Trudeau to take on a lower profile
Plans on a more businesslike approach
OT TAWA • Justin Trudeau says he’s taking a lower profile, more businesslike approach to being prime minister, having concluded that the focus on him and his lofty talk of values during his first mandate obscured his government’s concrete achievements on bread-and-butter issues.
Trudeau’s new approach is a big departure for a leader who vaulted the Liberal party from its apparent deathbed into government in 2015, largely on the strength of his celebrity status and “sunny ways” appeal.
It’s likely a tacit admission he is no longer the unalloyed asset for the Liberals he once was, his image tarnished by ethical lapses, misadventures on the world stage and the embarrassing revelation during this fall’s federal election campaign that he had repeatedly donned blackface in his younger days. Canadians ultimately re- elected the Liberals but handed them a minority government that will have to work with opposition parties in order to survive.
In a year- end interview with The Canadian Press, Trudeau said the message he takes from the election is that Canadians “agree with the general direction” his government is taking but want him to take a “more respectful and collaborative” approach.
He’s also concluded the focus on him meant Canadians didn’t hear enough about his government’s accomplishments.
“Even though we did a lot of really big things, it was often hard to get that message out there,” Trudeau said.
“The place that the visuals or the role that I took on in leading this government sometimes interfered with our ability to actually talk about the really substantive things we were able to get done,” and that he thinks Canadians want the Liberals to show them more clearly what they are doing for them.
Asked if the visuals he was referring to were the photos of him in blackface or the elaborate clothing he wore during the India trip, Trudeau said there are “all sorts of different aspects to it,” but he cast the problem more broadly.
“I think a lot of the time, politics has become very leader-centric in terms of the visuals,” he said. “This has been the case in Canada for a long time, where people, yes, vote to a certain extent on their local MP but the leader of the political party takes up an awful lot of space.”
Throughout his first mandate, there was private grumbling among some Liberal MPS who felt Trudeau spent too much time talking about his high- minded pursuit of things like diversity, inclusion and gender equality — derided as “virtue signalling” by his critics — and not enough on pocketbook issues. Trudeau, it seems, now agrees with them. Trudeau said he wants to make sure they are talking more about the “concrete things” his government is doing to “make life better for Canadians.”