How can Justin Trudeau’s public safety minister keep his job amid so much controversy? What you need to know about Marco Mendicino

OTTAWA-Liberal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino does not like to lose - or be thought of as a loser.

That much was clear when at the centre of jokes at a dinner last weekend about being shuffled out of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet, he mock-charged the stage to defend his honour.

That was even before this week's controversy over how the Liberals handled the transfer of murderer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security prison, including the fact Mendicino himself only found out after it happened.

Now what was said in jest at the dinner is being asked in all seriousness: can Mendicino keep his job?

The Bernardo boondoggle is only the latest political problem for the 49-year-old.

Since appointed public safety minister in 2021, he was forced to walk back efforts to legislate a sweeping gun ban, had holes poked in his justification for the use of the Emergencies Act and has become the target person over the government's muddled management of foreign interference.

Before that, he was immigration minister, handling the flow of people into Canada when borders around the world were slammed shut for the pandemic and then stuck in the quagmire of managing evacuations from Afghanistan.

It's been a rough ride and, noted more than one person in Ottawa this week, Trudeau himself so far has ducked questions about whether he has confidence in Mendicino staying on.

Then again, Mendicino became the MP for Eglinton-Lawrence without Trudeau's explicit endorsement.

Who is Marco Mendicino, and how did he get into politics?

For decades, the riding belonged to Liberal MP Joe Volpe. In the Conservatives' march to a majority government in 2011, they won it.

At the time, Mendicino was in his late 30s, working as a lawyer, and was also a prominent voice in the legal community, among other things serving as the president of the Association of Justice Counsel.

He'd grown up in Toronto, attending the St. Michael's Choir School.

His father Frank, came to Canada from Italy after the Second World War, while his mother Maria's family emigrated from there in 1926.

Mendicino also had two sisters and a brother, and has long cited his parents' early experiences in Canada as formative in his own life.

In 2001, he received a law degree from the University of Windsor, where he also met his future wife, Diana Iannetta. They now have two daughters.

In 2008, he had his first taste of the national spotlight as one of the prosecutors in the Toronto 18" terrorist case.

But it was after the Liberal party was destroyed in the 2011 election that Mendicino began mulling entering politics - a time when no one was even certain the party would exist come the next vote.

For Mendicino, a bigger question was whether Volpe would try to run again.

No one was sure, but Mendicino began putting in the work required to win the nomination, just in case.

By 2014, Volpe had bowed out. The nomination seemed Mendicino's to win.

Then came the first major fight of his political career: a surprise move by Conservative MP Eve Adams to cross the floor to the Liberals, and tell Trudeau she'd like to run in Eglinton-Lawrence.

Trudeau backed that choice, and the ensuing nomination battle was described at the time as bitter and tumultuous.

But the fact Mendicino won, and then went on to defeat Conservative Finance Minister Joe Oliver, lays the groundwork for understanding his political staying power, according to those who know him well.

He slogged it out, said Charles Bird who also ran Mendicino's nomination campaign in 2015 and his election campaign too. From there came realizing the intestinal fortitude" it takes to making a career in politics.

He has an unusual capacity for hard work," said Bird.

Soon after being elected in 2015, Mendicino established a reputation among Trudeau's inner circle as a capable communicator.

He was deployed frequently to political talk shows, tasked with building credibility for a then-rookie government trying to find its footing in Ottawa.

A sign that he'd lost some of Trudeau's trust on that score came last week, when in what may have been a first for him, he tried to run away from reporters' questions.

That came a day after journalists waited for nearly five hours for a promised opportunity to grill him over the chain of events surrounding Bernardo's transfer, but he never appeared.

Even in the midst of the debacle over Bill C-21, he didn't just face the media multiple times a day, he also embarked on a cross-country apology tour, and led intensive negotiations to get a bill together to pass muster with more people, winning the begrudging respect of at least some of his critics.

But others cited the gun bill issue this week alongside what happened with Bernardo as justification for him to go.

How can he be trusted to keep us safe when we cannot trust a word he says?" Conservative Public Safety critic Raquel Dancho said in the House of Commons this week.

What stands out with C-21, said Bird, is that it was Mendicino doing what he does well.

He has enough humility to know when he's gotten things wrong and the tenacity to make things right again," Bird said.

Whether there is a way to make things right" on the Bernardo file is a question he and his team are grappling with now.

Mendicino has promised a new directive to his staff will ensure he is never kept in the dark again - though so far no one has been fired - but that doesn't solve the national outrage over Bernardo's transfer.

The decision on how prisoners are managed, however, is up to the Correctional Service of Canada and not him.

That's part of what's made the past week one of the worst in his political career, observed Bird.

The hardest thing for him is to find himself in situations that are not of his making," Bird said.

That also goes for what comes next.

Rumours of an early summer cabinet shuffle now abound and what happens to him is ultimately up to Trudeau.

Bird said what he thinks will keep Mendicino around are the same qualities serving him well so far: he's a smart, affable guy, loyal to Trudeau and cheerfully persistent in his work.

I think he will live to fight another day."

Stephanie Levitz is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @StephanieLevitz

Correction, June 17, 2023: This story has been corrected from a previous version, which misstated Maria Mendicino's first name and the timing of her family's immigration to Canada.