Canada’s new(ish) Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was recently interviewed by the BBC. For non-Canadians, this interview might give you an idea of why he is the world’s most talked about new political leader. For Canadians, I think you’ll find it interesting to see how well he handled the international media spotlight.
Just to give some quick background, Trudeau won a stunning majority election only five weeks ago, ousting the odious Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. He was sworn in on November 4 and it has been a whirlwind three weeks for him, naming his cabinet and getting started on fulfilling the numerous campaign promises he made. He’s travelled to Turkey for the G20 summit, to the Philippines for an APEC meeting before returning home to Ottawa to change his shirt and meet with all the Premiers and Territory Leaders about the upcoming climate change conference and the imminent settlement of 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada. This week he was off to London to meet the Queen and is now in Malta for a Commonwealth meeting before heading to Paris for the big climate summit.
Justin Trudeau is, of course, the eldest son of one of Canada’s most (in)famous and long serving prime ministers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. P.E.T. was a brilliant man who did not suffer fools gladly and is well remembered for giving the finger to an assembled crowd of voters and telling another group to eff off although he claimed he had said “fuddle duddle”. More importantly though, P.E.T. was the man who repatriated the Canadian Constitution after 114 years of Confederation with Britain and gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Wikipedia offers this summary of him:
Admirers praise the force of Trudeau's intellect[2] and salute his political acumen in preserving national unity against the Quebec sovereignty movement, suppressing a violent revolt, fostering a pan-Canadian identity, and in achieving sweeping institutional reform, including the implementation of official bilingualism, patriation of the Constitution, and the establishment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[3] Critics accuse him of arrogance, of economic mismanagement, and of unduly centralizing Canadian decision-making to the detriment of Quebec's culture and the economy of the Prairies.[4] While public opinion of him remains divided, scholars consistently rank him as one of the greatest Canadian prime ministers and even regard Trudeau as the "father of modern Canada."[5]
Justin Trudeau doesn’t have the intellectual gravitas of his father but he is a much warmer ‘people person’ like his mother Margaret. He has engendered another wave of Trudeaumania in Canada. Just as throngs of people screamed and swooned over Pierre Trudeau, they are doing the same for Justin who, unlike his father, seems to thrive on the attention. He plunges into crowds for hugs and selfies and the craziness isn’t limited to Canada. He was mobbed in Turkey and Manila too.
Not surprisingly, Justin’s private meeting with Queen Elizabeth this week had the media reminiscing about his father’s famous pirouette behind the Queen on May 7, 1977 .
Justin Trudeau was much more circumspect. He had met her when he was a young boy and told her she was much taller than him then.
Anyway, to get back to the BBC video. One of the first questions they ask him is about his plan to have Canada withdraw from the bombing of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. He intends to send in more troops to augment the seventy or so they have there now to train the Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. This decision is causing quite an uproar as after the terrorist attacks in France, the right wing in both Canada and the U.S. and indeed in much of the world thinks the proper response is to ‘bomb the shit’ out of them but I think he answers the question well. The truth of the matter is that Canada only has six CF-18s there now and their contribution is minuscule relative to the overall mission.
There were plenty of interesting and thoughtful comments from Prime Minister Trudeau on numerous different subjects but the Canadian media is just as shallow and inane as the U.S. so of course the one thing that has been picked up and is making all the headlines is his diss about leaving his detractors “in the dust”. I guess he is his father’s son after all! But c’mon, the Conservatives spent several years and millions of dollars airing attack ads about him not being ready and only having nice hair going for him. A little bit of neener-neener is quite understandable and I quite enjoyed seeing that side of him.