THE NEW TRUDEAUMANIA
Liberal leader sticks to his script
Justin Trudeau sits quietly at the back of a turboprop airplane, sailing 16,000 feet above the lakes and thick forest that stretch across northern Saskatchewan.
The seat next to the Liberal leader is empty. He may be at his best working a crowd but, for now, Trudeau seems content to spend a rare moment alone, shielded from the grind of the endless campaign.
When his plane touches down, the performance will resume. Trudeau will smile, pose for selfies and accept hugs from strangers before firing off the day’s carefully scripted talking points. And he will do this with a level of enthusiasm that borders on mania.
But for now, Trudeau just peers out the window, taking in the expansive wilderness below.
In the confines of this tiny airplane, he’s surrounded by his notso-Dirty Dozen — white-collar warriors who will either shortcircuit the Conservative attack machine or crumble under its might.
Longtime friend and adviser Gerry Butts is seated closest to the leader. He sports a pair of thick reading glasses and only glances up from his book to talk hockey with Cyrus Reporter, Trudeau’s chief of staff. They speculate about which Montreal Canadien will be named team captain next season, settling on the outside possibility that scrappy little Brendan Gallagher will one day wear the “C” on his jersey.
Moving further outward from Trudeau, a group of young staffers is crammed into the front of the plane.
Cameron Ahmad, the leader’s sleep-deprived director of communications, is shrouded in a permanent five-o’clock shadow. Throughout the day, he will periodically rub his forehead in disbelief, holding a phone to his ear as he fields profanity-laced messages from a broadcaster who wants access to his boss.
Ahmad sits next to Trudeau’s executive assistant, a curly-headed francophone named Tommy Desfossés. He’s honed the uniquely political skill of bobbing and weaving his way through a crowd, remaining out of sight as he hands the leader his jacket.
A few days before the Saskatchewan flight, Desfossés snatched Trudeau’s blazer from his shoulders as he leaped from the stage at a Montreal rally and into a crowd of Liberal volunteers. It was, in its own bizarre way, a lot like that party trick where the guy whips a tablecloth off without moving any of the dishes. Magic!
At the head of the aircraft, a redheaded photographer readies his equipment. When the plane lands, Adam Scotti will be the first out the door; kneeling on the tarmac with his camera, ready to document another day in the life of Justin Trudeau. sweep it off its feet.
It doesn’t matter if he’s marching at the Pride parade in Montreal or visiting a farmer’s market in downtown Regina: Trudeau connects with people. Certainly it helps that he has a famous last name, that he’s tall and slender with blue eyes and a pretty face — to say nothing of those legendary Trudeau locks.
But there’s also something magnetic about the Liberal leader’s energy, about his ability to look people in the eye, wrap his arms around them and leave them feeling like they’ve just experienced something spiritual.
And yet, for a man who floats through a crowd with such ease, Trudeau is an immensely guarded person. It’s never clear where the performance ends and where the real Justin Trudeau begins.
Maybe this is a by-product of living under the microscope, of having his every word, his every movement, scrutinized by the media and his opponents. (Think of how many newspaper column inches were spent detailing Trudeau’s decision to crop his hair in 2013). But it’s also possible he honed this defence mechanism at a much younger age, when he was known simply as the oldest son of a long-serving, polarizing prime minister.
Trudeau had already learned to harden himself against taunts when he was a 13-year-old, entering Montreal’s prestigious Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. In one incident, detailed in Trudeau’s autobiography, an older classmate tried to get a rise out of Trudeau by mocking his parents’ highly publicized divorce.
The older boy brandished an adult magazine that featured a scandalous photo of Trudeau’s mother, Margaret Sinclair. It shocked Trudeau, but he somehow managed to keep a straight face, refusing to take the bully’s bait.
For all the cruelty, though, Trudeau says he was equally afraid of receiving the special treatment that came with being Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s son. And so, when you sit across from Trudeau and the audience is gone, when you look beyond the inviting smile, you get the feeling that he’s sizing you up, quietly suspecting you’ve already formed an impression of him.
“I got to learn firsthand growing up that people have pre-conceived notions about me and they believe them like they’re the gospel truth,” Trudeau said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette. “Even though they hadn’t actually met me, people would come up to me and like me or not like me because of my father. That’s something I’m comfortable with, I’m used to that. I know I have to dispel those notions with my own actions, my own identity."
Maybe this is why he hasn’t buckled under the weight of what his advisers say is a $20 million campaign waged by his political opponents to bombard Canadian airwaves with ads attacking Trudeau. At various points, the smears have painted him as an effeminate novice, a coddler of terrorists and a dilettante who sauntered into politics like it was his birthright.
The most brazen attacks came earlier this year when one commercial intercut footage of the Liberal leader with images of the Islamic State’s execution squad. Considering how heavy they’ve hit him in the past, suggesting Trudeau is “Just not Ready” may be the kindest thing the Tories have said about the Liberal leader.
Those ads are ubiquitous, and it’s likely Trudeau’s two oldest children have come across them at one point or another. Asked about what effect seeing their father as the subject of unceasing ridicule might have on his seven-year-old son and six-year-old daughter, Trudeau kept his guard up.
“There were tough moments in my childhood, and there will be tough moments in my kids’ childhood,” he said. “But I know that, on balance, the way I was taught to parent will help give them the capacity to get beyond it.”
Even the most ardent Conservative supporter would have to admit that, on some level, their campaign against Trudeau is a personal one.
“For some of the guys inside the (Tory) war room, ‘punking’ Trudeau is the closest they’ll ever get to taking a shot at the old man (Pierre Elliott Trudeau),” said one former Conservative staffer. “They despise Trudeau, he represents everything they hate: the Charter (of Rights and Freedoms), the National Energy Program, the kowtowing to Quebec. They take a sick pleasure in it. They want to humiliate him, to shame him out of politics. In a way, they want him to pay for the sins of his father.”
For Trudeau, the attacks — which began the day he was elected leader of the party 28 months ago and will continue at least until Canadians cast their ballots in October — have effectively shattered whatever good faith existed between the Liberals and Conservatives.
“It’s hard when so much is based on personal attacks to just turn around and say, ‘Oh, that’s just business’,” Trudeau said.
“It’s not. It ends up being taken personally and it undermines the collaboration that should be at the heart of Westminster style democracy.”
For some of the guys inside the (Tory) war room, ‘punking’ Trudeau is the closest they’ll ever get to taking a shot at the old man (Pierre Elliott Trudeau). FORMER CONSERVATIVE STAFFER