OTTAWA — As Canada bids farewell to one of its most polarizing prime ministers in a generation, the past decade will undoubtedly be defined by Justin Trudeau’s many scandals and missteps.
While this newspaper doesn’t have enough space to list every single misstep, the following is a summary of some of the most notable.
THE TRUDEAU HALL OF SHAME — THE BIG SCANDALS
Among the first to shake the PMO was 2016’s Cash for Access Scandal — featuring Trudeau’s fledging administration’s first brush with Chinese government interference.
A December 2016 Globe and Mail report uncovered numerous high-price cash-for-access events thrown by the Liberal Party, with some offering face-time with the PM in exchange for donations as large as $1,525, and netting the party as much as $120,000 per event.
While pricey fundraisers are an everyday occurrence in politics across all party lines, what sparked concern were the venues — the homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadians, some with rather uncomfortable ties to China’s communist government.
Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson never opened a formal investigation into the matter, but Trudeau was absolved of wrongdoing anyway.
The PM wouldn’t be so lucky with the Aga Khan Affair, throwing intense scrutiny on the PM’s infamous eight-day 2016 Christmas vacation at the Bahamian private island owned by the now-late spiritual leader of the Isma’ili Muslims — a close, personal friend of Pierre Trudeau.
Initially concealed from the public, reporting by Postmedia blew the story wide open, resulting in Trudeau become the first PM in Canadian history found guilty of ethics breaches.
While Trudeau’s personal usage of Twitter all but stopped after becoming PM, his infamous 2017 “Welcome to Canada” Tweet touched off a flood of immigration — both legal and otherwise — and ostensibly triggering a migration crisis that left cities and municipalities to pick up the pieces.
The tweet came on the heels of a January 2017 executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump barring refugees and visitors from a host of majority-Muslim nations.
That tweet, which as of Sunday garnered over 560,000 likes, 336,000 retweets and over 20,000 comments, prompted a huge spike in immigration and refugee inquiries across all levels of Global Affairs Canada, and according to media reports, and abject confusion within Canada’s bureaucracy over the country’s migration policy.
Documents obtained by news outlets outlined the behind-the-scenes turmoil sparked by the tweet, with embassies around the world overwhelmed by inquires from would-be refugees begging for guidance.
That was soon followed by an enormous influx of illegal immigration into Canada from the United States — most notably across a former uncontrolled Quebec border crossing at the end of Roxham Rd. in the municipality of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, which saw illegal migrants taking advantage of impromptu taxi and coach bus service to the illegal crossing.
The illegal crossings were further aggravated by a loophole in migration treaties between Canada and the U.S., and nearly 100,000 people illegally entered Canada before the crossing was permanently closed in March 2023.
Facing an influx of illegal migrants, cities and towns were left to shoulder the burden of packed homeless shelters and overwhelmed social services.
Toronto’s emergency shelters typically saw 530 clients per night in September 2021 — a number that grew to 2,800 in May 2023.
Officials and politicians across Canada blamed Trudeau’s tweet for helping spark the crisis.
Controversial vacations would become a theme of the Trudeau years, particularly after 2018’s infamous state visit to India, which saw the PM and his family cause a sensation by their eccentric behaviour and elaborate costumes that drew attention and condemnation from the Indian press.
That trip also featured a state dinner with a guest list that included Sikh extremist Jaspar Atwal, one of four individuals convicted in a 1986 murder plot against an Indian cabinet minister.
Later that year, accusations that Trudeau has groped a reporter covering a 2000 B.C. fundraiser in honour of his brother Michel — killed four years earlier in a skiing accident in Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park.
The accusations resurfaced via an editorial published shortly after the incident, where the reporter accused the future PM of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” her, to which Trudeau allegedly said if he’d known she was reporting for the National Post, “I would never have been so forward.”
An apology proffered several weeks after the groping was uncovered said the PM “… apologized in the moment because I had obviously perceived that she had experienced it in a different way than I acted or I experienced it.”
Speaking of experiencing things differently, 2019’s SNC Lavalin Affair saw Trudeau demote and then boot from caucus former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould after she refused to offer deferred prosecution to the Quebec-based construction firm.
The ensuing scandal, which brought forth accusations that Trudeau and close members of his inner circle were improperly pressuring Wilson-Raybould to cut the giant firm a break, claimed a number of careers — including close Trudeau aide Gerry Butts, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, and Treasury Board President Jane Philpott, who was likewise dismissed from the Liberal caucus for her defence of Wilson-Raybould.
Trudeau was found to have improperly pressured Wilson-Raybould, but the ethics office found no evidence of outright political interference.
Among the most memorable scandals happened later that year during the 2019 federal election campaign, when Trudeau’s re-election hopes were nearly dashed by photos and videos of the future PM in blackface.
Revealed in a September Time magazine article that included images from a 2001 yearbook depicting Trudeau — then a teacher at Vancouver’s West Point Grey Academy — wearing dark makeup on his face and a white turban during a school dance.
Trudeau would later admit to singing Day-O in blackface during a 1990s high school talent show, and was further embarrassed by a video of the future PM with his entire body darkened with makeup, dancing around with his tongue out.
The crowning moment of the scandal was the fact Trudeau, when pressed by reporters, could not recall how many times he’d previously appeared in blackface.
When questioned how many times he’d appeared in blackface, Trudeau told reporters he couldn’t recall.
Another defining moment during the Trudeau decade was 2020’s WE Charity Scandal — an affair that saw the PM embroiled in yet another situation questioning his ethics and put a prominent international Canadian children’s charity under harsh scrutiny.
The controversy began in April 2020 when the federal government chose WE — founded by Craig and Marc Kielburger — to facilitate a $912 million student grant program, which instantly drew questions about the close relationship between the Trudeaus and the Kielburgers.
Those questions deepened after it was revealed Trudeau’s brother and mother were paid speakers at various WE events — later doubled-down when reporters uncovered that former Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s daughter had been a WE employee.
Trudeau escaped unscathed, but the ethics commissioner determined Morneau not recusing himself from WE-related cabinet discussions were enough to violate Canadian ethics rules.
Morneau would later resign, but claims WE had nothing to do with it — and instead blamed it on his dislike over federal COVID-19 policy.
2022’s Freedom Convoy continues to be among the administration’s most enduring legacies, putting the entire Trudeau cabinet and senior bureaucrats under intense scrutiny.
With politicians and officials completely overwhelmed by the unprecedented turnout along Ottawa’s Wellington St. in front of Parliament Hill, both the city and its internal machinations of governance came to a complete standstill.
Despite most border blockades being cleared and the Ottawa protest largely dwindling, the decision by the PM to implement the Emergencies Act would come back to haunt the government.
Among the most insidious was the government’s new ability to monitor and freeze accounts of organizers and those suspected of donating to the cause, along with the arrests of protest organizers Chris Barber, Tamara Lich and Pat King — the same day police began towing vehicles and physically removing protestors from the area.
While the Rouleau Commission concluded invoking the Emergencies Act was justified, a later federal court ruling found the government actions both unreasonable and unconstitutional.
GOVERNING FROM THE AIR
Trudeau was a prime minister with a taste for travel.
And since the PM is forbidden by policy to fly commercially while in office, all travel — both business and personal — is handled by the Royal Canadian Air Force.
For domestic trips, the prime minister relies on a fleet of Bombardier Challenger 650 business jets operated by 412 Transport Squadron based out of Ottawa’s airport.
International flights are handled by 437 Transport Squadron, who maintain a fleet of passenger-configured CC-150 Polaris aircraft — military versions of the Airbus A310 airliner, which are in the process of being replaced by the newly-acquired CC-330 Husky, military versions of the Airbus A330-200 airliners.
Last summer, Trudeau flew 92,100 kilometres aboard government aircraft between June and September 2024 — roughly half of that year’s total air travel up to that point, and coming at a time when members of his cabinet were saying family vacations were responsible for Canada’s active wildfire season.
Among the PM’s most popular flights was the 45-minute hop between Ottawa and Toronto, but the shortest flight was a 10-minute, 65-kilometre jaunt where the RCAF plane flew empty from Waterloo to Toronto — reportedly to avoid rush hour traffic on Hwy. 401.
Among the PM’s most controversial trips was the decision to quietly depart on a family vacation to Tofino in September 2021, choosing to blow off invitations by numerous First Nations to recognize Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day.
Other notables include the mystery over who stayed in a $6,000-per-night hotel suite during the Queen’s 2022 funeral (it was Trudeau), the PM and his entourage racking up $200,000 in in-flight catering during a 2023 mission to Asia, and $800 spent on junk food ahead of the June 2023 G7 and Ukraine summits.
THE HONOURABLE MENTIONS
- 2018: Arrest and subsequent detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver airport on a U.S. extradition request, a move that would result in the summary arrest of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig by the Chinese government. They would be released after 1,019 days in detention on Sept. 24, 2021, the same day Canada released Meng from custody
- 2017-2021: Appointment, and subsequent resignation, of Governor General Julie Payette
- 2018: Eyebrows rose and mockery came from across the media landscape after Trudeau chastised a woman for using the world “mankind” during a February 2018 town hall in Edmonton, telling her “we like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind,” telling her it was more “inclusive.”
- 2019:Vice-Adm. Mark Norman affair
- 2020: Bill C-11, the controversial Online Streaming Act, is tabled in the House of Commons
- 2020: The infamous May 2020 order-in-council summarily banning thousands of semi-automatic firearms is introduced
- 2020: Questionable response to COVID-19 pandemic, including bungling disbursement of support money, vaccine mandates and questionable vaccine procurement
- 2020: The PM advises Canadians that they should wear a mask and avoid “speaking moistly” to cap the spread of COVID-19
- 2020: ArriveCan scandal, where an $80,000 pandemic-era travel app ballooned into costing nearly $60M, and raised questions surrounding how government contracts get handed out
- 2021:Gen. Jonathan Vance affair
- 2021: Government tables Bill C-21, its far-reaching and contentious gun control legislation
- 2021: Trudeau and cabinet abstaining from China Uighurs genocide vote
- 2021: A mansion belonging to property developer Wei Wei is raided by police as part of an underground gambling investigation in July 2020. Toronto Life magazine later revealed that Wei had attended pricey Liberal party fundraisers and posed with photos with Trudeau, and was a member of a Chinese industry delegation that had connections to million-dollar donations to the Trudeau Foundation
- 2022: Media reports reveal the Trudeau Liberals had paid billions in consultancy fees during their time in office, including over $110 million to McKinsey & Company
- 2022: The Liberals and NDP sign their infamous supply and confidence agreement that would protect the minority Liberals from being toppled by non-confidence votes. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh publicly tore up the agreement last September, but kept supporting the government
- 2023: Media reports uncover the scale and scope of Chinese interference in Canadian affairs, including allegations of meddling in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections and threats to Canadian politicians. The PMO was given reports from intelligence officials on the meddling as early as 2017, including warnings that candidates may be part of Chinese interference attempts, but allegedly ignored the warnings
- 2023: The federal government announces attempts to recoup the $112,000 anti-racism grant awarded to a group associated with activist Laith Marouf, who routinely posted antisemitic material on social media
- 2023: The Trudeau Liberals’ support of a non-binding U.N. resolution calling on Israel to cease operations in Gaza after Oct. 7 prompted Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad to issue a video statement thanking Canada for their support.
- 2024:Global Affairs Canada purchases $9 million condo in Manhattan for consul general
- 2024: Randy Boissonnault implosion — including pandemic-era federal contracts granted to a company he co-owned, and changing stories on his supposed Indigenous background
- 2024: Sustainable Development Technology Canada program, better known as the “green slush fund” scandal