Today, Explained - Yes We Canada?

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Justin Trudeau won re-election on Tuesday, but it wasn't pretty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you need a router? Visit Linksys.com to save 15% on a new router with the code explained. While supplies last, cannot be combined with other promos, refurbished products not eligible for this promotion, one per customer. Deal with it. Canada had a big election yesterday, but maybe before we get into the results, you could use a quick primer on how their elections even work. We are a charmingly archaic constitutional monarchy. That means the Queen's on all the coins. We're big fans of the queen up here. It does mean that we didn't overthrow anybody in order to gain our independence and freedom. That just, you know, we asked for it nicely.

And we have a parliamentary system, which means that we have 338 elections that happen across the country. You don't elect your head of state. You elect your local member of parliament. And the party that goes on to elect the most members of parliament typically gets the chance to form government. And without further ado, the results of the Canadian election. From coast to coast to coast, tonight Canadians rejected division and negativity. They rejected cuts and austerity, and they voted in favor of a progressive agenda and strong action on climate change. Yes, Canadian JT won, but he also kind of lost.

His party, the Liberals, don't have enough seats in Parliament to pass legislation on their own, so they're going to have to form coalitions. It's undeniably a setback for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. When he was elected four years ago, you know, the wind of optimism and hope and change was at his back. He was a bit of a celebrity, even in the United States. I mean, he scored photo shoots in places like Vogue. He really represented what Canadians wanted the rest of the world to think about them. Like he was this young, dynamic, hot, charismatic leader who was progressive and feminist. And that was really

the image that I think a lot of Canadians were happy to present about themselves. Four years later? Well, he wasn't that anymore. I mean, he was that in 2015. But in this election, he was the incumbent. And the whole liberal order seems to be under threat by this rise of populism and anti-immigration sentiment and just lack of faith in a lot of the values that have created stability over the last, you know, hundred odd years. It seems to me that so many other countries in the rest of the world, Canada is entering the end of this golden age and the fall of Trudeau reflects that kind of twilight era. Jen Gerson co-hosts a

Canadian politics podcast called Oppo. Before we got into the actual election season, I asked her how Trudeau lost his sheen in Canada. Turns out, it sort of starts and ends with the prime minister's fondness for playing dress-up. Yeah, history rhymes on this stuff. Yeah. In 2018, he makes this week-long trip to India, and he shows up in India with these outfits that are costume-like. They are so elaborate and so over-the-top that they look like something that you would wear if you were going to or even participating in an Indian wedding,

not just showing up for a week-long trip to do trade deals. It was the image of Trudeau looking over the top and being quote unquote, a little too enthusiastic about costumes, where I think sort of some of the skepticism about Trudeau's began to eat its way into the national consciousness. And that would, of course, foreshadow another scandal. But before we get to that one, he had a genuine corruption scandal too, right? Not long after that. Yes. And how do I explain the SNC scandal to an American audience in 10 seconds or less? Let's find out.

Oh, Christ. I'm going to try. I'm going to do my best. All right. Tell you what, we'll give you a 60. Okay. It came at the end of last year, one of the stars of Justin Trudeau's cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was shuffled from the high-profile attorney general post to Veterans Affairs. And everybody's like, what prime minister's office tried to get her to issue what was called the Deferred Prosecution Agreement for a company called Essency Lavalin, which is a Quebec-based engineering firm that has been accused of corruption in Libya. This was really the beginning of the end for Justin Trudeau's reputation as a progressive warrior because Jody Wilson-Raybould had, I think, the most senior post of any Indigenous woman in Canadian history. And to shuffle her out because she essentially stood up to the prime minister's office and

said, no, I'm not going to cut a sweetheart deal for a quote unquote corrupt Quebec construction firm or engineering firm was a pretty damning statement on Trudeau and his party. It just demonstrated that his progressive virtues were entirely superficial. And that came before the brownface blackface thing even happened, right? Oh yeah, that came way before it. Time magazine got a hold of this picture of Justin Trudeau with brown makeup dressed up in Aladdin. He apparently had done brownface for a fundraiser

for the school that he formerly worked at. And then after he got confronted with that, he was forced to admit that he'd kind at and then after he got confronted with that he was forced to admit that he'd kind of lost track of the number of times that he had done blackface so relatable so anyway some some video even came out of him not only in blackface where he'd done up his hair and had a giant afro wig from like i think this is like from the 90s but like he'd actually painted his knees and hands and things like that. Like, what? And then when he was asked about that on the campaign trail, he had this amazing quote, and it was something to the effect of, I've always been more enthusiastic about costumes than is somehow,

is sometimes appropriate. For me, it was such an encapsulation of the man's flaws. Not that he was a racist, but that he's a bit of a frat boy. This is a guy who's so privileged and so completely insulated from real life that, you know, there was no part of him that stopped the moment before his hand hit his face with a giant brown makeup brush. I'm actually so glad you said that because I think that gives us an opportunity to play my favorite Trudeau clip, which is him doing an interview in his kitchen and then showing the reporter who's interviewing him, and it's all in French

that he knows how to fall down a flight of stairs, and he just leaps down a flight of stairs and rolls down and totally eats it. And he's like, at the end, he looks back at the reporter, and he's like, voila, look at me, I can fall down stairs. This is a guy who's an actor, and to me, he's this former drama teacher who's playing the role of prime minister,

and doing a pretty creditable job at it, but there's something fundamentally inauthentic about it. And that is what I think the blackface scandal just got to. Like, what? So that scandal came sort of towards the beginning of your election campaign season, which is like enviably shorter than the U.S.'s season. Yeah. I mean, if you wanted to turn this into a conversation about why the America system is bad, I'm here for you.

So how long is it actually? Like 30 days? A rip period kind of spans anywhere from 36 to 50 days. I think we had 50 days just between like two of our debates. Were there any memorable moments in the short campaign that y'all had? No, it's been terrible. It's just been a really, not just nasty campaign in the sense that there was a lot of allegations of sort of racism and the conservatives are anti-abortion. And then there was like this crazy whisper campaign that suggested that Justin Trudeau was like, had an affair with a student back when he was a teacher. I mean, it was all bullshit, complete and utter nonsense.

But it's also been just an extremely shallow campaign. Like there hasn't been a vision. There really hasn't been a narrative. There hasn't been anything to get behind. So in a campaign that was sort of boring and shallow, what did Trudeau have going for him? Very little. My takeaway from this election was that really nobody was trying to persuade anybody else anymore. And that really what this campaign was all about was just getting respective supporters to the polls. So when the Liberals come out and say the Conservatives are going to take away your right to choose and they're, you know, cozying up with racists. Thankfully, Canadians aren't buying it because Conservatives stand in the way of good policies that help people.

Then they campaign on fear and empty promises. They're not trying to win over any conservatives with that. They're just trying to scare their people to vote into voting and vice versa with the conservatives. I mean, when they're going after Trudeau and they're saying like Trudeau is going to make your life unaffordable, he's going to raise taxes. Mr. Trudeau, you are a phony and you are a fraud and you do not deserve to govern this country.

We're going to vote him out. Vote him out. Vote him out. They're just trying to ensure that their people are motivated to come out to the polls. It's funny, though, because that sounds like a United States election when you were talking all that smack about our election system over here. Yeah, we're starting to take on some of your traits. And let me tell you, it's not great. We kind of like being a little bit more polite than you. I mean, we're a bit smug about it, in fact. How did Justin Trudeau manage to lose his majority government when he had a strong economy and not the stiffest competition in the world?

Because he won in 2015 by bringing a whole bunch of new people to the polls. And in the wake of these scandals, which really put a dent in his reputation as a positive, ethical reformer of Canadian government, how do you inspire those people to come out for you a second time? And they didn't? If they had come out for him a second time, he would be sitting at the head of another majority government.

And I think it's pretty surprising that he's not. After the break, it wasn't just the scandals that hurt Trudeau's majority government yesterday. People weren't thrilled about what the prime minister did in his first term. That's in a minute on Today Explained. How's your Wi-Fi? No, really, how's your Wi-Fi? Wi-Fi is such an integral part of our daily lives that it's hard to imagine life without it. But can you imagine life with better Wi-Fi? That's what you get with Linksys. Linksys routers

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and save 15% on a new router with the code EXPLAINED while supplies last. Your limit's one per customer and you can't combine this with other promos. Nice try. Jen, Justin Trudeau was first elected prime minister four years ago in Canada. What was the mood in the country back then? People were sick of the conservatives. Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper. Remember Stephen Harper? That hair though. That hair though. So Stephen Harper was a pretty competent prime minister on the whole, but he

kind of came across as a really senior executive at a very successful large applesauce conglomeration, right? Like that was his tone. It was very businesslike, it was very reserved, it was very cold. And over time, I think that people started to have real questions about the conservative government's pettiness, its meanness, its cynicism, and its ethics. The truth is that Justin Trudeau, the liberal leader, speaks very little about the specifics of his economic plan. He actually doesn't want to talk about it at all. As we know, it's all, you know, if I can be blunt,

it's all unicorns and rainbows. But no talking about the real specifics. And I think people were just sick of it. They were just, it was time for someone new. It was time for a fresh new voice. Yeah, how did it feel for Canada to have Trudeau win after years and years of Stephen Harper? Oh, he was a breath of fresh air, to think to a fresh new voice. Yeah. How did it feel for Canada to have Trudeau win after years and years of Stephen Harper? Oh, he was a breath of fresh air, I think, to a lot of Canadians.

He was young. He was charismatic. He was scrappy. He was also the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. So he kind of had this almost Kennedy-like vibe. He was like the son of destiny, the scion of the Trudeau name, right? A lot of people remember the elder Trudeau as being probably one of the most intellectually vigorous and inspirational prime ministers of his era. Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.

What did younger Trudeau promise voters as prime minister back in 2015? Trudeau replaced this turgid, stale old government with a really inspiring platform, a really ambitious platform, sort of the sort of non-status quo stuff that we hadn't seen in this country in a really long time. Quite frankly, Canadians are tired of that kind of leadership. You haven't been able to get it done on the environment, Mr. Harper. You haven't been able to get it done on the economy. You haven't built the kind of balance that Canadians expect. If we're going to build

strong communities, if we're going to create jobs for our children and grandchildren while protecting our air, our water, our land, we have to actually show leadership. And you have stepped back from any sort of confidence building for government. You know, he promised to increase refugees from Syria. He promised more open and transparent government. Indigenous reconciliation was a big one. Feminism was a big one. He promised a gender balanced cabinet. He was big on the environment. And I think a lot of it just had to do with sort of the tone of government shifting to something more youthful and optimistic and forward looking. Sounds super ambitious. How did he a carbon tax, although now most conservative premiers are, you know, gleefully collecting support and votes opposing that carbon tax. You know, he did initially put out a gender-based cabinet. And I think initially,

he did present a more positive tone to government. Where do you fall short on that slate of promises other than those scandals we talked about him battling during the actual campaign? The fact that he basically purchased the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline project. It's a $7 billion project that would nearly triple the capacity of the current pipeline and give Alberta's oil sands more access to Asian markets. It's perceived among environmentalists to be a very, very dirty kind of oil extraction. If you are a progressive and you're like, look, I voted for this dude because he promised serious action on climate change, this was a hugely negative thing to do that just blew a real hole in your credibility as a climate change crusader. That's why we've decided that every dollar the federal government earns from this project

will be invested in Canada's clean energy transition. I would say ethical government and governance stuff that he promised to do in terms of making the Canadian government more open and transparent. One of his promises, for example, was that he was going to stop, you know, slipping legislation into giant budget bills where it would get lost. And ironically, one of the things that happened with the SNC scandal was that the legislation that would have allowed the Attorney General to create a deferred prosecution agreement was hidden in one of the budget bills. So it went completely unnoticed, which is one of the things

the Harper government used to do that Trudeau promised would change under him. So it was just, again, another one of these examples of, you know, when it came down to the nuts and bolts of governing, he's running it pretty much exactly like previous governments did. Hmm. Between being an on and off, again, environmentalist, sometimes more of the same politician and a few legit scandals, I wonder what Trudeau's many remaining supporters see in him. Better than the alternative might be the answer. I mean, that seems to be the pitch for the liberals going into this campaign. Vote for me because we're the only guys who can keep the other guys out and the other guys are worse. You know, I grew up in Canada, Jen. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, did you? But I just, you know, what I recall from growing up in Canada and having leaders like, you know, Kim Campbell and Brian Mulroney and, you know, Jean Chrétien was that, like, we didn't seem to really like flashy politicians with colorful socks and checkered pasts.

Was Justin Trudeau sort of like a failed experiment in Canadian politics? I know it's weird to talk about him in the past tense when he's still going to be the prime minister, but was 2015 sort of an anomaly and now Canada's getting closer to its reality? Yeah, probably. We probably just like boring leaders. But let's also remember that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was really the last example of a flash leader. And Justin Trudeau, I think, consciously evoked that. I mean, I think he also consciously evoked Barack Obama when he was coming to power. He was the hope change candidate, right? Just ironically, as Barack Obama was ending his term and, you know, our hopey, changey, happy feelings became something else entirely. I think that, you know, there's a touch of the kind of cold weather Protestantism that has infected Canadian DNA. I think most of us would prefer to be considered reliable and steady than flashy and sexy.

Our national sort of motto is peace, order, and good governance, right? And this, I think, actually reflects Canadian political history as a whole. We kind of have, as I said, a reflects Canadian political history as a whole. We kind of have, as I said, a charmingly archaic political system that is built around tradition and ritual, monarchy and stability. And I think that it's more important, I think, for a lot of Canadians to have a government that is seen as competent and stable and reliable than one that is seen as visionary or flashy. That's traditionally been the Canadian way. Trudeau was a departure from that. He was unique in that. I think it's probably too soon to consider him a failure. I mean, for all we know, he could come back with a majority parliament in six months' time. And in fact, heck, that could happen. That absolutely could happen.

So I wouldn't rule him out. I wouldn't say he's out of the game. But he certainly is going to go down in history as an outlier, I think, at this point. Jen Gerson is a journalist based in Calgary, Alberta. She's one of the hosts of the Oppo podcast from the Canada Land Podcast Network. Check them out for all your Canadian news and media criticism. I'm Sean Ramos for them. This is Today Explained. We are produced in association with Stitcher and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

The team is comprised of Afim Shapiro. He's the engineer. Bridget McCarthy, Amina Alsadi, and Halima Shah. They produce. So does Noam Hassenfeld. He also makes music, along with the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. We're blessed with extra help this week from Miles Bryan, Zach St. Louis,

Olivia Ekstrom, and Jillian Weinberger. And we're blessed every week by Irene Noguchi. She's the executive producer of the show. Fun fact for all the Canadians listening, Today Explained is doing its first ever live show in Toronto this November as part of the Hot Docs documentary festival. You can expect us up in theth on Saturday, November 9th. The easiest way to find tickets for the show is to go to podcasts.voxmedia.com slash events.

See you soon. Just a reminder before we go that you can visit linksys.com, that's L-I-N-K-S-Y-S.com to save 15% on a new router with the code EXPLAINED, that's E-X-P-L-A-I-N-E-D. While supplies last, cannot be combined with other promos. Refurbished products are not eligible for this promotion. One per customer. Ramesh Verm out.