‘Most progressive prime minister’: Former Chief of Staff sings Trudeau’s praises

Evan welcomed former Saskatchewan lawyer, former Chief of Staff to Liberal Opposition Leader John Turner in Ottawa and Liberal supporter Doug Richardson to offer his thoughts on Justin Trudeau’s announcement today.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

EVAN BRAY: Can you share your thoughts on what happened this morning during the prime minister’s announcement?

DOUG RICHARDSON: For some time, I think there’s been a feeling within the party that it was time to change, and it’s been difficult to come to that conclusion — the prime minister successfully pulled us out of third place back in 2015.

I happened to be at the convention two years ago where he got an 88 per cent approval rating from the party. But shortly after that, things started to deteriorate. And I know key leaders within the party — and I’m not just talking about MPs but people who do door-to-door work, phone people,staffers, people who are raising money for the party — had felt the time for change had occurred.

In 1979, when Pierre Trudeau started to fall out of favour, (the party) really took defeat in the polls. Fortunately, I think Trudeau is not going to subject the party to that.

Did he do harm to the party by staying on as long as he has?

I think not. Whether you blame it on Mr. Trudeau or the time I think is a better question. Brian Mulroney was prime minister for eight years, and at the end of the run, it was deemed to be too much. I could go through the Jean Chretien thing, but I won’t burden you with it because there was that dynamic inside the party.

I’m not in politics to take away the good anyone does. And Prime Minister Harper made a contribution in certain areas that was positive but after nine years his course had run, and it was time for him to move on. It’s true that after nine years, if you look around the Western world, many of the democratic governments have really faced the need for change after eight or nine years, So I think it was almost inevitable.

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Where did things go off the rails for this prime minister?

In my personal opinion, Trudeau has been the most progressive prime minister. I’m not taking away some of the progressive things that we know Mulroney did, but if you go back to the time of Mike Pearson when he introduced Medicare — and he introduced that with the support of the work of John Diefenbaker when he set up the hall commission — you won’t find as progressive a prime minister in Canada.

By that I mean making so many changes. For example reconciliation and the life of the Indigenous people in this country. That was a dramatic change. He was pushing for a greener country, but a pipeline was also completed under his mandate, a first in Canada. Even Harper, who couldn’t have been a bigger friend for the oil and gas industry, couldn’t get a pipeline built and Trudeau did.

He brought in cannabis legislation, $10-a-day child care. Those are very big game changers in our society.  Once everything cools off and people stop being upset or mad with him for something he might have done or didn’t do, I would argue his legacy will be that he was the most progressive prime minister in this country since the Second World War.

What is it like for you to be a Liberal in the West?

It’s quite lonely being a Liberal, to be honest. Until last week, my son was a senior advisor to Chrystia Freeland. Ten days ago, his job came to an end, but on the Friday of that week, he proposed to a young woman in Ottawa who works for the prime minister at a very senior level.

So our family Christmas discussion was pretty well focused on the dynamic with two key players, if you will, but we had Christmas dinner with other outsiders. It is lonely to be a liberal and not subject people to our liberal point of view.

How do you see this playing out, now parliament has stopped until March 24 and with a Liberal leadership race?

What has the prime minister done or not done for the West? Because that’s what used to catch my attention on your show, and I did listen often, and even though quite often Liberals were being pilliored, the story did not get told very well and that’s on Liberals, too.

I’ve been directly involved as a lawyer with things like the move of the National Hydrology Research Centre to Saskatoon, and the move of the Canadian Light Source — the synchrotron was Canada’s largest science project ever — and the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), which you’ve talked about on your show, is the world’s third largest infectious disease facility.

Trudeau helped get us $160 million for VIDO, $92 million for the light source and another $20-odd million for hydrology.

The University of Saskatchewan in the last year got more post-secondary research funding than any facility in Canada, and there’s not one provincially elected MP on the Liberal side in Ottawa.

The prime minister came to VIDO. Supposed to come for 20 minutes, he spent an hour and a half. He was listening. He did some constructive things for our city that are game changers. I’d argue that changes for VIDO don’t simply matter to VIDO, but to the whole country if we ever have another pandemic.

He did some significant things that he hasn’t got much credit for.

What happens from here? I took two calls on the weekend from two people who are well-placed in the party and seriously considering running. We have gone through this process before with the retirement of Paul Martin, and we’ll start the process.

There could be as many as four or five candidates. We’ll go through the process of selecting delegates to go to a convention, and our national executive in the next week or so. I’m putting this forward. I don’t have it from any of the national executive members.