Justin Trudeau has been battered by crisis after crisis. A decade into his leadership, why do Liberals still think he's their party's best bet?

OTTAWA - Even on the playground of the College Jean-de-Brebeuf, circa 1984, Justin Trudeau was a polarizing figure.

This was Montreal, after all, at the tail end of his father's prime ministership. Strong feelings clung to the family name, residue of the federalist victory in Quebec's first failed referendum on separation and the constitutional dramas that encircled it. And boys at the prestigious Jesuit school were fully apprised of the sharpest polemical takes.

I guess kids that age are the reflection of their parents' talk at home," said Marc Miller, who befriended the young Trudeau when they met in advanced English at Brebeuf that year.

He was, you know, the son of the guy that was trying to destroy Quebec ... or the symbol of national unity," Miller recalled.

From his very youth, he's a guy who has been used to people not knowing who he is - very public, and totally mischaracterizing him."

Of course, by now, pretty much everyone knows Justin Trudeau - and has an opinion about him, too.

On April 14, it will be 10 years since Pierre Elliott Trudeau's eldest son became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. The decade saw him rise from a floppy-haired backbencher of a party on the ropes, to someone who bucked expectations from the boxing ring to the ballot box. His unlikely victory in the 2015 election - the first campaign to see a party vault from third to first place in 90 years - might well have saved the storied Liberals from ruin. And though they've only returned with minority governments and shrinking shares of the popular vote, the party won again under Trudeau's leadership in 2019 and 2021.

To his supporters, he has been a fine prime minister, the steward of a progressive Liberal administration responsible for Canada's strongest national climate action to date, increased parental payments that have reduced child poverty, and the placement of Indigenous reconciliation to the top of the federal agenda. His government is lauded for saving continental trade from Donald Trump's populist protectionism. It steered the country through the historic rupture of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more Canadians than died in the Second World War.

Yet many of these same actions spawned legions of Trudeau detractors. Out west, his very name is reviled in some quarters for climate policies seen as unfairly punitive to the fossil fuel sector. The government's handling of the pandemic, which included the imposition of vaccination requirements for people in some jobs, helped fuel the so-called Freedom Convoy" protest crisis last year. And some in his own party believe he's tacked too far to the left, or weakened the organization in trying to expand its participants beyond the loyal, dues-paying partisans of old.

Trudeau has also weathered controversies over almost eight years in power. There have been revelations he repeatedly wore racist makeup, and allegations he pressured his justice minister to intervene in the prosecution of a big Quebec-based company. He has broken promises, such as when he decided against changing Canada's electoral system despite so many earnest earlier pledges to do so. Polls suggest Trudeau's Liberals would have a tough time beating the Conservatives, led by notorious partisan scrapper Pierre Poilievre, if an election were held today.

This is where we find Trudeau 10 years into his Liberal leadership. Having inherited the political baggage of his father's name, he has added more through his own time as prime minister.

But that experience with other people's judgment makes him well-poised to keep pushing the government's agenda, said Miller, who has stuck by Trudeau for years and is now Crown-Indigenous relations minister in his cabinet. Like others close to the prime minister, Miller is 100 per cent" sure Trudeau means it when he says he will stay on as Liberal leader for the next election.

It's a question it seems the prime minister can't answer enough, amid stubborn talk that forces of change are blowing - always dangerous for the party in power - and that possible heirs to the Liberal throne are waiting in the wings.

Yet none of this would bother Trudeau, who has developed a sort of shell," Miller said - a sense of comfort" being the target of toxicity" in today's politics.

What happens next may well define this Liberal prime minister's place in Canadian history, not to mention his party's place in federal politics, after a decade in which he has already left his indelible, Trudeau-esque mark.

Navdeep Bains remembers the jokes. His seat in Mississauga was rock solid, safe as an unelected spot in the Senate.

But it wasn't so funny when the Liberals got crushed in 2011 election. The party posted its worst result ever, with just 34 MPs elected, and Bains was one of the Liberals turfed from the House of Commons.

It was a very tough loss - devastating," Bains recalled over the phone recently. That was an important reminder in politics to take nothing for granted."

Questions swirled about the future of what was once deemed Canada's natural governing party." Was there room for a centrist political organ in a more polarized, post-recession country? Should it merge with the now-stronger New Democratic Party? Was this the dawn of an era of Conservative domination?

For Bains, the right person to lead the party from this historic nadir was Justin Trudeau, the Liberal MP first elected in the Montreal riding of Papineau in 2008. But when they spoke about it, Trudeau flat out rejected the idea, Bains said.

Around that time, Trudeau expressed concerns about the Liberal party's tendency to pin its hopes on a new leader, instead of reassessing its structure and raison d'etre more broadly. After the 2011 defeat, Trudeau told the CBC, Because of the history packaged into my name, a lot of people are turning to me in a way that actually, to be blunt, concerns me."

Other Liberals shared such worries. The party needed to shake the perception it was primarily a vehicle for politicians with ambition for power, and instead show people it was geared toward the public interest.

Clearly the trust in, the confidence in, the party ... wasn't resonating anymore with Canadians," said Anna Gainey, another Trudeau ally who would become party president from 2014 to 2018.

Somehow the party lost touch with people and what people needed and wanted and hoped for," she said.

Sometime after the 2011 defeat, Trudeau changed his mind and decided to run, announcing his candidacy in October 2012. According to Bains, who was among a core group of Trudeau allies who gathered to plan and support his run for the leadership, the son of Pierre Trudeau had acquired a shrewd political sense that helped him see an opportunity few others noticed.

He realized at that time that he had an opportunity to rebuild the party from the bottom up, that he had an opportunity not only to grow the Liberal party, but create a movement that could help him win and form government - and do so immediately," Bains said.

That wasn't a belief that many had."

There was already buzz around Trudeau's potential to defy expectations after he beat Conservative Sen. Patrick Brazeau in a charity boxing match in the spring of 2012, but he was not expected to lose the Liberal leadership. Trudeau was effectively coronated - clinching the leadership with more than 80 per cent of the votes - on April 14, 2013, at an event in Ottawa.

To some Liberals, this was a prime chance for the party's rebirth. He was seen as a unifying force on whose watch the party could redefine itself as a movement for people instead of - in the least forgiving view - a club for aspirants to power. Trudeau himself, in his leadership victory speech in 2013, alluded to this problem when he declared the era of the hyphenated Liberal" was over. He was referring to the internecine personality battles of yore, when factions supporting figures like John Turner, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin jockeyed for power within the party, the prize being presumed occupation of the Prime Minister's Office.

When he came in, that vision and that unifying force and factor - at a time where things were pretty bleak - immediately provided an uplift to the party," said Azam Ishmael, a senior Liberal official who has been the party's national director since 2016.

Trudeau soon took the party in a new direction. In 2014, he booted all Liberal members of the Red Chamber from the party's caucus amidst a roiling scandal over Senate expenses.

According to Gainey, the Trudeau Liberals were also envious of how the Democrats in the United States - under president Barack Obama - had employed a sophisticated digital strategy. Adopting a similar approach, the Trudeau team tried to modernize the Liberal machine, Gainey explained. They also announced they would hold open nominations," even as they recruited a host of impressive figures to run for the party, like Chrystia Freeland and Francois-Philippe Champagne.

Then, during the 2015 campaign, the Liberals broke through with a host of election promises branded as real change." They would legalize marijuana and change the electoral system (the second one never happened). With a nod to the post-Occupy zeitgeist of the early 2010s, they would increase taxes on the rich. And they would break with the no-deficit dogma that had persisted since the Chretien-Martin years in order to finance infrastructure projects.

It was enough to clinch a majority government in 2015, a feat that remains the high water mark of Trudeau's tenure as Liberal leader.

Yet criticism remains, even from within the extended Liberal family.

From his corner office across the street from Parliament Hill, Sen. Percy Downe worries that the big red tent" has shrunk on Trudeau's watch. The party lost a lot of corporate memory" when he dispelled Downe and the other Liberal senators from caucus, he said. He also suggested some more fiscally cautious Liberals are wary of the Trudeau government's profligate ways.

Another point of contention with Trudeau's Liberal party: the decision to open party activities to registered supporters instead of dues-paying members. For Downe, this hollowed out the party" by allowing visitors" to enter the party and supplant a smaller number of seasoned partisans who would gain experience and influence over a number of years.

Surveying the walls of his office, Downe pointed out photos of Liberal giants of yore: here Lester B. Pearson, there Jean Chretien, for whom Downe worked as chief of staff when he was prime minister. Downe said the current prime minister pales in comparison to this pantheon of the party's greats.

We live in an age of celebrity, and if his last name had been anything but Trudeau, he would never have been elected leader," Downe said.

Others believe the party needs to renew efforts to inspire volunteers and connect with young supporters.

Mira Ahmad, a Liberal activist who is running for party president ahead of its national convention in May, said the number of registered young Liberals has significantly decreased" since 2015. She thinks the party needs to prove people can still join and use it to achieve progressive policies in government, like marijuana or assisted dying legislation.

People need to remember that the party is not just cabinets, not just caucus," Ahmad said. The more time we spend in government, the more time we need to remind ourselves of who sent us here."

Trudeau's popularity has also fallen since his post-2015 honeymoon, said David Coletto, chief executive officer of the polling firm Abacus Data. The trend really started after the SNC-Lavalin affair in 2018, he said, when then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould - another one of Trudeau's star recruits in 2015 - accused the prime minister and top officials of inappropriately pressuring her to intervene in a prosecution against the company.

It's one example of how Trudeau's original public image as a positive, sunny ways" leader has been sullied by his years in office, Coletto said.

Many also believe the prime minister has tried to sow divisions for political gain, despite his initial promises never to do so, Coletto said, citing his firm's polling data. Even Liberals have accused him of this, including Quebec MP Joel Lightbound, who held a news conference during the Freedom Convoy" crisis to slam his party for using vaccination mandates as a wedge" to win votes in the 2021 campaign.

When you look at where his numbers have taken hits over time, it's been because that initial impression, that initial hope that people had about him about what he would represent, was hurt," he said.

Part of the challenge is that Trudeau has been overexposed" in the public eye, said Bains, who was re-elected in 2015 and served as Trudeau's industry minister until he left politics in 2021. That's especially true since the pandemic, when Trudeau addressed the public on a near-daily basis for extended press conferences about the crisis.

Because of this, the party should no longer always place him front and centre" for all of its policies and announcements, Bains said.

When you've been in politics and in power now for close to a decade ... it takes a toll on one's personal popularity and the party's popularity. And he's very self aware of that, and understands those dynamics."

But if the pandemic strained Trudeau's public image, it also fed his enthusiasm to keep pushing his political agenda, according to several people close to him. During the depth of the crisis, the government proved it could quickly roll out programs like temporary jobless and wage supports. That experience invigorated Trudeau and made him a more hands-on leader in cabinet, said one senior adviser to the prime minister, who spoke on condition they aren't named.

He's kind of gone from chairing (the board) to putting his hands firmly on the wheel," the adviser said.

The ultimate destination can be gleaned in the story the Liberals are trying to tell in the wake of this year's federal budget: that they will use Ottawa's spending power - responsibly, they claim - to put Canada in a position to prosper as the world shifts away from trade with autocracies like China, and sets up new economies decoupled from greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

Yet risks abound. According to Scott Reid, who was a top official under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, the party under Trudeau has become the political organ for the professional class," urban dwellers with generally progressive social and economic views. With Conservatives dominant in the Prairies and rural areas, this makes the Liberals' Quebec base of seats all the more important - a vulnerability, perhaps, but also the main reason Trudeau remains vital to the party's chances, since he is best-placed to secure votes in his home province, Reid argued.

For all the slings and arrows" Trudeau has suffered, Reid said, the prime minister is essential" to the Liberals' electoral fortunes.

The Trudeau adviser said there is also a danger the Liberals get squeezed between the left and right if Conservatives can successfully argue government spending is out of control, and New Democrats convince enough progressives the government has failed on a host of their priorities, from climate action to reconciliation.

Coletto argued the biggest threat is if an appetite for change takes root across the electorate. If that happens, the next election likely won't be about Trudeau anyway, he said; it will be about whether voters feel the alternatives can be trusted to the standard of federal leadership.

Re-election is more unlikely than likely in my view," Coletto said.

But for many, Trudeau remains as inspirational as ever. Almost everyone who spoke to the Star for this story said he is still the best leader for the party.

There's a clear recognition that because of the prime minister and his ability to connect with Canadians, there's been a lot of success in the past, with three election wins," said Bains.

Ishmael, the party's national director, points to the prime minister's speech in December - the first in-person holiday gathering for the party's MPs since the start of the pandemic. The speech contained the usual boasts about signature government policies, from climate action to affordable child care. But it also included pointed partisan jabs at Poilievre and the Conservatives, whom Trudeau accused of spreading misinformation for their own gain.

For Ishmael, it was a preview of the fight ahead, and showed Trudeau still has the fire to compete - scars and all.

Every single Liberal I spoke to days after that," he said, was walking on cloud nine."

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga