Trudeau promised to stop bombing IS. He needs to explain why.
The Globe and Mail
Published updated
On Tuesday afternoon, Justin Trudeau tweeted, “It’s time for Canada to once again work constructively with its allies. A new Liberal government will do just that.” Also on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trudeau spoke with U.S. President Obama. He told the President that Canadian fighter jets would no longer be part of a U.S.-led, international coalition bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It’s not immediately obvious how this is an example of “working constructively” with Canada’s closest allies.
In his first phone conversation with Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Obama said he understood that the prime-minister-designate had made commitments during the campaign on limiting Canada’s role in the anti-IS mission. Of course, Mr. Obama is a politician, too, so he doubtless does understand. But the U.S. government has made it clear it would prefer Canada to continue with the air mission.
Mr. Trudeau plans to withdraw Canada from air combat in Iraq and Syria, while continuing an on-the-ground training mission in Iraq. Again, this is as promised. But it would be a good thing for the PM-designate, who has just made his first foreign policy move, to clearly explain his reasoning to Canadians: Why should we train but not fight?
The promise in the Liberal Party platform is this: “We will refocus Canada’s military contribution in the region on the training of local forces, while providing more humanitarian support and immediately welcoming 25,000 more refugees from Syria.”
A long explanation was offered months ago, from the now newly elected MP for Orléans, Andrew Leslie, a former lieutenant-general and Chief of the Canadian Forces Land Staff.
In February, before the election campaign got underway, Mr. Leslie told Global News with regard to Canadian planes striking IS, “Just going overseas and bombing does not work. It has never worked before, it’s not going to work in the future.” But he also said, “Doing nothing is not a good option.”
That was not a complete explanation, but it’s a start. So what is Mr. Trudeau’s justification for his pledge? Were our strikes ineffective? Counterproductive? There are principled and practical arguments for bombing IS, and for not. Mr. Trudeau should do more than just fulfill his election commitment. He should explain it.
VIDEOS
JUSTIN TRUDEAU ON THE CHALLENGE OF KEEPING IT REAL IN POLITICS
Politicians always have to watch what they say. Often this means having to decide whether they're going to make statements for their for strategic value, or make statements they can believe in.
Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau has had to ask himself which course of action he'd take.
When Trudeau was in the red chair, George showed him an interview clip with former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff was very candid in explaining how different his interview with George would have been were he still active in politics.
Said Ignatieff, "If I was doing this and I was still the leader, every darned thing coming out of my mouth would be strategic... I would have to fit, for very good reasons, a filter between my brain and my mouth."
George then asked Trudeau, "Is that true?"
"Um, shit, what do I say?" replied Trudeau. "See, and that's part of the challenge, but it's also part of the opportunity. Because for me, I've always been 'Justin Trudeau, son of...' All my life I had to know that I was carrying a name and people were paying more attention to what I had to say, and I had to make a choice early on. Do I have a private secret life, or do I live fairly openly and consistently with the person I am? And I've always had that. So, as I'm now in politics, where everything I say is parsed and used as an attack ad, if that's the way someone wants to use politics, I have to decide what's more important. That I always say exactly the perfect right thing and then it's carefully scripted and controlled? Or do I try and trust that my values are the right ones and therefore are going to see me through?
"And that Canadians, ultimately, are worthy of trust in that they're going see through to what a person really is, and forgive a few mistakes, and understand that we need a real person representing us, not just in Ottawa, but across the world stage."
Justin Trudeau's interview with George airs on Tuesday, April 1 on CBC.
What I've learned about Justin Trudeau: Delacourt
Star journalist Susan Delacourt reveals what she's learned about prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau over the years.
JUSTIN TANG / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Liberal leader and incoming prime minister Justin Trudeau hugs his mother, Margaret Trudeau, as he makes his way to the stage at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal on Monday, Oct. 19, after winning the 42nd Canadian general election.
By:Susan DelacourtParliament Hill,Published on Fri Oct 23 2015
Canadian politics was exciting enough this week to attract the attention of HBO’s Last Week Tonight and a hilarious segment from John Oliver.
The segment included a little bit from me talking about Justin Trudeau, which I learned about to my surprise through approximately 150 messages on Monday morning.
I’ll leave you to watch the segment itself or, better yet, the TVO show with Steve Paikin where the clip originated. It got me thinking, though, that this might be a good time to share what I have learned about Canada’s new prime minister over the past few years, mostly through work for this newspaper.
The Star occasionally hosts events at the Metro Toronto Reference Library featuring the paper’s writers in conversation with authors of new books. In the fall of 2010, I was asked to host an event with Margaret Trudeau, who had just published Changing My Mind, the story of her struggles with mental illness.
Though I’d met Justin Trudeau a few times before then, mainly at Liberal events, I didn’t really know him that well. When I told him I was doing an event with his mother, he quickly agreed that we needed to have a chat.
We went to the parliamentary restaurant, familiar territory for him since childhood days. He seemed to know all the staff and what was going on in their lives.
For about the first 20 minutes of the lunch, Trudeau gave me tips on how to deal with his mother. He was clearly worried about the potential toll to her mental health of a cross-country book tour, how all the attention could rattle her hard-won but fragile balance.
I realized, as he spoke, that this was the eldest son, speaking from long experience trying to rescue his mother from repeated bouts of despair. He didn’t talk self-pityingly or emotionally; it was just a fact of his life. (The CBC’s Neil MacDonald wrote eloquently this week about that fact in a must-read online column.)
As the lunch was drawing to a close, I asked Trudeau: what was the big difference in his two lives on the Hill — as the son of a prime minister in the 1970s and 1980s and as a backbench MP in 2010?
Trudeau said he had two answers to that question: one he was accustomed to answering publicly, one he kept to himself.
First, the oft-repeated answer: he was surprised to realize how much he liked constituency work, helping people in his Montreal riding of Papineau. He had never seen that aspect of MPs’ work through his father, who had staff to handle issues in the riding.
As for the other answer, Trudeau looked around to see who might overhear him. Careful to keep his voice down, he said he was stunned to see how some MPs treated their staff, and the air of entitlement around them. He was truly surprised to learn that many staffers had to endure temper tantrums from their bosses. “Who do they think they are?” he said, glancing in the direction of an MP or two dining nearby.
Trudeau then told me about how when he and his brothers were young, the only times they got in serious trouble with Pierre was when they showed disrespect to their RCMP protection officers. Overhearing the boys call one of the officers “Baldy,” Trudeau gathered them together and furiously scolded them, telling them that these men had families and lives they were putting on the line to watch over them.
This is not a prime minister who is going to rule with fear, it seems.
When the Star asked me to write an e-book on Trudeau during his leadership bid, I was initially reluctant. I had another book coming out and frankly, in Conservative Ottawa, writing about Liberals just bought you scorn and ridicule. I wasn’t afraid of the scorn, just kind of sick of it.
But it turned out to be a valuable experience in seeing Trudeau on the road and realizing why, as former prime minister Brian Mulroney warned as far back as 2012, Trudeau was a politician not to be underestimated. No one, seeing the crowds he attracted, could write off this Liberal leader.
I saw Trudeau in June this year at an event at the Chateau Laurier and asked whether he was worried about the polls. He shook his head: “You’ve been out there with me. More reporters should come out and see what’s happening outside Ottawa.”
As it turns out, we all saw on Monday night what was happening out there. It should have reminded us that few people really know Trudeau or what he can do. As of Nov. 4, when he officially becomes prime minister, many more of us will get that chance to know him better.
FIRST POSTED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015 06:55 PM EDT | UPDATED:THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015 09:20 PM EDT
As a G7 country, Canada’s voice and actions on the world stage matter and they have consequences.
Often, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, moral relativists bemoaned the lack of UN engagement and suggested his principled and vociferous opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine was mere political posturing. The annual Arctic Tour Harper started in 2006 was labelled a public relations exercise by critics who failed to recognize the importance of this coast to our nation’s sovereignty.
We have a new prime minister-designate — Justin Trudeau — who denigrated Putin’s dangerous and provocative actions in Ukraine as simply motivated by a “hockey loss.”
His first act was to tell our American ally he is going to pull our CF-18s out of the fight against ISIS. This group of terrorists are the most vile, barbaric and ritualistic murderers the world has witnessed and Trudeau is choosing to stand on the sidelines.
It is by no coincidence — more by design — that the expansionist Putin regime announced plans Thursday for three new military bases in the Arctic. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, boasted: “This is a really large base that was never seen during the Soviet times, and it has modern equipment, all of the needed equipment for these boundaries.”
So what say you, prime minister-designate Trudeau?
The Russian Bear is poking Canada and what do you plan to do?
There is a lot at stake in the Arctic — mining, exploration, new shipping channels and the territorial integrity of our country. There is also an enormous amount of international interest in the Arctic, that’s why the UN set up the Arctic Council to try and assess the merits of all the competing claims.
We have learned from Putin’s past behaviour that, if unchecked, an inch turns into miles. And if we consider occupation to be nine-tenths of ownership, Putin is laying the groundwork for squatters’ rights.
The safety and security of North America are clearly laid bare by Putin’s bold moves. Three functional, large and operational military bases in the Arctic could be seen as similar a manoeuvre as the Soviets establishing bases in Cuba.
As his first act as prime minister-designate, Trudeau pulled out of the coalition fight against ISIS and signalled to bullies like Putin that Canada is now a nation of pushovers.
During the election campaign, Trudeau promised to tell Putin off “directly to his face.” So has he made that phone call? Has he called in the Russian ambassador? Has he reached out to Arctic Council members? Has he done anything to respond to the world’s bully?
Here is your first test to show that you are an adult at the grown-up table, prime minister-designate Trudeau. What say you?
— MacIntyre is the former press secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and principal of MacIntyre Communications
Trudeau follows in father's footsteps as leader for generational change
It's back to the future as Trudeau the younger becomes standard-bearer for younger generations
By Louise Elliott, CBC NewsPosted: Oct 24, 2015 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 24, 2015 11:28 AM ET
When Justin Trudeau tweeted a picture of himself and two of his children in a DeLorean this week, it struck a chord not only with younger voters who remember the Back to the Future films, but among older voters who remember Pierre Elliott Trudeau's rise to office in 1968.
The humorous tweet captured the essence of the younger Trudeau's status as the first Generation-X prime minister, and all the pop-culture cachet that goes with it.
The time-travel reference also conjured the notion of the young Trudeau energetically following in the footsteps of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who, rightly or not, is associated with the fractious baby boomer generation of the 1960s, and its desire for change.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau's popularity with young voters helped maintain his support in the 1970s. (CBC)
Justin Trudeau's new status as the standard-bearer for Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers and millennials is indisputable, says longtime Liberal John Duffy, founder of Toronto government relations firm StrategyCorp and unofficial historian for his party.
"There's no question he's now regarded as one of their own," said the author of Fights of Our Lives, a behind-the-scenes chronicle of several Canadian election campaigns.
Duffy added the Trudeau campaign most definitely appealed to younger voters.
"From the first days of observing Trudeau's campaign, I certainly saw a clarity about contemporary Canada that felt youthful to me, and I knew would appeal with first-time voters ... on everything from doctor-assisted end of life, through to LGBT issues, to marijuana and, to a degree, environmental issues as well."
Of course, Trudeau's careful cultivation of young voters began long before the campaign, and was not restricted to hitting those hot-button issues. The leader has spent years consulting students in schools and universities, revitalizing the once-publicly funded Katimavik youth program, and crafting a social media strategy that has tremendous appeal for first-time voters.
'1st Gen-X prime minister'
All of that appears to have paid off in the campaign. Although a detailed breakdown of voter turnout by age is not yet available from Elections Canada, higher turnout on campuses, and at polling stations in general, probably means a greater number of young people voted this time.
"Justin Trudeau is our first Gen-X prime minister. He is representative of an entirely new era in Canadian politics that, frankly, none of the other leaders would have been capable of ushering in," said Ian Capstick, a partner at the Ottawa public relations firm MediaStyle.
Capstick, a former NDP staffer whose firm helped market and communicate Elections Canada's advance-poll project on university campuses this year, says it drew 72,000 students to campus ballot boxes.
"So I think for younger Canadians they are going to look to [Trudeau] and have a considerable amount of hope. But the flip side is of course that hope may turn into disappointment if all of the promises and expectations that Mr. Trudeau has lined up through the election aren't fully met."
To retain the respect of younger voters, Capstick says Trudeau must deliver on two key promises.
"[He must deliver on] changing the way we vote because every young person is fundamentally disenfranchised, and they know it and they're frustrated by it," he said. "And then second: marijuana. If he doesn't legalize marijuana and bring in a regulated tax regime, he will be an absolute failure in the eyes of young people, period."
Capstick likens the marijuana issue to Pierre Trudeau's earlier decision to decriminalize homosexuality, with his now-famous phrase, "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." That issue, along with the legalization of contraception, played well to the younger generation of voters in the elder Trudeau's day.
Don't forget seniors
Other issues that matter to youth, Capstick says, include:
Overall societal fairness, as it pertains to the job market.
Tuition fees.
Social justice for native people, as represented by young people's embrace of the call for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. An inquiry is another of Trudeau's promises.
Observers caution that as prime minister, Justin Trudeau can't focus exclusively on the concerns of young people - and in fact, seniors seem to have voted in large numbers for the Liberal leader. (Reuters)
But even with all these expectations stacked up among young voters, Duffy argues it would be a mistake for Trudeau or his strategists to believe young people alone were responsible for his surprising majority win.
"What we do know is that almost every poll had the Liberals leading, by the end of [the campaign] in every demographic category, including seniors. In fact a lot of the shift in the final week was among seniors," he said. "This was across the board: a mass migration, not a children's crusade. While I think the effect is to bring a new generation of political faces to power, that's not the cause. The cause is the entire country moving for change."
The same could be said of Pierre Trudeau's election victory in 1968, Duffy said, and the ascendance of Bill Clinton in the U.S. in the 1990s. While young voters made up a significant part of the elder Trudeau's support, so did older and rural voters, particularly in Quebec, he notes.
Still, to remain relevant over time, Justin Trudeau can't afford to lose touch with what is perhaps his most passionately engaged demographic.
That won't be easy, particularly on the issue of youth unemployment, says Patrick Gossage, who served as an aide to Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s and is a longtime partner at the Toronto public relations firm Media Profile.
"Young people will be watching for some approach to the insoluble problem of jobs for young people. Pretty hard to deliver on that.... That's not something the federal government has a lot to do with."
Style counts
The legalization of marijuana will also be tough to implement.
"Marijuana will be extremely difficult, and if he doesn't come up with a solution to that in the first year, that will be very hard for him to get over," he added. "Young people will be watching for that very closely."
But, like his father before him, Gossage says Justin Trudeau's ultimate appeal among youth won't just depend on policy, but style.
He recalls how the charismatic appeal of Trudeau helped him maintain support among youth through some difficult times in the 1970s.
VAULT Trudeaumania1:06
"I think it was more his image, and his physicality, and his unpredictability that appealed to young people, and that's certainly a trait he shares with Justin," he said. He recalled Trudeau — who was then not a young man but rather in his late 50s and early 60s — still playing frisbee with reporters on the plane.
In fact, Duffy argues it's not youthfulness that helps leaders like Trudeau senior and junior to bring in a more contemporary approach to politics. Rather, it's their status as relative newcomers to politics.
"When you come in fresh like Justin Trudeau has or like his father did, you can be really up to date. What's really awkward is when someone who's been around for a long time starts trying to sound up to date," he said.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair found himself in that position sometimes, Duffy said, "trying to sound like he's hip with the thing on the internet... but that didn't help with his overall presentation."
老杜鲁多是魁北克省人，母语是法语，是加拿大二战后任职时间最长的联邦总理。他是律师出身，从皮尔逊（Lester B. Pearson，联邦自由党著名政治家，前总理，多伦多国际机场以他名字命名）的国会秘书、司法部长起家，1968年当选联邦总理，直至1984年才“谢幕”，刨去期间不到1年的“空窗期”，担任总理长达16年之久。
老杜鲁多才智过人，能力突出，具有出色的政治技巧，他在任期间奠定了一系列加拿大的“立国之本”，包括立法确立了联邦范围内英语和法语的同等官方语言地位，确立了“多元文化主义”（Multiculturalism Policy）为加拿大的国策，推动加拿大“宪法回家”（尽管早已获得独立，但加拿大长期将最高司法裁决权“留在”前宗主国英国，并一直没有自己的宪法，在老杜鲁多推动下1982年加拿大通过《人权与自由宪章》the Charter of Rights and Freedoms，同年4月17日被英女王确认为加拿大最高基本法）。他虽然是魁北克法裔，但坚决反对魁北克独立，在任职期间一方面强硬处理了“魁独”激进组织“魁北克解放阵线”（FLQ）绑架英国贸易领事克罗斯（James Cross）和魁北克省劳工部长拉波特（Pierre Laporte）的1970年“十月危机”，令“武装魁独”从此一蹶不振，另一方面也说服英语省份给予法语和法裔更多特殊地位，维护了加拿大的统一。
这次登场源于一场家族悲剧：他的弟弟米歇尔.杜鲁多（ Michel Trudeau ）在西部不列颠哥伦比亚省的一次高山滑雪中死于雪崩，小杜鲁多以自由党青年骨干和遇难者家属的身份抨击该省停止为雪崩预警系统拨款的决定，从此崭露头角。2006年，联邦自由党在大选中败给哈珀领导的联邦保守党，丧失执政地位，小杜鲁多被联邦自由党委任负责青年事务。
