Why They All Resigned | Celina Caesar-Chavannes

Okay, let's walk through that. Let’s go back to 2015. Justin Trudeau was invited by the mavens of the Liberal Party at the end of the—correct me if I've got any of this wrong, by the way—at the end of the Harper term. Harper had been running the country for a substantial period of time, and it's pretty typical for Canadians to throw out whoever's in charge on about a 10-year basis. So many Canadians felt that it was time for change.

The Liberal Party was in some degree of disarray, and the powers that be went to Justin Trudeau. I had some real trouble with that right at the beginning, and I’d kind of like your opinion about that. I’m not a fan of Mr. Trudeau, and so I may have a very biased perspective. But I'd like to at least be accurate in my suppositions. My sense was that he had no right to put himself forward in a fundamental ethical sense. He had no right. He did as a Canadian, obviously, because the only thing that Justin had going for him, apart from his attractiveness and his charm—which are both obvious, I would say—he had an extremely famous name.

But I didn’t think that he had the experience or the education to dare to take on a role like that. And then I was thinking, well, that's a bit harsh, because the Liberals did want someone who had name brand recognition, and fair enough. He could have come to office and surrounded himself with real experts and learned like mad carefully, and perhaps had he had the ability, he could have become a stellar leader over some period of time, although I didn’t see much evidence of that either.

Then he came out with this "sunny ways" campaign. I think that really did capitalize on his charm very effectively. There was an optimistic mood in Canada at that point with regard to the possibilities of new leadership. So you were also swept up, and that was reminiscent to me. I was quite young when his father first came to power, but there was a wave of Trudo-mania across the country because Pierre Trudeau Sr. obviously was very charismatic and had that celebrity-like effect on the Canadian public that his son did.

Okay, so now that's 2015, and Trudeau comes to power. Everybody's looking forward to having that happen. That's when you became parliamentary secretary. Now you had, let's say, a detailed plan for something that was quite practical and quite novel on the neuroscience side, let's say. You produced a plan and you put it forward to Jerry Butts and you mentioned someone else at that point, Katie Telford, right? As far as you could tell, that was rejected out of hand. You don't believe, perhaps, that it even got to Trudeau's desk. Although you were parliamentary secretary, you didn't have a close relationship with him. Apparently, you weren't even in a position to ask him whether or not he had seen this plan that you had spent some time detailing.

Now, I think it would be useful to outline for us what the role of a parliamentary secretary is and what it was that you expected that didn't happen, and whether or not your expectations were actually realistic. Like, and you said you were disinclined to complain, and you laid out the reasons for that. So what's typical, as far as you understand, for how the relations between a prime minister and his parliamentary secretary are generally managed, and what is that role generally?

So typically what happens—and you could check the record because I attempt not to say things that don't have receipts—is that a parliamentary secretary, especially to the prime minister, has sworn into the Privy Council and has access to a breadth and depth of information that allows them to carry out their duty in a way that is fundamental to being able to have these meetings with individuals that are on high level or high level securities.

Although I had the security screenings from CRA, RCMP, and CIS, that was all done, but I wasn't able to have those meetings. Now, when I looked at other relationships, with the finance minister Bill Morneau and François-Philippe Champagne, who was his parliamentary secretary, they were very close. They were constantly having conversations, constantly involved in policy development, constantly involved in stakeholder engagement and relationships. There is no gap between what that minister is doing and what that parliamentary secretary is doing.

There has to be a tight relationship, and as a first minister, as prime minister, with the parliamentary secretary, there has to be an even tighter gap. Because if there's any kind of ripple or spaces in between the other ministries, we need to be aware of that. We need to run a tight ship; we have a lot to do on the agenda. So making sure that you have someone that's not only competent but has their ears to the ground—they know what is happening—is what I thought would be the relationship that I had.

I would say that maybe—I don't want to mislead anyone—maybe it was my fault that that relationship didn't go as well. The first meeting that I had with the prime minister was in December of 2015. And of course, everybody remembers that during that first administration, he had a 50/50 cabinet, and he came out and said: “You know, this is the cabinet because it's 2015, not because the people had merit, not because I have an excellent lineup. He said it's because it's 2015.” It was very disenfranchising, and I think it was very much flippant for someone who was a leader of a G7 country to just say, “because it's 2015.”

Okay, let me dive into that for a sec, if you don't mind. Because that also struck me. That struck me really hard! You know, I spent a lot of time assessing the research literature on hiring and determining how you do that. If you hire purely on merit, let's say—and merit is defined in relationship to the evidence you have that the people you're attempting to hire actually have the ability to do what that specific job requires—there are various ways of determining that merit.

You do a job analysis to find out what the job actually entails and then you go through the person's history to see if they have the experience and the raw ability. Okay, so now when Trudeau announced that 50/50 cabinet because it was 2015, I thought something quite similar to what you thought. I thought, first, hey, that's pretty damn flippant! And I thought second, you've done something there that's really not good because only 25% of the members of the House of Commons were female. That means you've reduced your applicant pool a priority by half.

There’s no way that you pulled the most, statistically speaking—purely—there’s no possible way that you screened and pulled in the most qualified people into your cabinet. And you did that for show! If you cut your applicant pool by half on arbitrary grounds, there might be other reasons to select people. But you had reasons as well; they may not have been the—you had reasons for being irritated by that.

So delve more for me, if you would, into why it put your teeth on edge. Certainly! And I won’t speak to the skills of the individuals; I think he had a very competent cabinet around him. The thing that really struck me with the “because it was 2015” is because it was so flippant. It made it seem like it was arbitrary, and it made it seem, as you said, for show. So I went into that meeting saying to him that look, I understand what my role is here. I understand I'm the only one that looks like me, but what I said—and I quote—is, “If I'm here to fill any gender or racial gap within your cabinet, I don't want this role.”

Yeah, I’m not that dangerous! That is absolutely one of the dangers of gender and ethnic selection, let's say. I saw this at the universities all the time. I think it's a terrible thing to have happen around people who are from a minority background who are truly qualified because it's hard on them. They don't know why they're selected, and it's hard on everybody else because they don't know why they're selected.

And so that's not fun! It’s not fun, and putting that forward right at the beginning, I wanted to put him on notice that I am smart; I’m more than capable! So use me for a particular role that you might have within this position as parliamentary secretary, but don’t for a second think that I would be a token throughout your entire administration. That was the notice that I was putting him under with those words.

After I said that, he said, “You know what, Selena, do you trust my judgment?” Dude, I met you like five minutes ago! So I said, “No, I don’t trust your judgment. I have no reason to. I’ve been married to my partner for 17 years; I hardly trust his judgment most days.” I mean, I have to build a relationship with someone! I’m not going to lie to you and say that I trust your judgment. I realized at that moment that the tension in the room got a little awkward.

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Okay, let's take that apart because—okay, so you take that apart. I’m doing my work on this. Well, for sure! So look, you had some reason to be apprehensive. Two reasons, right? The first reason you outlined is because of the statements that Trudeau made about the composition of his cabinet and how he made that, and then, second, because you were the only black woman in the entire House of Commons.

So the combination of those two things made it reasonable for you to wonder just what was going on and to make a statement. Now, if I was going to play the devil's advocate, I’d say, you know, maybe—and I’m not saying that this is right, but I really do want to go into this, so I want to do it in the most harshest way possible so we get it straight—you might say—and I think you kind of alluded to this, given that you said that perhaps you put your foot forward wrong in the first meeting—you might say if you were thinking about it strategically, you would have had a calm and somewhat contentless first meeting and just got to know each other a little bit before you put your foot down, so to speak, about the role you were going to play.

But maybe not too. Maybe the right thing to do was to make your case right off the bat. There’s no way I can tell, but you said that you were inclined to do that. Then you said that when you did it, the atmosphere in the room wasn’t perhaps what you might have hoped for. So tell me what you saw. He asked you to trust him, which is also—that's something you remember, and it is an event worthy of note because the question is, what did he mean? Because you don't know him now.

Did he mean you should just trust him because he's just—and he's the Prime Minister of Canada? Or did he mean that you should start out by trusting someone if you’re employed by them in a new role? Like, I don’t know, what did you think? Yeah, you know what? I’m not even sure that question is warranted on the first day. Like, “Do you trust my judgment on the first day?” I mean, I know that your platform was built by a number of different people. It wasn’t just you.

Why are you asking that question, and why are you asking that question of me? Do you think we could work together? Do you think we could achieve the objectives of our platform? Do you think that we’re going to do right by Canadians with this particular mandate? Ask me those questions. I don’t really care about your particular mandate, and it really speaks to ego.

It really speaks to a particular sense of awareness—or lack thereof—that was pretty evident right from the beginning. If we think about this whole episode, me being in politics has driven me into the PhD work that I'm doing right now on motivated cognition and understanding what motivates people; their self-appraisal, their self-enhancement, their self-verification. It was really in that moment seeing that everything that needed to align for Justin Trudeau at that moment needed to feed into his feelings or his motivation on self—what he felt about himself.

I came in, and within that first 15 minutes of the meeting said, “No, I’m not just going to arbitrarily fall into what you deem to be your methodology around your self-enhancement.” That is not my role! My role is to represent the people of my area. My role is to make sure that we execute a mandate. I didn’t know that at the time, but it really spoke to the fact—I didn't know what I didn't know at the time—that probably that wasn't the best move to make.

Because I assumed that as his parliamentary secretary, as his right-hand person, he would have wanted someone who was going to be honest. And I don't think that's what he wanted. He wanted someone to confirm a bias that he felt about himself or a lack of self-esteem that he felt about himself by saying, “Yes, I trust your judgment, Justin.” I don’t know you, but I'm going to say yes. I could have played that game, but I didn't want to.