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Hello,
“Dude! You’ve got to see it! It is so good.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was talking about the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor in his year-end interview with his long-time friend Terry DiMonte, posted here on Tuesday. (Globe and Mail Deputy Arts Editor Barry Hertz offers his take on Andor here.)
“It’s everything that Star Wars could be. It’s thoughtful, gritty. It’s not filled with cameos by a digital Skywalker,” Mr. Trudeau, who once dressed up as Han Solo while taking his children out for Halloween, said during the interview in Vancouver. “It’s for grownups.”
The unusually laid-back interview is an annual tradition for the Prime Minister, and revealed a different side of Mr. Trudeau apart from the policy issues he talked about in other year-end interviews.
Mr. DiMonte, a former Montreal DJ, has known Mr. Trudeau since the federal Liberal leader was a teenager as CBC reported here.
Mr. Trudeau also said he had been watching Season 3 of the shot-in-Toronto series The Boys, which features a group of covert operatives trying to take down rogue superheroes . Mr. DiMonte said he had not seen it. “Dude! You’re not watching good shows. What are you watching?” Mr. Trudeau asked. Mr. Trudeau said he gave up on Stranger Things after its third season.
Mr. Trudeau said he has read and enjoyed Stephen King’s latest novel A Fairy Tale (”He’s 75 now and one of my favorite authors.”). He also said his reading list includes the mystery novels of Canadian writer Ian Hamilton, featuring Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant Ava Lee as well as Michelle Good’s “gut-wrenching” novel Five Little Indians.
Among other topics, Mr. Trudeau also talked about learning, in September, that Queen Elizabeth had died.
He said he was at a cabinet retreat in Vancouver, and there was a knock at the door as he and his team were preparing for the closing press conference.
Someone came in and said they had heard through a contact at Buckingham Palace that the Queen had passed away.
“Everything stopped. And I just sort of sat there,” he said. Mr. Trudeau said his official photographer Adam Scotti said, “You should clear the room now.” Mr. Trudeau paused on the point, but agreed. “People headed out. I just said, `Nobody says a word about this, and I just had to take a few minutes. It hit me hard.”
He added that it was personal for everyone. “She was the Queen that we knew. She was part of a steadiness in our lives and you didn’t have to have the personal relationship I had with her to feel, `This is a moment’.”
The Prime Minister is also doing other year-end interviews. He told CBC here. that simply giving in to the provinces’ demands on health-care funding won’t guarantee improvements to Canada’s strained health system.
And Mr. Trudeau told CTV here that, amidst the latest confirmed ethics breach within his cabinet, “it sucks” when such cases of improper conduct arise, but the fact the public knows about them is a sign the system is working.
In an interview that aired on various broadcasters including Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and NewsTalk 610 out of St. Catharines, Ont., federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he has work ahead, presenting his vision for the country as he works to connect with voters.
“I want to bring, restore the Canadian dream that anyone who works hard can fulfill their dreams, can have a great home, a great life, a great family” said Mr. Poilievre, elected Conservative leader in September.
“I think I have to share with people the vision – here’s where we’re going to go together. We have to bring it home.”
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
