PM makes history in French assembly
Delivers a call to arms in first-ever speech by a Canadian prime minister
Prime Minister Justin PARIS— Trudeau ventured into the heart of French democracy Tuesday in hopes of enlisting his hosts as progressive, likeminded defenders against the onslaught of global perils such as climate change, authoritarianism and inequality.
His message — a call to arms of sorts in the face of anxiety and division both at home and around the world — was delivered almost entirely in French, and with Trudeau’s usual rhetorical flair, on the occasion of a Canadian prime minister’s first-ever speech to France’s National Assembly.
Not everyone swooned — especially not nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, and especially not when talk turned to the Canada-EU trade deal.
Tuesday’s speech came only hours after French President Emmanuel Macron, in many ways Trudeau’s political doppelganger, raised many of the same issues at the European Parliament, where he warned about a “European civil war” between democracy and rising authoritarianism.
But while Trudeau’s reception was by turns polite, warm and even raucous, it turned frosty when he mentioned the trade deal. One French MP later accused him of cheap sales tactics. A number of MPs grumbled audibly about the trade deal, known as CETA. Trudeau began his address with a now-familiar message, sermonizing about the fear and anxiety that’s at work around the globe, pushing the disenfranchised further away from what he considers the shared progressive goals the world ought to be working toward. As causes, he cited stagnant wages and job insecurity, against a backdrop of growing income inequality between the rich and the poor; divisive polit- ical discourse that breeds populism and threatens democracies; and the ever-present threat of climate change.
“It is at this time that we have to admit that change does not always amount to progress,” Trudeau said in French.
“Confronted with the great challenges of our time, liberal democracies bear the responsibility of articulating a clear and compelling vision of the future they aspire to. The world they hope to build.”
He sought to tie Canada and France together as allies in an axis of progressivism, two countries with the ideals and the willingness to fight back against such dark forces.