Front Burner - The 2 sides to Justin Trudeau: A pre-election profile

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Elected on a campaign of "sunny ways" and "real change," the expectations were high for Justin Trudeau when he came into power in 2015. But after a series of scandals, the public perception of Canada's prime minister might be shifting ahead of the fall election. Today, we continue our series on the federal party leaders by speaking to CBC News political reporter Aaron Wherry. He has a new book out called Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power.

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. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Mr. Harper has spent millions of dollars on attack ads trying to convince you that I'm not ready for this job.

As silly as they are, they do pose an important question. How can you decide whether someone is ready to be your Prime Minister? Here's what I think. In order to know if someone is ready for this job, ask them what they want to do with this job, why they want it in the first place. So that was Justin Trudeau back in 2015, making his closing statements during a leadership debate facing then Prime Minister Stephen Harper. For some, the off-the-cuff speech was incredibly inspiring. For others, it was just kind of bad and maybe cheesy and overly lofty. Inspiring or overly

lofty, these are descriptions that have followed Justin Trudeau throughout his political career. As we make our way towards a national election, we're continuing our series of leadership profiles. Today, we're taking on the prime minister. Aaron Wary is a political journalist and author of a new book on Justin Trudeau's time in office. It's called Promise in Peril, Justin Trudeau in Power. This is Front for Act. Aaron, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. I read your book, which is excellent, in an airport last week when I had a massive flight delay.

So I also owe you gratitude. It really helped me pass the time. I'm glad you were stuck with the book and had no other options. Yes, that's exactly why I read it. No, it was great, and I enjoyed it very much. So let's get to this. That end of debate speech from Trudeau back in 2015 that we just heard, you highlight this really early on in your book. And why did you choose to highlight this speech? What does it say to you about Trudeau? So a couple things. First, it was something that was raised to

me by Jerry Butts, who's obviously Justin Trudeau's sort of longest advisor, one of his closest friends, who pointed to that as sort of the unfiltered Trudeau. If you want to know what Justin Trudeau was like, go back and look at that statement. What I learned from my father is that to lead this country, you need to love this country. Love it more than you crave power. It needs to run through your veins. You need to feel it in your bones. There were some people who thought it was terrible. In fact, somebody walked into the press scrum

immediately after the debate and said to Trudeau, basically... One quick question. Your closing remarks were... They were kind of horrible. Like what message were you trying to communicate with those closing remarks? But if you isolated that clip and you put it online and you just had people listen to the clip, people responded to it very differently. This was reported at the time or sometime afterwards that the liberals were running a dial group. And when they asked people to just watch that statement,

they responded very positively to it. They thought it was very inspiring. And that really sets up a fair bit about Trudeau in that he can be very idealistic, he can have a very sort of almost theatric quality to the way he speaks. 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. We are who we are. And Canada is what it is. Because in our hearts,

we've always known that better is always possible. And people either respond to that and find that that's something they don't get from other politicians, or they look at that and think, this is corny, this is cheesy, you can't be serious. Right. And do you think it's fair for me to say that these two narratives of Trudeau have really emerged? You either see him as this empathetic, sunny ways, do things differently politician, ways, do things differently, politician, or the other side, you see him as, as we mentioned, overwrought, too lofty, sort of virtue signaling. Would you say that that is a dichotomy that's really emerged, particularly in the last four years? Yeah, it's, so there's a few things going on. One is that he is very, he and the party under him have been very idealistic. They talk about reconciliation. They talk about climate change.

They talk about feminism. I'm going to keep saying loud and clearly that I am a feminist until it is met with a shrug. And these are big ideas. These are big ideals. The problem, of course, always is that if you're putting out ideals, you end up being held to those ideals. Right. A long way to fall. Right. Exactly. And the classic case to me is on feminism, on gender equality.

You can look at what this government's done and say, well, they've introduced equity legislation. They have aimed for gender balance in so many of their appointments to government. To have a cabinet that was gender balanced. Why was that so important to you? Because it's 2015. But on the other hand, you can say, well, but he's still selling military equipment to Saudi Arabia. So how can he be a feminist? How can he claim to be a feminist when he's doing all these things? Another issue that they've taken a lot of heat for is climate change. You know, this is an administration that has talked a lot about the need to face this existential crisis. The path to economic growth and good middle class jobs is through strong environmental policy. We've got to act now. And then yet, they have faced a lot of

criticism for buying this pipeline, which is sort of relying on fossil fuels. So to those who want sustainable energy and a cleaner environment, know that I want that too. But in order to bridge the gap between where we are and where we're going, we need money to pay for it. But would that fit into this as well? Yeah, definitely. Climate change is a huge one, and it fits this template perfectly in that, you know, we've had successive federal governments, going back to Mulroney, who have talked about acting on climate change, and nobody quite got the courage up to really make dramatic moves in that regard. So the Liberals come in, they introduce a bunch of policies, they take a big gamble on carbon pricing.

Putting a price on pollution is the best way to tackle climate change because it works. They introduce it. They face tons of flack. They're fighting with the provinces. The risk of a carbon tax recession is very, very real. But there's always a yeah, but. And it's like, OK, so, yeah, you so yeah, you say you're going to do these policies. You're obviously taking a fair amount of political heat for it. You're expending a fair amount of political capital.

But if you really were serious about climate change, say the Greens and say the New Democrats. You can't keep pretending you're going to hit your Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees if the target you choose has no chance of getting near that even if we fully achieve it. And so it's always this, okay, are you going to, can the liberals get credit or do they get blamed for the megatons that they haven't quite accounted for? Right. One thing about this book that I found fascinating while reading it is that you have a ton of access to his inner circle. They are all talking to you. Jerry Butts, as you mentioned, Trudeau's principal secretary, Katie Telford, his chief of staff,

Krista Freeland, foreign affairs minister, Morneau, the finance minister. And what do they say to you about Trudeau, about his style, about who he is as a leader? So there's a bunch of things about Trudeau. One is that it goes back to that sort of idealistic, ambitious idea that that's where he wants to be. On the sort of negative side, there is this belief amongst the people around him that actually when he's at his highest, when the liberals are sort of doing their best, that is when he's prone to screw up. That is when he's prone to, you know, when he's doing well is when he's not going to think, he's not going to double check with himself that going to the Aga Khan's island isn't going to cause him a problem.

The travel back and forth from Nassau to the island happens on the Aga Khan's private helicopter, which he offered us the use of. After a year-long investigation, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson found the Prime Minister broke four rules by staying on the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas. Tell me more about this idea. This was a fascinating thread in your book. Right. So there is, it's gone back, I'd heard it even before I started working on the book, this theory that he's most prone to screwing up when he's at his sort of best, when he's riding highest. And it makes a bit of sense if you go back and look at this odd tendency to screw up, to make kind of odd mistakes, or in the way it sort of manifested itself when he was an opposition leader was

he would make these odd remarks. He would go to a forum and make an offhand sort of quip about how he admired the Chinese dictatorship for its ability to change policy. Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fastest. We need to start, you know, investing in solar. I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted. Or he would go on Tout le monde en parle and say,

oh, yeah, you know, Putin may be really upset right now because he just lost in Olympic hockey. It's very worrisome, especially because Russia lost at hockey. They're going to be in a bad mood. We worry about Russian involvement in Ukraine. Just because of hockey? No, just trying to add some levity to an extremely serious situation.

We're saying this could be a massacre. You know, so there were these odd moments when he seemed to shoot himself in the foot as opposition leader. And to a certain degree, that has carried over in government where you wouldn't, if you had sat back and said, where is this government going to go wrong? You wouldn't have said, well, it'll probably go wrong by his choice of outfits in India and where he goes for his Christmas vacation. Right. And the Shawcross Doctrine. Right. Those are the three things that will trip him up.

The Shawcross Doctrine, SNC-Lavalin. I want to get to that in a minute. But what's your best theory for why that's happening? I sort of think that it's, you know, a bit of a lack of fear. And that's another thing that people have said about Trudeau is he's a bit fearless. He doesn't quite grasp risk sometimes. And I sometimes wonder if that is what has gone through this government. If you look at the Harper government, there was almost a bunker mentality.

They were always worried about controlling the message, about what people were going to say, about the possibility of controversy, about how things could go wrong. And they were always trying to control things. And that became a defining characteristic of the government. We're about to tell you how stephen harper restricts media access joining me now is vice's parliamentary bureau chief justin ling in actuality he's standing there in front of a bunch of cameras with no journalists with them and nobody's allowed to ask questions if you are a print reporter you're not allowed in you're a radio reporter you're not allowed in these guys

don't seem to have that fear they seem to think if we do well on climate change, if we do well on the middle class, if we get the big things right, the small things will take care of themselves or they'll sort of fall by the wayside. No one will care if we go on a vacation to the Aga Khan's private island. Exactly. The risk is that eventually

those things catch up to you and it sometimes can happen sooner rather than later. You know, that eventually you just sort of corrode your own credibility. People almost stop listening to you. And it sometimes can happen sooner rather than later. You know, that eventually you just sort of corrode your own credibility. People almost stop listening to you. They don't care what your economic plans are anymore because they're too busy thinking about SNC-Lavalin. Let's move on to Asensi Lavalin and unpack this a little bit. It's something that we've talked about a lot on this show.

Arguably, this is the biggest controversy Trudeau has faced and is still facing. Last week, the Ethics Report came out and found that he had breached the rules. The scathing report describes how Trudeau engaged in a flagrant attempt to influence Jody Wilson-Raybould to further SNC-Lavalin's private interests and declared that Trudeau and his office used their authority to circumvent, undermine, and ultimately attempt to discredit Wilson-Raybould's authority as attorney general. I can't apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs. Why do you think SNC happened? Yeah, the great mystery. The great mystery. So I should explain it.

This unfolded as I was trying to finish the book. In fact, it all started to come out about three days after I finished my first draft. That must have been great for you. Yeah, it was beautiful timing. Really good timing. I fact, it all started to come out about three days after I finished my first draft. So that must have been great for you. Yeah, it was beautiful timing. Really good. I really appreciated it. So to a certain degree, I was grappling with it in real time in the book. I've had even more time to sort of reflect on it since. I think, again, it goes back, you can sort of look at it in one of two ways. You could look at it and take the most cynical view, which is these guys just ran roughshod over the attorney general. They didn't care about legal niceties. They didn't care about the rule of law.

They just wanted to get this problem fixed, and that's what they did. The other thing that, and I think it's possible for there even to be overlap in this, is to look at this and say, well, a crisis never happens because of one thing. It's always about 12 different things that add up to a major failure. And if you look at this, the relationship between Jody Wilson-Raybould and the prime minister and Jody Wilson-Raybould and the rest of the government was clearly in trouble. There was clearly something, there was bad feelings there. And then you have to add in the other level, which is Jody Wilson-Raybould was a signature appointment for this prime minister. He had appointed the first indigenous minister of justice, the first indigenous attorney general, a representative of the crown.

It was a hugely symbolic and hugely powerful appointment. Jody Wilson-Raybould. This is a senior portfolio. You don't get to be minister of justice unless you're in the inner circle. Not a typical politician. She sort of embodied all of these lofty ideals that we were talking about, what he ran on. Right, exactly. She was supposed to be independent and she was supposed to be part of this idea

of bringing in smart and talented people and accomplished people into government. She was part of that. So it's possible that if there really were serious problems between the government and her, the significance of her appointment kept them from moving her earlier. This almost redeemed the original idea. The original idea was to appoint strong individuals and revive cabinet government. Well, okay, there's nothing that screams strong and independent government more than your former attorney general sitting at a committee meeting and sort of throwing the doors wide open and saying, here's what she experienced in government. Indigenous person and as an Indigenous leader. The history of Crown Indigenous relations in this

country includes a history of the rule of law not being respected. Great. It does feel a bit ironic. It does. I don't want to be too cynical, but it's possible that if he had appointed a career partisan to that job, that yeah, there might have still been a disagreement within government about what to do about a DPA for SNC, but that at the end of the day, they would have gone, well, you know what, whatever, let's just move on. It's not a big deal. We're more focused on getting reelected here. Let bygones be bygones. And this would have ended peacefully. Trudeau talks to me for the book about how during the sort of two months that this dragged out, he spoke to some of his predecessors, and his predecessors essentially couldn't understand why he was dragging this out, why he didn't just kick her out of caucus and be done with it.

You know, you can easily imagine someone like Jean Chrétien saying, you know, on day one of this story, well, yeah, of course I stood up for jobs. And if she doesn't agree with that, she can get out of cabinet and she can get out of caucus. And that's that. You can imagine a very hard line on this and trudeau seemed to think either because personally he wanted to do things differently as he says to me or because the political the politics of this were so tough that he wanted to try to find a resolution here he wanted to try to to bring things back together somehow and as much as as as it that just seems, and I think I may have actually said to him at this point,

because we spoke sort of in the middle of it all, that I didn't see a happy ending anywhere. He seemed to insist that he thought he could pull it out. And you can, again, you can look at that and say, well, that's a guy trying to do things differently. Or you can say, well, you know what? He had put this powerful minister and it looked really bad for him to be on the outs with her. And he was just trying to save

his own skin here. It's hard to know exactly why they let it drag out for as long as they did. I made the difficult decision to remove Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Dr. Philpott from the Liberal caucus. We've taken every effort to address their concerns. But ultimately, if they can't honestly say that they have confidence in this team, then they cannot be part of this team. You mentioned that you were speaking with Trudeau about this scandal. I know you spent quite a bit of time with him for this book. What's he like in private?

So when there's no cameras around, he is, he's not a different guy. He doesn't suddenly drop the mask and become a completely different human. So when he's in front of a camera, he is very careful about saying only certain things and speaking in sort of very tidy thoughts and not wanting to sort of ruminate aloud. How could that not have occurred to you, with all due respect? You were going to take a free holiday from someone you consider a friend. How could it not have occurred to you that that might not have been okay? The fact is, we work...

Sorry, let me just try to reorder the thoughts. In private, when you've got an hour at a time to sit and talk about things and say, why did you do this? What about this? Why did you do that? He's very thoughtful. He's very willing to sort of lay out his thinking, very willing to acknowledge even sort of self-doubt. One of the things that struck out to me in all of our conversations was when I asked him about the G7 summit and the famous Donald Trump tweet. Trump appears to be offended by Trudeau's response to U.S. tariffs imposed on Canadian steel and aluminum. Canadians were polite, were reasonable,

but we also will not be pushed around. President Trump was quick to respond on Twitter. He called Trudeau dishonest and weak and accused him of releasing false statements. And what his reaction to it was, his first reaction, what he said to me was, his first reaction was, he thought, oh my God, what did I say?

Whereas I thought his, like, the natural first response would have been what the heck you know that's crazy that's interesting what does that tell you about him i think he i think he's there's still a certain amount of uh willingness to question himself it goes against the idea that he is sort of blindly uh arrogant i have no doubt that he can be very sure of himself and very insistent on his beliefs. But I think he is still willing to sort of interrogate himself. And the other thing is, I think he's willing to sort of admit that publicly. He, you know, I think part of his

willingness to talk about this, to talk to me for the book was was just sort of really go through the last four years, and really kind of talk about them at length and about what had happened here and try to explain and try to think through what had happened, you know, on all these sort of different fronts. When you're talking to him and you're having all these conversations with him for the book, how did he think he's done over the last four years? I don't know. It's funny. I don't know if I ever quite said. Are you good? Do you think you're good at your job? Do you think you did all right? I think I would hate to answer that question myself. I think there is. I think quite said. Do you think you're good at your job? Do you think you did all right? I would hate to answer that question myself. I think he does.

I mean, you know, maybe understandably, obviously, he thinks they've done some real serious work. You know, they will talk about the Canada Child Benefit until they're blue in the face if you want them to. And this is a benefit that has lifted... About 300,000 kids out of poverty. For families receiving the ccb in the first year of the benefit that meant nearly 2300 a year almost 200 more a month more than under the

previous system you know on reconciliation he will you know he insists that they have they have done real meaningful work creating proper partnerships and engaging responsibly with Indigenous peoples right across this country as we empower them to determine their path forward. I think there is a certain frustration. I don't know if he ever quite said this quite point blank to me, but I think there is maybe a certain frustration with the yeah, but. The, okay, you invested $5 billion in this, but if you really wanted to do a good job,

you would have invested $7.5 billion. I think there is maybe a certain frustration that they can't seem to get through the yeah, but, and that they consistently run up against it. But I do think they feel fairly good about what their record is. I think they feel good about their basic ideas, their basic vision.

And I think to a certain degree, this is, you know, it goes back to the idea that he tends to have his worst moments when he seems to be doing best. There is this idea about Trudeau that he actually does better when he's behind, when he's underestimated, when he feels he's underestimated,

when he feels like he has to fight to get a hearing and to show that he is capable and worthy. You quote Jerry Butz in the book, saying that he would ideally like Trudeau to be behind in the polls going into an election. Although, to be fair, you quote him before the SNC-Lavalin scandal. So I wonder if he would stand behind this quote now. Do you think that he would stand behind this quote now? You know what that he would stand behind this quote now? You know what? I mean, OK, let's be serious. If you offer the Liberals a choice of being 20 points up right now or tied, they would take 20 points up.

Right. But there is a sense of, OK, at least we know what our challenge is. This is our guy. If we believe in our guy, if he believes in himself, then let's go fight. There is a view, too, I've heard from other people sort of in other conversations where who have said, you know, like if the liberals hope is to move away from an idea of a referendum on Trudeau and to make it a choice between Trudeau or Scheer. Then, you know, a close polling situation actually helps in that regard because it it crystallizes that choice for them. And in that regard, it may work to their advantage, but... More people might vote strategically. Right. If Justin Trudeau's argument at the end of

this campaign is, it's either going to be me or it's going to be Andrew Scheer, that's a message to New Democrat voters and to Green voters that, you know, like, you have a choice to make. Yeah, you may want to vote NDP or Green, but at the end of the day, you have to realize that only two people are going to be prime minister. I think as we see the rise of successful conservative politicians at the premier level right across the country who don't believe in taking climate action, it's going to be really, really important that Canadians pick a government this fall that is committed to climate action. And that's certainly the point we're going to be making. to climate action. And that's certainly the point we're going to be making. I just want to go back for one moment to this fascinating idea that he screws up when he's doing well. Like an idea that his own people admit is a thing. What do you think is

going on there that would lead to that? You know, I suppose the most cynical way of looking at it is that when he does well, he's less cautious and maybe just his natural self comes out. Is that fair? I don't know. I think it is. I mean, I think you're at least right that it is. It is a question of caution that once you're up, you think you're the king of the world and you don't worry so much about what's coming out of your mouth or what you're doing. Maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind. So we'd like you to... We like to say people kind.

It played well in the room and in context. Out of context, it doesn't play so well. Whether or not that's his real self that comes out. I mean, I think he is a guy who likes to talk, who likes to think out loud. You know, one of his friends said to me that, you know, Justin Trudeau is always the first guy to, you know, jump in the lake. He just doesn't have, there's a certain lack of fear there. And I think that fear falls off when he seems to be doing well. And it kicks back in when he realizes his margin for error isn't there.

Like one of the things, one of the other things that's often said about Trudeau is that he's very disciplined. He gets the same amount of sleep every night. He eats well. He exercises on a regular basis. He, you know, goes boxing every two weeks. And when I put that to Trudeau, Trudeau said to me, you know, it's still funny to hear people describe me as that because all my life, my father told me I wasn't disciplined. My father always said, you're lazy. You're not applying yourself. You're not going to amount to what you should. And his father was, of course, one of the most famous things about Pierre Trudeau was that he

was famously disciplined. And Justin Trudeau's explanation to me was that his discipline didn't kick in until there were stakes, until there were real stakes that, uh, until he really, until he got into politics and now there were real stakes about what he was doing. Uh, and that, that could be part of it in that when he's up by 20 points, the stakes aren't there clear, aren't clear enough for him. And once he's screwed up and put himself back into a tie with someone, it kicks back in and that discipline comes to the floor. Aaron, thank you so much for this conversation today. It's been really fascinating and it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I can't believe we haven't had you on yet. Well, I'll come back anytime.

Yeah, will you change that with the election coming up? Please. It would be our pleasure. Now for something completely different. Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. So everyone's favorite neighborhood Spider-Man has had a long run on screen, with decades of TV shows and movies and remake after remake. Happy Halloween, Spider-Man's favorite neighborhood Spider-Man has had a long run on screen, with decades of TV shows and movies and remake after remake. Happy Halloween, Spider-Man! A human blowtorch. Spider-Man! There's this vulture guy out there, so if we could just postpone...

I'm Spider-Man. For decades, though, his on-screen appeal was hurting, as he lingered pretty much unloved in low-budget TV productions. Until a resurgence of popularity as a returning character in the hugely popular Marvel movies. I love these movies. Captain, big fan of Spider-Man. Yeah, we'll talk about it later. Just everyone. Good job. Right now though, the two powerhouses of Sony and Disney are in this showdown over how much Spider-Man is worth. Here's the deal. In 1999, the film rights to Spider-Man were sold to Sony. Disney owns the rights to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The last few Spider-Man movies were produced by Disney, but Sony got 95% of the gross box office. Disney has decided it's not okay with that arrangement anymore and wants a 50-50 split.

Sony likes their deal and has now walked away from the negotiations. Now, there are rumors that this is all just a big publicity stunt, or that it's just Disney calling Sony's bluff. Either way, it means Spider-Man's history in the expanded Marvel universe is currently up in the air. Is it dark? I don't feel so good. That's all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBrain. You'll find the Spider-Man!