The last year or so has been really rough on leaders.
Back in July, Joe Biden decided that he wasn’t going to run for office, after repeatedly saying how he was totally going to run for office.
His political hari kari didn’t have the intended outcome and, for the second time, DJ Trump was elected.
Or do you remember how, back during the height of the BC elections, Kevin Falcon was all “we’re going to win this shindig, ignore those other guys on the political right, they’re a bunch of losers,” right up until he decided to pull out of the race and leave the floor wide open for the far more scientifically literate BC Conservatives to come in and become the official opposition? Falcon himself decided not to run in the election, and, while some of BC United members decided to run as independents, no not one of them got elected.
That was August 28. Today, the day the paper is going to press (January 6, 2025), word came down from on high that Justin Trudeau was stepping down as Prime Minister.
It’s like the world has gone all topsy-turvy.
Like most leaders, Trudeau’s legacy is mixed.
In his favour, will say some, was his legalization of cannabis.
On the other side, he can be a bit of a bully. While most people will look at the way he basically shoved Chrystia Freeland out of her post as finance minister, let’s also not forget the SNC-Lavalin affair, wherein Trudeau (allegedly) pressured the Attorney General to intervene in a corruption case. It was one of the most prominent scandals of his tenure. Although Trudeau and his team denied any wrongdoing, the incident led to the resignation of several senior cabinet ministers and diminished public trust in his government.
And there’s the whole We Charity issue, in which his government awarded a lucrative contract to a charity with ties to his family, sparked accusations of nepotism and conflicts of interest.
On the other hand, he has worked hard for diversity and inclusion. Of course, that would be more believable if it weren’t sometimes just lip service. Nobody out there will forget that he’s the first Prime Minister to be embroiled in a brownface scandal, which sort of goes against his progressive image.
And, while people out there like to complain about all the financial hardships facing the country, he’s actually done a half decent job growing the economy. Sure, the country is in the midst of a housing crisis, but that’s something that has been growing for the better part of 50 years. And Trump is threatening eye-wateringly high tariffs once he gets into power, but someone, hopefully, will take him aside and explain to him that such policies are basically shooting America’s own economy in the foot, kinda like Tim Cook did, when he explained that a 50 percent tariff on technology built in China was just going to destroy American companies that manufacture in China (like Apple), and leave the door wide open for non-American, non-Chinese companies like Samsung (a South Korean company.)
Sorry. Got distracted. I was talking Trudeau and economics, because, just going by the numbers, the Trudeau years, have actually been more sunshine and rainbows that not.
In the last decade, the Canadian economy has grown by 41 per cent, to $3.2 trillion.
In the previous ten years, the economy grew by less than half that amount—18 percent—under the reins of Stephen Harper.
Per capita income grew by more than 23 percent to $77,700, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Harper? Managed only a 7.6 per cent increase.
Canada has become a wealthier nation and, on average, Canadians are far wealthier. Between 2016 and 2023, the median net worth of Canadians has grown to more than half a million, $519,000, up 66 percent.
That’s pretty good. But let’s not forget Trudeau’s handling of the pandemic, which was mixed, to say the least, and his handling of the protests that followed, which was truly awful, invoking the Emergencies Act and everything that fell out from that.
Like so many before him, and, one can only assume, so many afterwards, he came in with a message of hope, kindness and openness and is leaving in a moment of despair and crisis.
And, while he talks a good talk about unity, he has proven to be fairly divisive as a leader.
So much so that his own party is in open rebellion against him.
He speaks of building bridges, but is perfectly willing to burn them.
And, while he has declared his commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), he has proven slow to act on actual Indigenous issues. Many of the promises he has made to Indigenous communities remain simply that.
Trudeau has struggled to unify Canada’s political landscape. He has done what the Liberals do best, and stuck to the middle of the road, but this approach has alienated the progressive left and the conservative right. And, despite being a schoolteacher before he got into politics, he has been less successful in shaking his image as a “man of the elite”, than the incoming US Billionaire Oligarch, who has been able to convince an entire country that he’s a good old boy.
No, he wasn’t “Turdeau”, as some of you are fond of saying. Nor was he the paragon of virtue that others say. His tenure as Prime Minister was mixed.
But, say what you will about the fellow, he had a way with the ladies, as well as with a lot of the guys in the big trucks, who wrote about their desire to engage in coital relations with him on their bumpers.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
