The administration of Justin Trudeau

First Nations suicide epidemic

One of the first issues that confronted the new government was a growing epidemic of suicide attempts among members of First Nations peoples. On a single day in April 2016, 11 young members of the Attawapiskat community in remote northern Ontario attempted suicide, dramatically embodying the dire hopelessness experienced by some of Canada’s Indigenous people, who faced limited opportunities for education and employment. The incident brought to more than 100 the total number of suicide attempts in the Attawapiskat community since September 2015 and came in the wake of a rash of suicide attempts that had resulted in six deaths in Manitoba’s Pimicikamak community. Self-inflicted injuries and suicide had become the leading cause of death among First Nations people under age 45, and young members of First Nations were five to six times more likely to die by suicide than young non-Indigenous Canadians. In June, Trudeau announced that $69 million would be allocated over the next three years to address mental health and suicide in Indigenous communities.

Legalization of marijuana, environmental protection, and Quebec mosque attack

Among Trudeau’s campaign promises was a pledge to legalize recreational marijuana. In April 2016 Minister of Health Jane Philpott announced the government’s intention to introduce legislation in spring 2017 to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana. The government’s policy was grounded in a desire to protect children (who already had relatively easy access to illegal marijuana) and to prevent organized crime from profiting from illegal sales of marijuana.

In contrast to his predecessor as prime minister, Trudeau established a warm relationship with U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, with whom he shared a number of policy goals, including openness to environment-friendly measures. In December 2016—as Obama sought to protect the legacy of his policies aimed at protecting the environment by issuing a pair of memorandums that indefinitely banned oil and gas development in the entirety of the U.S. portion of the Chukchi Sea, the majority of the Beaufort Sea, and some 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) along the Atlantic coast—Trudeau announced that Canada was declaring a five-year ban on the licensing of drilling in all of its Arctic waters, with climate and marine science-based review to come at the end of that time.

On January 29, 2017, Canadians were shocked when a “lone wolf” shooter attacked a mosque in Quebec city during evening prayers, killing six people and wounding a number of others. The suspect in the shooting, a student, was known to be a virulent opponent of immigration—particularly by Muslims—and was a supporter of right-wing nationalists such as Marine Le Pen of France. Labeling the incident a “terrorist attack on Muslims,” Trudeau called the violence heart-wrenching and reaffirmed his belief that Canada drew strength from its diversity and that religious tolerance was a core value for Canadians.

This event, along with the later mass shootings at Quebec’s Polytechnique Montréal in 1989 that left 14 women dead and in Nova Scotia in 2020 (the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history) that left 22 dead, sparked a lengthy debate over gun control in the country.

Response to the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump

After the victory of Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trudeau was faced with the challenge of finding common ground with a new American leader who was his ideological opposite on most issues and who came into office pledging to renegotiate NAFTA. Responding to Trump’s executive order in January 2017 barring all refugees from seeking asylum in the United States for a 120-day period and blocking entry by citizens of Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria for 90 days, Trudeau took to Twitter, writing, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” The Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policy and anti-immigrant rhetoric prompted thousands of immigrants to the United States to flee to Canada in 2017.

Under the terms of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), promulgated in 2004, refugees in Canada and the United States were limited to seeking asylum in the country of their arrival, thus barring asylum-seeking immigrants to the United States from entering Canada at regular ports of entry on the U.S.-Canadian border. However, because a loophole in the agreement allowed those who entered Canada outside of official border crossings to apply for asylum, thousands of asylum seekers walked into Canada (mostly through Quebec) away from the official crossings.

The first wave to do so were Haitians who had fled their country in 2010 after the devastating earthquake and who, in May 2017, found their “temporary protected status” in peril of being revoked by the Trump administration. A wave of similarly threatened Salvadorans followed later. In all, more than 20,000 asylum seekers walked across the border in 2017, straining the Canadian government’s ability to process their requests for asylum and to provide for their needs. As the influx continued in 2018, the opposition accused the Trudeau government of having lost control of immigration, arguing that many of those entering the country were economic migrants rather than refugees deserving of asylum. Even as the government began trying to dissuade potential border crossers and considered revisions to the STCA, refugee-rights supporters called for scrapping the agreement.

In response to Trump’s threat to pull the United States out of NAFTA, representatives from Canada, Mexico, and the United States began renegotiating the agreement in August 2017. The going was slow, however, and after months of negotiations many of the larger disputes remained unresolved. Tensions between Canada and the United States escalated in April 2018 after Trump announced the imminent imposition of import tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, an action that threatened to start a trade war. Trump claimed that the tariffs (which also targeted Mexico and the European Union) were necessary to protect U.S. industries as a matter of national security. Trudeau called Trump’s national security justification “insulting and unacceptable.”

When Trudeau hosted the summit of G7 leaders at Charlevoix, Quebec, in early June, a combative Trump was at odds with the other leaders over a variety of issues but especially trade. Nevertheless, the United States initially supported the group’s communiqué. It withdrew its support, however, after Trump became indignant at remarks by Trudeau at a post-summit news conference, including the prime minister’s statement that if necessary his country would reluctantly impose counter-tariffs on the United States, “because Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.” Responding on Twitter, Trump called Trudeau “dishonest & weak” and accused him of having made false statements. Trump’s economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, then accused Trudeau of being a backstabber, though Canadian government spokespeople argued that Trudeau had not said anything that had not already been said in public or to Trump in person. Following the war of words, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passed a motion condemning Trump’s personal attacks on the prime minister.

In mid-June one of Trudeau’s central campaign promises came to fruition when both the House of Commons and the Senate voted to approve legalization of recreational marijuana use throughout Canada. Pending formal approval by the governor-general, the legislation paved the way for Canada to join Uruguay as the second country to sanction recreational marijuana use on the national level. Details remained to be worked out, but the federal government was to be responsible for setting the overall laws and for licensing growers, whereas the provinces would determine sales practices.

Mexico and the United States agreed in August on the terms of a new trade accord that preserved much of NAFTA while also introducing a number of significant changes, and at the end of September Canada, fearing the consequences of being the odd country out, also agreed to join the agreement, which was dubbed the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Canada made concessions that opened access to its market for dairy products, but it won the preservation of a special dispute process that U.S. negotiators had sought to remove. Trudeau, Trump, and outgoing Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto signed the agreement at the end of November during the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Argentina; the agreement had yet to receive legislative approval in the three countries.

SNC-Lavalin affair

Beginning in February 2019, Trudeau’s government became embroiled in a political scandal involving allegations that members of his staff had improperly pushed Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was attorney general and justice minister, to take actions to halt the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a giant Quebec-based construction and engineering company that had been charged with corruption and fraud. After being reassigned as veterans affairs minister in a cabinet reshuffle in January, Wilson-Raybould resigned from the cabinet on February 12. Roughly two weeks later she told a House of Commons committee that there had been a “consistent and sustained effort” to pressure her to intervene to obtain a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for SNC-Lavalin. She also testified that she had received “veiled threats” relating to the matter from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office, and the finance minister’s office. In testimony before the committee on March 6, Trudeau’s close friend and principal secretary Gerald Butts and Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick said that they had not put inappropriate political pressure on Wilson-Raybould to intercede in the SNC-Lavalin matter.

Nevertheless, in a press conference the next day, Trudeau—who had previously said that no improprieties had taken place but whose public approval rating was flagging in the wake of the growing scandal—attributed the controversy to an “erosion of trust” between Butts and Wilson-Raybould and to a communication breakdown. Trudeau said that he had not been aware of the erosion of trust but that it was his responsibility to have been so. He also said that he had asked members of his staff to raise the matter of the SNC-Lavalin prosecution with Wilson-Raybould and to emphasize the potential ramifications of her decision on the matter but that, in hindsight, he should have engaged with her personally.

The affair was at the centre of the news again in August, when Canadian Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion issued a report which found that Trudeau and his staff had indeed pressured Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case, a violation of Canada’s conflict of interest law for public office holders. The report concluded that the prime minister had flagrantly attempted to influence Wilson-Raybould in the matter both “directly and indirectly.” The damage to Trudeau’s reputation that resulted from the report threatened the Liberal Party’s prospects in the regularly scheduled federal elections that Trudeau called to be held on October 21, 2019.

Diplomatic dispute with China

In the meantime, Canada was locked in a diplomatic dispute with China that came about as a result of the Canadian government’s decision in December 2018 to arrest Meng Wanzhou, a high-profile executive for Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, in response to an extradition request from the United States. China immediately protested the arrest of Meng in Vancouver on U.S. charges that Huawei had committed fraud related to the iconic company’s alleged dealings with Iran in violation of U.S.-imposed sanctions. A second charge alleged that Huawei had stolen technology from T-Mobile. Seemingly as retribution for Meng’s arrest, China apprehended a pair of Canadians—a former diplomat and a businessman—and accused them of spying.

The 2019 Canadian federal elections

In mid-September 2019, just days after the start of the federal election campaign, a photo from the 2001 yearbook of the private school at which Trudeau taught was published showing him wearing “brownface” as part of his costume at an “Arabian Nights”-themed party. Soon afterward a photo and a video from the 1990s, which revealed Trudeau in blackface, came to light, deeply damaging his reputation as a champion of inclusivity and tolerance, despite the prime minister’s contrition and passionate apologies for his earlier behaviour. Notwithstanding the fallout from this scandal and the SNC-Lavalin affair, the Liberals still managed to hold on to power in the elections, though they went from being a majority government to a minority one. The Conservatives narrowly won the popular vote—capturing about 34 percent of the vote compared with roughly 33 percent for the Liberals—and took 22 more seats than they had in the 2015 elections (121 seats compared with 99 seats), but they came up short of the 157 seats won by the Liberals. Arguably the biggest winner of the elections was the Bloc Québécois, which returned to relevance by trouncing the NDP in Quebec and, in winning more than 30 seats, replacing the NDP (which fell to 24 seats), as the second opposition party nationally.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the 2021 snap elections

Shortly after the general election, life in Canada and in the world as a whole was profoundly altered by the outbreak of COVID-19—the potentially deadly illness caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2—in China in December 2019. By March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the outbreak a global pandemic. Canada responded to the dramatic public health crisis better than some countries but worse than others. Although the federal government was slow to stress mask-wearing and social-distancing measures, within days of the WHO’s declaration it did enact significant restrictions on travelers entering the country, and it quickly attempted to mitigate the economic consequences of the pandemic by providing monthly payments of Canadian $2,000 for those who became unemployed as a result of the shutdown of businesses that was undertaken to stem the spread of the disease. However, because much of the policy making in response to the pandemic was left to the provinces, success in containing it varied by region.

From the outset, the Atlantic provinces—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, along with Newfoundland and Labrador—took an aggressive approach, radically restricting social interaction, closing schools, banning nonessential travel, and requiring people who entered any of those provinces to quarantine for two weeks. Most of Canada’s other provinces took a more lenient approach, especially after the first wave of the pandemic began to recede during the summer. As a result, the Atlantic provinces contained the outbreak so effectively that by July 2020 they were able to carefully reopen not only their economies but also their borders with one another, creating what became known as the “Atlantic Bubble,” which required those entering from other provinces to observe the two-week quarantine that no longer applied to the Atlantic provinces’ citizens. Elsewhere, the more lackadaisical application or willful disregard of social-distancing and mask-wearing practices and a rush to reopen the economy led to a second wave of cases of COVID-19, which crested in mid-January 2021, challenging and in some cases overwhelming local health care systems and resulting in a climbing death toll, particularly in Quebec and Ontario. Whereas 27 individuals had died of COVID-19-related causes in New Brunswick by February 2021, the figure for the same period in Quebec was more than 10,000. Canadians living in long-term-care facilities were the hardest-hit cohort in the country and constituted a large percentage of those who died as a result of the pandemic.

By early March 2021, as the pandemic entered its second year, more than 870,000 Canadians had contracted COVID-19 and about 22,000 had perished as a result of it. Canada had responded to the early stages of the pandemic better than the United States (where more than 515,000 had died) and the United Kingdom (which recorded more than 123,000 deaths), but its efforts at containment had been far less successful than those of South Korea (roughly 1,600 deaths), Australia (just over 900 deaths), and New Zealand (26 deaths). Moreover, it lagged behind the U.S. and U.K. in obtaining vaccines for the virus and in rolling out its vaccination program, partly because it chose to spread its more than 400 million orders among seven companies rather than betting on any one provider’s ability to successfully develop a vaccine in order to obtain early delivery.

Nevertheless, about 49 percent of Canadians were fully vaccinated and some 70 percent had received at least one dose by July. As the number of reported cases, hospital admissions, and COVID-19-related deaths fell, public opinion polling indicated that Canadians approved of Trudeau’s handling of the public health crisis. Those polls also revealed a significant lead for the Liberals over the Conservatives in preference polling, and on August 15 Trudeau announced that he was calling early federal elections, a move that was widely seen as an attempt to capitalize on the moment in an effort to regain a parliamentary majority.

The Liberals’ election platform promised the creation of a comprehensive childcare program, a broad-based solution for Canada’s housing shortage, and an ambitious program to combat climate change. Casting himself as a moderate, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Trudeau’s principal rival, abandoned a number of his party’s past policies, notably acknowledging the need to address climate change and guaranteeing the availability of nationwide abortion services. O’Toole and other opposition candidates accused Trudeau of endangering the lives of Canadians by holding an unnecessary general election at a time when the Delta variant, a new strain of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, was sweeping the country. Trudeau countered by criticizing O’Toole for his advocacy of a voluntary response to the pandemic grounded in frequent testing rather than aggressive (and in some circumstances mandated) vaccination.

As the whirlwind 36-day campaign unfolded, the Liberals’ lead in preference polling evaporated and was reversed in favour of the Conservatives, seemingly because Canadians questioned Trudeau’s motivation for calling the elections. On the eve of the elections, according to opinion polling, the two parties were in a statistical tie. Still, when voters went to the polls on September 20, they handed Trudeau his third straight victory, though the Liberals fell short of a majority in the new House of Commons, the political makeup of which, despite all the Sturm und Drang of the campaign, looked pretty much the same as it had before the elections. Once again Trudeau found himself prime minister of a minority government.

The “Freedom Convoy” and the NDP-Liberal confidence-and-supply agreement

Although the majority of Canadians approved of government policies regarding COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine passports (proof of vaccination that granted admission to various venues), opposition to those policies coalesced around a protest mounted by truckers against a mandate requiring that those hauling cargo across the Canada-U.S. border be vaccinated. In late January 2022, convoys of trucks and other vehicles began converging on Ottawa in a protest effort financed by millions of dollars in crowdsourced funding, much of it coming from the United States. According to some police estimates, as many as 3,000 vehicles and 15,000 demonstrators descended upon Ottawa at the height of the protest, which clogged the streets of the capital—especially in the area around the Parliament Buildings—for weeks, disrupting the flow of traffic and daily life.

Having first demanded the removal of the vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, the leaders of the so-called Freedom Convoy eventually called for an end to all COVID-19-related restrictions and for Trudeau’s removal from office. There also was a not-too-subtle racist subtext to the protest, as some of the demonstrators brandished swastika-emblazoned banners and Confederate flags. Similar demonstrations and blockades occurred in other parts of Canada, most notably on the Ambassador Bridge, between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan. Nearly one-fourth of U.S.-Canada cross-border trade normally passed over the bridge, so, by stalling that traffic, the protesters disrupted between $300 million and $360 million worth of Canadian-American trade per day.

As Canadian local governments and law enforcement struggled to defuse the protest, opponents of COVID-19 restrictions in other countries mounted copycat protests. In early February the division of opinion among Canadian Conservatives regarding the protest contributed to the resignation of O’Toole as party leader and to his (interim) replacement by Candice Bergen. On February 14 Trudeau responded to the situation by invoking the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history. The act granted the federal government broad powers to restore order, allowing for the imposition of fines, the arrest and incarceration of protesters, and the towing of vehicles. By February 21 nearly 200 protesters had been arrested and some 115 vehicles had been towed as the protest was quelled.

In mid-March the Liberals and the NDP entered into a formal confidence-and-supply agreement, which promised to keep the Trudeau government in power until the next fixed federal elections, scheduled for October 2025. The two parties also agreed to work together on policy objectives related to climate change and housing, among other issues. In exchange for its support of the Liberals, the NDP won promises regarding the pursuit of dental care and pharmaceutical care plans.

Residential schools apologies

In July 2022 Pope Francis traveled to Canada to formally apologize for the harm done to Indigenous people by the residential schools operated by the Roman Catholic Church in Canada from 1883 to 1996. Authorized by Prime Minister John Macdonald, the residential schools were created to assimilate into Western culture the roughly 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children who were forcibly brought to them and to expunge Indigenous culture and language. About 70 percent of the schools were operated by the Roman Catholic Church, and the remainder were overseen by three Protestant denominations. Not only were Indigenous children physically and sexually abused, but also untold thousands of them died and were buried unceremoniously and surreptitiously—often the victims of malnutrition, fire, or disease spread rapidly through overcrowding.

In 2021 more than 1,000 unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of former schools across western Canada, raising anew the tragedy of the schools, which had been confronted earlier by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose final report in 2015 determined that the schools had been a form of “cultural genocide.” In 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to residential school survivors and all Indigenous people in Canada for the schools, and in 2017 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended that apology to the survivors of five former schools in Newfoundland and Labrador who had been left out of the 2008 declaration. Pope Francis, before traveling to make an apology on Canadian soil, first apologized in April 2022 for the church’s role in the schools to a First Nations delegation that was visiting the Vatican.