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Christie Blatchford: When a cloying Peter Mansbridge became too much for even Trudeau to take
Christie Blatchford | November 5, 2015
Photo at link: CBC's Pete Mansbridge rides with Justin Trudeau on his way to be sworn in as prime minster in the CBC "Behind-the-scenes of Justin Trudeau's first day as Prime Minister" video.
I was trapped in a Toronto court Wednesday with an alleged murderer — some days, you just get lucky — and so missed the massive coverage of The Ascension, as I have come to call Justin Trudeau’s arrival as prime minister and, more really, the return of the federal Liberals to their rightful place in power.
So Thursday, I looked up the CBC special I’d heard about, wherein anchor Peter Mansbridge got special, exclusive, nay unprecedented, access to Trudeau on the day of his swearing-in.
It was, ah, edifying.
Now, I grant you the young PM is a genuine charmer, and smart on his feet; that there are many engaging and accomplished people in his new cabinet, and that much of the country seems won over by Trudeau’s “sunny ways” optimism after almost a decade of relatively dour Conservative government.
I get all that. It’s pretty contagious.
But throughout the election CBC journalists, I thought, were caught in a difficult position: There they were, covering a campaign where one leader (Stephen Harper) had cut the CBC budget and seemed inclined to do more damage and two others (Trudeau and Tom Mulcair) were promising to reverse the recent cuts and pronouncing themselves in favour of stable, long-term funding for the public broadcaster.
How do you do that fairly, when one guy is threatening your livelihood and the other two are whispering sweet nothings in your ear?
I didn’t watch enough of the campaign coverage to have a clue how CBC’s reporters managed it — probably well — but it ought to have made the broadcaster institutionally cautious and keen to keep a certain distance once the Liberals won.
Instead, in what must look to cynics and Conservatives like a classic quid pro quo, the CBC and Mansbridge got — I presume sought — this ne plus ultra access to the PM.
The special ran to almost 25 minutes, and began with Trudeau and his two oldest kids riding to the top of the Peace Tower to raise the new flag for the day. (There’s a new flag every day. The twist was that Trudeau was this day the one to raise it.)
As they rode up in the elevator, Mansbridge asked if as a kid, Trudeau and his siblings had gone to the tower with their dad, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
It was one of several moments when Mansbridge strove desperately for the cloying, and young Trudeau resisted. (I have to say, such moments greatly endeared Trudeau to me. It would have been so easy to hit these big sloppy softballs out of the park with rank sentiment, but he declined manfully.)
“I think my dad made us take the stairs,” he told Mansbridge, who then went a bit gaga and mewled, “all the way from the bottom?” as though that was akin to climbing Everest.
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Trudeau then showed the kids his new office — telling them in French that it had also been their grandfather’s — and then the cameras followed him to a meeting with senior staff.
There was talk of “small announceables” and what to expect from the coming scrum with the press (it’s not just Harper’s PMO that talks of such crass matters), and Trudeau offered that he was astonished people still get worked up about the “gender balance” in his cabinet.
One of the staffers said that the best way to answer such questions was to just reference the year, which of course, to much applause, is what Trudeau later went on to do when a reporter asked why gender balance was so important to him and he replied, “Because it’s 2015.”
It was probably his weakest but most revealing moment because here he sounded just like those who are so over-the-moon to see the Liberals in charge again, and all right with the world. As a cynical friend wrote, after watching the CBC special, “It’s all so much better when we all agree and all is good and there’s no one else disturbing the peace.”
Besides, as that muse of mine puts it, if you really wanted genuine equality, surely there’s a good case for just doing it, not announcing it beforehand and reaping all the fawning. There’s a certain diminution of women inherent in saying a quota is needed.
On and on it went.
Photo at link: CP/Sean Kilpatrick: He walks! Justin Trudeau, with his wife Sophie, and members of his cabinet arrive at Rideau Hall to take part in a swearing-in ceremony, Nov. 4, 2015.
Mansbridge and Trudeau rode in a limo to 24 Sussex where Trudeau would meet his family and walk to Rideau Hall, and Mansbridge burbled, “How will you handle all this — the limo, bulletproof (glass) or whatever it is? That’s not you. … Now that you’re in ‘the bubble,’ how will you stay true to yourself?”
Trudeau did not roll his eyes, but I thought he deeply wanted to do. “It’s not a challenge for me,” he said. “It’s a challenge for the RCMP,” meaning those charged with keeping him safe as he mingles with the public.
At one point, when Trudeau was talking about the difficulty of raising normal kids in a privileged family, Mansbridge actually shook his head in admiration.
But my favourite moment was when Trudeau and the new cabinet ministers got on a bus to head to their first meeting.
Mansbridge was just beside himself: A bus! A bus! What magnificent, one-with-the-people symbolism!
And the new PM looked quizzically at him and told him, essentially, to cool his jets. “There will be cars and limos,” he said, because those things go with government.
And Peter, Trudeau added, “Lots of people take a bus every day to go to work.”
All in all, it was a more effective arse-handing than the one he famously delivered to Patrick Brazeau.
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