Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Rideau Cottage
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A1
My Very Dear Prime Minister,
I find myself more confused than usual today. I wonder if you can help me.
You see, there are two conflicting views of you circulating in medialand. They seem to be irreconcilable. I’ll be darned if I know which to tell people to believe.
View number one holds that you are in even worse shape than Erin O’Toole or Jason Kenney. We are asked to believe that you are a failed leader, that your government is out of gas, your days as Liberal leader running out, and you’d better get ready to jump before your disillusioned followers chuck you out.
View number two holds that while you rub part of the electorate the wrong way, it is because of your style, not your government’s direction or policies. In this view, the general public is with you on such big questions as COVID and mandatory vaccinations, climate change and a green economy, gender equality, issues of race and immigration, and the use of federal clout when necessary to shoulder the provinces aside in order to achieve national goals, such as the carbon tax and universal affordable daycare.
As to the first view, Prime Minister, I’m sure you are aware that more than a few opinion leaders in the Ottawa bubble subscribe to it. It was stated, baldly, last week in a notably sour opinion piece by John Ibbitson, one of the Globe and Mail’s conservative political columnists.
The second view was advanced with equal conviction by an American, Daniel Block, in the current issue of Washington Monthly magazine, of which he was the executive editor until moving recently to be associate editor of the venerable magazine, Foreign Affairs, the bible for of foreign policy/global affairs wonks. I don’t know Block, but I can tell you this, Mr. Trudeau: he knows his Canadian politics.
Let me start with Ibbitson’s warning that you get out of Dodge while you still can. His opening sentences set the tone:
“Justin Trudeau’s ill-considered trip to Tofino on the very first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation does more than remind us, yet again, of his sense of entitlement and his chronically poor judgment. It tells us that he may not be Prime Minister that much longer. A futile election, a lack of fresh initiatives and a disjointed economy all point to Mr. Trudeau’s departure before the next election. The latest family vacation embarrassment might hasten the move.”
Ibbitson wasn’t done. Your Tofino mini-vacation, he continued, “reminds Liberal supporters of something they must already have been wondering: whether it is time to change horses. This is, after all, a political leader who is repeatedly unwilling to let public perception, or even the law for that matter, get in the way of his will.”
To voters with no partisan axe to grind, Ibbitson may seem over the top. Couldn’t he have let you off with a trip to the Globe woodshed? He could have left it at another demonstration of rotten judgment. He could have lectured you that beautiful Tofino was a dumb destination on such a solemn day (you did admit the trip was a mistake). He could have caustically observed the miserable optics of making news that particular day frolicking on a Pacific beach, a cold one in hand.
(Ibbitson did not offer an opinion on an acceptable activity for you. Perhaps poring over Jody Wilson-Raybould’s latest book while sipping a pint of hemlock?)
So, the question I must ask, Prime Minister, is this: Do you agree that where you went and what you did on Truth and Reconciliation Day was an offence so grievous as to warrant national outrage and demands for your resignation? Or was it a tempest in a beer bottle?
In my experience, journalists in Ottawa, a town where not much happens that doesn’t involve political combat, have to take care not to get too close to one side or another. If they do, they lose perspective. They find themselves unable to see the forest for the trees.
Perhaps distance can lend perspective, as they say, because Daniel Block has no trouble seeing the Canadian forest from his Washington perch. He is no Trudeau groupie. Your days as an international celebrity are behind you, he observed. He listed a number of your failures and shortcomings since you became PM in 2015.
But he found that your shortcomings pale next to your accomplishments. You will like the next three Block bits, Mr. Trudeau.
This: “Trudeau’s accomplishments become especially impressive when one considers the Conservative he first defeated in 2015. Under nine years of Stephen Harper, Canada – never quite the progressive paradise that many American liberals imagine – was in decisively right-wing territory. Harper cut social services for the poor, including by making it more difficult to receive unemployment insurance. He pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol and systematically weakened elements of the country’s environmental protection regime. He shuttered 12 of the 16 regional offices operated by Status of Women Canada. .…Harper’s control was so total that he successfully passed a law to increase Canada’s retirement age to 67 starting in 2023, something the Republican Party has never been able to accomplish in the U.S. Upon taking office, Trudeau promptly repealed the age increase.”
And this: “Canada has remained one of the friendliest nations for foreigners. Of all the refugees who resettled around the world in 2020, nearly half went to Canada. It is the third consecutive year that the country has led the world in resettlements.”
Finally, this: “His third electoral victory almost assures that he’ll be the longest-tenured progressive leader in the wealthy world. Out of all the OECD countries with left-leaning heads of state, only Sweden’s Stefan Löfven has been in office longer. … The Canadian prime minister has stayed in power during an era in which much of the world has moved to the right – in many cases, such as the United States under Donald Trump, far to the right. That fact alone makes him one of the most successful progressive leaders on the planet.”
Music to your ears, Prime Minister? But don’t forget Sept. 20! John Ibbitson is right. You failed to win the majority you called the election to get. You wear that failure.
Daniel Block sees it the differently: “To hear some journalists tell it, [his] re-election was actually a defeat. A win is a win, and as far as winning goes, Trudeau has done quite a bit of it.”
Tell me, which view should we choose, Mr. Trudeau?
Your equivocating student,
Etc., etc.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is being published this month by McGill-Queen’s University Press. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.