The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can Canada's Unpopular Prime Minister Win Again?

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

The biggest question in Ottawa these days is will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stay on to lead the Liberals into the next election, or is he simply too unpopular to win a fourth term? Author and journalist Paul Wells considers that and Trudeau's nine years in power in his new book, "Justin Trudeau on the Ropes: Governing in Troubled Times." Steve Paikin spoke at the ARC Hotel, just a few minutes from Parliament Hill in Ottawa.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Or is his unpopularity so strong that he should consider resigning in the interim? Author and journalist Paul Wells has been giving that question and others some thought, and it's all chronicled in his new book. It's called Justin Trudeau, On the Ropes, Governing in Troubled Times. And we're here at the Ark Hotel just a stone's throw from Parliament Hill to have that conversation with Paul. Paul it's great to see you again how you doing? Good it's always good to talk to you Steve. Pleasure. Your book starts out with what turned out to be a pretty hugely significant moment in the life of Justin Trudeau so I want you to start by taking us back 14 years to that charity boxing match against

Patrick Brazeau and the significance thereof. So the thing that I take care to point out at the beginning was Trudeau did that boxing match because he had a lot of time on his hands. The Liberal caucus was the smallest it had ever been. They had come out of three of the four worst elections they've ever had. And yet, when it should have been all hands on deck, Bob Ray couldn't find much work for Justin Trudeau. He was a critic for amateur sport and post-secondary education. And so he was not needed in Parliament. He did a lot of charity events, and this was a charity event. And he had a hard time finding a Conservative who would fight him. When he found Patrick Brazeau in the Senate, a lot of people assumed the fight was already over. Brazeau was a physically very imposing guy, huge arms.

Martial artist. Yeah, well, this is it. I remember James Moore and Jason Kenney, the day of the fight, on Twitter, talking about what a tremendous victory was coming to their caucus mate, Pat Brazile. They erased those tweets later. And Trudeau beat him without much difficulty. I mean, Brazile came on strong and then Trudeau won basically through endurance. I wasn't there. I thought it was silly. I was surprised that friends of mine went. But it took on a life of its own. Nine weeks later, my interview with Trudeau was on the cover of Maclean's magazine saying, maybe this guy should be the Liberal leader. I thought it

was a saucy suggestion for me to make at the time. But it kept going. And by the end of that year, he was a candidate. And he eventually won quite easily. I would not belabor that stupid boxing match, except he does. He says to his friends, sometimes, not every day, you know I've been counted out before, people have assumed I've lost before, and yet I came back, not just in the ring, but in 2015, 2019, and to some extent 2021. not just in the ring, but in 2015, 2019, and to some extent 2021. And that's why, at least when I wrote this book in February, he still liked his chances and thought it was at least worth the try to go up against Polyev, his fourth consecutive Conservative leader.

You say it was worth the try. Are you not convinced that he still feels he can punch his way out from on the ropes? So we don't chat, and I'm only guessing. My hunch has been that he absolutely intends to run again. The amount of pushback from Liberal loyalists is considerable. Now, they have no mechanism to make him leave. Or, I mean, if they were to try to make him leave, they would have to mount a concerted campaign of the kind that we saw Paul Martin run against Jean Chrétien. It's messy. It's fratricidal almost by definition. I see no sign of such an effort. He's a hard guy to predict. He's a hard guy to know.

He makes it his business to be a hard guy to know. If he walked away, I wouldn't be too surprised. But if he wants to be a stubborn cuss, he can absolutely stay in that chair until we get a say as voters. You've got him described in the book as saying that Canadians are big-hearted, fair-minded people. Do you think he still feels that way, given where he is in the popularity standings right now? I think he thinks enough Canadians are fair-minded, big-hearted people. It's funny, he, his brand when he came into politics was that he loved all of Canada, even the parts that didn't

like him. And that was something they used to say to one another. But since 2019, 2020, especially since COVID, we have heard the odd, distemperate remark from the Prime Minister to the effect that some people are extremists, or they've been duped by misinformation, or they're essentially, they've skated themselves offside a proper political debate. And he's hoping that the rest of us can rationally choose to re-elect him. So that line that we heard in 2015 about how conservatives are not our enemies, they're our friends, and we need to convince them to come with us, we're not going to hear much of that in the next few weeks.

We've been hearing less of it lately. It's funny, at the end of the whole convoy episode, I wrote a short book a year ago about the Freedom Convoy. Trudeau gave a news conference at the very end of that, after the Emergencies Act had been passed and the crowds had been dispersed, where he talked a little bit about this. If you, if there's somebody that you disagree with on these questions, pick up the phone and call them. Not to debate this stuff, but just to check in. You know, I mean, he is a complex guy, and I think he reminds himself sometimes that he's supposed to be a uniter. But as he has said out loud in some interviews, he finds it difficult.

This is admittedly a purely speculative question here, which will call for some informed speculation from you. But we well remember when he first got elected in 2015 that he sort of pledged to be the antidote to his father, who had become the great centralizer in terms of power in the prime minister's office. And the gist was, I'm going to be the guy, the son of the guy who started this, who unwinds that, and who gives ministers more power to run their departments, and it's not all going to be the cult of leadership around the leader.

That clearly has not happened. Do you think if it had happened, if he'd kept his word on that, he might not be in the popularity pickle that he's in right now? It's a good question. So if he had let ministers be ministers, if he had let strong managers run files, I think he would say he didn't have the luxury of finding out, because when he came to office, he looked around, he didn't have strong ministers. He had strong personalities and strong intellects, people who'd done interesting things out in the real world. Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, Bill Morneau, Stéphane Dion. But with the exception of Dion on that list,

none of them had done elected politics. None of them had been members of parliament before, let alone senior cabinet ministers. And so I think they found themselves on the back foot almost as soon as he formed a government. And, you know, thinking of, well, let's pick more no, almost at random. Everyone likes Bill. Bill ran the largest HR firm in the country. You know, Bill is urbane and so on.

But Bill has never delivered a budget nor even taken a question in question period. So we're going to bubble wrap him and hope for the best. And that's why almost immediately this idea of cabinet government became a luxury they decided they couldn't afford. I learn in your book that the PMO insisted no ministers meet with each other unless their chiefs of staff are present. Yes. Is that normal? Not as far as I know. And as a matter of fact, it's slightly ridiculous. It amounted to a rule. this is, Jody Wilson-Raybould writes about that in her memoir. It amounted to a rule that consenting adults couldn't meet to talk about wine or the price of rice in China or whatever else without their minders present.

And like a lot of the hardest and fastest rules in Ottawa, I suspect it was not presented to them as a rule. It was presented to them as a friendly suggestion. Like Stephen Harper's friendly suggestion that Conservatives shouldn't drink in bars where Liberals convened. And it was taken properly as an absolute iron rule if you cared about your future in politics. I think Jody Wilson-Raybould was increasingly puzzling to the Trudeau Centre because she kept acting as though her mandate letter meant stuff. And they kept, their highest principle was that if someone comes to visit you from the PMO, you should listen to them, which is different. Does the Prime Minister's office appoint the chiefs of staffs of all the ministers? There have been many cases now there have been many many cases and sometimes the ministers get to pick their own or just their suggestions are retained. There are places where it's a long-standing routine that the the central office so in Quebec politics where ministers have

quite a bit of autonomy, they're also used to being informed of who their chiefs of staff will be. So... It's almost like having a spy, like for the centre, in your own office. It's weird. I keep mentioning Morneau.

It's just the way the conversation is going. Another minister said that... Morneau said to them early on, you should try and identify one person in your office who you can absolutely trust, which suggests that you couldn't or even needn't be sure about the rest of them. Okay.

As we look back at Mr. Trudeau's record, it's not like he hasn't had any victories. And I note in your book, enhanced child care benefit, higher taxes on wealthier people, lower taxes for others, more generous pensions, legalized cannabis, improvements for indigenous people, carbon tax and rebate, which whether you like it or you don't like it, it's a pretty ambitious policy, protecting people and businesses from the worst of COVID-19. There are some

successes to Trumpet. So why isn't he more popular right now? That's a good question. Incidentally, this book is, as you have noticed, quite critical of the prime minister. I worried before it came out that if there was a head of steam that built up of criticism of this book, it would be that I'm too easy on him because the zeitgeist is done with the guy. And the book gives him a fair bit of benefit of the doubt. I was amazed by the reaction to the SNC-Lavalin affair, which I was very critical of the government and the magazine I was working for. We ran a cover story. They called him an imposter. But it was a very technical issue, kind of hard to wrap your head around, the autonomy of the auditor general in prosecutorial decisions, or of the attorney general.

And yet they plummeted in the polls, and they have really never recovered. Well, what the hell was that about? And I think it was, my colleagues were very smart in picking that word imposter, there's a sense of phoniness about the guy and especially about his attempts to seem empathetic. When someone tells you that they feel your pain but they don't hear what you just said, that's a problem and it gets to be a big problem over a decade. He is dramatic, right?

When he speaks, he's dramatic. He has a breathiness about him in the way that he talks, which eight years ago, nine years ago, I guess compared to Stephen Harper, people thought was kind of interesting. They don't feel that way anymore, I guess. It's funny. Normally when we change heads of government, especially dur especially over the like the ones who last a decade they are

very different from from who they replaced so uh whatever you could say about Mulroney he wasn't technocratic and aloof and whatever you could say about Chrétien, he was, he took greater care to seem to be a man of the people than Mulroney had in the later innings. And Harper was tough, and he was delighted if people didn't like him. And he was not going to cut any slack to his critics. And that left a big opening for a kind of a care bear. And Trudeau was happy to play that role. And again, Poiliev. And incidentally, that's why there's a lot of talk in this town these days about Mark Carney as a potential liberal successor. And my first instinct is to be very skeptical of that. But I'll tell you, Mark Carney is different from Pierre Poiliev in almost

every way. And I think that would fit a long pattern, which is that whoever, if Poiliev were to be the next prime minister, he would likely be replaced by somebody who's nothing like him. And whatever else Carney may or may not be, he's nothing like Poiliev. Right. But presumably Justin Trudeau these days is paying a higher price for some of the things that he didn't do um should we make a bit of a list here of the things that he promised to do and didn't do and therefore it adds to the fire of why people are unhappy with him sure i mean the big thing is electoral reform he can and he is still like very recently in an interview with our colleague Justin Ling, still trying to come up with new explanations for why not only did he have to not implement that promise,

but it wasn't even a big deal. Because he said nine years ago, this was the last first-past-the-post election this country will ever have. Could not have been more categorical. and then when he didn't deliver it was he foisted it off on a new minister in the portfolio rather than taking it himself the promise to plant two billion trees the promise to make Canada the designer of a new age of urbanism in Asia a lot of the things they have tried to do in the innovation economy. I mean, I'll stop there. When I get a good head of steam, I could go all day. But like I say, there's a bit of a paradox because,

except for electoral reform, which I think was a real betrayal of a solid chunk of his electoral coalition, in isolation, none of the things he's failed to do or tried to do and fluffed seems enough to disqualify. And yet there has been a sort of a gestalt impression of the guy building up that doesn't help him. JIM ZIRIN. The Liberal Party, as you and I both well recall, used to have a social justice wing and a business wing.

And they were sort of in dynamic contact with one another during cabinet meetings. They would hash it out and generally occupy the big centre of the political spectrum and win a lot. What is the status of the business wing of the Liberal Party today? I think it's called Mark Kearney. They finessed that for the longest time by persuading at least themselves that progressive politics was good for business, that green politics was good for prosperity,

that feminism, diversity, reconciliation were all the ways to drive a strong economy. And that all looks a little threadbare now that we're in a period where the economy hasn't been strong. But, I mean, not only was that a handy little way to tie those things together. It was rigidly enforced from the centre. No one was allowed to diverge from that line if they cared about their future. But more than that, it worked for quite a while.

I mean, we're talking in June. I forget the date, but at some point in June, Trudeau will have been prime minister for longer than Louis Saint Laurent was. He's been prime minister for longer than Pearson and Diefenbaker. Why do people, you know, why do lemmings follow the lead lemming? Because the lead lemming made it to the front of the pack and looks, until you get over the cliff, looks like he's doing pretty well. And so I think it's the same with liberals. Here's a quote from the book. He said Canadians want, quote,

a PM who never seeks to divide Canadians, but takes every single opportunity to bring us together. You want a Prime Minister who knows that if Canadians are to trust their government, their government needs to trust Canadians. A PM who understands that openness and transparency means better, smarter decisions. In your judgment, has he lived up to his own words? Many days he has. He has been more frequently available to people in my line of work

than his predecessor was. He has on occasion... I mean, I've taken questions as I talk to other people about this book about why he never apologizes well he does apologize for his own behavior he did in the blackface affair he did when he strangely elbowed an NDP MP on the floor of the House of Commons and I think he they honestly believe that all of their various subsidies to old line news organizations are part of keeping the lungs of democracy healthy. I disagree quite starkly with that. But the instinct of any practitioner is to be defensive on some days. And the instinct of most communications advisors in the post-social media world is

don't apologize, don't explain, barrel forward. You'll never persuade the people who disagree with you, so just keep hammering message. And a lot of the worst instincts of this government come from that, I think, flawed analysis of communications imperatives. People who do what you and I do tend to, from time to time, overthink these things. And you mentioned Bob Ray earlier. Bob Ray once said, at a certain point, sometimes they just get sick of looking at your face. Do you think it's as simple as that?

looking at your face. Do you think it's as simple as that? Yeah, I mean, that's why I kind of checked my hanging judge instincts at every paragraph of this book, because I'm actually not sure that some perfect prime minister who took all of my advice would be more popular today after nine years. Trudeau has people working for him now who worked for Kathleen Wynne at the end of her tenure in politics. And one of the things they said at that time was, we're just not sure that you can sell the same product indefinitely. The various stories that they tell themselves to justify her defeat, first of all, it might be that that government had done things that Ontarians didn't like. Secondly, it may be as simple as what Ray said. You know, I think Bob Ray has a pleasant face, but whatever.

You know this stuff as well as anybody. You know what task he is trying to achieve here, namely four straight election victories, which I don't think has been done since Wilfrid Laurier. And that's more than 100 years ago. So the odds are tall. What has to happen? How do things have to unfold over the next year, year and a half, in order to give him a shot at doing that?

Canadians would have to sour on the alternative, and they would have to get back to believing that there's a person in there when they look at the prime minister and that it's somebody that they can trust, not necessarily somebody that they like. On the first thing, I mean, if you look at enough polls of perceptions of Pierre Poiliev, you find that he is quite a bit more popular and better liked than a lot of his coverage would seem to assume. But that there are things about him. He's seen as a tough guy.

He's seen as a guy who doesn't always listen and so on. Could that, you know, blossom into opportunity for the Liberals over the medium term? Stranger things have happened. I mean, often I can't think of any. As Trudeau knew in 2012 when it was just a boxing match, the on-the-ropes metaphor can only take you so far. At some point, you actually have to be a competent fighter. You have to be better than evenly matched against your opponent.

It's not magic. And this is a tougher confrontation. He won against Stephen Harper partly because the Harper government was seen to be worn out. And now he's in that place. It's a different dynamic. So let's finish up here on a question of trust. To the best of my knowledge, most leaders who find themselves in this kind of pickle have, you know, have a range of people that they can go to and say, so what do you think? You know, have I got a shot or should I take that walk in the snow or what do I do? From what I know about this prime minister, he has the smallest circle of trusted advisors, maybe of any First Minister I've ever heard

of. You're nodding your head, which makes me think I'm not wrong about that. In which case, who's he talking to about whether to hang in there or whether to leave early? So he is hearing from people who've been with him at least since 2012, 2013, people who would cheerfully walk into traffic for him, has been hearing from them for a while that it's not in his best interest to keep going. So the question is, does he listen? I believe he,

his most trusted advisor is the one he sees in the mirror. And I don't know what that guy's telling him. That's a very funny way to put it. Paul, it's great to see you. The book we remind everybody is called Justin Trudeau on the Ropes, Governing in Troubled Times. And we thank you for sitting down to take our questions today. Thanks for the invitation.