The Paul Wells Show - How did the Liberals get here?

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

On Monday, Justin Trudeau announced he'll resign as Liberal leader and Prime Minister once the party picks a successor, bringing an end to almost a decade in power. Marci Surkes gives us an inside view of the Liberal party before and during the Trudeau years.    Marci Surkes was executive director for policy and cabinet in Justin Trudeau’s Prime Minister’s Office. She ran the caretaker government during the 2021 election. She is now the Chief Strategy Officer for Compass Rose. 

The Paul Wells Show is made possible by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where I'm a senior fellow. [♪upbeat music playing.♪ Justin Trudeau resigns. How did the Liberal Party get here and what happens next? They have to be in it to rebuild and understand where we are and what Canadians are looking for in terms of leadership. That has changed. This week, Marcy Cirks on the past and future of the Liberal Party.

I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know that I generally believe that one of the strengths of the podcast is that it's not too close to the headlines. But this week, it's a little different. Justin Trudeau announced on Monday that he'll resign as liberal leader and prime minister after the party picks a successor. It's a stunning end to a decade in power. And I find myself thinking about how it all happened, all of it, starting before Trudeau became the party's leader and on into whatever happens next. To help us all understand this period in Canada's political history, I couldn't have a

better guest than Marcy Serks. You know her already. She's the liberal on The Panel, which is my fancy name for the pundit panel I sometimes convene here on the pod. But she's not just any liberal. She was executive director for policy and cabinet in Justin Trudeau's prime minister's office. She ran the caretaker government in 2021 while all of her colleagues went off to campaign for re-election. She's been back out in the private sector since 2023 and last year she became Chief Strategy Officer for Compass Rose and I'm really happy to have her here for the whole show. Marcy, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Paul. Were you surprised by what happened on Monday? I mean, by Monday we had all figured out that it was going to happen, but say a week earlier, would you have predicted that he was going to be resigning?

Let's put it this way. Last week, I was wondering if he was going to plunge us all into a general election immediately in the new year, and I'm not sure that that option was entirely off the table until quite late in the day. There may have been a school of thought and I may have shared it to some degree that a captain should go down with the ship.

And if the ship is looking as leaky as it appears, and as though it is heading toward an inevitable sinking in the next general election, perhaps there could have been an argument perhaps that the prime minister should have gone down with it, which could have been a terrible result. It may yet be a terrible result. We'll come back to that. Could have been a terrible outing for the Liberal Party and at the same time would have

provided a clean break and an opportunity to rebuild without the history of the Trudeau government still attached to it. So I was still thinking that was a possibility, although by this weekend and based on mutterings and rumblings around town, it was starting to feel as though the other option would be it. And in terms of what the Prime Minister has selected, I mean, there were really very few options remaining, none of them particularly good. But by the time we came through the weekend, it was clear that the option that he was selecting and did ultimately communicate to Canadians yesterday is probably the best of the bad options in order to retain some stability for the government to proceed. The government will govern and the House will not sit until the 24th of March, yet I'm sure the opposition parties will find other ways of making their case. And the party now is in the very unusual and I would submit

difficult position of concurrently running a leadership campaign while readying itself for the general, which as we all know could come as early as May. I kind of had the same thought, you know, up until a couple months ago that liberals are going to lose, he might as well lose as anybody. And that's sort of the Stephen Harper model of honorable defeat. And then you get a fresh leader for a new time. I assume that Christian Freeland made all of that

impossible. I think that's absolutely the turning point in the thought process. I think that's absolutely the turning point, uh, in the thought process. Uh, I believe when he was speaking to Mark Critch in December, uh, he was readying himself for the election whenever it would come. I think at that point in early December, um, he

still believed that to be the case. Uh, the team around him believed that would be the case, even if the results were going to be drastically unfortunate. It's hard to pinpoint any one thing over the course of history, but if there is a turning point in this story for the prime minister, it is most likely the resignation of Christia Freeland

and the spectacular manner in which she resigned her position. There was really no coming back from that. The caucus was no longer with him after the the free land exit. That is very clear. And I'm sure more of those stories will come out and will, you know, at some point, there'll be more to unpack and noodle about how that all happened, what precipitated it precisely. But in the meantime, for ease of your listeners and trying to make sense of what's happened, I think that's the moment we'll turn to in terms of when there was no path left to Justin Trudeau to run in the next election. Okay. Now let's back up a hell of a long time. When I wrote

to you last week, I said, you know, if things get weird, let's just talk about the whole recent history of the Liberal Party. And you were already thinking about that. I mean, the Liberal Party became your job in 2007, if I'm not mistaken. And you were an early adapter in getting out of journalism because you were working in journalism before that. Tell me about your journalism work and then why you decided to go and work for the Liberal Party. From a very young age, I was very adamant that I was going to be a member of the parliamentary press gallery. I had a deep affection for Canadian politics, I think, mostly formed by being raised in the time of the 1995 Quebec referendum. I was living in Montreal. I grew up in Montreal. That was a very formative moment, I think, for all young people, whether you were Anglophone

or Francophone, whether you supported separation or wanted to remain part of Canada, it was impossible for that to not be a pervasive component of your upbringing. And so I was very attracted to what was possible in politics. And from a unity perspective, my parents took me to the unity rally in downtown Montreal. You'll remember the iconic images of that Canadian flag hanging over Dominion Square and I was hooked. I was hooked from that moment. I wanted to be part of political life.

For me, I was like I said, really attracted to the idea of covering politics, helping to make sense of politics so that people could be better informed voters and citizens. I still believe that is a critical component to our democracy. I started working as a really an unpaid intern at the CBC in Montreal

and worked my way there through school. I went on to law school at McGill and as I was studying law, I was concurrently working as a journalist. I was working at the Ottawa Citizen. I covered the 2004 federal election, general election, Paul Martin's first election campaign for the Citizen. And I was working my way up, as I said, to getting into the gallery. Even in 2004, 2005, 2006, there were already not very many jobs in journalism. The job pool was shrinking. It was hard to find steady employment. I wasn't keen to practice law. I did pursue that and pursued writing the barristers and solicitors exams in Ontario.

But all the while, my heart was still on the hill. And so if I couldn't get a job in the gallery, I decided to take my shot and work for the liberals. I was not a partisan before I began working on the hill. I'm still probably not the most partisan partisan, though I am a liberal through and through. I identified with liberal values. And at the time that I started in early 2007, which feels like a zillion years ago, it was not long after Stephen Harper had formed government. The Liberal Party was in opposition. Stéphane Dion had been selected leader at that famous convention in Montreal, the unexpected win of Stéphane Dion. The caucus at that time was still not, well, it was not as small as it was going to be. I was a hundred plus members of the Liberal caucus under Stephane and I came to work and I would say

the prevailing attitude of Liberals when I showed up on the hill first as an intern and then as a an actual legislative assistant by March of 2007, the prevailing attitude of liberals on the hill at that time was that liberals were simply in the penalty box. Canadians would come to their senses soon, restore the natural governing order, and that Stephen Harper would be a blip of history, and the liberals would return. So my experience with the party and working for the party was in that mindset, in that headspace in opposition. And I stayed working in opposition for the Liberal Party from January of 2007 until the party formed government in November of 2015. I spent every day of that period working in opposition.

I remember that time very well. I went to interview Stéphane Dion, whom I had covered as national unity minister and whom I very much admired. And I went to interview him in the office of leader of the opposition after he had been in that office for nearly a year and there was nothing on the walls. He hadn't decorated the place yet. And I thought, oh my God,

he doesn't really believe he's the opposition leader. He thinks that this is a weird interlude and that he's going right back into the proper ministerial offices. And I got the impression that a large part of that period was about the liberal party kind of coming to terms with what had happened to it. To borrow a phrase from Tennessee Williams, it sort of needed its fingers pressed down on the fiery braille of reality a bit. Yeah, that was my experience exactly, Paul.

Now, as somebody who was very new to the game at that point, I quite appreciated the possibility or the prospect that we were going to be returned to government soon. I thought that was great. I was looking forward to it. I guess, you know, I grew up a little, and opposition has a funny way of hardening you and creating a hunger in you to do better, to be better. And I think that actually that attitude is what started to take place think that actually that attitude is what started to take place in the liberal party, but not, not very quickly, not quickly enough, in fact, for the party to have been successful under Ignatiev, because the the prevailing which we should unpack a bit that true opposition mindset, that reckoning finally took place. And that was the same period, of course, the party was being written off entirely.

There's the Peter C. Newman book, there was all of the punditry saying, you know, liberal party has absolutely no future. There is no room for a centrist party in a polarized political spectrum. The liberal party is a passe concept. All centrist parties are going the way of the dodo. And that, that and only that is what finally flipped the headspace of liberals and got the party back into a zone where it was ready to once again, compete for government. I remember the 20, let's see now, Trudeau becomes the leader in 2013. So it must've been the 2012 convention in Ottawa.

Peter Newman's book had just come out. That convention was just almost priceless marketing for Peter Newman because almost every person who went to the podium at the Liberal Convention began their conference by cussing out Peter Newman, what does he know, this party is not dead. But it was about that time that liberals started to think, man, something needs to change here

because we're not gonna get back in office on our charm. And it was at that time that Bob Ray was the interim leader. And there was a bit of a debate about whether he should become the permanent leader. Yeah. So as regular listeners or avid fans of politics will recall in the period between 2006 and 2013, the Liberal Party, of course, had four leaders in

fairly rapid succession, Mr. Dion, Mr. Ignatiev, Mr. Re, and Mr. Trudeau. And as we've just alluded, I mean, the Dion-Ignatiev period was really marked by believing that Liberals could just show up and would win. I will say Mr. Ignatieff did run, I think, on a fairly solid platform and was getting closer to what eventually became Justin Trudeau's winning formula on the middle class and those seeking to join it. No one remembers Mr. Ignatieff's platform, but it was a very middle-class family pack-oriented kind of platform with policy set that wasn't as focused as Mr. Dionne's had been on the green shift, which we all

remember, which of course eventually is the precursor to Trudeau putting a price on pollution. So both of those platforms actually sort of are the germs of the seeds and the ideas of what is to come from the Liberal Party. But in both cases, a leader who was not capable of selling those platforms clearly to the Canadian people and Liberals are very oftentimes see the world through their own lens or Liberal centric. The reality is of course, Mr. Harper also presented a very strong case to Canadians on an easily understood, accessible platform, five key points, turned out to be a closer to centre, centre-right leader, very able and capable on the world stage, which before he became prime minister wasn't obvious.

And so, you know, while liberals really dissect themselves and eat themselves up inside, they were actually, there was a formidable leader on the other side that Liberals didn't want to recognize, but that was the case. Mr. Harper obviously was successful in all of those elections that Liberals were not. The worst, culmination in 2011, that reduction of seats, the seat count that went from 100 to 77 to seats, the seat count that went from, you know, 100 to 77 to under Mr. Ignatieff, I think 34, you can fact check me on that. But it was a very tight rump of a caucus sitting for the first time in history as the third party opposite. But I will also

say that it was that rump caucus under the interim leadership of Bob Ray. And as you say, some people believed Bob, perhaps that was Bob's moment to be the leader. Whether it was or wasn't, we'll never know. But Bob Ray's tenure over that two-year timeframe, and yes, that convention in 2012, where liberals actually had to look themselves in the eye and say, do we have a raison d'être and what is it? And how are we going to

reconnect and reconnect with ourselves and Canadians? Bob presided over all of that. And it was a very unglamorous timeframe to be leader of the Liberal Party sitting third party opposite. I won't bore you with the details, but the parliamentary precinct, you go from having quite nice offices when you're in government to fairly acceptable, actually quite lovely offices when you're the official opposition. And when you're the third or fourth party opposite, it suddenly gets very not nice. Yeah. Our mutual friend, Jordan Owens, who was a staffer and along with you at that time, said that the party moved from the OLO,

Office of Leader of the Opposition, to the LOL. Yes, exactly right. And LOL because the light fixtures were hanging out of the ceiling, there was really nothing good about it. And it was very humbling. It was very humbling to move from the grandeur of Centre Block to where we were suddenly positioned on Spark Street over a bar and an ATM. And when I said earlier that opposition can harden you and make you hungry, that was exactly when that mindset came into being.

There is nothing to force the hunger or desire to get back in the game, than being reduced to effectively rubble. Ignatiev had seen that coming, right? His initial sort of political offer was his radiant person. and he was a great writer and thinker and BBC and Harvard guy. But part way through his term as leader, he brought in professionals and led by Peter DiNolo, a Kretschen strategist and a bunch of sort of battle hardened liberal pros to try and impose some order

and some strategy into things. But he was a great writer and thinker and he was a great writer and thinker and he was a great writer and thinker and he was of sort of battle hardened liberal pros to try and impose some order and some strategy into things. But by that time it was kind of already too later, it didn't stick or Ignatiev was the wrong messenger or how would you analyze that? It was a bit late in the day. All due credit to Peter DiNolo who assembled a very strong team at that point. Pat Cerbero was part of that group. The late great Mario Lagu was part of that as the

director of communications. I mean, it was really in terms of the liberal universe, it was your all-star team. And Mr. Ignatiev had recognized that he would need that kind of team around him if he was going to have a fighting chance in the campaign in 2011. And kudos to Mr. Ignatieff that he recognized it. I think he took the advice from that team, took it seriously. I think he came to love that team and many of the people around him very sincerely. And it was probably too late in the day. The die had been cast. As we all recall, the conservatives ran exceptionally effective negative campaigns against both Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff. We can all remember the tagline, just visiting. It stuck. Very difficult once your opponent has framed you to unframed yourself or to recast yourself.

And even the best in the business couldn't turn it around quickly enough to face the people in 2011. And, you know, was it Mr. Ignatieff's shortcomings? I think that's actually a little bit too facile an answer. I think Mr. Ignatieff grew into a far stronger politician than he began, and he had a great team and he had a platform that could have connected with people.

But sometimes in politics, the people have made the decision before you even leave the gate. And I think in that case, most people's minds had been made up if they were going to give Mr. Ignatieff a chance, certainly by the time debate night came, that chance had evaporated.

There was no point of return after the time debate night came, that chance had evaporated. There was no point of return after the leaders debate. And there was the, as is true in every campaign, there are the known knowns and then there are the unknowns. And nobody could have predicted the rise in that instance of Jack Layton as a folkloric hero of epic stature. And very difficult to compete with that, both a very capable politician and leader in Mr. Harper and an unexpected rise in Jack Layton's character. Amid all of this, Ignatius loses his seat, has to resign as leader, Justin Trudeau arrives.

What did he represent and what did he seem to represent to the party at the time? Mr. Trudeau was, I would say, Wyatt Herr in a sense, in terms of the caucus in those early days post Ignatiev. From the time Justin Trudeau entered politics in 2008 in the by-election in Papino, if I've got my year right, you know, it was Justin Trudeau. So yes, I mean, there was a certain status and recognition that came with him being in the caucus. But I will say in those early

years, first under Mr. Ignatiev and then for the first part of Mr. Ray's tenure, Mr. Trudeau was very focused on issues that he wanted to become more expert in issues that mattered, particularly to his writing, he spent considerable time focusing on immigration, immigration policy, I believe he was the critic for immigration at one point when we were in opposition. He focused always on youth and youth engagement. And he really kept his powder dry for the most part. And I would never tell tales out of caucus meetings, but I'll say only this. It wasn't like Justin Trudeau showed up and was suddenly trying to steal the show by any means. I mean, he was a caucus member like any other. And I think he

understood instinctively and probably through the advice of others that he would have to pay his dues. I mean, he was clear about that when he ran in Papineau. Papineau is not a sure seat for the Liberal Party of Canada under any circumstance. And I think he relished the opportunity to take the fight to a seat like Papineau where he was fighting the Bloc Québécois, where he was dealing with a very diverse constituency, a constituency on the lower end of the income, on the income scale.

And he wanted to prove himself. That was his goal. He wanted to prove himself and focus on the issues that mattered to that constituency. And so in terms of him presenting as a leader within the caucus that really only came after he had wet his feet as an active member of parliament on a certain set of issues.

He was adamant at the time, has been adamant ever since that it's not just another pretty face that wins an election, that you got to go on hope and hard work with the emphasis on the hard work, the door knocking, the get out the vote effort, the mechanics of politics. Was that a little bit disingenuous? I mean, if his name was Joe Smith, would he have become the prime minister? Probably not. He probably would not have become prime

minister Joe Smith. He had built in advantages, but he was very aware of that and didn't take it for granted. He had built in advantages and disadvantages. Joe Smith may have been a formidable candidate for the liberal party in Alberta and Justin Trudeau was never going to be a winning candidate for the Liberal Party in Alberta and Justin Trudeau was never going to be a winning ticket for the Liberal Party in Alberta. Right? So there were pros and cons to the name, but it's not just a name. I think why Justin Trudeau is such an exceptional figure

in Canadian history, I don't mean exceptional necessarily like great, I mean truly in the true sense of that word, exceptional, different, unique in our political life and public life in this country is because there is no one I can name off the top of my head who Canadians collectively felt they knew from the day of their birth. Justin Trudeau has been a household name in this country since the day of his birth in 1971. And for an entire generation of people who either grew up when he was growing up or who have nostalgia for his father's era or who came to Canada on the basis of policy set in place by his father. He represents a certain time and moment and place in the public life of this country, And there would be no other candidate who you could say that about. And so, yeah, you know, he didn't start off in politics. He came to politics. He understood what he came with. He understood both, again, instinctively, but also there was a good

body of polling research available, public opinion research available when he considered running for leader and then was the leader, that demonstrated that he would not easily be defined by his opponents because not only did Canadians all know him, at least at the get-go, and this is clearly soured over the decade of leadership, but at first instance and first blush, not only did Canadians all know who he was, generally speaking, Canadians wanted him to succeed. And that is again, a very unique position to be in in Canadian politics. Nine times out of 10 Canadian politicians have to introduce themselves first and that takes a long time and then convince people to want them to succeed. And Justin Trudeau had that built in from day one. So all he could do was potentially spoil that attitude, but he was coming in with

the advantage of people wanting him to succeed. I want to say a word about the people who are supporting this podcast. Gill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy offers more than just a master's program. They strive to bring together different perspectives and disciplines through public lectures and seminars, strike a better balance between theory and practice in their research and emphasize the various complexities of the policy process in their conferences. But if you are interested in earning a Master of Public Policy with global reach in just one year, applications are open now for next fall.

Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. My big read on Trudeau is that he did have a real sense of himself and of his effect on people in 2012, 2013, and somehow that went away over time. And his ability to read the room and understand himself seems to have been dulled over time. Do you buy any of that? I'll say two things. I agree with your statement. I think he had a very good sense of self and

his effect and impact on people. Uh, I think two things, uh, are important to point out here. The first is, I don't want to leave this unsaid that interim period between the Ignatiev defeat in 2011 and when Justin Trudeau becomes leader in 2013. Um, as I said, Bob Ray did the interim period between the Ignatius defeat in 2011 and when Justin Trudeau becomes leader in 2013. As I said, Bob Ray did the unglamorous work, but in the unglamorous work, what I mean by that is he

created the building blocks for Justin Trudeau to stand on in his leadership and beyond. Bob Ray stripped the party back. It was down to the studs if you're doing a wholesale reno on your house. He ripped it back to the studs. He questioned every orthodoxy of the party. Why do we do it this way? Why not another way? What does it mean to have a riding association? Is that riding association connected only to liberals? Is it part of the community? Is it a community service organization? What is it? What is in fact the machinery of this party?

And it was Bob who laid the track for that, for Justin to come in and build on it. And I just wanna make sure we say that before pivoting to Mr. Trudeau's leadership. I think one of the lines that Mr. Trudeau used very effectively in the 2015 general campaign, there were a number of very catchy phrases in that campaign. Some of them probably courtesy of Jerry Butz who has a tremendous way with words. courtesy of Jerry Butz who has a tremendous way with words. But one of the lines in that campaign was Mr. Harper doesn't understand how traffic and congestion impact your lives and the failing

infrastructure in our urban centers because he has spent the last part of a decade in the backseat of a limo or motorcade. And that line keeps coming back to me and haunting me. We used it to great effect in the campaign. It was a big applause line in the stump speech. That image of Mr. Harper sitting isolated in the backseat of a motorcade. And I think the reality for leaders, many leaders at that level, is that the isolation sets in at some point and your reality is so skewed. And even someone who has a very strong EQ ability, emotional ability to read the room or read people, which I still believe the prime minister has. I actually think you saw him on the steps of Rideau cottage yesterday, or just in front of Rideau cottage yesterday in terms of more of a more of an emotional

response that we saw in his resignation speech. I think even for someone who is deeply connected and rooted and has family, I think it's inevitable. I think these positions create a bubble around you. And in the case of Mr. Harper before, Mr. Trudeau, and likely whoever succeeds them as prime minister of this country, it is much harder to stay connected than it is to become disconnected. That disconnect

is so easy. Everybody does your bidding for you. And you have this life of great privilege. It's not easy. I'm not saying being prime minister is easy. It's the hardest job in the country, but it's also an alternate reality. And I think that's what has set in. And it's not particular to any one leader. It may be particularly acute in this case. Perhaps we can speak of the different ministers that shifts in the ministry that led to a smaller circle of core advisors, all of these things, which I'm sure you want to talk about. But there is a built-in component of this job that takes somebody away from that normal human interaction that most Canadians experience every day.

So one of the real revelations for me was when Kretchen was prime minister and he was mad at my boss, Conrad Black, who had founded a national newspaper to put the sticks to Jean Kretchen. And there was a national newspaper to put the sticks to Jean Chrétien. And there was a national caucus meeting in Halifax and there was a chicken lobby dinner laid on. The chicken people laid on a nice chicken dinner for the liberals. And so Chrétien spotted me at the chicken thing and came over and started yelling

at me about Conrad Black. And the thing that was striking was that a few of the MPs were around and their spouses, and they quickly became a kind of a Greek chorus, jumping in to let Kretschen know that he was right and he was brave to take on Conrad Black. And it was the most surreal experience, certainly of that year, was, and you're right, prime minister, keep going prime minister. And I thought, what is it like to go through your day where you're surrounded by people who are blowing that much sunshine up your ass all the time? It's not normal. I mean, that's the reality.

It's not a normal set of circumstances. The best we can hope for out of our political leaders is that they are able to maintain some sense of being grounded. And that's it. Like I said, able to maintain some sense of being grounded. And that's it. Like I said, it's so easy to not be when you have, for the most part, particularly when when you hold the levers and you hold the cards, an endless lineup of people who will agree with you. I will say two caveats, the most important function within the executive branch of our government is that when it's operating properly, the public service are not there to be us people. They hold to the adage, and I have experienced this time and time again

when it is convenient and when it is inconvenient that the public service at the highest levels do provide fearless advice. And by that it is very often contrary advice. And so a politician who makes it up to this rank and this level, they may have their caucus supporting them and being the Greek chorus, but they will inevitably confront contradiction and challenge from the public servants who support them. And that is one of the beautiful hallmarks of our democracy. And second, I would say, the Liberal Party of Canada. I keep going back, you want to talk about the Liberal Party, I keep going back to the opening line of Tolstoy's great masterpiece, Anna Karenina, all happy families are alike and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique ways.

Not saying the Liberal Party is an unhappy family, but it may be unique in its unhappiness at times. In so far as for a political party, it differs somewhat from the conservatives and new democrats in terms of the ethos and culture of the party and its caucus. The Liberal Party often has a democratic surplus. You talk about democratic deficits or antipathy or people not feeling connected to the political process, but within the Liberal Party there's a surplus of people who are connected to the process, who want to be involved. And that surplus means that sometimes they fall into line, and sometimes they are the Prime Minister's yes people, and a lot of times they are not. They find other ways of making their views known, whether it's a direct red line hotline to the Toronto Star or what have you, liberals have a funny way of both supporting their leaders and denying their leaders that feeling of leadership.

And it's a constant battle. Justin Trudeau actually had tremendous, and I believe still enjoys the support of a number of his caucus for a very long time for a liberal leader. And, you know, lots of other liberal leaders have not been granted that much space to lead. I mean, it was striking right up until the very end. I won't name names, but I know a member of the caucus who had quite a difficult career path was

on the rise and then was on the outs and remained very close to Justin Trudeau, even though Justin caucus who had quite a difficult career path, uh, was on the rise and then was on the outs and remained very close to Justin Trudeau, even though Justin Trudeau had handed out some pretty tough decisions to this MP. I mean, there's a level of personal loyalty that I think honestly mystifies a lot of us who are a little further away from, from the center. Well, I would just say quickly go back to the two things I said previously. One, a general feeling of whether you knew him personally or not, a feeling of goodwill toward Justin Trudeau, which again, sort of unique in our public life. And two, a real ability to connect with people, particularly before a series of events that

have diminished his stature, over the last, let's call it two years, I think it's fair to say, in terms of decline of popularity. But his ability to connect with people was very real. And one thing is, I'll say this, when you're with him, and I will not purport to be best friends with Justin Trudeau, I have spent a lot of time with him, briefing him. When you are speaking with him, his capacity to listen attentively is almost second to none.

He is incredibly present. He is an excellent person to brief because he remembers every detail of the briefing. It's almost uncanny. And so when you're exchanging with him or you're meeting with him or you're one of the legions of Canadians who have encountered him only briefly at a campaign stop or at an event, at a campaign stop or at an event, for that moment in time when he is speaking with you, you are the center of his universe. He is hearing everything you're saying and he is responding appropriately. And again, that's a unique quality that forget all politicians, not all politicians possess, not all people possess. And so that loyalty that has been on display, even in the toughest times from some, and there are some who feel very betrayed by him too, we should say. But for those who still feel loyalty or kinship with him, I get it.

Now, let me put another one of my theories to you and see whether you buy any of it. I think 2019 was a missed opportunity to course correct. They won reasonably easy and pretty and pretty. my theories to you and see whether you buy any of it. I think 2019 was a missed opportunity to course correct. They won reasonably easy and pretty in 2015. They won hard and ugly in 2019. SNC had happened, blackface blew up in the middle of the campaign. And there was this extended transition process

after the election. The prime minister or his office brought in Anne McClellan and Isabelle Houdon, prominent liberals from outside the election, the prime minister or his office brought in Anne McClellan and Isabelle Houdon, prominent liberals from outside the centre to take weeks thinking about how to proceed with a new government. And then very quickly, I got the impression not much had changed. What happened during that time? You're right. Anne McClellan and Isabelle Houdon came in, two very capable people. They were brought in to, as you say, provide a refresh, an opportunity for the government to reset itself at that time. I mean, 2019 was definitely not a pretty campaign. It was a very difficult campaign. I would say that

I don't think the transition there in the fall of 2019 was what was at issue. I think that what happened is the world fundamentally changed as we came into the early part of that year. And you know, you're talking about 2019 into 2020. And we all know what happens in the first quarter of 2020. Everything shifts, every preoccupation that the government thought it would have in that transition turned out to be far less of a priority and in some cases, just not a priority. There was the downing of the plane over Iran. There was, if we remember the- The rail blockades. The rail blockades and upheaval and indigenous communities coming forward in great protest.

Then we started receiving word about a strange virus out of Wuhan, China, and by the middle of March, it was an entirely different ballgame. So the platform that the Liberal Party ran on in 2019, which formed the basis of new mandate letters to the new ministry, all of it was effectively nullified by the circumstance. And I mean, this was the sort of classic events, dear boy events. I mean, anything that was discussed in that transition just came to be increasingly unimportant as we moved through the following year. So was it an opportunity to reset? Sure, it was an opportunity to reset. I don't think any government would have,

no one could predict what was coming. And I don't think any government could have really reset itself in that circumstances. And you can argue maybe the outcome of the transition was not significant enough to even demonstrate that the party had learned any of the lessons from the 2019 election. That's fair. That's fair comment. And that may very well be the case, but almost nothing would have mattered by March of 2020. Let's briefly touch on 21, the most recent election, really strong hopes of getting your majority back. And part of the vehicle for that was going to be increased, tougher anti-COVID measures and vaccine requirements.

And that played out in weird ways over, not just the campaign, but really over the next couple of years in Canadian politics. And then the other thing that happened was Afghanistan blew up like the weekend before you dropped the writ and suddenly you were just in a massive trouble that on the Afghanistan

thing would have been a little harder to predict. Uh, yes. So there were, there were three concurrent and very, um, volatile circumstances playing out in the background of that 2021 general election, which the government and the party chose. It chose the timing to proceed to the writ. And the feelings, of course, being that the government had weathered the storm, the peak COVID storm through a set of, I would say, you can accuse me of partisan bias or personal bias here, but I do think that the Trudeau government will be remembered favorably

in history for having a response that was generous. I know others will say that it led to inflation, but let's pause on the debate for one second. A generous and very robust response and the Canada emergency response benefit and the wage subsidy and the student serve, all of these pieces that none of us want to think about ever again, those policies were enacted from scratch virtually overnight. And the fact that the federal government was able to pull those levers, levers that I think most did not even know that it had meant that the federal government was suddenly, probably for the first time in the post-war period,

very present in people's lives. And it wasn't just about going to the passport office and being frustrated that there was a long line or being annoyed at some antics of a prime minister, it was the federal government putting food on the table and paying the rent in a way that really, like I said, probably not since World War II have Canadians experienced their federal government. And so the party felt like polling was strong. There was a moment where people recognized that the federal government, and I should say, in working in very strong concert with the provinces and the territories throughout that time period, that the government had weathered the storm, had

been there, had been the backstop, had been the glue that kept the country together. And it was in that same campaign, that unraveling, that social cohesion that seemed, you know, we can recall the days, the early days of the pandemic, when we were outside banging on drums for our healthcare workers and celebrating our frontline heroes and placing heart stickers around our neighborhoods because we believed that we needed to be there for one another. It evaporated almost suddenly over the course of that campaign, which was not anticipated. There was a sense internally that the party would be rewarded for its stewardship of the COVID-19 pandemic, both from a public health and an economic perspective. And that those who were detractors, that those who did not believe in vaccines or mandates

or the public health responses, the lockdowns, et cetera, that they were only a small minority of a subset of the electorate. And I think, you know, the prime minister, there are probably some words that he used in those days to describe people who disagreed with the public health advice that perhaps would be one of the things he would regret saying. I wouldn't say it was quite as stark as

Hillary Clinton's The Deplorables, but obviously for more people than was expected, it hit very close to the heart. And that was truly the beginning of that deep, deep anti-Trudeau sentiment, the flags and all the rest of it. I won't use the language on this podcast because we're a no swearing podcast, but you know what I mean. And all of that crystallized over the course of that campaign. And we have been living in that reality since the 2021 campaign. So that was the campaign. The backdrop was, as you say, the humanitarian evacuation from Afghanistan, the fall of Kabul, one, unpredicted,

but happened within 48 hours. That morning when the prime minister went to Rideau Hall to see the governor general to dissolve parliament, he was concurrently being briefed on the situation in Afghanistan. Those are two very difficult things to manage at the exact same moment. There were in the background ongoing discussions, negotiations about the two Michaels. That was happening in the background. And all of the pieces around COVID, including the

reopening of borders in some cases and the loosening of restrictions, while the party was campaigning on firm mandates. And that campaign played out as it did and the government eeked through, but there was nothing pleasant about what was happening behind the scenes or in front of the camera. And the prime minister was managing both, like all of that, being briefed every day as the prime minister

while also running a campaign and having stones thrown directly at his head. Did you leave in frustration or anticipation? Did you leave to get out of the PMO or to get into the wider world? So when we came through the 2021 and I was not on the 2021 campaign, it was the first time I wasn't involved in the national campaign since 2008.

I had played senior roles in 2019 and 2015 with respect to the platform and policy and policy briefings. When I stayed back in 2021, and as I've just detailed, it was not a sit back and enjoy the show kind of time. It was, we were working 24 seven through that caretaker period with a very skeletal staff of ministerial and PMO workers and most others have gone on campaign. And I did work on the transition back to government immediately following the 2021 general.

For me at that point, after 15 years, as we've detailed coming in as an intern and sort of working my way up from the most junior roles that you can have within a caucus, particularly in those years between Mr. Dion, Mr. Ignatieff, if you had said to me, Paul, or if anyone had said, just hang in there, just hang in there. Just hang in there.

At some point, you'll actually be the head of policy and cabinet to the prime minister and work alongside him and his team to set the agenda for cabinet. If you had added onto that, that it will be at a moment of unprecedented crisis for the country where the federal government is going to insert itself into every aspect of Canadians' lives in order to ensure that we don't face an internal collapse, existential collapse. Not only would I have thought you were joking, I would have thought you were absolutely crazy. There was no clear path to that when I started, given where the Liberal Party was. So by the time I reached that apex, and this is a lesson, lessons learned in politics, I learned it watching my boss, Ralph Goodale, be not returned in 2019 after 40 years of service to his community and country.

I learned the lesson that the only power you have in politics, whether you're elected or you're behind the scenes, if you have achieved some level of success, the only power that remains is for you to exercise judgment on your timing for exit. And I think we watched Christia Freeland do that to great effect in December, not that she's exited, she's still in, but exited her position. In my case, I just came to the realization that as a political staffer, if you are able to witness the kind of history that I have borne witness to and leave with your dignity and your perspective and values still intact, you better go because someone else will choose

your timing if you don't. It's an easy question, but I kind of have to ask it. Is that advice you wish Justin Trudeau had taken? I think that is a very good advice in the context of politics. I think leadership at the heart of leadership is making room for others to lead. I think the prime minister has done that now. I do wish it had happened a little sooner, but he learned the lesson. I mean, he certainly got ahead of the caucus

going any further in terms of forcing his hand, but effectively his hand was forced and he did not get to choose his timing. And I haven't spoken to him. I hope he's at peace with it. He seems to be at peace with it. I'm sure he is. He is somebody who I've experienced who can exercise a great deal of calm and serenity once a decision is taken, but he may have learned the lesson that he waited, he waited a little bit too long. What are your hopes for the Liberal Party as it goes through another leadership round and what are you nervous about? Well, it was actually quite something to attend the holiday party in mid-December, which I wasn't sure I was going to, and then I did.

And I was glad that I did because what I saw was a group of people who still feel united in purpose. And what I did not experience was what I had felt when I first became involved in the party in terms of that it's only a matter of time and maybe we'll be in the penalty box. None of that was present. It was a much more clear eyed perspective that I picked up from the room and I probably spoke, I don't know, spoke to dozens and dozens of liberals that night. It was really like a family gathering. And, and for the most part, the attitude is we've had a great run. Mr. Trudeau has led us through very difficult

period. We have accomplished much together. Much of that original concept of how we were going to distinguish ourselves from conservatives has held incredibly generational policy shifts, particularly for young people, both with respect to the Canada child benefit, which has reduced childhood poverty in this country by hundreds of 1000s and the national system for early learning and childcare, which is imperfect, but is growing and really is a generational change. The dental care plan, which was never ours, was always the NDP's and yet liberals have implemented it

to, I think, great effect. The feeling in the room was it's been a great run and it's time to step back, rebuild and reassess. I did not have the feeling that anybody is under the impression that we will succeed in forming government after the next general election and I the impression that we will succeed in forming government after the next general election. And I actually think that's really important. It's really important because again, as we experienced, it was only truly after the reckoning of 2011 that liberals

took that pause, that step back to look inside ourselves and say, what is the values proposal to the Canadian people? And I think right now that needs some reassessing. Can a new leader come in very quickly now? And I am like the prime minister, I'm excited for a leadership race. Probably better if it had happened in the fall than now, but here we are. But I'm excited by it. I'm excited to see who puts themselves forward, excited to see who puts themselves forward, what the vision is they're articulating, and whoever succeeds, asked to know that they are in this for the long haul and the rebuild and the Bob Ray years back, questioning everything, examining all processes, examining who's involved and how the world is. I don't want to use the Stephen Harper one.

You used it last night, I think, in your column. I mean, you know, it is a sea of uncertainty all around us. It's very true. Everything around us is complicated. There is a real pressing economic threat from the United States, possibly a security threat. There are geopolitical considerations that are shifting dramatically when we host the G7 in June.

We now know it will not be Mr. Trudeau in the prime minister seat. Who will it be? And what will that meeting look like? Who will be there from the other G7 nations? Will that group still stand united? Will the United States even participate? I mean these are questions, fundamental questions around the international world order for which there are no answers, which is almost incomprehensible or impossible to believe and yet this is where we

are. I'm excited to see who comes forward. I hope that they are as clear-eyed as I think most liberals are about the prospects and that they are not coming in to think it's a quick win. That would be the worst-case scenario. They have to be in it to rebuild and understand where we are and what Canadians are looking for in terms of leadership. That has changed. It has changed over the course of the decade. And that's why I think it's the normal course of things that Canadians choose different governments every 10 years or so. Marcy Serkis, I'm so glad you took the time today

to lay it all out for people. And I'm glad we're going to get many more chances to talk in the future. Um, thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Paul. It's been a nice walk down memory lane, but the future is going to be very interesting at the least. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show was produced by Antica and supported by McGill University's Max Bell

School of Public Policy. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Laura Reguerre is Antica's head of audio. Kevin Bright wrote the theme music and Andy Milne arranged Kevin's tune for the closing theme. If you subscribe to my Substack, you can get bonus content for this show as well as access to my newsletter. You can do all of that at paulwells.substack.com. If you're enjoying this show, give us a good rating

on your podcast app. It helps spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday.