Since I live here I figured I should mention a few things about The Politics.

The Drama Teacher

Justin Trudeau is gone, at long last. He announced his resignation on January 6th, and officially left office on March 24th. He first became prime minister in 2015 and won three elections in his decade long run as Canada’s PM.

Here’s his scorecard.

This looks to me like a great example of why first-past-the-post elections are a problem. His first government won full control of the house with less than 40% of the popular vote. His later governments lacked full control but managed to keep power despite earning fewer and fewer actual votes.

This is such a common problem in modern democracy that it’s hardly worth mentioning, but now after the end of his political career it’s worthwhile to highlight the supreme hypocracy of the man himself and his party.

He committed during his 2015 campaign to reforming our voting system. He was not suggesting it. He was not making empty ‘wouldn’t it be nice’-style statements. He had a plan, and promoted it publically and proudly:

• do a thing
• do another thing
• do it by this date

They say Fail to plan, plan to fail yet him and the Liberal Party managed to do just that despite having a decent plan and the power to enact it. Clearly, they lacked any incentive or true motivation. If not for the electoral system he pledged to replace he’d have not won the election.

It can be said that he made two large campaign promises before his first election:

Bluntly, he was incompetent.

The Euro Banker

And then Mark Carney was to replace Trudeau

The A priori Opposition

Its worth mentioning Pierre Poilievre, his rise and fall through the runup to the election is both astounding and revealing. An accolite of Stephen Harper, he has never worked a private sector job in his life, and is a career politician. This makes him out-of-touch with normal people, but to his credit he did have a modest rural-Albertan upbringing which one would hope was a humbling experience for him.

He likes to castigate his political opponents, as a form of performance art. He publishes recordings from the House to his Youtube channel in which he goes off on long excortiating speaches about just-how-awful his opponent is. I fully admit to watching and enjoying many of these videos.

During his campaign he truly did transform himself. He very quickly changed into someone who could plausibly become the next Prime Minister. He continued to lash Trudeau and his ministers, but also created a hopeful vision for correcting the mismanagement they had caused.

Canadian Federal Election Winners (1925-2025)