Garneau latest former Trudeau cabinet minister to blast PM

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Canada is losing credibility on the world stage.

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That’s not my assessment but the words of Justin Trudeau’s former foreign affairs minister.

In a soon to be released book, Marc Garneau details his life in the military, as Canada’s first man in space and his time in politics.

The book, A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream, isn’t due out until October but was written up recently by The Canadian Press. Garneau has many critiques of Trudeau’s management style as PM, but it is his failure to deliver on promises to allies that stands out.

“Unfortunately Canada’s standing in the world has slipped, in part because our pronouncements are not always matched by a capacity to act or by actions that clearly demonstrate that we mean what we say,” Garneau writes. “We are losing credibility.”

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Garneau also reveals that Trudeau didn’t seek his advice as foreign affairs minister and was completely uninterested in the transportation file that Garneau held previously.

“The prime minister’s aloofness led me to conclude that he did not consider my advice useful enough to want to hear from me directly, relying instead on his staff,” Garneau recounts.

That Trudeau doesn’t seek advice from ministers, including his foreign affairs minister, shouldn’t be shocking to anyone paying attention. While Stephen Harper had regular formal and informal meetings with ministers, that’s not Trudeau’s style.

In the early years of the Trudeau government when they leaned heavy on the idea that “Canada is back,” Trudeau met with his then foreign affairs minister Stephane Dion just once in 14 months on the job.

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We also shouldn’t be shocked that a Trudeau cabinet minister is speaking out against their former boss. It’s now part of a pattern.

In his memoir, former finance minister Bill Morneau wrote that Trudeau “had an inability, or lack of interest, in forging relationships with me, and as far as I could tell, with the rest of his cabinet.” He also wrote that in the image obsessed Trudeau government “policy rationales were tossed aside in favour of scoring political points.”

“I wish that I had never met you,” is what Trudeau’s former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould says she told the PM in March 2019 while discussing what he wanted on the SNC-Lavalin affair.

The meeting is detailed in her book, Indian in the Cabinet, where Trudeau plays a central role but definitely doesn’t come off as a hero.

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“In that moment this is what I felt. I told him I was upset — to say the least — because I had actually believed him and what he said about doing politics differently,” Wilson-Raybould wrote.

We can keep going down the list of people who have served closely with Trudeau and see him as nothing more than a fake.

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Celina Caesar-Chavannes was the MP from Whitby from 2015 until 2019. She wasn’t defeated, Caesar-Chavannes chose not to run after being disillusioned with politics which led to her resigning from the Liberal caucus in March 2019.

Her decision to leave the Liberal fold resulted in her getting an earful from Trudeau when she informed him of her decision not to run again.

In her book Can You Hear Me Now? Caesar-Chavannes describes Trudeau as a fake feminist and of engaging in racial tokenism with her.

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Then there is Andrew Leslie, the former top general in the Canadian Armed Forces who worked closely with what he says were three prime ministers who valued the military. Strangely, those prime ministers are named Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, but not Justin Trudeau whom he served under.

“The current prime minister of Canada is not serious about defence. Full stop. A large number of his cabinet members are not serious about defence. Full stop,” Leslie told the National Post in a recent interview.

These are not the views of people who have always opposed Trudeau, these are the views of people who have worked closest with him and served with him.

It should tell you something about the PM and might explain why Canadians at large are fed up with him.

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