Who is Justin Trudeau? (Canada 2019)
In 2011, the Liberal Party of Canada was utterly devastated. For the first time in history, the party had entered an election, and lost — not just first place, but second place as well.
The Liberals had long considered themselves the “natural ruling party” of Canada. And for good reason. Of the country’s nearly 150 year lifespan, they have led the government for 86; four of Canada’s top five longest serving Prime Ministers have been Liberals; and since World War I nine out of the last twelve Prime Ministers to win in a general election have also been Liberals. They were — and still are — the only party to ever win back to back elections with different leaders.
But by the end of the 41st Parliament, elected in 2011, the Liberals had been out of power for over nine and a half years: the longest stretch of time since John A. Macdonald.
To many, this looked like a new era in Canadian politics. Stephen Harper was set to become the longest serving Conservative Prime Minister in over a century. The NDP, had just become the official opposition for the first time. Their victory promised an end to the two and a half party system that had dominated the country for its entire existence. Or, at the very least, an end to the Liberal’s hegemony over that system. To many, this looked like the end of the Liberals.
But then, only four years later, the Liberals would not only win a sizable majority in the commons, but they would also cut the NDP back to half their size, retaking their historical stronghold of Quebec in the process — the first time since the 1980s. The Liberals — too — were on the rise.
And that rebound is largely thanks to one man: Justin Trudeau. Who — like his father before him — led the Liberals to a massive (and surprising) victory, primarily on the basis of charisma, confidence, and a promise to do government differently. But this time around, they are the government, and can hardly make those same promises. Trudeau has led quite a successful parliament, and he’s been able to achieve many of their goals. But they’ve also broken promises along the way, and the last four years certainly haven’t been without their scandals.
What are the chances that they can actually repeat this victory, now that they’re not actually the underdog? Let’s take a step back.
Early Life
Justin Trudeau was born in 1971, nearly four years into his father’s 15 and a half year reign. Pierre Trudeau, with the exception of a nine month gap between 1979 and 1980, would be Prime Minister until Justin was nearly 13 years old. He would spend his early childhood living at 24 Sussex.
In 1984 — after Pierre’s final parliament — Justin moved with his father back to Montreal, where he would attend the prestigious private Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature from McGill. He then moved to the West Coast to earn his Bachelor of Education from the University of British Columbia and then taught at private and public schools in Vancouver. It’s a common trope — you could probably even call it a slur at this point — that Trudeau’s only real working experience is as a drama teacher. And that’s just not true. For one, he served in parliament for several years, but even as a teacher, he mainly taught Math and French — not drama. He also started an engineering program and an environmental geography program when he returned to Montreal, but never finished.
At this point in the early 2000s, Trudeau was transitioning into a media career. He started appearing on English and French radio shows — even hosting his own weekly news show — and served as the MC for galas and conventions and things like that. If we’re being honest, his only real qualification for these roles — at first, anyway — was his family name. But regardless of how he got there, it eventually did become real, tangible experience and he was able to leverage that experience — and his name — to do some actually meaningful charity and political work. He even helped campaign during the 2006 Liberal Leadership Race, and served as the chair of the party’s Youth Issues task force.
By 2007, he had won the nomination for a federal riding in Montreal. Back in 2006, the Liberals — who had held the riding since 1953 — had lost it to the Bloc. But by 2008, Justin Trudeau had retaken it. And in 2011, he was one of only 34 Liberals to win a seat. For obvious reasons, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff quickly resigned, and one year later Trudeau launched his leadership campaign.
At this point, he was kind of divisive within his own party. On the one hand, he had only been an MP for four years, and his only experience had been as Critic to Youth, Citizenship, and Immigration — which at this time wasn’t really a big issue in the same way it is now — as well as his widely publicized, charity boxing match with Conservative Senator John Travolta. But on the other hand, it’s undeniable that Trudeau had this unmatchable aura about him. He was the son of the Prime Minister who gave us our constitution, he was charismatic, the media loved him, and he talked about big ideas at the level of values and morality rather than the boring level of substantive detail. He was Canada’s first, true, social-media leader.
In the end, this second opinion won out, and he won the Leadership Election handily on the first ballot, with 79% of the vote. For reference, the last Liberal leader to win a contested leadership race was Stephane Dion, and it took him four rounds of voting to win a majority of just 55%. (Current Conservative leader) Andrew Scheer won just 51% after 13 rounds. The Liberals were all in on Trudeau.
And luckily, the media hype didn’t die with the leadership race. Justin Trudeau was able to ride it, and even grow it, all the way up to the election. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Trudeau was pretty much the exact opposite of Stephen Harper. Where in the past, Harper had portrayed himself as an intelligent — if a little uncharismatic — leader who would fight strongly for on the merits of his policies — this time around he took on a more condescending tone. Harper tried to portray himself as the only one good enough to hold the office. (This is where lines like the “he’s just not ready” thing came in.) But this tact forced him to hold a negative tone for most of the election, which stood in stark contrast to the surprisingly youthful energy of 41-year-old Trudeau who spoke with an optimistic, but aggressively determined tone. He was even assisted in this — unknowingly — by Thomas Mulcair whose relentless — and perhaps justified — attacks on Harper also forced his party to take a negative tone. Further, this allowed Trudeau to keep his hands a little cleaner and focus on his own policies, because Mulcair was doing all the dirty work of criticising the Conservative’s for him. Moreover, Mulcair was running the NDP to the right of where they usually stand. In contrast, Trudeau was portraying himself as the leader of a new era of fresh, ambitious progressive politics.
As a result, Trudeau was able to produce the best Liberal showing since the 2000 election, with 39 and a half percent of the popular vote, and a 14 seat majority. He then went on to lead a pretty successful parliament, accomplishing most of his campaign promises, but also reneging on quite a few as well. Overall, these last four years can probably be best described as two-steps forward, one step back — with a whole lot of compromising along the way. Which is fitting for a man whose favourite Prime Minister is Wilfred Laurier — a Prime Minister who’s famous — or maybe even infamous — for always taking the middle ground and brokering compromises. It also clearly delineates him from the argumentative — perhaps arrogant — reign of his father.
Trudeau’s First Parliament
Let’s go through a few examples:
On affordability — they promised to make life more affordable for the middle class. In many ways they achieved this. They cut the middle income tax bracket rate from 22% to 20.5%, and they cut small business taxes just as much. There’s no longer any GST on insulin or feminine hygiene products. Even in housing, they provided benefits to make it easier to afford the down payment on your first home. But on the other hand, they haven’t really done much else as housing prices have skyrocketed — their benefits might have even helped fuel the fire. Further, they took so many tax credits off the books that their income tax cuts were basically a wash. Sure, it simplifies things and makes sure no-one’s overpaying by missing a tax credit they’re eligible for, but does it really change much else? Again, good in some ways, but not really in others.
They were also quite quick to allow assisted dying — a controversial, but I think generally supported policy. And the same can be said for cannabis, which they legalized for recreational use across the country. They even gave provinces control over how that legalization was going to roll out, which was a smart compromise.
On the other hand, though, they didn’t do anything to help those who are currently sitting in prison for marijuana possession. And since weed was semi-de-facto legal prior to this legislation — meaning you usually wouldn’t get in too much trouble for it, but sometimes you just might — a lot of people sitting in prison for those charges right now are only there because of bias and discrimination. But on the flip side — again — the Liberal’s full legalization has put an end to that grey zone which allowed for that bias in the first place. So that’s good.
But even on legalization, in a broader sense, they kind of jumped the gun. The science isn’t completely clear, but it seems to be the case that using cannabis before the age of around 25, can have serious, detrimental effects on your mental development. But the much lower legal-age might suggest to young people that it is in fact safe.
We also don’t have a reliable way to test for sobriety, yet — which is a real problem for law enforcement. And more than that, the Liberals used this — in part — to justify random breathalyzer and cheek swab checks. Which itself, just creates another grey area that allows for more bias to affect people’s lives.
Overall, cannabis legislation was probably a smart, progressive policy that helped lots of people. But the rollout, is not without its stains.
Another prominent — and again, controversial — area of legislation has been on the climate and environment. Most prominently, they implemented Canada’s first, federal Carbon Tax. Basically, this is a government added cost to anything that produces greenhouse gases. The goal is to make it more expensive to do those things, to disincentivize the behaviour. It also has the added benefit of financially compensating society as a whole for the damage that that behaviour causes. Now, I don’t have time to go into the climate debate in as much detail as I think the disagreements warrant, so I’ll just leave this as saying it’s extremely controversial. Both the Conservatives and People’s Party not only oppose it, but are making it one of their biggest priorities. The NDP and Greens are the exact opposite, and hope to expand to tax.
But regardless of where you stand on the issue, I’m sure it seems strange to you that the exact same government that created the tax, is also the government that bought a controversial oil pipeline that would further connect Alberta to the Pacific. Now, I don’t really care where you stand on this issue. But this is a strange compromise, right?
Let’s pretend — for example — that you oppose the carbon tax. You might think climate change is a problem — maybe not — but you definitely don’t think it’s worth making taxpayer’s lives more unaffordable to fix. Does the government then spending four and a half billion dollars of taxpayer money to purchase the pipeline make up for that cost? Not really.
Now let’s pretend you support the carbon tax. The climate is not only one of your most important issues, but it might even be one of your greatest fears about your children’s future. How does spending billions of dollars to help the fossil fuel industry sound? Not great, either.
I actually generally admire the work that the Trudeau government has done to consider multiple sides of most issues and make proactive compromises. But this climate set-up just seems incredibly foolish to me. It doesn’t win anyone to his side.
And further — it also feels like a breach of one of Trudeau’s keystone 2015 values: Indigenous rights and reconciliation. Now, I find the constant connection that people find between natives and the environment kind of infuriating. At best, it plays into this ‘noble savage’ trope where they’re the embodiment of some semi-divine connection to nature, and hold some inherent Assassin’s-Creed-Animus-style knowledge of how to shepherd the Earth. It fetishizes more than it respects. At worst, it draws a problematic spectrum between European cultures, Aboroginial Cultures, and the rest of nature and the animal kingdom. Which — of course — is ridiculous and hurtful. And that’s not what I’m talking about here.
I’m talking about land and sovereignty — especially in British Columbia where there are very few treaties. And again — don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every single Native is against the pipeline. Many actually support it, and projects like it. You’d have to create some pretty gross generalizations to believe that any subsection of society is going to agree on every single issue. But that’s not the point. Some nations, or their elected councils, or their hereditary chiefs, are against it. That’s the point. And if their governments or people are against an infrastructure project slicing through their lands, it’s kind of concerning that Trudeau is so eager to talk-the-talk when it wins him votes, but isn’t willing to walk-the-walk when it’s inconvenient. Even when it would have been easier his government didn’t do it — the project has already been delayed by court orders saying that they didn’t do enough consultation.
And honestly I don’t think that 5% of the population deserves a veto against the rest of the country — regardless of past and current injustices. But that’s not the argument. Right now, they’re not even being given a remotely powerful voice on the issue. And they certainly deserve that. If they can’t get it under a government that campaigned on reconciliation like Trudeau did, how will they ever?
While we’re on the topic: Trudeau hasn’t done much at all to increase sovereignty or the capabilities of First Nations governments, and many reserves are still without fresh drinking water without the political power or resources to do anything about it.
But like most things of this parliament, there’s a little give and take here. They haven’t made as much progress as they promised. But full, true reconciliation is going to be a long, hard, and politically costly endeavor. And their term is still only in its first parliament. There may be days ahead, yet. It took Justin’s father — for example — four long terms to finally implement a broad change to Canadian government and federalism, and patriate the constitution. These things take time. And they are making progress.
For one, “Reconciliation” — as a concept — wasn’t really embraced until the Trudeau government started pushing for it. It might feel like a long time ago now, but Trudeau is still the reason your kids are finally taking a hard look at Canada’s historical and present relationship with its native inhabitants in school. And I think most people are proud of these changes, although I also know there’s a sizeable group of you who find it pretty annoying, and just don’t care.
They were also quick to enact the Indigenous Language Act, which gave priority and funding to the preservation and promotion of ancestral and — in some cases — day to day languages and ultimately cultures of nations and peoples across the country. And, in regards to Child and Family Services, they added “traditions, customs, and language” to the list of important factors to consider when deciding the best interest of a child. This is an important acknowledgment of the systemic damage caused by the 60s scoop. And it’s also a tangible step to revert centuries-long government policy that allowed native children to not only be taken away from negligent parents, but also ripped them from their communities and cultures entirely. Often, with the express purpose of killing off those cultures. This still allows the government to step in and save a kid from a bad situation, but also ensures that we’re not trading one variety of damage for another. Steps are being made towards reconciliation. But they’re slow coming, and they sometimes they really don’t feel like a priority.
Speaking of priorities: remember when 2015 was going to be the last election fought under first past the post? Remember when Trudeau promised to transition the country to a more representative ranked-ballot or proportional system. Me neither.
Electoral reform is no longer a priority. It’s no longer anything. His did government create a committee to make recommendations on a new system, but ultimately it was decided — not by the committee but by his government — not to pursue electoral reform. In a mandate letter to his Minister of Democratic Institutions, Trudeau and staff write,“A clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged. Furthermore, without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest.” You know, I’m just spitballing here, but if you couldn’t find a clear consensus you could do a couple things.
A) You could make an educated judgment — as the executive of the country — and pick whichever alternative system you think is best. Then, you could send that system head to head with our current system in a referendum. Thus, divining a public consensus.
Or B) You could even let the public decide which alternative system is best. You could follow a procedure like the New Zealand flag referendums. First vote, rank the alternatives. Let us know which one of these you like most. Second vote, okay do you still like this alternative when we put it head to head with our current system? Again, you divine consensus.
If you’re a government that has pitched their tent on the idea of broader, more meaningful public consultation, a “no”-vote on the referendum wouldn’t hurt your image. It would prove your respect for the process that you supposedly support. There’s no risk. It would be good for you, if you wished to spin it that way. And if you actually cared about electoral reform — if it was anything more than a play for strategic votes — you would have done it. But Trudeau’s government didn’t. And that says a lot.
But that’s not to say there hasn’t been some progress on democratic reform. Again, two steps forward, one step back.
Reforming the Senate — the upper, unelected, appointed, legislature of sober-second-thought in our parliament — has been a continual project of Prime Minister after Prime Minister. Pierre Trudeau, Mulroney, Harper — you name it. And time and time (again), they’ve been met with failure. It’s incredibly difficult to actually change anything. Harper even gave up on making official reforms, and tried to circumvent the whole thing. He tried to just hold unofficial elections, and then promised that he would choose to appoint whoever won. Ultimately though, that was a non-starter as well.
So I actually think that Trudeau’s pragmatic approach to the issue, which was small but meaningful, was quite admirable. He cut the partisanship out of the process. The Senate of the future will not be organized into camps of Senators who were elected by this Liberal Prime Minister and this Conservative one. He’s created an independent, non-partisan committee that will recommend nominees, and then — similar to Harper’s solution — Trudeau will follow through. Only time will tell how sustainable this system will be, but it’s certainly progress. Give. And take.
The one area where I think the Liberal Government has been uncompromising, though, is in Immigration and Foreign Affairs, generally. They were pretty committed to joining the Trans-Pacific (trade) Partnership — despite some typical concessions for Quebec — and even held steadfast on renegotiating NAFTA with Trump, despite some Conservative calls for the government to just lay down and take the loss. Hell, did you know we even a free trade agreement with the Ukraine now? I think you probably know where you stand on this sort of thing, and we don’t have time to get into economic pros and cons. So I’ll leave it at that.
In terms of Immigration, the Trudeau government has been incredibly in favour of higher numbers. They’re bumping up the count by around 30% from around 260 thousand immigrants a year under Harper, to a future count of around 340 thousand. That’s about 1% of the current Canadian population. At first, I think this was actually a really popular policy, but as the last four years have progressed it’s become more and more controversial. Especially on the right side of the discourse. If that sounds like you, then you might be interested in what the People’s Party has to say on the issue. Overall, though, I still think most people actually lean towards the Liberal position, even if they are a whole lot more hesitant to fully buy-in.
The main sticking points, I think, have been the shift in our immigration system’s requirements and goals, as well as a general perception that the government has become soft on its own rules and enforcement. And I think it becomes especially frustrating for people when the government keeps conflating a genuine concern for how the immigration system is operating, with outright racist, anti-immigrant bigotry. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Overall, it’s probably fair to say that the Trudeau government has overseen a shift from focusing on economic immigrants and collecting skilled labourers like Pokemon, towards a more humanitarian outlook. And lots of people like that, others don’t. Although it’s hard to tell if this change is more a function of Liberal belief, or if it’s more a function of the Syrian Refugee Crisis’ sheer magnitude.
Either way, this has ultimately led to some pretty serious concerns of us being soft on our own rules. You know — people falsely seeking refugee status, being denied status, but then just staying anyway. Which is just objectively a dirty thing to do — if your first act after joining a society is to explicitly disobey its rules and institutions. And it is true, the Trudeau government has been incredibly slow to act on these concerns. But if we’re looking at the numbers, refugee immigration peaked in 2016 with 12% of all immigrants coming specifically from Syria. But the year before and after, that number’s been less than 5%. And if we look at newcomers overall, the sort of scams that make headlines are a really small piece of the pie. The reality is, most immigrants are still workers or part of the family reunification scheme. You might still not like that, and that’s valid — but, just be careful about falling for the hysteria.
It’s also true that the Liberals have relaxed a lot of the requirements for citizenship. We can no longer revoke someone’s citizenship just because we think they’re a national security threat. They might be a threat, but they’re still Canadians. You’re also no longer required to plan on staying in Canada after you receive citizenship. They even removed the requirement for people under 18 or over 54 years of age to demonstrate knowledge of Canada. The general thinking here is that young people will learn when they’re in school, and the older generations will raise the second generation in Canada anyway, so their kids will learn. You could easily agree or disagree here. Again, the Liberals, NDP, and Greens generally lean in favour of all these things. While the Conservatives and PPC are making it an important point of disagreement.
See video for updates on Trudeau’s ‘brownface’ scandal.
Lavscam
And finally, we have to talk about Jody Wilson-Raybould and SNC-Lavalin. Let’s start with the facts. Wilson-Raybould was a Liberal MP from Vancouver. Before being hand-picked by Trudeau as a candidate for the 2015 election, she served two terms as the Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations. After the election, she was appointed to the position of Justice Minister and Attorney General, making her one of the most important members of Trudeau’s gender-balanced Cabinet. Now that’s actually a really interesting position. On the one hand, the Justice Minister is like any other Minister. They’re a member of the government, responsible to parliament — and really the Prime Minister — and are in charge of their respective policy portfolio — in this case the judicial system, mostly. But the Minister of Justice is also the Attorney General — which is still responsible to parliament — but is also generally perceived to serve at arm’s length. They’re the chief law officer of the Crown — not the government , which is basically just the ruling party that’s in power — but the Crown — the government as an institution. In this role, they’re semi-non-partisan, and serve as the government’s primary legal advisor, as well as the government’s lawyer in legal cases. They’re supposed to be just and independent. And that’s where the problem comes in.
You see, there’s this rule in Canada that if a company is undergoing charges for criminal behaviour, or if they’ve been charged, then they can’t win any new government contracts for a few years. Which makes sense. And SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec based infrastructure construction company, was in the midst of fighting just such a charge. And for Trudeau, this is a problem. SNC-Lavalin is a pretty big company that employs a lot of people, and it just so happens to be based in the same province as his own riding, and — probably most importantly — is based in the province that’s… the most “special” member of confederation. The point is, most successful governments need to please Quebec, and that’s pretty hard to do if you’re exiling their biggest companies. Moreover, it just looks good across Canada to have as much job growth as possible come election time. Anything that makes that more difficult is a problem.
So, Trudeau and his administration urged the Attorney General — or she would probably say pressured her — to look into the case which was being litigated by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, which the Attorney General oversees. You know — maybe we could just make this go away, and SNC Lavalin can go back to employing people with government contracts. She responds by saying, that’d probably be inappropriate. To which they say, how about you sleep on that. To which she says, yeah no.
It wasn’t long after that Trudeau had a Cabinet shuffle, and Wilson-Raybould was essentially demoted to the Minister of Veteran’s Affairs. The shuffle, which saw changes to lots of different Ministers’ portfolios, was triggered by a gap that was opened by the resignation of the Treasury Board President. And Trudeau maintains that’s the only reason she had to be moved. But after the news of Trudeau’s conflict with Wilson-Raybould over SNC Lavalin broke, it’s easy to see how there might be ulterior motives there as well. And this has had several implications for Trudeau’s government.
First of all, it exposed minor, but very serious corruption within the government. It soon became clear that Trudeau’s staff and SNC Lavalin executives had had dozens of meetings. At one point, they were exchanging daily updates. And sure, it was good that Trudeau was acting decisively, with all the powers at his disposal, to protect and promote Canadian jobs. But was that kind of short term pragmatism, really worth sacrificing the rule of law in the long term? Probably not.
Trudeau’s handling of the ensuing investigation also puts him in a poor light. As the government’s lawyer, Jody Wilson-Raybould was restricted on how much she could say, because of Attorney-Client Privilege as well as limits on how much Cabinet Minister’s can reveal about government conversations. Trudeau, refused to release that privilege to aid the investigation. And then — later on — when an ethics report declared that his government’s actions were — indeed — problematic and corrupt, Trudeau said that he “accepts” the commissioner’s findings, but “disagrees”. Which — to me — sounds like an oxymoron.
It also doesn’t look too good for Trudeau that he demoted not only a woman from his Cabinet, but an Indigenous woman. Now, I think people are getting a little reductive here when they talk about this like it was an important factor in her demotion. I don’t think her race or gender a really good proxy for who she is in this situation. I think her demotion is more a function of her resolve to her hold her ground and her respect for the office of Attorney General than it is a function of her societal classifications. But it’s also easy to see how it’s really hypocritical for a government that talks so much about their gender-balanced cabinet and their respect for indigenous voices, to demote an indigenous woman as soon as she speaks her mind.
And finally, the affair has led to some important changes to the personnel of Trudeau’s Ministry. Trudeau’s longtime friend, Principal Secretary, Senior Political Advisor, and general right-hand-man, Gerald Butts resigned over the issue, in an attempt to diffuse the blame away from Trudeau. And now he’s gone. As the affair ran on, Jody Wilson Raybould eventually resigned from her Cabinet position. Jane Philpott, one of Trudeau’s most effective Ministers who served as the Minister of Health, Minister of Indigenous Services, and President of the Treasury Board, also resigned over the Liberal’s handling of the issue. Eventually, they were both kicked out of the Liberal party caucus, and are now running as independents in 2019.
Ultimately, the importance of the SNC Lavalin affair comes down to your own personal choice. If we take a step back, the actions of Trudeau’s government aren’t really that bad or egregious, and honestly the whole thing is pretty small. But you could also see it as a behind the scenes look into Trudeau’s Liberals that’s indicative of how they do everything. Knowing how they acted here, can you trust them on the bigger things? That’s up to you to decide.
And the same is true with everything else. They legalized marijuana, but in many ways they missed the point. They’re fighting a hard battle in the name of a carbon tax, but they also bought a pipeline. They’re doing more than any other government to promote reconciliation and improve the lives of indigenous communities, but they’re still neglecting them in many regards. So you have to make a choice. Every government has things that they prioritize and things that they neglect. They have to if they want to get anything done. And it’s up to you to decide if their two steps forward are in the direction that you want to go, and if that’s worth sacrificing the things they’re stepping back on. For a lot of people, I think that answer will be yes. But only you can decide that for yourself, based on your own values and priorities.
