http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/canada-willie-wonka-161023052034669.html
Sooner
or later Canadians' appetite for Justin Trudeau's charming act will fade -
whether he knows it or not.
By Andrew Mitrovica
Andrew Mitrovica is an award-winning
investigative reporter and journalism instructor.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau's sweet, youthful, Willy Wonka façade is slipping to reveal that he's
just an old boy wedded to the old way of doing things at home and abroad.
Recently, Trudeau celebrated his
first year in office by granting "exclusive" interviews to
golden-ticket bearing journalists who, predictably, treated him with gooey
deference, careful to avoid asking their younger and perpetually effervescent
guest any prickly questions.
It's telling that a politician who
claims to be doing politics in a new way continues to exploit legacy media to
share his saccharine-laced message that "sunny ways" Canada is back.
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What Canadians and the world can
expect from Trudeau?
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Of course, this is a
media-manufactured mirage. But if Trudeau and his protective team of PR
advisers have proven anything since he was elected last October, it's how adept
they are in fashioning an image of a prime minister who is all smiles, all the
time, sans the top-hat, frilly outfit and candy factory.
Friction-free
interview
For diabetes-inducing evidence of
this, I invite you to listen to this largely friction-free interview
Trudeau conducted with the CBC to commemorate his one-year anniversary as prime
minister earlier this month.
Among the first of many agreeable
questions posed by the fawning CBC host was this embarrassing bauble: "You
have always been clear that spending time with your own young family is a
priority. How do you balance that with the job that you have?"
Trudeau knocked that gift-wrapped
confection out of the park, saying, with all the solemnity that he could
muster, that he wasn’t in politics for the prestige or power, but because of
his three children.
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Canadian First Nations' chief in a
meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau [Reuters]
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"Everything I'm doing here is
or should be in service of making the world a better place for my kids, for all
of our kids to grow up in," he said.
The host’s follow-up question was
equally mortifying.
"And as a dad, what's your
favourite thing to do with your kids at the end of the day?"
At that point, the CBC ought to have
wheeled out a chocolate cake with a solitary candle on top so Trudeau and
family could blow it out, while everyone joined in a rousing rendition of
"Happy Anniversary" on Canada’s public broadcaster.
The obsequious CBC wasn't the only
major Canadian media outlet not only to give Trudeau a big, largely gentle
platform to parrot his cliche-ridden bromides, but also to give him high marks
as prime minister.
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Despite plastering a happy face
decal on Canada, Trudeau has followed in his Conservative predecessor's
reactionary footsteps so closely that critics are beginning to refer to him,
justifiably, as Stephen Harper light.
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A columnist with the Toronto Star -
Canada's largest circulation newspaper that has traditionally supported the
Liberal party - wrote that Trudeau had earned an A- because he had kept some of
his election promises, rehabilitated Ottawa's relationship with Washington,
provided safe haven to Syrian refugees, launched a public inquiry into missing
and murdered indigenous women and introduced a modest carbon tax.
Syrian
refugees
While I have applauded Trudeau's decision to
welcome Syrian refugees and to attempt finally to redress the
centuries’ old injustice visited upon Canada's first peoples, a less
pollyannaish assessment of his admittedly short stint in the top job is also a
lot less flattering.
Despite plastering a happy face
decal on Canada, Trudeau has followed in his Conservative predecessor's
reactionary footsteps so closely that critics are beginning to refer to him,
justifiably, as Stephen Harper light.
Examine Trudeau's environmental
record. To date, it’s, in effect, a carbon copy of Harper's: pay theoretical
lip service to the existential need to stave off climate suicide, while
adopting the Conservatives' limp carbon emission targets and approving a liquefied natural gas
plant, as well as a pipeline on British Columbia's coast that, taken
together, will substantially add to, rather than subtract from, Canada’s carbon
footprint.
Like Harper, Trudeau dutifully sided
with corporate interests over environmentalists, scientists and indigenous
peoples who believe they’ve been betrayed by a malleable politician who has,
once again, sacrificed the land and the people who inhabit it for the geyser of
cash to be made from energy exports.
And they're not the only Canadians
who feel betrayed by a prime minister who has mastered taking selfies and
double-speak.
Trudeau talks often in sophomoric
terms about recapturing the halcyon days when Canada was a force for peace and
international security.
Meanwhile, the number of Canadian military
"advisers" in Iraq has tripled and his government approved
a multibillion-dollar sale of armoured
vehicles to Saudi Arabia that helped vault Canada into second place - behind
only the United States - in arms sales to the Middle East in 2015.
Apparently, in Trudeau's
geopolitical calculus, war is indeed peace. Not only that, NATO and Obama are
great. Putin is very bad. Israel is never wrong. Dead Palestinian children, women
and men don't count. Ukraine is a freedom-loving democracy. Russia is a
dictatorship. Free trade deals and unfettered foreign investment are the keys
to prosperity. "Protectionism" is a dead end.
I could go on, but you get the
point. The rhetorical and substantive differences between Trudeau and Harper's
so-called "foreign policy" are microscopic.
Oh, and rather than rein in the
surveillance state enshrined into law by Harper, Trudeau has effectively
permitted it to operate carte blanche and in the absence of any tangible
oversight.
Canada's spies remain The
Untouchables, beyond the reach of any prying eyes or the law. Trudeau won't
even apologise to a trio of Canadian Muslims who were
tortured overseas with the complicity of the RCMP and Canada's spy
service, CSIS.
Tough-on-terror Trudeau has rebuffed
persistent calls by civil libertarians, constitutional lawyers and concerned
citizens to repeal the Harper-engineered "national security" bills,
opting instead to launch cross-country "consultations" designed to
provide him with semi-plausible political cover to rebut cynics like me who insist
the cement on this score is already dry.
Still, Canada's Willy Wonka sits
comfortably atop the opinion polls. But, sooner or later, Canadians' appetite
for Trudeau's charming act will fade - whether he knows it or not.
Andrew Mitrovica is an award-winning
investigative reporter and journalism instructor.
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