In the depths of a bitterly cold and snowy January this year, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister for nearly a decade, reluctantly decided to resign — a tacit admission that the sun was setting on his “sunny ways,” the mantra that propelled him to office in 2015.
Those “sunny ways” were tested early and often, many times by Trudeau himself and for that reason his legacy is likely to be a complicated one.
He could not have predicted that in his last weeks as prime minister, it would be US President Donald Trump who would help him burnish that legacy.
From defiantly posting, “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” after Canada defeated the US in the National Hockey League 4 Nations Face-Off, to pointedly telling the US president that his threatened tariffs would be “a very dumb thing to do,” Trudeau stood up for Canada in a way that even his fiercest critics could appreciate.
Last week, he demonstrated Canadian antipathy toward Trump and his policies. With a diverse crowd behind him and babies babbling in their parents’ arms, Trudeau held true to his progressive ideals announcing billions of dollars for government-subsidized childcare in one of his final policy announcements
“On a personal level, I’m made sure that every single day in this office, I’ve put Canadians first, that I have people’s backs and that’s why I’m here to tell you all that we got you even in the very last days of this government we will not let Canadians down today and long into the future,” he said, showing uncommon emotion, tears brimming in his eyes, a lump clearly in his throat.
It was a last ray of light for Trudeau’s sunny ways, a creed that now seems too trite to prevail after the scandals he faced, after Covid, after Trump’s second election.
By chance, it was indeed sunny the day Trudeau took office in November 2015, and it’s on that day that he set the expectations for himself, and his government.
When Trudeau, who appointed as many women ministers as men, was asked early in his first term why it was important that his cabinet be “gender balanced,” he responded bluntly: “Because it’s 2015,” to laughter and then applause.
In the frame right behind him, smiling in the sunshine, was Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s new justice minister and attorney general.
But by 2019, she would be demoted and later resigned after accusing Trudeau’s staff of pressuring her to cut a sweetheart legal deal for one of Canada’s largest companies amid a bribery scandal. A 2019 Ethics Commissioner report found evidence that Trudeau’s behavior breached Canada’s Conflict of Interest Act.
Another cabinet colleague, Jane Philpott resigned with her in protest.
Raybould would later write in her memoir, “This man was not the leader I had thought him to be.”
That incident proved an inflection point for Trudeau’s tenure. He had portrayed himself as an earnest champion of progressive and just causes, and Canadians expected his actions to live up to his soaring rhetoric.
More than once, they did not.
Beyond the sting of the Raybould scandal, there were more breaches of the high standards he himself had set.
He violated conflict of interest rules by failing to declare free vacations from wealthy friends. Photographs emerged showing Trudeau in blackface during his days as a student and a teacher – and he admitted he didn’t know how many times he had done it. And he faced criticism for awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to the WE Charity, linked to members of his family, though another Ethics Commissioner inquiry in 2021 found no evidence that that Trudeau had directly influenced any of the contracts.
Then, late last year, Trudeau’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned, publishing a scathing letter that accused him of wasting taxpayer money on “political gimmicks.”
With opinion polls showing his Liberal Party would likely face defeat in an upcoming election, Trudeau resigned and turned to the urgency of the moment, fighting not just a looming tariff war from the Trump administration but a possible threat to Canada’s existence itself, as the US president insisted it should become the 51st state.
“This is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom, it’s not a given. Canada is not a given. None of those happen by accident. None of them will continue without effort,” said Trudeau during his farewell speech Sunday.
For Trudeau’s period of nearly a decade in office, two accomplishments seem indelible: his efforts on indigenous reconciliation and his commitment to end child poverty.
With his steady pace of indigenous reconciliation efforts, Trudeau settled land claims, strengthened indigenous autonomy, worked to improve indigenous living conditions, and enshrined a day of National Reconciliation and Truth to be observed every year.
He is also credited with lifting hundreds of thousands of Canadian children out of poverty with a child tax benefit paid directly to families, among other family focused initiatives like subsidized childcare.
In one of his last social media posts as prime minister, it was telling that Trudeau did not return to his mantra of “sunny ways.”
“I leave as leader of the Liberal Party with the same belief in hope and hard work as when I started. Hope for this party and for this country, because of the millions of Canadians who prove every day that better is always possible.”