WHO IS THE REAL TRUDEAU?
In the course of an interview for my book on Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts made a comment that crystallizes the Liberal leader’s challenge in the coming days — convincing people who voted for him in 2015 that he is still committed to doing politics differently.
“I honestly think we’ve lost 5 per cent of the people who are no longer sure we’re the people they voted for. I think we are,” said Trudeau’s former principal secretary, who remains one of his closest advisers.
The jury remains very much out on that.
In Halifax on Tuesday night, Trudeau didn’t get out of first gear until just before he reached the finishing line. He looked tired and appeared to be going through the motions, as he assailed Conservative cuts and NDP impotence. It was only in the closing stages that the crowd in the Alexander Keith Brewery got fired up, when Trudeau started talking about how his government had made life better for workers in local businesses who would benefit from the new NAFTA deal; for Indigenous communities who have clean drinking water; for students able to sleep easier because they have longer to pay back their loans; and, for parents about to afford new winter boots for their kids.
That is the Hallmark version of the past four years, ignoring as it does all the missteps, broken promises and scandals. But it is the kind of rose-coloured storyline that worked in 2015, but from which the Liberal leader has strayed in recent days.
As another of Trudeau’s senior advisers, Tom Pitfield, put it: “You appeal to people’s higher order preferences — you show them you are going to provide them with the help and relief they need; that their fears are the same things that are keeping Justin up at night — which they are — and focus on those types of things again from a policy perspective. From a positive place, you own that hopeful narrative again.”
On Wednesday, in Montreal Trudeau seemed to have shaken off his lethargy at a press conference in the city’s Botanical Gardens, flanked by 29 of his Quebec candidates. Perhaps it was the news that Barack Obama had agreed to endorse him on Twitter as “an effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.”
Whatever fired him up, it arrived just in time. The strong performance of Bloc leader YvesFrançois Blanchet has put a stick in the spokes of the Liberal party’s progress in the province. At one time there were hopes of adding 15-20 seats in Quebec; now the more realistic ambition is to retain the 40 the party currently holds.
At his press conference, Trudeau’s intensity matched the pneumatic drill that provided a background beat from an adjacent construction site. He spoke about the Liberals being the only party capable of matching ambition with action when it came to climate change. He proselytized about the need to keep Andrew Scheer from power to prevent him ripping up the Liberal carbon plan and about the redundancy of the Bloc. "The focus of the Bloc is to stand up for Quebec against the federal government but the federal government agrees with Quebec on the need to fight climate change,” he said.
As is his nature when animated, Trudeau shifted into messianic mode. "We need Quebec to stand against those voices across the country and around the world, to fight the forces arraigned against us around the world to protect our planet,” he said. Ambitions have apparently elevated from merely putting a few more bucks in the pockets of the middle class (and those wishing to join it) to infinity and beyond. Trudeau sees himself as some kind of caped crusader, leading the righteous in a global, if not cosmic, battle against malevolent conservatives. It’s a delusion that is punctured by the reality of the past four years — Trudeau was twice found in contravention of the Conflict of Interest Act, for example, not to mention his decidedly mixed record on the environment. The purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline was a necessary evil but it hardly bolsters his claim to the mantle, Captain Climate Change.
It is disillusionment with the other choices, including the Liberals, that explains the renewed popularity of the Bloc Québécois. That support looks like it will be hard to shift, which explains why Trudeau spent most of the day on Wednesday visiting NDP-held ridings south and east of Montreal. All of them — Longueuil—CharlesLeMoyne, Chambly, Saint Hyacinthe—Bagot, Drummondville and Sherbrooke — were held by the Bloc in the recent past. Jack Layton’s Orange Wave is a distant memory and Jagmeet Singh’s renaissance does not appear to be enough to save seats in Quebec. Consequently, the Liberals and the Bloc are circling like buzzards over roadkill.
Success or failure depends on how far left you are able to position yourself in the province. Andy Fillmore, the Liberal candidate in Halifax, introduced his boss the previous evening by saying that “on the left there is only one progressive party — the Liberal party”.
In Montreal, Trudeau set out to prove he is the most enlightened, humanitarian, latitudinarian that ever ran for office.
I confess to tossing an underarm lob on this one, naively asking a question on constitutional boundaries that used as an example Trudeau’s disregard for provincial rights in the case of New Brunswick, and its position on the funding of a private abortion clinic.
The Liberal leader spotted the opportunity for a grand slam home run and took it. “I’m sorry,” he said, although he was not sorry. “I came down on the premier of New Brunswick because he is not standing up for a woman’s right to choose and that is a value that matters deeply to Canadians, particularly Quebecers.”
Will it be enough to persuade voters who have disowned Trudeau that he’s still the optimistic dreamer they supported in 2015? For some, perhaps. But spinning a hopeful narrative is hard to do when your record of delivery is so hopeless.