Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

> why was electrical reform needed?

Canada uses a first past the post system for federal elections, which usually boils down to a two party state equilibrium

> It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?

Possibly, but I want to believe that politicians can put country over party (I haven't found a huge amount of evidence for this though unfortunately)

Patio11 has some good coverage of Trudeau's handling of the trucker protest against the government's handling of COVID-19 [1].

Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system. Trudeau instead essentially told the banking system "You can't do business with those people, they're terrorists." Patio11's words of what happened next:

"The assistant deputy finance minister...said...'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a democratic government starts a sentence that way something deeply #*&$#ed up has happened."

I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.

[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...

(You'll have to Ctrl+F trucker as this blog doesn't seem to have for headings, as is customary on e.g. Wikipedia.)

> instead you've just handed us to the conservatives

I agree that the conservatives are not a good choice, but apparently for the opposite reason as you - the conservatives are unlikely to be able to fix much of the damage Trudeau has inflicted on the country, especially w.r.t. unfettered immigration.

The PPC is the only one with any sensible policies IMO, but unfortunately they won't be competitive in the upcoming national election.

Canadian here. It's certainly not normal. News broke yesterday that this was coming. The opposition kept tabling no confidence votes and trying to get an early election called... and Trudeau's approval rating is so low that it might even be the lowest of any Prime Minister in history (though I don't know so if someone does by all means fact check that).

However, our upcoming election is this year. It certainly does not surprise me that Trudeau is stepping down from leader of the Liberal party in light of the polling, since the polls are predicting that if an election were called today, the conservatives would win in such a landslide that I don't think many countries have even seen that before. Of course polling and actual election results are two very different things... but I think the Liberal party sees the writing on the wall. If they hope to have any shot of getting re-elected, they can't do it with Trudeau at the head.

... but that doesn't necessarily mean that we all saw him resigning as PM incumbent coming. He's also proroguing parliament until March. This is probably a move to get the other parties to step back and "STFU"; to not pass any motions during the party shift (particularly related to calling an early election etc).

Lastly, as others have said, the PM position is usually held for an average of 9-10 years (and that's multiple terms .. most incumbents just get re-elected into second and third terms). Trudeau was elected in 2015 so he's about due to exit anyway if we go by averages (though some have served longer).

I'm having trouble learning anything from this stream of disconnected, time-sorted tweetlike objects. I'm posting this on the off chance that a better article exists, and someone can point me to it. I assume it's too early for that though.