COVID-19 has tightened Trudeau’s circle of trust

Everyone’s circle of trust has tightened during the pandemic — Justin Trudeau’s circle, we’re learning, is no exception.

The surprise shuffle of Trudeau’s cabinet on Tuesday was notable for many things, but its emphasis on long-term loyalty should not be overlooked. It tells us much about the evolution of Trudeau as a politician and as a leader.

This prime minister, after five-plus years in power, is keeping his friends close — arguably closer than he did as a rookie politician. This latest ministerial shuffle wasn’t about what was shiny and new; much more about what is steady and true.

All of the ministers involved in Tuesday’s cabinet adjustment — all men, incidentally, for those who have accused Trudeau of being too female-friendly — are his go-to people for depth, either on policy or friendship, or both.

Marc Garneau, who ran the strongest race against Trudeau in the 2012-13 Liberal leaders’ contest, is now Global Affairs minister, following in a long tradition of prime ministers giving foreign affairs to old leadership rivals. (Brian Mulroney with Joe Clark in the 1980s; Stephen Harper to Peter MacKay after he became PM in 2006.)

Jim Carr, now sufficiently recovered from his bout with cancer, is back in cabinet as an elder statesman of sorts, to help keep Trudeau’s lines open with the politically difficult West.

Francois-Philippe Champagne, while not an old hand, is a trusted one, specifically kept close for his knowledge of business and finance — crucial, PMO sources say, as the government mulls pandemic recovery.

But the biggest loyalty story in Tuesday’s shuffle revolves around the departure of Navdeep Bains as industry minister and the promotion of Omar Alghabra to cabinet as transport minister.

This is far from a case of one Mississauga MP replacing another — the two men were among the original true believers in Trudeau.

The friendship was forged in another, more long-ago leadership contest, when former Ontario education minister Gerard Kennedy was running in 2006 and all of these characters, including Trudeau, were part of the team. So was Katie Telford, now the PM’s chief of staff, and Gerald Butts, the former principal secretary.

When Trudeau was assembling his own, tight little team to take a run for the Liberal leadership in 2012, all of these people were at his side.

Bains and Alghabra were among the small, ambitious group assembled at the Mont Tremblant resort in the summer of 2012 that clinched Trudeau’s decision to run.

Quietly, without a lot of fanfare or expectation of reward, Bains and Alghabra have stuck with him since and Tuesday’s shuffle was a display of Trudeau’s gratitude for that longhaul loyalty.

Trudeau talked about the value of these men’s friendship outside Rideau Cottage on Tuesday, recalling that Bains was one of the first people with whom he worked in federal politics and that he’d known Alghabra “a very long time.”

Some have suggested that Trudeau, especially after this gruelling pandemic year, is getting weary of politics and his demanding job. That speculation, however, ignores just how much the prime minister has actually been consolidating his circle of power; leaning more heavily on those he trusts and being far more cautious with those outside the circle.

Call it safe distancing — adopted because of power and not the pandemic.

Bains talked to my colleague Heather Scoffield on Tuesday and she kindly asked a couple of questions for me. I wanted to know what Bains would say when asked what Trudeau valued most in his friends — being “honest” was the answer — and how he thought the PM had changed since he first met him a lifetime or two ago.

Trudeau still has the same energy he had back in the early days, Bains said. “He’s a machine.” But the politician he sees today is more thoughtful and reflective, in his opinion. Some of that is indeed pandemic-induced, he said.

“He’s travelling less, able to spend more time here and really dig deep into certain files and understand issues at a more granular level,” Bains said. The Trudeau of today, he summed up, is “wiser.”

Every prime minister learns the lonely-atthe-top lesson. For Harper, it was a brand (remember the campaign ads of Harper alone in his dark office?)

Successful prime ministers, it’s said, know how to keep their friends at arm’s length and embrace that old rule about how the people who help you win power aren’t the ones who will help you keep it.

Trudeau, in many ways, is not adhering to that conventional wisdom. True, not all the old gang of his early days in politics are still with him, but in a stormy few years, this prime minister is keeping himself increasingly moored to the trusted and familiar. Like all of us in the pandemic, really.