OTTAWA—Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland quit the Liberal government cabinet Monday, a surprise departure that casts further doubts about how long Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can hold on to his job given the government’s deep unpopularity.

Calls are growing from within the Liberal caucus for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down as party leader — and some have pegged Chrystia Freeland as their choice to replace him.Twenty-one Liberal MPs have publicly urged Trudeau to resign — many of them within the last week — after Freeland shocked Canadians on Monday by resigning as deputy prime minister and finance minister hours before she was supposed to table the government's fall economic statement.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hold on power was threatened on Monday after the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration resigned abruptly, in a stinging rebuke to the country’s leader.

Freeland said Canada is dealing with US President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose sweeping 25% tariffs and should eschew “costly political gimmicks” it can “ill afford.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will chair a meeting of the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations today, amid increasing calls for his resignation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has survived a week of political chaos that saw Chrystia Freeland resign from his cabinet, and all main opposition parties now vowing to topple his government. But the pressure on Trudeau to resign continues to build — this time from Ontario's Liberal MPs,

That builds on the MPs already opposed to him continuing, believed to be over a third of the 153 from the ruling party