By Frisk Nightingale▸
In mere hours, the Liberal Party of Canada will select its new leader and, with that, the new Prime Minister of Canada. This means that current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation back in January, will be leaving the role of leader for good.
Alberta voters almost unanimously spewed vitriol at Trudeau throughout the majority of his time as Prime Minister. Surprisingly, though, as the end nears, many Albertans—Conservatives included—are sad to see him go.
"If I'm being honest," said Randy Scruggs, a rig-worker from Fort McMurray, "I don't exactly like my life. That was true during Trudeau's reign, but also before. It was kind of cathartic to kick Justin around on Facebook, but now I won't have that."
"Quite frankly," said Cammy Carlyle, a homemaker from Chestermere, "I feel stifled in my trad-wife role for my overbearing husband. Making fun of Justin Trudeau's masculinity was always a means of coping. It was the one thing that brought my husband and me together."
"Look," said Leonard Starkey, a pressurized safety valve repairman from Grande Prairie. "I've made some terrible decisions in my life, from intoxicant abuse to gambling debts to credit card over-usage. But Justin Trudeau always gave me a target towards which I could redirect my rage away from myself."
With Trudeau gone, the presumptive Liberal-leadership winner Mark Carney will take the reins as Prime Minister. Carney will likely call a spring election, in which Albertan-born Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre would be a favorite to win, given his strong polling numbers.
So how do these Albertans feel about the possibility of not just one but two new Prime Ministers in 2025?
"I kind of envy Justin," Ms. Carlyle mused. "He gets to move on, but I'm going to stay right where I am and my life's going to be just as unfulfilling, whether it's Carney or Poilievre in power."
"Sure," Mr. Starkers added, "in a year I'll be blaming Poilievre for everything that's wrong with my life. But with Trudeau, it was just nice to be able to blame someone from Quebec."
"And since we're being honest," Mr. Scruggs finished, "I must confess that if I was allowed to make love to a man, it would be Justin Trudeau."
Image credit: Frank Schwichtenberg, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
