‘Brand Trudeau’ mulled to pitch peacekeeping
Bureaucrats debated utilizing PM’s appeal
OTTAWA• Canadian bureaucrats pondered using the personal “brand” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sell the world on the merits of the country’s return to peacekeeping, The Canadian Press has learned.
Using the prime minister’s personal appeal was seen by senior foreign ministry officials as one of the possible “framing” techniques for explaining Canada’s decision to devote more military resources to United Nations peacekeeping operations.
Documents obtained through Access to Information detail the early government planning to reboot Canada’s return to peacekeeping.
Once a traditional role for the Canadian Forces, it was all but abandoned in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when the military focused on counter-terrorism and war in Afghanistan.
Trudeau promised during the 2015 federal election that Canada would focus more on UN peace operations, and the government has since committed 600 troops and $450 million to an as yet unspecified mission or a combination of deployments.
In January, officials at Global Affairs Canada — the newly renamed Foreign Affairs Department — convened a daylong strategy meeting with government officials and experts on how to turn that promise into policy.
Documents for the meeting said the first session focused on “Framing the Canadian engagement.” They said participants would try to “identify ‘filters’ or lenses through which Canada’s contributions to UN-led, or UNauthorized peace operations could be viewed.”
The documents listed eight possible “frames,” including “Building on ‘Brand Trudeau’. There is significant enthusiasm at the global level for the messages conveyed by the Prime Minister. Canada could capitalize on this enthusiasm by investing in inclusivity, including through a robust National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.”
An expert on the use of branding in politics says there’s nothing new about successive governments trying to imprint Canada on the international stage.
But what’s new is how Trudeau has become a personal brand, and how public servants embraced that in their peacekeeping discussion, said Alex Marland, a political scientist at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., and author of Brand Command.
Marland said the upside is it draws attention to Canada’s policies on a crowded world stage — an argument Trudeau himself has advanced. But focusing too much on one person — the prime minister — may have implications for parliamentary democracy.
“What are you supposed to do? Spend billions on advertising to get them to pay attention to Canada, or is it easier to use Justin Trudeau’s Twitter account?” Marland asked.
“But the more attention that we pay to the prime minister as an individual, the more power is concentrated in that person.”
All of that raises the spectre of too much power concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office, and the “reduced relevance of Parliament as an institution,” he added.
“And these are the exact things that the Liberal Party of Canada was concerned about in the election campaign.”
Trudeau addressed that criticism in his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, suggesting the brand belongs to Canadians as a whole, not just him.
“What I’m seeing around the world is that Canada is looked at as a place where people are smart and get it and have good values,” he said.
“So that uplifting of Canadians and what it is that we do well, diversity being a strength, being part of it, is, I think, where the brand is making the biggest impact on the world stage.”
In separate interviews, two of Trudeau’s mosttravelled cabinet ministers — Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland — said their boss’s personal brand has made their jobs easier.
“It opens all the doors,” said Dion, adding he mentions Trudeau near the top of every speech just to remind people he is “part of the same gang.”
IS IT EASIER TO USE JUSTIN TRUDEAU’S TWITTER ACCOUNT?