PHOTO: The many faces of our future prime minister
Justin Trudeau was across the border in Brampton today, but he was talking to Mississauga students, so I was up there to cover it.
After seeing him speak this morning, I like him much more than I did after the empty-though-charming speech he gave last month at Hammerson Hall for the Our Future Mississauga Speaker Series.
This morning, unlike earlier this month, Trudeau said things that were interesting.
In fact, not only were they interesting, they were revolutionary. It's sad that his words were revolutionary, because that simply means so many other political leaders in Canada aren't thinking.
These words should not be revolutionary: "We need to become the country we think of ourselves as."
Of course we do. We should become a peacekeeping nation helping around the world. We should become a generous country. We should become the country of sober second thought. We should become the environmentally-conscious country. We should be leaders, which is what the students Trudeau was speaking to were at the Leadership Now! conference to become. Canada needs to get back to being Canada. (NOTE: My speechwriting services are available to any politician willing to pay me more than I make here and give me season tickets to the Raptors.)
"We need to become the country we think of ourselves as."
Why opposition leaders haven't been saying that for the past 20 years, I'm not sure. Maybe the focus groups don't want Canada to be the country we think of ourselves as.
Maybe we Canadians don't want to be so Canadian anymore.
I don't think that's true, though. I think Trudeau's onto something, and, unless Dion is smart enough to pick up on the theme, Trudeau could ride that message as a slow wave to the top.
He also said that Canada should work to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals set out by former Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson.
The main goal was to spend 0.7 per cent of the GDP on foreign aid. All rich countries were meant to reach for that.
Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have met the goal.
Canada, which was up to 0.53 per cent of GDP in 1975, now gives a whopping 0.28 per cent of our GDP to countries in need.
"It sounds like an easy thing, something that's ripe to reach, but we're nowhere near it," said Trudeau. "If we increased our aid 10 per cent every year, we'd be there in eight to 10 years."
Turns out this guy in the velvet jacket might be onto something after all.