Justin Trudeau has been Canada's prime minister since 2015. The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin has become an international icon for feminists and progressives, whilst his polished and stage-managed governing style has generated scores of critics inside Canada.
On the face of it, Trudeau might not appear as unpleasant as many of the other characters I have studied on this podcast, and that’s because, to a great extent, he’s not. He hasn’t started wars that have killed thousands of innocent civilians, or shut down liberty and democracy in his country.
However, politics is a comparative discipline, and in Canada's relatively gentle political culture, Trudeau has been unusually controversial, and I wanted this conversation to be an attempt to uncover why.
My guest for this conversation is Andrew Coyne (@acoyne), columnist at the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper.
Justin Trudeau has been Canada's prime minister since 2015. The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin has become an international icon for feminists and progressives, whilst his polished and stage-managed governing style has generated scores of critics inside Canada.
On the face of it, Trudeau might not appear as unpleasant as many of the other characters I have studied on this podcast, and that’s because, to a great extent, he’s not. He hasn’t started wars that have killed thousands of innocent civilians, or shut down liberty and democracy in his country.
However, politics is a comparative discipline, and in Canada's relatively gentle political culture, Trudeau has been unusually controversial, and I wanted this conversation to be an attempt to uncover why.
My guest for this conversation is Andrew Coyne (@acoyne), columnist at the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper.
Hello and welcome to the hated and the dead with Tom Leeman a very happy Jubilee weekend to all of you. I hope you enjoy the long weekend. And this week, the subject of the hate is in the dead, is one of the Queen's elected Commonwealth representatives. Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister of Canada since 2015. Having served as leader of the governing Liberal Party since 2013, the son of former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin led the Liberals to a landslide victory in 2015 after a decade of Conservative Party leadership, whilst the Liberals are often seen as a party of the centre ground, some commentators have labelled much of the Trudeau government's social policy as radical and left wing. Whilst these policies have proven controversial largely among conservatives, what has attracted consternation from across the political spectrum is not the substance of many of Troodos social policies, but rather the manner of their delivery from the man at the top. Too often, through those personal governing style has appeared to be a mixture of media grandstanding, and moralising. A toxic combination made worse by Trudeau is apparent failure to practice what he preaches, most famously on blackface, but also on sexual harassment. On the face of it, Trudeau might not appear as unpleasant as many of the other characters I have studied on this podcast. And that's because to a great extent, he's not he hasn't started wars that have killed 1000s of innocent civilians, or shut down liberty and democracy in his country. However, politics is a comparative discipline, and in a relatively gentle political culture. Trudeau has been unusually controversial for a Canadian prime minister. And I wanted this conversation to be an attempt to uncover why my guest for this conversation is Andrew Coyne, columnist at the Toronto based Globe and Mail newspaper. We discussed the Trudeau political dynasty, the bipolar fortunes of the Liberal Party over the years, and Justin Trudeau successes and failures as Canada's Prime Minister. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce Justin Trudeau. But first, I'd like to play you some promotion for Canadian podcaster Chris bed. Have you ever want to learn about the man who tried to jump the St. Lawrence in a rocket car? The margarine bootleggers of Newfoundland, or the time the royal family had a barbecue with a regular Manitoba family in 1970. I explore all those stories and more on my podcast Canadian history acts. Over the course of over 500 episodes I've delved into the good, the bad, and the weird of Canadian history. From the days when the Vikings landed and met the indigenous to the shenanigan handshake. I try and cover it all. What about politics? Well, on my podcast from John to Justin, I look at our Prime Ministers premiers elections, opposition leaders and governors general and show how all of this shaped Canada to what it is today. On Canada's great war, I delve into the First World War and how it completely changed Canada forever, beginning in 1914, and running until 1918. And lastly, if you want to learn about trains, then check out coast to coast my look at the construction of Canada's transcontinental railway. All my podcasts are on all podcast platforms, ready to scratch whatever Canadian history itch you may have. Hi, Andrew, it's great to meet you. How are you? Good to be with you. Thank you. Andrew, we're talking about Justin Trudeau today. He's been the prime minister of your country, Canada since 2015. He's quite young for a politician. He's he's been pm for nearly seven years and he's only 50. Now. I suppose that before we jump into looking at Justin, we have to start by looking at another Trudeau. Because Justin isn't the first Trudeau Prime Minister, who is that other Trudeau than other Trudeau was his father, Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1984 with a brief interregnum, when he was out of office for about nine months in between there who was a controversial figure to say the least. A person of some intellectual heft, he had been a professor of law, noted antagonist of Quebec nationalists in the first flourishing of Quebec nationalism, or the first modern flourishing of it was somebody who was willing to take them on to make the case for Canada to make the case for civil liberties, even if those were inconvenient to nationalist ambitions. So he was a remarkable figure he much love much hated it. Very imperious in his personal style, but somebody who had to respect his intellect. And certainly his is passionate for the country. The Trudeau is aren't members of the Liberal Party of Canada. Yeah. Just for the uninitiated, can you give a brief account of the party system in your country? Some of the some of the sort of similarities that it shows with my country's political system and some of the differences, you know, who are the liberals? Who were their opposition, etc. Right. So it's a Westminster parliamentary system, but it's applied to a federal system of government. First of all, that makes it different in some ways from the UK, and secondly, to a country with two official languages that also add some further complications. It's sometimes been described as a one and a half party system of government in as much as historically, the liberals have been very much the dominant party. They one, two and three, three and four elections. Historically, the conservatives, formerly known as the Progressive Conservatives, have been the main opposition party and they were the dominant party through the first few decades of our existence. They were the party of government when the country was founded. But ever since about 1900, or 1920, certainly they've they've had a rough go of things. And I think that's a crucial way to understand our politics. First of all, in that, when one party more or less assumes it will be in power, and the other party more or less assumes it won't be or that it can only get into power by some stroke of luck or whatever. It does bad things to your politics, it's much better if both major parties if you have a two party system, they both feel they can win or lose any given election. So if the besetting sin of the Liberals historically has been a certain arrogance, the besetting sin of the Conservatives has been a certain insecurity and a belief that the everything stacked against them. And the public doesn't like some sort of insecurity that really, I think, hurts them. We're not a two party system, of course, and part of our problem in this country is that we act as if we still think we have a two party system, we did through the first 60 years of existence, what we really haven't had a two party system, since about 19/21 of all with the, what was called the Progressive Party, which was a kind of a populist party of mostly a farmers out west, and then latterly, since 1935, what is now called the New Democratic Party. They're a Social Democratic Party, you know, pretty similar to the Labour Party, maybe the labour left, and those have been the three main parties for a long time. Recently, we've started to get even more parties entering the system. So we had the Green Party, as many countries around the world has broken through to the extent that they now have a couple of seats, much more potently, the black Quebec Waa, which is the party of Quebec nationalists, who broke through I don't need to get all the details, but they've been a force since the 1990s. And now we even have a populist nationalist Trumpian type party called the People's Party. So it's now at least a six party system. And yet, as I say, we still have a system that was more or less designed for two parties in which two parties are only they're the only ones likely to form a government. In terms of the party that we're going to be talking mostly about today. The the liberals would do essentially, given that they sound like a sort of party of, of power, would you basically put them in the political centre, or leaning slightly more one way than the other? Yeah, left of centre, and particularly, I think, and this is an issue in current Canadian politics is under their current leadership. They seem to have drifted a fair bit further to the left, particularly on social cultural issues. And there's a common feeling that the centre ground is kind of between the Liberals going in that direction the conservatives have in their own wanderings that the centre ground of Canadian politics has been a little bit deserted of late. Now, mind you, you know, the centre ground is always shifting. And and and it's the it's the it's in the capacity of adroit politicians to move the centre to them. But certainly, I would say historically, yes, the liberals have been, have been adroit at taking from the right or the left as circumstances dictated and as their needs to stay in power dictated. I certainly would say that the most consistent description of the liberal party is a party of power. So they've been a little bit of a kind of a shape shifting party, but with certainly in recent decades, we With with a progressive edge to it. And they they've been able to kind of straddle that centre but but pull it a bit to the left as time as time has gone on, partly, as I say, by stealing policies from the New Democrats. But in the 1990s when we had a terrible debt problem, and we're near near the point where we couldn't sell our bonds, and we had to make some pretty tough fiscal policy, pretty tough spending cuts, it was the liberals who did it. To their credit, they're able to adapt to change in circumstances. Yeah, Trudeau Justin Trudeau is father stopped being Prime Minister, as you said, in 1984. Justin was 13, at the time, through the rest of the 80s and 90s, when Justin Trudeau was growing up, what was he doing to kind of improve his political credentials? What what accounts do we have of his activities as a as a young man? Well, very little in terms of politics. And I say that's actually to his credit, that, that for the first part of his life anyway, he could have gone in one of two directions, he could have been an absolute waste Roland gone and, you know, done a lot of drugs and Santro pay or something like that, and you didn't do that. And he could have just gone straight into politics at the age of 20 and capitalise on his family name. And he didn't do that, either. He went off, and he, you know, he taught high school, and, and, you know, studied various subjects, and it seemed to be pursuing his own course through life. And I, you know, I respect that, frankly, I think some people mock him for it. But I think, you know, growing up in the shadow of his father, I mean, obviously, it would come with some benefits. But it also comes with a great deal of costs in terms of expectations, and feeling trapped in a certain life and people expecting you to do certain things and be certain things and live up to your father and all those things. So I can only imagine that that was a that was a difficult thing for him to deal with. But no, up until relatively recently, in his life, maybe it was always in the back of his mind, maybe this was just he was just playing the long game to not be suspected of. But I think it's more likely that through the first part of his life, he was just pursuing his own course and, and trying to figure out life on this earth. And it's comparatively recently that he decided, first of all, to go into politics and second of all, to pursue the party leadership. Indeed, yeah, if we turn to discussing his political career a bit more closely, then he became a member of Parliament at the 2008 election. And I think he became an MP. At a time when the liberals were in a real electoral downturn, they actually became I didn't know this, but they became the third largest party in Canada for a time, you know, vividly embarrassing considering the sort of, you know, electoral dominance that you've that you've mentioned. Why were the Liberals doing so badly at that point? Was it an image problem? Was it leadership? Was it ideology? Well, they had been in power for a long time, under Jackie Chan and Paul Martin, briefly under Paul Martin. And they had been in power, what from 1993 until to when was it now 2006. So partly, you just acquire baggage as time goes on. Secondly, there have been a big schism within the party based mostly on the personal ambition of two men, but also with certain ideological and regional strands when it when that was Christian versus Martin. So Martin, was kind of the Gordon Brown is that Gretchen is Tony Blair. He was the he was the Deputy Finance Minister, who conquered the deficit, or at least was given credit for it, but was also very ambitious for the top job and, and Kretser had, in fact, defeated him for the top job in the leadership race of 1990. So that that tension was always there that that rivalry was always there. And over time, the ambition of Martin's people around him and crutches, Mueller's determination not to give into them toward the party apart and to really stand. Thirdly, there was an enormous scandal political scandal, as periodically seems to visit the Liberal Party over spending and advertising spending in Quebec, which was kind of funnelled through various players and kickbacks to the party, the details don't need to detain us now, but it was enormous and had an enormous impact and particularly in Quebec. It really damaged the party's brand new in a way that was very hard for them to to come back from. So once you're out of power, particularly if you're a party of power. It can be quite devastating for you because how do you Start to reassemble it'd be if the basis of your, of your support has been come along with us were inevitable. And you can probably get good jobs in the government with us. And these kinds of things, if that's what your argument for being in power has become, then when you lose power, you lose a lot. And, and so. So that was part of it. I think the Conservatives under Stephen Harper, who did a lot of things wrong, but also I think, put together a fairly potent and more durable coalition the conservatives have been capable of in the past. And when, when that party is doing well, everything the other party does, they just everything starts to feed itself, you start to look weak, you start to thrash around trying to save yourself, and you elect leaders who aren't necessarily the leader is going to take you to the Promised Land. Again, that's to some extent, a self reinforcing loop, the leader will look a lot worse when he was losing, even if it's not his fault. But there's no doubt they went through two or three leaders that just didn't seem to be able to pull things together for them. So yes, by that, by the time of 2008, and 2011, even worse, they had some of their worst results in their history, in terms of the share of the popular vote and that kind of thing. And they were in a very bad way. At the time, people like me, were saying, Well, this is an opportunity for the party to do a pretty deep rethink about what it means to be a Liberal Party in the 21st century, a centrist Liberal Party, start to think about, you know, what policy direction makes sense in this changing environment? All these sorts of things that people like me, right. And the party took a long look at that and said, yeah, we'll just I think we'll just get Trudeau. So he was he was a, he was a, you know, he had the potent family name. And one of the things that people like me always need to remind ourself is politics can be very tribal. And it can be, in fact, monarchical. And this was the monarchical principle at work is that people were, you know, if you've got the royal blood in you, people are going to look at you in a different way fairly or unfairly and not always, to your benefit, but sometimes to your benefit. And there's some legitimacy to that, in that being the son of a foreign Prime Minister, gives you certain strengths and certain weaknesses. So the strength is, he had a certain self confidence to him, that is gold in politics, people can sense if you're comfortable in your skin or not. And we generally as voters tend to run away from somebody who strikes as needing the job too much, or these kinds of things with if we think their psyche is overly invested in. And he at his best, had that kind of self confidence and what went with that self confidence was a certain generosity, certain Meghan magnanimity, to others, less fortunate himself to his opponents. So he could sometimes strike a very good grace note that I think a lot of that came from that from where he came from. On the on the negative side, you know, he gave very little evidence of having really thought about any major issue very deeply. He certainly didn't represent any particular strand of opinion within the party, other than, you know, a certain inheritance of his father's. Both his father's progress, progressiveness, and his father's a willingness to dig in against Quebec nationalists. But, you know, there was very little known about him. And what we did know, wasn't terribly impressive. But he had that he had the family name, and he had a certain celebrity quotient, and, you know, it wasn't everybody's taste, but some people thought he was pretty good looking. And all these things are the probably shouldn't be part of politics, but are. And, and, and as I say, he had he had a certain facility for politics, that is to say he likes being around people. It's extraordinary how many people will go into politics, who are really fundamentally uncomfortable with the glad handing part of the trade and look like they'd rather be anywhere else. Whereas Trudeau I remember thinking this in the spring of 2015 There was a gay pride parade in I forget what city it was. And the fact that was gay pride parade is neither here nor there. But what was notable was he was bounding down the street running from side to side to say hello to people in a most enthusiastic way. And I remember looking at this and going boy, you know, I'm not sure the Conservatives are ready for this. This is this is a this is a guy who really likes people likes politics, and and that can be very potent. And I've often had goes to think, I mean, I wasn't around when Tony Blair was elected prime minister here in 1997. But the way that people the kind of warmth that people had for Trudeau, when he got elected prime minister in 2015, seems reminiscent when I watch videos of Blair being reelected, you know, young I'm comfortable. He's in his own skin almost a bit too comfortable at times, and after a period of kind of doer, glowering conservative things. And you know, over time I think conservatives get kind of depressed and power. And, and so yeah, somebody, some bright young fella comes along. And part of it also was like Blair, he at first seemed to promise some kind of a new synthesis of the less doctrinaire left's approach to things a mixture of right and left, you know, he, for example, he gave a speech in Calgary, I think it was where he said, You know, I words to the effect of, you know, I recognise that the national energy policy, which is a great batch noir, and, and deservedly so, in Canadian politics, a policy brought in by his father that basically attempted to insulate us from the world price of oil, which was foolish as an economic policy uncertainty was devastating to the resource producing regions in Western Canada particular. So for a Trudeau to come along and say, this was bad policy, I'm never going to do that, again. It kind of gave people some kind of signal that maybe he was a more modern type of liberal than than the past. I think as time goes on, he's actually gone further left in other ways. Yeah. But But, but at the time, it seemed to suggest he was me there was some something of interest there. I mean, he led the Liberals to a an amazing victory in 2015. They went from being, as I said, the third largest party to win to winning an overall majority in the House of Commons in one election. This is, again, something that's often you know, talked about, about when Blair came in, in in Britain is, how much of it can you attribute to a sort of powerful programme and a powerful leader? versus how much of it can you attribute to just people being sick of the party in power? It's a good question. I think, I think it's a combination of things. Not to dodge the question, but I do think it's the combination of the Harper government having won itself having won a famous victory in 2011, where they seem to have built a very durable Coalition, which for a Conservative Party is unusual. Conservatives generally win in Canadian politics either win massive majorities because the Conservatives or the Liberals have been in forever, people are so sick of them, that they toss them all at once. And they win these enormous majorities as they did in 1958 1984 that are inherently unstable because they're the tent is too broad. And everyone thinks that the Conservatives agree with them. At some point, somebody has to be disappointed. So the either win that kind of victory or they win a narrow, squeaky minority. But in 2011, the Harper government had built a kind of a look like a pretty solid coalition between the West and Ontario that looked like it could last and then they just frittered it all away over the succeeding years, just again, we don't need to get into the details. But they they seem to go out of their way to antagonise and alienate virtually everybody outside their, their their narrowest base. So it was certainly that was certainly part of it. I do think the liberals had a bold platform in 2015. Some called suicidal at the time, and I didn't I don't when I say bold, I don't say it necessarily agreed with a lot of it. But it was politically quite effective. So in particular, they after a long period of time in Canadian politics, when we we were all of us fiscal conservatives, because we'd had this searing near death experience in the 90s. We everybody agreed we should run balanced budgets and pay down debt and these kinds of things. And the liberals, I think, correctly sense that maybe that mood has started to shift. And so they ran on a platform of unabashedly saying we're going to run deficits. Now. They said at the time, they're going to be small deficits, that will only be temporary, and we'll be back to balanced budget for years. But that all proved to be untrue. But But nevertheless, they they read the Mooka clip correctly, and there were a lot of other things in the platform, and it had a lot of heft to it. But if I had to put and those are both contributing factors, but I think the the X factor was true. And the best thing single thing I ever heard said about that election, was a pollster friend of mine who said that I don't think the liberals would have won this if they hadn't started in third. So they started out the election was very long election campaign. 1011 weeks, I think they started out back in third. They'd been in first at one point in the polls some months before, but they started the election campaign in third. And I filter this through my discussion of the of the monarchical principle. And I really think people tend to think in terms of stories. And I think a lot of voters were filtering that re election through the lens of the prince Howell story, right, the feckless youth who is tempered by advice A city and grows up to become the king. And, you know, particularly when you've got the son of the former prime minister, so let me put this way, supposing the liberals had come into that campaign in first place in the polls, I think a certain portion of the voters would have said, Oh, you think you're entitled to this? Do you think you think you're born to this job? Well, let me tell you with some of the things, you know, and they might have lost it. But because they came in in third, and because he had to campaign hard for it, through this long campaign, and and there was every opportunity for him to really mess it up. And he was certainly, you know, he was pretty unsteady when he started out. But he got better as the campaign wore on, and he managed to avoid blowing himself up. And I think by the end of that campaign, a critical mass of voters having looked at him and said, Alright, let's give the kid a chance. Kid, you know, it was 43. But you know what I mean? And, and so I, obviously, having a solid platform helped relieve people's doubts about that, and all these things contributed. But I think a lot of this was people just kind of looking at this guy and saying, Am I willing to give give him the keys to the car? Yes, I am. Enough moto said that. This is a podcast about politicians that are controversial. And if we look at what has happened over the course of Troodos premiership, and certainly from I'm saying this from some from the point of view of somebody that's looking at Trudeau mostly through the angle of the British media system, but an image that often comes across of Trudeau in our media, our kind of partisan media is that he is quite patronising sort of condescending if, obviously, he's not that kind of, he's not the first politician to be condescending or patronising. But fairly quickly after he became prime minister, his approval rating started to go south. Why do you think that happened? Yeah, I wouldn't overstate how quickly it was. He had a couple of years there where he did quite he was he was pretty strong in the polls. But you're right, that eventually it started to go south, which, of course, is a cautionary tale for political parties that, that when you win, you know, people fall out of love as quickly as they fall into it. And when you win because of a certain infatuation of a certain section of the electorate, you know, then you gotta you gotta be careful, because eventually people will turn on you. So that's an overarching note. I think it was accumulated things, it he, you're absolutely right. That part of it is, it's a version of, of the age old liberal arrogance in this country. Now. In previous incarnations, it was because we're the party of power, we can get away with stuff, what are you gonna do about it? You know, we're always going to be elected no matter what. So a certain arrogance that just goes with with that, with that kind of thing. intrados case, it was a mixture of him being the son of the former prime minister, and a certain arrogance comes with that. But more particularly with the kind of arrogance of virtue. And this is a very preachy government. It particularly on social justice issues, identity politics issues, it's not to say that some of their policies and stances are not right. In fact, a lot of them are right, but they phrase it in a way that really makes it sound as if they are they regard anybody who doesn't think the same way as they do, as being quite to beneath their dignity to even respond. And so put together his own personal style in that regard, and the liberal party's habitual failure in that regard in this new kind of politics of woke virtue. You know, there's nothing wrong with being moral but being moralising is distasteful to people. And so it's the preachiness and as you say, the condescension. That I think, is certainly one of the things and then mixed with hypocrisy. Because, you know, as time has gone on, we've learned more about some of his own personal foibles, including being credibly accused of groping a young reporter some years ago, of having dressed in blackface. So many times, he's not sure how many times at an age when and in a period when, you know, it's one thing to dredge up some film with somebody in the 40s doing it but but he was doing it, you know, when he was I think 29 years old, which is not that many years ago, when any buddy with any sense at all with no this is just really not on. So I think that sort of a grinding sense of hypocrisy, and I And it certainly is entirely possible that some of the liberal, aggressive posturing on racial and gender issues was designed to protect them on this, that they knew they had these skeletons in the closet. They knew he was vulnerable, and they decided the best defence was a good offence. I don't want to put it all down to that, because I think there's a lot of true believers in the party. But I would not be surprised if that was part of the calculation of some of the people around him that the way that will insulate ourselves from the attacks that we expect on these issues is we'll just, you know, painting the party as being sort of bullet proof on this. And unfortunately, I think the conservatives have sort of allowed them to get away with that, to some extent. But anyway, yeah, that's, I think, I think that's a big contributing factor. And the closely aligned with that a lot of ethics, ethical failings, there's been a series of ethical issues with the government, not the worst things you've ever heard of, but they kind of drip drip drip. And particularly because the more more cases the not have involved, personally, the prime minister himself, if we sort of go back to the sort of social issues, he's gained a reputation, and you used it, and I don't really like using it, I never tried it, but but woke right. Among the sort of right wing in the English speaking world, he has that reputation. And I should say, you know, and you've already said it, you know, I'm very comfortable with expanding minority rights and gender equality, kind of left wing social policy, as long as it comes with a degree of left wing economic policy as well, trying to kind of better the economic situation of poor people. And I hear much less from Trudeau on those issues, things like income inequality, housing affordability, you know, I think you might know this term in Canada as well. But in British terms, he might be called a champagne socialist, a middle class person who kind of adopts socially liberal views to fit in with their friends. But actually, when it comes to left wing policies that might affect them, that are completely out to lunch. I mean, do you think that describes Trudeau? I think that's a little over the top. There's no doubt that they came into politics. They kind of borrowed an issue from the States, which was the stagnating middle class. You know, there was a lot of rhetoric and a lot of things but about about, you know, nobody's had a wage increase in 30 years in Canada. And it's actually wasn't true. If you looked into the data, you know, we had a period in the 80s and 90s, when wages went flat or down. And then ever since the mid 90s, they've been rising pretty steadily in Canada. So it's not the same story as the states. But because we're all watching American media, it's pretty easy to import these storylines. So they came into power, saying we're all about the middle class. And the the tedious, liberal, tedious repetition line is the middle class and those working hard to join it. And so they came in saying we're going to bring in a tax cut for the middle class and the tax increase on the upper classes, and neither the amount of the whole bunch, the middle class didn't do that better off and the tax increase at the top wasn't that big a deal. But it was it was great symbolism. So thus far, you could say, Well, okay, champagne socialism, or middle class phoney, what everyone said, what I will say is the biggest single reform they brought in early on was a reform of the child benefit system. That brought brought to give a textbook reform, they brought together a bunch of dis different programmes with different cut offs and transition points and which didn't work very well together, created all kinds of bad work incentives and didn't deliver enough aid to people at the bottom and, and they basically reformed the design of that in a way that has absolutely measurably reduced the rate of poverty, particularly child poverty in this country, we're now have, depending on how you measure but by by a lot of measures, the lowest rate of poverty in our history, and particularly child poverty, so on that thing, you gotta, you gotta give that to him that that was a genuine reform policy, that I think, incontrovertibly, you know, it turns out, you know, give the poor more money. They're less poor, who do. So that's really that I think that's there, in my opinion, is the single biggest, in some ways, simplest reform, but in some ways it was because you're just basically, you know, cutting checks, but it turns out, that's one of the things government can do relatively well is just, it's not so good at managing big complicated issues, but sending money out to people. It's pretty good at. So yeah, so thanks. And I think you have to I would defend him against that charge. I think that I think that's a major improvement in Canadian life for people at the bottom of the income scale. Fair enough. That's that's quite interesting. It's not something that's that's filtered through the get a lot. But but as I say, if you delve into the numbers, it's it's it's basically incontrovertible. Well, well, I mean, often the sort Have the it's a shame really that the kind of simplest reforms and the you know, the dullest reforms in a way, don't really get any any headlines but often they have the best effect. I mean, I want to, I want to sort of turn to issues of kind of wider polar polarisation in Canada. If you look at the wider goings on in the Canadian political system over the last five or 10 years, it seems as if Canada has become more polarised between left and right. Obviously, it's not the only country that that's happened to and again, as you said a second ago, it's important to sort of not import American political trends to any other country, but particularly Canada considering it's just next door. But do you think that Trudeau is political style this quite as this quite sort of monarchic fair, slightly detached way of doing politics has made that polarisation worse? To some extent? I wouldn't exaggerate the degree of polarisation. So, you know, there's an old American line about, you know, politics being conducted between the 45 yard lines, if that means anything to a British audience, that the divisions, you know, people that people are fighting about are not necessarily that large now, in America right now they are but in Canada, I still think it's mostly between the 40 yard lines, what shall we say? So, but I'm more encouraged than I am dismayed. There are some dismaying things happening in Canada, we're getting some of that same attack on expertise, attack on knowledge, the epistemic crisis, they talk about that that certainly is present in Canada, but not to the same extent as some other places. Partly because we've been very fortunate, we haven't gone through the same series of traumas that the Americans have gone through in the last 20 years, we, you know, we didn't have anything like 911. Here, we've had the odd terrorist attack, but nothing like 911. We went into Afghanistan, but we didn't get mired in Iraq. We we, you know, we didn't have anything like the same financial crisis or the housing market collapse. So, you know, we've kind of skated through and I think, partly because of that there hasn't been the same kind of discrediting of an entire class of experts and authorities. Again, we import some of that. But the broad mass of the public, I don't think is in that headspace. And you can see it even as the concern of the Conservatives right now having a leadership race. And it's pretty appalling, in a lot of levels. There's a lot of stupid conspiracy theories being lifted. So, but it's also interesting seeing the things that they're not doing that nobody's going after immigration. Nobody's saying, you know, we need to we need to dismantle the healthcare system. I mean, for good, or ill. And I think those are both good things. They're they're still pretty broadly in a in a, in a, somewhere in contact with the Senator Brown, I think, I think they're not paying as much attention to as they like, as as I would like, I think the Liberals are not paying as much attention as I would like, but at the same time, don't want to exaggerate that. But there's no doubt that there's a certain section of the public that is furious with Trudeau, I think there's two groups that that are disaffected, there are there are people who are just kind of tired of them and think he's made a lot of silly policies and would like to have somebody a bit more sensible centre. Right. You know, there's a kind of a, there's a kind of a senator right voter who has been voting liberal, because the conservatives, they just just don't look like they're ready to govern. But who would default back to the conservatives? If, if they were given any excuse if the Conservatives could put up any kind of credible, but but so they've been parking their vote with the liberals. There's another type of right wing voters that thinks Trudeau is the antichrist that thinks he's a tyrant, that and a lot of this has been inflamed by the pandemic. And, and people that in the response of governments, and again, that a lot of this has found a lot of countries of the lockdowns and the vaccine man has done these things. And people have persuaded themselves that these are terrible tyrannies. And then on top, if on top of that, you've got a kind of a condescending guy who doesn't watch his mouth sometimes and says things that really betray that and make it seem like he's got no interest, whatever, in whatever anybody who opposes them things, then that's going to inflame those well, but so there's no doubt that he has a personality type that tends to divide opinion. And if you then add to that this pressure cooker of the pandemic and everything related to that. It's made it worse, but the hardcore Trudeau haters, I think is, you know, five or 10% of the vote. So the real haters you know, if I mean if You look at the policies that Trudeau supports it, especially on the sort of social side, do you think that they have become more or less popular in the time that he's been in government? Yeah, it's interesting question. So, so one of their signature issues, of course, has been the environment and climate change. And some people think they haven't done enough on that. But I think, broadly speaking, there's a certain, I think the policy community thinks that they've done quite well on that. And they have done quite well politically, because the Conservatives had persuaded themselves and they had some reason to think this from past elections, that they could always win elections by campaigning against the carbon tax, that people people just hated Carbon Tax had anything to do with taxing. And any party that introduced it would be political suicide, again, that that term, and liberals brought it in anyway and have won three elections. I wouldn't say they won them going away, they lost the popular vote, but they got enough vote enough parts of the country, in the right parts of the country to be able to put together a governing coalition. And so I think that, if anything is the Conservatives now who have been left kind of off side with where the centre of gravity of Canadian public opinion on that is, people I grant that voters are a little can be a little bit hypocritical on this, they want something done about climate change, but they want somebody else to pay for it. But broadly speaking, the optics of of having a carbon tax versus not having one even if your carbon tax isn't a very good one, you kind of have to have something like it now, I think to have a chance of governing in Canada. So that I don't think the conservatives have absorbed that yet because their base, just to hate some of the passion. And so they keep electing leaders who who promised to get rid of it and then discover ways not to get rid of it. And you know, but I think on that one, I think liberals have moved the needle more in their direction. I think, similarly on indigenous issues. I think the public, it's kind of a similar to the evolution on racial issues in the states that public opinion has kind of shifted, where people are saying, Okay, we just were not paying enough attention to this, we weren't taking this issue nearly as seriously as we should have been. People have been suffering and dying, we really do need to address it's now easier said than done, because it's a really complicated issue to, to fix. But but but, but nevertheless, there's, I think, much more of a political will and the general public, whether they'll make it there, you know, they're not going to vote on them. So unfortunately, but But it's definitely in their, in their frame of reference more than it would have been the past. And again, I think that's partly because the liberals had been have been championing it on some of the other stuff. I mean, you know, every budget they they is accompanied now by a 200 page, G gender analysis of it, that in my experience, nobody pays more than two seconds attention to some of the more doctrinaire stuff. I think that just kind of blows past people. And if anything, just irritates them, I don't think I don't think they've really moved the needle on some of the stuff, but it's important to their base and their activists to do these kinds of things. And but that, that, if anything, probably, probably in terms of their overall electoral balance, probably loses them more votes than against them. Because, again, because there's so in your face about it, and so appreciate about it that I think people would prefer, you just kind of got on with things and do whatever policy you think you want to do, rather than sort of always kind of preening yourself in public about how, how feminist URL etc. Yeah, I mean, it's a shame because that that sort of policy comes with starts with the best of intentions, but then overzealous, some of those policies. I agree with some of them, I don't. But you can separate out the policy content from the the political results, and I say this to people on the right as well, you know, you could get ill you could, you don't have to, you know, eliminate any distinction between yourselves and the liberals. You don't have to turn yourself into middle ground mush to get elected, but but people will give you a hearing, if you come across like an adult. And if you sound like you've thought your policies through. You know, I always say there's a difference between radicalism and extremism. You know, Medicare, which is beloved in this country, as the NHS is in Britain was a radical idea when it first came along right free trade, which is now the foundation of our prosperity was a hugely radical and controversial idea when it when it came in. So it's nothing wrong with people having big ideas and wanting to make big changes. But you've got to persuade people that you've thought about this and that you're We're open to evidence to the contrary and that you want to persuade people rather than just yelling at them and all these things. And the Conservatives don't seem to be able to wrap their minds around that they, they think that the two alternatives are either you just turn yourself into the Liberal Party light, or you just go out of your way to try to antagonise and piss off liberals, you know, the owning the LIBS thing, which is, unfortunately seems to be the marker now of your conservative conservative virtue, it's the conservative version of virtue signalling is just to be as asinine and antagonistic, and anti everything as you possibly can this, this proves you're, you're a fighter, you know? Yeah, you're just you're either the Liberal Party or or the Tea Party. Right. So I would like to see conservative party that was more substantively different than liberals had had substantive policy alternatives for good or ill, but also came across as nice people you might want to have a beer with, you know, apparently, that's asking. Trudeau has won three elections as Liberal leader. But he's only won the popular vote once in the first election in 2015, the second two elections, the conservatives have actually got more votes. So that's because of the first past the post electoral system which we also have in Britain. And I was just wondering, I mean, in Britain, the Conservative Party are the kind of defenders of first past the post. Now whether that's because they are just more small, see conservative and don't like changing things or because it benefits them the most. It's not entirely clear, it's probably a bit of both. But how much dissatisfaction with the electoral system is there in Canada? I think there's a fair bit and it bubbles up from time to time. You know, without getting into an hour long discussion of electoral reform. You know, there's there's many reasons why one might favour move into a more proportional system. But it's particularly germane, I think, in a country like Canada that's so regionally diverse, because the effect of it has been to reward and encourage regional based politics in a country that needs a national vision. But we don't frankly, have any national party, the liberals like to think of themselves there, but they're not they haven't left last time the Liberals won a majority of the seats in Western Canada was 1949. So the Liberals are basically the party of, you know, central Canada and the coasts. And the Conservatives are the party of Western Canada in a bit of Ontario, and sometimes a bit of Atlantic Canada. And the block takes a certain number of seats in Quebec and first pass the post rewards parties that can clump their vote geographically, so it basically takes all our existing divisions which are real enough on regional grounds and pour salt in them, makes it worse. The liberal party, as you may know, ran in 2015, on a very explicit, bold letter promised that this will be the last election held under first past the post, partly because they had an activist base, some sections which genuinely believed in it, but also because they were they were in the perennial liberal strategy, which is to steal votes in the NDP. And and one way you do that is by emphasising how scary the Tories are. And so therefore, if you're even thinking about voting New Democrat, you can't because you have to vote Liberal to keep the Tories out. But they added to it in this in that campaign, some policies that were designed to say to people, we're not your father's Liberal Party or my father's Liberal Party, we get some of these issues that are near and dear to the Democratic Party, including electoral reform. So they ran at the very explicit promise to to, to reform the existing system. They didn't say how they would reform it. And in the end, after having held some public hearings, Trudeau found an excuse to toss the whole thing out, and they basically just reneged on the promise. The liberals, certainly, if any party has benefited from the status quo with the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party has won. As I say, I forget it, I think it's two elections in three over the last 100 years, 120 years. The end, so you can see why they don't really have any interest in changing the existing system, the only reform they would probably go for would be ranked ballots, because they would probably get second third choices, and that would be in their plugins has been a proportional system. They're not going to go for the conservatives. I think, again, partly, as you say, out of just kind of knee jerk. This is the party this is the system that we were founded on why would we ever want to change and partly our perceived self interest have been hostile to it? But I would argue it's actually probably I don't think it is in their against their self interest to reform. First of all, they haven't done very well under the assist existing systems, not like they're they've had a sterling record, but also I would argue, the presence of there being essentially two left of centre parties and one right of Centre Party you would think would mean the left of centre parties would be would be out of power. But what's happened is when you have more than one party, it doesn't just share the voting pool, it expands it. And part of that is in any given debate in Canadian politics between those three parties. It's always the conservatives who look like the odd man out like the between the liberals. And the NDP can say, well, we're the, what represents the consensus of reasonable people? Why can't you people get on side with this? And if you're always the third, you know, just at a disadvantage, but secondly, those people sometimes think you can just add the liberals and the NDP together and it equals some bubble. No, they have distinct, they have distinct constituencies, if you merge the two parties, their their support base will probably shrink. There's some people who vote NDP would never think of voting liberal and vice versa. I think if you want a sensible, second Conservative Party in the mix, like a like a German free Democrat type party, you know, a free market type party, I think that could expand the base of voters and we could actually make make the make more of a level playing field between the left of centre parties in the right of centre parties. Unfortunately, we now have another right of Centre Party, but it's it's a very conspiratorial, Trumpian Manana, not a sensible, not a serious party, frankly, so that we're not going to be able to run them. But you know, if you go back to the period when the conservative vote was was split, in the 1990s, between the Reform Party as it was called, and the conservatives, their combined share of the vote was larger than the Conservative Party, the unified Conservative Party has got since then. So the all this is to say, I think some conservatives increasingly are starting to think about this, that this is actually might not be against their interests, and might actually open up some intriguing possibilities for them, it would help them break out of their Western Power Base, which has been a, you know, they own the West, but they've had a tough time breaking into Ontario and Quebec and Atlantic Canada. And if you had a more proportional system, they'd have a better shot at it. I think. Trudeau has been Prime Minister for six and a half years now, Andrew, how long has he got left? Do you think? The conventional wisdom, which I think is probably true, is probably only a couple of years. So the last couple of elections, as you mentioned, they were defeated in the popular vote. He he ran behind the party, if I'm not mistaken, in terms of his popular approval. So we're once he was they're absolutely their biggest asset. He isn't anymore. It's not saying won't ever be. But if you had to guess right now he so and indeed, they they've finished behind the Tories in the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, I think. So I think that after this last election, which was, you know, called for no apparent reason, you know, in defiance of ostensibly a fixed Election Day law, without any overriding issue, and were they all of the parties ended up with within a seat of where they were before the election, and within a percentage point in the popular vote, it was almost as if the election never happened. At the end of that election, my sense for what it's worth of liberal opinion was, he can stay as long as he doesn't stay too long as Listen, we don't want to run the next election with him as leader. So we're not gonna kick him out right now. But we're hoping he'll make a graceful exit in the next couple of years. Whether he will or not, is another question, because typically, party leaders tend to stay one election too long, you know, they, they convince themselves or they have people around him, convince them that they're the indispensable one. And they just hang on that, you know, the, the number of elites in our country, the number of political party leaders who go out on top, because not Not, not many, all too often they. So I think that would be the fear amongst some liberals is that he'll overstate as well. Now, some of that will depend upon what happens with the Conservative Party, you know, if they elect Pierre Paul, the leader who is leading I would it's not a Trumpian thing, but it's certainly a very populist type of message. I think there's a lot of conservatives who are worried that that will make them on electable and it may affect a liberal calculation in terms of whether they're willing to change leaders or not. But But But leaving leaving that aside, I think the mood of the party would be let's that the line people say is when you when you know you're really about to bout to be kicked out is when people say he's earned the right to make his own decision. That's when you know you're at death's door. And so when we hear people in the Labour Party say, Justin Trudeau has earned the right to make his own decision about when he wants to go, that will be the time for him to go there as a as a similar one in in footballing speaking The UK, obviously got the manager of a football team at the coach. And then you have the board of directors and the, the owners of the club and whenever it says on the news that I know, let's say Josie Marino football matches Josie Marino's and, you know, he has the full backing of the board, you know. In British politics, there's a kind of trope of, we have like an interesting Prime Minister. And then we have a dull one, we had Tony Blair, and then we had Gordon Brown, and we had Theresa May. And now we have Boris Johnson. Do you think that stylistically the next Liberal leader will be a sort of real departure from Trudeau? Yeah. Again, depending on where they're at in the polls, you know, if you if you were really heading for defeat, then you'd want somebody you know, as clearly different as you possibly could. And that would argue against some of the people who are considered Frontrunners. Now, notably, Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister and deputy prime minister. But but she herself is, even though she's closely associated with him, I think is viewed as being a bit more sort of down to earth a bit more substantive. Not sure I totally think that's merited, but that is more of her reputation. So I would imagine there will be a sense that we want somebody we we've done the celebrity thing, we've done the high flying, globe trotting, you know, photo op type of person, and people got tired of that, you know, before too too long. And it's been a drag anchor on him ever since, you know, there's the, maybe the probably the low, low watermark firm was the infamous trip to India. I don't know if your listeners will be familiar, but he made a visit to India where he sort of went to a playbook that had worked from the past of him kind of dressing up and, and trying to be like his, like his, his hosts, and everybody in India, from our, from what I could tell cringed at it. And certainly people in Canada cringed at these endless photo ops with him, apparently thinking it was a Indian prince, you know, it war? He looks pretty foolish. And obviously, he's getting very bad, bad advice on that. So yeah, I would think, I would think, at least among liberal party, people, there will be a feeling of we need to we need somebody who can shore up his perceived weaknesses. I mean, I was sort of thinking, during this conversation, just to bring this to an end, I do episodes of this show on people, you know, on, on real sort of, you know, dictators, and I was so and I just been thinking, if the worst thing you can say about your leader is that he's a bit annoying. I don't think that's too bad. Yeah, as, as I say, there have been people who've been attempting to sort of conjure them up into this terrible tyrant an enemy of freedom. Now, you know, I would say the he has some abuses of power to his name. Notably, there was an attempt to interfere with a criminal prosecution. That was, that was a pretty serious matter. But it was pretty garden variety compared to genuine tyrants around the world. So know that that's pretty silly. Yeah, mostly, I think the knock on is is yeah, he's annoying. He's tiresome, he's full of himself. He he and his party 10, the present party, that feeling that they're, they're a bit superficial, they're very enamoured of themselves and very enamoured of symbolism and feel good displays at the expense, too often of substance and real achievement. But as you say, if you know, if that's the worst that we're dealing with as a country, then we're we're pretty fortunate the country as usual. Andrew, thank you very much. That was great. Thank you. If people want to, you know, listen to more of your stuff or read more of your stuff. Where can they go? I wrote a column for the Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada, so the globe and mail.com I'll be there somewhere in the opinion pages. Thank you, Andrew. Cheers. Okay. Thank you for listening to the hated in the dead. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And for good measure. Leave us a review. 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