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Papineau Liberal MP Justin Trudeau took a well-aimed “shot” at former Bloc Québécois MP Vivian Barbot — his main rival in the upcoming federal election — during a nomination meeting held last weekend by the Papineau Liberal riding association. Trudeau defeated Barbot in the general election last October. He took back the seat Barbot had won in a historic victory for the Bloc in 2006, when she defeated former Liberal cabinet minister Pierre Pettigrew in this longtime Liberal bastion.
Gloves coming off?
Until recently, Trudeau had tended to be rather guarded in his language to the media when discussing Barbot, usually referring to her with terms suggesting she was a respected rival first and foremost. However, at last Sunday’s meeting held at Église St-Georges on Jean Talon Street, during which his nomination to run for the Liberals was confirmed, Trudeau took time, after talking about a number of other issues, to say this about Barbot.
“I’d just like to take a moment, although maybe I shouldn’t, to say that in all the meetings, all the festivals, all the evenings that I’ve participated in since being elected, I have to admit that of all the persons I’ve met, there’s one who I haven’t seen much, who I even haven’t yet seen in the riding. I’ve seen her several times in Ottawa, but I haven’t seen her in the riding. It’s not to say that she might be neglected in the upcoming elections, but Vivian Barbot since she is no longer our MP since last October 14, I remember it very well, she has been absent from the riding.
‘Let down’ by Barbot
“And this disappoints me a little bit, because this was a woman who had worked quite hard for the riding, and for her to let down the riding like this I find unfortunate. Because this riding deserves strong voices in Ottawa. And it deserves in the upcoming election some real debates on what is going on in the territory. And I want to bring what people are saying in this riding to the debates, to the preoccupations, to the media who are going to come to cover the election in Papineau.”
At nine square kilometres, Papineau covers the smallest area of any federal riding in Canada, although it is densely populated. According to the 2006 federal census, Papineau had the lowest average family income in Canada. Linguistically, 45 per cent of residents list French as their mother tongue, eight percent list English, but an astonishing 47 per cent list neither English nor French. The total immigrant population is 40 per cent.
Credits Deros
Since winning the 2008 election, Trudeau has devoted a lot of time and energy to building up a vast network of connections with the hundreds of community groups that exist in Papineau, using a consensus-building technique he has acknowledged learning by observing Park Extension city councillor Mary Deros. During his talk last Sunday, he named dozens of persons and organizations off the top of his head with whom he’s established a rapport locally.
Leading up to Pettigrew’s defeat, the Bloc had long harped on the perception of Papineau as a riding where prominent Liberal cabinet ministers like Guy Favreau and André Ouellet were usually the MPs, but where their attachment to the local community was typically seen as not very strong. Trudeau may be trying to reverse the impact of that legacy, while doing his best to make sure the Bloc doesn’t retake Papineau.
‘He’s learned,’ says Coderre
“What I love about Justin Trudeau is that he’s learned,” said Bourassa MP Denis Coderre, the Liberal Party’s lieutenant for Quebec, suggesting that Trudeau may have earned a lasting respect from senior officials in his party. Coderre referred to Trudeau as “someone who has done his homework. He’s someone who understood that the most important role for an MP, in government or in opposition, is first and foremost to be an MP. It’s someone who will be the go-between with groups and people. He didn’t have it easy but he won.”