Justin Trudeau: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Justin Trudeau has resigned as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. So this is a good time to look back at the good, the bad and the ugly of his legacy.  

The good

Trudeau's biggest personal accomplishment was to lead “Team Trudeau“ to victory over Stephen Harper’s cynical, tired government in 2015. I was a Liberal candidate in that election and originally thought that Trudeau was an arrogant airhead posing as a progressive, and he would not connect with Canadian voters. 

I was wrong. Trudeau's energetic 2015 campaign performance, particularly his outstanding leadership debate performances, was essential to the Liberals rising from third place in the polls to victory.  

Campaigning on middle-class tax cuts, electoral reform, the legalization of marijuana, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, and moderate "short-term" budget deficits, the Liberals won a big majority. Trudeau then named Canada’s first gender-balanced Cabinet, including Chrystia Freeland, Jane Philpott, and Jody Wilson-Raybould. 

The single greatest domestic success of the Trudeau government’s first term was the implementation of the Canada Child Benefit, a massive increase in funding for families that lifted hundreds of thousands of Canadian children out of poverty.  

The Trudeau government’s greatest international success was the effective management of Team Trump’s bullying. Team Trudeau listened to and worked closely with expert public servants and effective provincial premiers, creating an impressively cohesive response to US tariffs and tough trade negotiations.  

Similarly, when COVID-19 struck, the Trudeau government responded well, following the advice of professional public health experts to ensure Canada avoided the carnage experienced by countries led by conservative demagogues and buffoons like the United States and United Kingdom.

The bad

Liberal successes following the 2015 election soon gave way to broken promises, ethical scandals, and the loss of ministerial talent. Broken promises were especially debilitating for Trudeau, most notably the broken promise on electoral reform (a policy Trudeau expressed as one of his regrets during his resignation speech), the big budget deficits, and the purchase of the Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, essentially a massive $34 billion taxpayer subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.

Trudeau's long list of ethical scandals also damaged his credibility and unmasked character flaws.  Three lowlights spring to mind: 

• The "Cash for Access" fundraising scandal, featuring Chinese government influencers, confirmed the strong sense that Trudeau was hopelessly naive, or worse, about China. 
• In receiving vacations, gifts, and flights from the Aga Khan, Trudeau violated Canada's Conflict of Interest Act. His privileged, “but he's a family friend” defense was both tone-deaf and untrue. 
• Worst of all, Trudeau’s systematic undermining of Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin scandal was criticized for breaking the law. The Ethics Commissioner’s report on that scandal describes deep incompetence on the part of Trudeau personally, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Privy Council Office — a combination of dysfunction and disregard for the law of Trump-like proportions.

Most insidiously, Trudeau marginalized, demoted or fired a long list of effective ministers who dared to stand up to an increasingly isolated Prime Minister's Office, including almost all the most competent women in cabinet. As a series of ethical and experienced ministers left his cabinet, Trudeau's polling numbers plummeted.

The ugly

Liberal Members of Parliament finally gave up on Trudeau in December. Most Canadians have known for a couple of years that no one was listening to Trudeau's breathy rhetoric anymore and nothing would change that fact — not Team Trudeau blame-shifting to cabinet ministers, not Pierre Poilievre pandering to policy-free negativity, and certainly not Donald Trump’s swivel-eyed social media attacks on Trudeau and Canada.  

So, Liberal staff and National Board members are now reviewing the rules for an expedited leadership race. Ministers Anita Anand, Francois-Philippe Champagne, and Dominic Leblanc are consolidating leadership campaign teams, as is Chrystia Freeland.  

But each of those candidates is tainted by association with Trudeau. None will be able to lead the Liberals to victory over the Conservatives in October.  

Betting sites rate Mark Carney, possessor of an outstanding CV and darling of corporate Canadians, as the person most likely to lead the Liberals to victory. The odds-makers are wrong: Carney has no team and therefore no chance of winning the leadership race. Smart bettors looking for a long shot will place their money on Christy Clark, former Premier of BC, if she decides to run.  

What's next?

The House of Commons was scheduled to reconvene on January 27. That date will likely be postponed by way of prorogation to allow the Liberals to hold a leadership convention, possibly in April. 

The newly elected Liberal leader will immediately face a barrage of Conservative attack advertisements. Throughout the spring and summer, the Conservatives will spend millions of dollars on negative advertising before the election writs are issued. Pierre Poilievre will be closely following the Republican Party campaign handbook in deploying the huge Conservative campaign fund war chest.  

By quitting, Trudeau might just save the Liberals from an epic electoral disaster. The three interesting questions about the 2025 election are now: (1) will Pierre Poilievre win a record number of seats; (2) will the Bloc Québecois form the Official Opposition again; and (3) will Jagmeet Singh be able to disassociate himself from the Liberals, set aside his penchant for empty repetitive rhetoric, and lift the NDP ahead of the decimated Liberals in the House of Commons seat count?

Throughout all this, Donald Trump will be posting social media inanities about Canada. Federal public servants and ministers who are not running for the leadership will try to avert the economic disaster that will befall Canada and the US if we enter into a trade war. And, last but not least, Canadians will be reminded that elections are important and the coming 2025 election season is especially important for our future. 

David Merner served on the National Board of the Liberal Party of Canada and as the 2015 candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada in the riding of Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke. He joined the Green Party of Canada the day after Justin Trudeau announced the purchase of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline and ran for the Greens in the 2019 federal election.