Justin Trudeau: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As Justin Trudeau steps down, it’s a chance to look back at his legacy and ahead to the future political impact.

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 on Vancouver Island in that election and originally thought that Trudeau was merely posing as a progressive and could not connect with Canadian voters.

I was wrong. Trudeau's energetic campaign performances, particularly his outstanding leadership debate performances, were 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 U.S. tariffs and tough trade negotiations.

Similarly, when COVID struck, the Trudeau government responded well, following the advice of professional public health experts to ensure that Canada avoided the carnage experienced by countries led by conservative demagogues and buffoons like the United States and the 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, the big budget deficits and the purchase of the Kinder Morgan 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-linked influencers, confirmed the strong sense that Trudeau was hopelessly naive, or worse, on 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” defence was both tone deaf and untrue.
• Worst of all, Trudeau’s systematic undermining of then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke 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 disfunction 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’s pandering, policy-free negativity, and certainly not Donald Trump’s swivel-eyed social media attacks on Trudeau and Canada.

So Liberal staff and Liberal 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 B.C. premier, if she decides to run.

What's next?

The House of Commons was scheduled to reconvene on Jan. 27. Trudeau said today Gov. Gen. Mary Simon had granted his request to prorogue Parliament until March 24 and he had asked the party to launch a leadership contest.

The newly selected Liberal leader will immediately face a barrage of Conservative attack ads. Throughout the spring and summer, the Conservatives will spend millions of dollars on negative advertising before the election writs are issued. 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: will Poilievre win a record number of seats; will the Bloc Québécois form the official Opposition again; and will Jagmeet Singh be able to disassociate himself from the Liberals, set aside his penchant for empty rhetoric, and lift the NDP ahead of the decimated Liberals in the House of Commons seat count?

Throughout all this, 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 U.S. 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.