room. He told the room there's 'two sides to the story" but has left his caucus widely in the dark, several lawmakers said.

Trudeau has been under pressure since his party lost a Toronto stronghold in a special election in June. Liberals have lost two more since, including 
a blowout in British Columbia on Monday - the same day Freeland resigned.

The Prime Minister's Office has been trying to source the media leaks. Staffers say they don't know who to trust. There were even tears this week. 
Transport Minister Anita Anand was visibly choked up. After a rare December Cabinet shuffle, some ministers' staffers are wondering if they'll have a 
job after Christmas.

Freeland's exit has reenergized the Liberal MPs who attempted a caucus revolt earlier this fall.

"Finally we've got somebody like Chrystia Freeland who has made a major move, and my hope is a lot of Cabinet ministers will start to speak up and 
say publicly what they all know: The prime minister's political career is essentially over," Liberal backbencher Wayne Long told POLITICO.

Trudeau's struggles, both internally and in opinion polls, place him in a global line of sinking incumbents - U.K. Tory PM Rishi Sunak, France's 
Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

At the Liberal Christmas party on Wednesday, a photo line for Freeland rivaled the one for the PM. At a Liberal afterparty, it was all anyone could 
talk about.

When Trudeau's new Cabinet was sworn in Friday, his top lawmakers urged the party to unite and refocus their frustration on a collective adversary: 
Donald Trump.


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Canada:

'Worst In The World': Here Are All The Rankings In Which Canada Is Now Last

Most Unaffordable Housing, Highest Cell phone Bills And Worst Rate of Acute Care Beds, To Name A Few

If you spend any time on social media, it's likely that you've seen this 
graphic compiled by columnist Stephen Lautens that assembles 11 international 
indices which feature Canada near the top spot. "Canada is broken? I don't 
think so. Neither does the world," reads a caption.

Next time someone rants on how about how "broken" Canada is; or how badly we 
are doing on the international stage... share some facts.

Numbers don't lie, Felicia.

https://archive.is/o/LnFRL/https://twitter.com/DIGuideBradley/status/1554545079314010112

Naturally, it only tells a partial picture. While Canada may dominate abstract 
indices such as "quality of life" and "peace," there are plenty of far more 
empirical indicators in which we measurably rank as among the worst in the 
developed world.

There's plenty to like about Canada, but below is a not-at-all comprehensive 
list of all the ways in which we are indeed very broken.

WE HAVE THE MOST UNAFFORDABLE HOUSING IN THE OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is essentially a 
club of the world's 38 most developed countries. And when these 38 are ranked 
against each other for housing unaffordability, Canada emerges as the clear 
champion. OECD analysts rank affordability by comparing average home prices to 
average incomes, and according to their latest quarterly rankings Canada was 
No. 1 for salaries that were most out of whack with the cost of a home.

Housing by price to income ratio for the second quarter of 2022. That's Canada 
on the extreme right.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/840da40d6fa3b7fef6fcccdfc1637d24e0786760.webp

WE HAVE THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE WIRELESS COSTS

Every year, the Finnish telecom analyst Rewheel ranks the world's most 
expensive countries for wireless services. And last year, Canada once again 
dominated. Across several metrics, Canada was found to be the most expensive 
place in the world for mobile data. Analysts found that it would cost the 
average Canadian the equivalent of at least 100 Euros to obtain a cell phone 
plan with at least 100 gigabytes of mobile data. Across much of the EU, that 
kind of cell phone plan could be had for less than 40 Euros.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/822bcfe750687b1ef6288ee7df5606fd15629289.webp

Canadian telecoms charge more than 10 times as much for 100 gigabytes of mobile 
data as companies in France or Ireland.

Canadian telecoms charge more than 10 times as much for 100 gigabytes of mobile 
data as companies in France or Ireland. Photo by Rewheel

WE HAVE THE LOWEST RATE OF ACUTE CARE BEDS AMONG PEER COUNTRIES

Canada's health system was particularly walloped by COVID-19 due to the simple 
fact that most of our hospitals are at the breaking point even in good times. 
Multiple times during the pandemic, provinces were forced into shutdown by 
rates of COVID that had barely been noticed in better-prepared countries. A 
ranking by the Canadian Institute for Health Information provides one clue as 
to why. When ranked against peer countries, Canada's rate of per-capita acute 
care beds was in last place, albeit tied with Sweden. Canada has two acute care 
beds for every 1,000 people, against 3.1 in France and six in Germany.

TWO OF THE PLANET'S "BUBBLIEST" REAL ESTATE MARKETS ARE IN CANADA

For at least 15 years now, Canada has been a regular contender on rankings of 
overheated housing markets. And the latest UBS index of world cities with 
"bubbly" real estate markets is no exception. In their 2021 index, Toronto was 
second only to Frankfurt in terms of bubble risk, while Vancouver ranked sixth. 
Aside from Germany, Canada was the only country that saw two of its cities in 
the top ten.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/1961e904e18e8cb533ff42c2eae7beb611827bd4.webp

Only two cities in the entire Western Hemisphere qualified as likely "bubble 
risks," and they're both in Canada.

Only two cities in the entire Western Hemisphere qualified as likely "bubble 
risks," and they're both in Canada. Photo by UBS Global Real Estate Bubble 
Index 2021

WE RACKED UP COVID DEBT FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the most feverish global accumulation of debt 
in the history of human civilization. So it's rather remarkable that amidst 
this international monsoon of debt, Canada still managed to out-debt everyone 
else. Last year, analysts at Bloomberg tracked each country's rate of public 
and private debt accumulated during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Canada came in with an overall debt burden equivalent to 352 per cent of GDP. 
While a handful of countries (Japan, France and Hong Kong) came out of the 
pandemic with higher overall debt burdens, Canada outranked all of them when it 
came to how quickly that debt had been accumulated.

Containers on rail cars waiting to be shipped east by rail at the Port of 
Vancouver Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Photo by (Photo by Jason Payne/ PNG)

https://archive.is/LnFRL/5b7e25218f55d343b998db94c6748b57312dafaf.webp

THE PORT OF VANCOUVER IS (ALMOST) THE MOST INEFFICIENT IN THE WORLD

Last year - just as the global supply chain crisis got going - the World Bank 
decided to rank the performance of the world's 370 major ports. Authors weighed 
factors such as how long the ports kept ships waiting, and how long crews took 
to unload a vessel. And when everything was added together, the Port of 
Vancouver ranked 368 out of 370. The only places with worse scores were the 
Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. And it's not like our other 
ports are much better. If Vancouver is too gummed up, you can always sail north 
to Prince Rupert, which ranks 339 out of 370.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/ac861be6fb2f37d1463e7670c232b5cd548d5395.webp

Take that, Los Angeles and Long Beach. Photo by World Bank Group


Queues at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Photo by Peter J. 
Thompson/National Post

https://archive.is/LnFRL/b32f7be38081069e5e696a0029996f6f3adaa760.webp

TORONTO PEARSON IS THE WORLD'S MOST-DELAYED AIRPORT

Flight delays are another category in which basically the entire world is 
feeling the pinch. And yet, Canada still managed to outdo all of them. Last 
month, CNN used data from the website FlightAware to figure out which airports 
were seeing the highest rates of flight delays. In the number one spot was 
Toronto Pearson, with 52 per cent of all flights out of the airport 
experiencing some kind of delay. And it was a commanding lead; the second-place 
finisher, Frankfurt, only managed to see 45.4 per cent of its flights delayed. 
Toronto was also a contender in flight cancellations; with 6.9 per cent of its 
scheduled flights never getting off the ground, it ranked fourth worst in the 
world.

WE'RE ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORST ECONOMIES FOR FOREIGN INVESTMENT

A 2020 study out of the University of Calgary tracked foreign investment flows 
into a cross-section of developed countries between 2015 and 2019. Virtually 
every country on the list saw a surge in foreign cash during that period; 
Ireland topped out the ranking thanks to its foreign investment climbing by 
more than 115 per cent. Only four countries actually saw a reduction in foreign 
investment: Mexico, Brazil, Australia and Canada. A report by the Business 
Council of Canada noticed the same trend. "Canada is the second-worst in the 
OECD on openness to foreign direct investment," it concluded.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/222c5fba154990485338650dcb55e413d85e080c.webp

WE DRIVE THE MOST FUEL-INEFFICIENT VEHICLES IN THE WORLD

In 2019, the International Energy Agency examined the fuel economy of the 
world's private car fleets. On almost every measure, Canada led the pack in 
driving unnecessarily huge, gas-guzzling vehicles. Per kilometre driven, the 
average Canadian burned more fuel and emitted more carbon dioxide than anyone 
else. Canadian cars were also the largest and (second only to the U.S.) the 
heaviest. While it would be convenient to blame this on Canada being a sparse, 
cold country with lots of heavy industry, our ranking was well beyond plenty of 
other countries where that was similarly the case.