Trudeau speaks to Trail and the Interior
By Kyra Hoggan
As many as 150 people showed up to Trail’s Gyro Park to welcome the crown prince of Canadian politics (so called because his father, Pierre Trudeau, was Canada’s 15th prime minister) Monday afternoon.
The junior Trudeau, 41, is now leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and a contender for the PMO in his own right, and was on a working/educational vacation with wife Sophie Gregoire, son Xavier, 6, and daughter Ella-Grace, 4.
He said it was an emotional visit for him, as it was the first time he’d taken his family to see his little brother’s resting place.
Twenty-three-year-old Michel Trudeau, who lived in Rossland for a year, was caught in an avalanche in Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park and swept into Kokanee Lake on Nov. 13, 1998. Extensive search efforts failed to recover the young man’s body.
In fact, the Trudeaus have close ties to the region – Justin even met a second cousin who introduced herself and her daughters during Monday’s meet-and-greet.
Of course, it wasn’t all family reunions – politics did come up.
In a brief talk, Trudeau spoke frankly about the riding’s traditional lack of support for the Liberal Party.
“People have said that this is not necessarily fertile territory for the Liberals. I think last time we got four per cent of the vote – but you have to understand that that’s not the lens through which I’m looking at this travelling,” he told the crowd. “It’s not about percentages or votes or how we can do in the next election – it’s very much about how we’re going to pull together and face down the challenges that we’re all facing – together. We have an extraordinary country with incredible natural resources, and incredible human resources, and extraordinary geographic advantages … there are opportunities in this country in the 21st century built around what we do better than any other country in the world – being strong, not in spite of our differences, but because of them.”
“That capacity to understand, urban-to-rural, east-to-west, north-to-south … from new Canadians to people who’ve been here for centuries, to people who’ve been here for millenia – we have the capacity to work together and build, truly, a set of solutions for the 21st century that are worthy.”
He said forward march has been what underscored the strength of this country, and that there’s an anxiety today around whether we’re providing less opportunity for our children than our parents did before us.
“It’s creating a level of anxiety and insecurity that needs to be allayed by politicians. We need to be, once again, a country with vision, with hope for the future – ready to tackle the big challenges head-on and ready to respond to all the challenges that we know are coming down the pipe.
“Our biggest problem with the current government isn’t that it’s mean-spirited (although it does demonstrate a bit of that from time to time, he said, garnering chuckles from the audience) it’s that it lacks ambition for this country. This is the challenge, that even though our economy has grown, middle-class incomes have stagnated over the last 30 years.
“We’ve built this extraordinary project of a country by rolling up our sleeves and dreaming big, and nowhere do you see that more than in places like here in the Interior, in Trail. The people who built this country are the kind of people who still live here in this town.”
When asked if, should he achieve the country’s top office, he would return to the area, he said, “Absolutely,” going on to explain he has no intention of forgetting a place so important to his family, and to the country.
