Justin Trudeau will be sworn in Wednesday as prime minister — the position long held by his late father — as Canada begins a new era of Liberal leadership after Conservative Stephen Harper’s near-decade in power.
Trudeau and his Cabinet will officially take office at the ceremony Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m. (1530 GMT).
Trudeau is the son of Pierre Trudeau, who swept to office in 1968 on a wave of support dubbed “Trudeaumania.” He was prime minister until 1984 with a short interruption and remains one of the few Canadian politicians known in America, his charisma often drawing comparisons to John F. Kennedy.
Justin Trudeau channels the star power of his father. Tall and trim, he is a former school teacher and member of Parliament since 2008. At 43, he becomes the second youngest prime minister in Canadian history.
His election signals a generational change that will also be reflected in his Cabinet. His ministers will be announced Wednesday and most of them will be between the ages of 35 and 50. They are scheduled to hold their first meeting in the afternoon and then face the media — a departure from the Harper era.
Harper stepped down as prime minister just ahead of the swearing-in ceremony.
Trudeau and his wife and his new cabinet arrived at Rideau Hall on a bus for the swearing-in ceremony. They waved to a large crowd as they walked up the grounds to the hall. One of Trudeau’s young kids jumped into his arms upon seeing his father arrive.
Trudeau’s victory should improve Canada’s ties with the United States. Harper was angered by President Barack Obama’s reluctance to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas and it damaged relations. Although Trudeau supports the pipeline, he argues relations should not hinge on the project.
Harper, one of the longest-serving Western leaders, fought hard to reverse the image of a Liberal Canada, cutting corporate and sales taxes and removing Canada from a climate change agreement. Trudeau tapped into an appetite for change with a plan to reject austerity and spend billions on infrastructure, running deficits for three years to do so.
(AP)
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6 Responses
Harper is a friend of Israel and the Jewish people! I feel terrible for him that his loss was such a landslide – a definite rejection of his policies. He’s such a good, normal fellow – what was wrong??
I don’t understand Canadian politics but the Canadians do seem strange!
Harper was one of the few world leaders who was a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. he will be sorely missed.
Yaapchik,
Foreign policy was not an issue in Canada’s recent election, and none of the candidates was anti-Israel. (Mulcair quieted the formerly loud anti-Israel bloc in his party.)
Harper lost because the entire argument for extreme free market economic policies is that the are good for the economy. But he went all-in on extraction industry and the price of oil plummented, sending Canada into recession. Canada now has a higher unemployment rate than the US and worse, every Canadian lost a lot of purchasing power when the Canadian Dollar lost value against the US Dollar. Harper also tried running a nativist campaign in a country that mostly prides itself on being open-hearted. The surprising thing was that Harper’s Conservatives did as well as they did.
People in Canada wanted Change
a)Two of three main parties were promoting Change
But
Mulcair seemed like a polar explorer
While
Trudeau seemed like a college kid or teenager
So he obviously represented Change better
Harper was running on a bland “stay the course”
b)Harper also always seemed corporate ,distant and a bit uncanadian
c)Plus, making the Niqab on campaign issue was disaster
He lost the large muslim ,pakistani,south asian communities who on policies mostly would have stood with the tories
Former PC Prime Minister Mulroney related the morning after ,that he had warned segments of the conservative Party that they were Trudeau
treating Trudeau too much as a lightweight and and underestimating him
It came back to bite them hard
O Canada! Oy Canada!
The guy’s odd facial expression says it all!