Justin Trudeau talks ‘unicorns and rainbows’ with Stephen Colbert — and offers a glimpse of what his re-election bid could look like

It’s always a cringey experience to see yourself as others see you.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was an unwelcome reminder of that.
But if you could look past the horrible Canadian clichés, the jokes about back bacon, our national politesse and the monarchy, there were little shiny nuggets of relevancy pointing to the arguments Trudeau will take into the next federal election campaign, whenever it comes.
Unfortunately for Liberals, it boils down to a more-of-the-same message: that governing is hard, that they feel the pain of Canadian voters, and that there’s too much to lose by handing power to another party.
“People are frustrated and the idea that maybe they want an election now is something that my opponents are trying to bank on,” he told the U.S. talk show host Monday night. “I’ve been here, and I’ve been steering us through all these things and people are sometimes looking for change.”
Trudeau is not going to simply hand it to those change-seekers. He’s ignored the many critics who’ve suggested he should step aside and make way for a replacement at the head of a Liberal party he led to power nine years ago.
But in this interview, at least, he struggled to give any new reason for why Canadians should give him a fourth consecutive term in office, a feat no prime minister has pulled off since Wilfrid Laurier, who governed from 1896 to 1911.
“The reality is I deeply believe in continuing to fight climate change, in continuing to invest in people, in continuing to support people,” he said. “And I’m going to keep fighting.”
You can argue that Trudeau’s choice to speak with an obviously charmed Colbert amounts to a slumping big-league batter playing a round of softball. Every politician tends to search for such outlets.
For Donald Trump, it’s Fox News sycophant Sean Hannity. Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper loved nothing more when he was in office than sharing his views on the National Hockey League with bemused sports reporters.
But Trudeau knows well enough that Colbert’s show runs at the same time on Canadian TV sets as American ones, and his message, coming on the eve of Wednesday’s Conservative confidence vote in the House of Commons, would have to play to both sides of the border.
Even with the election reprieve the Liberals have been offered by the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party, it’s hard to believe that what Trudeau offered to viewers was the best argument for staying the governing course that he could come up with.
He will have won some points for combating the clichés of Canada as an unspoiled land of “maple syrup and mountains,” and for pushing the (equally simplistic) notion of Canada as “the best country in the world.”
“Everyone focuses on the land, but really Canada is about the people,” he said, referring to the multicultural mix of languages and viewpoints and approaches to life.
He had a witty comeback when Colbert asked about irritants in the Canada-U. S. relationship. He brushed off the never-ending dispute over American tariffs on Canadian lumber but offered a solution to sky-high American medicine prices that have states importing prescription drugs from north of the border.
“We’re happy to try and help you out, but it would be really easier if you had universal health care,” he said.
It’s a play to that quintessentially Canadian complex that delights in hearing our big brothers to the south face such retorts.
And it seemed a safe bet that Colbert wouldn’t have had the time or the depth of research to follow up on other aspects of the Canadian health-care system, such as the hospital wait times crisis or the family doctor shortages.
After all, he still had to get to the next guest, groundbreaking drag queen and new author RuPaul.
The second segment of the Trudeau interview took up his reason for being in New York. The United Nations General Assembly, which sees leaders from around the world gather at the UN headquarters starting Tuesday for a week of speeches and high-level meetings.
The prime minister presented an image of Canada the earnest and trustworthy middle power, connected through the tapestry of our population to the world’s many far-flung troubles.
“We do feel connected so that things that happen on the other side of the ocean, we do feel a responsibility and a desire to help out,” he said. “And when Canadians show up, people are usually sure we’re not there to impose or conquer. We’re really there to help.”
This, too, is a notion that Canadians cling to, even if the country’s impact on the world stage at such a brutal and uncertain time as this seems to be a fair bit less than what it has historically been in moments of global unrest.
Trudeau noted that he had meetings in New York on the political and security situation in Haiti and with Malala Yousafzai on the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan.
And while Canada has nearly 2,000 troops deployed to Latvia to support NATO’s eastern European borders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada’s funding for NATO as a share of GDP was ranked was 27th out of 31 member states. Its spending on equipment ranked an even-more-distant 30th out of 31 countries.
These are clouds on the “sunny ways” philosophy Trudeau touted when his party came to power in 2015. He’s still striking an optimistic tone heading into a darkened domestic political horizon.
“You have to be fundamentally hopeful in this job and particularly in this time, when the challenges are monumental,” Trudeau said. “If you don’t believe that you can actually work with others and make a positive difference, you’re not in the right line of work.”
This particular cri de cœur seemed aimed less at his counterparts gathering at the UN than for Conservative party Leader Pierre Poilievre, as he plots an election that opinion polls show he is favoured to win.
Colbert, who referred to Poilievre as “Canada’s Trump” asked about the rise of extreme right-wing sentiment, xenophobia and fascism across the globe and “even in a country as polite as Canada.”
This was the only point in the interview at which the prime minister challenged the worn-out stereotype of Canada’s eternally “sorry” citizenry.
“We’re not some magical place of unicorns and rainbows all the time. We’ve got our fair share, but the things that we’ve managed to do, we’ve had to work really hard at,” he said.
Again, Trudeau mentioned universal health care. Again, he mentioned climate change. He touted the dental-care plan created at the insistence of the New Democratic Party in return for support in the House of Commons as well as the creation of a national $10-a-day child care program.
“These are things that we have to fight for and are really hard to do, but you can bring people together around thoughtful ideas and you can also lose those things, too,” he said.
It’s all true of course. All good things can slip away. All hard-fought battles can be lost. But if Trudeau’s Liberals truly want to reverse their electoral fate, they’ll need some new political arguments and ammunition.
This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the date of the non-confidence motion vote.