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Dear World:

Justin Trudeau here. Remember me?

You were in love with me once. You put me on the cover of Rolling Stone. The Washington Post once called me “the anti-Trump.” The Christian Science Monitor wondered if I was “Canada’s JFK.” USA Today wrote that I had “charm, good looks, and progressive policies on feminism and diversity.”

Well, that was then and this is now, I guess.

I won’t bother to repeat some of the things you say about me now, World. They’re not very nice.

I mean, sure, my feminism took a bit of hit when, um, it was alleged that I groped a female reporter. But I repeat what I told her: I wouldn’t have done so if she had told me she was a writer for a national newspaper!

And, OK, Donald Trump and I both arguably obstructed justice — him for cronies, and me for a Liberal party donor being prosecuted for corruption. Sure. But he was impeached, and I wasn’t!

And, yes, my diversity credentials aren’t what they used to be. Lying about where I was on the day I set aside for Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation — and instead jetting off to a surfer’s beach in Tofino, and lounging at an $18-million mansion — wasn’t so progressive, I suppose. But I expressed “regret”! Isn’t that enough, World?

Anyway, World, we are BFFs no more. We aren’t besties like we used to be. I acknowledge that, and know who is to blame.

You, World. You are to blame. I’m the same guy — same chiselled jaw, same flowing locks. It’s you who has changed, World.

And I am serving my revenge, um, hot, World. My revenge is Melanie Joly.

You don’t know much about Melanie, now, but I guarantee you will, soon enough. She’s going to leave an impression on you, and you’re not going to like it.

Here’s a sampling of Melanie Joly’s gravest hits, World. Not one of these is made up.

Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations. Countries only turn 150 once — but Melanie, as minister responsible, turned ours into an unmitigated fiasco. Indigenous youth protested it, and citizens hated it, and even wrote to me about it. A sampling: “I have never seen such a poor, chaotic display. Shame on you Ottawa.” And: “Please, (Minister Joly), I beg you to step out of your protective shell and acknowledge what a mess Canada Day was and take some responsibility for it.” And: “Time for you to resign!” Ouch.

The Netflix fiasco. Melanie gifted the streaming giant tax-free status for a piddling amount of investment in Canada’s cultural sector — including in her home province, Quebec. The media weren’t impressed. The Globe and Mail said Melanie’s “fall from grace has been swift and merciless, sped by her maladroit attempts to sell a deal with Netflix.” The National Post noted that she had been “savaged in Quebec media, artistic and political circles.” And her hometown paper, the Journal de Montreal, said she sounds “like a living answering machine having a nervous breakdown.” Double ouch.

Ottawa Holocaust Monument.Melanie commissioned one, but she forgot something. The Washington Post noticed: “(Joly) forgot to mention Jews on the new Holocaust monument dedication plaque.” Oops.

Parliament Hill hockey rink. Melanie had a rink built on Parliament Hill, which was nice. Not nice: The rink (a) prohibited the playing of hockey; (b) was going to be in existence for less than a month; and (c) was a block from the biggest skating rink in the world, the Rideau Canal. Oh, and this, from the Toronto Star: “The rink is budgeted to cost about $215,385 per day that it’s open.” That worked out to about $300 per skater. Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Anyway, you get the picture, World. If you’re not nice to me anymore, I’m not going to be nice to you. So, I give you Melanie Joly, the worst cabinet minister in the history of Canada.

Take that, World.

Sincerely,

Justin

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Jean Chretien is a winner at politics — and at putting together a cabinet, too.

Consider this: During his 40-year political career, he never lost an election. With three back-to-back majorities, he is the winningest prime minister in modern times.

He beat Quebec separatism, twice. He brought home the Constitution and gave us a Charter of Rights. He held every major portfolio in the governments of Mike Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.

He was, and remains, consulted by international leaders, U.S. presidents, and Her Majesty the Queen.

And when he left active politics in 2003 — on his own terms, not because anyone pushed him out — his approval rating remained above 60%.

Chretien is a winner.

(And, sure, I’m biased. I was his special assistant and then, later, his friend. I would take a bullet for him.)

But objectively, if you were putting together a government — if you were putting together a cabinet, or putting together some contentious policy proposal — wouldn’t you pick up the phone to seek his advice?

He doesn’t charge for it. He’s willing to give free advice to any prime minister who gives him a ring.

Justin Trudeau — whose legacy is now proven to include scandal and political failure — needed to consult with Jean Chretien. But did he do that enough?

Well, Trudeau rolls out his new cabinet Tuesday morning. And Chretien — reached in Montreal when promoting the second volume of his new book, My Stories, My Times — doesn’t reveal if he was consulted on that new cabinet.https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Cz8aRnk5gE?embed_config={%27relatedChannels%27:%20[],%27autonav%27:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1

But, exclusively, Chretien has given the Toronto Sun some excerpts from the new book about how to build a cabinet. Check this one out, which tells for the first time how Paul Martin only became finance minister at the last possible moment:

“When we won the election on Oct. 25, 1993, I had to form a cabinet. What was I going to do with my two main adversaries for the party leadership, Paul Martin and Sheila Copps? It was the strategy of Lincoln, who did not lack for opponents in his own camp when he became president of the United States, that inspired me in forming my cabinet. He had given them the greatest possible responsibilities.  

With Copps, it was easy: I named her deputy prime minister and minister of the environment, which delighted her. With Martin, it was much more complicated. I told him that I wanted him to be my finance minister, because I believed that there was no problem more important than the deficit, the national debt, the unemployment rate, and the high interest rates.

He replied that that post was the graveyard of politicians, and he wanted to become the new C.D. Howe, the all-powerful minister of industry and commerce under Prime Minister Louis  St.  Laurent.  I  retorted that John Turner and I had been finance minister before becoming party leader and prime minister. After a number of exchanges, he told me clearly that he would not accept finance, but that he’d be happy with industry and commerce. Given this refusal, I offered John Manley the post of finance minister, which he accepted. Forty-eight hours before the swearing-in, Martin called me to say that he’d changed his mind and would finally agree to be finance minister. It’s clear that had I not insisted, he would never have known all the glory that this post brought him. I had to call John Manley back. He’d been finance minister for only 48  hours, but he would have the position again later on.”

That anecdote provides Justin Trudeau with the best advice of all: don’t play favourites. Don’t cater to big egos. Don’t blink.

Will Justin Trudeau take the advice? We may find out Tuesday morning.

— Kinsella was Chretien’s special assistant

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Story here. Key bits here:

“Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would have been “better served” if he sought guidance from his party’s elder statesmen, but that the current government has failed to reach out to him for advice.

“I’m not there, but sometimes I thought that, you know, they would have been better served if they would have looked to have older, experienced people with them,” Chrétien said in an interview airing on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday. 

Chrétien said he isn’t passing judgment on the current Liberal government.

But, in a forthcoming book, he wrote that while “Trudeau and his team aspire to be reformists on a grand scale … their lack of experience for succeeding in that goal is more and more apparent.”

Asked about that remark by CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, Chrétien said the current crop of Liberals in Ottawa “don’t consult me,” and that he is fine with that.

“I’m not there. It’s not my responsibility,” he said.

Chrétien also noted in his book that rejecting politicians, and the politics of the past, are part of the Trudeau Liberals’ identity. 

“They say to whoever wants to hear that one of their great successes is in having sidelined the old guard,” he wrote in My Stories, My Times, Vol. 2, coming out on Tuesday. 

The former prime minister said that the reason he believes in the value of leaning on the previous generation’s experience is because he is a product of that kind of thinking.

…Chretien, who oversaw three majority governments between 1993 and 2003, said, as a person who likes brokering deals and compromises, he would “have enjoyed having [a minority government], in a way.”

“I preferred to have a majority government and the people of Canada wanted to give me a majority government, So what can I say?”

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Hypocrite.

Calling somebody a hypocrite isn’t anything new. In politics, just about anywhere, hypocrisy is the coin of the realm. Everyone in public life seems to practice it.

But the regime of Justin Trudeau is a special case, isn’t it? They have taken hypocrisy to an entirely new level.

They have reached hypocritical heights that have heretofore never been reached. They are in the actual pantheon of hypocrites, for eternity.

I don’t mean to pick on her, even though God knows she deserves it. But Justin Trudeau’s minister of health, Patty Hajdu, is the most recent and most notorious example of a Trudeau cabinet minister who is unashamedly, undeniably hypocritical. It is almost like she relishes it. That it is part of her job description.

Some time ago, she lectured Canadians about wearing masks during the pandemic. Shortly thereafter, she was photographed laughing in a private airport lounge. Maskless.

She extolled the virtues of social distancing, and insisted that Canadians do likewise. She was then seen in the aforementioned private airport lounge, giggling close-up with other well-to-do executive types.

Most recently, following an unwanted and unnecessary election — in which her boss travelled nonstop for more than a month — she demanded that Canadians not travel themselves. With a straight face. She did that.

Do one thing, say another. Talk the talk, but never walk the talk. Preach something, practice something else.

That is what Patty Hajdu does, during the biggest public health crisis Canada has faced in a century. At precisely the moment when it was critical that Canadians receive clear, factual and persuasive health information from their federal minister of health, we were given a former graphic designer who is both incoherent and incompetent.

We were given Patty Hajdu who — over and over and over – says one thing and does another. Who is a hypocrite of the highest order.

But can we really blame her? Can we really get angry with Patty Hajdu, when we consider who her boss is?

Justin Trudeau, who repeatedly proclaimed that he was a feminist, and who covered up the fact that he had been accused of groping a female reporter?

Justin Trudeau, who, when he became Liberal leader in 2013, solemnly pledged to lead an ethical government — and then would go on to become the first sitting prime minister to be found guilty of violating federal ethics laws not once, but twice?

Justin Trudeau, who called for reconciliation with Indigenous people — and then defamed and exiled a proud Indigenous leader, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who refused to obstruct justice for a donor to Trudeau’s party?

Who promised to end boil water advisories for Indigenous people — and has done nothing of the sort? Who promised to clean up environmental disasters in Indigenous communities — and who then mocked a woman who drew attention to mercury poisoning at the Grassy Narrows reserve?

Who said he favoured Reconciliation and Truth for Indigenous People — and then bald-faced lied about where he was on the very day dedicated to reconciliation and truth?

So, in a sad and pathetic way, it’s kind of hard to get mad at Patty Hajdu. She is simply following the example that has been set, over and over, by her boss. By Justin Trudeau.

Like you, I despise hypocrites. But unlike you, perhaps, I’ve spent a lot of time working in politics. So I’ve learned to accept that politics often attracts people who are rank hypocrites.

But I swear to God: Justin Trudeau and Patty Hajdu and their ilk are the biggest bunch of hypocrites I’ve ever seen. Ever.

And by voting for them, in 2019 and 2021, too many Canadians are saying that they are OK with hypocrisy.

And that is the worst, and most hypocritical, thing of all.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant

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The election is over, Thanksgiving is over.

What better time, then, to give thanks about what happened, and what didn’t, in the 2021 federal general election?

And, yes, sure: Justin Trudeau isn’t now in a job for which he is suited, like cleaning leaves out of gutters. He’s still prime minister, and that’s nothing to be grateful for, if you ask me (and you did).

But we still have things to be thankful for, electorally speaking. Here’s 10:

1) The Conservatives didn’t falsely allege they won the election. The Tories could’ve done what Donald Trump did, and does. They could’ve pointed to the fact (because it is a fact) that they won a bigger share of the popular vote than the Trudeau Liberals. They could’ve kvetched and complained that only 20% — TWENTY PER CENT — of eligible voters voted for Trudeau. But they didn’t. Kudos. 

2) Canadians got to know who would govern them within hours, not days.Remember the U.S. presidential election, which had all the hallmarks of a three-ring circus, without any of the fun? It went on for day after interminable day, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jon King standing in front of their infernal magic board thing, trying to keep viewers viewing. Canada? We got the results hours after polls closed, and then we got to change the channel to Netflix. Yay! 

3) The losers conceded. Tory boss Erin O’Toole accepted the results with grace. So did the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh. Everyone was restrained and modest — well, maybe not Justin Trudeau, because he’s never restrained or modest. But it was all very civilized. Good. 

4) No one made false claims about mail-in votes or ballots. None of them did. In the United States, post-vote, Republican sore losers were to be seen everywhere. They endlessly made baseless claims about election fraud. In Canada, precisely no one did that, mainly because the system worked. Merci. 

5) No one called journalists “enemies of the people.” Trump, as despicable and dishonest as he is, built a flourishing career on calling every legitimate critic a purveyor of “fake news.” He was always on a war footing with the Fourth Estate. Up here in Canada, none of the politicians particularly like those of us in the news and commentary business, but they understand we have a job to do. Bonus. 

6) No one cooked up crazy and/or illegal schemes to overturn the election result. Trump did — up to and including urging his crazier followers to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. In Canada, we had a few recounts in the tighter races, but the law provides for that. We Canadians just shrugged and carried on. Very Canadian. Very good. 

7) Similarly, nobody called for the imposition of Martial Law. Sure, we’d like impose a better hockey team on Toronto, and better coffee at Tim’s, and better weather in February, but Martial Law? Isn’t that a law firm on Bay Street? Possibly. 

8) No one sacked Parliament Hill.Sightseers took selfies out front. Tour buses cruised by. And construction workers continued working on fixing up the Parliamentary precinct, which is taking more time than the construction of the pyramids. But no one ran around in Centre Block, wearing horns, makeup and a bearskin hat. Phew. 

9) No one chanted “stop the steal.”Because there was no “steal.” Not one of the political parties actually won anything — they all got precisely what they had before the unnecessary, unwanted election was called by a craven Justin Trudeau. But not one of them claimed that victory had been “stolen” from them. Victory! 

10) Our elections aren’t perfect. Our government isn’t perfect. Our politicians, God knows, aren’t perfect. But we’ve still got a pretty good country — and, election-wise, we look a lot wiser than the Americans, with their whackadoodle system of picking winners. 

So, give thanks, Canada. It could be worse.

Down South, it usually is.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant

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Sorry, but Justin Trudeau likes apologies. He does.

He makes them all the time. Everyone has noticed. The BBC even published a story about The Apologist-In-Chief, asking: “Does Justin Trudeau apologise too much?”

Their answer: Yes, probably. (And, yes, they spelled “apologize” in the Brit way, naturally, with an “s” and not a “z.” Apologies.)

Here’s a partial list of Justin’s apologies. It’s partial, because we literally do not have enough room to publish all of the details about the Liberal leader’s apologies. We’re a tabloid, not an encyclopedia. (Sorry.)

— When Trudeau and his family were caught with their snout deep in the WE Charity trough, Trudeau apologized. “I made a mistake in not recusing myself immediately from the discussions given our family’s history and I’m sincerely sorry about not having done that.”

— When Trudeau and his family were caught with their well-appointed beaks in another trough — the Aga Khan’s lobbyist trough — he was again super contrite for not getting permission from the ethics czar first. “I’m sorry I didn’t, and in the future I will be clearing all my family vacations with the commissioner.”

— When Trudeau and his family were caught lying on the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation — lying about where they were, lying about what they were doing, and lying about where they were doing it (an $18-million oceanfront mansion owned by the wife of one of the alleged tax avoiders identified on the Paradise Papers this week, according to the Journal de Montreal) — he again issued another post facto Act of Contrition: “Travelling on September 30th was a mistake, and I regret it.” He didn’t utter the word “apologize,” notably, but he claimed to have done so in a call with an Indigenous leader: “I apologized for not being there with her and her community for (Truth and Reconciliation) day.”

Do you see the oily, serpentine thread that weaves through all of Trudeau’s dewey-eyed, butter-wouldn’t-melt apologies? Yes: They all involve his family. You know: his multimillionaire family, who rarely seem to resist the temptation to plunder the treasury, or someone else’s bank account. About which Prime Minister Penitential then apologizes — always after getting caught. Never before.

But like we say: Justin Trudeau loves apologies. They turn him on. There was his apology for the Komagata Maru incident, wherein a ship full of mostly Sikhs were turned away from Canada about 100 years ago. Then there was the one he made for elbowing NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau in her chest during a nasty debate in the House of Commons in 2016.

Then there was the one he made for residential school survivors in Newfoundland and Labrador in November 2017. Four days later, he made another one to LGBT people for what he called “state-sponsored, systematic oppression.”

He apologized to the Tsilhqot’in First Nation for the killings of their chiefs in 1864. In that same year, 2018, he apologized because his Liberal predecessor, Mackenzie King, turned away 900 Jews on the MS St. Louis in 1939, most of whom would go on to be murdered in Nazi death camps.

And so on, and so on. Apologies followed to the Inuit, to the Poundmaker Cree Nation, and on and on. And now, because he made the first Truth and Reconciliation Day a farce, a bad memory.

Here’s the best response to your fetish for apologies that are never, ever, ever accompanied by changes in your behaviour, Justin Trudeau. It comes from Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald.

“Hollow apologies will no longer be accepted,” Archibald said. “As national chief, on behalf of all First Nations, I expect concrete action and changed behaviours.”

There you go, Justin Trudeau: Take your apologies and shove them.

Sorry.

— Warren Kinsella was a federal Ministerial Representative to dozens of First Nations across Canada from 2003 to 2015

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