Front Burner - Grappling with Trudeau’s political legacy

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Nearly a decade ago Justin Trudeau rode a wave of hope and optimism — his so-called "sunny ways" — to the prime minister's office, leading a once-flailing Liberal party out of the wilderness.A lot has changed since that time. Not only for Trudeau and his party's fortunes, but for the world — and how many people feel about the kind of hopeful vision that once helped propel people like Trudeau into power.Today we're going to grapple with Trudeau's legacy, and how he may be remembered: the accomplishments, the failures, the scandals — and whether, as the world transformed around him, Trudeau was able to adapt with it.Our guests are Aaron Wherry, CBC senior writer and the author of Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power, and Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Every language is a note in the symphony of our heritage. Together, they create a harmony that cannot be silenced. Discover your voice on the new APTN Languages TV channel. This is a CBC Podcast. Sunny ways, my friends. Sunny ways. This is what positive politics can do. Nearly a decade ago, Justin Trudeau wrote a wave of hope and optimism, his so-called

sunny ways, right into power. He led a flailing liberal party out of the wilderness, and he went on to win two more elections, one in 2019, another in 2021. When someone has been Prime Minister for a decade, I think it's easy to forget some of the big things that happened when they were in office. And it's also easy to forget just how much the world has changed in that time too. So today we're gonna try to grapple with the legacy of Justin Trudeau. What will history remember as his accomplishments, his failures? And was he able to shift with the changing world around him? I'm going to do that today with two journalists who have both written books about the Prime

Minister. My CBC colleague, Aaron Wary, author of Promise and Peril, An Account of Justin Trudeau's First Four Years in Power, and Stephen Maher, author of The Prince, The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. Aaron, Stephen, it's always great to have you on the pod. I want to start this conversation by going over some of the big highs and lows that might be defining in Trudeau's legacy. Let's start with the positives, though. Stephen, I'll start with you, but Aaron, please feel free to jump in whenever.

What do you see as the big wins from a policy standpoint of Trudeau's time as PM? Well, child poverty, I think that the Canada child benefit. I thought watching him early on that there were sort of three silos. One was inequality. During the election campaign, we talked about the CCB lifting over 300,000 kids out of poverty across the country and that's exactly what we're expecting to happen. Another was reconciliation with Indigenous people. The government of Canada sincerely apologises and asks the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. And the other was climate. The Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

An ambitious and achievable framework to address climate change and grow the clean economy for our children and grandchildren. During especially his first term, you could see him sort of making steady effort on all three of those things. I think that he may have lost the plot somewhat on inequality along the way, but on climate change and reconciliation, he kept working at those. And, you know, lately the economy has proved to be as Achilles heel. Aaron, you want to jump in there? Yeah, I think that's a pretty good way of looking at it in terms of, you know, some of the

major policy directions he set. The Canada child benefit was, you know, a pretty transformational policy. And I think was then, you know, added onto with that the Canada Child Benefit was a pretty transformational policy and I think was then added on to with things like child care and dental care. This government is really excited about moving forward in partnership with the provinces on affordable child care. We're talking about an average of $10 a day in five years.

That's why with Budget 2023, we're creating the Canadian dental care plan. It'll provide coverage to Canadians that don't have dental insurance or are making family incomes of less than $90,000. And enhancing the Canada Pension Plan. I think his record on climate change and reconciliation, you know, look, there's going to be a lot of debate about whether he did as much as he should have or could have. We'll see how durable the changes are, especially on reconciliation. It's a fraught debate in terms of what they promised and what they delivered. But I think there's real potential there that on both of those fronts, these last nine years will end up looking

like turning points for where the country goes in the future. Just tell me more about that. Like, what do you mean when you say that, you know, they made progress, but also you didn't deliver? Like, what are we talking about here? Yeah, like, so when climate change, for instance, I guess it would be more clear to say it's not quite clear yet that this country

is on the path to meeting the more ambitious targets that this government has set for itself on climate policy. And some of those policies, in particular the carbon tax, it's not clear how long lasting they're going to be. But I think the Trudeau government can credibly boast and claim to have done more than any previous government, federal government, to get this country on track to reduce its emissions and transition to a clean economy. On reconciliation, it's a bit more difficult to judge the legacy at this point because there know, there's just so much work to do and compared to kind of some of the promises that he made about, you know, eliminating

boil water advisories and. Not eliminated. Yeah, not fully eliminated and implementing all the recommendations of the truth and reconciliation commission. Uh, you know, those kind of promises have hung over this government. But on the flip side of that, there has been a,

you know, a wave of funding, of legislation, and of settling historic grievances. And I don't know that future governments are going to be able to turn back the clock or completely ignore what happened over these nine years. Right, right. You know, I know certainly I saw on the Globe that federal spending for Indigenous priorities

tripled under this government bit. At the same time, they spent well over $100 million fighting First Nations in court, including over settlements to do with on reserve child welfare. Neither of you guys mentioned weed. Peter Tosh's weed anthem, Legalize It, came out back in 1975. And today, over 40 years later, Canadians bought their first legal gram of pot at midnight in St. John's.

Why not? Stephen, you want to take that? Yeah, that's starting to be a while ago now, I guess. But yeah, no, that was significant and largely positive, I think. I see it that way. It was one of those things that he said he would do and did and sort of had a political impact, you know, and that he was positioning himself as a transformational modernizing kind of person. Mm-hmm. It is interesting to remember how much, as Stephen says, that was a considered such a daring move at the time.

Yeah. I think what's kind of interesting is that after it happened, everybody just kind of very quickly moved on. Yeah. Yeah. And even though it was considered a big deal at the time, people just kind of got used to it. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on his leadership during the pandemic, right?

Do you think that ultimately Trudeau will be seen as the guy who united the country during an unprecedented health crisis? Addressing COVID-19 must be a Team Canada effort. To keep Canadians safe, to mitigate the economic impacts of the virus. All levels of government are working together. Or do you think he will be remembered as a leader who played politics with stuff like masking and vaccinations? I'm thinking about some of the comments he made that I hear people talk about a lot when he called protesters, small fringe minority who don't believe in science, who are lashing

out with racist, misogynistic attacks. Aaron, you want to take that first? Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of both. If you look at the pandemic in the wide angle, you know, it's hard to claim victory in a pandemic, but I think if you compare Canada's results to the results in the United States and the results in the United Kingdom, you know, Canada looks fairly good. I think the dramatic moves made by the government to backstop both people and businesses and provincial governments in the early going was pretty historic and pretty remarkable. I think the vaccine rollout was quite successful, even if there was some kind of early fretting

about it. But it doesn't end with this moment of kind of national celebration or relief. It ends with a very divisive debate about vaccine mandates and it ends with the freedom convoy, which various levels of government struggle to deal with. So I do think the prime minister's leadership during that time and the government's actions,

it's hard to talk about history in the present, but I think that will qualify as very historic, but it's hard to look at the pandemic and say that that was, you know, his greatest moment because it ended with so many bad feelings. Yep. Stephen, when it comes to Serb in particular, it did later end up taking a lot of heat as

part of this criticism of rampant spending by this government. But how do you think years from now that policy in particular will be remembered? Well, people will complain later. And they are complaining, you know, it seems like every couple months there's a story with some audit or other that finds that some of the money wasn't repaid or it was badly spent. But there was no way to get as much money out the door as they did without causing that kind of problem. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit will provide $2,000 a month for the next four months for workers who lose their income as a result of COVID-19.

They had to shovel the money out the door in order to keep people at home so that people would not get sick. And because they did that, thousands of Canadians who would have died lived. That's what I think the evidence shows. So it's a really good record in a way where I see something that's harder to justify is the political side of it in that the Prime Minister was unnecessarily divisive

in attacking protesters who were expressing their charter rights in Ottawa. And he carried that sort of divisive spirit into the subsequent election, was sort of forced to, I think, by circumstance, he might've lost otherwise. And that sort of set up a rupture between a majority of Canadians who thought that the public health measures were wise and minority who were angered by them. But the problem for the prime minister is that that minority grew as the pandemic faded into the memory.

And I think that's one of the reasons why you had a sort of exasperation and anger building against Trudeau over time is that he became so closely associated with taking one side in a debate that divided Canadians. On Monday, the prime minister said his biggest regret was not passing electoral reform. So the elimination of the first pass the post system that a lot of people feel is not very representative of the electorate. And he implied that his hands were tied. That's why he couldn't get it done.

I could not change unilaterally without support of other parties our electoral system that wouldn't have been responsible. What does that say to you? That one, he chose that as his biggest regret in 10 years, and that he framed it in the way that he did. Aaron? So first, I think it is a slightly creative retelling of events. The prime minister made an open-ended commitment

to change the electoral system. He didn't say, I will implement my preferred electoral system, a rank ballot. When he says his hands were tied, I do to a certain degree believe that's true. It would have been probably bad for him and bad for the country if the liberals had proceeded unilaterally with their own preferred electoral system. But, you know, he promised an open-ended study that would result ultimately in a change to the electoral system. And it becomes such a kind of symbolic part of the one of the biggest criticisms of him over the last nine years, which is that he's more talk than action, more big promises than delivery.

And it also, it will be one of those things that, depending on where the federal government, where Canada, where Canadian democracy goes from here, it will be one of those things that people potentially look back on and go, well, maybe he should have done something. Stephen, anything you want to add to that? I know you have this great quote in your book that relates to this idea of this government confusing press releases for action.

Yeah, an Ottawa insider said that to me, that they think the press releases is the work product. I was very frustrated by the electoral reform thing. They had all of these meetings. I went to one of them in Gatineau and everyone filled out forms and participated in small group sessions. And then when it looked like he wasn't going to get his way because people were interested in proportional representation, not ranked ballots, he basically just iced it all. He didn't present a version that he wanted to try and bring it to a vote in the House. He didn't give a speech to Canadians about it. He just sort of abandoned it and told Marie Vastel at Le Dvoire that, you know, Canadians aren't really interested in this anymore because now they have a government they're satisfied with. So, it seemed to me to be sort of the worst of, to demonstrate the sort of worst side of Mr. Trudeau in the way that he managed it all.

And, you know, I can understand that he regrets not having handled it differently, but the only person responsible for that is him. Every language is a note in the symphony of our heritage. Together, they create a harmony that cannot be silenced. Discover your voice on the new APTN Languages TV channel. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. and Languages TV channel. That's not a tightball, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial

vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I imagine you might find some through line here in the next question I'm going to ask you, which is about some of his scandals, right? Sort of this third bucket that we're looking back on. Let me just list off a few of the big ones here just for us to go down memory lane. There was the black face and the brown face.

What I did, the choices I made hurt people, hurt people who thought I was an ally. There was the lavish vacation to the Aga Khans island. As I said, this was a personal family vacation where we visited someone who I have known pretty much all my life. There was a trip to India where his family was accused of kind of cosplaying taking all these photos dressed up in traditional Indian clothes. I have long been known to wear traditional clothes to a broad range of events in many different communities in Canada and elsewhere. There was the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Welcome or not, the Ethics Commissioner is digging into the SNC-Lavalin controversy, trying to

find out if the prime minister or his staff pressured Jody Wilson-Raybould to go easy on the company. And Jody Wilson-Raybould leaving his government. I strongly maintain, as I have from the beginning, that I and my staff always acted appropriately and professionally. There was the federal contract given to the Wee Charity and the criticism that Trudeau's family and others in government had close ties to the charity. How much money total have your brother, mother, and spouse received from this organization?

How much? That information has been publicly shared, but I will highlight. Well, then tell me what it is. My mother has... How much? It's just the dollar figure. Throughout her life... The dollar figure, Prime Minister.

And Stephen, what of those scandals do you think have stuck to this government and why? Well, all of them. It's like each one is like a little chip off the vase. But to me, the SNC-Lavalin matter was the thing that did the most lasting damage. I don't know if it did it in the public mind, although it was definitely a blow. But inside the government, he lost two important ministers. He lost the clerk of the Privy Council and

crucially Gerald Butts, his principal secretary, who had seemed to play an important role in strategizing and narrative building. It seemed like the government never really came back from that and that subsequently it was always reactive. Erin, what about you? What do all these scandals say to you taken together, or maybe, maybe one or two say something more important. I do, do agree with Stephen that SNC Lavalina is the sort of lasting, is the one that left the most lasting damage.

You know, I think it also just sort of hurt his image as a, as a feminist, as someone who was prioritized reconciliation, who was interested in attracting credible people to government and listening to their views. We can debate sort of whether he deserves some of those criticisms necessarily, but I think it undercut his image and his claims to some of his ideals. I think, you know, some of these scandals, it's particularly the vacations and the trip to India, you know, other than his father,

I don't know how many Canadian prime ministers could have stumbled into some of these, you know, the flying to Fino on Truth and Reconciliation Day. Oh, yeah, we didn't even mention that one. Yeah, it's such a, you know, from a political lens, you go, why wouldn't someone who has had so much success in politics see the huge risk that if he went there and people realized he was on vacation, that that, you know, would not reflect well.

Lots of prime ministers have lots of scandals. Trudeau had just an odd ability to stumble into things like that. You know, in part because of kind of who he was and his lifestyle and his upbringing, but just a kind of odd inability or, you know, maybe people will see it as arrogance or entitlement, but whatever the issue, just an inability to kind of avoid these little moments that end up, you know, being talked about years later

when people are reflecting on your legacy. But despite all of that, he kept winning elections, right? He won after SNC. He won after Blackface, right? And so at what point do you think things really started to unravel for him with the public? So because of there's such a rupture when COVID happens, that really scrambles the book. Because you know, coming out of 2019, he was considered a kind of damaged prime minister,

right? You know, the brownface scandal had happened, SNC Lavalin had happened, he'd been reduced to a minority. He went away, he grew a beard. It was, you know, considered kind of a low point for him. And then COVID happens and it sort of scrambles public opinion. I think the bottom really doesn't fall out until we're coming out of the pandemic and inflation hits and housing prices get just completely unreasonable and interest rates start going up. And, you know, we've seen with incumbent governments across the world

that that's, you know, the mix of cost of living issues has proved fatal. I think it also just sort of exposed some of the weaknesses in the government and it, after so many years in office, they just weren't capable of kind of reacting fast enough. And I think that's where, as I said, you know, I can't help thinking about what we were talking about in the intro, this idea that he came in on Sunnyways in 2015 and how, I mean, maybe for some people that was very corny at the time, but broadly that was a vision of the world of hopefulness that a lot of people could buy into. But it's actually incredible how much change has happened in the world since then.

The first election of Trump, the second election of Trump, Brexit, the pandemic, Ukraine, Gaza, incredible political polarization fueled in part by social media algorithms, affordability crises, like Erin was talking about, anger around wealth inequality, global surge in populism on the right and the left. And do you think that also part of the problem here was that he didn't shift to where the world was. Like, to what extent is he still that Sonny Weiss guy from 2015 in a world where that's not really the vibe anymore? I think that's right. In terms of the way that the world changed,

sociologists talk about, and political scientists about a post-materialist mindset and a materialist mindset. The sunny ways man who's very interested in equality and feminism and diversity and inclusion, those and the environment, those are feelings that people respond to when they are not consumed by personal financial concerns. And particularly for young people, and we haven't mentioned immigration, a lot of young people link, and a lot of new Canadians link sort of the very fast immigration in the last couple of years of

his government with the housing crisis and shortages of other social goods, health care and employment. And so you have a sort of generation that feels like they're in a corner, they're stuck in the basement, they're sleeping on couches, and they do not believe that Trudeau has their interests at heart. And that's, I think, a big part of how he found himself standing on the steps of Rideau Cottage, announcing that he could no longer carry on. Right. And just, you know, continuing on this idea of not necessarily meeting people where they're at. You know, I was thinking about how much buzz there was when Trudeau had gender

parity in his first cabinet. There was a lot of positive reception around that. And just maybe by way of comparison, a few weeks ago, Trudeau criticized the United States for voting. For a second time to not elect its first woman president. As an example of women's rights backsliding. I mean, for him, it was an example of women's rights backsliding. And there was, I think, a fair bit of criticism and eye rolling about

that from the right, but also from the left. People who are more interested in what people believe, like what policies that they might enact than whether or not they are a woman. And it struck me that perhaps this brand of feminism may also be from another time. Erin, we were talking earlier about some of these big substantive policy changes that Trudeau did achieve in his time in office. When we talk about his legacy, to what extent do you think those achievements risk being overshadowed by this image of him from the

end as a guy who held on to power for too long, a guy who refused to listen to all these people telling him it was time to go? I mean, I think a lot of that depends on what happens next, obviously, and what kind of fate the Liberal Party and the Trudeau agenda kind of comes to. I think, you know, Brian Mulroney said it and Justin Trudeau quoted it, you know, this idea that history is more interested in the big things you did and not so much in the gossip and tumult of politics. I think that is sort of broadly true. It is, when you think about what's kind of going to move forward with the Trudeau agenda, I do think it fits within that idea of

how much change has occurred over the last nine years and where the world is at. You know, if you go back and look at the attendees at Justin Trudeau's first G7 meeting, it feels like a G7 meeting from a previous century. Uh, you know, the idea that Donald Trump would be president in the United States was, was still sort of inconceivable at that point. And I think a lot of, you know, what became the sort of stated or unstated purpose of this government was being a sort of progressive liberal democracy while the world was experiencing so much tumult.

If you go back to his last meeting with Barack Obama after Donald Trump had been elected, one of the things Obama said to him was, you know, you need to hold the top of the hill. You know, this idea that while everything else was going on, you know, Brexit and Trump, that Canada and Justin Trudeau could sort of be the sort of beacon for progressive liberal democracy. And I think the central kind of underpinning of that was economic security. And that's something that, you know, Trudeau had touched on from the start with the middle class and, and quote unquote, those who are working hard to join it. And I think what has happened

over the last two years is that that economic security has been severely undercut. And so now we'll see where sort of Canadian democracy and Canadian politics goes from here. And so then it becomes a question of some of the ideas that Justin Trudeau raised, including gender equality, including inclusion, diversity, shared economic security and prosperity, acting against climate change, rejecting sort of divisive populism, how well those things hold up and then how people view Trudeau's nine years in

office of whether he did enough to sort of keep those ideas moving forward. Stephen, final thoughts there? Well, it feels like a bad moment to be making an ideas moving forward. Stephen, final thoughts there? Well, it feels like a bad moment to be making an assessment of Trudeau's record because just before we recorded this, Donald Trump was saying that Canada and the United States, that would really be something.

You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like. And that he's considering using economic force to make Canada join the United States. He was speaking disparagingly of Trudeau and their conversation at Mar-a-Lago. The country is going to be led by Mr. Trudeau for a few more months at a time when it would be good to have a prime minister with a popular as opposed to just a legal mandate. So I feel in a way that assessments of his time in office will have to wait until we see how this plays out. I can't remember a time when I felt more anxious

about the future of Canada than I do right now. And not just the relationship with the United States, our relationship with India and with China, our immigration system. I'm fearful for the future of the CBC. The Canadian forces is in poor shape. The RCMP hasn't had a serious reform in a long time. So there's a great number of things where you feel a sense of just quiet and a sense that it is time for someone else to look after things for a while. And the reassessment can wait. OK. Aaron, Stephen, I want to thank you so much for this.

Thank you. It was a pleasure. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Pueasong. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.