TRUDEAU KICKS SAND AT HIS OPPONENTS
‘I left them in the dust,’ PM tells BBC
VALLETTA, MALTA • As Britain debated Thursday whether to launch air strikes in Syria, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he’s not opposed to Canada’s current bombing mission against ISIL, but believes the country can contribute more effectively in other ways.
Trudeau used an interview with the flagship BBC program Newsnight to also take shots at Stephen Harper’s “divisive” politics and insist his famous last name had “very little” to do with his election victory, which left his political opponents “in the dust.”
Trudeau also said in the seven-minute interview late Wednesday that, despite pulling down the portrait of Queen in the Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa, Canada is “perfectly happy” with its royal head of state.
As British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered his pitch Thursday to British parliamentarians to conduct air strikes in Syria, Trudeau repeated his desire to shift Canada away from its current bombing mission, toward a “different military mission” that includes stepping up training efforts for local troops fighting ISIL.
Asked to confirm that he is “not against bombing,” Trudeau agreed, but said, “Indeed, there is a wide range of things that Canada can do.”
The Royal Canadian Air Force is “outstanding” in what it does, he said, “but I know that we have different ways that we can be possibly even more helpful to our friends and allies.”
On another front, Trudeau was asked during his BBC interview what his election win says about disenchantment with the political establishment in many western countries.
Trudeau replied that the recent election showed that “more divisive positions” were very popular with some people — no doubt referring to the Conservatives making the niqab an issue.
“But when you get right down to it, when citizens take a long, hard look in the ballot box about actually voting against your neighbour, against someone who is different than you, in pluralistic societies like we have, it becomes very difficult to sustain the hatred or the fear of the shopkeeper you see down the street every day or your colleague from two cubicles over, and that dynamic is what is really a source of optimism for me,” he said.
Trudeau was also asked in the interview whether he’s embarrassed to be a part of a Canadian political dynasty, considering he’s standing for a new kind politics.
“No, because I’m incredibly proud of my father, the values he stood for, the place he gave Canada on the world stage, and I respect Canadians’ intelligence. I know that if I’m sitting here as prime minister, it has very little to do with my last name,” Trudeau said.
“I don’t deny that doors opened up for me. The way I was raised was that I have to work two or three times as hard as anyone else would to walk through that door now that it was opened,” he added.
“And I think Canadians get that. There’s an awful lot of people who sort of shrugged and said, ‘Oh, he has nothing but a name to go on,’ and found themselves slightly bewildered as I left them in the dust.”