 I'm Jay Fiedel, and this is View from the North, where we look north to see what's going on in Canada and how it compares with what's going on in the U.S. And the question before the house is, what do Canadians think of Justin Trudeau, the prime minister? And for this discussion, I'm going to talk to a Canadian, our favorite Canadian, Ken Rogers, back to Ken Rogers, retired Canadian businessman in Kelowna, British Columbia. Welcome to the show, Ken. Hello, Jay. How much talk about him? It's nice spring in Canada, despite our stink as a prime minister. Okay. I have a feeling this is going to be a very candid discussion here. So tell us about, you know, you've lived in Canada pretty much all your life. You've seen a lot of prime ministers come and go. You've seen, you know, of course, the media will write up everything that a prime minister does. So how is Justin Trudeau doing? Well, he is the prime minister of Canada, because in the last election, he got a third of the vote. Now, that would surprise most Americans. How could you be prime minister if you only got a third of the popular vote? And in fact, the Conservative Party got about 1% more vote than he did, or than his party did. You know, in Canada, you do not vote for the prime minister separately. Like in the US, you have a presidential vote having, you know, very separate from voting for your congressional stuff in the parliamentary system that they have in Britain, Australia, Canada, etc. You know, you vote the party with the greatest number of seats, you know, gets to lead or become prime minister. Their head becomes the prime minister. Well, in Canada, we have a coalition government, much like since Israel's in the news lots, everybody knows there's a, you know, several parties together to keep Netanyahu in power. And in Canada, we have three fairly significant parties. You know, two major, let's call it liberal and conservative, and the third party is left to the liberal party, sort of in Bernie Sanders territory. Well, that third party has combined with the liberal party or Trudeau's party to become the government. And they've done nothing. I knew this was going to be a candid discussion. Well, about the only legislation that anybody could remember, I spoke to a few people and asked them what has Trudeau accomplished in, you know, almost eight years of being the prime minister. And the only one they could think of was that he legalized marijuana. So that's not much when you think of all the issues in the world, which include all the issues in Canada. So question, how do people feel about that? If he was running on a popular vote, not that he has to, but if he was running on a popular vote today, how would he do? Is he a popular leader? Yes and no. There's a certain segment of the population that, you know, absolutely thinks he's wonderful. The majority do not think he's wonderful. So really it's this, whether the two parties that now operate as a coalition will get enough votes or not, if there were an election in the very near future, it's probably likely they would get voted out, booted out. You know, the conservative party in Canada, which is a lot more moderate than the U.S. Republican Party, especially right now, you know, they have increased in popularity in the polls to a great extent because Trudeau has done nothing. You know, his method of government is he does very, very well, standing before a microphone, making speeches, you know, and he makes wonderful promises and he, I guess, looks so sincere. And I'll use an example of, you know, that he makes the promise and that's the end of it. You know, you never get a broadcast that shows what did he ever follow up on. You know, he just does not follow up on anything. But a great example is we had an atmospheric river about three years ago in British Columbia that, you know, caused havoc in the mountain passes. It just wiped out every highway that could get from Vancouver into anywhere. And, you know, you just couldn't get from the coast inland from British Columbia, this all mountain passes, you know, they just obliterated them with this atmospheric river, while one town that was kind of a crossroads of a couple of highways called Merritt, a little weed place, but it got absolutely decimated. And he was right on the news really quick. Our minds and hearts are with you. And oh, what was us and poor people and we will get right in there. The federal government's behind you. Well, about three years later, there's absolutely zero been done. You know, just zero. And that's what he promises all the time, you know, make little speech with before NATO, you know, saying, you know, Canada will, you know, you know, meet its commitments. You know, well, I think Canada's, you know, percentage of gross domestic products spent on defense is the lowest of the G seven. It's certainly the lowest of any of the sizable countries that make up or the NATO, the smallest in NATO. But he just makes these terrific promises. You know, one of the major platforms that he said was he was going to make, you know, reconciliation with the with the indigenous population in Canada, you know, well, United Nations ranks Canada as close to the worst in the world in the treatment of its people. You know, they put them all out on reservations, much like, you know, the Americans did. You know, but, you know, in Canada, we didn't ship people from Georgia to Oklahoma or somewhere and set the reservation on what was then thought it was close to the worst land in the United States. You know, our reservations were set up where the natives were, you know, they were just shrunken in size so that the actual reservations are pretty tiny. Well, in Canada, about, you know, half the native population lives in what I call remote areas. And those reservations, you know, have an absolute dearth of of a complete absence of, you know, fresh water, you know, like any of the necessities, you know, any endless promises will do all these things and it does nothing. Well, the people understand this. Do they know this? Does a media report on this? How does he get away with it? Well, how does Donald Trump get away with, you know, endless numbers of lies and still have people, you know, anti-democratic stuff and still get away with it? You know, is the public's not overly well informed? Like they used to be. Everybody used to get a local newspaper and you had good journalism in those days. The newspapers were pretty straight forward. Like, you know, I think of the Washington Post and LA Times that are, you know, pretty good newspapers. New York Times. We don't have much of that anymore than anybody gets. Hmm. So he's very good looking. We have a picture of him. And what's remarkable is that he looks like a teenager, but he's actually 52 years old, born in 1971. And, you know, it's a really fabulous picture of him all over the place from the cover of Teen Vogue. And I can see all the, you know, young teenager people jumping up and down about him. What is, how does his looks factor into this? His youthful looks? His forever youthful looks? Well, was Bill Clinton's looks a factor in his being elected? Your answer is yes. You know, and it has been a role. I mean, he wrote in to a great extent on his father's name and his father's accomplishments. Like his father was absolutely brilliant, did some fantastic legislation, was an abrasive personality to many people. You either really liked him or really hated him. I was in the latter category. And so when just when the name popped up, I already had a negative response. But the two of them don't resemble each other at all. Like if you put photographs of them and doesn't matter how you magnify it, you could never believe that Justin Trudeau is Pierre Trudeau's son. They have nothing in looks compared to them. And in terms of brilliance, you know, Pierre Trudeau was a very brilliant individual and accomplished things the US has yet to accomplish. For example, Canada's elections really work well because of Pierre Trudeau. He's the one that brought in the legislation that took big money out of elections, shortened the election cycle, so big money didn't matter. And he, you know, Canada was a, it wasn't a colony of Britain, but it was in, you know, the, it was the dominion of Canada and it still had a bunch closer ties to Britain. And he, you know, repatriated the Constitution, created the Bill of Rights, you know, and his son Justin has done Diddly Squat in eight years in power. So you're saying that Justin, Justin had the benefit of the Trudeau name and that his looks, you know, got him into office. Well, why would some Americans be willing to vote for RFK Junior? You know, and there's a Kennedy name and it has great meaning with, and there's good reason, you know, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were pretty neat politicians, accomplished a lot of great things. And so somebody would think, well, if it's another one of the Kennedys, I'm in favor, you know, but that in that name recognition for Trudeau still carries a lot of weight. But there's no way that his, his smarts, he's not a dumb person. You know, he's very like Justin is very well educated or let's just say I wouldn't use the well as he has tons and tons of education. If you said, what did he do from when he finished high school? Well, the next 15 years, he just went in and out of different colleges. You know, he really did nothing. Like he was 23 before he had a Bachelor of Arts degree. And that's when they gave Arts degrees only took three years that he majored in literature. Well, then, you know, he fluffed around for a little while. Then he went to University of British Columbia because they have better skiing in BC. And then he, you know, it took a, you know, a Bachelor of Education degree. Well, you know, then, you know, he fluffed around a little bit, you know, taught part time, you know, junior high school level, you know, like grade 79 era. Well, then he, you know, decided, well, he'll go and back to Montreal and take some more college. And so he took engineering at a great college in Montreal, took a couple years of that or a year and a half and then packed that in, then fluffed around a little while more and then went back to the college in British Columbia and took environmental geology that I had to hesitate because the names don't tend to fit together. And then he packed up that education. Well, now by then he was about 33. Well, then he stopped doing that because when his father died, he gave a eulogy, which was heard by everybody in Canada. And it was absolutely fantastic. Just mind-droppers saying, wow, here is this guy named Trudeau. What a neat name, you know, for a politician. And listen to him speak and look at how handsome he is and wow. And so he then started to get, you know, requests for this and that. Well, you know, people look, gee, he's in his early thirties, you know, or 32, almost 35 by then, having done diddly squat other than having taught some junior high school courses in British Columbia. You know, and you'd say, well, what courses? If you listen to the news, they would say, well, how could a drama teacher ever be Prime Minister? Like that's the quote you hear the most for anybody that doesn't like him, that he was a drama teacher, you know, like shown acting, and that's all he does as Prime Minister, you know, a phony actor. Where really, he taught everything from soups and nuts. But of course, if you look at what he took in college, you know, he taught, actually taught junior high school math. And he did teach drama, you know, but, you know, he taught literature. Well, his Bachelor of Arts degree was in literature. He taught several things. So he's highly educated, you know, but I don't know that, but he's got terrible, terrible judgment compared to his father. Give me an example of that. Well, there was a he's been in several scandals. You know, all because, you know, if you're a critic, you'd say because of his stupidity. You know, well, he is not stupid. He just has bad judgment or, you know, and, you know, he was born with a silver spoon. And so, you know, you have no idea of whether he's been, you know, on the gravy train, you know, like the senator from New Jersey in the United States or not, you know, nothing direct that anybody's made, but he's been in a bunch of scandals that stunk. Well, one of the reasons that I think he is, his judgment is poor, and when people are up close to him, he's not as likable as he is on TV, that he's had trouble getting other people that are high talent around him. You know, if you took his current cabinet where he's made a big fuss about, well, we want to have equal rights, and so we should have 50% of the Canadian cabinet should be women. You know, well, when you only get about a quarter of the people elected are women, and then you're going to pick from those, you have trouble. Oh, one thing Americans may not know is in Canada, the head of the cabinet, the head of each department is the person, a person who was voted in. That is, you don't hire, you know, like you do not have either whether the person is a politician or non-politician, but in the US, the president picks the cabinet, and the cabinet, each of the cabinet has a department, but in that department, there are senior people that tend to stay there, or, you know, reasonably senior. Sometimes they turn over those people to have ones that are more favorable, but while in Canada, you know, the head of every department is somebody that's been voted in. Well, it's no wonder they've done nothing when they've got, you know, third class people having been voted in and chosen to be head of some department. Well, when they had this scandal, it was a large construction company thing in Montreal, and Montreal has an image in Canada like New Jersey. You know, if there's anything been dishonest in Canada, you'd say, oh, where in Montreal did it happen? But anyhow, that'd be the first question. It's not always the case. It's certainly the image justified. So, but this scandal had two of the cabinet ministers, you know, said what Trudeau had given his speeches as the excuse for how this happened. They just said, that's bloody well not right. You know, some good, honest, straightforward Canadian politician. Both were women. And, you know, so of course, he devised a way to get them kicked out of the party and out of the parliament. And, you know, so that really good people have not wanted to get, you know, branded next to them, you know, sort of in the current cabinet, you know, two of the women, the Foreign Affairs Minister or what the Americans would call Secretary of State, you know, the gorgeous blonde, you know, she's about five, eight, or nine in height. So she's taller than a lot of these international presidents. You know, if you'll see a NATO picture or something, the good looking blonde is, she's a smart one. And, you know, the one that Trump really, really didn't like named Freeland in those two, but the only two cabinet ministers that have been able, that stuck around that had any brains at all. You know, but you said before, you said before that he's been in office eight years. And you said before that his election is done by the parliament. And I suppose the parliament could vote him out any time. There could be elections. Not the parliament, the members of his party that are in parliament. Got it. So, and you mentioned also that the coalition that he has cobbled together, the left and the further left. But that there is a conservative, you know, group, you know, maybe growing the way it's growing in the U.S., that, you know, that doesn't agree with the liberals. So I guess my question is, if he is so do nothing, why is he still there? Why are the liberals still so popular that they feel they have to leave him there? Why don't they kick him out in favor of somebody who would, you know, provide a better political return for them? Eight years is a long time. It's longer than a president. Well, Canada's political balance is very different than the United States. You know, in the U.S., in the most biased of states, the losing party still gets a pretty good share of the vote. You know, if you took, you know, North Dakota, the Democrats don't do too badly or in Texas. They don't do too badly. They lose, but they don't do too badly. In Canada, you've got province like Saskatchewan or Alberta, and most of the time the liberals get zero. They get just absolutely wiped. Whereas the, you know, population in Canada is so heavily concentrated in, you know, the, let's call it the St. Lawrence River, you know, go from Montreal to Detroit almost, you know, or a little bit north of Montreal to Detroit, you got more than half of Canada in that little area. You know, like Toronto has more people than every province except Quebec. You know, like Toronto, British Columbia is the third most populous province, and it has less people than this metro to fall in Toronto. So you're saying that Eastern Canada keeps him in office. Eastern Canada, which is largely French, is liberal, and it keeps him in office. Is that what you're saying? Well, the Quebec doesn't really like to vote for conservatives. Now, Ontario is interesting. They like to vote for a, the rural or let's call it non-Toronto parts of Ontario vote for the conservatives in Toronto for the liberals when it's federal. The minute it's a provincial election, they'll vote for the conservatives. They like to have a different, a provincial premier that's not of the same party. That sounds like a good idea, don't you think? But anyhow, you, you, when you can run B Prime Minister with only a third of the popular vote, you know, you really have, you know, reason for some dismay among many people. Well, you know, I asked you whether his good looks played into it. Certainly his father's name plays into it. But, you know, there's another element that I would like to explore, and that is the French thing. I don't think people in the US understand, you know, how the French are concentrated in Montreal, Quebec and Eastern Canada in general. And here's his father was French. He's French. His wife Sophie was French. They're divorced now, I guess. But I wonder how French that group in the legislature is. Is it all French? How powerful are the French? How powerful is the French language in the US does not understand that most people do not understand this bifurcation in Canada. And here's a political bifurcation that is playing out in the form of this, you know, French, the second French Prime Minister in only a few years. How is French? Well, I just I don't understand. It's just maybe there are more people voting in French Canada. No, like, I'd be surprised you to say what whatever you said, Americans don't understand. You know, neither do most people in western Canada. Okay, yes. Now, actually, Canada has has more than three parties in its federal parliament. If there's, you know, there's always some pop up party showing up. Well, there is a, you know, a special Quebec party, you know, that favored that Quebec should become a separate standalone country of its own. You know, and that has always been a factor that's been sitting around since the days in particular of Charles de Gaulle, if you remember the French guy from World War two, you know, he, you know, came to Canada to visit. And there's a nice political gesture. He leaves by saying, Viva la Quebec Libre, you know, as if France, the country's in favor of Quebec separating from Canada. Now, that's always been a factor. And so you have, you know, separatist causes. Well, you know, when I grew up in Alberta, which is the province that's second closest to the Pacific Ocean in Canada, kind of like Nevada or Idaho distance from the Pacific Ocean, you know, and I really just born in, in that area, you just inherit the thinking of, you know, the province or the area. And, and I can remember just begrudging, having to learn to speak French, you know, at school, but it really, because it was still such red that country, they didn't even put the French into school until you reached either grade nine or 10. They were supposed to. This is a bilingual country. Well, right. You have two official languages. In Redneck, Alberta, they had stick in your ear, you know, and, and there was such an animosity among my friends and so on. And, and at the time, you know, they had the oil discovered in Alberta. And, you know, example of high school I went to was probably 40, 40, 50% kids that were the sons of Americans that had moved to Canada to work in the oil and gas industry. Well, you know, I kept saying, look, I don't want to speak French. I live closer to Mexico. I'm far more likely to go to visit Mexico as I grow older and go on holidays. I'm never going to go to Quebec. And, and why would I ever want to go there? There's nothing there that would interest me. They can't even I can't even talk to them. You know, but and, and, you know, let me, let me add that there are a lot of people in Quebec who don't speak English. Am I right? Yes, well, when you use Quebec and Montreal simultaneously shows a little bit of an American misunderstanding. You know, Montreal used to be, you know, the, the New York of Canada, like it was the be all and center of the earth. I mean, everything evolved. It was the financial capital. It was the headquarters of all the major industries and, and it was about 50% English speaking and 50% French speaking. And if you went 10 inches outside Montreal, nobody spoke English. Wow. That is almost the case now. The difference is that, that Ottawa is technically in Ontario. Well, it's really on the border between Ontario and Quebec. Ottawa on the, on the, well, as Ottawa has grown to about 1.6 million people, you know, there's probably 150, 200,000 of it, at least on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. You know, so metropolitan Ottawa now has lots of English speaking people, but you know, the Quebec, it's really all in, in Montreal, people that speak English, you know, for, for example, everybody else, everybody else speaks French and not English. Oh yeah, gorgeous city, you know, Quebec city, further up the, you know, let's call it further north from Montreal is almost a million people in size. And, and you could go there and, and have real trouble finding anybody that could talk to you in English. So they must love Trudeau. I would, I would guess the Trudeau and the people around him speak French. They must love Trudeau. Trudeau is bilingual, like anybody would say, how could you dream of perfect bilingualism? I mean, he is silky smooth in both languages. You know, he's a, he's a fairly good public speaker. When he gets angry, he's a really good public speaker. He's been in debating classes. You know, he's, he's capable, athletically, you know, example, you know, his father wanted to, he had three sons, even though he was over 50 when, let's call it Pierre Trudeau, Justin's father was over 50 when, when Justin was born. And Pierre Trudeau divorced his wife when Justin was about six years old. Now he'd always lived with lots of money and nannies and that sort of thing. But, you know, for example, before he was 20, his younger brother, both he and of which were born on Christmas day, if you can believe that. Wow. How do you, how do you organize that? You have to have a lot of clouds to do that. Justin Pierre Trudeau was very smart. He figured out how to do it. But his younger brother, you know, they were skiing in what is called the bugaboos in British Columbia to an area in the Kootenays area, north of Idaho, straight north of Idaho. But in the most wild country, well, any 20-year-old that can ski in the bugaboos has had an awful lot of skiing and has got to be very athletic. I mean, it is heaven for skiing for anybody. Well, Trudeau kids and the father could, you know, ski like whizzes. I mean, that's why the son moved to British Columbia when he was fluffing along with, you know, 15 years to go through college. I suppose if I asked you, is this unique in your lifetime, the phenomenon of Justin Trudeau? He's not like any other Prime Minister, I think, in your lifetime. And so where is it taking Canada? What can Canada expect either from a continuation of Justin Trudeau or the next Prime Minister, however, you know, from whatever power base he has selected? You know, I mean, I'm always interested in sea changes. What sea changes does Justin Trudeau represent? Well, a little bit like the United States, you know, you elect a president and usually it's really rare for that president not to win a second term if they're running, you know, and the same idea in Canada. You know, now Trudeau is, you know, two thirds of the way through his second term or getting close to the end of his second term. And the popularity tends to go down and like in the U.S., well, if we had party A for eight years now it's time to change. That tends to be, you know, an action where the Canadian Parliament has certainly not been historically as adversarial as the U.S. Congress is now. And, you know, we've got, we've seemed to inherit, you know, a stronger conservative movement than lately. But it's not as ugly as the American one. Pardon my bias, but that's- No, I'm in the same place. But, you know, what does this mean as we go down the track here? The conservatives are going to get more powerful? I mean, I think there's a trend certainly in this country and in Europe, you know, toward conservatism and maybe even autocracy. So the question is, where does Trudeau stand on all of that? Will he last more? I guess he could. There's no term limit on him. Or will there be a conservative prime minister next time around? Has anybody surfaced who might actually oppose him or be the next prime minister? Or does he have the feel right now? There's a lot of conjecture that the current head of the conservative party in Canada, a guy named, you know, also, who's very, very fluent in French, nice French name, Pauliev, you know, that, but he was sort of born and raised in politics and that's it. You know, I think he was a member of parliament when he was about 30 years old and he's now about 45 or 50 and, you know, has never had another job, you know. Is he better qualified than Trudeau? In my opinion, yes, but in Canada, you tend to have a substantial element of the people that are fairly conservative and will vote for the conservative party. And then you have everybody is I'll vote for anybody but a conservative. Well, when you have this group of parties, such as in Quebec, let's say they don't like Trudeau, they will vote for the Quebec separatist party before they will vote for conservative. So, so that that or they'll vote for the third party, the one let's call NDP, which is sort of Bernie Sanders level of way over on the left. Well, I don't know that they're always as far over but both the same. So they, none of those fringe parties will make a coalition with the conservatives. So the conservatives have to win 51% to become prime minister. Now, that does happen fairly often. And especially if the head of the conservative party is from Quebec, you know, there was, you know, a month or so ago, a former prime minister died guy named Brian Mulroney. Now he was from Montreal, and he was one a one of the last prime ministers that got along with every US president that he dealt with. You know, very Irish guy in his nature, but he was actually from rural Quebec and very fluent in both French and English. And he swept Canada like he got, you know, three quarters of the seats in the in the parliament just as a conservative. But that's one of the threads of our discussion. Can I, you know, Canada is different in many ways the same but different. And if Americans want to be, you know, fully informed, they really have to know what you're talking about. And not only that, but they have to follow it, because it's not static, it changes. And so I'm afraid to say that a lot of Americans don't follow. But we follow it here on Think Tech. And I sure appreciate your sharing all this. I'm looking forward to further discussions with you, Ken. Ken Rogers, retired Canadian businessman, helping us understand what's on the other side of the border, you know, view from the north, as you will. Thank you so much, Ken. Thank you. Aloha. Aloha from Canada. We want to announce that Think Tech Hawaii is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30th. We will retain our website and YouTube channel and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on ThinkTechAway.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.