Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May says though she's not surprised by Justin Trudeau's resignation, it is a sad day for the prime minister who has held the office for nine years.

In a phone interview, May reflected on when she was first elected to Parliament in 2011 when the Liberals were unable to form a government or official opposition for the first time in the party's history.

"I've known him and worked with him from when I was first elected in 2011, and the Liberal Party was the third party in the House. I used to joke and say that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party were so irrelevant they had to sit with me. I mean, I was in the far corner of the chamber, and so was he," she said.

She explained that over the years she watched him be recruited by the Liberal Party because of his "royal jelly and charisma" before he was elected as party leader in 2013, and eventually elected as PM in 2015.

On a personal level, she thanked Trudeau for his years serving the country, despite the transgressions made by Trudeau and his party; and she said she hopes for many years of peace for him and his family.

"This was a hard thing to do. Public service is increasingly hard. And the vitriol and personal unpleasantness for Trudeau, no matter how much of it one could say he was the author of his own misfortune, one of the things that has changed is that we've lost a lot of basic civility," she said. "I think that for him to be snowboarding in B.C. over Christmas and being attacked with really rude language in front of his very youngest child is unfortunate, and it just underscores that public service is a sacrifice."

Despite the resignation announcment, May says it ends a lot of uncertainty, and she is now thinking about the next few months in government, and the coming federal election.

"I'm very angry at a whole lot of Liberal broken promises, but I promise they'll hear about that on the campaign trail when we get to the 2025 election," she said.

Over the coming months, she hopes to meet with other party leaders in an effort to pass "important legislation" that has died as a result of Parliament being prorogued.

"They are, as of now, dead, but by an all-party agreement, we could bring them back and get them passed before the election," she said. "I hate to see how much work was minutes away from being passed into law, and in parliamentary terms, literally minutes, and probably in real life, maybe a couple weeks away."