The West Block – Episode 15, Season 13

THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 15, Season 13
Sunday, December 24, 2023

Host: Mercedes Stephenson

In Conversation with the Prime Minister

Location:
Ottawa, ON

Mercedes Stephenson: Thanks for joining us today. I’m Mercedes Stephenson here with a special year end conversation with the Prime Minister.

It’s been quite a year for Justin Trudeau, from the affordability crisis to questions about his own political leadership, and then there were the national security and foreign policy challenges that he had to contend with.

I sat down with the Prime Minister a week before Christmas. Here’s our conversation:

Mercedes Stephenson: Prime Minister, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: It’s always a pleasure, Mercedes.

Mercedes Stephenson: It is Christmastime and it’s a tough time for a lot of people at this time of year and I imagine maybe a bit of a tough time for you. You’ve had a tough year politically, personally. How are you doing?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: But that’s the question we’re always asking each other. Right now, times are tough for everyone and that’s why that really we see the best of Canadians coming forward at this moment as people continue to roll up their sleeves and lean in for each other, even as though—even while everything is challenging, and I think this a moment at the holidays when everyone’s going to be pulling together and reflecting on hopefully, a much better year in 2024.

Mercedes Stephenson: Your polls would indicate that you’re not heading for a better year. Seven out of ten Canadians want you to step down. There was a recent poll saying that Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney were both more popular choices than you to lead the Liberal Party. Why do you think Canadians are so frustrated with you?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Well I think first of all, it’s a really frustrating time. Full stop. There is so much going on around the world. There’s so much impacting us here at home. There’s so many challenges people are facing in their daily lives, from groceries to rent that yeah, there’s a lot of frustration. But we have been working incredibly hard to deliver for Canadians in really concrete ways, and to my mind, this is exactly not the time to be slowing down or to stop fighting for people. We have been focused on delivering for Canadians for eight years now, and the context we’re in right now where progress has become so fragile because of global and large macro events is the time to doubling down and rolling up our sleeves and that’s what I’m here for.

Mercedes Stephenson: And I understand wanting to advance that agenda and that it’s hard to let go of being in power once you’re in, but historically Canadian prime ministers don’t get elected four times in a row and people are being very clear that they don’t like you in these polls.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Listen, people are frustrated right now. But on a personal level, I made a commitment in 2015 to a whole bunch of young people who came out to vote for the very, very first time that we were going to be doing the right kinds of things to secure the promise of this country in a way that people were worried about. And years later, even with everything we’ve done on the environment, on inclusion, on gender equality, on growing the economy, on reconciliation, those young people, eight years later, are having trouble paying their rent, worried about their future in ways that are just as tangible, if not more, because of the global context we’re in, and I didn’t make a promise that I was going to make things better for them and then walk away after four years or even after eight years. I said I’d be there to fight for them every single day. That’s what I’m doing now…

Mercedes Stephenson: Even if they don’t want you there.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Listen, there’ll be an election eventually in which people will get to make that choice. But I am not giving up on them. I’m not giving up on Canada. I’m not giving up on the progressive vision of progress that we’ve been fighting for every single day over the past years.

Mercedes Stephenson: Let’s talk about housing because it’s something that affects everyone, and there’s been a lot of struggle in every Canadian city, every Canadian province, to try to find affordable housing. One of the issues which your government has recognized is that there’s more people than there is housing necessary. There is, I believe, a need for 3.5 million homes by the end of the decade. You’ve promised 30 thousand. That’s only 1 per cent of the supply. Why so low?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: On the contrary, we’ve actually made commitments that are adding up to about 300 thousand new units over the coming decade. These are the kinds of things we need to accelerate and there’s no one way of doing it. What we’ve come at is not a single silver bullet but a massive range of initiatives, whether it’s the First Home Savings Account that 300 thousand people have used to start being able to save up for a down payment. Whether it’s the rapid housing initiative that has quickly got things up and running across the country, whether it’s the housing accelerator that is securing deals with cities that are transforming their zoning, transforming densification so they’re building more places near public transit and to create more liveable cities and communities. And those things are starting to land and they will just accelerate over the coming years.

Mercedes Stephenson: On housing, one of the big issues has been whether there is enough for those who are being welcomed into Canada. In the most recent survey, we saw more people came into Canada in the last quarter than since 1957, and yet your government is also acknowledging that there’s not enough housing. Do you think that you bear some responsibility for the housing crisis based on your policies?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: We absolutely have to be part of solving for this. But let’s be clear about the numbers we’re seeing. Only about a quarter of those numbers are the federal permanent resident immigration numbers. Three quarters of those numbers are actually in three categories: asylum seekers who are arriving regularly, international students where there’s been an amazing spike in that—a concerning spike in that, and temporary foreign workers as well that are needed for growing our economy, for working in our businesses. And on all three of those, we have specific plans on it. We’re working with international partners on the asylum seekers. We’re making sure that institutions across the country as they get accredited by the provinces are both legitimate institutions because we’ve seen some fraud and some sketchy practices there, but are also able to house the international students that are coming so we’re not putting pressures on communities, and around temporary workers making sure that employees and employers have a role in ensuring housing. If they absolutely need to bring in foreign workers, they have to make sure that there’s going to be housing for them as well.

Mercedes Stephenson: I just want to go back to immigration, though, because that is a federal responsibility, and you were clearly articulating when I looked at the interviews from you last year that you knew housing was a problem, yet it took until the last month or so for you to act. So I go back to the question of do you bear some responsibility here?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Well of course, we all bear responsibility. This is a challenge that we have to work on all together. But from 2017 onwards, we put forward a national housing strategy that has been making sure and securing more homes on people. The spike in temporary arrivals over the past two years, a total upwards of two million people, need to be responded to and that’s why there are very specific challenges that we are addressing in partnership with municipalities and provinces, but also with international partners to make sure that we’re managing that flow right. We need to continue to protect immigration. We need continued immigration in this country, but we have to protect the integrity of our system, and that’s very much what we’re working on.

Mercedes Stephenson: Up next, what the Prime Minister says about Iran, China and India. And I ask him about his track record on defence spending.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “We are continuing to invest in our front lines, in our equipment for military as people expect us to, but we’re doing it in a responsible way.”

Mercedes Stephenson: I want to move on to foreign and defence policy, something that really has played a significant role in domestic politics this year, perhaps more so than usual with the all the crisis that the Canadian Armed Forces have been called on to help with. You say a Canadian citizen murdered on our soil by a foreign government, concern about Iranian senior regime officials intimidating Canadians, concerns about China intimidating the diaspora population here as well. When you look at the national security picture for the country, what do you see?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: I see an incredibly complex world in which Canada being a country of law, as a country of defence in the international rules based order, has a more important role to play than many other countries around the world. If you look over the past number of years, whether it’s been with China and the two Michaels, whether it was the challenges we had with Saudi Arabia, whether it’s the challenges we have right now with India, whether it’s ongoing challenges with Iran around PS752 and foreign interference on the ground, continued challenges with Russia and their violation of the UN Charter and the international rules based order in engaging—invading Ukraine. Every step of the way, Canada has doubled down on our values and on the rules based order, and we have shown that we stand up for what is right and what is our system of justice, and we have stayed strong at a time where bigger countries and countries that play by different rules have tried really hard to impact us and we’re continuing to defend ourselves in all the right ways.

Mercedes Stephenson: Do you think that part of the reason why some of those bigger countries or our allies aren’t listening is our lack of investment in foreign policy and defence?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Canada has continued to step up as a member of NATO, as an international partner, whether with our Indo-Pacific Strategy, or things like investing in vaccine facilities in South Africa, or being part of significant investments across Eastern Europe, in nuclear plants and things like that. Canada is a very engaged international partner and countries around the world continue to look to us as one of those countries that’s always going to stand up and defend the rules.

Mercedes Stephenson: That’s not what I hear from our allies. They point to us having three days’ worth of ammunition if a war were to break out, to not having tanks that function and those that are, are overseas in Latvia and the government has not made efforts to replace them. They point to a billion dollars coming in defence cuts. They point to you, allegedly, privately saying that we’ll never hit 2 per cent of GDP.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Okay. Well those examples are specifically on defence. What I’m talking about is the large international frame. But even on defence, we have since 2017, stepped up with 70 per cent increases on our defence spending. We’re going to continue to do more and more in defence. We’ve just announced a $38 billion NORAD modernization. We’re stepping up with F-35s. Yes, we’ve had to make up for lost time when under the Conservative government defence spending dipped below 1 per cent for the only time.

Mercedes Stephenson: But you’ve been in power for eight years. You’ve said you’d never buy the F-35s, which was part of the delay there and your own chief of the defence staff is saying that if there were to a be a war tomorrow, Canada would be in big trouble. Isn’t that on you after eight years in power?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: But everyone is in big trouble because have been shipping—all of us as allies, as NATO allies—shipping massive amounts of ammunition to Ukraine right now because Ukraine is on the front line of defending not just their own territory but the international rules based order and that’s why we are so unequivocal on Ukraine and quite frankly, even yes, as we’re fixing those procurement challenges to make sure we are getting more ammunition for Canada, for training, continuing to be there for Ukraine despite the hesitations by the Conservative Party is the best way to protect our future as a country and our system of democracy.

Mercedes Stephenson: But Canadian soldiers are looking at this and saying we can’t protect our country right now.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: We are continuing to do that. We are continuing to invest in our front lines, in our equipment for our military as people expect us to, but we’re doing it in a responsible way.

Mercedes Stephenson: On the national security front, why do you think that we’re the focus of so much foreign interference? Whether it was the killing of a Canadian citizen by India, whether it is the Chinese government interfering with the diaspora and trying to interfere with our elections, which I know Russia has done as well, or whether we’re talking about the Iranian regime intimidating people here. The FBI is saying it’s a concern even for them. Why is it that we are subject to so many simultaneous significant national security threats?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Canada is one of the countries in the world with the largest diasporas from all those countries you mentioned. We are an incredibly diverse country, where we’ve made those differences into an incredible source of strength. But one of the fundamental challenges we have right now is ensuring that we are protecting all Canadians, including from their home countries that maybe do want to interfere with them. And that’s why as a country that is standing up strong for democracy and the rule of law, we’re a target to countries like Russia and Iran who want to destabilize democracies and we’re seeing it around the world.

Mercedes Stephenson: So why haven’t you established things yet then like a foreign agent’s registry, which has been recommended for almost a year now: changes to deporting Iranian officials who are here. The CDSA is deporting, too, but it’s been very slow. One of the individuals being deported, who somehow got into Canada despite your changes in the law, is the former head of the Morality Police, the same force that was killing women for refusing to wear a hijab.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: No. Obviously that’s unacceptable and these are things that we are working on. But those are sort of the next steps that we are right now working on, including the foreign agent registry, but we have been acting on this since 2015. We brought in a national security committee of parliamentarians. For the first time, there’s oversight by all different parties over our national security with people with…

Mercedes Stephenson: They say they’re not getting transparency.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: They are getting the highest level of clearance. They are getting all the necessary tools to oversee everything that is being done. We move forward on an election panel of top civil servants and security agencies to ensure the integrity of the elections, as they did in 2019 and 2021. We’ve moved forward with significant investments in and countering foreign interference. We even led on that in 2018 at the G7 meeting here in Canada, where we created the rapid response mechanism that the G7 relies on in terms of electoral and domestic interference. So we’ve done a lot, but you’re absolutely right. There’s a lot more to do and that’s what we’re continuing to do.

Mercedes Stephenson: Coming up, I ask the Prime Minister about the rising threat of terrorism in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “What we’re seeing is terrifying and it is something that we absolutely have to act on.”

Mercedes Stephenson: I want to talk you about terrorism in this country. I’ve been speaking with a lot of national security sources and what they tell me is—these are people with a lot of experience domestically and overseas with terrorism—that the threat picture they’re seeing right now is terrifying. That is it a combination of ISIS once again trying to radicalize young people and neo-Nazi groups like Atomwaffen also trying to do the same, and it’s a bit of this perfect storm. We recently heard about a young man in Ottawa, a 15-year-old, who’s been charged on terrorism charges by the RCMP, including possession of an explosive device—or pardon me—of explosive substances. And the RCMP put out an actual press release and said there’s been five cases of people under the age of 18 facing terrorism charges or terrorism peace bonds just since this summer. What are you being briefed here on what’s happening?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Oh that it is very, very serious. We have taken the issue of terrorism incredibly seriously from the beginning, whether it’s empowering our national security agencies, ensuring that there’s oversight that is encouraging them and making sure they’re doing more and getting that accountability. What we’re seeing, particularly right now with the rise of antisemitism linked to what’s happening overseas right now is terrifying and it is something that we absolutely have to act on and we are acting on. The arrest on the weekend was an extremely important moment, where we’re demonstrating that we’re doing everything we can to keep the Jewish community in this country safe and we’ll continue to keep all communities safe in this country.

Mercedes Stephenson: What do you think of some of the protests that we’ve seen here in malls, outside Jewish businesses? There was one here in Ottawa surrounding the Santa photo booth, where kids were taking their pictures. These are people protesting in support of Gaza, but some people feel those protests are crossing a line. What do you think?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: First of all, the freedom to protest, the freedom to express their political views is extraordinarily important in Canada. We will always, always defend that. The lines get approached and crossed when they are actually targeting individual Canadians who have no more responsibility for what’s going on overseas than that they happen to be Jewish, for example. That’s unacceptable. You know, protesting and sharing the legitimate aspirations for the Palestinian people, absolutely. Knock yourself out. We should be doing that and free to do that everywhere and anywhere. But the specifically making other Canadians feel unsafe, whether it’s Jewish kids on campus, whether it’s families wanting to celebrate Christmas with their kids at a photo booth and made to feel guilty because of the horrific fact that there are kids dying overseas in Gaza is something that people can be made aware of, but the aggressive and the underlying violence in making other people feel unsafe in this country isn’t part of free protest—of freedom of speech or lawful protest.

Mercedes Stephenson: Do you think the police should do something about that?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: I think the police need to make sure that they are arresting people who are engaged in acts of violence and who are breaking the law. Whether it’s a sound ordinance or a trespassing, these are things that we do have to take seriously because they snowball. We see maybe there’s 50 people showing up to peacefully express their support for a legitimate and real concern that they have, that there are lots of them out there, but the one person who then gets encouraged or incited to break a window or attack someone or pull someone’s clothing off or go at them, that’s something we all have a responsibility to be thoughtful about, and to remember who we are as Canadians. We are the country in the world that does diversity better than just about anyone else. And our capacity to actually hear and understand each other’s fears and concerns and grief and anguish, and connect with each other as people and not as caricatures of what they are and the dehumanization that goes on, on both sides, whether it’s around Islamophobia or antisemitism, is something that we have to make sure we’re remembering who we are as Canadians, that we are open to each other. That we feel each other’s pain, even if we don’t come from the same perspective. And the quicker we can get to remembering who we are as Canadians, the more we’re going to be able to be useful in spreading that peace and security around the world.

Mercedes Stephenson: One last question for you. You changed your position on Israel over the course of the last couple of months. You were initially very pro-Israeli, Israel’s right to defend itself and you’ve since decided that a ceasefire is necessary. What led you to make that decision in your change in position?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Let me be very clear. We haven’t changed our position. From the very beginning, we talked about Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with humanitarian law and the need to protect civilian lives. What we’ve seen over the past nine, ten weeks is an evolving humanitarian catastrophe that requires us to continually shift in our approaches. We were among the first countries to call for humanitarian pauses and we’re now calling, like much of the rest of the world, for work towards a ceasefire. But a ceasefire that can’t be one-sided, a ceasefire that continues to recognize that Israel has the right to defend itself. That Hamas must lay down its arms, release hostages, not use humans as shields and understand that there is no future for Hamas in the governance of Gaza, particularly as we move towards a two state solution, where you have a peaceful, secure Israel alongside a peaceful, secure, viable Palestinian state without Hamas in charge. That’s where we need to get to. That has been Canada’s position from the very beginning and that continues to be our position. We are responding, as necessary, to events as they unfold as time goes on. But our position remains exactly the same.

Mercedes Stephenson: Can you have a ceasefire with Hamas that doesn’t in some way legitimize them?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: There was a ceasefire that Hamas broke on October 7th. There’s been a ceasefire since 2021.

Mercedes Stephenson: So why trust them again?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Because the only path towards peace is getting hostages released, getting humanitarian aid in and removing Hamas as the governing body of Gaza. That’s the only way forward and that is—those are the conditions we’re putting in towards a ceasefire.

Mercedes Stephenson: Prime Minister, I know that you have a lot to do and we appreciate you sitting down with us and answering questions for Canadians. And we’ll see what 2024 brings.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: We shall. But thank you very much for taking the time, Mercedes.