Trudeau in trouble: a sunny leader in stormy times
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Anne McElvoy, filling in for Jason Palmer. |
| 0:11.8 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.3 | Free money for all. Sounds enticing, but how is the idea of universal basic income intended to protect the poor and marginalised in society working out in practice? |
| 0:28.6 | And some jaunty new looks for beards in a remote part of Pakistan. Our Asia editor will be letting us in on a new trend. First up, though. |
| 0:49.3 | Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has long been a pin-up for liberals around the world, |
| 0:55.6 | but now he's facing calls within his own country to resign. |
| 0:59.5 | Justin Trudeau simply cannot continue to govern this country now that Canadians know what he has done. |
| 1:07.1 | Critics of Mr Trudeau, like opposition leader Andrew Shear, argue he's guilty of political meddling |
| 1:13.6 | to protect a big construction company named SNC Lavelland from prosecution. |
| 1:18.6 | Today, a former aide is expected to testify against Mr Trudeau in the Parliamentary Justice Committee. |
| 1:24.6 | It's absolutely the biggest crisis that the Trudeau government has faced. |
| 1:28.6 | Madeline Rowan is our Canada correspondent based out of Ottawa. |
| 1:32.4 | And the timing is terrible because there's an election coming up in October |
| 1:37.8 | and it doesn't give the government very much time to turn the page on this. Madeline, there are lots of moving parts in this scandal, |
| 1:47.2 | but how did it start? S&C Labelan is a big construction company that has operations all over the world, |
| 1:54.9 | and it has been charged with paying bribes to officials in the Libyan government in order to get construction |
| 2:02.4 | contracts there. |
| 2:04.0 | And how did that turn into a controversy that's pulled in the Prime Minister? |
| 2:07.7 | Well, the first indication that Canadians got that something was a little bit odd was when |
| 2:13.3 | Justin Trudeau demoted his Minister of Justice and Attorney General in January. There was no good |
| 2:22.2 | explanation given for this demotion, and people thought it was a little bit odd. And then |
| 2:27.6 | journalists started sniffing around, and there was a fairly explosive news report that came out |
... |
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