How a carefully built ‘brand Trudeau’ unravelled ahead of Canadian elections

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau was seen as the leader of the 21st century with his multiculturalism & liberalism. But a series of scandals have dented his re-election bid.

Justin Trudeau | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

New Delhi: One brand has been ubiquitous in Canada since 2015, be on Instagram or on old-fashioned advertisements — Justin Trudeau.

The Canadian prime minister was perceived as being chic, suave and empathetic — pictures of him hugging Syrian refugees as they arrived in Canada or his participation in LGBTQIAP  parades helped him become a part of popular culture.

But above all, Trudeau was seen as the face of the liberal-progressive world order, with his embrace of multiculturalism and immigration. He was seen as the anti-thesis of the right-wing populism best defined by US President Donald Trump in a world marred by eroding commitment to liberal democracy and the idea of openness.

But with Canada holding its general election Monday, the political discourse has centered on whether the carefully built ‘brand Trudeau’ was just a masterclass in a public relations exercise. 

Over the past year-and-a-half, since his infamous trip to India in early 2018, Trudeau has found himself at the centre of one scandal after the other, denting his image and dampening his poll prospects.   

As he seeks re-election, ThePrint looks at the creation of ‘brand Trudeau’, its unravelling, and whether it was all really just a farce.  

Rise of Trudeau

When he first sought power, Trudeau was projected as the leader of the 21st century. His 2015 election campaign spoke of embracing multiculturalism, rights for the ethnic minorities, fighting climate change, accepting immigrants and refugees, and running a transparent government.

The projection of certain political values was backed by a lengthy list of promises in the 2015 Liberal party manifesto.

And it paid off in the elections. Trudeau’s Liberal party saw the largest increase in seat share in Canadian electoral history — as it rose from the third to the first position. At the heart of this victory was a massive surge in support for Liberals among the young voters.

The electoral victory was just the start, Trudeau and his team were just beginning to build the “brand Trudeau”. 

Soon, pictures of Trudeau hugging Syrian refugees as they arrived in Canada emerged. He also put out practised video lessons on quantum computing while even his socks at important diplomatic events became much-talked-about style statements.

“During his first year in power, barely a week went by without some sort of viral moment from the prime minister that found its way into people’s daily lives as they scrolled through Snapchat on the bus or perused Instagram in bed,” notes a feature in The Guardian. 

Brand Trudeau takes a hit

After enjoying an extended honeymoon period, a series of missteps and scandals have tarnished Trudeau’s carefully constructed image.

It began with Trudeau’s trip to India, which was seen as a major foreign policy embarrassment. He was then accused of interfering in the SNC-Lavalin scandal and was called out by Canada’s ethics committee for violating the country’s ethics code. When Trudeau signed the Trans Mountain pipeline, it didn’t go down well a large part of his progressive voter base.

If these weren’t enough, pictures appeared from Trudeau’s past that show him sporting a blackface during a school event — considered a deeply racist act.

The issue for Trudeau is that by the end of these scandals, a perception starting gaining ground that he was neither as liberal nor as transparent as he projected himself. 

“One characteristic of politics in this era is that voters want authenticity; they want to know that politicians who represent them have been honest about themselves,” Warren Kinsella, a leading Canadian political commentator told ThePrint.

“Trudeau’s mistake was that he is a consummate social media performer… But at a certain point, voters started to realise that there was a falsity at the centre of it,” added Kinsella.

One of the biggest campaign promises made by Trudeau was to reform Canada’s electoral system and according to analysts, the prime minister backtracking on it has cost him dearly.

“The promise he broke on electoral reform — which I think was the right move in the end — has nonetheless become symbolic of his lack of commitment to truly wide-ranging reform,” Peter Loewen, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told ThePrint.

Under a father’s shadow

Throughout his years in the political wilderness, Trudeau had to contend with the critique that in contrast to his father, Pierre Trudeau, he is just a lightweight. It continues to haunt him.

“Pierre is a towering figure in Canadian history, who liberalised laws on abortion and homosexuality, entrenched a charter of universal rights and instituted official bilingualism,” notes a feature in The Guardian.

“Justin was not groomed for public office along the line of the Kennedys or the Gandhis,” Larry LeDuc, professor, political science, University of Toronto, told ThePrint.

“He is not as much of an intellectual as his father was. Also, his life experiences are very different than that of Pierre’s,” LeDuc said. “Justin was a high school teacher, and lived for quite a while in Vancouver. Pierre was a lawyer who focused on constitutional issues and spent much of his life fighting separatism in Quebec,” said LeDuc.

All fluff or some substance?

The critiques of Trudeau raise a fundamental question — is brand Trudeau just a creation or there is some substance to it?

“On policy fronts, I think he’s been largely successful at implementing an ambitious agenda,” Loewen said. “There was a major reform towards income support, carbon taxation, and medically assisted dying, to name a few thorny issues.”

“Where the trouble comes for him, I think, is that he holds himself to a different standard in terms of historical fidelity to those commitments than that to which he holds others,” added Loewen.

Kaatje O’Donnell, editor of McGill Journal of Political Studies (online), told ThePrint that the opposition Conservative party’s politics might be partly-responsible for a flailing brand Trudeau.

“SNC-Lavalin raised issues about ethical governance, and the Blackface/Brownface scandal raised questions about upholding diversity. Neither ethics nor diversity are issues on which the Conservatives hold much popular credibility,” said O’Donnell.  “For this reason, making good use of the scandals relied a different approach: attacking Trudeau’s image as fabricated.” 

Trudeau’s political future

Some political analysts believe that the effects of Trudeau’s falling credibility can already be felt. “The 2015 election was a leader-centred campaign for the Liberals, meaning that a sort of personality mystique was necessarily built for Trudeau,” said O’Donnell. “But this is not the case with the 2019 campaign. The current campaign is more about the Liberal party.” 

Trudeau, however, seems to have brought about a more fundamental change in his Liberal party.

“The thing that’s unique is that the Liberal party is now Trudeau’s party. It’s very different than the Liberal party of the past. There is no successor waiting in the wings. There is no process to replace him if were to stumble,” Kinsella said. “It is his party, he brought it to first place from the third. And everybody who is there in his caucus, owes their political career to him.”