The imagined bucket list for Trudeau’s last weeks as prime minister

"Tell Singapore that their caning policy is racist. Make French gender-neutral. Take down Chris Hadfield"

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Published Jan 11, 2025  •  Last updated 6 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

What if Justin Trudeau put "scorched earth with Trump" on his bucket list? Donald Trump and Trudeau meet in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 13, 2017. Photo by Saul Loeb /Getty

After proroguing Parliament for two months, one of the first actions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to jet to the United States for a sit-down interview with CNN. This is after cancelling a host of scheduled year-end interviews with Canadian media, and refusing to conduct so much as a press scrum since mid-December.

But this is probably what the next three months is going to look like. As prime minister, Trudeau has never deviated all that much from doing and saying whatever he felt like, and that tendency is probably going to get more overt now that he’s a lame duck.

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This is where we usually put Dear Diary, the National Post’s satirical re-imagining of a week in the life of a newsmaker. Instead, here is Justin Trudeau’s imagined checklist of how he intends to spend the final weeks of his tenure.

Appear in a Broadway musical

Here’s your New York Times headline: “Trudeau becomes first sitting world leader to appear in a Broadway musical.” It needn’t be anything too glamorous; I’ll take a walk-on role in Hamilton as an anti-slavery activist from British North America.

End the War in Ukraine

It came to me in a dream. Fly unannounced to Moscow and walk the 30 minutes from the Canadian Embassy to Red Square accompanied only by my son Hadrien and a sign reading “peace.” In front of the Kremlin, I raise a bullhorn and deliver a speech — in Russian — about the brotherhood between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, and the need for a return to the rules-based international order. Cheers. Exuberant cries of “Trudeau khuylo! Trudeau khuylo!” When they offer me the Nobel Peace Prize, I insist that be given instead to “the brave people of Ukraine.”

Alienate one more South Asian country

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India wasn’t my fault; anybody in my position would have taken the chance to publicly accuse New Delhi of being a criminal gangster state. Anyway, I propose we tell Singapore that their caning policy is racist.

Fill Vimy Ridge with asylum seekers

I fear Europe is going down a dark, nativist road, and abandoning the openness to newcomers that the continent has embraced in prior decades. But Canada can help steer them from this course. The grounds around Vimy Ridge remain sovereign Canadian territory, and can serve as sanctuary for asylum seekers denied succour by European nations.

Destroy Chrystia

This one’s easy. Start a rumour around Ottawa that she’s actually much more clever than she seems when Big Bad Justin Trudeau isn’t keeping her on a leash anymore. Sit back and watch as they discover it’s not true.

Scorched earth with Trump

I tried to be nice. I even went down to his Florida resort and laughed at his annexation jokes. But it’s too late for that now. Let’s see him squirm when we blast him with retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made solar panels and whey protein.

Apologies, apologies, apologies

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Nobody’s ever officially apologized for Canada’s participation in the Boer War, or that time Lester Pearson used the term “retarded pygmies” in a speech. I could apologize again for Canada turning away Jewish refugees in 1938 — but this time I could use it to denounce Netanyahu as a baby-killer.

Pardon everything

The Canadian prime minister isn’t really supposed to do this, but I figure the Governor General wouldn’t look too closely at any pardon requests before signing them. Poilievre has made clear his intention to pursue a Trump-style police state in which no Liberal would be safe from politicized prosecution. And thus it would merely be a defensive act to issue pardons for my entire caucus for any potential unlawful actions between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 2030. The entire caucus except Chrystia, that is.

Make French gender-neutral

We’ve removed the archaic gender binary from the national anthem and stripped it from federal documents. It’s time someone had the political courage to tell Quebec that assigning gender to things like food and furniture is wrong. Instead of “le” or “la,” Canadian French must now say “lx.”

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$30 billion for the climate or whatever

$40 billion if George Clooney agrees to show up to the announcement and call it a “perfect storm” of good leadership.

Drag one more respected retiree down with me

David Johnston may never escape the spectre of being “the foreign interference guy,” which I’d argue is still a far better fate than being a Harper-appointed Governor General. And let’s see how many book forewords Mark Carney is asked to write once he pulls a full Michael Ignatieff. But I still feel there’s one more respected retiree whose eulogy should rightly begin with their association to me. Let’s see if we can take down Chris Hadfield.

Tell Newfoundland what I really think of them

I actually don’t mind Alberta, but I regret every second I had to spend in the presence of those inhuman cod-murdering, bologna-eating ghouls.

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