Trudeau win shakes up Cdn. politics

The Daily Twigg  Vol. 1 No. 35  April 1, 2012

Justin Trudeau's upset win in boxing match
could restructure centre-left politics in Canada

By John Twigg

A lot has already been said about the charity boxing match between Liberal MP Justin Trudeau and Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau on Saturday night in Ottawa and much more will be said in times ahead too because it turned out to be another major pivotal moment in Canadian politics, with ramifications all the way out to here in B.C. too.

What was the big deal? Well actually lots of things, which we'll compile and analyze here, but mainly it was some kind of a generational shift and it was obviously some kind of left-right thing too but perhaps not so much of a shift as a consolidation of who and what the new left now really comprises in Canadian politics, from coast to coast.

First the surface story itself was intriguing, in which young Trudeau, the 40-year-old son of the famous Prime Minister Pierre, and now the second-term MP for Papineau riding in Montreal, went looking in Ottawa for some Conservative MP who might engage him in a charity boxing match to raise funds for fighting cancer in recognition of his father having died from the prostate version, and Justin having been boxing for exercise for more than a few years.

Trudeau didn't find any Tory MPs willing to fight him even though at 6' 2" he's a rather thin 180 pounds but he did recruit a fairly new Conservative Party Senator named Patrick Brazeau, a Cree from Quebec with a black belt in karate, a background in the military, a similar age 37 and weight 183 pounds but a quite different height of only 5'10" - which gave Trudeau a real reach advantage but probably a disadvantage in strength and endurance. So it shaped up to be an interesting match.

Fight raised funds for cancer

It certainly drew interest, selling out all 600+ tickets in an Ottawa hotel, getting all sorts of hype and coverage, and raising $230,000 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Fund, which the cynics sneered at, but to be fair Brazeau had a reason for doing it similar to Trudeau's - his mother had died of cancer and he wanted to honour her too.

Alas the pre-fight talk soon turned nasty and what began as a perhaps fun event soon was deadly serious, with Conservatives in particular openly slathering at the delicious taste of an iconic Liberal going down to an ignominious defeat literally at the hands of a Conservative, with odds running about 3 to 1 in Brazeau's favour, and the attendance reportedly about the same proportion.

The media circus soon discovered that Mr. Brazeau also had a controversial "chequered" past, including financial management problems when he headed a political-cultural group for off-reserve natives in Quebec and other scrapes, which are easily found on Google and which began raising questions about whether such a guy should even have been appointed to the Senate in the first place, and especially by a Prime Minister who long ago had fought against such partisan patronage in a dysfunctional institution.

In other words the more base instincts of free-enterprise Conservatives began to show but that seemed to not matter so long as the boy was from their side of the river or their side of their floor, with their colour on his shorts; their little boy blue was sure gonna show 'em and teach them Liberals a lesson eh.

Trudeau to his credit kept his cool and acknowledged that it would be a real fight with three 2-minute rounds using Olympic rules and a potential for real injuries but a prize of merely a haircut (both having long tresses) and having to wear around the winning side's colors for a week, which believe it or not seemed to really matter to them, which is a key point in this saga. It involved partisan pride but perhaps also some stark ideological differences, a kind of black or white good or bad.

Trudeau sent out brilliant Tweet beforehand

Shortly before the fight Trudeau sent out a Tweet which which had been retweeted onto the #bcpoli list I follow which I thought was brilliant, saying: "Odd. I just got a phone message from the organisers of tonight's fight. The venue's been changed to across town. I'm on my way there now." - which really played into right-wing thoughts that he might be too chicken to go through with it.

I LMAO'd because it was a wonderfully wry shot at the extreme partisanship of the Harper Conservatives, a few of whom (probably without Steve's direct knowledge) appear to have been behind an odious voter-suppression effort in maybe 10 or so close ridings in the last election which entailed known non-Tory voters getting phone calls on voting day redirecting them to an ostensibly new polling location.  I know the ploy well because both me and my partner Laura remember getting such calls when we lived in the North Island and that now is one of the ridings where Elections Canada will be investigating further (we didn't file a complaint and had no trouble voting, but I've wondered ever since about who was really behind those weird calls). [I won't be surprised if the perp turns out to be a veteran operative based in B.C.!]

Anyway in reply I tweeted this to Trudeau and others just before the fight began: "Brilliant. Justin clearly has his mother's looks and moods but it seems he has a few of his father's genes too! Just watch him!!"

It was a reference to Justin's feisty wit but also to his father's famous catch phrase "Just watch me"regarding how far he would go in imposing the War Measures Act nationally in order to fight terrorist separatistes in Quebec (which I include as background for readers too young to remember the 1960s).

Soon afterwards Trudeau scored a stunning upset win over Brazeau, and I have no idea whether he or really anyone else of note saw that Tweet, but still it was in some harmony with some big kharmaic shift because that phrase "Just watch him!" also was used in at least one national TV newscast that night and it was the main headline for a time on the electronic version of the Globe and Mail the next day.

Fight win boosts Trudeau's political career

Just watch him. Indeed. And not just in the fight but now let's watch what it does to his political career, and I am far from alone in believing that it will be huge.

"In one evening, Trudeau has managed to obliterate all the stereotypical notions that surround him. The silver spooned prince, born of privilege and entitlement, forever within the long shadow of his father, there was always an element of the man that people didn't quite take seriously. There are many people who hate Justin Trudeau, and much of the loathing is based on what they perceive he represents, rather than observations about his true character. In a shocking performance, Trudeau defied the odds and will now benefit from a newfound respect that will forever change the way he is viewed, make NO mistake about it," said Steve V on http://farnwide.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sting-like-bee.html .

Certainly for Trudeau it will be huge in Parliament, perhaps now finally giving him a front-row seat? - and it should be big for the fibrillating Liberal Party of Canada too, which has been running a so-far-boring leadership contest coming up some months from now that Trudeau now has some time and momentum to enter into with. [My old English teacher is deceased, thank goodness she can't see that construction!]

Will Trudeau challenge Bob Rae for the top job? Or will Rae wisely endorse Trudeau as per les Desmarais' instructions??

Trudeau won with brains over brawn

Meanwhile as an old sports writer I can report that how Trudeau won the fight was brilliant too (its video is all over You Tube and on other sites), and while certain conservative commentators were rather quick to deride Brazeau's lack of conditioning and training, about which some bettors apparently were misled, they should admit that Trudeau knew Brazeau would come out hard early and that if he could weather the storm Brazeau afterwards could be controlled by Justin's long left jab, which is exactly what happened.

Brazeau got in two hard right punches early on but he didn't get the knockout he needed, and after that Trudeau's left took over (pun intended) and his semi-amateur footwork was just good enough to force Brazeau into a corner where Trudeau could pummel him until the referee stepped in, which routine Trudeau continued into the final round until he badly bloodied Brazeau's nose to end the fight with a TKO.

A knockout!! No kidding. For Trudeau. And against long odds. In a gutsy performance of human courage and wit. The disappointment of such right-wing icons as Ezra Levant was palpable all the way out to Vancouver.

And it was ecstasy for many left-leaning types of various partisan orders who are rightfully aggrieved at the Harper Conservatives for slashing environmental protections, railroading resource projects, trimming the CBC again and - of particular interest to Justin Trudeau - killing off Katimavik, a social development project for young northerners begun by his father in 1977 before he was born.

"You know, he knocked out a Conservative and frankly, it made my freakin' week," said a young Tweeter on #bcpoli .

Justin Trudeau also has deep roots in B.C.

And as B.C.ers let's remember that Justin is sort of a B.C. boy too, though he now lives in Quebec, prefers to speak in French (according to social media) and sometimes advocates for forms of Quebec separatism or sovereignty or independence [as BTW I still do for B.C. too, in a friendly way - and for Quebec!!].

Anyway Justin's mother is the famous Margaret Sinclair, one of five daughters of Jimmy and Kathleen Sinclair of North and West Vancouver, he being in the Air Force at war in Europe when he was elected as the Liberal MP for North Vancouver and later became a wealthy titan of both politics and business. Trudeau first met Margaret when she was a teenager holidaying with her family in the Caribbean and the rest as they say is history, some of which included Justin passing time in B.C. for a while too, including working several years as a low-profile teacher (French and/or history?) at a Vancouver private school.

In fact there is so much to tell about his family history, such as the perhaps overbearing role of Power Corp. in the affairs of state when and after Trudeau was Prime Minister, and whether Justin's brother Michel was murdered as a warning or reprisal to Trudeau sr. or was simply the victim of an accident while skiing in B.C.'s Kootenay region a few years ago. His body was never found, which raises the possibility he was murdered according to the Waterwarcrimes website.

Justin now free from his family's history

But meanwhile Justin as a politician is now free from all of that, if he wants to be, and is now his own man, his own politician, and is no longer merely the dilettante son from a silver-spoon family (his father's side having even more wealth and power than the Sinclairs).

Interestingly Justin proceeded with the charity fight even though his grandmother Kathleen had died on Thursday at age 92 in a nursing home near Victoria, and he was man enough to not only keep the fight date but also to let his mother watch the fight live in the hotel room too.

The only naysayers were those with predisposed conclusions, perhaps because subconsciously they knew this was a major game-changer in Canadian politics: a commentator on one blog said "Brazeau fought like a Canadian Senator in Parliament  . . . (with) no accountablilty to the people, unprepared, no ramifications if he failed miserably, an epic embarrassment, overfed, lazy, self-absorbed narcissist with delusions of grandeur, earning way more money than he deserves."

Now Justin can run for leader in his own right, or talk of electoral arrangements in his own right, or revive the Liberals in his own image, maybe even talk strategy with the MP from the neighbouring riding of Outremont who just happens to be - wait for it, because this is too delicious: Tom Mulcair, as hopefully every reader here knows is the very-newly-elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party.

But more than that Mulcair has a bit of backstory not unlike Trudeau's, having only recently entered federal politics after many years as a Liberal in Quebec's fiery provincial politics, including a stint as Environment Minister, and now a fluently-bilingual francophone-first pro Quebecker bent on reforming the country. Not just moving the NDP to the middle where there are more votes but really enlarging the appeal of the party's policy platform so it will appeal to more people in more regions, especially in the Prairies but also, ahem, in B.C., where he did very well at gathering support too - especially because he was seen as the upstart outsider willing and able to challenge and supplant a rather tired, dogmatic and domineering old guard atop the NDP.

So what a strange and remarkable development - suddenly the two leading reform figures on the left side of Canadian partisan politics are representing neighbouring ridings in Quebec and advocating similar new reformist policies in Parliament.

Forum poll finds Mulcair competitive with Harper

And this is no pipedream mirage because a new poll by Forum Research reportedly has found that Mulcair is already equally competitive with Prime Minister Harper and in party popularity they are more or less equal too, though that's a bit academic with an election still three or four years away.

But what a sudden change in Canadian political winds eh? The old guard inside the NDP are already falling away though Mulcair to his credit has not done any purges; he took a high road during the campaign and now as leader he is staying there, and that's a path similar to what Justin Trudeau has taken too, finding a rather novel way to get out from under his father's shadow.

I won't predict yet how this will shake out but it looks like Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were wise to not make the recent budget a big bag of do-it-early-in-the-term regressive cuts; there were some of those, but most observers felt most of their moves were so gradual as to not be provocative to many voters.

That sort of satisfies the tone and substance of what was in Mulcair's platform, a smart version of "give the people what they want" and it's kind of like what Trudeau embodies too - a youthful appeal towards social progress within practical economic strategies. 

What if Mulcair and Trudeau agreed to each run candidates in all ridings or as many as possible but by prior arrangement determine which ridings they would really work on, such as say letting one party face a Conservative head-on in one riding and the other party face a Conservative in the next riding, in an informal gang-up of the left against the right?

That's sort of what NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen was advocating, excepting that Cullen wanted each party to not run candidates in ridings the other would contest whereas Mulcair is adamant about running a full slate, so maybe a blend could do both without violating election laws (as if the Conservatives would be credible if they tried to complain anyway, given their own many abuses).

Electoral co-operation could decimate Conservatives

Such a strategy of New Democrats and Liberals carving up territory could well decimate the right-wing ranks, such as the New Democrats not campaigning in areas such as Shaughnessy and West Vancouver to help Liberals win them and Liberals not campaigning in certain areas of Burnaby and Surrey to help the NDP win them, which could fill Parliament with a hodge-podge of center-left politicians and very few others. There also could be other deals such as both parties deciding to not campaign hard against Green Party leader Elizabeth May in order to prevent her Saanich seat from reverting to a Conservative.

Would that qualify as a new type of politics? A sort of co-operative progressivism without using the dreaded S word?? Yes, and some tweets suggest that Mulcair has even been advocating that "democratic socialism" be removed from the NDP's constitution.

Meanwhile there also is evidence from Tim Naumetz of Ottawa's Hill Times which suggests that Trudeau admires Mulcair's makeovers.

“I think he has managed to rebrand himself sufficiently,” Mr. Trudeau told The Hill Times. “Image matters in politics, and he has been chosen by the NDP and therefore he must be a real NDPer. After a good convention like that you would expect to have a bump in attention and support. For me, we’ve got a long game to play. There are still three years before the election and we still have to go through a leadership convention as well.”


That apparently was said before the fight; just watch what it becomes!