Canada
Shame on Us for Ever Believing Him
Justin Trudeau convinced me he was a sunny patriot who’d unify Canada. What I got instead was a cynical culture warrior who smeared opponents as bigots and defamed my country as a genocide state.
There are no term limits in Canadian politics. While this may sound like a boon to ambitious politicians, it’s actually something of a curse, as it allows them to cling to power long after their stars have dimmed and their legacies have been compromised. This is why ex-prime ministers and ex-premiers (Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien being two examples from the former category) are relegated to somewhat grubby professional after-lives as corporate pitch men and lobbyists in their dotage.
Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation on Monday, presents a particularly sad case study. His Liberals won a commanding Parliamentary majority in 2015, and during the first term that followed, Trudeau did much to reward voters’ trust. He faced down Donald Trump’s protectionist threats with patience and tact, increased marginal tax rates on the rich as a means to fight income inequality, legalised marijuana, and passed legislation that allows adults to access medical assistance in dying (MAID, as it’s now commonly known)—all steps that I supported. Trudeau became a star on the world stage, positioning himself as something of an anti-Trump; but also (at least briefly) a unifying force at home. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2017, the values he then channelled—liberal “in both the modern and classical sense of the word”—are widely shared across the Canadian political spectrum.
Jonathan Kay
Trudeau’s reputation among Canadians is now at such a low ebb that it’s easy to forget how popular he was during this honeymoon phase. Had he quit politics in 2019, as his star was dimming, he’d likely be remembered fondly by most Canadians, and would now possess some gilded sinecure at a prestigious university, name-brand NGO, or even the United Nations. Instead, he went on to fight in two closely contested elections—losing the popular vote in each to the opposition Conservatives while cobbling together increasingly scandal-plagued minority governments.
