Once upon a time it looked like nothing could ever go wrong for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was the fairytale prince of international politics, and wife Sophie was his equally perfect princess.
Young, tall, unfeasibly good-looking, he and his ex-TV presenter and personal shopper wife had three beautiful children to match and a shared mission to change the world – one woke step at a time.
If to outsiders and political opponents they seemed just a little bit sanctimonious and smug – actually, achingly, teeth-gratingly smug – to many of their fellow Canadians, who are sometimes accused of having the same faults, it didn’t seem to matter.
Their ridiculous, virtue-signalling antics – from posting online photos of their impressive yoga positions to dressing the entire family in lavish traditional Indian costumes during a 2018 trip to New Delhi – received nothing like the mockery they surely deserved.
When Trudeau in 2011 raised over $1,000 by performing a partial striptease in front of a whooping audience at a charity gala and did push-ups while announcing that Canada was ready to compete in the 2016 Invictus Games for disabled veterans, Canadians overlooked his appalling poseur tendencies.
Indeed, Teflon Trudeau and his lovely wife could do no wrong. They were the darlings of the progressive world, worshipped on social media, and Canada was apparently riding high under his enlightened leadership.
Now, nearly a decade on from leading a decisive election victory in 2015 – the second-best in the Liberal Party history – his personal life is in shambles, and it’s all fallen apart politically for Trudeau as he finally announced his resignation as prime minister on Monday.
Trudeau’s government had been struggling for months – largely due to a limping Canadian economy, wounded by rising unemployment, low growth and record inflation driving up the cost of living and housing.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, show off their dance moves in 2016
The Trudeau family dressed in lavish traditional Indian costumes during a 2018 trip to New DelhiÂ
A scandal ensued when a photo emerged in 2019 of Trudeau, then a 29-year-old teacher, with skin-darkening make-up on his face and hands at a private school gala in 2001
Trudeau’s personal popularity has also plummeted, with a recent poll revealing that fewer than one in five Canadians felt the country was heading in the right direction.Â
And so, suddenly, the man who once promised to bring ‘sunny ways’ back to Canada came under immense political pressure – even from a majority of his own caucus – to step aside.
Trudeau, 53, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, got an unpleasant taste of that new mood several days ago while on a skiing holiday in British Columbia. As revealed in a video post shared on social media, a woman approached him in the parking lot of the Red Mountain Resort in Rossland and he greeted her with his trademark glittering smile and handshake.
‘Mr. Prime Minister,’ she said. ‘Please get the f*** out of [British Columbia].’ He politely replied, ‘Have a beautiful day ma’am,’ which seemed to rile her even more. ‘Yeah, you suck,’ she said as Trudeau walked away.
It’s anyone’s guess which particular government policy had prompted her outburst, but it could easily have been his progressive stance on immigration.
In October, Trudeau announced Canada would sharply cut the number of new immigrants allowed into the country, after admitting his administration’s decision to allow a flood of new permanent citizens over the last four years put intolerable pressure on Canada’s housing market.
It was another humiliating climbdown for a prime minister who had long bragged about how his country was so much better than other rich Western countries at welcoming newcomers and integrating them into the culture and economy.
It also gave President-elect Donald Trump a chance to crow and chalk up a victory for his tough borders policy, commenting: ‘Even Justin Trudeau wants to close Canada’s borders.’
A video post shared on social media shows a woman telling Trudeau to ‘get the f**k’ out of British Columbia, where he was on a skiing holiday
Trudeau hot-footed it down to Mar-a-Lago in late November to meet with President-elect Trump
Recent woes also certainly brought matters to a head – first, Trump threatened to impose potentially crippling 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports, then, three weeks ago, Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned from his minority government in disagreement over how to handle that threat. (The US is Canada’s biggest market and is responsible for buying nearly all its foreign sales of oil.)
Freeland’s dramatic departure – the fifth minister to step down in 12 months – and her jibe about the government’s reliance on ‘costly political gimmicks,’ such as Trudeau’s plan to send a $250 cheque to most working Canadians, was a devastating blow.
And Trump, who has never had any time for Trudeau, twisted the knife by renewing his running gag about Canada becoming the 51st US state, referring to Trudeau as ‘Governor’ of the ‘Great State of Canada’ and suggesting Canadians would ‘save massively on taxes and military protection’.
That was even after Trudeau had endured the humiliation of hot-footing it down to Mar-a-Lago in late November to kiss the ring. His decision to dispense with the usual protocol and wait for a formal post-inauguration state visit backfired as it made him look somewhat desperate.
Insiders told Fox News that Trump even jokingly mentioned the 51st state idea at the dinner, embarrassing Trudeau. He might feel further humiliated that some Canadians say they like the idea of merging with the US.
Perhaps summing up how the President-elect really feels about Trudeau, Elon Musk, now Trump’s ‘first buddy’ and a close ally, recently described the Canadian leader as an ‘insufferable tool’.
But beyond the international embarrassments, Trudeau was creating problems of his own at home.
His government’s heavy-handed Covid-era restrictions thoroughly antagonized his critics and culminated in a standoff with hundreds of truckers who descended on Ottawa in January 2022 to protest these vaccine mandates. Their demonstrations ground the city to a halt.
Trudeau responded by invoking Canada’s ‘Emergencies Act’ for the first time in the nation’s history to subdue the allegedly ‘illegal and dangerous’ protest blockades. Nearly one year ago, a federal judge ruled that the Liberal government’s response was unreasonable, unconstitutional and unjustifiable.
And as Trudeau public image crumbled, there was failure in his private life.
The Trudeau government’s heavy-handed COVID-era restrictions thoroughly antagonized his critics and culminated in a standoff with hundreds of truckers who descended on Ottawa in January 2022 (pictured) to protest these vaccine mandates
Trudeau responded by invoking Canada’s ‘Emergencies Act’ for the first time in the nation’s history to subdue the allegedly ‘illegal and dangerous’ protest blockades (Pictured:Â Police confront truckers in a bid to remove them from Ottawa on February 19, 2022)
In August 2023, he and his wife Sophie called time on their 18-year marriage – just two days after Trudeau appeared at a news conference with a bandage on his forehead.
He said he’d bumped his head playing with their children but the timing looked odd and there had been whispers for years – denied by the couple – that the marriage was on the rocks. Trudeau firmly repudiated claims that he’d had affairs in the past, but Sophie was evasive when asked by an interviewer in 2015 if there had been infidelity.
‘I can tell you right away that no marriage is easy,’ she said evasively to The Globe And Mail newspaper. ‘I’m almost kind of proud of the fact that we’ve had hardship, yes, because we want authenticity. We want truth.’
In truth, the Trudeau star was fading long before then – his endless wokery veering into self-parody.
In 2018, even he realized he’d gone too far when he corrected a female member of the audience who’d used the word ‘mankind’ at a political meeting of young people. ‘We like to say ‘peoplekind’ not necessarily ‘mankind’,’ he corrected her. ‘It’s more inclusive.’ He later claimed he’d been joking but few believed him.
Trudeau later supported a Canadian Senate bill to make the country’s national anthem gender neutral by removing the word ‘sons’, and wrote solemn essays for women’s magazines on how he would turn his two sons into sexism-fighting feminists.
And he faced allegations of hypocrisy when it emerged in September 2019 that he had worn ‘blackface’ (skin-darkening makeup) at least three times when he was younger. It’s difficult to imagine progressive Trudeau tolerating such a woke transgression by any of his political opponents.
In one snap, he was elaborately costumed as Aladdin for an end-of-year ‘Arabian Nights’ party at a smart private school in British Columbia.
His fellow teachers barely bothered to dress up for the 2001 event, but Justin Trudeau had gone for it, donning a white robe, theatrical turban and even dark make-up on his hands, face and neck.
In another picture, taken some years earlier, he was barely recognizable under an Afro wig and blackface while attending high school.
In August 2023, he and wife Sophie (pictured) called time on their 18-year marriage – just two days after Trudeau appeared at a news conference with a bandage on his forehead
In one snap, he was elaborately costumed as Aladdin for an end-of-year ‘Arabian Nights’ party at a smart private school in British Columbia (pictured)
At other times, he wasn’t so much politically-incorrect as stunningly tactless, such as when he was filmed singing Bohemian Rhapsody by a piano in a London hotel, two days before the Queen’s funeral in 2022.
Last, but certainly not least, were the three ethics scandals that damaged his carefully-honed image for scrupulous rectitude: in 2017, Canada’s ethics commissioner criticized him for accepting a family vacation on the private island Bahamian island of Aga Khan, a billionaire religious leader who claims to be a direct descendent of the prophet Muhammad and whose foundation has received millions from Trudeau’s government.Â
Then in 2019, another commissioner found Trudeau had inappropriately tried to influence a criminal prosecution of a Quebec-based engineering firm, which was facing fraud and bribery charges.
He was in trouble a third time in 2020 over his government’s decision to grant a $912 million contract to a charity with links to his family.
So many toe-curling scandals and so many remarkable recoveries.
Some will surely say the biggest mystery about the demise of Justin Trudeau’s political career is why it took so long to happen.
