Justin Trudeau’s resignation speech was barely 400 words long and out of character in tone, style and content, as well as length. As he listened, Robert Danisch, professor in communication arts at the University of Waterloo, who studies political rhetoric in democratic societies, noticed the familiar structures and themes of Trudeau speechwriting, all gone slightly stale.
“This speech is about what’s hidden from view. There’s a lot he’s not saying,” Danisch said.
The speech, transcribed below, included passive attempts to shift blame to Parliament, an expression of regret for something that was other people’s fault, a perfunctory and half-hearted campaign-style section, and a powerful word that really meant its opposite. Danisch sensed the looming spectre of Joe Biden over Trudeau’s shoulder as he wrote, and the patronizing sense that “Chrystia,” not “Minister Freeland,” was diminished as Trudeau’s “work wife.”
There was also one especially good sentence.
With Danisch’s guidance, the National Post’s Joseph Brean deconstructs the speech (and some unscripted answers to reporters’ questions) that brought the Trudeau era to an end.
Trudeau’s speech
Robert Danisch: It’s very short for him. It’s not really like him. I expected a little bit more fulsome comment about the democratic process, even how great it is that in a democracy he can do this and allow the Liberal Party the space to choose a new leader. Some of his best speeches have done that, and that’s largely absent here.
Justin Trudeau: Every morning I’ve woken up as prime minister, I’ve been inspired by the resilience, the generosity and the determination of Canadians.
Danisch: That kind of repetition is familiar to him. It’s a parallel structure that he often uses. It usually builds momentum for him, or builds or amplifies a point, but he just dropped the point. He’s the agent of that sentence. He’s doing some work there. And that kind of falls away from the speech. Trudeau at his best was not like that. He was I and we. He doesn’t really say “we” here much at all. He did that in some of his international speeches, especially on Ukraine, when he was very good at articulating a collective view. There’s no sense of “we” here whatsoever.
Trudeau: It is the driving force of every single day I have the privilege of serving in this office.
Danisch: I heard a great deal of passivity here. It’s a bit abstract. It feels distant. Even watching him he seemed distant.
Trudeau: That is why, since 2015, I’ve fought for this country, for you, to strengthen and grow the middle class, why we rallied to support each other through the pandemic, to advance reconciliation, to defend free trade on this continent, to stand strong with Ukraine and our democracy, and to fight climate change and get our economy ready for the future.
Danisch: That is the best sentence of the speech, because he’s actually trying to articulate and frame what the Liberal Party accomplished under his leadership, and he’s trying to offer a defence of that, a positive defence, and he did it in his typical style. That was the one sentence where he was robustly defending his leadership. But that’s all we got, that one good sentence.
Trudeau: We are at a critical moment in the world. My friends, as you all know, I’m a fighter. Every bone in my body has always told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians.
Danisch: We gotta talk about the “fighter” thing. Sometimes in rhetoric we say the thing knowing it’s the opposite. The opposite of a word is always lingering around a word. And here that’s what ’s going on. He’s trying to say he’s a fighter but clearly he’s doing the opposite, he’s resigning. He’s trying to avoid being labelled. He wants the newspapers to run headlines about him being a “fighter.” He wants you to quote the fighter bit of the speech because it affects people’s conception of his legacy, but he’s a bit desperate to get that word in because he knows the headlines will be “Quit,” “Resign.” He knows they’re coming.
Trudeau: I care deeply about this country, and I will always be motivated by what is in the best interest of Canadians.
Danisch: For him, that’s pretty vague, pretty generic, because it’s that next sentence…
Trudeau: And the fact is, despite best efforts to work through it, Parliament has been paralyzed for months after what has been the longest session of a minority Parliament in Canadian history.
Danisch: What he’s saying here is, “I’m going to say something generic, and then I’m going to passively describe a situation where I don’t have agency.” Like, what did he do to contribute to that paralysis? Or undo it? You get him caring but you don’t get him acting to redress the political situation. He sort of blames Parliament. It sounds like, “I’m stuck in this situation that Parliament is paralyzed, so that’s why I’m resigning.”
Trudeau: That’s why, this morning, I advised the Governor General that we need a new session of Parliament. She has granted this request, and the House will now be prorogued until March 24.
Danisch: He’s saying his only action is to get a new session of Parliament. He’s the agent doing something constructive here, and that’s not resigning, it’s getting the Governor General to call a new session of Parliament. Obviously, writing that, he thinks he’s going to look like a leader. But that’s not what people called for. They called for his resignation, not a new session of Parliament. It’s a clever way to frame what’s going on with him as the leader of a process.
Trudeau: Over the holidays, I’ve also had a chance to reflect, and have had long talks with my family about our future. Throughout the course of my career, any success I have personally achieved has been because of their support and with their encouragement. So last night, over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I’m sharing with you today. I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process. Last night, I asked the president of the Liberal Party to begin that process. This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.
Danisch: I think this is just him trying to remind us that he’s a good person. A lot of that sheen has rubbed off in the last few years. He was elected with enthusiasm. People liked him for a lot of reasons. They liked him, they liked his wife, his kids, his image, and that has really been tarnished these last few years. I think he wants us to remember that image of him. I think that’s also a little bit about divorce, that he wants to be recognized as a family person even though the headlines recently may not have been that.
Trudeau: The Liberal Party of Canada is an important institution in the history of our great country and democracy. A new prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party will carry its values and ideals into that next election. I’m excited to see the process unfold in the months ahead. We were elected for the third time in 2021 to strengthen the economy post-pandemic and advance Canada’s interests in a complicated world, and that is exactly the job that I, and we, will continue to do for Canadians.
Danisch: This is the most interesting part. The spectre of Joe Biden is everywhere, lingering over his shoulder as he’s writing this. Biden appointed a successor and that was a problem. I think Trudeau is saying “I’m not going to make this mistake, I’m doing this in this manner because I believe in democratic processes and I want the Liberal Party to have a leadership race.” I think that’s great. I think that’s a really good decision that demonstrates Canada, procedurally, is on firmer footing than the United States is as a democracy. There’s also slippage at the end, “… the job that I, and we…” He’s clearly conflicted about his place in the party. Watching it, I think it was written on the prompter probably “we,” but I think he slipped.
Trudeau’s answers
Trudeau: Canadians deserve a real choice in the next election and it has become obvious to me with the internal battles that I cannot be the one to carry the Liberal standard into the next election.
Danisch: I think that’s saying maybe Americans didn’t have one. I think he’s saying we’re not going to make the mistake the Democratic Party did at the very least. You can’t make this speech without thinking a little bit in the back of your head about what happened in the U.S. I wish he had said more about how that’s really good, that’s what democracy should do. It shouldn’t just appoint people. There should be time for consideration of choices.
Trudeau: Over the past years we’ve reduced their taxes, we’ve increased the benefits to families, we made sure the economy was focused on working for everyone and not just a few, and that has changed…. That has dropped poverty rates in Canada, that has brought more people into the workforce, that has moved us forward on reconciliation in a way that has deeply improved the opportunities and success of Canadians despite the incredibly difficult times the world is going through right now. There’s lots more work to be done and I know that this party and this country and Canadians will keep doing it.
Danisch: It feels so watered down. It just feels like a very weak version, because he knows he’s not going to be campaigning, so his instinct is to try some version of it, but his heart’s not really in it. It’s like a nod to the process of campaigning.
Trudeau: If I have one regret particularly as we approach this election — well there are probably many regrets that I will think of — but, I do wish that we’d been able to change the way we elect our governments in this country so that people could simply choose a second choice or a third choice on the same ballot, so that parties would spend more time trying to be people’s second or third choices, and people would have been looking for things they had in common instead of trying to polarize and divide Canadians against each other. I think in this time, figuring out how to pull together and find common ground remains something that is really important for democracies but I could not change unilaterally, without support of other parties, our electoral system. That wouldn’t have been responsible.
Danisch: He’s done versions of that so much better than what’s here. I think he’s capable of talking more clearly about extremist rhetoric and the dangers of elections being driven by social media algorithms, and he’s rendering it into this policy failure, absolving himself of blame, and blaming other parties. He clearly doesn’t see himself as the defender of Western democratic values anymore.
Trudeau: Chrystia has been by my side for close to ten years now. She has been an incredible political partner through just about everything we have done as a government, and as a party over the past decade. I had really hoped that she would agree to continue as my deputy prime minister and take on one of the most important files that not just this government but this country is facing, but she chose otherwise. In regards to what actually happened, I am not someone who’s in the habit of sharing private conversations.
Danisch: Notice how he talks about her with her first name. He’s trying to be really familiar, almost like she’s a little sister. I found it a bit of an attempt to diminish her. It was the most polite, respectful, gentle, kind of “Canadian” way of saying, “We had a nice relationship and she’s my little friend we were close and she got mad.” He really minimized her and minimized the dispute, and there’s a reason she’s upset. She’s his “partner.” It sounds like he means she is his work wife, and implies secondary status. I thought that was a bit unfortunate.
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