Justin Trudeau

Some Lesser Known Facts About Justin Trudeau

• Justin and his younger brother Alexandre were born on the same day in different years.

• He is the second person in the history of Canada to be born to a serving Prime Minister. The first was John A. Macdonald’s daughter Margaret Mary Theodora Macdonald, who was born on 8 February 1869.

• Trudeau’s ancestors arrived in Canada from Scotland and France. His grandfather James Sinclair was born in Scotland. His ancestors also trace their roots back to Malacca and Sumatra, Indonesia.

• Justin was Baptized on 16 January 1972 at the Notre Dame Basilica in Ottawa. This was the first time when the public saw him.

• Thereafter, the then-US President Richard Nixon came to Canada, where he met Justin and said, “I would like to toast the future prime minister of Canada, to Justin Pierre Trudeau.”

  

• One of the first gifts he received from a head of the state was a stuffed toy of the character Snoopy, which was gifted to him by Richard Nixon’s wife when he was a toddler.

• Initially, Justin was to go to France to attend a school there; however, the decision to send him to France was dropped after his mother managed to convince his father to let him stay and study in a government-run school (public school) in Canada.

• Since Trudeau did not know French, one of the official languages of Canada, he was enrolled in the French immersion program at the Rockcliffe Park Public School.

  

• According to sources, Justin Trudeau studied with Matthew Perry, a popular actor who appeared in the American television sitcom Friends as Chandler. Perry reportedly used to beat Justin and bully him.

• Trudeau backed up the Liberal Party from a young age. He offered his support to party leader John Turner in the 1988 federal election.

• Justin’s father and mother were very strict as none of them wanted their sons to get spoiled by giving them the perks a child of a Prime Minister does; therefore, they decided to let Justin and his brother take a bus to school instead of a Limousine and a cavalcade.

  

• His parents divorced on 27 May 1977, when Trudeau was only 5 years old. However, Trudeau lived with his father until his father’s death. Initially, his father was granted joint custody of the kids.

• In 1979, the custody of the children was converted to joint custody. As per sources, Justin loved living with his mother and was a “momma’s boy.”

• In the same year, Justin and his brother had to vacate the Prime Minister’s house as their father had been defeated in the elections. Following this, they shifted with their maternal grandparents as the repair work for their new house, the House of the Leader of the Opposition, was not complete.

• At the age of 18, he stopped visiting Church and became a “Lapsed (non-practising) Catholic” as he believed that the prayers at the church did not align with his daily needs. He talked about this phase of his life and said,
  

  I was like, OK, I’m Catholic, I’m of faith, but I’m just not really going to go to church. Maybe on Easter, maybe midnight Mass at Christmas.”

• Justin and his brother would spend their summers taking part in a summer camp, Camp Ahmek, organised at the Canoe Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park.

• In 1984, Justin Trudeau applied for the post of camp counsellor at Camp Ahmek. This was his first paid job.

  

• According to sources, Justin was unwilling to spend money and was very tight-fisted. It is also said that he never smoked and drank only wine which too in limited quantity.

• Justin once revealed that the time he looked up to the most was the time he would get to spend with his father, especially while camping.

• Justin’s wife, Sophie, was a classmate and friend of his youngest brother, Michel, who died in 1998 in an avalanche. She spent a lot of time in Trudeau’s home in Montreal.

• Justin and his brother’s school education and early college education were done with the help of the funds accumulated in the Canada Savings Bonds that their father had invested in every year.

• It was while pursuing a bachelor’s degree that Trudeau came into contact with Gerald Butts who became his close friend. Butts went on to become his Principal Secretary after Trudeau became Canada’s Prime Minister. It was on Butts’ recommendation that Trudeau joined the McGill Debating Union.

• He went on to win two student world championships as a debater for McGill University.

  

• Thereafter, he joined the Killarney Secondary School in Vancouver as a teacher. There, he used to teach math and French to the students.

• After working at the Killarney Secondary School for some time, Trudeau joined the West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, where he served as a permanent teacher.

  

• He later served as a club bouncer and taught bungee jumping in different parts of Canada.

• Thereafter, he joined the Canadian Debating Union and worked as one of the leaders for the sexual assault centre.

• In 1998, he started practising Christianity and regained faith in the religion after some of his friends persuaded him to do so following Michel’s death.

  

• The year 2000 got Justin Trudeau in great despair when his father died on 28 September 2000. He delivered a great eulogy at his father’s state funeral.

• He inherited a sizable portion of his father’s company and other businesses in the same year, which he used in his education and political interests. The most prominent company in which he received a share was 90562 Canada Inc., a federal corporation that held the Trudeau family’s portfolio of securities and was managed by Montreal investment firm Jarislowsky Fraser.

• In an interview, Justin revealed that his mother had temperamental issues; therefore, he never looked up to her especially while dealing with finances.

• In the same year, Trudeau and his family launched several campaigns to ensure the safety of athletes under the Kokanee Glacier Alpine Campaign, the same location where his brother had died two years earlier.

• Justin Trudeau went on to teach at many high schools as a teacher. He taught French, drama, and math.

• In 2002, Trudeau enrolled at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, where he studied for a diploma in engineering till 2004. He, however, dropped out of college to become a politician.

• In the same year, he joined the Katimavik, a Canadian youth volunteering program, as a chairperson. He remained in the post till 2004.

• From 2003 to 2004, he worked in the Canada Reads series aired on CBC Radio. There, he explained and spoke of Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

• He played a vital role in the establishment of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto in April 2004.

• Thereafter, he enrolled to pursue a master’s degree in environment studies. However, he decided to quit his studies to start campaigning for his political journey.

  

• Trudeau led the team of politicians in 2005 that spoke against the establishment of a zinc mine on the Nahanni River, a United Nations World Heritage site in the Northwest Territories. He argued that the mine would pollute and destroy the ecosystem near the river area.

• He was invited to host the literary award named the Giller Prize in 2006. He is among the few politicians to have been invited to visit the show and host it.

• In September 2006, he organised several rallies in Canada and its territories, seeking the involvement of the Canadian government in the resolution of the Darfur crisis, a major land war in Sudan between various factions.

• After the defeat of the Liberal Party in the same year’s federal elections, Justin Trudeau was appointed as chairman of a task force. This task force was responsible for engaging more youth in the party and identifying the main reasons for the defeat.

• Thereafter, he criticised a senior Liberal Party leader named Michael Ignatieff over his political ideologies, which he called Quebec nationalism. This ideology seeks the political legitimacy of the Québécois nation, particularly its French Canadian population.

• In 2007, Trudeau played the role of one of his relatives, Major Talbot Mercer Papineau, who lost his life during the First World War at the Third Battle of Ypres, in a documentary. His appearance in the film was reportedly deleted twice before the final version was aired.

• In the same year, rumours began circulating that Trudeau was planning to run for a Senate seat in the bye-elections for Montreal, as it would strengthen the Liberal Party. However, Trudeau later dismissed these claims, stating that he would instead contest the next general elections.

• He was later nominated by the Liberal Party to contest the elections from the Papineau bloc in the 2008 Canadian federal elections. He won the nominal elections against several well-known Liberal Party candidates by receiving 690 votes.

  

• In 2008, he was invited to attend the Kokanee Summit in British Columbia. There, he sought funding to support the families of the victims of the 1998 avalanche in which his brother, Michel Charles-Émile Trudeau, was killed as well.

• He has also taught combat and adventure sports like boxing, snowboarding, and surfing at the Whistler Village, B.C.

• While teaching there, Trudeau did not receive any financial help from his family and had to sleep in his friend’s apartment on a sofa and drove a worn-out Mercedes-Benz that had several holes in its floor. He talked about it, in an interview, and said,
  

  There was no thought of going off to be a ski bum. I knew I had to go off and work … But I didn’t have to worry about what my salary was.”

• Thereafter, he relocated to Vancouver, where he taught in a school on a yearly salary of $44,000 with the help of which he bought a Volkswagen Jetta.

• After spending some time in Vancouver, Justin relocated to Montreal, where he pursued his engineering studies. As per him, the company which was allotted in his name by his father helped him pay for his education.

• Justin popped the question to Sophie Grégoire on 18 October 2004 – on what would have been his father’s 85th birthday. The couple’s first child, Xavier, was born on 18 October 2007.

• After becoming an MP for the first time in 2008, Justin Trudeau presented the “National Voluntary Service Policy for Young People.” This policy was passed in the same year and enacted in 2009.

• In October 2008, he was given the post of critic for multiculturalism and youth, an apolitical post within the Liberal Party. He was reappointed to the post without any opposition in 2009.

• In the same year, Trudeau was considered a candidate for the post of the leader of the Liberal Party when Stéphane Dion resigned from the leadership. However, Trudeau turned down the offer to take over the post and asked the party to appoint Michael Ignatieff as its leader.

• His career as a speaker ended in 2008 when he decided to stay in Canada and run for the elections there.

• In 2011, he took off his shirt during a fundraising event for the Canadian Liver Foundation, where audience members placed bids on a lunch date with him. This video went viral and was later used by the rival Conservative Party in ads against his Prime Ministerial candidacy.

  

• In October of the same year, Trudeau once again decided not to contest for the post of Leader of the Liberal Party; however, after the candidate he had supported decided to withdraw, Trudeau was forced to take over the post as he was “pressurized” by his supporters and other party members due to his popularity.

• In March 2012, he took part in a boxing match against the Conservative Party MP Patrick Brazeau; Trudeau won the match. The income earned from the match was donated to charitable causes.

  

• His income reportedly rose to $462,000 in 2007 as he began charging $15,000 for speaking at events for some well-known industrialists. The industrialists paid him well and looked after his well-being by booking business-class seats in plains and arranging his stay in five-star hotels.

• In the same year, Trudeau and his wife bought a $1.2-million home in Outremont as they had decided to have kids and start a family. The house was sold for $1.6 million in 2010.

• In 2012, Trudeau and his family relocated to Mount Royal in Montreal, where they purchased a smaller house for $777,000 out of which he took a mortgage for $622,000.

• In the same year, he became an MP and resumed his career as a speaker in different countries. He. however, was required to get permission from the Office of the Commissioner of Ethics of Canada before going to any event to speak. He reportedly earned $72,000 from speaking that year.

  

• He faced criticism from the public and party politicians for not clarifying his positions on various policy matters, including policies related to the economy and foreign affairs.

• By August of the same year, Trudeau had amassed assets and properties worth $1,242,522. He had $958,154 in short-term investments and $255,455 in cash.

• In September 2012, Trudeau officially announced his decision to run for leadership of the Liberal Party in the upcoming elections. However, some party members expressed scepticism about his candidacy, fearing that his popularity might discourage others from contesting for the position in the future.

• According to sources, he earns an annual royalty of $10,000 from the autobiography that his father wrote and published.

• He won the party leadership election in April 2014 by receiving 80.1% of 30,800 votes.

• In January 2014, at the funeral of the renowned social activist Nelson Mandela, he announced his decision to quit his post as a Member of the Parliament.

• In November 2014, he published an autobiography titled Common Ground.

  

• In the same year, Justin Trudeau’s family was threatened when a burglar broke into his private residence and left a threatening note. The burglar was later caught by the cops. However, this prompted Trudeau to sell his home and relocate to a new house at a different location.

• Justin owns a 1960s convertible Mercedes-Benz which he acquired from his father after he passed away. He rarely takes the car for a drive and has reportedly stored it in a car dealership’s garage in Montreal.

• Justin won the 2015 Canadian election one day after what would have been his father’s 96th birthday. His party won a decisive victory with 184 seats.

  

• In the elections, he conducted the longest political campaign in the history of Canada.

• At 43, Trudeau became the second-youngest Canadian prime minister after Joe Clark.

• Soon after taking over the office of the PM, Justin Trudeau re-implemented the long-form census, a census for the indigenous people living in Canada, that had been scrapped in 2010. He also reduced the taxes on the middle-class income group while increasing the same for the upper-class income group.

• He then gave an interview to The New York Times in which he stated that he had a vision to transform Canada into a postnational country. Postnationalism refers to the critique of the concept of the nation as the central organizing principle of modern political identity and government.

• In 2015, he issued an order which saw the withdrawal of the Canadian Air Force from the NATO detachment deployed to assist the US in the Syrian Civil War.

• As the Prime Minister of Canada, his first official visit was to the United States of America when President Barack Obama was the President in 2016.

  

• He later implemented a new pension scheme as well as numerous child benefit policies. For this, he established a Financial Task Force, which he directly oversaw.

• In 2016, he went on a vacation to Europe, where he started visiting several events and venues as a guest and a keynote speaker. He reportedly earned $290,000 from speaking events. He used to charge approximately $5000 for attending such events.

• He issued a formal apology in November 2017 to the Indigenous people in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador for the boarding school system, which impacted their culture and religion.

• He is politically Federalist, i.e., he believes in the functioning of a federal form of government in Canada. He once threatened to support the separation of Quebec and Montreal from the remainder of Canada if the far-right political government was pushed into power.

• In 2018, the Trudeau administration claimed that they would “retaliate” against the US government’s decision to impose taxes on the export of steel to Canada. This led to a deterioration in the Canada-US diplomatic relations.

• In the same year, Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the founder of Huawei, was arrested at an airport in Canada, which led to further degradation of the relations between China and Canada.

• In 2018, the relations between Saudi Arabia and Canada deteriorated after he stopped Canada from selling military weapons after being reportedly pressurised by international human rights organisations. This led to Saudi Arabia recalling its ambassador and expelling several Canadian diplomats.

• Justin Trudeau is the first Canadian Prime Minister to have tattoos on his arm.

  

• In 2019, during a summit hosted by NATO in the European Union (EU), a video of him alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte went viral. In the video, they were seen laughing while discussing Donald Trump. Trudeau confirmed the occurrence, but others denied it. This was used by Joe Biden against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election campaigning.

  

• In June 2019, Justin Trudeau was invited as a guest of honour to give a speech at Juno Beach in France, where the D-day landings of the Second World War took place in which many Canadian troops lost their lives.

  

• In July of the same year, the relations between the US and Canada deteriorated further after he declined the U.S. president’s invitation to attend a signing event of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in Washington, D.C. Later, Trudeau claimed that the invitation was denied by him due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• In the same year, when the Trump-led US administration barred refugees from the Middle East from entering the United States, Trudeau went against Trump’s decision and decided to allow refugees in Canada on “humanitarian grounds.”

• In the 2019 Canadian Federal elections, Trudeau’s party secured 33.1 per cent of votes. Despite the lower number of votes, he managed to form a minority government. His party won 156 out of 338 seats which put the Liberals far short of the 170 seats needed for a second straight majority government.

• In May 2020, the Trudeau-led government passed a law which prohibited the sale and purchase of more than 1500 models of assault rifles and pistols. This decision came after the mass killing in Nova Scotia. This went against his government’s earlier notion of not banning weapons in Canada.

• In the same year, Trudeau attempted to secure a seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC); however, he did not succeed.

  

• In 2021, after the Canadian government mandated the compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations, Trudeau met with stiff resistance. At an election rally, he called the protestors anti-vaxxer mobs following which pebbles and stones were thrown at him.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, he initiated the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy policies under which those people who had lost their jobs were given daily wages to sustain themselves. He also waived the student loans.

• He then deployed the Canadian Army under Operation LASER to enforce the implementation of the Quarantine Act during the pandemic.

• Thereafter, due to the strained Chinese and Canadian ties due to the allegations of China’s interference in Canadian matters, the plan to procure Chinese COVID-19 vaccination failed. Due to this, Trudeau’s government signed a pact with Pfizer and Moderna to procure vaccines.

• Then he implemented the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit under which a subsidy worth $82 billion was granted to the Canadian workforce. This is considered to be among the largest subsidies given by any country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• In 2022, he was tested twice as COVID-19 positive.

• In the same year, the Canadian and American Truckers’ Union staged a massive protest against the Canadian government’s mandate of vaccinations either from Pfizer or Moderna to allow them to enter Canadian soil. The protests took place as many unvaccinated Canadian truckers were left stranded on the US-Canada border; whereas, many American truckers were not allowed to deliver cargo to their destinations in Canada, which caused delays and losses.

  

• After the protests spread to Parliament Hill in Canada, Justin was taken to a secret place to avoid getting harmed by the violent protests. He then invoked the Emergency Acts and it was the first time in nearly four decades that the act was put into effect during a protest.

• The move to impose an emergency was criticised by many politicians and judges as it infringed upon the personal rights of Canadians to express their views.

• In 2022, he ordered three major independent investigations – the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIWG), the Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks (in partnership with the Government of Nova Scotia), and the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.

• He called for an investigation into the Federal Electoral Processes after rumours of Chinese interference in the Federal election in Canada began spreading.

• In March 2022, he played a crucial role in signing an agreement of alliance with the New Democratic Party (NDP) under which NDP agreed to support the Liberal Party on the floor, including during the no-confidence motion presented by the Labour Party.

• He was nicknamed “Little Potato” by Chinese social media users when he visited China, where he met Xi Jinping.

  

• Jagmeet Singh, a Canadian politician, is considered to be a close confidante of Justin Trudeau and it is claimed that the duo often support each other on political agendas. Jagmeet reportedly plays a vital role in influencing Canada’s foreign policy towards India.

  

• After, the murder of Nijjar, Jagmeet committed to pursuing justice for him, which he expressed in a social media post following Justin Trudeau’s remarks on the matter. In the post, Singh asserted that he would leave no stone unturned, even if it required holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi accountable for pursuing justice. A viewpoint later endorsed by Trudeau.

  

• He once revealed that he had smoked marijuana five or six times in his life. Even though he has left consuming marijuana, Trudeau has spoken in favour of passing a law regarding the legalisation of it.

• He consumes alcoholic beverages occasionally.

  

• Justin Trudeau is an avid dog lover and owns a Portuguese Water Dog named Kenzie as a pet.

  

• In August 2023, Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire separated after 18 years of marriage. With this, Justin Trudeau became the second Canadian prime minister to announce separation while in office. The first was his father, the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and mother Margaret Trudeau, who announced their split in 1977 after six years of marriage. They later divorced.

• He considers himself to be a feminist, and he has also supported Canada’s national bank featuring a woman in its currency. He and US President Donald Trump established the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. It aims to bolster female workplace participation and remove barriers holding working women back.

• Justin Trudeau is a supporter of the LBTQIA+ community and has implemented several community-friendly policies, such as policies to help people of the community seek affordable housing. Trudeau has often criticised the US for hatred of the LBTQIA+ community.

  

• In February 2024, the Liberal Party and the NDP went against each other after the latter did not support the National Dental Program aimed at low-income Canadians.

• After that, the NDP threatened to withdraw its support; however, it later extended the deadline given to the Trudeau-led administration for withdrawing its support, demanding the government amend the dental program.

• In June 2024, it was reported that when Trudeau visited the Indo-Pacific region, the Canadian government spent more than Can$ 200,000 on food and drinks.

• The 2022 confidence and supply agreement between Trudeau’s party and the NDP ended in September 2024.

• He is multi-lingual and is well-versed in speaking and writing French and English.

• He was made fun of in October 2024 after he used the word “brokenist” during a debate in the Canadian Senate. Reportedly, no such word exists in the dictionary.

• Since Trudeau took office, the number of visa applicants to Canada has increased significantly due to relaxed visa regulations. Asylum claims by Mexicans grew from 110 in 2015 to 24,000 in 2024.

• Justin Trudeau is a critic of President Donald Trump. He has often criticised Trump over his policies of not allowing refugees from the Middle East into the United States.

  

• In January 2025, soon after quitting his post as Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, Trudeau claimed that he would not contest the general elections and might even quit his career as a politician. He talked about it and said,
  

  In terms of my own decisions, I will not be running in the upcoming election.”

• Thereafter, Mark Carney replaced him as the Prime Minister of Canada.