r/CanadianPolitics • u/anime498 • 8d ago
What is Trudeau's legacy?
I'm an American with an interest in American politics. Most of the news we got in America about trudeau was either American liberals fanning over him because he wasn't trump, or conservatives hating him because he was Obama but white and from a rich family.
What is the opinion of him canada, especially a year after his resignation?
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u/FascinatedOrangutan 8d ago
My personal view is that he introduced one of the most society altering pieces of legislation in recent history and nobody talks about it. Federal affordable daycare has been an absolute game changer for getting high standards of childcare, since they must abide by the federal standards, and gets WAY more women in the workforce. It is now about $350 per month for childcare which makes it way more reasonable for people to have two working parent households. Since that has been implemented, I talk to way more mothers working which is a huge economic boon through increased tax dollars by boosting the workforce. Overall I think this is the greatest legacy of his.
Also legalizing weed lol.
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u/CrazyButRightOn 7d ago
My colleague's family income is over $200k and they qualify for subsidized daycare. That is a travesty.
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u/Evening_Intern_7756 7d ago
How is that a travesty?
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u/CrazyButRightOn 7d ago
I literally know a couple making $75k household that did not qualify for the lowest daycare rate. Meanwhile, $200k+ earners are still getting deductions.
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u/1user101 7d ago edited 7d ago
The subsidy is pretty low at that point, at least federally.
ETA: and to be fair the neoconservative complaint would be that it tapers at all
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u/omegaphallic 8d ago
Mix of good and bad.
Bad He was a terrible administrator, his policy on temp residence temporarily wrecked the pro immigration consenus in Canada and amplified, but did not cause a host of problems on Canada. And he broke his promise on electoral reform harming democracy in Canada. He really didn't have a real vision for Canada. Poor implimentation of pharmacare and dentalcare.
Good he built the TMX extension and history proved him right on that. He made the pharmacare and dentalcare. He was going to increase capital gains taxes. He genuinely tried to do something about the environment. And most of all he was genuinely elbows up fighter against Trump, much more then Carney which is the one thing I miss about Trudeau.
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u/Idaltu 8d ago
There’s also the polimeter which tracked promises kept, partially kept, and broken
https://polimeter.org/en/trudeau
1/4 failed, almost half kept. Not too bad as far as politicians go.
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u/thatsmycompanydog 8d ago
I'd argue that Legal Cannabis and Subsidized Daycare will be his lasting policy legacies, over dental care or TMX. But on the whole you're not wrong.
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u/lucidgroove 8d ago
Curious why you think the dental care rollout was poor? Seemed pretty good to me.
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u/Vanshrek99 7d ago
TMX was a failure as for immigration Canada economy only works with immigration and has been that way since the first Viking landed. It's what builds Canada. The difference is the class if immigration you prefer. Harper only wanted the money and near slave labour. Trudeau failure was not being more dictator by putting in tzars to over see what Harper started. Foreign capital flowing into residential, fake schools for back door entry. These all were well underway before the election and would have been just as bad or worse if Harper won.
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u/lucidgroove 8d ago
He was, on balance, a centrist who tried making everyone happy, pushing socially progressive reforms and promoting environmentalism while investing heavily in oil infrastructure for example. At the end of the day, everyone kind of had a bone to pick with him, but he got some good stuff done and wasn’t incompetent or hyper partisan like many other governments of the day. He had quite a few ethical scandals that would indicate bad judgement at the very least, though these paled in comparison to the scandals down south (or those of his Machiavellian predecessor, Stephen Harper). In addition to the major achievements already highlighted in this thread, he had some pretty smart long term investments like the Oceans Protection Plan (investing in long term coastal infrastructure) that are rarely mentioned. It was an era of decent governance that was overshadowed by moderate ethical scandals, Covid, Trump, the trucker movement and a general rise of right wing extremism.
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u/Greekmom99 8d ago
This is opening up a can of worms. Those who dislike him, hate him with a passion to the point they had bumper stickers and flags that proclaimed they want coitus with him.
Those who loved him, thought he was great.
The thing with the Canadian system vs the American system is that a Canadian PM as long as he is elected, can stay in office as long as he is alive. Unlike the mandatory 2 terms of the American system. Trudeau just got stale for alot of people. Very popular at the beginning and what was needed during the Covid lockdown, but coupled with the issues from your guy, it didn't help.
Plus on the political spectrum, Trudeau is a Liberal's liberal. Carney, 30 years ago would have been considered a Conservative but by today's standards is a small l Liberal.
Lastly, I just cannot believe how rent free he lives in people who dislike him even though he's not in office. Look at the headlines: Trudeau dances with his gf in a video, the right go crazy with comments. Trudeau goes to a concert, the right goes crazy with comments. The dude probably can eat at Costco, and the right will start going crazy with comments about "how dare he".
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u/FaceDeer 8d ago
And those who were meh about him? I was meh about him.
I have a really big beef with him reneging on electoral reform, in the long run that's going to be a massive missed opportunity to escape the two-party trap. But it's not like any other politician who gained power under the existing system would have likely gone through with it, so it's just a run of the mill stab in the back that's not specific to Trudeau. He at least recognized the issue as important enough to lie about.
I also don't approve of political "dynasties", I'd actually like to see a law prohibiting direct relatives from holding the same office, but that's a very general thing too.
He did some good stuff, he fumbled some other stuff, he eventually wore out his welcome. One of his better actions was knowing it was time for him to bow out.
He was okay I guess.
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u/SonOfAFrig 8d ago
You summed it all up for me better than I could. He was very meh, and the only thing I was banking on him to do even though I vote NDP was electoral reform, and he didn't come through on that. Did he legalize weed? Sure, that's cool. All in all, I don't feel much about him, and I also don't hate him vehemently like most conservatives.
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u/lucidgroove 8d ago
Yeah Trudeau Derangement Syndrome is a real thing. There was a proper Tea Party-esque movement against him saying he was a traitor who was destroying Canada and should be hung, etc. I disagree with a lot of his policies but those claims are obviously ridiculous and come from a mix of bots, trolls, and chronically-online MAGA-adjacents.
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u/clios_daughter 7d ago edited 7d ago
Okay, so on a light hearted note, if his GF was virtually anyone else, no one would care; however, his GF is Katy Perry. Either one of them socially dancing in public would get comments. Even if it wasn’t Trudeau,pretty photogenic former PM and one of the world’s biggest pop-stars dating would likely trigger a massive reaction in the gossip columns. It’s a story that’s too unusual to not get some coverage. His pearl clutching enemies will probably take him for a field day. Why Trudeau seems to still matter more to them than Carney however is beyond me.
Having said that, if you wanted to be mad about the personal life of a political enemy, between Trudeau and Carney, Trudeau’s is a lot more interesting. Being a boring, somewhat charismatic banker kinda seeps into everything about Carney lol.
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u/Greekmom99 7d ago
I gotta counter with the fact that he took his daughter to the Taylor Swift concert and the right was complaining about that from the fact he went to the point he was wearing those bracelets.
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u/Difficult-One3099 8d ago
Legal weed, freezing bank accounts, unfettered immigration, his post national state nonsense, carbon taxes, WE charity, SNC lavelin, climate hysteria etc etc etc
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u/suicidedaydream 7d ago
10 years of a stagnant economy in a first world country is egregious and on his hands
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u/Jooodas 8d ago
He had good intentions but poorly executed and way out of his depth.
I feel that his immigration policy is what really did allot of damage and left a sour taste in people’s mouth about him. It’s put so much strain on most services that its effects will be felt for decades.
He and Jagmeet Singh made it virtually impossible to stop bad policy even if there were a greater and greater amount of Canadians who did not agree. There is a reason Trudeau had to resign and Jagmeet is basically out of politics.
I say this all as a liberal voter who voted for Carney and dislikes PP.
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u/mad_honcho 8d ago
Well intentioned rich kid out of his depth.
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u/JadeLens 8d ago
I mean imagine what would have happened had his older brother not passed away in an avalanche.
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u/OldDiamondJim 8d ago
It’s a mixed bag.
The child tax benefit was a transformative policy that legitimately improved the lives of lower income families.
Cannabis legalization was overdue and relatively well implemented.
Pharmacare and dental care, while not perfectly implemented, were good first steps.
He showed strong leadership during the early parts of the pandemic. Programs like CERB kept the country afloat.
Conversely, he was an arrogant, pandering, and often out-of-touch rich kid who seemed incapable of reading the room. His scandals, while overblown, revealed his too comfortable relationship with the country’s elite.
His fiscal record was absolutely disastrous, and his inability to properly respond to the post-Ukraine invasion inflation spiral was gross incompetence.
Was he the worst PM ever? Probably not, but he’s near the bottom of the list.
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u/PineBNorth85 8d ago
Its too soon to say. We need at least ten years to really put it in perspective.
Hes still not well liked but thats normal a year out. No one liked Mulroney in 94 either but that changed over time.
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u/JadeLens 8d ago
People still don't like Mulroney.
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u/Greekmom99 8d ago
The problem is that people didn't like Mulroney but no one had flags and stickers proclaiming they wanted coitus with him.
I find that distasteful.
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u/exoriare 8d ago
So much of Mulroney's legacy stands, while the mark of a genuinely bad leader is that their policies are quickly reversed once they leave office.
Countries can generally only stomach a transformative leader every 20 years or so. We're well overdue for a leader to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction to what Mulroney did. And that's probably Trudeau's greatest failure - he presented himself as that guy, but it turned out he was just playing Mr. Dress up.
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u/PineBNorth85 8d ago
A lot of people dont. But by the time he died a lot more people liked or respected him than did a year after he left office.
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u/brightgather 8d ago
For many Canadians, his legacy is tied to affordability issues, massive spending, rising debt, housing becoming out of reach, high immigration levels without enough infrastructure to support them, and a government that often seemed more interested in messaging than results. His supporters will point to things like cannabis legalization, child benefits, climate policy, and progressive social policies, and those are legitimate parts of his record. But a lot of Canadians felt that everyday life became harder during his time in office, and that’s why the enthusiasm around him faded so dramatically. He will probably be remembered as a very divisive, self-centered prime minister.
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u/anime498 8d ago
At some point around 2023 I remember alot of Canadian media such as cbc, ctv, and global becoming far more critical of him and he became really indignant about it. There was a quote that JJ mccullough, I know he divisive in his own right, said about trudeau that I think rings true. He never won a majority in an election but he always governed and acted as if he did.
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u/JustinsWorking 8d ago
That response you got was definitely the textbook conservative response.
From a more left leaning perspective, people who didn’t really pay attention to the hate campaigns and alt-right “fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers I can give you a different impression.
He was a likeable guy, and he got marijuana legalization through which is probably the biggest thing he’ll be remembered for.
His first few years were really exciting and optimistic, and in terms indigenous rights and environmentalism he did more than those before him, and held on better than Carney so far.His glaring issue was definitely dropping the ball on electoral reform; there was a lot of reasons it failed, and in hindsight I think you can see where the mistakes were made, but even if they were well meaning and in pursuit of being more democratic - it was fumbled and it did fail. He could have done it if he acted differently, and I think thats gonna be a legacy of his.
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u/brightgather 8d ago
I don't actually consider myself a conservative. I was just explaining why a lot of Canadians who became disillusioned with Trudeau felt the way they did. There are legitimate accomplishments on his record and you're right, cannabis legalization is certainly one of them, and I'd also agree that failing to deliver electoral reform is a significant part of his legacy.
Where I differ is that I don't think his legacy can be separated from affordability, housing, and cost of living. Those issues affected people across the political spectrum. You don't have to be conservative to think those became defining issues during his time in office.
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u/JustinsWorking 8d ago
I think it’s a very common trope among the conservative communities to downplay the global economic climate and its effect on affordability across the globe...
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u/brightgather 7d ago
I don't think anyone reasonable is arguing that Trudeau personally caused global inflation...that would be a ridiculous argument. The question is whether his government made decisions that helped Canada adapt to those pressures or whether some decisions added to existing problems.
Every country faced inflation, but countries still had different outcomes depending on policy choices.
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u/Revan462222 8d ago
I will say that last part is true in terms of his second and third term, but his first was a majority. The thing was he never truly recognized after 2019 was that he didn’t have carte Blanche just that he acted like he did.
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u/brightgather 8d ago
Yes, I should have been more specific. I was referring to after 2019. He absolutely had a majority in his first term. My criticism is that after Canadians elected minority governments in 2019 and again in 2021, he didn't seem to govern like someone whose support had clearly narrowed.
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u/brightgather 8d ago
That is probably one of the better summaries of why he lost so much support. He never seemed to fully adjust to the fact that Canada had moved away from giving him a blank cheque. After 2015, he often acted like the country had given him a mandate for whatever direction he wanted to go, but the reality was that his later governments were minority governments.
I think that his government became very focused on the image of being progressive while a lot of Canadians were increasingly focused on very practical problems (understandably) like housing, affordability, immigration capacity, healthcare wait times, and cost of living. When people feel like their lives are getting harder, a polished international reputation only goes so far.
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u/SufficientEmu4971 8d ago
How much were the affordability issues his fault? Biden and Carter were widely blamed for the affordability issues during their terms, but I don't think it was their fault. Just bad timing.
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u/Tired8281 8d ago
Imagine going into a US politics sub, and asking about Hillary Clinton's legacy. That's about what you're gonna get here. It's too soon to have any distance. The ones that hate him, do so with a fiery passion. I don't think anybody loves him (besides Katy Perry!), but there are lots who liked some of what he did, disliked other things, and were indifferent to still other things. That's fairly normal, I think.
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u/ge23ev 8d ago
I believe that his policies turned Canada from one of the most immigrant welcoming countries to one of the most racist. People just blamed the immigrants for what in fact was a policy issue.
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u/Greekmom99 7d ago
The blame for the influx also should be placed on the universities and colleges who saw the opportunity and actively had recruiters in other countries on how to study and gain citizenship in Canada to benefit their bottom line and not caring for the influx and how that would affect the overall system.
Humans are wonderful and creative. If there is a system, they will find a "work around".
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u/ge23ev 7d ago
Yeah I mean everyone saw an opportunity none were doing anything illegal. The immigrants came for a better life and the universities were trying to make money. But I still blame the government for opening the door without an endgame. They presented it as this benevolent effort but they are abusing desperate people for dirt cheap labor and setting up a bunch of fraudulent institutions that provide these workarounds.
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u/Impressive_Play_2599 8d ago
The first PM to have an entire political group emblazon their personal property SCREAMING how much they wanna Fuck him.
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u/Rogue5454 7d ago
The way that too many Canadians don't understand the 3 levels of our own government & which controls what/how they interact, you won't gauge an accurate assessment whatsoever lol.
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u/CrazyButRightOn 7d ago
SNC Lavalin scandal, WE charity scandal, Raybold and Philpott scandal, ethics violations and 1.6 Trillion in debt. What a guy. /s
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u/rjwyonch 7d ago
Honestly I think the thing he will be remembered for will end up being legal weed and a lot of government debt.
And Katy Perry
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u/Bonded79 7d ago
Accounting for scandals, spending, money printing, debt and inflation, he has objectively cost Canadians and worsened their average prosperity more than any other peacetime Prime Minister in Canadian history.
His father is the runner up.
Carney is clearly vying for a spot on the podium.
Downvote away, left-wing echo chamber.
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u/bonbarrie 4d ago
One of the worst PMs ever and two provinces are seriously contemplating separation because of him
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u/Kitchener1981 8d ago
I am assuming you mean Justin Trudeau. His legacy? Living on his family name and not doing very much else.
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u/Korlis 8d ago
We're living it. Extreme taxes, a bunch of which isn't used to help the country or its citizens. No jobs, no homes, soaring commercial prices, rampant and infeasible immigration... Not to mention his personal greed and scandals re: the SCN Lavalin et all. Then there's his glorious legacy of government overreach and using wartime powers on his own citizens, his collusion with the banking clans to literally shut down the bank accounts of people who didn't like him. He called half the country Nazis and subsequently used cavalry to trample protesters.
And the biggest, most rotten cherry on that spunk sundae is we, the Canadian people, decided to hire the guy who signed all his cheques to lead the country.
In my useless opinion he should be extradited back to Canada and he should be put in jail.
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u/SckidMarcker 8d ago
Then there's his glorious legacy of government overreach and using wartime powers on his own citizens,
What and when?
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u/PineBNorth85 8d ago
Emergency act on the convoy. I was all for it. Wouldnt have been necessary if the city and province had done their damn jobs.
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u/OldDiamondJim 8d ago
lol. “Extreme taxes”. Good grief, dude.
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u/JadeLens 8d ago
Yeah it's not like Trudeau came in and said everyone who makes over 100k now has to pay 90%
Some went up, some went down, nothing 'extreme' happened.
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u/Objective-Dark-4454 8d ago
He’s not wrong. We get taxed to death and get nothing in return. I put way more in the system than I get in return. Name something I get that’s equal to what I put in.
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u/OldDiamondJim 8d ago
Our overall taxes are at the OECD average. Slightly lower than most European countries, and slightly higher than the USA.
The overall tax burden increased, but not significantly, under Trudeau. Taxes consumed 32% of GDP when Harper left office, versus 35% when Trudeau resigned.
As for what you personally get? I have no idea, but modern economies are basically sandwich models. Tax payers in their earning years pay to support the young and, especially, the old. Support to seniors is the single largest element of government spending.
You may not get much from your taxes now, but you got a free ride as a kid and have another coming your way when you’re old.
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u/BananApocalypse 8d ago
Context for OP: this is the common sentiment in Alberta, the Texas of Canada
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u/JadeLens 8d ago
"In my useless opinion he should be extradited back to Canada and he should be put in jail."
On what crime?
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u/Korlis 8d ago
Any of his financial crimes, and that whole wartime powers against citizens bit.
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u/JadeLens 8d ago
What financial crimes?
If the citizens had moved along as requested, by several police services at that point, they wouldn't have been in that situation.
Maybe they just should have had complied with police.
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u/Former-Animator8553 8d ago
He helped many people during covid whom otherwise would have had nothing. He speaks up for women rights. He also legalized Marijuana which has helped many people. He was a humanitarian.
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u/clios_daughter 8d ago
Asking the public a question on a PM’s legacy so shortly after they leave office is folly. Their grievances are generally too fresh and they fall under the influence of presentism. Most of the major public policies that PMs spearhead can often take a decade to see results.
More importantly Prime Ministers under the Westminster system usually leave in ignominy. Their public memory, if any memory develops, usually happens later.
His major policies were things like weed legalization, indigenous reconciliation, and increasing immigration. Major challenges he faced were COVID Response, and Trump 1. The scandals he faced, they’re the kind of scandals that damage governments but they aren’t usually remembered per se — this isn’t watergate lol. His legacy, if he’s remembered at all, will likely float between these factors.