Now comes the tough part for Trudeau

In all the commentary on political affairs no insight has ever come close to matching that concocted a near half-century ago by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

A journalist had asked him what had been the most challenging force he had ever had to deal with. MacMillan’s famous reply was, “Events, dear boy, events.”

To this point, Justin Trudeau has performed with exceptional, indeed quite extraordinary skill. By the adroitness of his performance during the election campaign and by the contemporary flair of the ceremonies by which he was sworn in as prime minister together with an array of cabinet ministers of unusual competence and diversity, Trudeau has made himself liked by huge numbers of Canadians, even loved by a good many and, far more significant, trusted to a degree uncommon for Canadians so often skeptical of their politicians and political system.

Now comes the tough part: “events” are now buzzing around Trudeau and his government.

The classic “event” is one that bursts out unexpectedly. One such has just happened. It will compel Trudeau to decide, and quickly, whether he wants to enrage most Quebecers or to enrage large numbers of all other Canadians.

At issue is the Montreal-based aircraft manufacturer Bombardier. It’s just been bailed out of bankruptcy by a $1-billion loan by the Quebec government. That government has gone on to call on Ottawa to “invest” the same amount into Bombardier to preserve its 20,000 high-value jobs.

Financially, the answer should be No. Politically, all the pressure is to say Yes. Either way, a lot of people are going to feel that their trust has been violated.

Another current “event” is largely of Trudeau’s own making. After declaring young Canadians are suffering from “high unemployment and underemployment,” he has promised to “create 40,000 good youth jobs” in each of the next three years. To raise the money to do this, Trudeau’s plan is to put the budget into deficit.

Predictably, he did well in the election among young people. The problem, though, is that young Canadians aren’t really that badly off, indeed are suffering less from the code word “inequality” than are their kin in most industrial economies.

Sometimes, solving an “event” can do more harm than good even though the undertaking is thoroughly well-intentioned.

In the election Trudeau promised to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees here by the year’s end. That’s incomparably better than the equivalent mean-mindedness of the Conservatives. But a Canadian winter is absolutely the worst time to bring in refugees who’ve lived their entire life in a warm country like Syria.

Lots of other “events” are on the go, but this shouldn’t cause alarm because by definition newly elected governments always need time to learn their trade, and always overpromise during the election that made them a government.

But one “event” does show worrisome signs of becoming long-standing and thereby pushing Canada apart from our most important — by far — partner in just about everything, namely, of course, the United States.

That President Barack Obama would veto the entry into his country of Canada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline was always a virtual certainty. Action on climate change is now Obama’s most cherished legacy issue.

Trudeau is exactly the leader we need to connect with Obama. He has pledged to develop a national climate change policy that Canadians could be proud of as well as make us partners of countries in Europe who think the same way and above all of Obama.

But an intervening new “event” is making Trudeau’s task appreciably more difficult. He’s also pledged to withdraw Canada’s planes from the wars in the Middle East. This will move Canada’s military in the exact opposite direction of the coalition Obama has assembled to, in his words, “degrade and ultimately destroy” the murderous ISIS jihadists.

A front-page article in Sunday’s New York Times highlights how challenging it will be for Trudeau to remain in Obama’s good books. It cites his “pledge to end Ottawa’s role in the air campaign altogether.” This would happen, according to the article, at the same time some of the coalition’s Arab members are pulling back to deal with the local war that has broken out in Yemen. Trudeau’s commitment to cover the gap by humanitarian aid and a small number of trainers is hardly likely to be ranked by many American generals as a sufficient substitute. “Events” aren’t determinates. Trudeau possesses a far greater range of capabilities than was once recognized. But a useful step he might now take would be to bone up on the skills Harold MacMillan exercised for so long so successfully.