 After deciding to leave office in February 1984, Pierre Trudeau retired as Prime Minister of Canada in June of that year.Polls showed that he would almost certainly be defeated by Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives in the next election.Trudeau's Liberals chose Turner, a former Cabinet minister under Trudeau and Lester B. Pearson, as their new leader in a bitterly contested leadership convention in which Turner defeated six rivals, most notably Trudeau's preferred successor Jean Chrétien.