Most political leaders are consumed by the need to establish a legacy before they leave office. This can be accomplished in several ways, including personal leadership traits, policy decisions, and positive outcomes. Long story short, they want to be remembered for something (or several things) they achieved by the time they leave this mortal coil.
Which brings us to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau announced on Monday that he will step down as Liberal Party leader. He will remain prime minister until the party chooses his successor in a forthcoming leadership race. He also prorogued Parliament until March 24.
The PM’s left-wing sycophants in politics and the media are already trying to build a legacy for him. They’re promoting or reshaping some of his policies since taking office in 2015 and attempting to put a positive spin on them.
It won’t work. Trudeau’s legacy will always be defined by one word: “failure.”
Some readers will argue that I’m just saying this because he’s a Liberal. That’s not true. The other four Liberal Prime Ministers in my lifetime – Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin – all left their own legacies. While I didn’t support any of them and disagreed with most of their policies, there’s no question that they accomplished things while residing at 24 Sussex Drive.
That’s not the case with Trudeau. His list of political failures, missteps and blunders is enormous – and puts the mistakes of most other Prime Ministers to shame. I’ve written about them many times, in many different ways and in many different columns, opeds and feature pieces. Let’s examine some of them again for the sake of posterity.
Trudeau’s behaviour was often abhorrent
He tried to hide three older instances of wearing blackface until the media and photographic evidence caught up with him. He received two violations from the Ethics Commissioner for accepting a trip to the Aga Khan’s private island and the SNC Lavalin controversy. He barely escaped a third one related to WE Charity. He skipped speaking engagements to go surfing with his family in Tofino, B.C., during the first National Truth and Reconciliation Day. He claimed to be a liberal (or progressive) feminist at every turn, but his spats with female Liberal cabinet ministers like Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Chrystia Freeland, as well as his then-parliamentary secretary, Celina Caesar-Chavannes, put doubts in many people’s minds. We can’t ignore “elbowgate,” in which he bumped into Ruth Ellen Brosseau, a former NDP MP, during a May 2016 parliamentary session. There’s also that alleged groping incident with a female reporter in Creston, B.C., in 2000, which happened before he became a Liberal MP and was resolved but is still worth mentioning as a sidebar.
Trudeau’s policies were usually terrible
He spent taxpayer dollars like a drunken sailor – which is unsurprising as he’s a true tax-and-spend Liberal. He attempted to persuade the U.S. and Mexico to include frivolous concepts like gender rights and Indigenous rights during NAFTA renegotiations instead of focusing on the real matter at hand, trade. He wasted time, effort and plenty of resources on foolish gun control policies that frustrated many Canadians and unnecessarily targeted duck hunters, law-abiding gun owners and even Canadians who had never used a firearm in their lives. He obsessed over environmentalism, including a crippling national carbon tax that’s turned off most Canadians and hurt us at the gas pumps. The GST holiday on certain items like junk food and alcohol was rejected by most Canadians as a wasteful measure to regain lost voter support. His policies essentially created the affordability crisis in this country, leading to escalating home prices, high heating bills in many provinces and some individuals and families being unable to purchase essential items like bread, butter, eggs, bacon and baby diapers.
Trudeau’s national and international screw-ups need to be mentioned, too
There are allegations of Chinese election interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections that remain unresolved. The two Michaels and Meng Wanzhou affair gripped the nation and the world for a time. The Freedom Convoy and his controversial decision to enact the Emergencies Act made headlines. The PM’s wild allegation of a link between India’s government agenda and the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which his own national security advisor, Nathalie Drouin, said in November was “speculative and inaccurate,” was an embarrassment. Allowing a Nazi to be honoured in Parliament was a disgrace to the Canadian people. Speaking out of both sides of his mouth about Israel and the Middle East turned off many Canadians, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Icy relations with two U.S. presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, pushed Canada to the foreign policy kiddie table – where we remain today.
There’s even more, but you get the idea.
Long story short, Trudeau did absolutely nothing that benefited Canadian politics and our national economy. He accomplished absolutely nothing on the domestic and international scene. He achieved absolutely nothing as Prime Minister.
This isn’t a legacy to be proud of. Most of Canada’s Prime Ministers would be embarrassed to be associated with this list of failures. Justin Trudeau, our ineffective, mediocre, and delusional PM, likely experienced them differently.
Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.
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