Opinion: But just because Trudeau didn’t break the letter of the conflict law, it doesn’t mean he didn’t breach its spirit
The British public accepted the Royal Family’s six-week-long summer sojourns as long as they were taken at a gloomy, cold castle in the rainy Scottish Highlands.
Similarly, the Canadian public is amenable to their prime ministers taking vacation time, as long as they don’t look like they are having fun.
That has not been the case for many of Justin Trudeau’s vacations during his time in office. Think: the Christmas holiday on the Aga Khan’s island; the trip to Tofino on Truth and Reconciliation Day; or the passage to India, which, while officially a work trip, appeared to the world like a taxpayer-subsidized family boondoggle.
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Just about the only holiday that Trudeau and his family have taken since taking office in 2015 that has not proven controversial was a Christmas vacation in 2017 at a back-country skiing lodge in the Canadian Rockies, which had no wi-fi, no running water and an unheated outhouse.
The Trudeau family trip to Jamaica over the holidays was always likely to be an easy target for partisans.
Prime ministers, by definition, work hard and are always under scrutiny. This prime minister’s marriage has unravelled and, presumably, he saw Jamaica as a place to help heal his family’s wounds.
No prime minister is allowed to fly commercially and, once at their destination, they need privacy and security. They deserve the public’s forbearance: costs are always going to be higher than the average all-inclusive trip.
All that said, with Trudeau’s ethical rap sheet, he should have been much more sensitive to the optics of taking a trip to a resort so luxurious that the fluffy towels wouldn’t fit in your suitcase — particularly a stay that was footed by a family friend.
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The Trudeau family’s 10-day stay at the luxury $9,300-a-night compound was paid for by the resort’s owner, Peter Green, a businessman with ties to the prime minister’s family going back decades.
The trip was pre-cleared with the office of new ethics commissioner, Konrad von Finckenstein, as Trudeau committed to do after being found guilty of contravening the Conflict of Interest Act on four counts after his 2016 Christmas vacation to an island owned by the Aga Khan. Then ethics commissioner Mary Dawson, who died just this past Christmas Eve, said Trudeau was wrong to accept the gift of hospitality because there was an ongoing business relationship between the government of Canada and the Aga Khan’s foundation, which was registered to lobby the Prime Minister’s Office.
There is an exception in the act for gifts from relatives or friends, but Dawson did not accept Trudeau’s contention that the spiritual leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims was a family friend, as defined by the act. The prime minister also travelled to the island on the Aga Khan’s private helicopter, in contravention of the section of the act that blocks public office holders from accepting travel not required in their official capacity.
None of those circumstances seems to be at play in this case. There is no evidence of any links between the Green family’s businesses and the Canadian government, while the links between the Trudeaus and the Greens are long-standing.
As the prime minister told Parliament when he defended his visit to the same resort last year, his father was godfather to one of Peter Green’s sons, while Green was godfather to one of Justin’s brothers. “This is a 50-year friendship,” he said.
But just because Trudeau didn’t break the letter of the conflict law, it doesn’t mean he didn’t breach its spirit, particularly when his office initially told The Canadian Press that the prime minister was covering the cost of the trip. The PMO was later forced to “clarify” that the hospitality was paid for, which strongly suggests the prime minister was not entirely frank with his own staff.
Liberal apologists have called this a “nothingburger,” pointing out that Trudeau didn’t lose any support in public opinion polls after the Aga Khan trip.
But the difference is that he was 10 points ahead in the polls at the time; he’s 14 points behind right now.
His expressions of solidarity with Canadians — “I understand how tough it is right now” — ring ever more hollow.
After being found guilty over the Aga Khan holiday, Trudeau went on a hair-shirt “listening tour” to “reconnect” with Canadians. He drove around the country holding town hall meetings, calling local radio stations to request Tragically Hip songs and telling people he was “just there to say ‘hi’”.
The tactic is unlikely to work this time. Voters are not buying that kind of calculated shtick from a leader who is so overexposed that people are just tired of seeing him around.
Trudeau is now a liability to his party, rather than the asset that he used to be.
A poll that came out last week by Spark Insights suggests that the main negative perceptions around the prime minister focus on him being too “preachy” and out of touch with the issues that matter.
When he said in his year-end CBC interview that “we are doing what we always do as Canadians — we roll up our sleeves,” it probably wasn’t intended to convey that this was a means of catching more Caribbean rays.
In Liberal minds, 2024 is set to be the year of Trudeau’s rebound, when his domestic concerns are behind him and he’s back in the game.
The prime minister may yet manage that feat — as former Harper government chief of staff Ian Brodie recently noted, Trudeau is always capable of being an extremely competitive political figure.
But now he is likely to spend the first month of the new year playing defence over this trip.
The sand is running out, and his latest freebie to the beach will not help refill the hourglass.
National Post
jivison@criffel.ca
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