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So what rhymes with tariffs?

It was like being at the bedside of a terminally ill patient. You know the end is coming, but when it does, it’s still a shock.

That’s how it seemed Monday as we watched Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announce his resignation as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. We all knew it was coming. Pundits had been predicting it for weeks, if not months. But it was still a bit of a shock when he actually made the announcement.

Regardless of what we think of Trudeau, we should pause for a moment and recognize that he helmed the country for almost 10 years. Not an easy task, even when times are good and the halcyon days of the 1950s that all Conservatives dream of weren’t what Trudeau had to navigate.

We should all, including those rapidly scrambling to get their F*CK TRUDEAU flags to the printers as soon as they are told who they now hate, should recognize and appreciate the time served.

That being said, Trudeau’s demise is largely one of his own making … something he neglected to acknowledge in his resignation speech. While he recognized what many have known for some time, that he’s the party’s biggest liability right now, he pointed his finger at inner turmoil in the party as the reason he has lost the confidence of his caucus. It’s actually the other way around, the inner turmoil is because his caucus lost confidence in him.

As a decades-long advocate of electoral reform, at all levels, I also choked a bit when he listed one of his biggest regrets as “not being able” to change the electoral system. One of his chants in the 2015 election was that it would be the last using the first-past-the-post electoral system.

He struck an all-party committee to look at changing voting system and when it came back with a recommendation other than the ranked ballot system preferred by Trudeau because it would favour the Liberals, he put the kibosh on the entire process.

But that’s just my pet peeve (sour grapes). On to the business of the day.

Trudeau is gone-ish. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who couldn’t muster up the guts to actually speak to reporters, issued a videotaped message following Trudeau’s resignation. He repeated his mantra of calling for a ‘carbon tax election.’

Oh Pierre, that’s so 2024.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the biggest crisis facing Canada today is Donald Trump and tariff delusions. Should Trump follow through on his promise of 25 per cent tariffs on all things Canadian in two weeks’ time, our election, which won’t officially begin until March but unofficially kicked off some time ago, is going to be how do we deal with Trump’s tariffs.

The carbon tax is nothing compared to what is coming should Trump follow through. And yet, the prime-minister-in-waiting is completely silent on the Conservatives’ strategy for dealing with massive tariffs. Canadians deserve to know his plan before we go to the polls. Oops, he might have to talk to reporters to do that. Maybe he’s trying to come up with a good rhyme for tariffs.

And then there’s Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. They are poised to become the country’s official opposition party. All they have to do is reach out and grab it. Continually harping on about corporate interests won’t do it. Plus, I have this niggly feeling in the back of my brain that today’s bravado will fade by the time next confidence motion comes around.

Which brings us to who will be the next Liberal leader. Your guess is as good as mine. However, I did find it interesting that Trudeau mentioned, at least a couple of times, that the search for a new leader should be a ‘national’ one. I read that to mean someone from outside the GTA and/or the Laurentians, which precludes all the current front-runners.

It does, however, boost the fortunes of former B.C. premier Christy Clark, who is the only current contender not tied to the current gaggle of MPs in power.

For Poilievre, it’s an easy case to make that switching up Trudeau for Chrystia Freeland or Dominic LeBlanc or even Mark Carney, is simply the same-old, same-old. Unless the new leader isn’t one of the Sunny Ways Gang.

Hang on to your hats folks, it’s going to be a wild ride. And if anyone ever tells you politics is boring, feel free to send them a link to any national news media outlet.

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