Trudeau's image takes biggest hit since 2015 on India trip, goes from ‘golden boy’ to a ‘bit of a joke,’ say politicos

Justin Trudeau’s recent controversy-plagued India trip had the “most profound” negative impact on the government’s brand since it won power in 2015 and was another "unforced error" by the Liberals that has pushed the prime minister from being the “golden boy” to “a bit of a joke,” say politicos. However, Liberals insist the trip was nonetheless a success in which the government signed bilateral trade agreements worth $1-billion. “This trip probably has had the most profound impact on the image of the government since coming to power because of all the photographs of the family in costumes that are sort of embedded in the Canadian consciousness,” said Clive Veroni, a leading expert on marketing and brand positioning, and author of Spin: How Politics Has the Power to Turn Marketing on Its Head. “It makes the prime minister look superficial and a bit of a dandy, rather than a serious political figure.” Mr. Veroni said he thinks the trip has negatively affected Canadians' pride in Prime Minister Trudeau. “It seemed like a family vacation that was tacked on to a diplomatic trip. It seemed to be more about tourists than about being a political or a government event,” said Mr. Veroni. Never shy about dressing up, Mr. Trudeau was on the receiving end of mostly negative media attention over his style for almost the entire trip, including coverage from The Washington Post and Vanity Fair. The prime minister and his family dressed in traditional Indian costumes during their trip which was criticized as overdone. “Is it just me or is this choreographed cuteness all just a bit much now?” quipped Omar Abdullah, a prominent Indian politician on Twitter on Feb. 20. “Also FYI we Indians don’t dress like this every day sir, not even in Bollywood.” And a local Indian fashion designer called the Trudeau family’s outfits “a little too Indian for Indians also.” “It looked like a complete backup dancer for a cheap Bollywood movie,” said Anand Bushan, an Indian fashion designer in an interview with a local English TV network in India. “India to Justin Trudeau: Stop Trying so Hard,” read a Washington Post headline on Feb. 23. Mr. Veroni, meanwhile, like others, questioned why the prime minister spent a week in India when the official business could have been completed in a day or two. Also, he said, Mr. Trudeau met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of the trip which was a mistake, and should have done that at the beginning of the trip. “That didn’t require a week-long trip,” said Mr. Veroni, adding that if the prime minister had focussed on the official business first, the images would have been pictures of Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Modi sitting at the table signing a deal, not the appearance of a “family vacation masquerading as a trade mission.” “The takeaway from it was they seemed like a bunch of white people who’d been invited to an Indian wedding,” he said. “And they felt that this was an occasion to dress up, and the fact that it was the whole family and they were all sort of in strangely matching outfits just further added to the atmosphere that this was really a family vacation masquerading as a trade mission.” The most damaging part of the trip was the revelation that Jaspal Atwal, a B.C. resident who was convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian cabinet minister while he was visiting Canada in 1986, was on the guest list of two Canadian receptions in India with Mr. Trudeau. At one event, he took a picture with Mr. Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, in Mumbai. He was also supposed to attend a dinner with Mr. Trudeau at the Canadian high commissioner to India’s residence, but the invitation was rescinded after stories came out about his background. Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, resigned as chair of the B.C. Liberal caucus last week. The Hill Times photograph by Charelle Evelyn Initially, the government explained that Mr. Atwal, who was also charged, but not convicted, with a violent attack on former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh in 1985, was included on the guest list following a recommendation from rookie Liberal MP Randeep Sarai (Surrey Centre, B.C.). Later, in a briefing to reporters, Mr. Trudeau’s national security adviser Daniel Jean blamed some rogue factions in the Indian government for orchestrating the Atwal controversy in order to sabotage Mr. Trudeau’s visit. In answering questions from the opposition parties in the House and from reporters, last week, Mr. Trudeau stood by Mr. Jean’s claim. He also pointed out that the trip yielded $1-billion worth of bilateral trade agreements which is estimated to create about 6,000 new jobs. Of the $1-billion investment, according to media stories, Indian companies will invest $250-million in Canada, and Canadian companies will invest $750-million in India. “As I said, the individual in question never should have received an invitation and the Member of Parliament responsible for extending that invitation has taken responsibility and apologized for that,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Montreal last week. “On top of that I continue to trust and support our national security agencies and officials and when they highlight that there are concerns around a particular issue, I trust them and I believe them.” But a spokesman for the India government denied Mr. Jean’s claim. “Let me categorically state that the Government of India, including the security agencies, had nothing to do with the presence of Jaspal Atwal at the event hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner in Mumbai or the invitation issued to him for the Canadian High Commissioner's reception in New Delhi,” said Raveesh Kumar, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, last week. “Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.” Mr. Sarai took full responsibility for inviting Mr. Atwal to the dinner and issued a public apology during the trip. After returning to Canada, Mr. Trudeau had a meeting with the MP, who again accepted responsibility for this mistake, and later resigned from his position as the B.C. Liberal caucus chair. As of deadline last week, it was still a mystery what exactly transpired that led to extending the invitation to Mr. Atwal. National Post columnist John Ivison said in a column last week that it could have been a combination of rookie mistake on the part of Mr. Sarai, and “conspiracy in operation at the same time” from someone inside the Indian government. Meanwhile, experts interviewed for this story said that Mr. Atwal’s invitation to receptions in India made matters more complicated for Mr. Trudeau, as the prime minister was blasted only recently for meeting with Joshua Boyle, a former Afghan captive, who met with the prime minister on Dec. 30, only two weeks before he was charged with 15 counts of assault, sexual assault, illegal confinement, uttering threats, and public mischief. “Canadians look for a pattern of behaviour. They saw the prime minister meet with Boyle, who was another controversial individual, and now they see the invitation to Atwal,” said pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research. “The Liberals now have to worry about being at risk of a very dangerous narrative which basically boils down to: 'What type of people is the prime minister meeting?'” During Mr. Trudeau’s India trip some internationally renowned comedians, including Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, took shots at Mr. Trudeau for his “national dress pandering.” “The Indians all look like they showed up for a diplomatic conference, and looked like he was auditioning for Jai Ho,” Mr. Trevor, said in his show, two weeks ago. Greg Lyle of Innovative Research said in politics when people start to make fun of a politician, it’s a sign of serious political “trouble.” “He was poking fun at Justin Trudeau going around just like he was in a Bollywood performance,” Mr. Lyle said. “When you’ve got a show like that saying ‘you might have gone a little bit too far, buddy,’ then you know you are in trouble.” Mr. Lyle said the outcome of the India trip raises questions about the choices of political staffers who played a key role organizing it. Also, he said, these kinds of political mistakes makes MPs, who won their ridings with close margins, nervous. “If you are a Member of Parliament in a seat that’s relatively close, and the election starts to get closer, you start getting nervous when you see that people in 'The Centre' making mistakes like this,” he said. “It makes you nervous.” Alex Marland, a political science professor at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., said it is too early to say if Mr. Trudeau’s “bungled” India trip means anything now for the 2019 federal election, but said if the trend continues, it will indeed become politically damaging. “How many electors are going to be thinking about this trip on election day in the fall 2019, that’s really the measure of how much the problem this is,” said Prof. Marland. According to Mr. Nanos' weekly tracking poll, the Liberals were leading the pack with 38 per cent support last week, followed by the Conservatives with 32 per cent, the NDP 19 and the Green Party at seven per cent. Mr. Nanos said it would take some time before he’s able to gauge how damaging the India trip was for the prime minister and the Liberals. “Events like this are a bit like the Thanksgiving dinner, it takes a little time to digest politically,” Mr. Nanos said. But, a new Ipsos poll conducted for Global News indicated on March 2 that if an election were held last weekend, Liberals would lose the election. For the first time since winning the last federal election, the Conservatives were leading the Liberals with a five-point lead. According to the poll, the Conservatives had the support of 38 per cent of Canadians, the Liberals 33 per cent, the NDP 21 cent and the Green Party five per cent. The poll also indicated that 40 per cent of Canadians said Mr. Trudeau’s trip to India had a negative effect on Canada-India relations, 16 per cent thought the effect was positive and 21 per cent said the visit had no impact. The poll of 1,001 Canadians was conducted between Feb. 28 to March 1 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Experts interviewed for this story said Mr. Trudeau should now move on from the fallout of the India trip and focus on some substantive policy issues that could make a difference in the lives of Canadians. “Just move on, don’t dwell on it. Just own up to the mistakes," said Mr. Lyle, before last week's federal budget was released. "We’re going to have bigger issues, bigger fish to fry than what he wore at some events in India. He’s got a natural firebreak on the story.” Meanwhile, Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.), described the India trip as “terrific” and “successful.” As one of 14 Liberal MPs who were not part of the official delegation, but travelled on their own, he said, it was valuable for Canadian parliamentarians to travel to India because the country is a growing economic super power and a number of trade agreements were signed between Canada and India. He said thousands of his constituents are of South Asian origin and that during the trip, he was able to connect with some of those constituents who were travelling there, and also their families living there. “Every year, we have literally, in my case, Winnipeg North, hundreds of individuals who travel to the province of Punjab, to reconnect with their family members and so forth,” said Mr. Lamoureux. “Wherever I travelled, and I did most of mine inside Punjab, I was meeting constituents or families of constituents.” The Hill Times Official Delegation Justin Trudeau Prime Minister Sophie Grégoire Trudeau Wife of Prime Minister Navdeep Bains Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Chrystia Freeland Minister of Foreign Affairs Harjit Singh Sajjan Minister of National Defence Amarjeet Sohi Infrastructure Minister Kirsty Duncan Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities Bardish Chagger Government House Leader Nadir Patel Canada’s High Commissioner to India Jordan Reeves Consul General of Canada in Mumbai Katie Telford Chief of staff to the Prime Minister John Hannaford Foreign and Defence Policy Adviser to Prime Minister and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet PCO Roy Norton Chief of Protocol Andrée-Lyne Hallé PMO outreach director Sabina Saini PMO deputy director of policy Cameron Ahmad PMO deputy director of communications Vandana Kattar PMO deputy director for outreach Susan Menchini PMO deputy director of tour and scheduling John Zerucelli PMO senior adviser Elder Marques PMO senior adviser Patrick Travers PMO policy adviser Chantal Gagnon PMO press secretary Amreet Kaur PMO press secretary Jamie Kippen PMO Ontario regional desk officer Philip Proulx PMO executive assistant Adam Grech PMO senior adviser Alexandra Bernier PMO advance and scheduling Terry Guillon PMO lead media advance Julie Tatone PMO media advance David Sommer PMO digital creative lead Adam Scotti PMO official photographer Dunerci Caceres PMO executive assistant Emma Kristensen PMO executive assistant Veena Bhullar PMO youth adviser Marian Pueyo PMO special assistant

Trudeau’s image takes biggest hit since 2015 on India trip, goes from ‘golden boy’ to a ‘bit of a joke,’ say politicos

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau not only looked ‘superficial’ and like ‘a bit of a dandy,’ the India trip again brought into question his judgment. He now has to focus on substantive policy issues in order to regain control over his narrative.

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