Trudeau has ‘overestimated Canada’s impact abroad’: former minister

Former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau says Canada has lost its standing in the world under the tenure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he criticizes as an ill-prepared leader who prioritizes politics and makes big pronouncements without any follow-through.

“I believe Justin Trudeau has overestimated Canada’s impact abroad,” Garneau writes in his autobiography, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream,” which is scheduled to be released in October by Signal, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

While much of the book is a trip down memory lane for Garneau’s pre-politics career in the military and as an astronaut, the final third is devoted to his time as a member of Parliament.

Garneau, now 75, was first elected in 2008 as the Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville Marie, a riding that later became Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount after boundary changes in 2015.

He staged an unsuccessful run for the party leadership in 2013, ultimately withdrawing from the race and backing Trudeau, who would go on to win in a landslide victory.

After the Liberals came to power in 2015, Garneau served in Trudeau’s cabinet for six years, more than five of those as the minister of transport. He spent the final nine months as the minister of foreign affairs, until Trudeau dropped him from cabinet completely after the 2021 election.

In his book, Garneau acknowledges being “blindsided” by that decision — one he says Trudeau never explained.

He writes that Trudeau did offer him the ambassadorship to France during a phone call about the decision, but Garneau said no. He said he would prefer to be an ambassador in Washington, D.C. Trudeau thought about that and ultimately said no.

Garneau