Conversations with Trudeau
Conversations with Trudeau
Perhaps you're wondering what Justin Trudeau's doing right. Guess who can tell you!
It’s fitting that this year’s annual conference of Canada’s Building Trades Unions is at the Hilton in Lac-Leamy, 15 minutes’ drive from Parliament Hill and down a hall from the national capital region’s big casino. People often come here to contemplate the hand they’ve been dealt, calculate their chances, decide whether to raise or fold.
Prime ministers and federal opposition leaders almost always attend these conferences. Unionized construction workers are a prize in any election. Their vote can shift from election to election. They don’t always take their leaders’ advice. So Justin Trudeau was there on Monday. Pierre Poilievre will be there on Tuesday.
I find myself becoming more fascinated by Justin Trudeau as more Canadians hang up on him. He has spent the last year trying to get our attention: with a cabinet shuffle that was supposed to push the best communicators forward; with a long and meaty pre-budget tour; with special access for social-media influencers at the budget lockup; and lately with a turn to podcasts that has gotten more coverage from more outlets than the work of half his cabinet.
When a guy is this eager we might as well listen. What is he trying to tell us?
Most years Trudeau delivers an ordinary speech to the building trades. This year the prime minister plunked himself down in a plush chair and told CBTU executive director Sean Strickland, facing him in another chair, that he wanted to try “something slightly different this year.” This year he would “actually have a conversation with you, Sean, where we could talk about some of the challenges we're facing.”
Forty minutes later I was left wondering what Strickland thought about the challenges we’re facing, because Trudeau didn’t leave him much room for his side of the conversation.
My transcript of Trudeau’s opening volley runs past 1,500 words. Here’s a very condensed version: