Justin Trudeau
Justin Trudeau
Justin Pierre James Trudeau PC MPis a Canadian politician who is the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, and the leader of the Liberal Party. The second-youngest Canadian prime minister after Joe Clark, he is also, as the eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, the first child of a previous prime minister to hold the post...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth25 December 1971
CityOttawa, Canada
CountryCanada
Vancouver is home. I spent a huge amount of time here as a kid growing up with my mom, with my grandparents who lived here.
We're committed to making sure parents have affordable, quality early learning for their kids - there's no question about it.
Canada was built around a very simple premise. A promise that you can work hard and succeed and build a future for yourselves and your kids, and that future for your kids would be better than the one you had.
I am a teacher. It's how I define myself. A good teacher isn't someone who gives the answers out to their kids but is understanding of needs and challenges and gives tools to help other people succeed. That's the way I see myself, so whatever it is that I will do eventually after politics, it'll have to do a lot with teaching.
When I get out across the country and listen to people, the resentment that I see and the frustration that I see is that we have a generation of people who are fairly convinced that their kids are not going to have a better quality of life or a better future than they will.
People are very much worried that our kids are not going to inherit the same opportunities that we inherited from our parents.
I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis -- I'm in favour of legalizing it. Tax and regulate. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model isn't working,
Nobody knows better than I do what the pressures of party leadership can do to a young family. It tore mine apart.
One of the challenges that Vancouver and cities across the country are facing is that we don't have a federal partner in terms of building for transit, not in the way we need.
I have been incredibly lucky all my life. I've had a family that has loved me and given me incredible opportunities. I've gone to great schools. I've travelled across the country.
I think we need to price carbon; there's no question about it. The way we do it needs to be based on science and not political debates and attacks, and that's why I'm drawing on experts and best practices from around the world.
I think Canadians are tired of politicians that are spun and scripted within an inch of their life, people who are too afraid of what a focus group might say about one comment or a political opponent might try to twist out of context, to actually say much of anything at all.
We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement.
My mother is brilliant but emotional and very much gregarious and connected to people. My father was brilliant but focused and driven and very narrow-casted.