Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Rideau Cottage
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A1
My Dear Prime Minister,
Welcome home, Sir.
You sure managed to cram a lot into six days away: the first four days in England for the magnificent state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II, an audience with King Charles III, meetings with other royals and tete-a-tetes with world leaders, including Britain’s Liz Truss, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and the Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal.
Then two whirlwind days in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, a panel session on a sustainable ocean economy and a working group on Haiti, a roundtable with Hillary Clinton on job growth, the Global Food Security Summit, and an international fundraiser to fight AIDS, plus private meetings with the secretary-general of the UN, the president of the European Commission, the prime minister of New Zealand, and the presidents of Moldova and Suriname – and, at the end, a reception hosted by Joe and Jill Biden.
Your loyal subjects were overjoyed to see you back safe and sound in Ottawa last week. And no one, I suspect, was more delighted – although joy is not one of his everyday emotions – than your new fencing partner, Pierre Poilievre. His voice reeked sincerity as he welcomed you: “It is good to see the Prime Minister here on a visit to Canada to refuel his private jet.”
Now, Prime Minister, I am sure the new Conservative leader meant to ask you about the funeral, and your other adventures in London, Windsor and New York. We need to make allowances. Being a newbie, he must have been so nervous that he plumb forgot to ask about all the wonderful things you accomplished for Canada in a mere six days.
Curiously, he inquired instead about your plane, the government jetliner that ferried you across the pond. He said that inflation – “justinflation,” as his party prefers – means Canadians are struggling to afford fuel to keep warm this season, while the “Prime Minister … burned more jet fuel in one month than 20 average Canadians burn in an entire year. Will the Prime Minister ground the jet, park the hypocrisy and axe the tax hikes?”
You and I both know, Sir, that the good fellow did not mean to imply that you alone had burned all that fuel. That would be wrong. He probably forgot that you took members of the Canadian delegation to the funeral. They included Governor General Mary Simon, two former governors general and four ex-prime ministers, including his own Stephen Harper. You don’t suppose he deliberately chose to forget?
Seriously, Poilievre is a different kind of cat. He’s not Andrew Sheer or Erin O’Toole. After talking to some smart political people, I’ve come up with four brief suggestions for dealing with him:
1. Don’t take him lightly. Handle him with care. He’s dangerous.
2. Don’t play his game. Don’t try to stand toe-to-toe and trade insults. You can disarm him by being transparent. Abandon the tacky evasions you Liberals so love to hide behind. Swamp him with facts and let him stew in his own juice.
3. Don’t attack him personally. That will get you nowhere. Attack his kooky ideas. Expose the contradictions in his pronouncements.
4. Keep Jagmeet Singh and the NDP close. You’re going to need them.
Oh, BTW, I hear Poilievre is bitterly disappointed that you won’t be burning jet fuel to fly to Japan for former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s funeral this week. You changed plans at the last minute. You’re staying here to coordinate government relief measures for Canadians affected by tropical storm Fiona. He’ll just have to find something else to complain about, won’t he?
Yours faithfully,
etc, etc
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com