Marital separation is always painful and always something that should be treated with sympathy and kindness. When it concerns a leading and controversial politician, however, respect and decorum aren’t the most common responses. Recently, as we all now know, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie, issued a statement that after 18 years of marriage, they were separating. The couple will continue to co-parent their three children, but Sophie Gregoire Trudeau will no longer be considered the Prime Minister’s spouse in any official capacity and she has left the family’s Ottawa home. I hope and pray that they and their children fine peace and happiness.
It’s come as more of a shock internationally than here in Canada, where for some time now there have been rumours of growing problems between 51-year-old Trudeau and 48-year-old Gregoire Trudeau. Sophie, a former television personality, wrote last year that relationships can be “challenging in so many ways,” and political insiders were well aware that what was once seen as a perfect partnership was facing difficulties.
The problem is that this “perfect partnership” has been a major political asset for Liberal leader Trudeau, who while competent and sometimes even impressive as a politician has certainly used style as much as substance in his prime ministerial career. The image was that of a handsome young man, son of the genuinely impressive Pierre who had reshaped the country, married to an accomplished woman, and very much the admired family man. What will happen now is difficult to predict, but Conservative opponents, while publicly sending heartfelt support, are said to be preparing a campaign of “contrast and compare.”
Tory leader Pierre Poilievre is married to Anaida Galindo, an immigrant from Venezuela who is fluent in English, French, and Spanish. Their marriage seems a very happy and secure one, and as one Conservative manager said to me, “Unlike Sophie, she isn’t friends with Meghan Markle.” He meant that the Tory attacks on the Liberals and their leader as being elitist and connected, and the Conservatives as being the party of the people, will continue and expand. Poilievre and his wife will be portrayed as traditional, and while it will be handled carefully, the Trudeau separation will certainly come into play.
It’s dreadful in numerous ways, but then politics has never been a venue for pristine manners and delicacies. It’s all the more poignant because Trudeau has written about his father Pierre’s separation from Margaret Trudeau in 1977 and the impact this had on him.
Yet he’s also an experienced and tough political operative, having become Prime Minister in 2015, and winning two minority victories in 2019 and 2021. The next election can’t be too far away, and he’s certainly not as popular as he was. Many within his own party would like to see a new leader, and hatred for the man from the right is tangible and visceral. We’ve all see those loud and even violent anti-Trudeau rallies, with “F*** Trudeau” banners frequently flying on cars, accompanied by Canadian flags flown upside down.
It’s deeply personal, and mostly irrational. Trudeau is largely a centrist, a social liberal but hardly of the far left. It’s the image, his persona, that seems to most outrage those who are triggered by Covid lockdowns, Pride parades, and the Trudeau approach to a new and modern Canada.
These angry critics have been flooding social media with ghoulish glee at what happened, and while the conservative establishment won’t, of course, follow suit at the moment, they know full well that the electoral map has just been changed.
It also transforms internal Liberal politics, because any attempt to remove Trudeau as leader before the next election will be seen as insensitive and even cruel. Kicking a man while he’s down, as it were. And there are even those who believe the separation will improve Trudeau’s political career, with a “sympathy” vote emerging from those who now see a more fragile and vulnerable side to the man. There may have been a time in our political system when privacy would have been respected and treated as sacrosanct but we all know that such a time has long gone. Doubt it? Ask John Tory.
Either way, it seems so calculating and cold at a time when all concerned deserve empathy and compassion. But genuine empathy and compassion, rather than its appearance, the have never been especially common in politics even in the “good old days,” and Justin Trudeau — raised in the game — certainly knows that as well as anyone.
