This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Jack Mintz, March 22, 2024
This is a weekend in which prime ministers past and present are likely to be considering their legacies.
Justin Trudeau can look back at a number of important policy initiatives in his almost nine years in office. He has done plenty of popular redistribution — subsidizing child care, child benefits, dental care and a skeletal pharmacare program, all paid for by rising corporate and marginal personal tax rates and higher debt. He can also claim credit for recovery from the COVID recession, though he did it with over-the-top, inflationary deficits.
He imposed social justice and carbon policy criteria throughout the government, whether in trade agreements and academic research grants or approvals for resource projects. Even federal budgets now contain a (rarely read) gender analysis, concocted no doubt by glassy-eyed civil servants holed up in windowless rooms.
Despite these achievements, the prime minister doesn’t seem ready to leave. Saying “I couldn’t be the man that I am and abandon the fight at this moment,” he has made clear he still has work to do pushing for women’s and LGBTQ rights and fighting climate change.
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