Hitting the ground running

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This article was published 23/10/2015 (3351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — On the day after the election, the feeling of change was everywhere — in elevators, in coffee shops, at downtown bus stops. 

And people were repeatedly saying they expect big things of prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau. Ironic, after expectations of him were so low at the start of the election campaign. 

But Trudeau’s unlikely majority government win has symbolized not just a policy shift for Canada, but a personality shift. 

Trudeau himself has done everything in his power to paint the picture for Canadians that he is as different from Stephen Harper as you can get.

So it was, within 24 hours of the Liberals’ victory, Trudeau was already in the National Press Theatre, talking to members of the national media, something Harper did only three times and not once since 2008. 

And Trudeau didn’t just show up. 

He showed up in Trudeau style, by walking across the street from the Centre Block, a black-suited figure in a flurry of cameras, shaking hands and posing for selfies with anyone he passed along the way.

At the street light just in front of the West Block, a transit bus driver honked as he realized who was waiting to cross.

So Trudeau boarded the bus and shook hands with the people on their way home. These are mostly bureaucrats, many of whom express a hope the tightly controlled world of Harper will end under Trudeau. 

As he left the bus, Trudeau even joked that if he were Jean Chrétien, he would have worked the whole bus, but he was tired.

Of course he was. He was up until the wee hours celebrating his win and then out at a subway station in his Montreal riding glad-handing morning commuters before making his way back to Ottawa for an afternoon victory rally with candidates and staff and volunteers there.

“Does this man ever sleep?” wondered a friend on Facebook upon seeing the images of Trudeau.

It’s all part of the carefully crafted image of Trudeau as fit and energetic and at ease with people.

But who is Justin Trudeau exactly, and what kind of government is he really going to run?

Comparisons to Trudeau’s father have been frequent and inevitable.

Trudeau and his team have taken great pains to ride the comparisons to his father when it helped and push them aside when they didn’t. The image of Justin Trudeau paddling a canoe solo down the Bow River in Calgary on the morning of the leaders debate on the economy surely was crafted to invoke memories of Pierre Trudeau, who was photographed endlessly paddling a canoe, often wearing buckskins.

The Liberal campaign has repeatedly put Justin Trudeau in active photo ops — boxing, hiking up a mountain, balancing babies on his hands — reminiscent of the photos of his father doing pushups on the riverbank or the famous pirouette.

During the leaders debate on foreign policy at the end of September, Trudeau bristled at criticism of his father tossed out by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair. His impassioned defence of his father’s legacy was one of the strongest moments in any debate by any leader.

“Let me say very clearly, I am incredibly proud to be Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s son,” he said.

But he has also repeatedly spoken of the differences between himself and his father.

In his autobiography, Common Ground, released in 2014, Justin Trudeau said his father’s legacy might have kept him away from running for office.

“The association with my father was never a reason for me to get into politics,” he wrote. “It was, rather, a reason for me to avoid entering the political arena.”

He has said he wants to put an end to the tightly centralized power of the Prime Minister’s Office that began under his father and has increased with every prime minister since. Ministers, Trudeau said this week, will be “deciders” again.

Where Pierre was more aloof, Justin is far more comfortable in a crowd. In fact, there seems to be nowhere he is more comfortable.

It should surprise nobody Trudeau is comfortable in this position. He grew up with Parliament Hill as his playground in a world where meeting presidents and kings was nothing out of the ordinary. 

In a 2012 interview with Maclean’s magazine during the Liberal leadership race, Justin Trudeau acknowledged substantial differences between himself and his dad, noting his father was a more “focused, incredibly linear” thinker whose thoughts were determined before he even joined cabinet as the minister of justice.

“I’m someone who stumbles my way through, leads with my chin in some cases, leads with my heart in all cases. It leaves me way open for all sorts of criticisms left, right and centre. You know what? I was raised with pretty thick skin. And I think people are hungry for politicians who aren’t afraid to say what they think and mean it.”

Trudeau has said he is in many ways much more like his mother, Margaret, who is more outgoing and a little softer than his more insular father. He has also taken great pains to try and draw comparisons between himself and his mother’s father, James Sinclair, who was known to be an outgoing, somewhat gregarious MP from Vancouver from 1940 to 1958, which included being fisheries minister in the final five years.

Last Sunday, his final campaign event of the election — not so subtly located at a hotel on Victory Ship Way in North Vancouver — was in the riding represented by his grandfather. It was a purposeful moment, designed for Trudeau to try and define himself not as his father, but as his grandfather.

“I’m not sure if love of campaigning has any kind of genetic component, but if it does I can trace my passion for it straight back to Grandpa. He loved knocking on doors, getting out and meeting with people, taking the time to really listen to what they had to say. It’s his style that I have adopted as my own because it suits me, too.”

Margaret Trudeau kept a low profile during the campaign, which, she said in interviews, was deliberate. However, they shared a tender embrace on election night as Justin made his way to the podium to deliver his victory speech. 

Those close to Trudeau expect his government style to not be too far off his campaign style, the one he said was responsible for winning the election. That is collaboration and consultation with as many people as possible.

Lloyd Axworthy, a former regional minister in Manitoba, said this week Trudeau has set himself and his government up well with connections on the ground in the last 2 1/2 years. Every trip to Manitoba included numerous meetings with people from a variety of groups.

“In doing so, he established a real circle in the province,” Axworthy said. “These are people he knows by first name.” 

They are people he can now call on when he needs to get an ear on the ground, when the government needs to get a read on how things are playing, or what people expect. They are people who can potentially help keep him grounded himself. 

Greg MacEachern, former Liberal staffer and now vice-president of government relations for Environics Communications, said the expectations on Trudeau are enormous, in large part because of the campaign he ran and the promise things will be different.

“I would say one of the first items the Trudeau crew has to deal with is managing expectations,” said MacEachern. “They have to clearly define what they intend to do in the short term.”

Trudeau has a long list of promises to deliver on but will have to establish a schedule to get there. Some priorities are clear. The United Nations climate change conference in Paris is just over a month away, and Trudeau is already speaking to premiers about the strategy Canada will present there. Most premiers will attend with Trudeau in early December.

Trudeau promised to introduce his middle-class tax cut in the first 100 days, which means by the end of January. He promised Tuesday to move quickly on a public inquiry into the number of murdered and missing indigenous women in Canada. 

And there is that little matter of the economy. The Bank of Canada downgraded its economic forecasts for this and the next two years this week. Trudeau has promised small deficits to finance infrastructure spending as a means of getting Canada’s economy growing again. So getting the new $60-billion infrastructure program off the ground will be key. 

None of this will begin in earnest until Trudeau is sworn in as Canada’s 23rd prime minister Nov. 4. And some of it, like tax cuts and infrastructure programs, can’t really be implemented until Parliament resumes with a throne speech. It’s unlikely to happen before mid-December, and with Christmas break, the Liberals may decide to wait until the new year, although MacEachern said finding a way to do it before Christmas may help send a message the Liberals are wasting no time getting down to the business of governing.

Trudeau has already joined Harper for a transition meeting, and his transition team is in place, led by former senior bureaucrat Peter Harder. Aides are already trying to find a time for Trudeau to meet with the premiers ahead of the climate change event. It would be the first meeting of a prime minister and all the premiers since 2009. 

One thing is clear. If Canadians have high expectations of Trudeau, he has them of himself, too.

As Trudeau rushed out of the National Press Theatre earlier this week, his new security detail hovering close, ushering him into a waiting motorcade to whisk him away to the next event, the media called out to him, wondering if this was the last they’d see of him now he has won. 

He paused a moment and turned back to the microphone.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “I promise.”

 

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca