On June 23, 1971, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s wife of four months, the former Margaret Sinclair, was pregnant and due in December. Justin Trudeau was born on Christmas Day 1971 at 9:27 pm EST at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. He is the second child in Canadian history to be born to a prime minister in office; the first was John A. Macdonald’s daughter Margaret Mary Theodora Macdonald (February 8, 1869 – January 28, 1933). Trudeau’s younger brothers Alexandre (Sacha) (born December 25, 1973) and Michel (October 2, 1975 – November 13, 1998) were the third and fourth.

On April 14, 1972, Trudeau’s father and mother hosted a gala at the National Arts Centre, at which visiting U.S. president Richard M. Nixon said, “I’d like to toast the future prime minister of Canada, to Justin Pierre Trudeau” to which Pierre Elliott Trudeau responded that should his son ever assume the role, he hoped he would have “the grace and skill of the president”. Earlier that same day U.S. first lady Pat Nixon had come to see him in his nursery to deliver a gift, a stuffed toy Snoopy. Nixon’s White House audio tapes later revealed Nixon referred to that visit as “wasting three days up there. That trip we needed like a hole in the head.”

His father had intended Trudeau to begin his formal education at a French Lycée, but Trudeau’s mother convinced his father of the importance of sending their sons to a public school. In the end, Trudeau was enrolled in 1976 in the French immersion program at Rockcliffe Park Public School, the same school his mother had attended for two years when her family relocated to Rockcliffe Park while her father served as a federal Cabinet minister. He could have been dropped off by limousine, but his parents elected he take the school bus albeit with a Royal Canadian Mounted Police car following. This was followed by one year at the private Lycée Claudel d’Ottawa.

His parents announced their separation on May 27, 1977, when Trudeau was five years old and his father having custody. There had been repeated rumours of a reconciliation for many years afterwards. However, his mother’s attorney Michael Levine filed in Toronto to the Supreme Court of Ontario for a no-fault divorce on November 16, 1983, and finalized on April 2, 1984, with his father announcing his intention to retire as prime minister on February 29 of that year. Eventually his parents came to an amicable joint-custody arrangement and learned to get along quite well. Interviewed in October 1979, his nanny Dianne Lavergne was quoted, “Justin is a mommy’s boy, so it’s not easy, but children’s hurts mend very quickly. And they’re lucky kids, anyway.” Of his mother and father’s marriage, Trudeau said in 2009, “They loved each other incredibly, passionately, completely. But there was 30 years between them and my mom never was an equal partner in what encompassed my father’s life, his duty, his country.” Trudeau has three half-siblings, Kyle and Alicia, from his mother’s remarriage to Fried Kemper, and Sarah, from his father’s relationship with Deborah Coyne.

Trudeau lived at 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, the official residence of Canada’s prime minister, from his birth until his father’s government was defeated in the federal election on May 22, 1979. The Trudeaus were expected to move into the residence of the Leader of the Official Opposition, Stornoway, at 541 Acacia Avenue in Rockcliffe Park, but because of flooding in the basement, prime minister Joe Clark offered them Harrington Lake, the prime minister’s official country retreat in Gatineau Park, with the expectation they would move into Stornoway at the start of July. However, the repairs were not complete so Pierre Trudeau took a prolonged vacation with his sons to the Nova Scotia summer home of his friend, MP Don Johnston, and later sent his sons to stay with their maternal grandparents in North Vancouver for the rest of the summer while he slept at his friend’s Ottawa apartment. Justin and his brothers returned to Ottawa for the start of the school year, but lived only on the top floor of Stornoway while repairs continued on the bottom floor. His mother purchased and moved into a new home nearby at 95 Queen Victoria Street in Ottawa’s New Edinburgh in September 1979. The Trudeaus returned to the prime minister’s official residence in February 1980 after the election that returned his father to the Prime Minister’s Office.

This was the second-best performance in the party’s history. The Liberals won mostly on the strength of a solid performance in the eastern half of the country. In addition to taking all of Atlantic Canada and Toronto, they won 40 seats in Quebec—the most that the Liberals had won in that province since Trudeau’s father led them to a near-sweep of the province in 1980, and also the first time since then that the Liberals won a majority of Quebec’s seats in an election. The 150-seat gain was the biggest numerical increase for a single party since Confederation and marked the first time that a party had rebounded from third place in the Commons to a majority government.

After his father’s retirement in June 1984, his mother remained at her New Edinburgh home while the rest of the family moved into his father’s home at 1418 Pine Avenue, Montreal known as Cormier House where the following autumn he began attending the private Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, his father’s alma mater. The school had begun as a Jesuit school but was non-denominational by the time Justin matriculated. In 2008, Trudeau said that of all his early family outings he enjoyed camping with his father the most, because “that was where our father got to be just our father – a dad in the woods”. During the summers his father would send him and his brothers to Camp Ahmek, on Canoe Lake, in Algonquin Provincial Park, where he would later work in his first paid employment as a camp counselor.

Trudeau supported the Liberal Party from a young age, offering his support to party leader John Turner in the 1988 federal election. Two years later, he defended Canadian federalism at a student event at the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, which he attended.

Trudeau’s father was a devout Roman Catholic and his mother converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism just prior to their wedding. As a child, Justin attended Mass each Sunday and said his prayers each night before bedtime. He became a lapsed Catholic at age 18, as he felt that much of his day-to-day life was not addressed by the formality and structure of the church. Trudeau described his faith during this period as “like so many Catholics across this country, I said, ‘OK, I’m Catholic, I’m of faith, but I’m just not really going to go to church. Maybe on Easter, maybe midnight Mass at Christmas.'” After the death of his brother Michel in 1998, Trudeau was persuaded by a friend to participate in an Alpha course, during which he regained his faith. In 2011, Trudeau stated, “My own personal faith is an extremely important part of who I am and the values that I try to lead with.”

In August 2000, Justin Trudeau attended the Kokanee Summit in Creston, British Columbia, to raise funds in honour of his brother Michel Trudeau and other avalanche victims. After the event, an unsigned editorial in the Creston Valley Advance (a local newspaper) accused Trudeau of having groped an unnamed female reporter while at the music festival. The editorial stated Trudeau provided a “day-late” apology to the reporter, saying, “If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward”. In 2018, Trudeau was questioned about the groping incident but said he did not remember any negative incidents from that time. His apology and later statement about the event have been described as hypocritical, while responses to the story have been described as a witch hunt or non-story.

Trudeau, then 28, emerged as a prominent figure in October 2000, after delivering a eulogy at his father’s state funeral. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) received numerous calls to rebroadcast the speech after its initial transmission, and leading Quebec politician Claude Ryan described it as “perhaps … the first manifestation of a dynasty”. A book issued by the CBC in 2003 included the speech in its list of significant Canadian events from the past fifty years.

Trudeau and his family started the Kokanee Glacier Alpine Campaign for winter sports safety in 2000, two years after his brother Michel died in an avalanche during a ski trip. In 2002, Trudeau criticized the Government of British Columbia’s decision to stop its funding for a public avalanche warning system.

Trudeau first met Sophie Grégoire when they were both children growing up in Montreal; Grégoire was a classmate and childhood friend of Trudeau’s youngest brother, Michel. They reconnected as adults in June 2003, when Grégoire, by then a Quebec television personality, was assigned as Trudeau’s co-host for a charity ball; they began dating several months later. Trudeau and Grégoire became engaged in October 2004, and married on May 28, 2005, in a ceremony at Montreal’s Sainte-Madeleine d’Outremont Church. They have three children: a boy born in 2007, a girl born in 2009, and a boy born in 2014.

In 2002–03, Trudeau was a panelist on CBC Radio’s Canada Reads series, where he championed The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston. Trudeau and his brother Alexandre inaugurated the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto in April 2004; the centre later became a part of the Munk School of Global Affairs. In 2006, he hosted the Giller Prize for literature.

In 2005, Trudeau fought against a proposed $100-million zinc mine that he argued would poison the Nahanni River, a United Nations World Heritage Site located in the Northwest Territories. He was quoted as saying, “The river is an absolutely magnificent, magical place. I’m not saying mining is wrong … but that is not the place for it. It’s just the wrong thing to be doing.”

On September 17, 2006, Trudeau was the master of ceremonies at a Toronto rally organized by Roméo Dallaire that called for Canadian participation in resolving the Darfur crisis.

Following his father’s death, Trudeau became more involved with the Liberal Party throughout the 2000s. Along with Olympian Charmaine Crooks, he co-hosted a tribute to outgoing prime minister Jean Chrétien at the party’s 2003 leadership convention, and was appointed to chair a task force on youth renewal after the party’s defeat in the 2006 federal election.

In October 2006, Trudeau criticized Quebec nationalism by describing political nationalism generally as an “old idea from the 19th century”, “based on a smallness of thought” and not relevant to modern Quebec. This comment was seen as a criticism of Michael Ignatieff, then a candidate in the 2006 Liberal Party leadership election, who was promoting recognition of Quebec as a nation. Trudeau later wrote a public letter on the subject, describing the idea of Quebec nationhood as “against everything my father ever believed”.

In 2007, Trudeau starred in the two-part CBC Television miniseries The Great War, which gave an account of Canada’s participation in the First World War. He portrayed his fifth cousin, twice removed, Major Talbot Mercer Papineau, who was killed on October 30, 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele. Trudeau is one of several children of former prime ministers who have become Canadian media personalities. The others are Ben Mulroney (son of Brian Mulroney), Catherine Clark (daughter of Joe Clark), and Trudeau’s younger brother, Alexandre. Ben Mulroney was a guest at Trudeau’s wedding.

Rumours circulated in early 2007 that Trudeau would run in an upcoming by-election in the Montreal riding of Outremont. The Montreal newspaper La Presse reported despite Trudeau’s keenness, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion wanted Outremont for a star candidate who could help rebuild the Liberal Party. Instead, Trudeau announced that he would seek the Liberal nomination in the nearby riding of Papineau for the next general election. The riding, which had once been held for 26 years by André Ouellet, a senior minister under his father, had been in Liberal hands for 53 years before falling to the Bloc Québécois in 2006.

On April 29, 2007, Trudeau won the Liberal party’s nomination, picking up 690 votes to 350 for Deros and 220 for Giordano against Mary Deros, a Montreal city councillor and Basilio Giordano, the publisher of a local Italian-language newspaper.

The Conservative Party won a minority government in the 2008 election, and Trudeau entered parliament as a member of the Official Opposition. Trudeau was the first member of the 40th Parliament of Canada to introduce a private member’s motion, in which he called for a “national voluntary service policy for young people”. The proposal won support from parliamentarians across party lines. He later co-chaired the Liberal Party’s April 2009 national convention in Vancouver, and in October of the same year he was appointed as the party’s critic for multiculturalism and youth.

After Dion’s resignation as Liberal leader in 2008, Trudeau’s name was mentioned as a potential candidate with polls showing him as a favourite among Canadians for the position.

However, Trudeau did not enter the race and Ignatieff was named leader in December 2008. After the party’s poor showing in the 2011 election, Ignatieff resigned from the leadership and Trudeau was again seen as a potential candidate to lead the party.

In September 2010, he was reassigned as critic for youth, citizenship, and immigration. During that time, he criticized the government’s legislation targeting human smuggling, which he argued would penalize the victims of smuggling.

Trudeau was re-elected in Papineau in the 2011 federal election, as the Liberal Party fell to third-party standing in the House of Commons with only thirty-four seats. Ignatieff resigned as party leader immediately after the election, and rumours again circulated that Trudeau could run to become his successor. On this occasion, Trudeau said, “I don’t feel I should be closing off any options … because of the history packaged into my name, a lot of people are turning to me in a way that … to be blunt, concerns me.” Weeks after the election, Toronto MP Bob Rae was selected to serve as the interim leader until the party’s leadership convention, which was later decided to be held in April 2013. Rae appointed Trudeau as the party’s critic for Post Secondary Education, Youth and Amateur Sport. After his re-election, he travelled the country hosting fundraisers for charities and the Liberal Party.

According to an October 2013 EKOS poll, Trudeau’s approval numbers improved to a 48–29 approval–disapproval; Thomas Mulcair’s jumped to a slight lead at 50–25, while Stephen Harper’s ratings sank to 24–69. A December 2013 EKOS poll showed the Liberals preferred by 32.1 per cent of voters, the Conservatives by 26.2 per cent, the NDP 22.9 per cent. Likely voters, estimated by removing those who didn’t vote in 2011, moved the parties into a logjam: Liberals 29.1 per cent, Conservatives 28.5 per cent, NDP 27.2 per cent.

Trudeau wanted to take part in a charity boxing match on behalf of the cancer research fundraising event Fight for the Cure, but was having difficulty finding a Conservative opponent until Conservative senator Patrick Brazeau agreed when asked on Trudeau’s behalf by their mutual hairdresser Stefania Capovilla. The fight on March 31, 2012, in Ottawa at the Hampton Inn was broadcast live on Sun News with commentary by Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley and Trudeau won in the third round, the result considered an upset.

Following the election, Trudeau said he was undecided about seeking the leadership; months later on October 12 at Wilfrid Laurier University, he announced he would not seek the post because he had a young family. When interim leader Rae, who was also seen as a frontrunner, announced he would not be entering the race in June 2012, Trudeau was hit with a “tsunami” of calls from supporters to reconsider his earlier decision to not seek the leadership.

Opinion polling conducted by several pollsters showed that if Trudeau were to become leader the Liberal Party would surge in support, from a distant third place to either being competitive with the Conservative Party or leading them. In July 2012, Trudeau stated that he would reconsider his earlier decision to not seek the leadership and would announce his final decision at the end of the summer.

On September 26, 2012, multiple media outlets started reporting that Trudeau would launch his leadership bid the following week. While Trudeau was seen as a frontrunner for the leadership of the Liberal Party, he was criticized for his perceived lack of substance. During his time as a Member of Parliament, he spoke little on policy matters and it was not known where he stood on many issues such as the economy and foreign affairs. Some strategists and pundits believed the leadership would be the time for Trudeau to be tested on these issues; however, there was also fear within the party that his celebrity status and large lead might deter other strong candidates from entering the leadership race.

On October 2, 2012, Trudeau held a rally in Montreal to launch his bid for the leadership of the Liberal Party. The core people on his campaign team were considered longtime friends, and all in their 30s and 40s. His senior advisor was Gerald Butts, the former President of WWF-Canada who had previously served as principal secretary to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. Other senior aides included campaign manager Katie Telford, and policy advisors Mike McNeir and Robert Asselin, who had all worked for recent Liberal Party leaders. His brother Alexandre also took a break from his documentary work to be a senior advisor on Trudeau’s campaign.

During the leadership campaign three by-elections were held on November 26, 2012. The riding Calgary Centre was expected to be a three-way race between the Conservatives, Liberals and Green Party. A week before by-election day Sun Media reported on comments Trudeau had made in a 2010 interview with Télé-Québec, in which he said, “Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda.” Trudeau’s campaign advisor said that the comments were being brought up now because of the close race in Calgary Centre. The following day, Trudeau apologized, saying he was wrong to use “Alberta” as “shorthand” in referring to Stephen Harper’s government. The Conservatives held onto Calgary Centre in the by-election by less than 1,200 votes. Liberal candidate Harvey Locke said he lost the by-election on his own and that comments made by Trudeau did not influence the outcome.

On March 13, 2013, Garneau dropped out of the leadership race, saying that polling conducted by his campaign showed he would be unable to defeat Trudeau.

With Joyce Murray, the last challenger, receiving significant press time, more Liberal politicians and public figures declared themselves for Trudeau. Trudeau was declared the winner of the leadership election on April 14, 2013, garnering 80.1 per cent of 30,800 votes. Joyce Murray finished in second place with 10.2 per cent points, ahead of Martha Hall Findlay’s 5.7 per cent. Trudeau had lost only five ridings, all to Murray and all in BC.

In 2013, Justin Trudeau chose to give up his seat at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, in deference to Irwin Cotler as representative of the Liberal Party of Canada, because of Cotler’s work for and with Nelson Mandela in fighting apartheid.

During the leadership campaign Trudeau pledged to park all his assets, exclusive of real estate holdings, into a blind trust which is atypical for opposition MPs, including leaders. According to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, he fulfilled the pledge in July 2013 when the blind trust was set up by BMO Private Banking.

Trudeau first publicly expressed an interest in the legalization of marijuana while speaking at a rally in Kelowna, B.C. on June 24, 2013. He told a crowd, “I’m actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis. I’m in favour of legalizing it. Tax it, 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 is not working. We have to use evidence and science to make sure we’re moving forward on that.”

In an interview in August 2013, Trudeau said that the last time he had used marijuana was in 2010, after he had become a Member of Parliament: “We had a few good friends over for a dinner party, our kids were at their grandmother’s for the night, and one of our friends lit a joint and passed it around. I had a puff.” After analysing the results of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, Trudeau reiterated his position in favour of the legalization in Canada, saying that Canadians would benefit from analysing the experiences of both Colorado and the state of Washington.

In June 2013, two months after Trudeau became the leader of the Liberal Party, the couple sold their home in the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood of Montreal. They began living in a rented home in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park, the neighbourhood near where Trudeau resided as a child during his father’s time as prime minister.

On January 27, 2014, Trudeau and MP Carolyn Bennett escorted Chrystia Freeland into the House of Commons, as is traditional for by-election victors. Trudeau launched an internet video the week before the 2014 Liberal party convention titled “An economy that benefits us all” in which he narrates his economic platform. He said that Canada’s debt to GDP ratios have come down in recent years and now it’s time for Ottawa to “step up”.

Trudeau has long advocated changes that would make the Senate of Canada a less partisan house. In January 2014, he announced a step that began reducing Senate partisanship by removing Liberal senators from the Liberal caucus.

On August 18, 2014, an intruder broke into the house while Grégoire and the couple’s three children were sleeping and left a threatening note; however, nothing was stolen and there was no damage to the property. Following the incident, Trudeau, who was in Winnipeg at the time of the break-in, stated his intention to inquire with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about his home security. After his 2015 electoral victory, Trudeau opted to live at Rideau Cottage, on the grounds of Rideau Hall, until necessary repairs are completed at 24 Sussex to make it habitable.

On October 19, 2015, after the longest official campaign in over a century, Trudeau led the Liberals to a decisive victory in the federal election. The Liberals won 184 of the 338 seats, with 39.5% of the popular vote, for a strong majority government; a gain of 150 seats compared to the 2011 federal election.

Trudeau and the rest of the Cabinet were sworn in by Governor General David Johnston on November 4, 2015. He said that his first legislative priority was to lower taxes for middle-income Canadians and raise taxes for the top one per cent of income earners after parliament was reconvened on December 3, 2015. Trudeau also issued a statement promising to rebuild relations with Indigenous peoples in Canada and run an open, ethical and transparent government. On November 5, 2015, during the first Liberal caucus meeting since forming a majority government, the party announced that it would reinstate the mandatory long-form census that had been scrapped in 2010, effective with the 2016 census.

Trudeau has stated that he wishes to form a party that is “resolutely pro-choice” and that potential Liberal candidates in the 2015 election who are anti-abortion would not be greenlighted for the nomination if they did not agree to vote pro-choice on abortion bills. This stance was in line with a resolution passed by a majority of Liberal party members at its 2012 policy convention. Trudeau’s stance was criticized by conservative Catholics, with former MP Jim Karygiannis saying it will “definitely hurt the party”, and Toronto cardinal Thomas Collins writing to Trudeau urging him to reverse his ruling, leading Trudeau to defend the position.

In December 2015, the government announced that an all-party parliamentary committee would be formed in early 2016 to consider other options. During a discussion of the plan, Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef referred to it as “an open and robust process of consultation”. However, she refused to commit to the Conservative Party’s demand for a public referendum that would allow Canadians to vote on their preferred electoral system, indicating that she does not want to “prejudice the outcome of that consultation process”.

Trudeau met with hundreds of chiefs at the Assembly of First Nations on December 7, 2015, and laid out his philosophy and commitments to Indigenous peoples in Canada, to assure their “constitutionally guaranteed rights … a sacred obligation”. In brief, he promised to rescind government policies that are in conflict with their rights, make a significant investment in education programs, increase general funding, and launch an enquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. Trudeau also indicated that the new government would implement all of the recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

During the 2015 election campaign, Trudeau said that if made prime minister, he would implement an infrastructure plan worth $60 billion (US$42 billion) in spending over 10 years. Following his electoral win, in 2016, the Trudeau announced a 12-year, $180 billion (US$143 billion) infrastructure plan, with a focus on public transport, infrastructure in rural communities and Canada’s northern regions, green infrastructure and affordable housing. The Trudeau government also is setting up an infrastructure bank to fund projects.

After the Liberal party formed the government in November 2015, with Trudeau as prime minister, he announced that a federal-provincial-territorial process was being created to discuss a jointly suitable process for the legalization of marijuana possession for recreational purposes. The plan is to remove marijuana consumption and incidental possession from the Criminal Code; however, new laws will be enacted for greater punishment of those convicted of supplying pot to minors and for impairment while driving a motor vehicle. By late November 2015, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said that she and the ministers of Health and Public Safety were working on specifics as to the legislation. In April 2016, the Trudeau government announced that it would aim to introduce legislation to legalize cannabis in Spring 2017.

On December 5, 2015, after his appointment as prime minister, the new government’s democratic institutions minister, Maryam Monsef, with House leader Dominic LeBlanc, announced a major overhaul of the appointment process, as Trudeau had promised during the election campaign. The new system consists of five board members—three federal appointees and two from the relevant province—who will pick independent candidates, not officially affiliated with any political party, based on merit, a similar concept to the Advisory Committee on Vice-Regal Appointments.

During the 2015 election campaign, Trudeau pledged to study the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) before making a final decision on ratification. Trudeau said that Canadians should know what effects TPP would have on different industries, adding that he would hold an open and serious discussion with Canadians.

In October 2015, Trudeau stated that, once prime minister, he would end Canada’s airstrike mission against ISIL. In his mandate letter to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, he also called for increased focus on Canadian trainers for local troops and humanitarian aid for the region.

In November 2015, Trudeau was asked whether his plans to change Canada’s contribution to the fight against ISIL and to repeal parts of Bill C-51 would change following the terrorist attacks in Paris. Trudeau responded, “It’s too soon to jump to conclusions, but obviously governments have a responsibility to keep their citizens safe, while defending our rights and freedoms, and that balance is something the Canadian government, and indeed all governments around the world, will be focusing on.”

Trudeau has a bachelor of arts degree in literature from McGill University and a bachelor of education degree from the University of British Columbia. In his first year at McGill, Trudeau became acquainted with his future Principal Secretary Gerald Butts, through their mutual friend, Jonathan Ablett. Butts invited Trudeau to join the McGill Debating Union. They bonded while driving back to Montreal after a debate tournament at Princeton University in which the Princeton team included Ted Cruz, a U.S. Senator, who was a candidate for the U.S. Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016. After graduation, Trudeau stayed in Vancouver where he became a substitute teacher at local schools and worked permanently as a French and math teacher at the private West Point Grey Academy. He became a roommate at the Douglas Lodge with fellow West Point Grey Academy faculty member and friend Christopher Ingvaldson. From 2002 to 2004, he studied engineering at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, a part of the Université de Montréal. He started a master’s degree in environmental geography at McGill, but withdrew from the program to seek public office among other reasons.

During the election, the Liberal Party promised to run a deficit of around $10 billion per year, but Trudeau’s Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, announced in his first budget in March 2016 that the government would have a $29 billion deficit in 2016 and 2017.

In June 2016, Trudeau’s Liberals voted against a Conservative motion in Parliament to recognize ISIL’s atrocities as genocide; during a question period, Trudeau said that Canada “strongly condemns the atrocities committed by” ISIL but voted against the resolution because “We do not feel that politicians should be weighing in on this first and foremost. Determinations of genocide need to be made in an objective, responsible way. That is exactly what we have formally requested the international authorities weigh in on.” Following the issuance of a report by a United Nations inquiry formally concluding that ISIL was perpetrating a genocide of Yazidis, Trudeau’s government recognized the genocide.

Since being elected as a member of Parliament and later as prime minister, Trudeau has been the target of increasingly hostile and even violent rhetoric, primarily on social media. Authorities have responded to a number of security incidents and made arrests of several individuals who have made credible threats to his life. According to journalist Brian Busby, “the first call to kill Justin Trudeau came on October 23, four days after the 2015 election.” In January 2016, a 57-year-old Ontario man was charged for allegedly threatening to kill Trudeau, his family and female MPs while aboard a VIA Rail train headed to Toronto. In August 2016, a 41-year-old man from Saskatchewan was charged with uttering threats to Trudeau on Facebook, and in May 2017, another Saskatchewan man, aged 34, faced charges in connection to a separate incident of threatening Trudeau’s life. In January 2018, a 52-year-old man from Medicine Hat, Alberta pleaded guilty to making threats against Trudeau and other public officials, while another man from Alberta faced charges that same month for threatening to kill Trudeau and then-Alberta premier Rachel Notley. In February of that year charges of uttering threats were laid for a 41-year-old man from Edmonton, Alberta, while in June, a 60-year-old man from Leamington, Ontario faced charges for contacting Trudeau’s office by phone and threatening “to use an AK-47 on the prime minister” before referencing the 2014 shootings on Parliament Hill. Trudeau’s wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau was also the target of threats in May 2017 by a woman from Lethbridge, Alberta, who was placed under a restraining order, barred from attending political events, and prohibited from coming within a 100-metre radius of Grégoire Trudeau.

In January 2017, Canada’s Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, began an investigation into Trudeau for a vacation he and his family took to Aga Khan IV’s private island in the Bahamas. The Ethics Commissioner’s report, released in December 2017, found that Trudeau had violated four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act. He became the first sitting prime minister to break federal conflict of interest rules.

On February 1, 2017, the newly appointed Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould announced that the government had abandoned the electoral reform project and it was no longer a priority in her mandate letter from Trudeau. In the letter, Trudeau wrote that “a clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged” and that “without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest”.

On February 10, 2017, at a townhall in Yellowknife, Trudeau admitted he had “turned his back” on the promise to reform the electoral system.

In 2017, the Liberal government announced Canada will welcome nearly one million immigrants over the next three years. The number of migrants will climb to 310,000 in 2018, up from 300,000 in 2017. That number will rise to 330,000 in 2019 then 340,000 in 2020.

In 2017, Trudeau criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order banning refugees from seven countries, six of which have Muslim majorities, from entering the United States. On social media, Trudeau displayed support for affected refugees.

In February 2018, Trudeau was criticized when his administration invited Khalistani nationalist Jaspal Atwal to the Canadian High Commission’s dinner party in Delhi. Atwal had previously been convicted for the shooting and attempted murder of Indian Cabinet Minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu in 1986, as well as the assault on former B.C. Premier Ujjal Dosanjh in 1985. Following the dinner, the PMO rescinded the invitation, and apologized for the incident.

The legislation to legalize cannabis for recreational use (Cannabis Act, Bill C-45) was passed by the House of Commons of Canada in late November 2017; it passed second reading in the Senate of Canada on March 22, 2018. On June 18, 2018, the House passed the bill with most, but not all, of the Senate’s amendments. The Senate accepted this version of the Act the following day. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the next day that recreational use of cannabis would no longer violate criminal law as of October 17, 2018. As of October 17, 2018, cannabis is legal in Canada for both recreational and medicinal use.

After the United States withdrew from the TPP, Canada joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which incorporates most of the provisions of the TPP and which entered into force on December 30, 2018.

In January 2018, in a speech at the World Economic Forum, Trudeau called for critical discussion on issues brought up by the Me Too movement. Trudeau has also advocated a high standard and holds a “zero tolerance for sexual assault, harassment or other forms of misconduct by his employees or caucus colleagues”. As the leader of the Liberal Party, Trudeau initiated investigations on several Members of Parliament resulting in the dismissal of cabinet minister Kent Hehr, the resignation of MP Darshan Kang, and the suspension and later expulsion of MPs Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti. In an interview, Trudeau explained that the zero tolerance standard applied to himself as well and stated, “I’ve been very, very careful all my life to be thoughtful, to be respectful of people’s space and people’s headspace as well.”

Trudeau supported the Harper-negotiated arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and Trudeau’s government approved export permits for the shipment of most of Canadian-made LAV III combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia under the deal, which is valued at $11.3 billion or $15 billion. Human rights and arms control groups have repeatedly called upon Trudeau to halt the deal in light of Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record and the humanitarian crisis associated with the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In October 2018, Trudeau condemned the killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, promised “consequences”; later that month, following Khashoggi’s killing and the continuation of the war in Yemen, Trudeau announced that his government was suspending the issuance of new arms export permits to Saudi Arabia pending a review.

In August 2018, Canada called for the immediate release of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and his sister Samar. In response to Canada’s criticism, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador, and froze trade with Canada. Trudeau said that Canada will “continue to speak clearly and firmly on issues of human rights at home and abroad wherever we see the need”.

In September 2018, as the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar became ethnic cleansing against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, Canada stripped Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary Canadian citizenship.

In July 2019, a group of 20 independent academics published an assessment on Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister, called Assessing Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Government: 353 Promises and a Mandate for Change. The assessment found that Trudeau’s Liberal government kept 92 per cent of pledges, a sum of complete and partial pledges. When calculating completed and realized pledges, they found Trudeau’s government kept 53.5 per cent of their campaign promises. Trudeau’s government, along with the “last Harper government had the highest rates of follow-through on their campaign promises of any Canadian government over the last 35 years,” according to the assessment.

On February 8, 2019, The Globe and Mail reported that sources close to the government said that the Prime Minister’s Office had allegedly attempted to influence Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould concerning an ongoing prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. When asked about the allegations, Trudeau said that the story in the Globe was false and that he had never “directed” Wilson-Raybould concerning the case. Wilson-Raybould did not comment on the matter, citing solicitor-client privilege. Soon after, Trudeau voluntarily waived privilege and cabinet confidences, permitting her to speak. On February 11, the Ethics Commissioner announced the opening of an investigation into the allegations. Trudeau said he “welcomed the investigation”. The Justice Committee of the House of Commons has conducted a series of hearings on the alleged interference. The investigation heard from several witnesses, including Jody Wilson-Raybould, who submitted as evidence a telephone call she secretly recorded between herself and Privy Council Clerk, Michael Wernick, which was subsequently released to the public. On the recording, Wernick is heard asking to understand why the “DPA route” is not being used, stating that people were “talking past each other”, and suggesting Trudeau obtain independent legal advice from former Supreme Court Justice Beverly McLachlin. Wilson-Raybould is heard suggesting that Trudeau would be “breaching a constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence”. On March 19, 2019, the Liberal committee members voted as a bloc to shut down the Justice Committee’s investigation.

On September 11, 2019, Trudeau visited the Governor General, Julie Payette, to request the dissolution of Parliament (the act which launches an election). Prior to the formal start of the election, Trudeau announced his intention to only participate in the three leaders’ debates, two organized by the Leaders’ Debates Commission, and one organized by TVA. The Citytv/Maclean’s debate was held on September 12, with an empty podium left on stage for Trudeau. The Munk Debate on foreign policy was originally scheduled on October 1, although its organizers cancelled the event as a result of Trudeau’s decision to not attend.

In September 2019, controversial pictures and video were published showing Trudeau in brownface and blackface. On September 18, 2019, Time magazine published a photograph of Trudeau wearing brownface makeup in the spring of 2001, at an Arabian Nights-themed gala, while Trudeau was a teacher at West Point Grey Academy. Trudeau publicly apologized, agreeing the photo was racist and saying: “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have known better and I didn’t. I’m really sorry.” He further went on to say “It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time, but now I recognize it was something racist to do”. Trudeau also admitted to wearing blackface makeup in high school while singing “Day-O” at a talent show that was subsequently published by Global News. A third instance, a video, of Trudeau in racist dress was also published. After this video was published, Trudeau admitted he could not remember how often he had worn blackface makeup.

Trudeau’s Liberal Party won the most seats in the 2019 federal election, but the Party lost 20 seats in the House of Commons (lowering its total from 177 to 157) from the time of dissolution. Nevertheless, the Liberals won enough seats to allow Trudeau to form a minority government. For the first time since 1979, the party that garnered a large share of the national popular vote did not win the most seats—Trudeau had 33.1 per cent of the popular vote, while conservative leader Andrew Scheer had 34.4 per cent. It was also the first time a government took power with less than 35 per cent of the national popular vote since John A. Macdonald, in 1867, who had 34.8 per cent of the votes. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Liberal party won 14 per cent and 10 per cent of the popular vote, respectively. In Ontario, Liberals won all 25 Toronto seats and 24 of 29 seats in the surrounding suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area—reportedly due in part to the unpopularity of the Ontario Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford.

On February 20 and 21, 2019, a controversial event was held on Parliament Hill known as the “United We Roll” truck convoy, at which several members of the far-right yellow vests movement shouted slogans and carried signs calling for Trudeau to be hanged for “treason”. Prominent political officials were criticized by anti-racism activists and fellow members of Parliament for attending the event, which was seen as lending the group legitimacy in the eyes of the government. On the second day of the two-day rally, Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick, in his testimony regarding the SNC-Lavalin affair, raised concern over the increasing calls to violence against public officials and the prime minister in particular, telling the House of Commons Justice Committee that “I worry about the rising tide of incitements to violence, when people use terms like ‘treason’ and ‘traitor’ in open discourse. Those are the words that lead to assassination. I’m worried that someone is going to be shot in this country this year during the political campaign.” Later that month, a 52-year-old man from Nipawin, Saskatchewan was charged with threatening to shoot Trudeau and blow up the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. In May 2019, a man with connections to the yellow vests movement was arrested for making threats against Trudeau at a fundraising event in Mississauga, Ontario. Protesters there accused Trudeau of advancing “global communism” and again condemned him as a “traitor.”

In October 2019, during the federal election campaign, a rally in Mississauga, Ontario was delayed for 45 minutes while police fitted Trudeau with a bulletproof vest after becoming aware of an unspecified potential threat. In December 2019, two men from Quebec with links to a white nationalist group known as the Storm Alliance were arrested for alleged threats to the prime minister and to Muslim Canadians. It was not immediately clear as to whether the arrests of the two men were in connection with the security threat during the campaign. In July 2020, one of the men faced additional charges of intimidating a justice system participant and inciting genocide, after the RCMP revealed that he had made more than 100 social media posts under various pseudonyms containing hate, threats, or incitement to violence. In a statement, RCMP Corporal Charles Poirier confirmed that the justice system participant the man was accused of intimidating was Prime Minister Trudeau.

In June 2020, Canada lost a vote on temporary membership of the United Nations Security Council. Trudeau was criticized for having an unclear message on the world stage. Meanwhile, opposition leader Andrew Scheer criticized the campaign as “another foreign affairs failure for Justin Trudeau,” accusing him of “[selling] out Canada’s principles for a personal vanity project. Former U.N. ambassador under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Stephen Lewis, pointed to public controversies affecting the Trudeau “brand” as having played a role in the results, such as the prime minister’s much-talked-about trip to India in 2018 and photos of the prime minister in blackface that were revealed during the 2019 federal election campaign. However, Bessma Momani, an international affairs expert at the University of Waterloo, said it is not fair to see the loss as an indictment of Trudeau’s global popularity. Chris Westdal, a former Canadian diplomat who had headed missions in Moscow and Geneva, also dismissed criticisms of Trudeau’s image as having an effect on Canada’s standing internationally, writing in an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen that “Though his critics wouldn’t have you believe it, our prime minister is known and respected in the world for more than colourful socks and zany costumes.”

Other observers and commentators, including Adam Chapnick, author of Canada on the United Nations Security Council: A Small Power on a Large Stage, and Thomas Juneau, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, did not even mention Trudeau’s personal “brand” as a factor in their respective analyses, but have highlighted more complex factors they felt were more likely to have affected the outcome of the bid, and Canada’s international outlook more generally. Among these were the late start to Canada’s campaign (roughly a decade after competitors Ireland and Norway); a structural decline in Canadian foreign policy that predated and continued into Trudeau’s premiership, including Trudeau’s government requiring considerable time and resources to deal with Donald Trump’s administration and rivalries with such countries as China, India, and Saudi Arabia; internal friction between the prime minister and former Liberal Party leader turned U.N. ambassador Stéphane Dion; and even flaws within the selection process and the UNSC apparatus itself, including the veto power of its permanent membership leading to a “perpetual stalemate” and the ultra-competitiveness of Canada being clustered with European countries, which tend to vote as a bloc, an element of the campaign that Trudeau had also found fault with. In a press conference on 17 June 2020, the day the vote was to be held, Trudeau stated, “I have nothing but respect for our two competitors, Ireland and Norway, that have demonstrated an engagement in the world. It is unfortunate that we’re in a situation of having to compete against friends for this.”

Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. His government’s response to the Pandemic included funds for provinces and territories to adapt to the new situation, funds for coronavirus research, travel restrictions, screening of international flights, self-insolation orders under the Quarantine Act, an industrial strategy, and a public health awareness campaign. To deal with the economic impact of the pandemic, Trudeau waved student loans payments, increased the Canada Child Benefit, doubled the annual Goods and Services Tax payment, and introduced the Canada Emergency Response Benefit as part of the first package in March. In April 2020, Trudeau introduced the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, the Canada Emergency Business Account, and the Canada Emergency Student Benefit. On April 30, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux issued a report projecting the federal deficit for the fiscal year 2020 could be in excess of $252 billion, based on nearly $146 billion in spending on federal aid measures. Trudeau also deployed the Canadian armed forces in long-term care homes for contingency planning in Quebec and Ontario as part of Operation LASER.

Following complaints by opposition parties that the Trudeau family had ties to WE Charity, the Ethics Commissioner on July 3, 2020 announced an investigation into Trudeau’s and the government’s decision to have the charity administer a summer, student-grant program which could assist students financially during the COVID-19 epidemic. Trudeau responded by saying WE was the charity that had the capability to administer such a program. WE and the federal government decided to “part ways” leaving administration of the grant program to the federal government.

We Charity was criticized for its close ties to the Trudeau family; the investigation came after revelations that Trudeau’s mother, brother, and wife all were paid nearly $300,000 to speak at WE Charity events. On July 16, 2020, the ethics commissioner also announced the investigation was being expanded to include Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

On July 2, 2020, one day after another far-right protest took place on Canada Day on the grounds of Parliament Hill, a Canadian Army Reservist from Manitoba rammed through the gates of Rideau Hall with his pick-up truck, and lurked on the grounds of the property where Trudeau and Governor-General Julie Payette have their respective residences. Neither Trudeau, his family, nor Payette were at home or on the grounds at the time. After a nearly two-hour deescalation process, the man was taken into custody by RCMP officers working security for the estate. Though RCMP sources initially claimed that the man just wanted to “chat” with Trudeau, he eventually was served with 22 criminal charges, 21 of them firearms-related and one charge of uttering threats to the prime minister. He had four weapons on his person during the standoff, including one that had been banned by an order-in-council following the May 2020 massacre in Nova Scotia. Though initial media reports downplayed the severity of the attack, further details revealed that he had carried a note with him, and that his social media history indicated possible radicalization by far-right Internet outlets and conspiracy theories, including the QAnon phenomenon. In addition to a litany of personal struggles, the note contained accusations that Trudeau was “turning [Canada] into a communist dictatorship” and avoiding accountability by shuttering Parliament during the COVID-19 pandemic and issuing lockdown orders, which were in the interest of public health.

On March 12, 2020 the Trudeau family self-isolated at their Rideau home in Ottawa after his wife began exhibiting flu-like symptoms and later tested positive for COVID-19. By March 28, she had recovered.