(Ottawa) Man does not give himself up often; his speech is repeated, the emotions he displays, always calculated. When he says “I understand how boring it is to be in this situation”, speaking of the pandemic, his gaze focused, the break-in is apparent.
Justin Trudeau doesn’t feel like talking about himself. One of his favorite lines, when his political opponents attack him: While the opposition focuses on me, I focus on the Canadians.
So he’s going to dodge, as much as he can, but he’ll end up offering a few admissions … oh, a tiny little gap.
“On a personal level, it’s exhausting”, he confides, in an end-of-year interview with the team of The Canadian Press, in Ottawa, who wants to know how much the management of the pandemic weighs on him. .
COVID-19 has occupied, obsessed, surprised its government for 21 months.
” It is tough on my family. It is tough on me. It’s certain. But we get to have an impact […] He said, animating as the mask slid down his nose during his deluge of words.
He wants to hold up the proof that if all is not “unicorns and rainbows”, it is not dark either.
A national child care system at $ 10 a day, almost everywhere (Ontario is still resisting it), it is “thanks” to the pandemic.
“We are in the process of delivering Quebec-style daycare systems across the country. We could never have done this without a pandemic. It was not in our platform in 2019. It is precisely the pandemic, where people realized, “oh my god, daycare is important”. Well yes, it is important. And we were able to deliver across the country. We couldn’t have done it [sinon] », He emphasizes.
A new relationship with the First Nations, on the path of reconciliation, is “thanks” to the pandemic.
“We are transforming relations with indigenous peoples. And besides, having been there to protect them so much during a pandemic that would have been a thousand times more devastating for indigenous peoples, allowed us to move forward, ”he believes.
And he takes refuge as much as he can in an already scripted message.
Me, it is not because I found it going to be easy that I wanted to become Prime Minister. I became Prime Minister because I knew I had the ability to help people improve their country.
Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
The journalist offers him a metaphor. This country is like a house where he wanted to move in to add a skylight and solarium, and now he has been stuck there for months scooping up dirty water from a sewer backup – the pandemic – over which he has no control.
“Am I happy to be Prime Minister now and not 10 years ago and not in 10 years?” We do not know what will be in 10 years… ”, reflects the Prime Minister aloud.
“Yes, I’m happy to be prime minister now,” he replied to himself.
“We manage to have an impact, not just now, to empty the sewers, but to build back better. Then when we manage to put the solarium in the house, we will do it on a base, in a clean house, in a house that is more solid than it was before, ”he says.
And realizing he’s dived a little too deep into the metaphor and is talking about sewers, he ends the interview with a loud laugh.