Turbulent Times: Trudeau biographer weighs former prime minister’s legacy
Posted March 30, 2025 2:38 pm.
On March 14, Justin Trudeau stepped down as prime minister of Canada, a job he had held for almost a decade. Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney succeeded him as Liberal leader, following a short race for the party’s top job. Two weeks later, Carney called an election, set for April 28.
With this changing of the guard, now may be the time to look back at the Trudeau years and see how they set us up for the era to come.
“The country has a lot of problems, and he leaves it with a lot of problems,” said Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau.
Maher’s book is the second one written about Trudeau in less than a year. In On the Ropes, journalist Paul Wells portrayed the now former prime minister as a boxer who doesn’t know when to leave the ring.
Maher sees Trudeau as more of a princely figure, someone born to his position because of his famous surname, who seems to live by a unique set of rules that only apply to him.
“I think it’s a good frame, a good way to think about him,” he said.
“He has good qualities that are princely: courage and charisma and confidence, and [he] has other qualities. He can seem capricious and full of himself and entitled. So, you know, you look at the whole picture together, and I think it’s an accurate way of thinking about him.”
“And then when I was researching the book, I found examples of his mother, his wife, and his brother all calling him a prince. So, I reread Machiavelli and started thinking about what it means to be a prince.”
And, like a prince, the portrait of Trudeau that emerges is that of someone who can seem aloof and hard to get close to. If we can extend the prince metaphor even further, as prime minister, Trudeau surrounded himself with courtiers like Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, leaving relations with his cabinet ministers to senior staffers to manage. Maher has a long list of former ministers who can attest to that, including Bill Morneau, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Marc Garneau, and finally, Chrystia Freeland.
“Ultimately, you can’t outsource cabinet management to your staff to the extent that that he tried to,” Maher said.
“He is, in a funny way, an introvert. He thrives on being the center of attention, being in public, mixing with big crowds. [But] he gets drained by one-on-one time. And I think in a way, maybe sees himself as a kind of spokesperson for the government, somebody whose job it is to be the face of a big team. And so, if he thinks of himself that way, he’s not really thinking of himself as a team member. And the result is obvious. He was not able to keep everyone who he ought to have been able to keep on his side, on his side. And, in the end, it’s what drove him out.”
Being 20 points behind in the polls to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives for the two years leading to his resignation didn’t help either.
While Trudeau is not on the ballot in this federal election, his near decade in office is still very much a part of the conversation. Maher admits Trudeau left his successor with significant problems, such as national unity, economic management, and foreign policy.
“The country was divided when he took office. For about a year during this honeymoon period, people kind of rallied around him, but eventually the division that’s underneath politics reasserted itself.”
“Productivity per capita has been declining. GDP per capita has been lagging similar countries. That’s partly as a result of out-of-control immigration that most Canadians, who generally support immigration, think was a mistake.”
“Our relationship with India is terrible. Our relationship with China is terrible. The Trudeau government was, I think, very slow to recognize that we had to take national security and foreign interference more seriously.
As for how Trudeau will be remembered, Maher says the positives will outweigh the negatives…eventually.
“He legalized marijuana. He handled Trump 1.0 successfully. He handled COVID successfully. Those are things that, in a non-partisan way, you can look at and say, OK, well, those were accomplishments,” he said.
“So, it’s going to take time, I think, for people to sort out how they feel about all of that.”
Now that he has been succeeded by Mark Carney, Maher says the best thing Trudeau can do is keep quiet — which, so far, he has done.
“The best thing he can do is not contradict him,” Maher said.
“He’s not bothered that Carney is out there saying, well, we the Trudeau government, we need to change. I think that that actually comes from his princely confidence. It doesn’t hurt Trudeau’s feelings.”
For Maher, there is an obvious parallel between Carney and the 2024 presidential campaign waged by former U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris.
“It’s an interesting comparison between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden,” he said.
“Kamala Harris needed to distance herself from Joe Biden’s economic policies, and he would not let her. She might have won if she had been able to say, ‘Well, look, I’ve been glad to be part of the Biden team, but I think we’ve made mistakes, and here’s how we’re going to change.'”
“When Trump was re-elected, I wrote a column for the Toronto Star, saying, basically, it’s time for a Progressive Conservative government. The country is under national threat. We should get rid of the carbon tax and do all kinds of things, basically to start acting from consensus positions, because national unity and sovereignty is most important. So, we should put water in our wine and do things that everyone can basically accept. Trudeau couldn’t do that. Carney appears to be doing that.”
As for Trudeau himself, have we seen the last of him? Maher says don’t count on it.
“The family, it’s kind of like the Kennedys in the United States. They’re woven into our national life, and I suspect we’ll see more of Justin and other Trudeaus in the years ahead.”
The Prince is a timely refresher on the Trudeau years, from the optimism of his “sunny ways” days to the mounting scandals and the diminishing popularity that ultimately drove him from office. It is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the era we find ourselves in now. It certainly won’t be the last word, but rather the start of a broader conversation about an especially turbulent time in Canadian politics.
The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau is published by Simon and Schuster.
