“You can hear him. The man is teary-eyed.”
I speak, of course, of Rick Bell, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s favourite political commentator.
I hope Mr. Bell will forgive me for plagiarizing the lead of his March 8 column, in which he pretends that he isn’t sorry to see a choked-up Mr. Trudeau about to leave the national stage.
But if Mr. Bell isn’t teary-eyed, he certainly should be very worried about what Mr. Trudeau’s departure today means for the politicians he supports, especially the ones outside Alberta.
It’s also hard to believe that Premier Smith isn’t weeping – and not just the crocodile tears she used to shed when she talked about trans kids. She certainly would be if she were thinking about what losing her most effective foil might mean. Leastways, she’d be a little damp-eyed if she didn’t have the prospect of heading south to sunny Florida at our expense to kiss up to more Canada-hating Republicans to cheer her up.
Then there’s the federal Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, the Antitrudeau, who for months we’ve been told is coasting to a majority electoral victory so massive it will finish off the Liberal Party forever.
I once believed in the end of the Liberal Party, too, not long after Jack Layton’s Orange Wave crested in 2011. That turned out to be a personal triumph of hope over good judgment. Maybe things would have been different if Mr. Layton had survived his cancer, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I doubt it. They call the Liberals Canada’s Natural Governing Party for a reason; they may stumble from time to time, but they’re not going away.
Mr. Poilievre, the Tiny Tory who never grew up to be a real Tory like Joe Clark did no matter how much time he spends in the gym, must be bawling at his seeming inability to come up with a smear that will stick to Mr. Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, who was sworn in as prime minister this morning.
Hilariously, in the face of unexpected polling that suddenly looked a lot better for the Liberals under Mr. Carney, the Slogan King was reduced to complaining that Canada’s new PM “has nothing but slogans.” From the guy who gave us “Axe the Tax,” “Canada is Broken” and other lame three-word slogans, this is pathetic!
Even the delightful Jenni Byrne – Mr. Poilievre’s top strategic advisor who excoriated Erin O’Toole, perhaps the only decent human being to lead the federal Conservatives since Jean Charest, for wishing a Liberal cabinet minister well – hasn’t been able to think of anything!
Trust me, not even scary videos of Liz Truss, famously outlasted as U.K. prime minister by a head of lettuce, saying Mr. Carney was a crappy governor of the Bank of England are going to do much good.
Now the worm has really turned thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Conservatives have spent the past two and a half years touting Mr. Poilievre as the man best able to deal with the United States because he is the federal leader most simpatico with the American way of doing business. President Trump – Mr. Poilievre’s ideological doppelganger – has changed all that in in a few weeks. Methinks the Conservative leader will have a hard time changing that narrative.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. If the Liberals are Canada’s Natural Governing Party, the Conservatives – especially under Mr. Poilievre, the proven election cheat – are Canada’s Natural Smearing Party.
Conservative hatred for the departed prime minister now pretty much entirely defines the party. But they may yet figure out a smear for the new one that works better than “Carbon Tax Carney,” which doesn’t seem to have had any impact on the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor who’s so colourless it’s almost colourful.
Mr. Trudeau had his flaws – that costume trip to India didn’t go over well, especially with a little help from Stephen Harper’s buddy Narendra Modi – but they didn’t include trying to wreck Alberta’s tarsands industry, no matter what Premier Smith and her “environment” minister keep saying.
After all, Mr. Trudeau and former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley were the only people in more than 70 years to manage get a pipeline to tidewater built within Canada’s borders! Some readers may not think that was a good thing, but it obviously gripes the UCP mightily or they wouldn’t keep making up alternative history about it.
Likewise, it didn’t involve shutting down the occupation of Ottawa by Maple Syrup MAGA fake patriots and their blockade of Canadian trade with the United States in 2022 either – which absolutely helped set the stage for Mr. Trump’s bizarre assault on Canada now.
And it wasn’t his willingness to have his picture taken with Canadians, almost anywhere anytime, who were mostly delighted to pose with him.
Mr. Trudeau’s biggest flaw, if you ask me, was his steadfast unwillingess to fight back effectively against the hysterical and constant personal attacks on him and his family by bad actors like Ms. Smith, Mr. Poilievre, and Michael Cooper, our ghoulish MP here in St. Albert. They all would have made easy targets if Mr. Trudeau had chosen to play with his elbows up. Why he didn’t remains a mystery.
Conservatives and mainstream media may never acknowledge it, but Mr. Trudeau certainly had many accomplishments that made Canada better place and a better country, not least his government’s acknowledgement that the health of our planet is a legitimate concern, even if it stands in the way of the profitability of Ms. Smith’s favourite industry.
The child tax benefit and $10-a-day child care, resisted bitterly by Alberta’s government, are measures that help lift families out of poverty. This is not nothing.
The dental care program that the Conservatives hope to destroy is a huge accomplishment. The movement toward a national pharmacare program – while too little and quite possibly too late – is not nothing either.
Banning assault rifles and other weapons intended only to kill humans, a sound policy despised and obstructed by the UCP, makes Canada a better and safer place. The ghouls who say otherwise – and we are sure to hear from some in the comments section – can go to blazes.
Managing the economic fallout of the COVID pandemic – despite the egregious opposition of provincial Conservative governments and the fact Ottawa does not control health care policy which in this province has fallen into the hands of anti-vaxx nuts – must be counted as another success.
And, yes, the legalization of pot has been a significant benefit to Canada – ending, hopefully for good, one of the most harmful aspects of the deadly and corrupting “war on drugs.” It has also changed the smell of Alberta’s suburbs on summer evenings, when the pungently spicy bouquet of herb sometimes overwhelms the traditional scent of barbecue.
Immigration under Mr. Trudeau has not been a success through either a progressive or a conservative lens, but Conservative Party attacks on Canada’s supposed lack of “border security” and leakiness to drugs moving south mostly parrot racist tropes and MAGA conspiracy tales.
Likewise, the housing crisis is real and is not likely to get better under any possible government in Ottawa or the provinces and territories – a result of the total neoliberal economic consensus by all Canadian political parties capable of being elected. Mr. Poilievre chanting “Build the Homes” isn’t going to fix the problem any more than the Liberals’ temporary foreign purchase prohibition. It can only be solved by direct government intervention in the market, which is anathema to Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats alike.
But surely Mr. Trudeau’s greatest accomplishments in office were in 2015, when he turned the dreadful Harper Government out of office to a national sigh of relief, and in the past few weeks, when he stood up to The Donald with determination and dignity.
Justin Trudeau may not have quite been his father, but he grew in office, and history will remember him well.
I liked Trudeau, what the Liberals did for Canadians and I hope he finds a new and important way to journey through life. Yes, he personally made some mistakes, but none of them came from a malicious heart but seems to me, more from being too impetuous and acting before he checked the prevailing winds of the times. Unlike Mr. PP who has only one speed and it’s all Malicious!
What to say? You put it all into perspective as usual and thanks for that. We live in the bubble so some common sense is welcome relief.
There are moments in history that matter. This is one of them. While Justin Trudeau will have a prominent place in history books, Pierre Poilievre will be lucky to get a footnote. The icing on the cake would be a Bruce Fanjoy win in Carleton in 2025.
Abs– I concur. Given that Mr Fanjoy has been knocking on doors and actually talking to people in Skippy’s riding while he has been gallivanting around the country the country wasting taxpayers money on his “campaign style rallies “, and seemingly so sure of himself that he thinks he has his own riding all wrapped up that he can ignore his constituents, might just come back to bite him. We can only hope that his constituents are as tired of Slogan Man’s snarlings, as the rest of us. Two plus years of “Canada is broken ” doesn’t sit well with the sudden, so called patriotic fervor, no matter how many flags he puts up around him. And IMHO, to come out today within an hour of our new Prime Minister being sworn in, fangs bared, shows as much disrespect as his southern support crew.
So to the people of Carleton:
# elbows up
as a final redemption…
Turf the Smurf .
Randi-lee: Turf the Smurf! Words to live by. DJC
Thank you for listing all of the good things that Justin Trudeau did for Canadians, DJC. I can never think fast enough to counter arguments from people who hate him, in my mind for no reason.
The people who will probably be the saddest to see Mr. Trudeau go are the Federal Conservatives, who spent tons of money and focused much of their effort to attack and destroy him personally. Well, it sort of worked, the opposition party was successful, so successful he left, now depriving them of the fruits of their relentless efforts.
Now, their dislike of Trudeau was genuine. First they underestimated and dismissed him, when he defeated their patron saint Harper which upset them greatly. As well, it seemed that everything Trudeau was and stood for triggered them, he was young, progressive, popular, good at sound bites and campaigning. All the things they were not, so there must have also been a great deal of envy. Imagine a drama teacher presuming he could be a Prime Minister? Unheard of! Didn’t he know that role was reserved for the elite of corporate lawyers and professional politicians?
The Conservatives to their credit eventually (after losing twice) also got a younger leader, one who although a bit too angry, intransigent and over the top to be liked, was at least good at slogans and attacks. Of course he was a career politician and had been practising attacking his opponents for decades, which may be part of the reason he was fairly good at it.
However, in the course of a few months the show has changed dramatically and the one Poilievre has spent years auditioning for now no longer exists. I suspect he will still go around talking about axing tax because he has memorized the lines so well, perhaps not realizing like Wylie Coyote that he cliff he has just run off of no longer exists. Someone in his party will have to tell him, if they dare, before he starts to look too ridiculous.
I don’t know why Trudeau did not fight back more against the often ridiculous and relentless attacks on him, but I have theories. He may have become complacent or underestimated his opponent. He may have become tired and wanted to go. It was often said his main reason for sticking around was to keep Poilievre from winning. It would be ironic if his leaving achieved the same result.
Regardless of the election outcome, I also suspect in a few years Canadians will look back much more favourably on our now former Prime Minister. If the Liberals manage to pull off a miraculous come back, the vindication will probably be sooner rather than later.
This cartoon in the Toronto Star a few days ago says it all: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/theo-moudakis-dont-go/article_e4d79804-003c-11f0-951c-dbe5e31d2868.html.
Thank you for this. I think I heard a collective sigh of relief today, mingled with a not insubstantional note of regret.
Li’l Magus was great, except for that neoliberal economy stuff. “Apart from that, Mrs. Kennedy, how did you enjoy your trip to Dallas?”
You’re too kind DJC, old age mellowness? I don’t believe history will treat him well. It is said that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead – oh wait he’s not dead so ok…
I suspect the con hatred of JT flows from that he turfed “the dreadful Harper Government out of office to a national sigh of relief” more than anything. This is the only substantial positive thing JT can claim. Legalizing pot was controversial and good but not substantial. All his recent good things wouldn’t have happened without pushing from the NDP. Similarly his greatest achievement for which history will remember him may be the way he drew the attention, focus and strategy of the Conservatives onto himself only to leave them floundering as a probably more competent PM arrives on the scene to rescue us – sort of a variation of a stalking horse.
As nice as Mr. Sunny Ways is, he was going to get eaten alive by Donald Trump. Look at what Xi Jinping did to him on a brief encounter when JT thought he would lecture him on human rights. The CBC said that “Xi during his interaction with Trudeau at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, to be ‘quite dismissive and threatening,’ indicating that any illusions the government has that China respects Canada as an influential nation in the world have long since disappeared.” Well Donald Trump has just reminded us that any illusions we have that the US respects Canada as an influential nation in the world have long since disappeared, or were never there, so get used to it. JT is no where near the calibre of his father, I always thought his brother Alexandre would have been much better at the job, smarter and way tougher.
On the positive things accomplished on JT’s watch I think he was actually weak, highlighted I guess by what you say about his weakness responding to criticism. He would never be able to fix all the problems which have come along during his watch but I think he will be remembered for doing very little to deal with every one of them. Having said that you’re correct DJC that it’s not as much JT’s fault than because neoliberal thinking cannot even begin to help with any of those.
I will remember JT by the opportunities he missed which his father and maybe his brother would have caught. All along we’ve moved closer and closer to the US and further and further from Asia, South America and actually the rest of the world. As the bible says somewhere, we shall reap what we sow…
Mickey: I probably am, but what the hell, eh? I believe, though, that it’s not to late for Canadians to repair our relationship with … China. Alexandre strikes me as sharper, too, but that may just be because we haven’t heard much from him. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul goes on to say, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Never thought I’d hear you quoting scripture! DJC
Hah! Yeah Dave maybe I’m mellowing with age too and I figured you’d know where that somewhere is. Excellent point about repairing our relationships, particularly with China, and Mark Carney has an opportunity to do that. I was heartened to hear MC say that diversifying our economy is a priority and I’m sure he meant diversify our trading partners.
Mickey R: Speaking of reaping what is sown, it was Harper who damaged Canada’s very long positive relationship with China by destroying the Canadian Wheat Board. After the Korean War we defied the American food blockade of China, and they never forgot how prairie farmers saved them from famine. By killing the Wheat Board Harper forced China to go to the despised American grain companies for their grain imports.
However, it was Trudeau who publicly insulted the Chinese about their entirely reasonable expectation that canola should come close to the same cleanliness standards we provided to them in our wheat and barley shipments. Within that cultural context Trudeau’s insult was just as vile as the Vance/Trump public bullying of Zelenskyy.
And it was Trudeau who chose to continue the Harper policy of giving control of our farmer and govt funded seed genetics to the agrochemical companies. Both internationally and domestically Trudeau’s agricultural policy was just a continuation of Harper.
Perhaps you could favour us with your definition of “substantial”?
As for the housing crisis, I think you and I and Mr. Climenhaga can agree that this is one place the “neoliberal” tag can be applied with some fairness. My single biggest criticism of the former PM was when his government decided to address the housing crisis by helping young professional couples borrow more money. This was fighting a fire with gasoline. The broader problem is that nobody is any position of power, and not the NDP seemingly, can articulate that the housing crisis does not consist in the high price of home ownership. It consists in that fact that working people can’t afford the rent. No amount of new construction of 1,000,000$ 1-bedroom condos will solve that problem. All that will do is keep the price of such things from edging up to 1.1 million. People willfully misunderstand the effect of supply and demand, which acts not only on the marginal price, but also in on the distribution of prices. The $1,000,000 condos are built on sites formerly occupied by much lower cost housing, which simply disappears without replacement. And that is the problem that even “trained economists” seem unable to grasp: the consequence of the 40 years of social and co-op housing that we failed to build as a explicit consequence of the pernicious “Washington consensus” .
I agree generally with your comments
I would add improving the right to die which is such a benefit to many people who can now choose.
One of the recent measures that I treasure,which is getting very little attention, 8 is the expansion of school feeding programs
Surely addressing the real hunger that many children suffer from is something we have to address
A sports celebrity, leaving,a team after 5-10 yrs and getting teary eyed, shows how much he cared about his team and he’s sad to be moving on.
All the JT haters don’t have the understanding, compassion or sensibility to understand that.
Given all the death threats thrown his way; all the personal attacks on his children by the right wing media tropes, I think he stood up rather well.
And having the added pressure of the billionaire &the buffoon doing their best/ worst to smear him, while he was trying to do his job didn’t help.
I will say a big Thank You, for myself & my family for getting us through the pandemic, no thanks to the hypocrites (Cons) who were screaming about not getting the vaccines fast enough, then turn on their heels and start supporting the anti-vaxx crowd. 5 yrs since it started and numbnuts are still going on about mandates, because they still don’t know or care about responsibilities, choices that have consequences.
So many ‘voices’ about: well after 10 yrs, it was time for him to go. Well if that’s the argument, then it’s double time that Skippy should go. After all, in 19yrs 3mths, what has he accomplished as a representative of the people, besides a nice fat pension.
For Mr Trudeau, I personally wish him and his family a well deserved rest and reprieve from the onslaught of vitriol that was imo, spurred on more by a personal agenda than political beliefs.
I strongly second your remarks about the anti-vaxxers. It was striking how the incessant howls of “where are the vaccines” turned on a dime.
The CPC and allies: If it weren’t for bad faith, they’d have no faith at all. Their approach to political is based entirely on relentless but ephemeral lies.
Thank you for writing this, David, and I agree with your sentiments.
We will have to wait to see how history will judge Justin Trudeau; it is just too early to tell at this point. I must make the point that it is too early to tell, because of the possibly preposterous parallel I am going to make.
Justin Trudeau was our voice of assurance and reason during Covid, and it is thanks to him and the policies he implemented that Canada did as well as we did. You only need to compare Alberta and BC’s Covid experience (Alberta, with a smaller, and younger, population reached 5000 Covid deaths before BC) to get a sense of how the wrong leadership can mishandle the challenge of a generation.
By the time Covid was over, however, people were really tired of it, and tired of Trudeau’s reassuring voice; his popularity started to wane. As a resut, Pierre Poilievre’s attack message began to stick, with the result Trudeau was destined to lose the next general election.
We have seen this in the past. Winston Churchill was Britain’s voice of reason and reassurance in World War II, and history speaks extremly well of him. The fact is, though, that in spite of the high regard he is seen in now, the ungrateful UK electorate threw him out of office in the 1945 general election right after WWII ended, and handed Churchill’s opponent what Wikipedia calls a landslide victory.
Compare Trudeau to Churchill? Preposterous or insightful? It is too early to tell.
Bob: I recall Spike Milligan writing that he felt guilty voting for Clement Attlee in 1945, but he did anyway because it felt like a time for a change. He was still in the armed forces, and most everyone else in his unit did too. DJC
Excellent column Mr. C:
Let’s not forget on a lighter note, the boxing match between young Mr. Trudeau and The Great Conservative Hype of the conservatives, Patrick Brazeau. Senator Brazeau was going to wipe the floor with young Mr. Trudeau to prove once and for all that the likes of conservatives like Skippy Poilievre were far more manly than any Liberal. After all, the Senator had tattoos AND a pony tail!!!!!! In the end, the poor Senator could only stand there while getting punched in the face by Mr. Trudeau.
As for little Ricky Bell, if he wasn’t catching farts for the right he would be out of a job.
On a more positive note, I take great delight now in educating any conservative individual whinging about about a lack of pipelines in Canada that this country would be choc-bloc full of pipelines if only they were smart enough to do what Pierre Trudeau had wanted them to do fifty years ago.
Apropos of nothing, I am old enough to remember when a very large body of water was called an ocean, not tidewater. Fun fact, tides do not go in and out. The water bulges from gravitational pull while the earth rotates. Maybe we should not use the term tide water.
JE: Funny you should say that about “tidewater.” I grew up next to tidewater and we did indeed call it “the ocean.” As for Senator Brazeau, let’s remember that he was very graceful in defeat. He is a genuinely tough guy, but so, as it happens, is Mr. Trudeau. Much of the hype surrounding Mr. Brazeau’s chances had to do with his possession of a black belt in karate. Speaking as someone who also holds dan rank in karate, I can say with confidence (1) that not all black belts are created equal (I am sure, for example, that Mr. Brazeau could defeat me in a sparring match) and (b) that if you’re going to bet on fights between different kinds of martial artists, you should always bet on the boxer. You may not always win, but over time you will make money. Finally, about Mr. Bell, well, I can’t really argue with you. DJC
If JT had kept this promise most everything else would have resolved easily. Enough Canadians follow issues and have the compassion to install decent politicians working together rather than petty warring gangs endlessly “owning” each other and delivering the odd bone to the voter. After his tenure and some side shuffle, arguably populast moves this failure to move closer to democracy should be remembered as his only legacy.
That silencing of the human voice was a betrayal from which all the little victories could have followed and continued to happen long after he is gone.
That would have been a legacy.
Pragmatically , blackface and dope are still better than ‘lil pp.
I go with Hosea 8:7
“They sow the wind
and reap the whirlwind…”
“Trudeau repeated his promise to “make every vote count” more than 1,800 times, apparently well aware it would resonate with voters. It was not a radical promise. More than 90 countries around the world – 80 per cent of OECD nations – have systems of proportional representation using multi-member districts as a mechanism to offer citizens a reasonable opportunity to elect a representative aligned with their political values.
In 2015, voters wanted real change from the Conservative government. They were not looking for a better boss; they wanted a confident leader who would fix the system and work on behalf of all Canadians, not just the partisan apparatchiks in the backrooms.
Last week, after a cross-country tour that could only find “ordinary Canadians” in Liberal ridings, Trudeau finally put his cards on the table and showed Canadians that he did not possess the leadership qualities required to champion a fairer system. He chose the allure of another false majority, and the fortunes of his party over Canadian democracy.”
History always looks kindly on disastrous leadership, A. Hitler notwithstanding.
Trudeau is one these coulda-woulda-shoulda-didn’t-ah leaders. Promising electoral reform allowed to Trudeau to score tens of thousands of votes. But self-sabotage of that promise caused him to have regrets later. Too many of Trudeau’s big initiatives moved sloth-like, often to nowhere, because of his own disinterest in championing them. Ending the drinking water advisories in First Nations communities was one of those big initiatives, and a big one at that. But it should have been Trudeau’s hill-to-die on moment. He should have made it his ‘come hell or high water’ moment. But…disinterest overcame him and left this promise to languish.
Apart from Pharmacare, the National Childcare strategy, and several others, Trudeau seemed to favour the virtue-signally over really getting the shite done. Why? Afraid of offending someone? An absence of talent? Personal disinterest from the outset? Not the right colourful pair of socks?
Trudeau seemed to have checked out after the 2019 election. And his one last kick for a majority in 2021 came up short, and left him bereft.
In the end, history will say he tried to do the right thing. Even G. W. Bush is hailed today as an honourable president, though he drove the US into twenty-four years of futile war, and allowed the pillage of trillions of dollars in the pursuit of regime change to no end. People need to be reminded he was also an awful president.
As my older, fuzzier, memory catches up, seems young Mr. Trudeau lamented, as did I, the lack of success in getting through legislation procuring Proportional Representation of some kind and ridding us of the dilapidated, outmoded, and utterly un-representational first-past-the-post electoral system. The “new” Liberal party will swing back to the right even further than JT did after 2015, along with the NDP. Neoliberalism survives yet for longer, to the detriment of the majority. Leadership on any left is bereft of much since they refuse to listen to that same majority!
I never voted for Justin Trudeau, being a stubborn NDP’er who refuses to relinquish my vote for the latest wonderboy. The only time I ever voted for a candidate who got elected was in 2015 when Rachel Notley made us proud,and you probably heard my WHOOHOO! all the way to St. Albert.
However, I actually liked Justin Trudeau even if I didn’t usually say it out loud in my rural riding.
The ugly things said and done to Trudeau made made me really angry. I think about how his children must have felt seeing those filthy signs. It was all so irrational. The house in my area that has an Every Child Matters flag right next to an F-Trudeau flag is totally disgusting. What possesses people anyway?
We are turning a new page and hopefully the Liberals can maintain their momentum and win the election because life could get really nasty if PP wins.
Have a lovely Saturday afternoon with snow in the trees and spring coming soon.
So now that the cons have had their way with “axing the tax”, why hasn’t the price of gas at the pumps dropped? After all, the carbon tax is no longer being collected.
Pretty sure it is from March 31, so we will have wait until April 1st to see how that pans out. My guess is the O&G industry will have some sort of crisis to keep prices up.
If the CPC forms the government after the upcoming election, Mr. Trudeau’s reputation will undoubtedly undergo a rapid and positive reassessment.
His government deserves credit for the way it got the nation through the COVID crisis. Less than half the death rate of the US, and how many bankruptcies were there here compared to our closest ally and main trading partner? Mind you, look at who was in charge down there.
A perception –
Why is Premier Smith always standing with her arms folded and hands gripping the elbows?
Justin said “Elbows Up!!!”
Gotta own the Libs…
“National Smearing Party”, I’m still laughing, good line.
Can’t figure out why some hated/disliked Trudeau so much. He wasn’t an a.h. like many of those in the federal Conservative party. He wasn’t nasty, looked good, had good manners, was polite, decent enough person, knew what he was doing most of the time as P.M., didn’t attack any groups of citizens who were simply expressing their opinions, wasn’t a racist, understood international politics, had good relationships with other world leaders.
When Canada was hit by COVID and most were not permitted to go to work, he managed to have the government send out 500k cheques within 36 hours on a 48 yr old computer. Not bad at all. In our neighbourhood, nothing really changed except all the adults were home from work. No one lost their homes, vehicles, had to resort to food banks, etc. Our small neighbourhood during that time were mostly young families who had purchased their first home or moved out of condos. Those cheques made a real difference. Trudeau did understand the need for them. But I’m not surprised, his father was the P.M. who introduced Plan 71, the U.I/E.I. act which changed unemployment insurance in Canada so people could survive being unemployed. It originally required only 8 weeks of insured earnings to qualify.
Agree with what you have written about Trudeau. If the Liberals ran him again at some future date, I’m just fine with that.
Excellent piece. Seems like once again, the electoral lesson will have to be taught. Anger won’t win. Never has.
Canada is not broken no matter how many times Pipsqueak states it.
As for Smith, I thought she might give the new PM 24 hours before the Ottawa bashing began.
I was wrong.
You bookended the Trudeau II era well. In between?— well, pretty good, but I’d like to add:
Harper cratered Canada and Trudeau fils filled it back in. He didn’t try to assassinate any politician’s character or demolish any political party. He tried but failed to demolish single-member-plurality but demolition just wasn’t his thing. But red meat must be fed before it taints, so he demolished the “Fair Elections Act” instead (a vote-suppressing concoction of Harper’s minister of Democratic Reform, the petulant prince of peeve, Pierre Poilievre). JT always regressed back to the mean if he ever wandered very far from it—by that I don’t mean ‘mean-spirited’ (which Canada’s partisan-right has been ever since the folksy cut-throat, Preston Manning, infected politics), but rather that JT’s middle path was always “sunny days and sunny ways” (if I got that swapped around incorrectly, please, my pseudoCon compatriots, don’t take it personal or make it conspiratorial).
Reminding that this isn’t an obit, the first I ever noticed young Justin was when he was born because, naturally, he was born to the famously mercurial père Trudeau and his beautiful, much younger, flower-child wife, and on Christmas Day, no less—back before the “radical liberal left” were accused of banishing the “merry” greeting. As I recall, it was considered something of a harbinger on that day. But when Pierre and Margaret produced Alexandre two years later, exactly to the day, toddler Trudeau’s Star of Bethlehem shifted its beam, and then agin, when the proud parents missed the trifecta with the late Michel (October 2, 1975 – November 13, 1998), RIP, we heard little of young Justin. His parents’ overshadowing might have been either protective or coincidental (re: El Macambo and patio stones), and there was always news of the elder Trudeaus. Yet in spite of that enduring fascination, Justin went about fairly unseen until the national climactic zenith of his father’s state funeral when he at last gave the eulogy.
Beginning with, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” my darling and I looked at each other, both entertaining the same thought—or, actually, the same question: you don’t suppose he’ll follow his father’s footsteps into politics, do you? I mean, really?—nah, no way! …but, do you think…?
Joseph Philipe Pierre Elliot Trudeau was truly a hard act to follow, but follow it Justin did:However, I don’t think son tried to emulate father but, rather, sought to repair his father’s occasional divisiveness perceived in certain parts of the country that could have reduced the lineups to pay Trudeau Senior respect to hours-long instead of days, and metres-long instead of blocks. Respects paid to PET surprised most Canadians. In his eulogy, Justin related how his father took him as a lad to the House of Commons cafeteria for lunch; seeing ProgCon leader Joe Clark, young JT made a partisan remark, whereupon father smartly marched him over to Clark’s table for introductions as compatriots. I believe the episode was sincerely life-long-instructive for Justin—and not simply because he said it in eulogy to his father.
I remember PET being divisive from time to time, but he seemed to dish it out fairly—to Quebec separatists, to Alberta oilmen, to indigenous peoples, to partisan rivals who dared one-up him— but I don’t recall the kind of implacably rote enmity many politicians of the Canadian right do nowadays (like, Poilievre won’t likely be accorded a state funeral). Nevertheless, I took the new, JT-led Liberal government’s purchase of the TMX pipeline to be a peace offering to Alberta which has been grudgingly grinding an axe to wood-splinters over PET’s National Energy Program even half a century later. Sunny ways? Well. At least Justin never rose to the bait of thanklessness.
The Adonis looked young enough to make rookie mistakes that could be forgiven—if he had New Democrats backing him, that is. His 2015 election rivals’ tried to turn his youthfulness to their advantage (“Justin’s just not ready,” was the HarperCon slogan) but it turned real youth to their disadvantage. That was probably a fortunate result of a rookie mistake—that is, making the campaign promise to end First-Past-the-Post forthwith, plainly popular with inexperienced voters, but without any workable way indicated. I wondered for a long time, especially during that fiasco (which I predicted the moment he said, “…the last election under First-Past-The-Post”—would fail before a referendum ballot was even considered) and also after the 2018 BC electoral-systems Referendum, whether JT misspoke on the stump or made a cynically insincere psephological play to win those youth-votes. In the fullness of time I let that query go by opting for the rookie-mistake—followed by a cynically insincere sabotage of the travelling parliamentary-committee roadshow to which JT contributed with a totally inappropriate statement about his own electoral system reference which had contributed to my suspicions for a few years. (Full disclosure: I was active in defending FPtP—so I guess I should have been happy when the whole mess fell apart.)
Like a lot of people, I probably sympathize with the now-former PM because he, like all of us, is living in an era of internet fake-news and real-hatred. Of course only he can know what it’s like to be the target of mythologized accusations of villainy but, whether in deference to his father—recipient of right-wing enmity, even posthumously—or to his resolve to be remembered as a positive figure (again, this isn’t an obit and I find it somewhat disturbing that some sources are treating it like one) I can’t say. The JT-arc should instruct how cultivated hatred for partisan gain is so potent that it could make a tRump out of the Virgin Mary. Yet Trudeau is leaving victorious.
Really? Yes, really. His final half-year at the helm has been one of deftly turning that incessant, ten-plus-year ad hominem against him into a winning strategy to handcuff Poilievre to tRumpublican hyperbole , to take one for the party’s sake, to play his cards in a way nobody seemed to notice or believe (the big thing for me is I don’t think I’ve ever been so right before) and slowly draw the pseudoCons to their much deserved doom. For the last half-year I’ve asked, “Why is Trudeau smiling?” Now everybody knows: by taking the heat, he iced his party’s main rival. That’s no rookie mistake.
We’ll get through this noise (perhaps even thank JT for dealing with the Orange-Blob-of-Fox-Fat and pandemics of Covid and fake news on our behalf), and one day, with better perspective, be kinder to Trudeau’s decade. That is, fill between the bookends that he defeated Harper in 2015 and, in 2025, sparked Canadian patriotism in the face of tRump such as I’ve never seen in my short life ( I actually have sons as old and older than Justin). Maybe we’ll have to wait until his actual obituary—may it be a long ways off!—but surely it will include, such as current chatter doesn’t, many firsts which occurred during his leadership, like legalizing pot— the first nation to do so; like Medical Assist in Dying, the Dental Plan, and more.
Since this isn’t an obit (ironically, PP and Smith would that JT’s government lived on) we may ask: what Trudeau will do after the next election in which he has decided not to participate? I expect the intensifying political noise to drown out just about everything and if JT’s smart, he’ll make good use of the cover to recover his personal life—maybe even his wife who, recall, separated from him because her cannabis-oil start-up would only draw more heat onto him as PM. He went through a lot for Canada. No, PP, he wasn’t trying to destroy Canada. No, Danielle, he wasn’t trying to destroy Canada. He was trying for Sunny Days and Sunny Ways. Maybe too early to judge fairly, but if he achieved even half his goal it would be worth saluting.
Already we are focused only on current and crazily forecast events. But if I saw Trudeau on the street, I would thank him and wish him well.
What was the quhittesenial Trudeau moment during his prime ministership? For me it was that day when the Canadian Parliament led by Justin Trudeau gave a 98 year-old Ukrainian war veteran a standing ovation only to find out a few days later he was a member of a Ukrainian SS division founded by Heinrich Himmler himself, the primary architect of the Holocaust, a unit that was “responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a malice and brutality that was almost unimaginable” -according to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Let’s relive the moment in all its glory.
https://youtu.be/IhexiXV30oA?si=4cXKMfPWVxbPZYAf
Yes, this is what mind poisoned by malice and resentment and a gargantuan degree of bad faith would find the most important event of the past 10 years.
You never disappoint.
This event, while disturbing, was in my view a textbook illustration of the maxim, known as Hanlon’s Razor: “never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence”.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
While these fake Conservatives, Reformers have constantly bashed Trudeau and accused him of stealing all our money intelligent Albertans know the truth it’s been these Reformers helping the rich do it, by destroying Lougheed’s oil royalties and corporate tax structures.
Lawyers point out that Trudeau has been a hero to Albertans by helping the young people survive the COVID Pandemic and the oil industry survive the crash of 2014 and we know these Reformers never would have. They tell us to google these articles that prove’s Trudeau was a hero and they are right.
“Alberta has received more funds from Feds than it has in revenues in decades “.
“Albertans received more COVID money per capita than people in any other province “.
So much for the lies these Reformers have been feeding us. I have been talking to young store owners about what they think and all five of them praised Trudeau for helping them. It certainly makes Poilievre and Smith look stupid doesn’t it?
Intelligent and insightful commentary from your faithful readers. I envy their talent…and yours.
Justin Trudeau’s dignified resistance to Donald Trump’s incoherent maunderings has earned him a degree of respect, even in rural Alberta. Yes, even here.
I overheard two friends, both farm owners, agreeing that Trudeau impressed them for standing up to Trump. Wow.
Even a relative, otherwise staunchly Conservative, admitted Trudeau had impressed her—for the same reason as my friends. (Of course, she’s convinced beyond reason that Pierre Poilievre will do better than Mark Carney after the next election.)
As legacies go, this small example won’t add up to much. I’m convinced these people will get over it soon, and revert to their anti-Liberal stance within weeks. But even as a momentary change, it’s a significant development.