Talk:2024–2025 Canadian political crisis

Propose retitling this article to "2024-25 Canadian political crisis"

This article should be renamed (per WP:MOVE) to "2024-25 Canadian political crisis", since the events have clearly occurred over two years. So I'd like to propose that. N2e (talk) 00:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

It definitely should be moved. Unfortunately 2024–25 Canadian political crisis has been hijacked by a redirect right now and I'm not sure which course of action should be taken to fix that. RedBlueGreen93 01:20, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I have followed through and implemented the move as in accordance to the WP:MOVE; if you would want to change it to the the "2024-25 Canadian Political Crisis", you may do so. I still however, think that "2024-2025 Canadian Political Crisis" is adequate. SN102813 (talk) 04:03, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Why the change to capitalization alongside the change to year? Per WP:LOWERCASE, the title should be changed to "2024-2025 Canadian political crisis". I am not familiar with the procedure for moving a redirect (and in any case I can't do it as an IP), but this happens routinely. So someone who knows how to do it, please move this. 87.49.146.56 (talk) 04:34, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Will do, thank you for the feedback. SN102813 (talk) 05:31, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Full disclosure: I've gone ahead and redirected "2024–2025 Canadian political crisis" to this article, as I assume moving this article to that redirect's name will be uncontroversial. I also think it is needlessly confusing to have the redirect, which differs from this article's title only in capitalization, directing to something other than this article. This issue may need to be taken up again if and when this article and the redirect's former target (Resignation of Chrystia Freeland#Reactions and political fallout) are merged. 87.49.146.56 (talk) 05:31, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is preventing me from doing this due to the similarly named article, can somebody try to circumvent this? SN102813 (talk) 05:33, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

If I understand WP:MOVEOVERREDIRECT correctly, you need to take this to Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. Please try asking there. 87.49.146.56 (talk) 05:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the help, I will do that later tomorrow. SN102813 (talk) 05:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Glad I could help. 87.49.146.56 (talk) 05:46, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

(Same guy here, I'm on a different IP as I switched from mobile to PC). I have submitted a request at RMTR, so someone is hopefully working on fixing it now. 87.49.44.170 (talk) 06:16, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I should also say that I keep changing redirects to here as I find them. So far, I have made 2024–2025 Canadian political crisis, 2024-2025 Canadian political crisis, and 2024-25 Canadian political crisis into redirects to 2024-2025 Canadian Political Crisis. Thank you to anyone who lends a hand in changing further redirects.

If anyone objects to this article being the target of the redirects (pending resolution of the deletion discussion for the article Resignation of Justin Trudeau), I'd be happy to discuss, but I would like to preemptively ask that such discussion be centralized here, rather than spread across the talk pages for the individual redirects. I would be okay with some other article, like the Freeland resignation one, being target for these redirects and then having this article merged into that one, but for as long as this exists as a separate article I think it is the least confusing if the similarly-named redirects are towards here.

Anyways, I have stuff to do IRL, but will probably check back later. Thank you, @SN102813:, for trying to solve the move-over-redirect issue. We'll probably talk again later. 87.49.44.170 (talk) 06:48, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Just briefly checking in again, and I see the move over redirect has been completed. Thank you, @Cyberdog958:, and good work on merging the talk pages from redirects to here. 87.49.44.147 (talk) 08:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank You! This has been a large help. Just make sure that the titles are updated, as I spotted one in the Resignation of Justin Trudeau. Anyways, Talk Later! @87.49.44.170 SN102813 (talk) 00:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Will do, I'm gonna go scavenging for redirects to fix any issues, such as ensuring they are not WP:DOUBLEREDIRECTs. 87.49.146.56 (talk) 04:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Start Date

I think it’s debatable that the crisis started on the 16th. Trudeau had been losing the confidence of his own party for months, and lost several key ministers prior to Freeland, Freeland was not the cause of the crisis herself, but rather added to it being such a high profile resignation.

Many articles reference the caucus revolt starting back in October (https://globalnews.ca/news/10828342/justin-trudeau-leadership-questions-will-stay-on/amp/) or before. Factchecker72946482 (talk) 19:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

This was merged here from a redirect's talk page after multiple intermediate moves. cyberdog958^Talk 07:33, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Slow-merging stuff from Resignation of Justin Trudeau

Hey all, I've started adding little snippets from the Resignation of Justin Trudeau article, just in case we decide to merge it here. Let me know if that's going too far or blowing this article out of scope. Trecorite (talk) 00:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

30th Canadian Ministry article

Is it too soon to create an article about the incoming 30th Canadian Ministry? I have started a draft, as I'm not sure what the Canadian politics wikipedia community normally does in these situations. RedBlueGreen93 02:15, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Crazy that you started it anyway! The propagandization of Wikipedia must continue comrades! 2605:B100:1103:199D:157:ADF:EE4:4F28 (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Don't worry, the article also has views from all sides:

"The government is expected to lose a non-confidence motion once parliament is reconvened, as the leaders of the Conservative Party, Bloc Quebecois, and New Democratic Party have all announced their intention to defeat the minority Liberal government regardless of who becomes the prime minister, which would likely trigger the 2025 Canadian federal election." Félix An (talk) 04:18, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I asked a question, nobody replied for a week, I made the article. As for propaganda, I'm not sure what you're getting at, but your lack of username tells me you're probably just some troll. RedBlueGreen93 07:08, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I mean, don't be so quick to not WP:AGF. He raised a genuine concern about WP:NPOV, and I addressed his concern. See: WP:IPHUMAN and WP:BITE. Surely, he could use a less sarcastic tone next time, but I think it's best to correct new editors instead of scaring them away. Scaring them away only increases the accusations that Wikipedia is biased. Félix An (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how this would violate a neutral point of view? Parliament is prorogued, and the next Cabinet will be Liberal, unless something incredibly extrodrinary happens, in which case we can edit the article as needed. I don't really care if this objective truth about Canadian politics frustrates Conservatives. If they were acting in good faith, they would not have been so confrontational. If they were new, they would not have a reasonable answer to my question. RedBlueGreen93 19:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I know, it doesn't violate NPOV, so I was explaining to him how the article has views from the other side as well. Félix An (talk) 02:05, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 24 March 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There appears to be rough consensus against the proposal. There was some support for a move to Resignation of Justin Trudeau, however this was not sufficiently discussed. (non-admin closure) TarnishedPath^talk 10:29, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

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2024–2025 Canadian political crisis → 2024–2025 Canadian government transition – The events leading to the change of Prime Minister from Trudeau to Carney do not qualify as a political crisis, as set out in the Wikipedia article Cabinet crisis (which is where "Political crisis" redirects). The definition there is: "A cabinet crisis, government crisis or political crisis refers to a situation where an incumbent government is unable to form or function, is toppled through an uprising, or collapses." None of those factors applied here. Although Trudeau was steadily losing political support within his own party and ultimately resigned, his government remained functioning, including through the significant political response to Trump's tariff threats. This was a transition due to loss of party support, and resulted in a smooth transition of power under the Liberal party rules and the conventions of responsible government. It was not a crisis. (Yes, Wikipedia is not itself a reliable source, but I think we should be internally consistent when using a phrase such as "political crisis" which is the subject of an article directly on point.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:56, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

I've added a section to the article to show that during the tariff events of February and into March, the Trudeau government was continuing to function. Not paralysed, which is one of the conditions for a "political crisis" based on the definition.

Also expanded the section on the Liberal leadership contest and then Carney being sworn in and calling an election, to show that there was a smooth transition from Trudeau to Carney; new government formed, no collapse or political uprising. Not a crisis, but rather a smooth transition of power under the rules of the Liberal party and the principles of responsible government. (Also answered the question "But what happened next, after the resignation?" which the article previously just left hanging.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:14, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support. "Crisis" does not accurately represent what happened in Canadian government during this time period. Not opposed to Resignation of Justin Trudeau (which has already been merged into this article); the events in question pretty much boil down to this. 162 etc. (talk) 21:39, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
• Support, as per the reasons already described. Imperatorhobbes (talk) 23:37, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose, multiple reliable sources have referred to what transpired after Freeland's resignation as a political crisis. See | CNN, | The Hill, | Financial Post, | NPR. Also even if reliable sources didn't favour describing this as a political crisis, I still have an issue with the name "X government transition". There doesn't seem to be any precedent for using this title on Wikipedia (not that I could find). The closest thing are articles about transitional governments after civil wars. CASalt (talk) 05:50, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. I was inclined to agree, but upon reflection it is actually a crisis, which Wiktionary defines as:
  1. A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
  2. An unstable situation, in political, social, economic or military affairs, especially one involving an impending abrupt change.
  3. A point in a drama at which a conflict reaches a peak before being resolved.

This was a normal crisis, of the kind you can expect to happen to a lot of governments after ~10 years in power. And I think it all happened fast enough in political terms to be considered a crisis. There is no question that things reached a critical point. That's why Trudeau resigned. The decision to prorogue and hold a leadership contest dragged out the resolution of the crisis, but arguably the situation remained unresolved without an election so long the major opposition parties are all publicly pledged to defeat the government. Srnec (talk) 00:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose The government was on the verge of collapse and other than calling an election or resigning (which trudeau did) if was effectively functionless. Trudeau's subsequent actions against the Tariffs of the Trump administration were basically in the form of a Caretaker government during the 2025 Liberal Party of Canada leadership election and the prorogation of parliament. - Epluribusunumyall (talk) 05:23, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose - It was a political crisis. Go check the definition of a political crisis under Wikipedia, otherwise 2024–2025 Canadian political crisis is very accurate of a title. Vangaurden (talk) 07:01, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose It is an actual political crisis, not a graceful transition which is what I think is the meaning behind this proposal. Yours truly, Stuffinwriting | talk 20:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: I think "Government transition" would understate the event. "Transition" sounds very orderly and normal, just the movement from one first minister to the next, as happens regularly in Canadian politics — but this was the party rebelling against its leader and forcing him to resign, a fairly unusual occurrence in Canada. "Political crisisis a touch dramatic, but it's also been used for democratic governments losing confidence of their governing partners, so it seems to fit the least worst. — Kawnhr (talk) 23:50, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support moving from the current title, but not to this title per WP:NATURALDAB. The current title doesn't work per the excellent analysis below, but "government transition" is not sufficiently concise, and describes a generic event that we would either not write about at all, or embed in the existing article on the impacted premiership or legislature. This event is more than that, and should be appropriately described, I'm just not sure how; Resignation of Justin Trudeau does seem to work. There is also the problem that this is one of the government transitions that will occur this year - there will be at least one more following the upcoming election, and could be more depending on how stable the newly elected government turns out to be. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:46, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose: Technically speaking, articles about the transition already exist - the 29th and 30th Canadian Ministries. Since a new Cabinet was sworn-in (if they were new to Cabinet or shuffled) or reaffirmed (if they remained in their previous role) with a new Prime Minister, it represented the transition of Canada's head of government and executive council from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney. As such, the proposed title is very inaccurate. I'll also note that the "government crisis" title was used on Wikipedia for similar events in another Westminster democracy. Go^LeafsGo 05:31, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

• Support — The FLQ kidnappings were a crisis. The King–Byng affair was a crisis. Even the convoy garbage was a crisis. This was intra-party squabbling. There may be a better new name than proposed, but this 100% needs renaming. The only way this was a "crisis" was in terms of it being a crisis for the Liberal party. Calling it a "Canadian political crisis" makes it sound like, as others have noted, the government was unable to function and was on the verge of dramatic collapse/dysfunction (losing confidence or having to call an election is a very NORMAL part of Canadian politics, so not a crisis). So at most it was the "2024–2025 Liberal Party of Canada leadership crisis" but honestly... calling this a "crisis" does a disservice to anyone who has been through a real one. —Joeyconnick (talk) 07:24, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

  It is my guess that this article was inspired by the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis and October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis articles. In both cases, there was never really any threat of the situation spiraling into a violent encounter or constitutional crisis. Evidently it doesn't equate in severity to more serious crises throughout Canadian history, but the term government crisis, cabinet crisis, or political crisis still seems to be reasonable for intra-party squabbling that results in the unforseen resignation of a head of government. RedBlueGreen93 10:18, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose - per CASalt, Epluribusunumyall, and Vangaurden. RedBlueGreen93 10:21, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Is this whole article not just describing of the resignation of Trudeau and conditions which brought it about? It should be renamed “resignation of Justin Trudeau” (which is what I have heard most people call it).

SecretName101 (talk) 20:43, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose the proposed title. Per reasons given by other editors, namely that "government transition" is about as inaccurate and unhelpful a title as the current one. Resignation of Justin Trudeau is not a bad title and I would be inclined to support it slightly more, even if it isn't the perfect title either. To be clear, I do support moving the article to something else, but I don't think we should really care if we match whatever definition is laid out in the political crisis article; it needs to go by what RS are saying. Yeoutie (talk) 11:43, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

• Comment I'm seeing some support above for my earlier suggestion of Resignation of Justin Trudeau. Does anybody have a strong argument as to why this shouldn't be used as the article title? 162 etc. (talk) 15:36, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

We had a Resignation of Justin Trudeau article that was later redirected to this article. RedBlueGreen93 19:42, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Right, my suggestion is that the merged article should use this title. 162 etc. (talk) 21:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I also oppose moving this to resignation of Justin Trudeau because by the time that happened on Jan 6, this entire episode had already become notable enough to warrant it's own article, with extensive national and international media coverage. It also wouldn't make much sense from the perspective of this article, because the majority of it is focused on Freeland's resignation. Compare the sizes of the two sections. CASalt (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm also not entirely sure this would be allowed. Article mergers are directional, and the consensus was for merging resignation of Justin Trudeau into the crisis page, and not the other way around. CASalt (talk) 21:54, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Commentary

I don't want to interrupt the comments above, so I thought I'd start a commentary section for extended discussion.

A. Political crisis – the starting point for me, and what drew me to this discussion, is the very first line in the lead, which uses the wikilinked phrase political crisis. That links to the article on "Cabinet crisis / government crisis / political crisis", which defines the term:

"A cabinet crisis, government crisis or political crisis refers to a situation where an incumbent government is unable to form or function, is toppled through an uprising, or collapses."

By linking to that article, this article is using that definition, so the article needs to demonstrate that one of those conditions is met. But it doesn't:

"unable to form or function" - not the case. Trudeau was able to carry on government throughout the period under discussion, through a major international dispute, with discussions with the President of the United States and the President of Mexico, and with public addresses to the nation, public meetings with business and labour leaders, and meetings with the provincial premiers seeking a common front. As well, once his resignation became effective, Mark Carney became the leader and formed a new ministry, which is carrying on the government of the country. This first requirement is not met.

"is toppled through an uprising" has not happened. The federal government continues to function, and there has not been even a hint of an uprising, as shown by the reliable sources explaining the transition.

"collapses" - has not happened, as the sources about the transition show.

Thus, none of the conditions for a political crisis, linked in the very first line of the lead, have been met. The article's sources do not support the lead line.

B. Wiktionary definition - Wiktionary, like Wikipedia, is not a reliable source. Unlike Wikipedia, the Wiktionary definitiion has not been cited anywhere in this article, and therefore cannot be used to support the use of the term. There is also the weakness that this article uses the term "political crisis", not the word "crisis", defined by Wiktionary. I don't think those two terms are equivalent. The word "political" here carries particular weight.

C. Use of the term "political crisis" in the article: here we come to the real problem. When you search the phrase "political crisis" in the article as currently phrased, there are only six occurrences of the phrase: 1) the title of the article; 2) the short description; 3) the top line of the infobox; 4) the "Type" field in the infobox; 5) the lead line of the article; 6) the Justin Trudeau template at the bottom of the article. That's it. In other words, the only use of the phrase "political crisis" is by the Wikipedia editors. They have imposed their own interpretation of events on the article. That is a severe breach of NPOV. We cannot use Wikipedia-voice to determine the analysis of the situation. Lack of any non-editorial use of the phrase is a severe black mark on the article.

D. Lack of Reliable Sources using "Political crisis"': The related point is that there are 72 sources currently cited in the article. Not one of them uses the term "political crisis", at least not in their headlines / article titles. (I've not read the 72 sources, but I assume that if any of them were referring to a political crisis, they would put that front and centre in their headlines or article titles; I'm open to correction here, if someone points out the use of the phrase in one of the sources, but not in the headline.) If the reliable sources cited in the article do not use the term "political crisis", it is even more inappropriate, and breach of NPOV, for editors to impose their own interpretation of events on the article, using the Wiki-voice. (Note: there is one French article which uses the term "crise", but I think we need to be careful in using a term from a foreign language, which may have different nuances than in English, as support here.)

E. Foreign news sources: CASalt has provided four news sources which do use the term "political crisis", from CNN, The Hill, NPR, and Financial Post. None of them are currently cited in the article. Three of them are American. Only the Financial Post article, a Canadian source, uses the phrase. With respect to the FP article, hanging one's hat one one and only one Canadian source to explain Canada politics strikes me as WP:UNDUE, especially since none of the editors of the article to date have cited that single article. And finally, relying on American articles to justify a particular terminology to explain Canadian politics, that no-one has cited in the article, and which is not used by any of the 71 English sources already in the article, strikes me as American cultural imperialism: "We'll use American sources to explain to those poor ignorant Canadians what is going on in their country, even though their media doesn't seem to get it."

In conclusion, the bottom line of Wikipedia is reliable sources and NPOV. When none of the Canadian English reliable sources use the term "poltical crisis", and the only ones using the term in this article are the Wikipedia editors, there is a severe breach of both basic principles.

Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.