OTTAWA — Canadian Prime Minister (PM) Justin Trudeau is increasingly likely to announce he intends to step down, though he has not made a final decision, a source familiar with Mr. Trudeau’s thinking said on Sunday.

The source spoke to Reuters after The Globe and Mail reported that Mr. Trudeau was expected to announce as early as Monday that he would quit as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.

The source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Trudeau’s departure would leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.

Sources told The Globe and Mail that they did not know definitely when Mr. Trudeau would announce his plans to leave but said they expect it would happen before an emergency meeting of Liberal legislators on Wednesday.

An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, have publicly urged Mr. Trudeau to quit.

The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. The prime minister’s regularly published schedule for Monday said he would participate virtually in a cabinet committee meeting on Canada-US relations.

It remains unclear whether Mr. Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal leader is selected, The Globe and Mail report added.

CALLS TO RESIGN GROW
Mr. Trudeau took over as Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was in deep trouble and had been reduced to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.

If he does resign, it would likely spur fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a stable government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years.

The prime minister has discussed with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc whether he would be willing to step in as interim leader and prime minister, one source told the newspaper, adding that this would be unworkable if Mr. LeBlanc plans to run for the leadership.

Mr. Trudeau, 53, had been able to fend off Liberal legislators worried about the polls and the loss of safe seats in two special elections.

But calls for him to step aside have grown since December, when Mr. Trudeau tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest cabinet allies, after she pushed back against his proposals for more spending.

Ms. Freeland quit instead and penned a letter accusing Mr. Trudeau of “political gimmicks” rather than focusing on what was best for the country.

Mr. Trudeau propelled the Liberals to power in 2015 promising “sunny ways” and a progressive agenda that promoted the rights of women and a promise to fight climate change.

But the everyday realities of governing gradually wore him down and like many Western leaders, the need to deal with the effects of the pandemic ate up much of his time.

Although Ottawa spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses, racking up record budget deficits, this provided little protection from public anger as prices soared.

A botched immigration policy led to hundreds of thousands of arrivals, straining an already overheated housing market. — Reuters

HANOI — Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 7.09% last year, greater than the 5.05% expansion in 2023, driven by strong exports and robust foreign investment inflows, government data showed on Monday.

Vietnam’s GDP grew 7.55% in the fourth quarter, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a report.

The Southeast Asian country, a regional manufacturing hub, has benefited from a recovery in global consumption despite being badly affected by Asia’s strongest typhoon last year.

Exports in 2024 grew 14.3% from a year earlier to $405.53 billion, led by shipments of electronics, smartphones, garments and farm produce, the GSO said in its report.

Imports grew 16.7% to $380.76 billion in 2024, resulting in a trade surplus of $24.77 billion, according to the GSO.

The strong rebound in growth in 2024 was also helped by the government increasing coal imports for power generation to avoid a repeat of previous years’ electricity shortages.

Coal imports in 2024 rose 24.8% from a year earlier to 63.8 million metric tons, while electricity output in the year rose 9.6% to 293.3 billion kilowatt hours.

Average consumer prices in 2024 were up 3.63% while industrial production output rose 8.4%, the GSO said.

Vietnam has set an official GDP growth target of 6.5% to 7% for this year. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh last month said Vietnam would aim for growth of 8%. — Reuters

TAIPEI — Cyberattacks on Taiwan government departments doubled in 2024 from the previous year to an average of 2.4 million attacks a day, the island’s National Security Bureau said, adding most of them were launched by Chinese cyber forces.

Taiwan has in recent years complained about what it sees as China’s “grey-zone harassment” — from daily military drills and balloons near the island to cyberattacks — at a time when Beijing ramps up military and political pressure to force the democratically governed island to accept its sovereignty claim.

Taiwan’s Government Service Network, or GSN, received a daily average of 2.4 million attacks last year, double the daily average of 1.2 million in 2023, according to a report by the National Security Bureau on Sunday.

The bureau offered rare details of the attacks, attributing most to China’s cyber forces, with telecommunications, transportation and defense among the top targets.

“Although many of those attacks have been effectively detected and blocked, the growing numbers of attacks pinpoint the increasingly severe nature of China’s hacking activities,” the report said.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment.

China routinely denies being involved in hacking attacks but is frequently accused by foreign governments, especially the United States which last week said Chinese hackers stole documents from the US Treasury Department.

The Taiwanese report said China launched some of the attacks to coincide with Chinese military drills around the island, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to disrupt access to web pages of Taiwan’s transportation and financial institutions.

The move, the report said, was meant to “intensify the harassment effect and military intimidation.”

Beijing staged two rounds of major exercises around Taiwan last year to pressure Taipei, one in May and one in October, dubbed Joint Sword – 2024A and B respectively.

China also targeted Taiwanese civil servants’ e-mails and launched attacks including social engineering in attempts to steal confidential information, the report said.

The report said China’s cyber forces employed techniques including advanced persistent threats and backdoor software to try to infiltrate and compromise Taiwan’s key infrastructure including highways and ports.

“Such efforts attempt to disrupt Taiwan’s government operations, as well as gain advantages in the fields of politics, military, technology, and economy,” the report said. — Reuters