Hoo 'boy'....
“Boy, your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada, and have turned Canada into a running dog of the US.”
Kheiriddin: The world's love affair with Justin Trudeau ends on a sour note
How far Canada’s golden boy has fallen since he first burst on the scene
Justin Trudeau, G7 Summit, Cornwall, 2021, speaking to a reporter:
“The impacts of this G7 will remain long after the newspapers you write for have been used to wrap fish.”
Ah, how far Icarus has fallen. When the newly minted prime minister burst on the scene, the world couldn’t get enough. From fawning Vogue covers to selfie-fests with foreign leaders, Canada’s golden boy held press and politicians in the palm of his hand. Even Ivanka Trump basked in his spotlight.
How far Icarus has fallen
Now, it appears the love affair between the prime minister and the global media is over. It would appear the ill feelings are mutual. Instead of sunny ways, Trudeau this past weekend presented a grizzled, sour figure. Tongue-in-cheek headlines were everywhere on Sunday: “With Merkel leaving, Trudeau positions himself as dean of the G7,” with the stories noting coyly that no one is actually taking him up on his offer.
So what went wrong? Well, not much has gone right with Trudeau’s “Canada’s back” boast to the world. Canada’s peacekeeping efforts are at a 60-year low, with
our meagre 2019 mission to Mali lasting all of a year. Trudeau’s 2018 India trip was a
PR disaster. And in 2020, Canada failed (again) to secure a UN Security Council seat, despite
Trudeau’s lavish lobbying blitz.
Worse yet, Trudeau’s actual accomplishments have only come back to haunt him. In 2018, the prime minister presided over a G7 meeting at Charlevoix, Que., which saw a
“historic investment” in women and girls. But a year later, the feminist PM steamrolled two high-profile female cabinet ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, in the SNC-Lavalin affair, in order to help a company that had admitted to international fraud and bribery.
On the trade front, Trudeau’s vaunted CETA deal with the EU has
Western beef producers in a snit: almost four years in, exports from the EU to Canada have soared from $14.7 million to $129 million, while Canada’s inched up from $7.9 million to $32.7 million.
And despite supposedly chummy relations with the Biden administration, Trudeau has made no progress in reopening the border since the early days of the pandemic, to the consternation of both travellers and businesses.
But the elephant in the room may be China.
As the G7 powers rally to counter the threat of China’s growing geopolitical influence, one cannot help but remember Trudeau’s famous
2013 pronouncement that “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green … we need to start investing in solar.’” In 2018, he was busily trying to secure a free-trade deal with Beijing.
Fast forward to March 2021. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
released a report that found China and Russia engaging in “significant and sustained” foreign interference activities that “predominantly threaten the fundamental building blocks of Canada’s democracy.” Earlier this month, it was revealed that in 2019, two Chinese military scientists were fired from Canada’s only Level 4 virology lab, spawning an RCMP investigation. Meanwhile, two of our citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, remain jailed in China on trumped-up charges.
And what do the Chinese think of Trudeau? In March, after Canada imposed sanctions on China over its horrific treatment of its Uyghur minority, a Chinese official tweeted caustically at Trudeau: “Boy, your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada, and have turned Canada into a running dog of the US.”
So when Trudeau declared at the recent G7 that “At this meeting, Canada led the way on a common approach to addressing the challenges posed by China,” it is impossible for Canadians to take him seriously — and for the rest of the world to do so as well.
Kheiriddin: The world's love affair with Justin Trudeau ends on a sour note