Front Burner - Measuring a decade of Trudeau’s Liberal leadership

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Ten years ago this week, Justin Trudeau took over the Liberals’ top job. He won it in a landslide. In his acceptance speech to the excited room, Trudeau swore that unlike Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, he heard Canadians’ pleas for something better, and vowed that he was going to devote his leadership to addressing the issues of “the millions upon millions of middle class Canadians and the millions more who work hard to join the middle class.” Now, a decade into Trudeau’s tenure, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is arguing that far from getting better, “everything feels broken.” Today on Front Burner, CBC senior writer Aaron Wherry looks back at the Trudeau of ten years ago, compares him to where he’s at today, and talks about what it means for his political future. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. And on this lovely spring evening in our nation's capital, I am honored to stand with you, proud to be the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Ten years ago this week, Justin Trudeau took over the Liberals' top job. took over the Liberals' top job. He won it in the landslide,

and in his acceptance speech to the excited room, Trudeau swore that, unlike Stephen Harper's conservatives, he heard Canadians' pleas for something better. Canadians are looking to us. This campaign has been their campaign, more than just ours. They want something better. They refuse to believe that better is not possible.

They see the country their parents and grandparents worked so hard to build and want to hand an even better country on to their children. He vowed that he was going to devote his leadership to addressing the issues everyday Canadians face. I say this to the millions upon millions of middle class Canadians and the millions more who work hard every day to join the middle class. Under my leadership, the purpose of the Liberal Party will be you. I promise. you. I promise. I promise that I will spend every day from beginning to end thinking about and working hard to solve your problems.

Now, a decade into Trudeau's tenure, and a lot of problems for the middle class and those working hard to join it don't feel so solved. And Trudeau's main rival, conservative leader Pierre Polyev, is out there arguing that far from getting better, things have become broken. Everything feels broken. Most of all, things have become broken. Everything feels broken. Most of all, the deal is broken. The deal that if you work hard, you get a house, good food, a good living, and a good life. That deal has been broken. And Justin Trudeau is the one who broke it with his... So today, Aaron Weary is with me to look back at the Trudeau of 10 years ago, compare him to where he's at today,

and talk about what that means for his political future. Aaron, hey. Hey, Jamie. It is great to have you here. When we were prepping for this interview, we came across this old segment from The National on Trudeau announcing that he would run for leader. Well, Peter, this is hardly earth-shaking news. An inexperienced backbencher wants to lead his struggling third-place party. It's actually like a pretty cheeky report. But it was interesting for me to see the reactions to him at the time, both the positive and the negative. The kid's gorgeous. He's what we want in Canada.

I hate to be disparaging, but I think he's a lightweight compared to his father. And the reporter ends the segment by pointing to two paths Trudeau's leadership could take the liberals. Sure, but one poll already has it that Trudeau is magic, that the liberals would, poof, sweep to power with him at the helm. A less giddy version has it that he'd keep the conservatives in power by splitting the anti-Harper vote with the NDP. Either way, the liberals now have their Trudeau buzz and we'll see how long it lasts. And well, it has been 10 years now, if you can believe it.

It has been 10 years now, if you can believe it. For those who weren't following closely at the time or who don't remember, maybe, can you flesh out for me how Trudeau was perceived when he first put himself forward to lead back then? Yeah, there's kind of, I guess, two ideas. One from people who were sort of very into politics and closely followed politics and even from people in the press gallery. There was, I would say, a healthy skepticism about Justin Trudeau, right? Is this guy just his last name? Is this guy just his good looks and his nice head of hair? Is this guy for real? Should we actually have to take him seriously? And you would see that come out really, you know, most prominently, I think, in the conservative advertising that would come after Trudeau once he became leader. You know, the idea that he wasn't ready.

So when has he ever had to make a tough choice? People, being prime minister is not an entry level job. I'm not saying no forever, but not now. Nice hair, though. Justin Trudeau. He's just not ready. You know, the famous job interview ad that the Conservatives ran. That really picked up on something that was real, and it was a fair bit of skepticism and cynicism about Justin Trudeau.

I think there was another feeling, though, both from people who had seen Trudeau in action and people who would see Trudeau in action afterwards, that the man had a real appeal to people, and he was able to command a stage and engage people and get people excited. Justin Trudeau proved again tonight that he can draw a crowd and grab attention far beyond what is technically his due as a relative newbie in politics. And if you went to one of his events and saw the crowds that came out and the people who lined up afterwards

to have a picture with him, there was something there. Day one, a portrait of the Trudeau campaign begins here in Vancouver at the city's Gay Pride Parade. The candidate without a jacket wading into the crowd with a manic energy. Whether political calculation or something that would wear off, there was something there that was more than the average politician.

there that was more than the average politician. Yeah. And, you know, tell me a little bit more about what he was actually saying at the time, sort of beyond the presence and the vibes. What were some of the big messages that you think helped sweep him to the leadership of the Liberal Party 10 years ago, but then two years after that, from third place to a majority in the general election for the Liberals, which was like a real landslide of a victory. Yeah, so I think there were a few big messages. One is hope and hard work is what he sold to the party,

which were two things that party needed at that moment. It was on, it seems like ancient history now, but it was really teetering, it seemed, on the edge of oblivion after the 2011 election. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will head a majority government for the first time. The Liberals, which held power for most of the 20th century, posted its worst ever election result, winning just 34 seats. And I think he needed to sell the party on the idea that they needed to be hopeful, but also that it was going to take some work to get back to where they were.

I think he, during that leadership campaign and in the early years of his leadership, introduced that idea of focusing on the middle class. The conversations I've had about the fact that people are stuck making choices between paying for their own retirement or paying for their kids' education. between paying for their own retirement or paying for their kids' education. People feel that this idea of Canada that has every generation do better than the generation before no longer holds. Which was not something that you had heard in Canadian politics a lot. It was more common to talk about that in the American political sense.

The idea that you were going to focus on the middle class, that you were going to support the middle class. It was the beginnings of an economic message for him and a message that was really centered on, you know, the very practical concerns of Canadians. And then there were a couple of things that he started to sort of flesh out in his leadership. And then once he became leader, sort of two ideas. One is real change. And that was the idea that he would take things in a very different direction than Stephen Harper was currently taking things. And then attached to that was the idea that better is always possible. Mr. Harper is dead wrong about one thing. He wants you to believe that better just isn't possible. Well, I think that's wrong.

isn't possible. Well, I think that's wrong. We are who we are. And Canada is what it is. Because in our hearts, we've always known that better is always possible. You can think about that message and say, well, this is, you know, to harken back to some of the complaints that were directed at Barack Obama. This is kind of that hopey changey stuff that doesn't amount to much. Yeah, a little vague. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It's hard to know what that means. But it was sort of an implicit rebuke or response to the Harper years. Stephen Harper was not just, you know, maybe the most ideological conservative prime minister we've had in many years, maybe ever. He was also an incrementalist. And he kind of governed in small steps. And he was very methodical about trying to, by cutting taxes and cutting spending,

and in his own rhetoric, kind of reduce the ambitions of government. To say, you know, government can't do all of these things that you want to do, or it shouldn't be doing all of these things you want it to do. And I'm going to make sure it doesn't even have the money to do all the things you want it to do. And so Justin Trudeau comes along and says, better is always possible. And it is a direct response to Harper to say, no, no, government can actually do all these things. And it also speaks to, you know, while Harper was governing for 10 years, And it also speaks to, you know, while Harper was governing for 10 years, a lot of kind of big issues started to pile up that he hadn't quite found answers for. Climate change, reconciliation, income inequality.

And Justin Trudeau came along and said, I'm going to address these things. I'm going to deal with these things. And so better is always possible. It was a response to Harper and it was a kind of about sending a message about Trudeau as an ambitious politician who was going to govern ambitiously. And it was a direct contrast with the way Harper had governed. So by the time he gets to the 2015 election, talk to me a little bit more about how he says he's going to make things better, because he actually did make some big promises. Right. I'm thinking like the legalization of marijuana, for example. And so what are some that stand out to you?

And talk to me about his inclination, this inclination of his. that stand out to you and talk to me about this inclination of his. Right. So Justin Trudeau does not really understand the downside. I mean, I guess maybe he does understand the downside of making big promises, but he's not necessarily guided by the downside of big promises. So he talks about things like legalizing marijuana, about renewing the nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples, about, you know, taking on climate change, addressing the middle class and helping the middle class out. And he always frames these things in kind of big things. He doesn't take half measures. And he does that a bit during his time as leader in sort of those years between

when he became leader in the election. He does, you know, he rolls out the marijuana promise. He decides that the party is going to take a strict pro-choice position, he kicks senators out of his caucus, then during the election he announces that the Liberal government under him would run a deficit. There's a huge difference between them, who are proposing cuts and even austerity, and the Liberal party, which is proposing that what we all know, which is that confident countries invest in their own future. And that's what we're going to do. Which was at the time considered just politically suicidal, that you would ever sort of break the

orthodoxy of balancing the budget. He makes big promises. And he also, you know, as he transitions, as he gets more and more into government, he also starts to talk more and more in the language of ideals and values. So he, you know, describes himself as a feminist. I understand one of the priorities for you was to have a cabinet that was gender balanced. Why was that so important to you? Because it's 2015. You know, he talks in kind of very lofty terms about reconciliation. And this just sort of goes to kind of who Trudeau is and how he wants to govern.

And to flash forward a bit, like one of the best examples of this to me is, you know, years later, he's running for reelection and or about to run for reelection. And his advisors come in and say, okay, we've worked through some plans, you know, we want to make this commitment on planting trees as part of our climate change effort. We think we can reasonably promise to plant a billion trees. And Trudeau looks at the numbers and says, well, I've gone over the numbers and I think actually we could do 2 billion. And so that just becomes the promise. You know, Trudeau has campaigned all along, almost with complete disregard for the old political axiom of under promising and over delivering. He doesn't have a lot of time for that. And that has been kind of his hallmark from the start. And even now, several years into this,

he hasn't really been dissuaded from it. Give me some more examples of that over-promising and under-delivering. I was reading a piece that you wrote, and you recently noted that that mandate tracker that they had, that they rolled out in 2017, where they kind of track promises. It's just basically been collecting dust since 2019. They just stopped updating it. Yeah. So they started out with this idea of deliverology. And part of deliverology, you know, is sort of set clear markers, then track your progress publicly. And that holds everyone to account. And it sounds great practice, but they kind of at some point decided it wasn't worth the public effort. I mean, I think the sort of two classic examples of the problem they've had on this are first electoral reform. He didn't just promise to study electoral reform or think about electoral reform or pursue electoral reform. He stood up and said, the 2015 election will be the last federal election conducted under the first past the post electoral system. And it

doesn't seem that there was really much of a plan of how exactly that would work. I think Trudeau just kind of imagined that it would work itself out somehow. And then it didn't. And he had to, faced with not kind of getting the electoral system he wanted to ultimately implement,

he decided to abandon the promise. You know, now granted, there probably aren't a ton of people in this country who, you know, that's their number one issue. But it sort of goes to his, it goes to his sort of the general idea of him. And the other, the more, the sort of more practical and more impactful one is the idea that he was going to end all boil water advisories in Indigenous communities and within five years of forming government. And again, it sounds like a good idea. Sure, that should not take more than five years.

Indigenous communities should have clean drinking water. Go do it. But they couldn't. They got into government and they realized it was much harder than they thought. The problem was much bigger than they imagined. They pumped far more money into it than they originally planned, but they are still, seven years into his government, trying to fulfill that promise. And the sort of glass half full or sort of optimistic version of that would say, well, would the government have moved as fast as it even has so far if he hadn't made that promise? And people have said to me that they don't think there would have been that impetus to move as fast as as they did or have but the flip side of it is it comes up every time he tries to sort of talk about what he's accomplished or what he

he is promising to do this idea that he's not as good as his word he's promised things before that has sort of almost from day one a sort of constant thing hanging over him is this idea that he can't quite live up to what he has promised. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 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 want to talk to you about his new opponent now, across the house, Pierre Polyev. And it's really interesting to me, earlier you mentioned Pierre Polyev. And it's really interesting to me. Earlier, you mentioned Trudeau, when he first took over the Liberal Party, talked a lot about the middle class and these pocketbook issues. And 10 years later, it wouldn't sound strange for a lot of this same stuff to be coming out of the mouth of Polyam. We have people who can't afford to pay for their kids' food. We have countless young adults still living in their parents' basements, stuck in small apartments. And I meet seniors all the time whose savings are evaporating because of 40-year highs in inflation. Canadians are hurting.

And it is our job... This isn't to say their solutions to these problems sound remotely alike. As you said, Trudeau explicitly ran on deficits. But if Trudeau came to power saying, unlike Harper, I believe we can make things better, Polyev's angling to become PM by saying under Trudeau, everything is broken. And why do you think that that is such an effective message for Polyev against Trudeau right now, who I should say, like, won in a landslide of his own to take over the Conservative Party? Yeah, so I think it works for Polyev for a couple reasons. One is there's lots of things he could point to. Coming out of the

pandemic, if we ever thought that the pandemic, you know, was going to end in celebration and glory and everything kind of returning to a perfect normal, we've been disabused of those notions, right? Like from inflation to lineups at passport clinics and on and on. There are all sorts of these problems that are apparent. So Polyev has lots of things that he can point to and go, look, look at all these things that aren't working. It feels like everything is broken in this country right now. Whether it is the 40-year high in inflation that Justin Trudeau has caused through his inflationary deficits and taxes. And then he also has the advantage of being able to point at Trudeau and say, you've been

in power now for more than seven years. You can't blame this on other people. It's your fault. And similar to the way income inequality had sort of crept up as the issue in 2015, now the issue is inflation, the cost of living, and affordable housing all kind of mixed together. Trudeau could stand up in 2015 and say the answer to these problems is more help from the government. And now Polyev can stand up and say, well, we've had seven years of more help from the government. We still have these problems. So clearly the answer now is less

government. So things have kind of flipped. And any government at the seven, eight year mark is going to have some trouble carrying the load. They've accumulated lots of baggage. They've maybe exhausted the public's patience. And now a government dealing with inflation is also going to bear the brunt of public discontent. is also going to bear the brunt of public discontent. So Polyev has come along kind of in the way that Trudeau did at a fortuitous moment politically for him, in that he, you know, has sort of the opportunity and the evidence and the timing right to kind of make this argument that everything is broken. And the way to fix things is to get rid of this guy who you're probably tired of and move in a completely different direction. It was interesting to me to hear Trudeau's response to that. Everything is broken line from Polyev. He denied it pretty forcefully. But when he says that Canada is broken, that's where we draw the line. This is Canada. And in Canada better is always possible

but I don't accept Canadians and politicians that talk down our country. But like you said, this is not based on fantasy here. House prices have nearly doubled since the liberals took over in 2015. The sticker shot at the grocery store is very real for people. And I wonder if for people listening to Trudeau's response, that sounded out of touch.

You know, certainly Polyev has seized on that response. Everything feels broken. Oh, I just offended Justin Trudeau. He gets very angry when I talk about these problems. He thinks that if we don't speak about them out loud, that Canadians will forget that they exist. To a certain extent, it sets a low bar, right? Disproving that everything is broken shouldn't be that hard.

You know, the country is not completely ruined, so you should be able to point to some positives to rebut the argument. But as you say, there are these stressors out there and these issues out there that have to be dealt with somehow. And the progressivism that Trudeau came in with in 2015, he now needs to be able to say and prove that that approach to governing can deal with these problems, can solve these problems. Because if it doesn't seem like it can solve those problems, you know, housing, for instance, if it doesn't seem like his progressive approach to government can solve the issue of housing prices, then it's going to become that much easier for Polyev and for voters to conclude

that you need to try something different. And, you know, that has really, I think, kind of frames this term for Trudeau is he's out of the pandemic now. He's got a confidence and supply agreement with the NDP. He's conceivably got a period now where he can govern without necessarily having to face, you know, a once-in-a-century crisis. And he's got to show that all of the promise and all of the ambition can really result in something, can result in success, and is still preferable to whatever Polyev is offering. And I guess as we've talked about this approach and belief that he has that government can solve a lot of these problems, it comes with additional spending.

And now the spending is being used as evidence by critics, including Polyev, that he's responsible for creating this inflation. That's hurting a lot of people right now, that it's wasteful inflationary spending. According to Polyev, the Globe's editorial board, the Globe and Mail's editorial board, called the most recent liberal budget a fiscal fantasy. And so to what extent do you think the criticism that he and his government are wasteful, not fiscally prudent, is sticking to him right now? I think a bit, at the very least. I mean, it has always lingered as this idea that, well, you know, you're running a deficit, that's risky and that will end badly. And it makes you vulnerable any time there seems to be any amount of spending that's wasteful. You know, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, if it turns out that you spent money and it didn't produce anything,

it goes to that idea that you're being wasteful, that you're being irresponsible. And now, look, we could have a long conversation about what actually causes inflation, but Polyev is hammering the idea, which will be disputed by any number of economists, that inflation is caused by all this government spending. And so he's tying it all together as this idea that, you know, not only is Trudeau not solving problems, but he's actually the cause of all these problems. And it goes back to that idea that Trudeau has to be able to show results, that he can't just stand up and say, you know, we have committed $11 billion to this problem. He has to be able to say, we put this money and it actually accomplished the following things. And that has always been

a challenge for this government is that they have, either because of just the practicalities of the issue or, you know, the way public policy works, actually kind of proving the concept, pointing to results has always been the challenge. And now they don't really have much room for error. They have to be able to say, you know, yes, you're worried about the money we're spending, but look at what we've accomplished with it. And, you know, you mentioned examples before of wasteful spending. Like I'm thinking recently that $6,000 a night hotel he and his wife stayed at in London at the Queen's funeral,

like the massive increase in the use of pricey consultants like McKinsey and bigger stuff too, like the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy Program during the pandemic, which was criticized for handing out money with little oversight to companies, some of whom posted big profits and

enriched shareholders. And so do you think that this is having a cumulative effect here that these are really adding up? Yeah, I mean, I think it I think it does. I mean, it adds up both literally and figuratively. Individually, you can take any of these things and go, well, you know, $6,000 for a hotel room. I mean, that is a lot for a hotel room. But in the grand scope of a many billion dollar budget, it doesn't actually matter. And you can go through and try to make arguments for each of these things, but eventually it all kind of adds up. And it starts to look like you're not responsible with public dollars, that you don't care, and that you're a bit more about throwing

money at the problem instead of actually fixing the problem. And, you know, now it could flip around at some point, because Polyev may come in and want to run on balancing the budget quickly or cutting spending. But when it comes to explaining how to cut spending, Trudeau may be able to sort of wrestle the advantage back and say, well, look at the following things you're going to cut. If you want to balance the budget in the next two years, which programs are you going to cut? Show me which benefits you're going to cut. And in that sense, in the long term, some of these investments may prove very hard to reverse. But from a political standpoint, there is still a certain, even if the idea that you have to balance the budget is kind of passe now, you're still at some point going to be held accountable for how that money has been spent.

And if it doesn't seem like you're spending it responsibly or achieving anything with it, you know, your announcements and your claim to want to be reelected is going to be in trouble. So, Aaron, given everything that we've talked about today, he's had 10 years at the top of his party. Now he's got this opponent who can use some of the same lines against him that Trudeau used against Harper, the out-of-touch thing, for example. And do you think he ultimately has much time left in this spot? least sometime in 2025, although we'll see how long that lasts. You can't underestimate the challenge in front of him, right? It will be said 100 times between now and the next election that it has been more than a century since any prime minister has led his party to victory in four consecutive elections. It's really hard to keep winning. By the time of the next election, he could have been in office for 10 years. That said, I don't know that there is, first of all, much of a push within the party to push him aside. I don't know that it's particularly obvious that anyone else in that job would be better suited or more likely to win the next election. And the underrated aspect of the

confidence and supply agreement with the NDP is that it just gives this government time. And so it's got time to try to build a case for itself, to try to build evidence for what it's trying to do, and to show Canadians that there's a reason to keep going with this government, to show Canadians that, you know, this idea that everything is broken isn't true, that, you know, this idea that everything is broken isn't true, that they can ride out maybe this inflation and the potential for an economic slowdown and move things forward before the next election. And if they can do that, that's part of the equation.

The other part of the equation is at some point they need to make the argument to Canadians that the poly of conservatives, even if you want change, even if you're not super happy with the way Trudeau has governed, that going in that completely other direction would be a bad idea. There probably isn't any government this far in office that has been able to get re-elected without pointing out or at least making or making the argument that the other side is unpalatable. And so that's the other piece of this. They will have to, and they are to a certain

extent already, making the argument that Polyev is an unacceptable choice, essentially. And so it's a massive challenge to get re-elected, or it will be a massive challenge to get re-elected, but we would be getting way ahead of ourselves to say that the next election is by any means already determined. All right, Aaron, thank you for this. Thank you. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.