Justin Trudeau’s honeymoon can’t last forever. Canada’s dreamy prime minister has some tough legislative battles coming up; some supporters are starting to grumble that, one year into his term, there’s more style than substance when it comes to his new policies on refugees and indigenous affairs, to name a few; and Trudeau arrived in New York for the U.N. General Assembly amid a bit of controversy over a plan to deploy Canadian peacekeepers to a yet-to-be-named sub-Saharan country.
But in his first address to the General Assembly, switching fluidly back and forth from English to French, Trudeau brought the smug sunshine. Here are the Trudeau-iest moments.
On what he learned from campaigning in Canada:
If you want the real stories, you have to go where people live. Coffee shops and church basements, mosques and synagogues, farmers markets, public parks. It was in places like that that I got the best sense of what Canadians are thinking and how they are doing. And through the politeness, because we Canadians are always polite, I learnt a few things.
On what the world should learn from Canada:
We need to create economic growth that is broadly shared, because a fair and successful world is a peaceful one. We need to focus on what brings us together, not what divides us.
On what Canada did right:
In Canada, we got a very important thing right. Not perfect, but right. In Canada, we see diversity as a source of strength not weakness. Our country is strong not in spite of our differences, but because of them.
On what Canada did very, very wrong:
And make no mistake, we’ve had failures. From the internment of Ukrainian, Italian, and Japanese Canadians during the World Wars, to our turning away of boats of Jewish and Punjabi refugees, to the shamefully continuing marginalization of indigenous peoples. What matters is that we learn from our mistakes and commit ourselves to doing better.
On what new arrivals find in Canada:
From the moment they arrive, those 31,000 refugees were welcomed not as burdens but as neighbors and friends, as new Canadians.
On people who are not from Canada, but are still good people:
Our citizens—the nearly 7½ billion people we serve—are better than the cynics and pessimists think they are.
On what the world can expect from Canada:
Listen, Canada is a modest country. We know we can’t solve these problems alone. We know we need to do this all together. We know it will be hard work. But we’re Canadian and we’re here to help.
