Trudeau’s barbarians storm gates
LEADERSHIP CANDIDATE assembles an inner team of ‘Greeks’ – Grits mixed with geeks – to take over and remake the Liberal Party
TORONTO - Already they’re worried they’ll be perceived as the Young Turks, rabble-rousers and malcontents, mostly in their early 40s or younger, who fervently believe the Liberal Party of Canada needs a swift kick in the pants.
“If there was any kind of age design in the assembly of this team, I’m not aware of it,” said Ontario organizer Omar Alghabra, dismissing a report of an upper age limit of 40 for membership in the inner circle. “We’re are a bunch of friends, like-minded people who have the same vision for the country, the party, and for Canadians.”
With Justin Trudeau leading the way, and with his younger brother, Sacha, now also leaping into politics at his side, the barbarians are at the gate of the party of Laurier. The brothers intend to seize control of, unmake and then remake their father’s party — and in the process, they and their supporters hope, change the course of Canadian history.
A recent poll for the National Post found that, with Trudeau heading the party, the Liberals would win enough for a majority. So, who are these people, anyway?
The people closest to Justin Trudeau are “Greeks” (a cross between a Grit and a geek): bright, capable young people who, not many years ago, were toiling in relative anonymity at the feet of the party’s 1990s-era giants. Like Trudeau himself, they tend in their backgrounds to hew to what is generally perceived as the party’s left wing. They’re not talking about revitalizing any longer. They’re talking about starting over.
“I was one of those people that was hugely behind renewal of the party in 2006,” said Katie Telford, who ran Gerald Kennedy’s 2006 leadership bid and is now running Trudeau’s campaign. “That was when we really thought we were going to bring about the change required. It didn’t happen so successfully and I think Justin and others are of the view that ‘renewal’ became a word that just started not to work anymore. It became just a word. We actually just need to build. This is roll up your sleeves and build.”
Certainly, there are early signs Trudeau intends to try something unusual: His stump speech is explicitly anti-ideological. His senior people speak about crafting “post-partisan” policy. “I’m not sure I would characterize us as left-leaning,” Telford said. “If there’s a good idea that’s traditionally seen as right … we’re all pretty openminded people. (Solutions) need to be results-driven, and evidence-driven.”
The core team includes: Gerry Butts, one of Trudeau’s close friends and a former policy architect in the Ontario McGuinty government; Mike McNair, an alumnus of the London School of Economics and former director of the Liberal Research Bureau; former Ontario MPs Navdeep Bains and Omar Alghabra; policy analyst and University of Ottawa Professor Robert Asselin; Bruce Young, formerly an adviser on British Columbia issues to Paul Martin; former CBC TV journalist and Ontario Liberal staffer Ben Chin, who now lives in B.C.; Chris MacInnes, a senior organizer in the Nova Scotia Liberal Party; Danielle Dansereau, a Quebec-based communications consultant; and Jon Moser, a former Paul Martin staffer who now lives in Alberta.
New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc, who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberal leadership in 2006, is not running and is endorsing Trudeau, who is a longtime friend. LeBlanc will also play a key role in the Trudeau campaign.
Of this group, only Telford has a formal title. She and McNair, thus far, are the only operatives working full time on the campaign. The rest are unpaid volunteers.
Every Liberal operative is conscious of the party’s history of nasty fratricidal warfare. Trudeau’s people say they’re determined to avoid that. “We want to have a relatively flat organization,” Telford said. “There are certain accountabilities, but we want to stay as flat as possible and as merit-based as possible.”
There will be no leadership campaign policy booklet, Trudeau organizers say. Instead he will articulate his values and principles, sketching a frame within which later policy proposals will emerge. For now, the team’s main practical goal is to introduce him to people — as many as they possibly can, nationwide.
We know already, based on what he has said so far, that Trudeau will preach optimism, respect and inclusion, darts aimed at Stephen Harper’s heart; and an end to regional polarization related to resource extraction, which is a javelin aimed at Tom Mulcair’s. In Calgary Wednesday, Trudeau said this: “It is time for us to be more honest with ourselves. There is not a province in this country that would find 170 billion barrels of oil and leave it in the ground.”
Beyond that major theme, though, what can we surmise about Trudeau’s likely policy direction from the composition of his team? Its pivotal figures, though some might dispute such a characterization, are Butts, Telford, McNair and Sacha Trudeau. As a group they are progressive, environmentalist and internationalist, but with a pragmatic tilt.
Butts is a governor of McGill University and president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, Canada. He has a master’s degree in English literature from McGill. Butts wrote the Ontario Liberal policy platforms in their first two winning elections.
Telford is a consultant at Toronto-based Strategy Corp. She cut her teeth as chief of staff to Gerard Kennedy, when he was Ontario education minister. She was a Liberal negotiator in the ultimately unsuccessful coalition talks between the Liberals and New Democrats in 2008.
McNair is a former investment banker for CIBC World Markets, with a master’s degree in global economic history from the London School of Economics and another in international and public affairs from Columbia University. He was a policy adviser to Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. He is the team’s key policy hand.
At 38, Sacha Trudeau is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. Though less outgoing than his brother, his work has long been passionately political, in a nuanced way. He was a critic of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2003, Sacha told The Gazette, “I’m not a Liberal. I’m apolitical.” Yet he leads the building of Trudeau’s Quebec organization.
“He’s 100 per cent supportive of his brother,” Telford said. “You hope for family to be supportive. You never know how much they’ll be available and interested. He’s got three young children himself, (but) he’s all there.”
Thursday, in Mississauga, Ont., Justin Trudeau drew an audience of more than 1,000 to an event that had been planned for between 300 and 400. In his speech, he predicted the blaze of interest in his candidacy will soon fade, as he begins to engage with smaller groups in smaller towns. “The lights will dim and the cameras will disappear.”
Having witnessed the last five days, his rivals — in his own party, and beyond — are doubtless hoping that’s true. Whether Trudeau has in fact launched a “movement” remains to be seen. But without question, the people closest to him believe it’s a movement.
That is something we’ve not seen in a while.