The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Justin Trudeau: How the Sun Set on Sunny Ways

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying to do something that's never been done before in Canadian history. He says he will fight for a fourth consecutive victory, despite being miles behind his Conservative adversary in the polls. Stephen Maher, author of "The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau," joins Steve Paikin to discuss this and more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying to do something that's never been done before in Canadian history. He says he will fight for a fourth consecutive victory, despite being miles behind his conservative adversary in the polls, and that he can't wait to take on Pierre Pelliev whenever the next election happens. Stephen Maher knows the PM pretty well, having written, The Prince, the Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. And Stephen Maher joins us now here in the studio. Great to have you here. Thank you.

What a pleasure to be here. Well, a pleasure to have you, and I really enjoyed the book. Good job. Well done. Thank you very much. Let's go back, and to that end I want to start with a quote, so Sheldon, if you would, let's bring this up and here we go. It was hard to take him entirely seriously in those days, you write of Justin Trudeau.

He had great hair, a famous name, and a friendly, open way with people, but he had no particular accomplishments for the job. When he talked about policy, he often seemed like a poser, with convictions based on his own inclinations rather than a deep understanding of the issues. He looked like a charismatic, lightweight. Okay, first question. How different is that Justin Trudeau from the Justin Trudeau who has now been prime minister for almost nine years? Well, that's a hard question.

His critics, his opponents would say that he never rose to the occasion. I'm not sure, I think that that sort of history will judge that. There are big files where I remain kind of mystified as to why the party and the government and he didn't do a better job. I think not because it's the most important issue, but the question of Chinese, in particular foreign interference in Canada, and there's an inquiry playing out now, hopefully we will be better able to judge this in another six months. But I find myself looking at some of that stuff and thinking,

I don't understand why the government didn't correct course sooner. So there are things that he obviously, you know, there are big questions about his competence. But there's other things, like the management of Donald Trump and the pandemic, where I think it's hard to fault him at all for his management of some very, very challenging things. I always like it when authors do mea culpapas in the book and you do you do a couple of mea culpas in here like in 2015 you didn't completely appreciate the completely appreciate the fact that the public really wanted him to be the Prime Minister at the time in spite of all of his shortcomings what did the

public find so appealing about him in 2015 that at that point, I guess, was still eluding you of it. I think it's interesting. I was thinking recently about the idea of charisma. And Max Weber's writing on charisma, there is something about that being the scion of a famous father. We see this now. You look at the unlikely political success

of Robert Kennedy Jr. in the United States. It's like having money in the bank, in a way, in politics. People yearned for him, which he knew, and the people around him knew, but being a kind of creature of the bubble at that time, I had not seen that, the way that Canadians wanted the son of Pierre Trudeau to be in their lives politically. They thought

maybe that guy should run the country. And that was to be the engine of his great success at that period. Here's another quote from the book. I think Justin Trudeau is deeply unknowable, says one person who knows him and has studied him for years. Anybody who wanted to get close to him was wanting to use him because of his name and therefore he wears a mask. I think that he is a deeply guarded person who opens himself up to nobody. He no doubt knows this about himself. Others have no doubt told him this. And yet, having that tight circle has proved to be a political problem for him. So why doesn't he open that circle of advisors any wider?

I think it's too late now. The time to do that likely would have been after the SNC Laveland affair, a reset, the kind of thing that John Crenshend did effectively, that Stephen Harper did effectively. Well, we need to make some changes around here. Thank you for your help. So in particular, his relationship with Katie Telford, his chief of staff, was with him from the very beginning

of this Montreux and Blois conference, where they started to think about how they would take over the Liberal Party of Canada. And it has been both very effective and somewhat limiting. They are a team that acts together. And also, all chiefs of staff end up being seen as gatekeepers. And resentments develop around that,

because other people want time with the prime minister and want to influence him. And therefore, they get the bounce at some point. But she hasn't. No. And I think that that's because he relies on her in a way that is unusual for a prime minister. You've got a really unusual quote in this book from Dominic LeBlanc, who is of course his great longtime friend and cabinet minister, quoted as saying, we've got the wrong Trudeau running for leader after he saw how smart his brother Sasha was. How awkward between the brothers has Justin Trudeau being prime minister been, particularly

for Sasha? Yeah. Well, I should say I wasn't able to talk to Sasha for the book. I tried, but he's not a public figure and is not required to help people like me. And I've kind of talked to friends of his. And I believe that he kind of complains. He has done so publicly, actually, about the government. But I think he is wise to sort of keep most of that private. He's critical of the government in some ways.

And I am certain that that was a painful family episode when together somehow they decide that Sasha is not going to be part of the Justin team. Because he was at the beginning. He was. And then they nosed him out. Yeah. They did.

And that seems to have been because there's two sort of theories about that. One is that his views, in particular on Israel, would have posed a vulnerability for the party that they could not afford. And the other is that he's a dynamic, intelligent, forceful person who knows a lot about politics. And sometimes you can have too many people like that in a team. Most people I talk to say that the train, I guess, first started to go off the tracks

when the prime minister broke his promise on electoral reform. He swore this would be the last first past the post-election, 2015, that they bring in some kind of electoral reform, proportional representation, whatever, and then he went back on that promise. Do you know or do you think, do you have any reason to believe, that he regrets that decision and that if he'd had it to do again, he should have stuck to that promise? So we spoke about that in my interview with him, and I didn't include it in the book

because I see it as kind of a cop-out and didn't feel like contradicting him. But what he said, well, I wish I'd been clearer at the time that what I thought was a good idea would be a ranked ballot, rather than leaving open the impression that he would consider proportional representation. Which he didn't want to consider actually. Well that's right. And I felt that there was something, that he was less than forthcoming, might be the best way to put it, in proposing that.

Because, you know, the fair vote candidate of people people the people who advocate for proportional representation and I am extremely sympathetic to them I think that they and I could bore your listeners for a long time about why I think proportional representation should get serious consideration in Canada but he never thought that and he could have easily said well now I'm interested in electoral reform but I don't like proportional representation and won't be doing that. But he never said that. He didn't say that, and you know why.

Because there was a lot of new Democrats and Greens who were tempted to vote for him and be excited about it, who would not have maybe been tempted, right? So he's not the first politician to be a little economical with the truth about something like that. He does do some things that really do make you scratch your head though. I mean the vacation to the Aga Khan's private island, on the reconciliation day, going to Tofino instead of taking part in those ceremonies, skipping reconciliation day.

Why does he seem to have such a tin ear on things that no doubt his advisors tell him, boss, this is going to get you in trouble. Well on the question of family travel, and all of these things have to do with family travel, I find it galling and irritating and so do many of the liberals who I know, who end up saying privately, why does he keep doing this? He's shooting us in the foot. We're trying to get him re-elected, and he's making it difficult by doing this. But I spoke to him in particular about the holiday

place in Jamaica, Prospect Villa, I think it's called. He first went there as a child with his mother and father. It has deep emotional meaning to him, and he wants to share that with his children. So I think you can understand at some point. Yes. Yeah. So in a sense, I see it as a kind of princely sense

of entitlement. That for his family, he believes that there are certain things that they should have, and he is not willing to sacrifice those things. I'm glad you used that word, because there is a point in the book, and obviously it is the title, where you call him a prince, and you say, rules don't apply to princes.

Do you think he believes that? I think he does. There was a moment in the 2019 election campaign after it was revealed that he had worn blackface on a number of occasions. And they took the plane from Halifax to Winnipeg. And during that flight he was working the phones and trying to figure out it seemed to a lot of liberals like

this might be the end of the experiment that they were gonna go into a brick wall. And then he gave a scrum in a park in Winnipeg and one of the things he said was I should have known better and I was protected by my layers of privilege Yes, that's correct, you know you look at it and it's like okay he knows that about himself in the end he had Answered every critique of him honestly and answered every critique of him honestly and directly. And so he kind of acknowledges that at times. And then at other times, it appears that maybe he gets kind of caught up and forgets that.

When he came into power in 2015, one of the things he took pains to say was, I'm not going to be like my dad, who was a great centralizer of power in the prime minister's office. I actually want to begin the process of decentralizing things. Well, of course, we know nine years later, he's twice as bad a centralizer of power in the PMO as his father ever was. How did that happen?

So I remember a lot of my sense of politics was formed while I was covering Stephen Harper, who was seen as a great centralizer and a control freak. And I would write these columns saying, it's terrible what Stephen Harper, it's anti-democratic, he's controlling everything, he's treating his ministers like puppets. And then I realized at some point, I got a slightly broader perspective and realized, oh, they're saying the same thing about Barack Obama, that Barack Obama is doing the same thing. And so partly what we have is a process that is taking place irrespective of who happens to be the prime minister. There's two reasons for that. The pressure of 24-7 media coverage and social media

means these people are subject to scrutiny in a way that is Completely different from what his father Did you know you've watched the famous? interview that he's talking to the guy under the peace tower where he says How far will I go just watch me that's a 10 10 minute conversation with a CBC reporter. Tim Rafe. Tim Rafe. On the steps. On the steps.

No security around. Incredible. 10, 15 minutes. They're having a free exchange. That does not happen now. Would not happen now. So that's part of it is the media environment has changed. The other part of it is that the mandate that Justin Trudeau

earned was a personal presidential style mandate, as with Mr. Harper. The age of regional chieftains who can rally a region for somebody seemed to be gone. The local MPs, there were all, what was it, 33 MPs when Justin took over and then suddenly there was a majority. So in a very real sense, the mandate is earned by the leader and with that mandate comes the authority to treat ministers like spokes ministers. So I mean, I think it's problematic

because the Westminster system is not designed to run that way. But it's also sort of just the way things are now. I want to circle back to a couple of things you said earlier, which is he handled Donald Trump pretty well. He handled COVID pretty well. I mean, I think Japan is the only other country in the world that had a lower death rate than Canada did So yeah, we didn't get the vaccines as fast as some others. But if you you know with the benefit of hindsight

He handled those two enormous files pretty well He doesn't seem to be getting much credit for that anymore. Why is that? Well, you know politics The question isn't what have you done for me? It's, what are you going to do for me now? Right? So I believe that there is a residual sense of goodwill toward him. There are a lot of people, not everybody,

but a lot of people, oh, yeah, I know you did some good jobs. But they're just turning the page. My sense of the country is people just want to change. They want somebody else. No, the polls reflect that. But if you had to point to one thing and said, Justin Trudeau keeps doing fill in the blank,

and that's why he's 20 points behind the conservatives now. What's that thing? I think perhaps it's a sense that he sees himself as a heroic figure who's at the center of a story. And that, you know, because when he says why he now wants to stay around and run for another election, it's because it's so important that we stop Pierre Pauliev from implementing his dangerous ideas and so on. But the thing is that even the people who agree with him,

who have misgivings about Poliev, and a lot of progressive conservatives do, they don't say, well, we need Justin Trudeau to stop him. So he's casting himself in that position now. And once people have grown fatigued of a public figure, it seems like it's very difficult to turn that around. Well, there are 800,000 kids, I think you tell us, in the country today who are no longer in poverty because of the Canada Child Benefit, which he brought in.

This will be a signature legacy piece when they write the history of this time. Again, doesn't seem to get a lot of credit for it all this time later. I think one of the things about that and I spent a fair bit of time researching it, that piece, because I think that's extremely significant. If you've ever known people of modest means and what their lives are like when they find out that they're going to have a child, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, if the fact that the government is going to help you at that moment, I think that's enormous. All the families that that's helped.

But as I was discussing the book, Endlessly Imposing on My Friends, I was struck by how many of them had no idea about that because it doesn't affect upper middle class people, right? It doesn't, there's a, you know, so it, people tend to think about things the government does for them. I remember when they had the public inquiry into the convoy situation in Ottawa and the Prime Minister was hauled before that, well hauled is putting it too strongly, but he was brought before the judge and he was asked to testify and the conventional wisdom out of Ottawa then was, holy smokes he did great. All that kind of over-the-top dramatic breathiness and all that, none of that was there. He

answered direct questions with direct answers and he performed extremely well and I guess my question is, how come we don't see that guy very often? Well, it's a good question. I think that he's a bit of a ham actor, right? I wrote in the book about a scrum that he gave early on back when he had the three musketeers, soul patch and mustache, and had been, said something slightly dumb about

maybe if Stephen Harper was still prime minister, Quebec should separate or something, you know, an immature thing. He mused about it, yes he did. He had mused about it. And he gives this overwrought scrum where he's talking about himself in the third person and saying, you know, the question is not does Justin Trudeau love the country?

It's like the reporter standing around where he's struggling not to laugh, right? He has this love of drama and being in the spotlight and they've worked on him and worked on him and he continues to do this work. It's one of the admirable things about him is that he will spend all that time in front of the mirror and you know watching tapes becoming a more disciplined performer but underneath it there is a camera hog, a spotlight seeking person with tremendous energy, a tremendous desire to interact with people, to be seen, to be admired.

How does he not know that that is ultimately self-destructive behavior if you're trying to get elected for a fourth time? Well, he would not have been elected once if it wasn't for that, is what I would say. This unique quality that he has, I mean you've watched a lot of politicians in a lot of situations. Have you seen somebody who's sort of better at all those things than he is? Glad handing and he's not the greatest debater or greatest speech-giver, but he's

present and energetic and has done his homework and, you know, he's a... Incredible campaigner. Yeah. Works a room amazingly. Yeah. He's got those skills. There's no question about it. He's not like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or Tony Blair,

able to sort of, or Jean-Cretia, unable to create a mind picture that changes everyone's thinking about things. But in terms of showing up being a vital physical presence and being energetic and on topic and so on. But the flip side of that is, think an excessive exuberance, excessive showmanship. I know everybody asks you this question and you'll be disappointed if I don't ask you the question because you're expecting questions.

So why don't I just indulge you and I'll ask the question anyway. Obviously nobody knows, but you're closer to it than I suspect anybody watching this right now. As you look for tea leaves to read does it look like he's staying or does it look like he's going? Both. Really? Like I know that he he talks to people and gets advice and I know that some of that advice is I don't see any way that you can win. You should go, right? You've done so much, boss. It's been fantastic.

And he says, thank you. I disagree, right? So that's what's going on all the time, people telling him. And he's no fool, right? So he must know that if he sticks around, he's got months and months of eating dirt, basically, is how I see it. No one's ever come back from 20 points down to win a fourth term. No.

Never happened. No. And increasingly, there's a hardening sense among liberals that he's not even necessarily the best person to save the furniture, right? If we're gonna have Prime Minister Pierre Poliev, do you want him to have the biggest majority in Canadian history, or do you want to maybe try to limit him to a minority, right? Like, you know, that's the way liberals are thinking. But it's impossible the Prime Minister is thinking to himself, no liberal is going to win the next election, period, full stop.

So I may as well go down with the ship and give my successor a fresh slate. People, I mean, I know some liberals think that. And some liberals who wanted him to go last year now think it's too late. Right? So, but the recent events in the United States provided a powerful example of how things can change when you change the leader. If you look at all of the incumbents who were in office when the cost of living crisis hit, it's not been good for them, for any of them. It's like a hurricane politically when things are so terrible, when people's

pocketbooks are, they blame the leader of their country. It doesn't have to be rational. That's what happens. And in the United States, one liberal put it to me a while ago, Joe Biden became the sin eater, right? He has taken the hit and left the stage. has taken the hit and left the stage, and now Kamala is somehow able to try

to be the change candidate. So it is possible that the liberals could try something similar in Canada. And my question is, and because he's so guarded and such a talented performer, you cannot know really what's going on inside his head on something like this. But my question is, is he just too addicted to the spotlight to want to get out of the way?

The short answer is, we'll know soon enough. That's Stephen Marr. His book is called The Prince, The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. It has been that, but it's given guys like Marr lots of stuff to write about. We thank you for coming into our studio tonight. It's been a real pleasure, thank you.