Canada’s global reputation suffers under Trudeau, says Garneau in autobiography

OTTAWA — Former foreign minister Marc Garneau says Canada has lost its standing in the world under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he criticizes as an ill-prepared leader who prioritizes politics and makes big statements without follow-through.

“I think Justin Trudeau 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 Penguin Random House.

Although much of the book is a trip down memory lane for Garneau’s pre-political career in the military and as an astronaut, the last third is devoted to his time as a Member of Parliament.

Garneau, now 75, was first elected in 2008 as the Liberal MP for Montreal’s Westmount-Ville Marie district, a riding that later became Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount after boundary changes in 2015.

He mounted an unsuccessful run for the party leadership in 2013, eventually withdrawing from the race and backing Trudeau, who would go on to win in a landslide.

After the Liberals came to power in 2015, Garneau served in Trudeau’s cabinet for six years, including more than five as transportation minister. He spent the last nine months as foreign affairs minister until Trudeau dropped him from cabinet entirely after the 2021 election.

In his book, Garneau admits he was blindsided by the decision — one he says Trudeau never explained.

He 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 points out: Garneau thinks Trudeau didn’t appreciate the importance of a foreign minister and isn’t very good at international relations.

“Unfortunately, Canada’s standing in the world has declined, in part because our statements are not always accompanied by the ability to act or actions that clearly demonstrate we mean what we say,” writes Garneau. “We’re 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 “unsuccessful”.

The two trips to China failed to jump-start free trade talks with China, and Trudeau was criticized at the time for trying to bring non-trade issues to talks with the Chinese government. This included promoting human rights, which did not go down well in Beijing.

The setbacks of the India trip were well documented, including the embarrassment of inadvertently giving a reception invitation to a man convicted of attempting to assassinate an Indian minister in Canada in 1986.

“We weren’t properly prepared,” Garneau said of the three overseas visits.

“At a fundamental level, we didn’t understand who we were dealing with. We thought we could seduce and were surprised that it didn’t turn out that way. Gone is the clear-eyed approach of a prime minister like Jean Chrétien, who always knew with whom he dealt and who made pragmatic alliances with world powers”.

Garneau also criticizes Trudeau for delaying the launch of new national strategies for dealing with China and expanding Canada’s relationship in the Indo-Pacific region.

China’s strategy was delayed largely because Trudeau and his “entourage” were reluctant to release anything about it while Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were still being held in China, he writes.

“I think it was just a mistake.”

He also says he couldn’t get a new Indo-Pacific strategy in front of the cabinet and it wasn’t actually launched until November 2022 – a year after it was ready and a year after Garneau was moved from the portfolio.

Garneau declined an interview request about the book.

Trudeau’s office did not respond to a request for comment on its contents.

The former astronaut is not the first former Trudeau minister to write a memoir critical of the prime minister. In 2023, former finance minister Bill Morneau released his own memoir criticizing Trudeau for making largely unilateral decisions and putting politics ahead of policy.

Both describe a concentration of power in the prime minister’s office that has not improved despite Trudeau’s promises to decentralize when he took office in 2015.

Garneau writes that when he was dealing with transportation, Trudeau didn’t seem to be interested in the file at all. When he moved to foreign affairs, he hoped the prime minister would be more interested in seeking his input on issues.

But, Garneau says, he didn’t.

He writes that Trudeau only called him once for advice, at a meeting with then-ambassador to China Dominic Barton in a discussion about the ongoing situation with 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 it disappointing to say the least. He expected communication between him and me to be through (the Prime Minister’s Office) and so I never knew what information, if any, reached him.”

The Trudeau government, Garneau argues, is generally too reactive and ill-prepared.

“It is not enough to pay attention only when a concern arises, which this government has made a habit of,” he writes.

Garneau says he found that having Canada go through so many different foreign ministers undermined his credibility in the role and left the impression that Trudeau and Canada did not value and prioritize the file.

Garneau was the fourth of five people to lead Canadian foreign policy during Trudeau’s 8 1/2 years as prime minister.

“Our allies might logically question whether Canada has placed sufficient importance on this portfolio, and they have,” Garneau writes.

In each of his introductory conversations with counterparts, he says he was told they hoped he would last longer than his predecessors, something he describes as “a not-so-subtle message”.

It did not happen.

Garneau lasted only nine months, the shortest of the five.

Chrystia Freeland, the second appointed to the role, has held the role for almost three years and Mélanie Joly, the current foreign minister, is approaching 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 office for 14 months.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 5, 2024.

Mia Rabson, Canadian Press