The Telegraph devoted two pages on Sunday
Eight years of hurt: Canada’s growing fury with Justin Trudeau
Eight years of hurt: Canada’s growing fury with Justin Trudeau -
ByDaniel Johnson - 20 August 2023
Canadian prime minister swept to power on promises of a golden era of reform, but he has failed to deliver on so many counts
Trudeau's premiership has been tarnished by accusations of hyprocrisy as well as lack of results.
Canadians have finally fallen out of love with
Trudeau. The shine has come off a career that at times seemed to defy political gravity. Instead of Trudeaumania, the nation is suffering from Trudeau fatigue.
The Liberal prime minister’s approval ratings have slumped below 30pc among voters aged 18 to 34, according to national polling group the Angus Reid Institute. This is the group whose enthusiasm helped get Trudeau elected in 2015, re-elected in 2019 and again –
just about – in 2021.
Voting intentions tell the same story, with a widening gap between the ruling Liberals and the Conservative opposition.
Disillusionment has been fuelled by economic factors, including soaring interest rates and a housing crisis.
From a British perspective,
Canada may not seem to be doing too badly. Inflation is running at less than half the UK level and there are no major public sector strikes, NHS waiting lists or small boats. But Canada has its own problems.
Mortgage costs on an average home in Canada now eat up 60pc of typical incomes, according to the National Bank. The figure is 90pc in Toronto and over 100pc in Vancouver. For first-time buyers, prices are simply unaffordable. Their rage is focused on the man they trusted with their votes, not once but thrice.
Under Trudeau, the Liberal Party lags up to 10 points in the polls behind the Conservatives.
The Conservative leader,
Pierre Poilievre, is popular but not populist, younger than the PM but without his baggage. He offers a modernising, moderately libertarian agenda, a change from the Liberals’ big state profligacy and fiscal incontinence. For the first time in eight years, Trudeau is up against a dangerous opponent.
Canadian voters have been slowly souring on their prime minister for a while. The cult of personality that has surrounded Trudeau, which was assiduously cultivated by him on social media, became a bad joke when
historic photographs of the future PM in “blackface” surfaced in 2019.
Suddenly his wokery resembled hypocrisy and the idolisation of “Social Justice Justin” gave way to mockery.
Trudeau’s image as an all-Canadian family man was also dealt a blow this summer when news emerged that the
PM and his glamorous wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, had separated. The former TV presenter’s occasional absence from his side at international summits had been noticed.
While a deeply personal matter, it has also become a political one because of how public the couple have been about their relationship. The Trudeaus did a photoshoot and interview with Vogue shortly after Justin was elected prime minister, featuring the pair in a close embrace and describing their first date. It helped cement a public image of the couple as a modern and open family – the face of Canada that many wanted to believe in.
Now, as economic challenges mount and the public image slips, Trudeau faces an uphill struggle to win back voters who have fallen out of love with him.
Born for politics
Eight years ago, it all felt so different. Justin Trudeau swept into office aged just 43, the second youngest prime minister in his country’s history and the scion of its most celebrated family.
Justin Trudeau’s implicit promise was to recreate the golden era of liberalism from 1968 to 1984, when his father Pierre dominated Canadian politics.
The elder Trudeau, who had put the country on the global map, is fondly remembered by most older people for his social reforms. He legalised homosexuality and abortion, liberalised divorce and abolished the death penalty.
After General de Gaulle had stirred up Francophone Canadians in 1967 with his rallying cry in Montreal, Vive le Québéc libre (Long live free Quebec), Pierre Trudeau succeeded in killing Québécois separatism with kindness by transforming Canada into a bilingual society. It was arguably his greatest achievement.
As political dynasties go, the Trudeaus are unique. Imagine the impact on the United States of a family which combines the kudos of the Kennedys and the charisma of the Clintons, all rolled into one.
Justin shared his father’s good looks and charm, if not quite the same intellect and integrity. He presented himself as Canada’s first “post-national” prime minister. Trudeaumania was back with a vengeance.
Yet dynasties often disappoint. Justin Trudeau has failed to deliver, either for the younger generation who saw him as a standard-bearer of liberal values, or for the middle-aged voters who hark back with nostalgia to the heady days of his father’s reforms.
A Research Co poll in July found that whereas Pierre Trudeau was the most popular choice for the best Canadian PM in modern times, Justin was by a considerable margin seen as the worst.
If the elder Trudeau had promised to elevate Canada into the “Just Society”, his son has sought to remake it in his own image — the “Justin Society”. But Canadians are not a fan club and the emperor of cool turns out to have no clothes. Despite grand pronouncements on social issues, the younger Trudeau appears to favour symbolism over substance.
Many of Trudeau’s policies reflect his centre-Left economic views but they often have a tinge of protectionism. For example, under a law introduced in 2022, non-Canadians are banned from buying residential property unless they themselves are permanent residents. There is scant evidence that this legislation will help to alleviate housing shortages, as the Trudeau government claims, but it has certainly sent a signal to foreign investors: keep out of Canada.
The same applies to Trudeau’s environmental policies. He wants to phase out the oil and gas industries, thereby eviscerating the economy of Alberta, and impose a draconian carbon tax which will handicap economic growth across the board.
The country lacks an entrepreneurial culture: a recent Financial Times list of 100 top global companies included only one Canadian firm. Unlike its larger neighbour to the south, Canada is falling behind by most measures. This is despite the emphasis placed by Trudeau on mass immigration. Indeed, some critics have suggested that his only strategy for economic growth is to increase the population by
importing more “peoplekind” – a term he coined and which has attracted much ridicule.
In the case of Ukraine, he was so keen to attract those displaced by the Russian invasion that his officials issued far more visas than there were refugees willing to move to Canada. Five out of six Ukrainians offered Canadian visas have chosen to go elsewhere — fewer than 150,000 out of 650,000.
Regardless, the population has just passed the symbolic 40 million mark and is due to increase by another 1.5 million by 2025. After Russia, Canada has the world’s second largest landmass and so it seems to have plenty of room for more.
The arrival of millions of workers is good news for Trudeau, who boasts of his country’s record on economic growth.
The Canadian economy did not shrink as much as other G7 nations during the pandemic, contracting 5.1pc in 2020, compared with 11pc in the UK and 6.1pc in the eurozone.
However, looking ahead, the International Monetary Fund expects growth in Canada to slow, slipping below the average growth rate of 1.9pc over the decade to 2014 to 1.7pc in 2028.
Seen in this light,
Canada’s immigration policy is a cynical gamble, which has been described as “human quantitative easing”. Last year its headcount rose by 700,000, just 200,000 fewer than the US – which has a population eight times as large.
For ordinary Canadians, it is per capita GDP that matters – and this has shown practically no growth per capita during his administration.
In major cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal, house prices are unaffordablly high for anyone who is not already on the property ladder. The average house price in Canada is C$754,800 (£440,000) – more than 11 times the average household income after taxes.
The housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world and rents are still climbing.
Trudeau is now trying to shift blame for the housing crisis onto the provinces and territories, claiming that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility”. Nobody is fooled.
Empty reform
Trudeau began his reform programme by
legalising “recreational” cannabis, making Canada the first G7 nation and only the second country in the world to do so. The Cannabis Act was popular among his base but legal pot failed to eliminate black market drugs – in fact it was much more expensive and investors in marijuana businesses lost money.
Now Vancouver has gone further by decriminalising possession of hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin or fentanyl. Will the normalisation of narcotics improve the quality of urban life in Canada? It is too soon to say, but the policy has hardly been a resounding success.
Trudeau’s
voluntary euthanasia reforms, the Medical Assistance in Dying amendments to the Criminal Code, were introduced in response to a Supreme Court ruling, but are even more controversial. There is widespread concern about medical authorities offering assisted suicide to the disabled, the depressed and other vulnerable people. The annual death toll from euthanasia is rising rapidly and in 2021 exceeded 10,000.
Human rights advocacy groups claim that Canada’s permissive law lacks essential safeguards for patients who may have no other medical conditions besides their disability. Uniquely, the law allows nurses as well as doctors to prescribe euthanasia.
Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, sees Trudeau’s reform as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ programme in Germany in the 1930s.”
Equally disturbing have been reports that people living on benefits have been offered euthanasia as a solution to their problems. As in other countries, the Covid pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems in Canada at the same time that huge numbers are slipping into poverty.
The heated discussion about euthanasia has tarnished Trudeau’s claim to be the greatest reformer of Canadian human rights since his father. On a visit to this largely Catholic country, Pope Francis denounced the inhuman treatment of “patients who, in place of affection, are administered death”.
Trudeau, who refers to himself as a ‘cultural Catholic’, and his wife have a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, 2017 CREDIT: POOL New/REUTERS
Trudeau is a self-proclaimed “cultural Catholic” but appears to disdain his own religion while pandering to others. When some 30 churches were burned down by Left-wing activists in response to claims of the discovery of mass graves of indigenous schoolchildren, Trudeau was accused of doing nothing to protect Catholic communities.
Instead, he buys into the darkest possible view of Canada’s colonial history: not merely a racist past, but a genocidal one. He claims that “Canada has no core identity” and thus reduces to absurdity his father’s carefully judged cultural pluralism.
Always eager to be woker than thou, in his Twitter feed the prime minister
adds “2S” in front of the usual litany of LGBTQ... This acronym means “two spirits” and refers to the tiny minority of the indigenous First Peoples who do not identify as male or female, but with the spirits of both.
Just in case anyone was in any doubt, Trudeau told a Liberal Party conference this year that “transgender women are women”. He has backed the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports and their access to women-only spaces.
While keen to talk up his progressive credentials on ‘soft’ issues around culture and identity, Trudeau has proved much less able when it comes to dealing with real-world crises.
The prime minister’s handling of the
Freedom Convoy of truckers protesting about pandemic restrictions in January and February 2022 demonstrates his struggles under pressure.
Among those who converged on the capital Ottawa, some protesters were far-Right extremists brandishing Nazi symbols and Confederate flags; many were anti-vaxxers; and some engaged in violence. Some 64pc of Canadians saw the truckers as a threat to democracy.
However, 46pc shared at least some of the truckers’ views on lockdowns, compulsory vaccines or masks. Among younger people aged 18 to 34, that number was 61pc.
Trudeau invoked strong-armed tactics of the Emergencies Act against the Freedom truckers
Trudeau was criticised by some for acting too slowly and “hiding” from the limelight, while others attacked his refusal to engage with legitimate opposition and argued that the government measures were too harsh.
The prime minister eventually decided to crack down by invoking the Emergencies Act 1988 for the first time ever. The act had its genesis during the two world wars and gives the government sweeping powers over public order at times of genuine crisis. Hundreds of truckers were arrested and many have been prosecuted.
When a Conservative MP, Melissa Lantsmann, took issue with his use of the Emergencies Act, Trudeau’s response was tone deaf. How, he asked, could she and her party “stand with people who wave swastikas”? The PM’s implicit reference to the fact that Ms Lantsmann is Jewish and so should be ashamed of herself went down badly among Canadian Jews.
The truth is that as the lorry drivers approached the parliament and seat of government in Ottawa, Trudeau panicked. The protesters were dispersed — but the mask had slipped. This is a prime minister who cannot tolerate dissent; who divides the country into woke sheep and fascist goats; who called an election during the pandemic to give his own standing a temporary booster jab, but now finds himself deeply unpopular.
Weak international standing
Where does such a leader turn? Perhaps abroad, in the hope of distraction. But Trudeau’s standing on the international stage is hardly better than at home.
In February 2022, Canada was quick to offer help to Ukraine. Some 4pc of its population are Ukrainians: 1.36 million even before the war. Yet despite presiding over the largest expatriate Ukrainian population in the world, Trudeau has made a
feeble contribution to their embattled homeland.
Even if humanitarian and financial assistance is included, Canada has pledged a smaller share of GDP than any major Nato ally except France. Last June, Trudeau made a visit to Kyiv to promise more military aid but if and when it is delivered, Canada will rank well below the US, the UK, Germany and Poland.
Canada’s defence budget was the equivalent of 1.22pc of its economy in 2022. That was lower than Germany and just above Slovenia, according to NATO data.
This year, defence spending is expected to be around C$36.7bn (£21bn), or 1.29pc of GDP. The truth is that Canada, despite its strategic importance, vast geographical size and inordinately long coastline, spends well below the 2pc minimum on defence that Nato demands. Having sheltered under the US umbrella for the past eight years, Trudeau sees no reason to step up military spending at the expense of his pet projects. So there are few reserves of equipment and other war material available for Ukraine.
Trudeau has promised Ukraine more military aid but Canada would still rank well below support given by the US, UK, Germany and Poland
As a result, Canada is somewhat isolated in Nato. While Canada remains a member of the Five Eyes Intelligence-sharing group, it was not included in the Aukus defence agreement between the US, UK and Australia. Canada’s exclusion from this cornerstone of the Anglosphere’s security architecture promoted soul-searching in Ottawa.
It is the same story on the environment. Trudeau talks a lot about net zero, but in 2023 on his watch
Canada endured the worst wildfires in recorded history – some 4pc of all the country’s forests burnt down. Toxic smoke from these fires has caused hazy skies as far away as Europe, while carbon emissions are also at record levels – 160 megatonnes in six months.
Naturally, Trudeau blames climate change, but he ignored warnings about poor forest management and refused to allocate the necessary resources.
Seasoned Trudeau-watchers notice a pattern of behaviour: extravagant rhetoric, followed by periodic bursts of hyperactivity. However, solid achievement is vitiated by a short attention span, a reluctance to face down opposition or to follow through.
A good example is the monarchy. Trudeau’s younger supporters would like him to press ahead with a referendum to create a Republic of Canada. Polls suggest that a majority of the electorate would support the replacement of constitutional monarchy by an elected president, although only the separatist Bloc Québécois actually proposed and voted for abolition in parliament.
After the late Queen’s funeral and the Coronation of King Charles III, Trudeau expressed lukewarm support for the “steadiness” of the institution. At the same time, he subtly undermined it by proposing a redesign of the crown that appears on bank notes and other official documents.
The new crown seems innocuous enough, with Canadian maple leaves instead of the Anglo-French fleur-de-lys, plus wavy blue lines to evoke the nation’s maritime past. But the arrows on the ermine base are reversed, pointing left instead of right. The Maltese cross that traditionally surmounts the crown has gone, replaced by a stylised snowflake to represent Canada’s arctic climate and pay homage to the indigenous peoples.
The choice of a snowflake suggests a sense of humour failure of epic proportions. Did nobody in the Trudeau entourage dare to say: “Mr Prime Minister, a snowflake? Really?”
And so the Christian symbol of self-sacrifice has been supplanted by the religion of ecology, with a consecrated snowflake emoji to proclaim the political correctness of the new secular order. Trudeau loves such gesture politics, but a bolder leader might have seized the opportunity of the Queen’s death to reopen the constitutional debate. Trudeau would doubtless love to stamp his personality on Canadian history, as his father did, by abolishing the monarchy.
Unlike Pierre, though, Justin is just too timid – a bit of a snowflake, in fact. Rather than a republic, Trudeau the Younger will bequeath a feeble bit of heraldic wokery.
Then there are the family matters. The collapse of their marriage has broken the spell of the Trudeaus. Together, Justin and Sophie were more than the sum of their parts; without her, he looks diminished, deflated and tired.
Hamlet complex
Trudeau faces an uphill struggle to win a fourth term in the next election, which must be held in 2025 or before. There has been much speculation that Mark Carney, still only 58, might offer himself as a safe pair of hands, despite the fact the former Bank of England governor ruled himself out last May.
A Globe and Mail poll last month found that 53pc of the public would like to see a new leader to take the Liberals into the next election. Even of those who normally vote Liberal, fewer than half (42pc) support Trudeau as party leader.
His invincible sense of entitlement means that Trudeau’s chances should never be written off. After eight years in office, his father was also unpopular – but he turned out to have another eight years to go. To match Trudeau senior’s longevity in office will almost certainly be beyond Justin, but that won’t stop him trying.
It is the need to equal or surpass his father that drives Justin Trudeau’s Hamlet-like ambition. Yet his time in office has demonstrated that there is precious little sitting behind that ambition.
Trudeau clings to office in pursuit of a chimera – the post-national destiny of a proud people who are growing weary of his identity-driven politics. Canadians are emphatically not a nation of snowflakes, despite what the prime minister may think.
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I mean I don't think I am wrong, but ignorance really can be bliss sometimes)
