Canadian public life still misses Jack Layton.
Maybe this sad news contributed to hardening my determination not to run for the leadership of my party. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that I was one hundred percent at peace with the decision. I had convinced myself that too many Liberals would see my entering the leadership race as another potential shortcut around the monumental task ahead. I was determined to play an active role in that work, though. I told my colleagues at our first caucus meeting, in September, that I would not seek the leadership but that I was excited about the future and looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting dirt under my fingernails.
During this period, lots and lots of people doubted that the Liberal Party had a future. Serious authors wrote books about our imminent demise. We Quebecers were particularly aware of the party’s perilous state. Outside Quebec, few Canadians appreciate the fall-out of the Gomery Commission within my home province. Whatever you might think about who did what to whom in the Liberal internal disputes, the party’s basic integrity was called very much into question in the minds of millions of Quebecers. There was no wishing it away, no way to pretend it hadn’t happened, no way to sidestep it with new leadership. We were in a deep hole, and the only way to win back the faith of Quebecers—and other Canadians—was hard work over time.
Despite these very real problems, I never doubted that the Liberal Party could have a future. I believe that Canadians want a truly national, non-ideological, and pragmatic party that is connected to them and focused on them. One that is focused on the hopes and dreams they have for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country. We have not always lived up to it, but at our best, the Liberal Party can be a unifying, constructive national force. One that, since Wilfrid Laurier, has tried to focus on building common ground among people whose many differences are too easily exploited as divisions by a more cynical style of politics and politician.
Among the many, many great things about democracies is that they tend to be self-correcting over time. If a government becomes too self-centred or out of touch, it gets replaced. If people want a new political movement, they will create one. I have always believed that Canadians want a party to play the central role the Liberal Party once played. The question was, in the aftermath of their worst defeat in history, could the Liberals become that party once again? In other words, could the venerable Liberal Party become the twenty-first-century movement that Canadians needed?
A couple of pivotal and auspicious things happened in the months after the 2011 election. First, Bob Rae stepped in as interim leader to provide stability and calm at the top. It’s hard to overstate how important Bob’s leadership was through this period. He established credibility and a professional, businesslike stewardship that the party badly needed at the time. Most important, he set an example by working hard. He wouldn’t accept the prevailing wisdom of the moment, which was, overwhelmingly, that the party was about to be consigned to history’s dustbin. Few people will ever appreciate how important Bob Rae’s relentlessness was in ensuring that the Liberal Party didn’t show up at the wake many had prepared for it in 2011.
Second, the party’s base responded decisively. People across the country rose to the challenge. The much maligned, often dismissed grassroots of the Liberal Party showed up, en masse, in Ottawa for the January 2012 policy convention. I have to confess that even I was pleasantly surprised by the unmistakable enthusiasm on display everywhere that weekend. It was a lesson that reminded me of my experience in Papineau. It’s easy to get caught up in what people are thinking, writing, and talking about in the Ottawa bubble when you’re there. The prevailing winds can create their own atmosphere. The 2012 convention was the first time Liberals from across Canada had had the opportunity to get together since the election, and the pushback against those prevailing winds was invigorating.
In some ways, the severity of our defeat prepared the way for our rebirth. As the third-place party, we had the leeway to discuss contentious issues we would never have considered as a governing party. Interesting things began to happen. When 77 percent of the delegates at the 2012 convention voted in support of a motion to legalize marijuana, we were comfortable with the idea. We made the Liberal Party a truly liberal party when delegates decisively endorsed a motion defending a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion.
We made equally important—if less visible—decisions to modernize the party’s administration and political modus operandi. We elected Mike Crawley as party president. He had run on the slogan “A Bold, New Red,” and he drove an ambitious agenda for the party to begin to professionalize fundraising. Most important, we revamped the party’s structure to accommodate a new no-fee class of “supporters”: Canadians who shared our values and who would be given a voice in choosing the next leader. The supporters contingent would also create a broad base for raising money and spreading the Liberal message. This helped us tap into the new networked nature of modern political movements. For decades, political parties had communicated with citizens through the broadcast media, mass mailings, and phone banks. Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008 changed all that. Now, most important political communication is spread peer-to-peer via social media. People who set up Liberal Facebook pages or attract thousands of Twitter followers to the party may lack the time or desire to attend a party convention, but they respond with enthusiasm when they discover their place in the organizational structure.
The level of rejuvenation that took place in the Liberal Party over the years after the 2012 policy convention was outstanding, no matter how you measure it. Speaking as one very interested participant and observer, it gave me confidence that the party was finally beginning to learn its lesson and was willing to put in the hard work required to earn Canadians’ trust. Young Liberals especially turned out in droves. As is often the case at critical moments, it was the young people who saw what was at stake and took the future into their own hands. Many of these committed young Canadians would become major figures in my leadership campaign, and are now growing into community leaders all across the country. Some will be candidates in the next election or in future elections. Others will apply their civic-mindedness through volunteer work. All of them are imbued with a positive attitude toward public service and the public interest. They were both the breath of fresh air and the swift kick in the pants that the Liberal Party needed, just when we needed them. That January they gave the clearest indication yet that ours was a party that would not go quietly into that good night.
Most of all, I enjoyed being present at the 2012 policy convention. It had an unmistakably positive spirit. It was free of factionalism and infighting, free of hand-wringing and finger-pointing about the past. While the 2011 disaster still stung, I got the sense that people were reflecting on it only to learn lessons to take into the future. Something important had happened to the party, and the 2012 event crystallized it. The shock of hitting rock bottom in 2011 had been the jolt that convinced Liberals everywhere that it was time to rebuild the party from the ground up.
That shared work ethic was the most hopeful sign yet that Liberals had learned the lesson Canadians had been trying to teach us for the better part of a decade: the Liberal Party has no inherent right to exist, let alone govern. We have to earn it. Serious effort was required, and the country would accept no substitutes.
We finally seemed to have a critical mass of people who got that.
As I sat in the convention centre in Ottawa listening to all those enthusiastic Canadians, young and old, from every corner of Canada, speak passionately about the country they wanted to build, I started to seriously entertain the thought that I could lead them. It’s more than a little ironic, but I don’t think I would have run in the end had I not ruled it out so categorically several months earlier. That intervening period gave me the peaceful detachment and serenity I needed to truly reflect on the party’s prospects and think about
what a better kind of liberal political movement might look like, without the necessarily self-interested distractions that planning a leadership campaign would entail. Had the fall of 2011 been filled with the “will he or won’t he?” intrigue that attends potential leadership aspirants, I doubt that I would be leading the party today.
Nonetheless, at this point the idea was just beginning to germinate. I was nowhere near ready to make a definitive call. Shortly after the convention, I had a long conversation with my old McGill friend Gerry Butts, who had been a long-time principal secretary to the Ontario premier. He had left politics in 2008 to become CEO of World Wildlife Fund-Canada. I told him about the convention, and about how pleasantly surprised I was that people had showed up en masse, full of hope and ready to work. I let Gerry know that, for the first time, I was beginning to revisit my decision to rule myself out of the leadership race, and I asked him what a leadership campaign might look like. I made it clear that I hadn’t made a decision; I just wanted to think through the options.
Shortly thereafter, we approached Katie Telford. I had gotten to know her when she was Gerard Kennedy’s leadership campaign manager in 2006. She had subsequently worked in Stéphane Dion’s office as deputy chief of staff, and I liked and trusted her. Katie is hard working, tough, honest, and wicked smart, plus had actually run a federal leadership campaign. I was glad to get her assessment of the task we had ahead of us.
Gerry and Katie, along with Daniel Gagnier, whom we recruited a few months later, are still today the core of my inner circle. Dan, a fiercely proud federalist Quebecer, may be the only person in Canadian history to have served as chief of staff to the premiers of both Quebec and Ontario. I had first encountered him when I was working on environmental initiatives in Montreal, but he had first encountered me when he was a senior civil servant helping my father repatriate the Constitution in the early 1980s.
So began about six months of quiet conversations. I firmly believe that one of the most important attributes of a strong leader is the ability to recruit excellent people to your cause. There’s an old saying that fives hire threes but nines hire tens. I am convinced that with the right people on your team, you can accomplish anything. That’s the approach I have taken to my leadership campaign, to candidate recruitment, to staff, and to volunteer training. Leaders too often think that the presence of strong team members indicates some personal fault or deficiency. This has led, especially in politics, to a leadership model that verges on autocracy. It’s a sign of weakness and insecurity—not strength—if the best person you can enlist in your cause is the person you see in the mirror in the morning. If I earn the privilege of serving as prime minister, I want to be judged by the quality of the arms I twist, all across Canada, to actively serve our country.
All that said, sometimes you have to go with your gut, even when everyone around you thinks you’re wrong. My charity boxing match with Senator Patrick Brazeau was one of those moments. Not a single one of my friends, confidants, or colleagues thought it was a good idea.
The route to the ring began in June 2011, when someone told me about an Ottawa-based white-collar amateur boxing event called Fight for the Cure. Proceeds would benefit the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. Now there, I thought, was an opportunity.
The concept behind a white-collar fight is to take fit professionals and executives who are usually more used to squash or spinning, train them as amateur boxers for six months, and then pit them against each other in front of tables filled with their neighbours, friends, and clients, to whom they’ve sold tickets. Everyone has a great time, and a lot of money is raised for charity.
I had been training as an amateur boxer since my early twenties, and I had always liked the idea of stepping into the ring for just one real fight. I had thought that once I entered politics, that item would remain forever unchecked on my bucket list, but here was a chance to test my skills in a real boxing match, for a good cause. The bonus was that I might be able to find a hard-core Conservative to be my opponent.
When I officially signed on, in October, the party was still reeling, and hurting. I knew that Liberals could use a happy diversion of some kind to raise our collective morale, as the NDP and Conservatives were having a grand old time shellacking the once-mighty Liberals in the House. I figured if nothing else, I could provide that diversion.
The fight almost didn’t take place. For all the tough talk from Conservatives, I had trouble finding a Tory willing to step into the ring. I approached a number of MPs, including Rob Anders, the brash and outspoken Calgary MP, as well as Peter MacKay, then the minister of national defence, but they declined. As I joked with Dom LeBlanc at the time, “Who knew I’d have such a hard time finding a Conservative who wants to punch me in the face!”
Finally, Patrick Brazeau, who would later get caught up in the Senate expenses scandal, took up the challenge. As anyone who knows Mr. Brazeau can attest, he is big and brawny and full of swagger. It would be a good match. I had a few inches of height on him and a longer reach, but he was much thicker around the chest and biceps. He had been trained in the Canadian Forces and held a second-degree black belt in karate. He was so physically menacing that, when the fight was announced, the question quickly became not “Who will win?” but “How many seconds will it take for Trudeau to land face down on the canvas?”
Sophie, of course, had mixed feelings about the whole thing. She knew how happy the mere idea of being in an honest-to-God boxing match made me, and she watched me revel in the gruelling training regimen. But she was genuinely worried for my safety, not least because of the nature of my opponent. I talked her through my training plan and my fight strategy, shared with her my analysis of Brazeau’s strengths and weaknesses, and quelled most of her fears with a phrase I’d used before, and would use again: “Sophie, I’ve got this.”
The fight date was set for March 31, 2012, at Ottawa’s Hampton Inn, and over the next six months, I trained hard. Really hard. In Ottawa, the organizing gym, Final Round, taught all the white-collar fighters the boxing basics. But I knew the stakes would be significantly higher for me, and my opponent tougher, so I drew on a dear friend in Montreal for extra help. Ali Nestor Charles runs a mixed martial arts and boxing gym in the east end of my riding. I’d come to know and respect him through the great work he did keeping kids away from street gangs and in school. Indeed, I had spent a few hours on a couple of occasions with the kids at his gym: they’d work on finishing high school in a classroom above the ring in the morning, then in the afternoon they’d train. I know they got a kick out of having their local MP join them for both aspects of their day.
Ali is himself not just a coach and mentor but also an accomplished professional boxer. So he and I trained together regularly for those six months, and when fight night came, I was truly ready.
There is something about the purity of old-school boxing. It teaches you more than a set of technical skills. It teaches you how to remain focused despite exhaustion, and to stick with a game plan even while getting battered. Most of all, it teaches you the value of discipline and hard work. I beat Patrick Brazeau in that ring because I had a better team behind me, I had a better plan, and I had trained harder to make that plan a reality. (I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about whether or not that approach applies to politics.)
A week before the fight, Matt Whitteker, my trainer in Ottawa, asked about my fight plan. I told him how I thought it would go: Brazeau would throw everything he had at me early. I’d spend the first round keeping him away with my jab and reach, and let him tire himself out. By the second round I’d have more gas than him and take the initiative, and perhaps in the third round I’d go for the knockout. Matt smiled at my confidence and teased, “Oh, you’ll wait till the third round to knock him out, will you?” We both knew full well that KOs rarely happen in Olympic-style amateur boxing, and if there was one, all the smart money was on Brazeau delivering it.
Bu
t as it turned out, that’s pretty much what happened. Brazeau came out in a frenzy from the start, and in the first half of the first round he landed a number of huge overhand rights that had me reeling and wondering if I’d made a terrible miscalculation with this whole thing. He hit me way harder than I’d ever been hit before, even though I’d gone up against some very tough partners during my training. But just as I was beginning to wonder how much more I could take, he stopped landing those big punches. I could hear him huffing and puffing, and suddenly I was connecting my punches and swatting away his. I ended that first round with a smile on my face, because I knew it was already over. He’d given me his all, and I could take it, and now I was going to win. The tide fully turned during the second round, and by the third round Patrick Brazeau had had enough. He was exhausted, and the slightly panicked, slightly bewildered look in his eyes made it clear he wanted to be anywhere but in that ring. When I scored a third standing eight-count in that final round, the referee ended it. It was a TKO, or technical knockout, not a true knockout perhaps, but under Olympic rules it was the best outcome I could expect.
Only then did I look out and begin to absorb everything around me. I had been so single-mindedly focused on the fight that I had barely noticed the atmosphere. The hall was filled with Conservative MPs and ministers looking forward to seeing their guy knock a Trudeau down. The fight had been carried live on a small specialty network that heavily favours the Conservative Party. They had clearly expected a different ending. I learned that people across the country had tuned in to the fight at bars and sports restaurants after the Habs lost in a shootout to Washington. As I had hoped, the event was a morale booster for fellow Liberals, and my inbox was flooded with notes of congratulation.
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