Angry in the Great White North

This is one of those posts that points out odd connections that could just be coincidence, or not. You decide.

Justin Trudeau, son of the former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, is running for the Liberal Party in Quebec. But his lineage is what gives him all the press. Even though his statements have suggested that at 35, he's not quite sufficiently mature politically for public office, if he stays quiet, he could be quite useful to other people who need to stay in the shadows.

Consider Justin Trudeau's "contribution" to the Liberal Party on "youth issues":

Yes, he's been a teacher, but so have hundreds of thousands of other Canadians. And, yes, he's sat on the board of the youth volunteer organization Katimavik, but he clearly got the job through family and political connections. Yes, he's working on a master's degree in environmental geography at McGill University, but being a 35-year-old grad student isn't exactly an accomplishment to write home about. And, yes, he hosted last year's televised Giller Prize award ceremony to honour the country's literary set, but he's never written a book, let alone a major policy paper.

In other words, he's a lightweight, but at least a well-known and apparently youthful one. "He's not taken very seriously," political commentator and recently retired Liberal MP Jean Lapierre said upon learning of Trudeau's decision to try to run for office. "So he will have to show that he has something in his belly. We don't know that yet." Lapierre also revealed that Trudeau wasn't even a member of the Liberal party until last fall. "I sold him his first membership card about four months ago," Lapierre said, "so he never really cared about the party before." Ouch.

Nevertheless, that Justin Trudeau is a Peter Pan-ish 35 going on 25 may explain why the Liberals chose him to head their youth task force last year, even though he was nine years older than the official age limit of 25 for membership in the Young Liberals of Canada. That youth task force is as good a place as any to begin considering the young Trudeau's record, which in recent years seems to have been designed to give him maximum possible publicity with the minimum of actual accomplishment.

Now here's the thing. He didn't write that report:

The Task Force on Youth and Civil Engagement was one of several such study groups the Liberal party established in an attempt to "renew" itself, following its defeat by the Conservatives in January 2006. Two things are immediately evident about the task force's interim report, made public late last year. First, despite his name being on its cover page, Trudeau was not actually its primary author; a reader has to turn to the inside to discover the report's "lead writers" were actually two other individuals, Chris Holcroft and Danielle Kotras. Exactly how much work Trudeau did on the report is unclear.

OK, so what? You'd be forgiven not to recognize the name Danielle Kotras. She's a major player in the Liberal Party -- formerly the Director of Public Affairs and Development and formerly the Women's Liberal Commission President for the Ontario branch of the Liberal Party. Not really a youth person (Chris Holcroft, on the other hand, is part of the Young Liberals of Canada) but more of a public affairs person.

Where is she now? Hard to say, but it would seem that she's been working for David Herle's Gandalf Group. I think this for two reasons. First, her name still appears on the domain registration information for gandalfgroup.ca:

Admin-Name: Danielle Kotras
Admin-Title:
Admin-Postal: Gandalf Group
55 Metcalfe Street, Suite 1460
Ottawa ON K1P6L5 Canada
Admin-Phone: 6132338080
Admin-Fax: 6132369546
Admin-Mailbox: dkotras@veraxis.ca
Tech-Name: Danielle Kotras

Second, the Gandalf Group is bidding on the Google search term "Danielle Kotras" in order to serve up a sponsored link to their website. You wouldn't normally do that for former employees unless they were particularly famous.

In case you need reminding, the Gandalf Group, formerly Veraxis Research and Communications, formerly Earnscliffe Research and Communication, is a polling and research firm with strong ties to the Liberal Party. David Herle runs Gandalf, and was the campaign chair for the Liberal Party for the 2006 election. The Liberals lost, and that in turn set in motion the Renewal Commissions, one of which generated this report ostensibly authored by Justin Trudeau.

But then it looks like the report was written in part by Danielle Kotras of the Gandalf Group. Indeed she was the lead writer. Certainly, the report required polling and interviewing that is the primary business of the Gandalf Group. Consider the second component of the reports findings based on meeting with young Canadians:

Second, the report is notable for its vacuous but still ominous findings: vacuous in that the paper's most important specific recommendation seems to be that Elections Canada "work with school boards across the country to hold comprehensive mock elections in high schools" to help young people understand the electoral process; ominous in that the paper declares that young Canadians with whom the task force met "want a return to activist government."

Return to an activist government? Return to a Liberal government, but in particular, a Liberal government of big top-down social programs, like universal childcare and Kyoto enforcement and so on.

Not so much a renewal as a rerun.

One might think that Justin Trudeau is the front man for some ex-Martinites hoping to rehabilitate themselves.

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