For Americans, Justin Trudeau’s undoing has been swift. For Canadians, it has been a long time coming.
By Melissa J. Gismondi
Ms. Gismondi is a journalist.
Sept. 19, 2019
“He is getting so embarrassing, tbh.”
That was the text I woke up to this morning from a friend who, like me, is a Canadian living in the United States. She was talking about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and yesterday’s Time magazine bombshell report that he once wore brownface to an “Arabian Nights” party while a teacher at a private school in Vancouver in 2001. (Since Time’s story broke, other instances of Mr. Trudeau in blackface and brownface have surfaced, including a video.)
My friend was referring to how Mr. Trudeau is seen on the world stage, but especially in the United States, a country that had a tendency to pretend that Canada didn’t exist until Mr. Trudeau came along. And her text encapsulated a distinction I’ve noticed in how Americans have been receiving this story compared with Canadians. For Americans, Mr. Trudeau’s downfall from liberal media darling — remember Rolling Stone’s 2017 cover, “Why can’t he be our president?” — to disgraced politician has been swift. For Canadians, it has been a long time coming.
It all started back in 2015 when Mr. Trudeau won a surprising majority victory over the longtime Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper. He cozied up to President Barack Obama, and the two young, charismatic world leaders had what the press affectionately called a “bromance.”
But south of the border, excitement over Mr. Trudeau didn’t really reach its zenith until November 2016. Before that, the prime minister, with his self-described feminism and his openness to Syrian refugees, had cast himself as Canada’s answer to the charismatic and cosmopolitan liberalism of the Obama years. Now, however, for American liberals, he was no longer cute kid brother but foil: Mr. Trudeau offered the perfect juxtaposition to the crassness of Donald Trump. Every detail, from his luxurious hair to his stylish socks, seemingly served to emphasize their differences.
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It was in this spirit that Rolling Stone put Mr. Trudeau on its cover and Vogue did a sultry photo shoot with him and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. Talk of “Canadian exceptionalism” made the rounds — the idea that while the United States was imploding, Canada was a beacon of hope in a world gone mad. It was a sentiment echoed by pundits on both sides of the border: Adam Gopnik wrote an essay in The New Yorker reminding Americans, “We could have been Canada,” while Stephen Marche, writing in the Toronto-based publication The Walrus, called Canada “the last country on Earth to believe in multiculturalism.”
On the world stage, things were bright. But back home, the love affair with Mr. Trudeau, for those who ever had one, was short-lived.
Characteristically for politicians, it started with a failed promise. In early 2017, the Trudeau government announced it wouldn’t be pursuing electoral reform, despite making it a major part of the Liberal Party platform. (The reforms were part of a broader effort to make Canada’s parliamentary system proportionately representative.)
Then, in 2018, Mr. Trudeau made one of his most shocking moves: purchasing the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs from Alberta to coastal British Columbia, as part of an expansion project to increase capacity and add portions of new pipeline. Coming from a prime minister who said he was committed to green energy and tackling climate change, the move angered environmentalists and some Indigenous nations who oppose the pipeline, including those who had supported Mr. Trudeau.
Mr. Trudeau’s public image as a liberal feminist committed to gender equality also took a hit with the more recent affair involving the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. The details of this evolving and very Canadian political scandal are difficult to explain. But in brief, it started with allegations that Mr. Trudeau’s office tried to interfere in then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s investigation into the firm. The important part, for Mr. Trudeau’s brand, is that following the resignation of Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, a former Treasury Board president, from Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, the prime minister kicked them out of his party. For many, this was a shocking way to treat two ?
In Canada, these developments, as well as a host of others, have changed how liberals see Mr. Trudeau. He is far less popular than he was in 2015, a leader despised on the right and often ridiculed on the left.
These stories, though, rarely made a stir in the United States. Occasionally, I’d see articles alluding to Mr. Trudeau’s troubles. Recently, Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix series “Patriot Act” featured an episode with Mr. Trudeau, in which he uncomfortably answers questions about the gap between his image and his policies. But overall, the American story of Mr. Trudeau as a “dream politician for the left,” as Mr. Minhaj put it, stuck. Until now, that is.
There are two ways this story will be understood, depending on which side of the border you’re on.
For many Americans, the story connects Canada to what’s often seen as a deeply ingrained American tradition: blackface. Down here, Trudeau’s brownface and blackface episodes are bursting the Canadian exceptionalism bubble. Slowly but surely Americans are learning we Canadians can be just like you: very, very racist.
For Canadians, though, the story is different. It also has bigger stakes, coming as it does in the middle of a federal election that has seen the Liberals and Conservatives neck-and-neck in the polls. It’s the latest in a series of scandals that have led many liberals to grow disillusioned and, yes, even flat out embarrassed by Mr. Trudeau.
Sorry, Americans. As Canadians living in the United States, we tried to tell you: That dude you thought was your dreamy boyfriend? He’s not all he’s cracked up to be. And like you, we’re wondering, as Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party and the first person of color to lead a major party, put it: “Who is the real Mr. Trudeau?”
