The Book Justin Trudeau Never Read?

In his 2011 Peter C. Newman published a book essential reading for every aspiring Liberal prime minister. It appears he never did.

“The Liberal party is in great danger of becoming an irrelevance. Alas that assumes that assumes there is still something called the Liberal party. What used to be a genuine, large and co-operative organization of like minded people has been turned into an empty shell by centralizing leaders, and is now populated by celebrity followers and power seekers”— Gordon Gibson, Senior Aid to Pierre Trudeau

“It is not out of place to mourn the fate of the vanishing Liberals. They once were a highly selective, self-perpetuating, relatively enlightened electoral band of brothers that reigned over the country longer than any other democratic movement, anywhere, anytime. That’s why it is no idle comment to speculate that Canada’s gods changed on election night last May, when the Liberal party’s walking wounded, became its walking dead”— P C Newman, National Post 2011

In 2011 Peter C. Newman published his book When the Gods Changed. In 2013 Justin Trudeau became leader of the Liberal party and won a majority government in 2015. You would think that an aspiring Liberal prime minister would read such an historically pertinent and insightful book. It appears that he never did and if he did he ignored its prognostications; as written by one of the greatest political journalists our country has ever produced.

Did he write it to score political points! I think not. First of all it covers an important period in Canadian political history. Secondly it serves as a wake up call for a political party that has hit hard times and urgently needs to re-invent itself as every political party must do cyclically. I have often wondered if Newman actually wrote the book as a favor to the party as a reference for party renewal?

Could it be Newman wrote Trudeau his “mandate letter” as Trudeau supplied mandate letters to his cabinet ministers?

Unlike the political twaddle we read and hear today Newman wrote a thoroughly researched book on the downfall of the Liberal party. It was written with frankness and intellectual honesty, and ended with a daunting challenge:

“To my mind the finesse required to preserve the remnants of the Liberal party, a once omnipotent political force, is along the delicate lines once outlined by the late Jackie Gleason, who was instructing a group of French musicians in Paris on how to play the score of his film Gigot. He couldn’t read music or speak French but he knew precisely the sound he wanted from the orchestra. He said to his interpreter, “Tell them I want the first note to sound like someone pissing off a cliff into a Chinese tea cup.” A tough assignment on a windy day. But it will take a delicate maneuver of that kind to assure some semblance of a future for the Liberals. In other words, don’t count on it.”

In his book Newman characterizes PM Stephen Harper as a one man band, the cunning ideologue with his preset agenda to dismantle Canada.

So too has Justin Trudeau been a one man band, the celebrity narcissist frolicking for eight years at the country’s expense. He has been no more than the political gadfly, spending as little time in Ottawa as possible, pursuing his trivial, scandal ridden and ethically challenged agenda.

Trudeau won an easy victory in 2015 winning a majority government. How much of this success was due to antipathy directed at the Harper government vs the Trudeau brand name? Canada’s archaic FPTP(First Past the Post) electoral also favored the Liberals.

Most importantly he was totally indifferent to rebuilding the party and hitting “the Chinese tea cup.” He is the fraudster who exploited his father’s good name to seize control of a party when it was most vulnerable to fraudsters and opportunists….as Gordon Gibson adroitly observed the party, “is now populated by celebrity followers and power seekers”

The Liberal caucus is as culpable as the leader for the dismal performance of the party. The Trudeau name was their gate ticket to power, pensions and flush employment and they spent eight years endorsing a leader who should have been held to account; an indifferent public are also culpable.

We get the leadership we deserve.

Now the electorate is flocking to the Conservative alternative which is not an alternative, just more of the same, another compact of “celebrity followers and power seekers” indifferent to the public and national interest.

A change of government in Canada is a meaningless exercise as like most Western so called democracies they have sold their souls to money, power, and the neoliberal agenda .

The dismal performance of our political parties is a symptom of much more critical issues not being addressed and principled political values abandoned; along with the ever present neoliberal ideology whose primary role is to emasculate government.

Until we consider reinvention, not much will change.

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