It is not ‘business as usual’ for Justin Trudeau in 2019

Lots of politicians are hypocrites. Some of them might even claim it’s in the job description to say one thing and do another. But Justin Trudeau would never say that — not the Justin Trudeau of 2015, at least. But 2019’s Justin Trudeau? Well, there’s been a whole lot of “business as usual” claims from his government in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

So what happened to sunny ways — the transparent and positive governance Trudeau promised Canada when he became prime minister? Was it always a lie? How did we get from there to … this? And would this scandal be so damaging to a “normal” politician? Or is it the fact that Trudeau had the gall to brand himself so differently that makes the revelations of the past three weeks so damaging?

GUEST: David Moscrop, political theorist, writer (Maclean’s, Washington Post), author of Too Dumb for Democracy?

 

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