Justin Trudeau: Pro-US, Slavish Prime Minister of Canada

By Arnold August  –  Jan 21, 2025

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decade as the leader of the Liberal Party has come to an abrupt and embarrassing halt. His term as PM is marked with unabashed servitude to U.S. interests, bigotry, and frat boy antics. While his time in office has finally come to an end, it is unlikely that the next to hold the seat will be a true political departure from what the nation has already seen.

During Justin Trudeau’s decade in power, he has proven to be the most slavish Prime Minister as an instrument of the U.S. in Canada’s history, especially since the beginning of the 20th century. His superficiality and hypocrisy served to disguise his servility. However, his prominent, consistent double-faced nature, tied to unparalleled frivolousness, was increasingly unable to hide his sycophantic fawning of the unfriendly neighbor to the south. The result is a cocktail of submissiveness to both Trump and Biden, whose mandates spanned the Trudeau ten-year terms, mixed with his trademark silliness and bigotry. This poisonous blend increasingly erupted in the waning months of the Biden mandate. Trudeau was similarly rejected by history as Kamala Harris, with the lowest popularity rating of any PM in recent history. However, many of us saw this coming as soon as Trudeau was catapulted onto the Canadian and international scenes in 2015 as the “liberal poster boy” par excellence.

Nevertheless, many others, in Canada and abroad, had to be weaned off the illusions during the decade. At last, Trudeau was dumped even by his party like a used rag, accompanied by rare unanimous popular support to abruptly turn the page against the now-defrocked liberal poster boy—the emperor with no clothes. The authors of the coup in the Liberal Party will nevertheless follow very similar domestic and foreign policies as their former leader. For example, it is laughable, if not tragic, that one of the current leading contenders to Trudeau’s empty throne, Chrystia Freeland, is now campaigning on a platform “unlike Trudeau” to stand up for Canada against Trump and the U.S. Yet, according to a leaked document the U.S. Embassy in Canada gleefully revealed that, through Freeland, “Canada Adopts America First Foreign Policy.” Her credentials were admittedly stalwart as she had already distinguished herself as Trudeau’s right hand in organizing the 2017 Lima G roup (on behalf of President Trump) to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela. On August 8th, 2017, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru gathered in Lima, Peru, to establish the Lima Group. Its main goal, beyond the verbiage of “restoration of democracy” in Venezuela, was to overthrow the Venezuelan government led by Nicolas Maduro. Trudeau and his then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, played a leading role. Freeland, the proud granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi, also assured Trudeau an ally to confront Russia. Similar values apply to the other main political force, the Conservative Party, contending to grab the reins of power in the next elections, probably in the spring of this year.

Nevertheless, cataloging Trudeau as the most slavish, superficial, and hypocritical pro-U.S. Prime Minister in the last 125 years may seem an exaggeration. Most Canadian Prime Ministers have also been pro-U.S., even when simultaneously tied to the British empire. However, one must consider U.S. domestic and foreign policies, spanning Trump’s first mandate and the Biden term. They have been the worst in recent U.S. history on all key issues. And the Trudeau government has been faithful to them, right to the bitter end.

Indigenous Peoples in Canada: Colonialism at Home, Imperialism Abroad
Canadian imperialism is hitched to U.S. imperialism. While Canada’s imperial pursuits have their objectives, they are also tied to those of the U.S. Canada took its first baby steps toward imperialism as a genocidal settler colony, later evolving into imperialism.

According to a University of Manitoba residential school expert, Professor Sean Carleton, approximately 150,000 First Nations children – Inuit and Métis – were removed from their families between approximately 1883 and 1997 and forced to attend federally funded “residential schools.”  An estimated 6,000 children died in the schools, though experts say the actual number could be much higher; however, despite their notoriously and recently discovered “unmarked graves,” there is still an attempt to deny this claim. The attempt to deny the history of residential schools  prompted the social democrat New Democratic Party member of the Canadian Parliament, Leah Gazan, to introduce a private member’s bill last year that seeks to criminalize residential school denialism.However, Professor Carleton confirmed to this writer that Trudeau had done nothing to make this practical. Mohawk activist and one of the most critical voices of the Indigenous people in Canada, Ellen Gabriel, points to colonialism as the root cause of the problem as influenced by the long-term, lasting impacts of the Residential Schools: “cultural shaming, with the messaging that we were inferior.” Furthermore, according to the commission set up by the Trudeau government on the plight of Indigenous, its 2019 report concluded that Canada is guilty of genocide against the Indigenous peoples.

Yet, despite this sordid public legacy, why does the Trudeau government go to such lengths to deny it? It is directly linked to the credibility of its pro-U.S. foreign policy. For example, when  Canada criticizes China for the supposed violation of human rights in Xizang (Tibet) and Uyghurs in Xinjiang, these accusations ring hollow, as the Chinese press can quickly argue that “Canada should focus on its own human rights issues.”   In addition, Canada objects to Cuba’s “violent crackdown” on protesters, said Trudeau’s foreign minister, on behalf of his regime, found guilty of genocide. Of course, Cuban soft-spoken Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez tweeted, among other points: “I expressed concern about systematic human rights violations against indigenous peoples.

The notorious truckers’ convoy in Ottawa protesting compulsory COVID mandates represented another context. A violent horse-mounted police attack on the protesters ended the protest. Furthermore, a Canadian court even highlighted Trudeau’s duplicity on human rights. It found that Trudeau’s use of the country’s Emergencies Act was an unjustified infringement of civil rights, including protection against unreasonable search and seizure and, in some instances, the freedom of expression and the freezing of people’s bank accounts linked to the protest.

Trudeau’s Black Face and His Silence in the Face of Trump’s Racism
Trudeau’s abject superficiality arose internationally when photos surfaced of him disguised in black and brownface when he was younger. However, while willingly and actively being marketed as a liberal poster boy, thus supposedly being naturally “anti-racist”, in  2020, at the height of the global anti-racist George Floyd protests, the New York Times wrote: “When asked what he thought of President Trump’s call for military action against American protesters and the tear gassing of peaceful demonstrators to make way for a photo-op, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused at his podium for 21 uncomfortable, televised seconds. He opened his mouth, then shut it — twice. He softly groaned.” See the cringing and cowardly 21-second clip here. However, the Canadian corporate media, as part of the deep state, tried to give it a spin to maintain the liberal poster boy image, namely that the silence was —incredibly— Trudeau’s way of opposing Trump!  However, things went from bad to worse when he tried to defect from this embarrassing incident by taking a knee with protesters on Parliament Hill a few days later in support of George Floyd. This hypocrisy did not go unnoticed.

Trudeau Fully Supporting U.S.-led Palestinian Genocide.
Trudeau has been one of the Biden-Harris team’s strongest genocide allies. He could not even agree with the BDS movement, as this 20-second video shows. Furthermore, his  International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism purposefully conflates criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism. “Supporters of Israel frequently deploy it to shut down Palestinians’ perspectives. ” However, anyone attending and following the demonstrations and university encampments across Canada knows it is a lie of Goebbelian proportion. Furthermore, while the Trudeau government had to hypocritically pretend to stop arms shipments to Israel in the face of massive opposition in the streets, campuses, open letters by faculty, doctors and others, “Canada’s off-the-record’ arms exports end up in Israel via the United States. ” On another occasion, Trudeau was so tangled up in the US-Israel lobby’s double-faced, ever-changing “cease-fire” narrative that he stumbled on the term “cease-fire, seemingly not knowing whether — or how— to utter the term, as this short excruciating clip shows. Trudeau never ceases to lecture other countries about freedom of expression and inclusiveness, especially in the Global South. However, while Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, was recently welcomed in Canada by students, faculty, professionals, and many other sections of society across the country, she noted that she was “snubbed by Trudeau.”

As a result of Trudeau’s team’s slavish adherence to the suicidal U.S.-Zionist genocide pact, one of the leading contenders for the top job to replace Trudeau, Freeland, seems to have been hit by the Kamala Harris curse: Total defeat as a result of the Biden/Harris Israel policy.  On January 19, her debut campaign for Liberal leader and new Prime Minister was so disrupted by pro-Palestine protesters that it turned out to be a monumental flop, making the headlines across Canada. It was a great initiative: guerrilla-type tactics carried out by about ten tiny groups (according to the Canadian corporate press), some with Palestinian flags. Others would pop up as some were “escorted” out of the campaign hall. Savor this moment in this video report prompting the headline: “Freeland pitches herself as tested Trump negotiator, as protesters disrupt Liberal leadership launch.”   Of course, her Nazi roots justifiably fueled the anger.

However, let us not forget that Trudeau appointed her to the top spots in his cabinet, even if they eventually ended up at loggerheads, as two opportunists would do. If she wins the leadership race, will the young people, especially, decide to punish her at the ballot box, and by ricochet Trudeau, over the issue of Palestinian genocide as their U.S. counterparts did to Kamala Harris, irrespective of the “conservative” boogie man?  Freeland, like Trudeau, embodies a slavish, superficial, hypocritical, pro-U.S. personality. However, she outstrips Trudeau’s double-faced character. Freeland is, after all, the very same person who is claiming today to be a stalwart against Trump’s annexationist utterances that was the one that Trudeau promoted in 2017 to engineer with the American president Canada’s treasonous “America First Policy.”

Ukraine: The Nazis Behind the Liberal Poster Boy’s Mask
Who better to unearth the gory history of Canada’s links and promotion of nazis than University of Montreal history professor Michael J Carley who specializes in the USSR, Russia, and World War II.   Even the mainstream Ottawa Citizen wrote: Freeland, who strongly supports Ukraine and is a major critic of Russia, suggested to journalists that the articles about her grandfather were part of a Russian disinformation campaign.” However, the Ottawa Citizen details that her grandfather, “Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator.” Furthermore, according to Canada’s leading corporate media, “Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper.” Freeland is in good company as Canada allowed several thousand World War II Nazi war criminals, many from Ukraine.Readers may recoil when watching the world-famous scene when the entire Canadian Parliament, including special guest Nazi-enabler President Zelenski himself, gives standing ovations to a literal Ukrainian Nazi. Of course, Trudeau had to “apologize.” Yet, he missed the opportunity to show his sincerity when more recently, last November, “Trudeau refused to release the names of 900 Nazi war criminals who fled to Canada after WWII.”   Furthermore, according to the most recent figures from January 2025, Canada lists considerable sums handed out to the Ukraine Nazi regime, with the current total value of Canadian military assistance to $4.5 billion.

Along with Canada’s unhinged support for the U.S.-backed Israeli genocidal atrocities, as exposed in the previous section on Zionism, Israel is increasingly known worldwide as the present-day nazis. Therefore, taken together, both Canada’s Israeli and Ukrainian policies have never before exposed a Canadian Prime Minister such as Justin Trudeau being so tied to Nazism.

Canada Should Focus on Its Own Human Rights Issues

China: Justin Trudeau’s Barely Veiled “Yellow Peril” Narrative
On December 1, 2018, during Trudeau’s first mandate, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer (CFO) of Huawei, Meng was detained at Vancouver International Airport by the Canada Border Services Agency and subsequently placed under house arrest on an extradition request by the United States Department of Justice. In retaliation, China arrested two Canadian spies in China. Trudeau’s servile attitude created tension between Canada and China to an extent never before since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1970. This year, 2025 is the 55th anniversary of these ties.  Nevertheless, Trudeau later doubled down on his decision by saying he had “ no regrets about the arrest of the Huawei executive, [he] says [the] world must stand up to China.” While Canada-China relations and trade were maintained during his decade-long rule, they were erratic. At one point, President Xi had to school Trudeau about how to maintain relations, deserving of a 44-second public dressing down designed to ridicule Trudeau.

Trudeau bought into Trump’s first mandate and then Biden’s anti-China rhetoric. This narrative includes terms and slurs resembling the “Yellow Peril” scare. In contrast, Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau (later Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984) traveled to China as a youth in the late 1940s and then again in 1960. In his book on that adventure, he wrote: “This book was nearly given a different title: The Yellow Peril. ….Those who take seriously the precept ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ cannot object to our reporting such success as the Chinese government is having in leading its people out of several millennia of misery.” (Two Innocents in Red China, Pierre Trudeau and Jacques Hebert, Douglas& McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 1961, pages 39 and 43.)

In sharp contrast to Justin Trudeau on China, even Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (1984 to 1993) stood out. Mulroney wrote in his Memoirs about his upcoming 1986 state visit to China that the Chinese Embassy staff in Ottawa noted that “his government accorded a high priority to the continuation of Canada’s excellent relations [with China], noting that former PM Trudeau had recently visited Beijing…” … Trudeau later sent a note thanking me for the kind words.” (Memoirs:1939-1993, Brain Mulroney, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2007 page 437.). One cannot express illusions about Pierre Trudeau’s domestic or international politics. However, he carried out two favorable foreign policies. One consisted of being among the first NATO powers to recognize the PRC on October 13, 1970. It marked a significant breakthrough that helped open the floodgates of recognition, including by the U.S. However, his son Justin has come close to betraying this heritage because of his slavish attitude toward the U.S., including Trump. The second positive step was Pierre Trudeau’s Cuba policy, to which we now turn our attention, in contrast to his son’s.

Cuba: Justin Trudeau’s Superficiality and Hypocrisy
When Fidel Castro passed away, PM Trudeau issued a statement reading in part: “It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest-serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.” However, only a few days later, after being grilled by a state-run Canadian Broadcasting Company reporter, Trudeau as the epitome of superficiality capitulated, allowing the outlet to triumphantly run the headline “Fidel Castro was a dictator, Trudeau says.” The reporter confirmed this in a tweet: “I asked Trudeau if he thinks Castro was a dictator. He says yes.”

How did his father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, face the red scare “gotcha” question by reporters during his 1976 state visit to Cuba? As expected, one of the first questions to the PM concerned the possible repercussions of visiting a communist country in Canada. According to the transcript of the Canadian television report, Trudeau outsmarted the reporter by stating tongue in cheek: “Well, the category of people who would be shocked by that has long since been shocked by my visits to China and the Soviet Union. So, I can’t worry about that. I’ve been to those two countries several years ago and I don’t think Canada has veered notoriously toward Communism since, so I don’t see why it would happen now.”

When the Canadian government was planning Pierre Trudeau’s 1976 trip to Cuba, as a result of the Angola crisis and Cuba’s involvement in Africa, everyone was against Trudeau going to Cuba. This would be seen as Canada’s approval of Cuba’s growing military presence there to support Angola against the U.S.-backed South African apartheid regime. Everyone opposed the trip: his own Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, all the Canadian mainstream media, and the U.S. government and its corporate media. Yet not only did he travel there, but in the central open-air rally in Cienfuegos he terminated his speech in Spanish next to Fidel Castro by shouting the infamous: “Viva el Primer Ministro Comandante Fidel Castro!”

Justin Trudeau, in contrast, has become increasingly critical of the Cuban government as Trump and then Biden ramped up pressure against the Island. His government never stood up publicly to defend Cuba against the blockade while repeating the U.S. talking points regarding supposed human rights violations.

Thus, in addition to China, Pierre Trudeau’s 1976 Cuba trip were the only two positive points of his foreign policy legacy. He followed the basic Canadian alignment policy with the U.S. on all other issues. For example, even on Angola, after his return to Canada in 1976, he followed the West’s policy by slapping sanctions on Cuba. Yet, in contrast, Justin Trudeau leaves absolutely no positive legacy due to his full-throttled U.S. lackey mentality, frivolousness, and duplicity. He has shown no backbone. Furthermore, he quite possibly would have gone farther along the road of treason regarding China and Cuba if it were not for the specter of his father’s legacy haunting him regarding these two countries.

Venezuela: The Pinnacle of Cow-Towing to U.S. Imperialism
Perhaps most emblematic of this arrogant policy towards the Maduro government was when in 2019 Justin Trudeau’s then Foreign Minister Freeland actually attempted to enlist Cuba in the U.S. plan to overthrow the Maduro government. According to the Canadian readout, “the crisis in Venezuela was a focus of the meeting.”

However, Justin Trudeau’s slavish pro-U.S. anti-Maduro policy goes back to 2016 right after being elected for the first time. After hypocritically meeting with the Cuban government in Havana and promising that the newly elected Trump would not sway him, he traveled on to visit President Mauricio Macri in Argentina and to Lima, Peru. Out of this trip the Lima group was established: “The Foreign Ministers and Representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru, gathered here in Lima, on August the 8th of 2017 to address the critical situation in Venezuela and to explore ways to contribute to the restoration of democracy in that country, through peaceful and negotiated means.” Noteworthy was that the United States and its President Trump were not part of the Lima Group. Thus, Justin Trudeau’s role was to be the liberal poster boy front for Trump.

As the first significant act of the Lima Group, in January 2019, Trudeau’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland stated, according to the media report: “…We recognize and express our full support for the interim presidency of Venezuela assumed by the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó…”. Furthermore, one of Canada’s main corporate outlets spells out its article by fully revealing the US-Canada Lima Group alliance with the headline: “Canada will recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, follows a move by the U.S. to do the same.”

This sordid history continues today. On Canada’s Foreign Ministry page dedicated to Venezuela, there are more than sixty posts detailing all the sanctions and international intrigues against the Maduro government.

 

Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist, he collaborates with many websites in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. He is a contributor to Orinoco Tribune. His website: www.arnoldaugust.com .

 

 

(Black Agenda Report)