--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you need a router? Visit Linksys.com to save 15% on a new router with the code explained while supplies last, cannot be combined with other promos, refurbished products not eligible for this promotion, one per customer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Canada had a big election yesterday, but maybe before we get into the results, you could use a quick primer on how their elections even work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are a charmingly archaic constitutional monarchy. That means the Queen's on all the coins. We're big fans of the Queen up here. It does mean that we didn't overthrow anybody in order to gain our independence and freedom. That just, you know, we asked for it nicely. And we have a parliamentary system, which means that we have 338 elections that happen across the country. You don't elect your head of state. You elect your local member of parliament. And the party that goes on to elect the most members of parliament typically gets the chance to form government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And without further ado, the results of the Canadian election. From coast to coast to coast, tonight Canadians rejected division and negativity. They rejected cuts and austerity, and they voted in favor of a progressive agenda and strong action on climate change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, Canadian JT won, but he also kind of lost. His party, the Liberals, don't have enough seats in Parliament to pass legislation on their own, so they're going to have to form coalitions. It's undeniably a setback for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When he was elected four years ago, you know, the wind of optimism and hope and change was at his back. He was a bit of a celebrity, even in the United States. I mean, he scored photo shoots in places like Vogue. He really represented what Canadians wanted the rest of the world to think about them. Like he was this young, dynamic, hot, charismatic leader who was progressive and feminist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was really the image that I think a lot of Canadians were happy to present about themselves. Four years later. Well, he wasn't that anymore. I mean, he was that in 2015. But in this election, he was the incumbent. And the whole liberal order seems to be under threat by this rise of populism and anti-immigration sentiment and just lack of faith in a lot of the values that have created stability over the last, you know, 100 odd years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It seems to me that so many other countries in the rest of the world, Canada is entering the end of this golden age. And the fall of Trudeau reflects that kind of twilight era.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen Gerson co-hosts a Canadian politics podcast called Oppo. Before we got into the actual election season, I asked her how Trudeau lost his sheen in Canada.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Yeah, history rhymes on this stuff. In 2018, he makes this week-long trip to India and he shows up in India with these outfits that are costume-like they are so elaborate and so over the top that they look like something that you would wear if you were going to or even participating in an Indian wedding, not just, you know, like showing up for a week-long trip to do trade deals.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Like it was the image of Trudeau looking over the top and being, quote unquote, a little too enthusiastic about costumes, where I think sort of some of the skepticism about Trudeau began to eat its way into the national consciousness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that would, of course, foreshadow another scandal. But before we get to that one, he had a genuine corruption scandal, too, right? Not long after that.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Yes. And how do I explain the SNC scandal to an American audience in 10 seconds or less? Let's find out.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Christ, I'm going to try. I'm going to do my best. All right. Tell you what, we'll give you 60.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Okay. It came at the end of last year. One of the stars of Justin Trudeau's cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was shuffled from the high-profile attorney general post to Veterans Affairs. And everybody's like, what? That's kind of odd.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Well, it emerged that Jody Wilson-Raybould had really fought back against the prime minister's office when the prime minister's office tried to get her to issue what was called the Deferred Prosecution Agreement for a company called SNC-Lavalin, which is a Quebec-based engineering firm that has been accused of corruption in Libya.
--:-- Jen Gerson: This was really the beginning of the end for Justin Trudeau's reputation as a progressive warrior, because Jody Wilson-Raybould had, I think, the most senior post of any Indigenous woman in Canadian history and to shuffle her out because she essentially stood up to the Prime Minister's office and said, no, I'm not going to cut a sweetheart deal for a quote-unquote corrupt Quebec construction firm or engineering firm.
--:-- Jen Gerson: It was a pretty damning statement on Trudeau and his party. It just demonstrated that his progressive virtues were entirely superficial.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that came before the brownface scandal even happened, right?
--:-- Jen Gerson: Oh yeah, that came way before it. Time magazine got a hold of this picture of Justin Trudeau with brown makeup dressed up in Aladdin. He apparently had done brownface for a fundraiser for the school that he formerly worked at.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And then after he got confronted with that, he was forced to admit that he'd kind of lost track of the number of times that he had done blackface.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So relatable.
--:-- Jen Gerson: So anyway, some video even came out of him, not only in blackface, where he'd done up his hair and had a giant Afro wig from, I think this was from the 90s, but he'd actually painted his knees and hands and things like that.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Like, what? And then when he was asked about that on the campaign trail, he had this amazing quote, and it was something to the effect of, I've always been more enthusiastic about costumes than is sometimes appropriate.
--:-- Jen Gerson: For me, it was such an encapsulation of the man's flaws. Not that he was a racist, but that he's a bit of a frat boy. This is a guy who's so privileged and so completely insulated from real life that, you know, there was no part of him that stopped the moment before his hand hit his face with a giant brown makeup brush.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm actually so glad you said that because I think that gives us an opportunity to play my favorite Trudeau clip, which is like him doing an interview in his kitchen and then showing the reporter who's interviewing him, and it's all in French, that he knows how to fall down a flight of stairs, and he just leaps down a flight of stairs and rolls down and totally eats it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's like, at the end, he looks back at the reporter and he's like, voilà, look at me, I can fall down stairs. This is a guy who's an actor. And to me, he's this former drama teacher who's playing the role of prime minister and doing a pretty creditable job at it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there's something fundamentally inauthentic about it. And that is what I think the blackface scandal just got to. Like, what?
--:-- Jen Gerson: So that scandal came sort of towards the beginning of your election campaign season, which is like enviably shorter than the U.S.'s season, yeah?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if you wanted to turn this into a conversation about why the American system is bad, I'm here for you. So how long is it actually? Like 30 days? A rip period kind of spans anywhere from 36 to 50 days.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I think we had 50 days just between like two of our debates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Were there any memorable moments in the short campaign that y'all had?
--:-- Jen Gerson: No, it's been terrible. It's just been a really, not just nasty campaign in the sense that there was a lot of allegations of sort of racism and the conservatives are anti-abortion. And then there was like this crazy whisper campaign that suggested that Justin Trudeau was like had an affair with a student back when he was a teacher.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I mean, it was all bullshit, complete and utter nonsense. But it's also been just an extremely shallow campaign. Like there hasn't been a vision. There really hasn't been a narrative. There hasn't been anything to get behind.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in a campaign that was sort of boring and shallow, what did Trudeau have going for him? Very little.
--:-- Jen Gerson: My takeaway from this election was that really nobody was trying to persuade anybody else anymore. And that really what this campaign was all about was just getting respective supporters to the polls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when the liberals come out and say the conservatives are going to take away your right to choose and they're, you know, cozying up with racists.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Thankfully, Canadians aren't buying it because conservatives stand in the way of good policies that help people. Then they campaign on fear and empty promises. They're not trying to win over any conservatives with that. They're just trying to scare their people to vote into voting and vice versa with the conservatives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, when they're going after Trudeau and they're saying like Trudeau is going to make your life unaffordable, he's going to raise taxes. Mr. Trudeau, you are a phony and you are a fraud and you do not deserve to govern this country. We're going to vote him out. Vote him out. Vote him out.
--:-- Jen Gerson: They're just trying to ensure that their people are motivated to come out to the polls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's funny, though, because that sounds like a United States election when you were talking all that smack about our election system over here.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Yeah, we're starting to take on some of your traits. And let me tell you, it's not great. We kind of like being a little bit more polite than you. I mean, we're a bit smug about it, in fact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How did Justin Trudeau manage to lose his majority government when he had a strong economy and not the stiffest competition in the world?
--:-- Jen Gerson: Because he won in 2015 by bringing a whole bunch of new people to the polls. And in the wake of these scandals, which really put a dent in his reputation as a positive ethical reformer of Canadian government, how do you inspire those people to come out for you a second time?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they didn't? If they had come out for him a second time, he would be sitting at the head of another majority government.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And I think it's pretty surprising that he's not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the break, it wasn't just the scandals that hurt Trudeau's majority government yesterday. People weren't thrilled about what the prime minister did in his first term.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's in a minute on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How's your Wi-Fi?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wi-Fi is such an integral part of our daily lives that it's hard to imagine life without it. But can you imagine life with better Wi-Fi? That's what you get with Linksys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Linksys routers are the Wi-Fi solution for homes that thrive on entertainment. If you're still renting your equipment from your Wi-Fi provider or haven't purchased a new router within the past three years and you're experiencing issues, it's time for an update.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Linksys solves the biggest Wi-Fi issues such as buffering, dead zones, and connection problems. And it's super easy to set up and easy to control from the Linksys app.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can also easily set up separate guest access and parental controls to manage screen time and filter inappropriate content.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Learn more about Linksys at linksys.com and save 15% on a new router with the code EXPLAINED while supplies last.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your limit's one per customer, and you can't combine this with other promos.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nice try.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Justin Trudeau was first elected prime minister four years ago in Canada. What was the mood in the country back then?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People were sick of the conservatives. Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper. Remember Stephen Harper? That hair, though. That hair, though.
--:-- Jen Gerson: So Stephen Harper was a pretty competent prime minister on the whole, but he kind of came across as a really senior executive at a very successful large applesauce conglomeration, right? Like, that was his tone.
--:-- Jen Gerson: It was very businesslike. It was very reserved. It was very cold. And over time, I think that people started to have real questions about the conservative government's pettiness, its meanness, its cynicism, and its ethics.
--:-- Jen Gerson: The truth is that Justin Trudeau, the liberal leader, speaks very little about the specifics of his economic plan. He actually doesn't want to talk about it at all.
--:-- Jen Gerson: As we know, it's all, you know, if I can be blunt, it's all unicorns and rainbows. But no talking about the real specifics.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And I think people were just sick of it. They were just, it was time for someone new. It was time for a fresh new voice.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Oh, he was a breath of fresh air, to think to a lot of Canadians. He was young, he was charismatic, he was scrappy. He was also the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, so he kind of had this almost Kennedy-like vibe.
--:-- Jen Gerson: He was like the son of destiny, the scion of the Trudeau name, right? A lot of people remember the elder Trudeau as being probably one of the most intellectually vigorous and inspirational prime ministers of his era.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
--:-- Jen Gerson: What did younger Trudeau promise voters as prime minister back in 2015?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trudeau replaced this turgid, stale old government with a really inspiring platform, a really ambitious platform, sort of the sort of non-status quo stuff that we hadn't seen in this country in a really long time.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Quite frankly, Canadians are tired of that kind of leadership. You haven't been able to get it done on the environment, Mr. Harper. You haven't been able to get it done on the economy. You haven't built the kind of balance that Canadians expect.
--:-- Jen Gerson: If we're going to build strong communities, if we're going to create jobs for our children and grandchildren while protecting our air, our water, our land, we have to actually show leadership.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And you have stepped back from any sort of confidence building for government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He promised increased refugees from Syria. He promised more open and transparent government. Indigenous reconciliation was a big one. Feminism was a big one. He promised a gender-balanced cabinet. He was big on the environment.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And I think a lot of it just had to do with sort of the tone of government shifting to something more youthful and optimistic and forward-looking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sounds super ambitious. How did he do on that massive slate of promises?
--:-- Jen Gerson: He got a couple of things done to his credit. He did legalize marijuana, although how that actually turned out at the provincial level was a bit of a mixed bag.
--:-- Jen Gerson: He did implement a carbon tax, although now most conservative premiers are, you know, gleefully collecting support and votes opposing that carbon tax.
--:-- Jen Gerson: You know, he did initially put out a gender-based cabinet. And I think initially he did present a more positive tone to government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where did he fall short on that slate of promises other than those scandals we talked about him battling during the actual campaign?
--:-- Jen Gerson: The fact that he basically purchased the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline project. It's a $7 billion project that would nearly triple the capacity of the current pipeline and give Alberta's oil sands more access to Asian markets.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Perceived among environmentalists to be a very very dirty kind of oil extraction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you are a progressive and you like look I voted for this dude because he promised serious action on climate change this was a hugely negative thing to do that just blew a real hole in your credibility as a climate change crusader.
--:-- Jen Gerson: That's why we've decided that every dollar the federal government earns from this project will be invested in Canada's clean energy transition.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I would say ethical government and governance stuff that he promised to do in terms of making the Canadian government more open and transparent. One of his promises, for example, was that he was going to stop, you know, slipping legislation into giant budget bills where it would get lost.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And ironically, one of the things that happened with the SNC scandal was that the legislation that would have allowed the attorney general to create a deferred prosecution agreement was hidden in one of the budget bills.
--:-- Jen Gerson: So it went completely unnoticed, which is one of the things that the Harper government used to do that Trudeau promised would change under him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it was just, again, another one of these examples of, you know, when it came down to the nuts and bolts of governing, he's running it pretty much exactly like previous governments did.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Hmm. Between being an on-and-off, again, environmentalist, sometimes more of the same politician, and a few legit scandals, I wonder what Trudeau's many remaining supporters see in him.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Better than the alternative might be the answer. I mean, that seems to be the pitch for the liberals going into this campaign. Vote for me because we're the only guys who can keep the other guys out and the other guys are worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I grew up in Canada, Jen.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Oh, did you? But I just, you know, what I recall from growing up in Canada and having leaders like, you know, Kim Campbell and Brian Mulrooney and, you know, Jean Chrétien was that like we didn't seem to really like flashy politicians with colorful socks and checkered pasts.
--:-- Jen Gerson: Was Justin Trudeau sort of like a failed experiment in Canadian politics? I know it's weird to talk about him in the past tense when he's still going to be the prime minister, but was 2015 sort of an anomaly and now Canada's getting closer to its reality?
--:-- Jen Gerson: Yeah, probably. We probably just like boring leaders. But let's also remember that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was really the last example of a flash leader.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And Justin Trudeau, I think, consciously evoked that. I mean, I think he also consciously evoked Barack Obama when he was coming to power. He was the hope change candidate, right?
--:-- Jen Gerson: Just ironically, as Barack Obama was ending his term and, you know, our hopey, changey, happy feelings became something else entirely.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I think that, you know, there's a touch of the kind of cold weather Protestantism that has infected Canadian DNA.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I think most of us would prefer to be considered reliable and steady than flashy and sexy. Our national sort of motto is peace, order and good governance, right?
--:-- Jen Gerson: Right. This is and this and this. I think actually reflects Canadian political history as a whole. We kind of have, as I said, a charmingly archaic political system that is, you know, built around tradition and ritual, monarchy and stability.
--:-- Jen Gerson: And I think that it's more important, I think, for a lot of Canadians to have a government that is seen as competent and stable and reliable than one that is seen as visionary or flashy.
--:-- Jen Gerson: That's traditionally been the Canadian way. Trudeau was a departure from that. He was unique in that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trudeau was a departure from that. He was unique in that.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I think it's probably too soon to consider him a failure. I mean, for all we know, he could come back with a majority parliament in six months' time and in fact, heck, that could happen that absolutely could happen so I wouldn't rule him out.
--:-- Jen Gerson: I wouldn't say he's out of the game but he certainly is going to go down in history as an outlier, I think, at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen Gerson is a journalist based in Calgary, Alberta. She is one of the hosts of the Oppo podcast from the Canada Land Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Check them out for all your Canadian news and media criticism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The team is comprised of Afim Shapiro. He's the engineer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bridget McCarthy, Amina Alsadi, and Halima Shah, they produce. So does Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He also makes music, along with the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're blessed with extra help this week from Miles Bryan, Zach St. Louis, Olivia Ekstrom, and Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're blessed every week by Irene Noguchi. She's the executive producer of the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fun fact for all the Canadians listening, Today Explained is doing its first-ever live show in Toronto this November as part of the Hot Docs Documentary Festival.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can expect us up in the 6th on Saturday, November 9th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The easiest way to find tickets for the show is to go to podcasts.voxmedia.com slash events.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: See you soon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Refurbished products are not eligible for this promotion. One per customer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ramas Verm out.
