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PM shows discipline, leadership and restraint that isn't being matched south of the border

The art of leadership involves a steady hand through layer upon layer of challenge.
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The art of leadership involves a steady hand through layer upon layer of challenge.

Today Justin Trudeau has many layers on his hands: the pandemic, the social and economic health of the nation, the shoddy crisis management by our supposed ally to the south, the questionable conduct of the coronavirus’ originating country and the ankle-biting antics of the political opposition to get more airspace.

And now this.

It has been easy to discount Trudeau over the years and define him by his shortcomings, but the one thing he has trained himself to do is not blink when the worst is hitting him – as it has many times.

We saw it when dubious moments of his past were raised as the last election campaign started, we saw it in the shock of Humboldt’s horrific bus tragedy, we saw it when his government bought a pipeline to get it built and we even saw it when rail blockades dented the economy and questioned his commitment to reconciliation pre-COVID crisis.

He has a skill few of us possess in suppressing the first thing that comes to mind or the second thing that overwhelms it, to stop short of coming asunder in conditions that would rattle and jangle, and he is getting better at it each time.

He has had a disproportionate fill of challenges – some self-imposed, most just imposed – in less than a half-decade as prime minister, and the country’s worst mass shooting is an awful addition to the tally. But the call of duty to leadership is upon him more today than at any stage. He now must not only manage us through our ongoing anxieties and personal losses of the last weeks but into our beguilement and grief of the last hours that a crime like this could happen among us.

He will have to do so without the typical techniques of an empathic leader: the visit to the devastated scene, the physical and emotional participation in the community vigil, and the demonstrative reassurance to the country. The House of Commons is an effective chamber of expressing sorrow, but it is cavernous amid coronavirus. Here is another important ritual that COVID-19 will deny us, a process that will have to adapt to these larger circumstances. 

After the RCMP briefing on the Nova Scotian tragedy Sunday, I decided to take another peek at a Donald Trump briefing. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it certainly offered a feast of contrasts. 

The U.S. president actually read a paragraph aloud at the podium from a Wall Street Journal weekend piece that, if you read the whole piece, grudgingly accorded very mild praise. The publication, once a staunch supporter, has been anything but lately. 

He ran a clip of New York governor Andrew Cuomo thanking the federal government for medical assistance – even though Cuomo had the day before spent nine minutes essentially ripping him. 

He took a swab out of his inside suit pocket, opened it up, compared it to a Q-Tip, made some sort of flippant remark about it to his pandemic medical chief, Dr. Deborah Birx. 

This all on a day when one of his loyalists, British broadcaster Piers Morgan, decided enough was enough with the narcissism and called him out for “failing the American people.”

History has been unkind often to leaders who confronted challenges. In the thick of it, they grow; in the aftermath, they can recede. 

What we know today is our leaders on either side of the border are heading in very different directions, only one overseeing a country in disciplined restraint and able to lend its values to the unspeakable sorrow.

Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.