Former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau says Canada has lost its standing in the world under the tenure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he criticizes as an ill-prepared leader who prioritizes politics and makes big pronouncements without any follow-through.
“I believe Justin Trudeau has overestimated Canada’s impact abroad,” Garneau writes in his autobiography, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream,” which is scheduled to be released in October by Signal, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
While much of the book is a trip down memory lane for Garneau’s pre-politics career in the military and as an astronaut, the final third is devoted to his time as a member of Parliament.
Garneau, now 75, was first elected in 2008 as the Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville Marie, a riding that later became Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount after boundary changes in 2015.
He staged an unsuccessful run for the party leadership in 2013, ultimately withdrawing from the race and backing Trudeau, who would go on to win in a landslide victory.
After the Liberals came to power in 2015, Garneau served in Trudeau’s cabinet for six years, more than five of those as the minister of transport. He spent the final nine months as the minister of foreign affairs, until Trudeau dropped him from cabinet completely after the 2021 election.
In his book, Garneau acknowledges being “blindsided” by that decision — one he says Trudeau never explained.
He writes that Trudeau did offer him the ambassadorship to France during a phone call about the decision, but Garneau said no. He said he would prefer to be an ambassador in Washington, D.C. Trudeau thought about that and ultimately said no.
Garneau makes it clear that he and Trudeau had little in common outside of their “Liberal values,” and that the two were not close.
Another thing he makes clear: Garneau thinks Trudeau did not value the importance of a foreign affairs minister, and isn’t very good at international relations.
“Unfortunately Canada’s standing in the world has slipped, in part because our pronouncements are not always matched by a capacity to act or by actions that clearly demonstrate that we mean what we say,” Garneau writes. “We are losing credibility.”
He describes Trudeau’s trips to China in 2016 and 2017, and to India in 2018, before his tenure as foreign minister, as “not successful.”
The two China trips failed to kick-start free-trade talks with China, and Trudeau was criticized at the time for trying to bring non-trade issues to the table in talks with the Chinese government. That included pushing on human rights, which did not go over well in Beijing.
The India trip’s failures were well-documented, including the embarrassment of inadvertently offering a reception invitation to a man convicted of trying to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister in Canada in 1986.
“We were not properly prepared,” Garneau said of the three foreign visits.
“At a fundamental level, we did not understand who we were meeting. We thought we could seduce and were surprised it didn’t turn out that way. Gone was the clear-eyed approach of a prime minister like Jean Chrétien, who always knew with whom he was dealing and who forged pragmatic alliances with world powers.”
Garneau also criticizes Trudeau for delaying the release of new national strategies for dealing with China and expanding Canada’s relationship in the Indo-Pacific region.
The China strategy was delayed largely because Trudeau and his “entourage” were hesitant to release anything on it while Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were still detained in China, he writes.
“I think that was a mistake, pure and simple.”
Likewise, he says he could not get a new Indo-Pacific strategy in front of cabinet, and it wasn’t actually released until November 2022 — a year after it was ready, and a year after Garneau had been moved out of the portfolio.
Garneau declined a request for an interview about the book.
Trudeau’s office has not responded to a request for comment on its contents.
The ex-astronaut is not the first former Trudeau cabinet minister to pen a memoir that lambastes the prime minister. In 2023, former finance minister Bill Morneau released his own memoir, which criticized Trudeau for making mostly unilateral decisions and putting politics ahead of policy.
Both of them describe a concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office that did not improve despite Trudeau’s promises to decentralize when he came into office in 2015.
Garneau writes that when he was in charge of transport, Trudeau didn’t seem to have much interest in the file at all. When he moved to foreign affairs, he hoped the prime minister would be more interested in seeking out his input on issues.
But, Garneau says, he did not.
He writes that Trudeau only called upon him once to offer advice, at a meeting with then-ambassador to China Dominic Barton, in a discussion about the ongoing plight of the two Michaels.
“The prime minister’s aloofness led me to conclude that he did not consider my advice useful enough to want to hear from me directly, relying instead on his staff,” Garneau recounts.
“I found this disappointing to say the least. The expectation was that communication between him and me would be via the (Prime Minister’s Office), and so consequently I never knew what information, if any, reached him.”
The Trudeau government, Garneau contends, is overall too reactive and ill-prepared.
“It is not sufficient to pay attention only when a concern arises, something this government has made a habit of,” he writes.
Garneau says he found that the fact Canada had gone through so many different foreign affairs ministers undermined its credibility in the role and left an impression that Trudeau and Canada don’t value or prioritize the file.
Garneau was the fourth of five people who have headed up Canadian foreign policy over the 8 1/2 years Trudeau has been prime minister.
“Our allies could logically question whether Canada attached sufficient importance to this portfolio, and they did,” Garneau writes.
During every one of his introductory calls with counterparts, he says he was told they hoped he’d last longer than his predecessors, something he describes as “a not so subtle message.”
It didn’t happen.
Garneau lasted just nine months, the shortest of any of the five.
Chrystia Freeland, the second to be named to the role, held the role for almost three years, and Mélanie Joly, the current foreign affairs minister, is closing in on 33 months in the role.
Stéphane Dion was the first, holding the title for 18 months, and François-Philippe Champagne, who was the third minister of foreign affairs, was in place for 14 months.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
