A commission, a convention and a decision
In this exclusive excerpt from his book Common Ground, Justin Trudeau traces his transition to political life
Following the Liberals’ January 2006 election loss, Paul Martin stepped down as leader, and by that spring an eleven-person leadership race was well under way. I chose to stay away from it, but I did wonder whether, given my growing experience as a public speaker on youth and the environment with a message about citizen engagement, I might have something to offer a Liberal Party in renewal. I talked it over with Sophie, because it would be a big step with possible farreaching consequences, but we both agreed I had something to contribute and therefore I should at least offer my help.
I didn’t know where to begin, but I had heard that Tom Axworthy, whom I had come to known slightly over the years because he had been one of my father’s advisors, was heading up the party’s Renewal Commission. I called him up and offered to help out with youth issues. The commission was hoping that while much of the party was wrapped up in leadership strategies, a number of people would hunker down and build a tool kit of fresh ideas, policies, and principles that the next leader would be able to draw on to rebuild and renew the party.
That summer my colleagues and I travelled across the country, listening to young people’s views on politics and on the Liberal Party in particular. Our goal was to produce a report that would recommend how the party could prompt young Canadians to vote Liberal. But after hearing from hundreds of young people, I concluded that our most pressing challenge wasn’t persuading them to vote Liberal; it was getting them to vote at all, for anyone. In our report, my colleagues and I proposed that the party’s primary goal should be to overcome the apathetic attitude of young people and persuade them to participate in elections.
Whether or not they would be motivated to choose the Liberal Party once they were in the voting booth was up to the party and the local candidates.
There are plenty of passionate young activists in Canada. However, most of them focused their efforts on performing work with non-governmental organizations, rather than with political parties. “Youth prefer to take individual steps toward making a difference in society,” we reported, “but have less faith in the ability of collective efforts to make a difference such as participating in democratic or government initiatives.” We noted that young people were committed to environmental actions such as recycling their own garbage, but not nearly as committed to involving themselves in elections, even to the point of taking such basic steps as casting a vote. When you worked with community organizations, NGOs, or even big single-issue causes, it was easier to feel you were contributing in a small but meaningful way to changing the world. When you voted in an election or worked on an election campaign, you were participating in a system in a way that might, abstractly, one day lead to change, but it was far from certain — particularly given the cynicism about politics that was dominant at that time. “Continuing decline in voter turnout will only worsen unless young people are engaged,” we concluded.
UNTIL THAT POINT, ALTHOUGH I HAD SPENT SOME TIME WORKING AT THE MARGINS OF THE LIBERAL PARTY, I WAS NOT YET CONVINCED THAT I WAS INTERESTED IN A CAREER IN POLITICS. I LOVED THE WORLD OF IDEAS, VALUES, AND POLICY-MAKING THAT LAY AT ITS CORE, BUT MY MOTHER HAD WARNED ME, WITH HER WORDS AS MUCH AS BY HER EXAMPLE, OF THE INCREDIBLE PERSONAL COSTS TO A POLITICIAN’S LIFE. AND THERE WAS OF COURSE ANOTHER CONSIDERATION: ENTERING POLITICS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL WOULD SUGGEST I WAS FOLLOWING IN MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS, PERHAPS EVEN HARBOURING THE NOTION THAT AS THE SON OF PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU, I SOMEHOW DESERVED A ROLE BASED ON THAT QUALIFICATION ALONE.
Among our recommendations, we suggested that politicians engage youth by focusing on issues of importance to younger Canadians, including education, the environment, foreign policy, and the protection of individual rights. We also proposed promoting “a culture of responsible citizenship” by expanding our national commitment to youth volunteerism, and urged Elections Canada to work with high-school boards in conducting mock elections on the same day as real federal elections.
I thought then, as I do now, that citizen engagement is both an end in itself and a necessary means to solve the problems we face as a country. We have some big issues to deal with, and I often worry that unless we reinvigorate our democracy, we will never find legitimate answers to them. Modern democracy shouldn’t just be about citizens endorsing a vision and a set of solutions with their votes, but about actively contributing to building that vision and those solutions in the first place. This is the heart of the matter when it comes to democratic reform. Too often reform gets depicted as an “inside the bubble” issue that only politicians and Ottawa people care about.
That misses the point. The people who feel the consequences of our democracy’s failures most acutely are physically and metaphorically a long way from Ottawa.
I was just beginning to understand the importance of this issue as we published our report in the autumn of 2006. I met with some contenders in the leadership race to hear their opinion of our recommendations and to gauge how seriously they were taking the problems that the party was facing with young voters. I also wanted to get a sense of who really understood the need for real renewal and the opportunity that an election loss gave for modernizing the style and approach of the party. Party members and journalists had been asking me for my view on the leadership contest for some time, and I wanted to better know the field of candidates before expressing any opinion. My own belief was that the party needed to make a break with the bad habits of the recent past and that it was crucial to move away from the sense of entitlement that came with thinking of the Liberals as Former prime minister Paul Martin, below left, meets Justin Trudeau at the federal Liberals’ 2006 leadership convention in Montreal. the “natural governing party” of Canada.
Ultimately, I chose to support Gerard Kennedy, the Ontario education minister. I was impressed with Gerard Kennedy’s long record of public service outside government, something many career politicians lack. For example, having run Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank for almost a decade, he understood poverty, income inequality, and unemployment, issues I was beginning to focus on in my own political thinking. I became enthusiastic about his beliefs and his achievements, his focus on grassroots renewal, and his obvious work ethic. I felt even then that the Liberal Party was in a deeper hole than many within the party realized, and it would take a leader from a new generation, someone from outside the federal party, to reinvigorate it.
For those looking to breathe fresh life into the Liberal Party, the December 2006 leadership convention in Montreal was an inspiring event. Far from either a coronation or a duel between feuding party elders, it was a raucous, unpredictable nail-biter featuring four candidates — Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Stéphane Dion, and Gerard Kennedy — with legitimate shots at victory. The others — Ken Dryden, Scott Brison, Joe Volpe, and Martha Hall Findlay — all brought enough support to the convention to have a bearing on the outcome.
Looking back at my transition into political life, that weekend in Montreal really mattered. Until that point, although I had spent some time working at the margins of the Liberal Party, I was not yet convinced that I was interested in a career in politics. I loved the world of ideas, values, and policymaking that lay at its core, but my mother had warned me, with her words as much as by her example, of the incredible personal costs to a politician’s life. And there was of course another consideration: entering politics at the federal level would suggest I was following in my father’s footsteps, perhaps even harbouring the notion that as the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, I somehow deserved a role based on that qualification alone.
The association with my father was never a reason for me to get into politics. It was, rather, a reason for me to avoid entering the political arena. The battle to convince myself and others that I was my own person had challenged me all through high school and university. Why should I negate those efforts by making the one career choice that would guarantee I would be measured according to my father’s achievements? It made sense for me to stay out of that arena for at least another decade and reduce the inevitable comparisons. That was my state of mind as the convention approached.
Things changed soon after the gavel was struck in the Palais des congrès. As I mixed with hundreds of other Liberals all intent on the future of the party and the country, I began reassessing my fear about comparisons with my father. Perhaps, I thought, I had underestimated the very real differences between myself and my father when it came to politics.
From the beginning of his political career, my father assumed an intellectual approach to all his political activities, including campaigning. He felt somewhat unsuited for the baby-kissing aspect of electioneering and avoided so-called retail politics whenever possible. Busying myself on the convention floor revealed to me that where political campaigning was involved, I wasn’t at all my father’s son — I was Jimmy Sinclair’s grandson. Grampa Jimmy had perhaps been the ultimate retail politician, a man who loved mixing with people, shaking hands, listening, and, yes, when the opportunity arose, kissing babies. The contrast between the two men is dramatic, and the more it became clear to me, the more it eased my concern about being compared with my father.
I was surprised and enthused by the response I got from party members on the convention floor. Kennedy organizers had to create an advance team for me, to ensure I could move smoothly through the crowd. I genuinely enjoyed working the room for Gerard, discussing issues with delegates and bonding with fellow Liberals. I made a brief introductory speech on his behalf, helped him with his own address to the delegates, and then settled back to watch the outcome of the race.
The vote count on the first ballot saw Mr. Ignatieff cruise to first place, with 1,412 votes. Just 123 votes separated the next three: Mr. Rae with 977, Mr. Dion with 856, and Gerard two behind with 854. Mr. Brison, Mr. Volpe, and Ms. Hall Findlay dropped out of the race, leaving about five hundred votes to spread around in the second ballot and ensuring that the top four contenders were still very much in the race.
The second ballot proved disastrous for Gerard. He remained stuck in fourth place, having picked up just 30 new votes. When Mr. Dryden, in fifth place, was forced to withdraw, he announced he was supporting Bob Rae and freed his own delegates to vote their choice. Gerard voluntarily withdrew and moved his support to Stéphane Dion. I had already decided that should Gerard not be the winner, I wanted it to be Mr. Dion, so I went to him as well. He was a Quebecer who was a strong and thoughtful federalist. Moreover, he had built his campaign around environmental policy, which aligned with so much of what I had heard from young people as chair of the youth task force. Most of all, he was a serious guy. He thought things through deeply and addressed complex issues earnestly. I still find that enormously appealing about Stéphane Dion.
On the third ballot, Mr. Dion almost doubled his votes, leaping ahead of both Mr. Rae and Mr. Ignatieff. When Mr. Rae was forced to withdraw, he released his delegates to vote as they chose, and the result was dramatically revealing. The chasm of support between Mr. Rae and Mr. Ignatieff was so wide that the vast majority of Rae delegates moved to Mr. Dion, who took the leadership on the next ballot.
The day after the convention ended, I phoned Stéphane and congratulated him on his victory. I let him know how happy I was to have contributed to the start of the party’s rebuilding. “But now I’m going to step away for a bit, try to get back into private life,” I told him. And Stéphane replied, “Don’t go too far, because I’m going to want your help in getting rid of this Harper government.”
For him it may have just been a polite remark, but after I hung up the phone I looked across at Sophie and told her what he’d said. We realized we had a big decision to make.