‘I hope so’: Marc Garneau on whether Liberal party still has room for Blue Liberals

Former cabinet minister Marc Garneau, who describes himself in his new book as always-a-Liberal, “but a decidedly blue one,” says he hopes the party still has room for someone like him.

“I hope so,” Garneau told CTV’s Power Play host Vassy Kapelos, when asked exactly that. “I hope that the Liberal party will continue to listen to a variety of people who are perhaps a little bit of the right of the centre and a little bit left of the centre.”

“That’s been, traditionally, the success, historically, of the Liberal party, the so-called wide tent, because we’ve made room for people with slightly different opinions, sort of clustered around the centre,” he said, in an interview that aired Monday. “So I hope that that will continue to be the case.”

In his new memoir, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream,” Garneau writes that he believes governments should provide a social safety net for “those less able to make it on their own,” but also “keep deficits under control.”

Garneau — a former naval officer and astronaut, and the first Canadian to go into space — was elected as a Liberal MP in 2008, later unsuccessfully ran for the party’s leadership in 2013 and went on to serve in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet for six years.

He led the transport portfolio for five of those years, before taking over foreign affairs for the first nine months of 2021. After the 2021 election, Trudeau booted Garneau out of cabinet entirely.

Garneau announced his resignation from his seat and retirement from politics in 2023.

On foreign affairs, Garneau writes that the portfolio’s high turnover rate — he was the fourth person in the job in five years — “definitely bothered (him) … suggesting that the prime minister did not view it seriously enough, perhaps because he felt he was really in charge of it.”

When asked twice by Kapelos whether, taking those statements and factors into consideration, he ended up landing on a conclusion about whether Trudeau takes foreign affairs seriously, Garneau wouldn’t say.

He initially answered that he’s happy to see his successor, current Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, has been in the post for three years, adding anyone in the role needs time to develop relationships with their counterparts in other countries.

But when pressed again on whether Trudeau takes the issue seriously, Garneau said he was “not going to answer that question.”

“Because, you know, I’ve been removed from that portfolio for three years, and I’m retired,” he said. “I’m simply saying that international affairs — although Canadians are generally more focused on domestic issues, such as the cost of living and things like that — they do care about Canada’s place in the world, and they like to think that we have a voice that is listened to in the world.”

“And I have already told you where I think we need to do a little bit of work,” he added. “And I hope that that’s good advice. I hope it is.”

More broadly, Garneau observes in the book that “Canada’s standing in the world has slipped,” that “we are losing credibility” and that “pronouncements are not always matched by a capacity to act.”

Garneau in his interview also discussed his perspective on the current conflict in the Middle East, calling a two-state solution “the only viable one,” and elaborated on Canada’s role on the world stage, after writing in his book that “the notion that Canada punches beyond its weight hasn’t been credible for a long time.”

He also discussed Canada’s still-unmet NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP on defence, and his concerns over military resources and readiness.

You can watch Garneau’s full interview on CTV’s Power Play in the video player at the top of this article.

With files from CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos