Transcript: Stephen Maher

An interview with the Canadian political journalist Stephen Maher

If you follow Canadian politics, you know that Justin Trudeau’s political career is now looking uncertain. He’s been polling badly for months, as a series of crises have rocked the country, including the cost of living, the opioid crisis, the housing crisis, healthcare, runaway immigration, and foreign interference. My guest on this week’s program has written a comprehensive biography of Trudeau as Prime Minister, based on interviews with more than 200 insiders, and the man himself — and this week, he walks us through Trudeau’s journey from being a global media darling to becoming one of the most divisive figures in the country. 

Stephen Maher is an investigative journalist and political writer. His new book is The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. 

This is an edited transcript for paid subscibers. You can stream the interview for free here.

---

TH: This is a fascinating book, very thorough and detailed. As you know, I learned a lot reading it. I think it will be of interest to those who follow politics in this country, but also to those outside the country who may have been noticing that their previously boring, mild-mannered neighbour has been making a lot of news lately.

SM: That's actually, in a sense, part of the story of Justin Trudeau — the story of him as a global media phenomenon. Which is not necessarily a typically Canadian thing for our leaders to be known for around the world.

TH: We are at quite a moment right now for Trudeau. Terrible poll numbers. Young Canadians are increasingly moving towards the Conservative party. There's a number of serious crises that Canada is dealing with, from housing and immigration to healthcare and the opioid epidemic. You interviewed a lot of people for this book, including our Prime Minister — this year. How would you characterize the moment that we find ourselves in Canadian politics right now?

SM: As you say, we have a lot of problems. The cost of living and housing are at the top, because in politics, when people are broke, that is what will guide their political thinking. When people feel that pinch, when they're not sure how they're going to pay the bills, it's very damaging to incumbents. We saw yesterday Rishi Sunak announced an election in England that he is going to lose. If there was an election now in Canada, Justin Trudeau would lose. Joe Biden looks like he's on track to lose. It's very difficult, during a time when people can't pay their bills, for incumbent governments to get reelected. 

In Trudeau's case, I think that you have to acknowledge — and he has in fact acknowledged this — that his government did not respond to the cost of living crisis. They created space for Poilievre to challenge him. I think they were slow to recognize how important this was. It's a perilous moment for him. I think that when your polls are this bad for this long, and nothing you do seems to change that, the track record of people who make successful comebacks after that is not great. You never know in politics, but it's not looking good for him.

TH: Let's talk about how he got here. You paint a picture of Trudeau as a very skilled, savvy politician. Certainly one who has beaten the odds in the past several times. But also a kind of prince, who was raised in privilege, can be out of touch with ordinary Canadians, and isn't great when he doesn't get his own way. Two incidents in the book that you cover stood out to me. You write about a May 2016 incident of him losing his temper in the House of Commons, and you also write about him making a flippant remark when he was protested by members of Grassy Narrows First Nation, on the issue of mercury poisoning. Can you give listeners a brief synopsis of these two incidents and what you took away from them?

SM: I would start by saying that Trudeau, more than most politicians maybe, presents a very carefully constructed persona to the world. It's what one person knows him well described to me as a mask of affability. So, it's not a complex image. It's not as complex as his father, for instance, who had a kind of remove, an emotional distance from the public. Trudeau has been sharing. And the Justin Trudeau that shares himself is a nice person, is friendly, is trying to help everyone, like a teacher helping kids. But there are moments when that mask drops, or we see a different person. 

It's interesting you mentioned those two. One was in the House of Commons, it was called Elbow Gate. There was some normal procedural wrangling in the House of Commons — and if you don't like that, then you shouldn't become a member of parliament, because that's the field of struggle. He lost his temper and started to snap at people and ended up elbowing Ruth Ellen Brosseau, an NDP MP, a woman, in the chest, while he was trying to sort of rush into the centre of the floor of the House of Commons. It really shocked Gord Brown, who was a very nice man and has since passed away, a Conservative member of parliament who was the Conservative house leader. [Trudeau] quickly realized that he'd done something stupid and said to his senior people, “I can't believe I was so stupid.” But it is strange that he had this sort of temper tantrum. I don't know how meaningful it is, but it's one of these things where you think, “Well, that seems out of character.” 

Whereas the second gaffe that you mentioned, I think, is more in character. It's more like the Justin Trudeau that we understand. It was during the SNC-Lavalin affair in which he was seen to be gaslighting Jody Wilson-Raybould, a very impressive Indigenous woman. It seemed to be undercutting his image of himself as a progressive who is helping make space for Indigenous Canadians in the mainstream of public life. During all that, he went to a fundraiser and some activists from Grassy Narrows, which is a First Nation in Ontario that has been dealing with just a heartbreaking health crisis that's been going on for generations having to do with mercury poisoning from a pulp mill. The people there rely on freshwater fish as part of their traditional diet. The multi-generational illness — it's heartbreaking when you read about the details of what's happened in Grassy Narrows. So, these people were protesting government inaction on Grassy Narrows, and Trudeau joked, “Well, thank you for your donation.”

It was one of those things where everyone in the room laughed. It was a sort of nervous moment. But I think it shows a couple things. He later did apologize, as he should have. But Justin Trudeau is so often surrounded by people who are very interested in him, and he has this charismatic presence. People laugh if they're in the room because they're struck by his presence, but he ends up looking quite bad from a distance. If you're not there, sort of nervously in his presence, then you say, “Well, he's making a terrible joke about these people who are trying to do something about the terrible situation at Grassy Narrows.”

TH: You also draw attention to the Aga Khan ethics scandal, which took place early on. There have been other ethics scandals since. But you write that this particular scandal exhibited Trudeau's princely capriciousness. Can you give listeners the broad outline of that scandal, and what you meant by “princely capriciousness”?

SM: This took place a little bit more than a year after he was elected Prime Minister. It was his first Christmas as Prime Minister. And people who know him say that he and his family really needed a vacation, and I think that's true. He had been on the road so much and then taking over the government and no one ought to begrudge him that. He needed to reconnect with his family. The Aga Khan, the hereditary leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, invited Trudeau and his family and some friends to go stay at Bells Cay, an island in the Exuma Chain in the Bahamas. Which I actually sailed around this past winter to have a look at it. 

The senior people around Justin Trudeau said, “Well, that doesn't sound like a good idea, boss. That's not going to look very good. Why don't you go someplace else?” And he said, “I'm not really asking for your opinion. This is my private time, my family time.” And then they said, “Well, if you're going to do it, we had better announce it ahead of time and try to think of some way to spin it. This world leader wants Justin Trudeau there.” There might have been some way they could try to spin it a little bit. So, that’s capriciousness in my view. He decided, “I'm going to do this and I won't listen to anyone.” In his defence, this is not unusual for politicians who are pushed to the point of breaking by the demands of their professional life. They get a defensive, guarded quality around private time when they get a vacation. So, he's not the first person to run into this kind of thing, but it seemed to me like the first moment in his prime ministership where you think, “These people don't seem to know what they're doing. This is painfully obvious that this is going to lead to ethical and legal problems.” He was ultimately found guilty of having violated the conflict of ethics code, in violation of the law. He broke the law by going on this vacation and by taking a private aircraft owned by someone else. 

And that's a law that was brought in by Paul Martin and then Stephen Harper after an earlier generation of Liberal politicians got in trouble for taking free flights from their rich buddies. You look at this whole thing and you think, “Well, that's capriciousness. That's him not taking good advice and damaging himself in the minds of Canadians.” It was the beginning of the end of the honeymoon.

TH: The real turning point is the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which you argue he never quite recovered from. And summarizing that scandal, Jane Philpott described the government as trying to tear down the fundamental tenets of democracy. Can you talk about that scandal? I think a lot of people didn't follow that scandal to the very end. How did it conclude? What was found by the Ethics Commissioner?

SM: The Ethics Commissioner found that Justin Trudeau had violated the ethics code. It was an interesting decision, in that there's a law that is designed to prevent politicians basically from rewarding their friends and relatives with a government contracts, or sweetheart deals. Which Justin Trudeau had not done. There is no evidence that he or people close to him sought to profit from giving a sweetheart judicial deal to SNC-Lavalin, a troubled Montreal engineering company. But the Ethics Commissioner found that because the government had attempted to interfere in the administration of justice by the Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, that was improper. I think that that's correct.

 A thing that I found surprising about it — and I think, again, it's an example of capriciousness — is that neither Trudeau nor the very smart people around him ever said to themselves, “You know what? Let's think a little harder about this. Jody Wilson-Raybould may be right. Maybe we can't have this.” What was at issue here was [SNC] was being prosecuted for corruption in relation to terrible things that they did to funnel money corruptly to the Gaddafi family in Libya. These murderous Gaddafi’s who were syphoning money from public works projects in Libya into their own pockets so that Saadi Gaddafi, Muammar’s son, could live this ridiculously lavish lifestyle. 

Canada has signed international treaties that require us to behave a certain way when Canadian companies are found to be bribing foreign public officials. People around SNC-Lavalin were saying, “Let's not prosecute. Let's let them basically do a plea deal, through a deferred prosecution agreement.” And that's fine. Deferred prosecution agreements are a part of international anti-corruption law. But they are supposed to be reached by prosecutors who are following guidance that is agreed on in international treaties. I don't know whether they didn't fully understand the nature of their international obligations, or they were just kind of blinded by the desire to save a Montreal company from ruin. But they tried to muscle Jody Wilson-Raybould into giving a sweetheart deal to SNC-Lavalin, and were prevented from doing so by ultimately her going public and her resignation and the work of The Globe and Mail. Then, when they replaced her, the new Justice Minister, David Lametti, did not order that they be given a deferred prosecution agreement. Because, I believe, it would have been improper for him to do that — as it was improper for the government to demand that Jody Wilson-Raybould do that. 

Now, looking at it closely, there is another way of looking at it. The people around Trudeau say, “We were just trying to save jobs.” It is complicated. There are shades of grey, but I think Jody Wilson-Raybould was right. I think the government created a huge problem for itself by failing to listen to her, when it should have.

TH: It's interesting. I was living in her riding when that happened. I come from pretty progressive circles, and the impact of that on Trudeau's support in the community was quite extreme. Particularly given the fact that these are two very impressive women who have been basically thrown under the bus, by all intents and purposes. What impact do you think that had?

SM: I think — and the Liberals around Trudeau think — that in a way he never recovered from it. An important part of his brand is that he's this adorable progressive, that he is a feminist, he's an anti-racist. And he is a feminist and he is an anti-racist. If you look at the role that women and multicultural Canadians play in his government, it's like no other government before it. He has made progress in that way. But this undercut his image. He had treated Jody Wilson-Raybould disrespectfully, ultimately. I think when you looked at it very closely, you could see that her complaints were grounded in something. 

Something I thought about a lot — it's a counterfactual. But if there was a man from the same sort of milieu as Trudeau giving him that advice about the prosecution, would he have set it aside? Or would he have said, “Well, I guess we've got to listen to the Attorney General, who is telling us we can't have what we want.”

It's complicated, though, because Jody Wilson-Raybould was in some ways a political neophyte, having never served in a partisan office before. She'd been in First Nations politics, but it's not quite the same. So, there's a lot of shades of grey here. But I really do think that it permanently damaged his image. Not just among progressives, with a casual knowledge of the thing, but also with the people in the media, business, legal community who could see that he had bungled the whole thing. From the beginning, to his crisis management — which let the thing just go on and on — to the end. I don't believe he ever came up with a story that explained the whole thing. He just kind of moved on. And I think that's because there is no good story for the whole thing. It was basically impossible to do anything except hope people would forget about it eventually.

TH: Let's talk, now, about probably the most controversial moment in his tenure, and that is the vaccine mandates and then the Freedom Convoy. So, the vaccine mandates in particular, a lot has been said about his divisive tone on those, and you also note this was wedge politics. It was calculated, it did work — although barely — and it increased division in our country. I would also add that reporting from Rupa Subramanya, at The Free Press, based on federal court documents, demonstrated there was no scientific rationale for these mandates. And I did reach out to the government at the time to ask for a statement on that, and it denied none of her reporting on this. But also since this moment, we've seen research from the British Medical Journal, for example, showing vaccine mandates can have widespread unintended consequences: political polarization, lost public trust, increased vaccine hesitancy for routine childhood vaccinations. It was an utterly explosive moment in Canadian politics. What do you think his decision to wedge on that issue cost him, and what do you think it cost the country?