DEC. 8, 2015

With support from President Obama and the legacy of his father on his side, Justin Trudeau sets out to redefine what it means to be Canadian.

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, six days after Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, was sworn in as prime minister of Canada, I was shown into his office on the third floor of the Parliament building in Ottawa. A dark oak-paneled room, it contained a jumble of outsize furniture chosen by the previous occupant, Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party was in power for a decade. The office had the air of a recently abandoned bunker — shelves bare, curtains drawn, personal effects hastily removed. Trudeau’s father, Pierre, occupied the same office for 16 years during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, and the new prime minister would shortly install his father’s old desk, a symbol of restoration but also an emphatic rejection of his predecessor. The squat, bulldoglike bureau left by the departing prime minister, Trudeau implied, was a reflection of Harper’s autocratic manner.

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In person, Trudeau was as upbeat and friendly — as nice — as might be expected of a politician with a campaign mantra of ‘‘Sunny Ways,’’ a reference to the optimistic adage of Wilfrid Laurier, a Liberal prime minister at the turn of the 20th century. Trudeau is 6-foot-2 and has an athletic build, his hair neatly trimmed after years experimenting with a variety of shaggy manes. There was little of the pomp of the powerful — just an aide named Tommy, who brought him half a tuna sandwich and a cup of chicken-noodle soup for lunch from the cafeteria downstairs. This was the first print interview Trudeau had granted since taking office, and in his presence there was a palpable sense that he was still figuring out exactly how to play this new role — how to talk, how to gesture, how to adopt the mien of a world leader. Despite his studied manner, he was prone to providing glimpses of his unguarded self.

‘‘It’s very, very cool to have the president call up, and I say, ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ I’ve never met him,’’ Trudeau said. He dropped his voice an octave to imitate President Obama: ‘‘Justin, I like to think of myself as a young politician. The gray hair caught up with me, and it’ll catch up with you. But calling me ‘Sir’ makes me feel old. Call me ‘Barack.’ ’’

Trudeau shook his head, amazed. ‘‘That’s going to take some getting used to.’’

One week later, a new geopolitical relationship between America and Canada would begin in a conference room in Manila at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting, when Trudeau and Obama sat down for the first time to talk. In an age of a rising China, Middle Eastern chaos and Russian belligerence, it may sound strange to say, but the United States has no relationship more important than the one with Canada. The country is one of America’s largest trading partners (on par with China), a peaceful neighbor and a crucial ally in global affairs — when the relationship is functional, as it hasn’t been in recent years. Harper’s hawkish foreign policy put him at odds with Obama on the Iran nuclear treaty, Israeli-Palestinian relations and Syrian refugees. In domestic affairs, Harper was strongly in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama resisted; the president killed the project two weeks after the Conservatives lost. The discord may largely have ended with Trudeau’s election, though Canada will be less likely to participate in airstrikes against ISIS in the Middle East.

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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/trudeaus-canada-again.html