Justin Trudeau, son of the leader who shaped modern Canada, will be the country’s next prime minister. Trudeau, 43, beat current Prime Minister, Conservative Stephen Harper, after topping unfavorable polls in the country’s longest election campaign in recent history, which lasted 78 days.

Canadians voted in favor of this decision, after a decade of Harper, a politician who, with a hard and polarizing style, accelerated the transformation of Canada into a country with more weight in the western provinces, an economy based on the oil boom – now in doubt – and more aggressive diplomacy.

“Canadians have chosen change. The real change, ”said Trudeau, when it was past midnight, in a lounge at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, his electoral stronghold.

Among the approximately 1,000 people present were Sikhs and Orthodox Jews, students and parents. A recently retired judge said he was happy to be able to speak publicly after decades without speaking out, as a professional duty, and a Vancouver student confessed that he did not vote for Trudeau, but for the social- Democrat Tom Mulcair, but he was just as happy. .

“I wanted ABC,” he said. Anything But Conservatives, which means in English: “Anything But Conservatives”.

With Trudeau, the Liberals, the ruling party for most of the 20th century in Canada, returned to power. French-speaking Quebecers, who have held the position for most of the past half-century, are also back. And that goes to the Trudeau family.

Family name

Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Prime Minister, with a brief interruption, between 1968 and 1984. He shaped modern Canada, that of multiculturalism, federalism and bilingualism. He was charismatic and smart, loved and hated in equal measure.

Minutes after the result was announced, Stephen Clarkson, Pierre Trudeau’s most prestigious biographer, said by telephone from Toronto that he saw little resemblance between father and son.

“They look a bit alike,” he says. “Trudeau Senior had very, very clear ideas. It was very stiff. And we admired his inflexibility, especially towards Quebec, towards nationalism. The son draws ideas from his advisers, he is not an intellectual. He is not an expert in the details of politics, as Harper indeed is. And listen to others. He is very different from his father. The connection between the two is in the name, but I don’t think they have much in common in terms of political attractiveness. He [Justin Trudeau] appealed to people who wanted anyone but Harper. ABC, as the student from Vancouver said.

Not so long ago, a victory for Trudeau would have come as a surprise. He was considered a light, superficial daddy’s boy, without political weight, not that of his father, but that of his rival, Harper.

With a message of dialogue and humility, a door-to-door campaign and economic proposals contrary to fiscal austerity, the Liberal candidate turned the tide in the polls and won a victory wider than even his supporters. did not hope.

resounding victory

The centre-left Liberal Party obtained an absolute majority in the House of Commons, which will allow it to govern calmly and without the need for agreements with the opposition. All 338 seats were filled. The Trudeau legend has managed 184 at last count. The Conservative Party, 102. The NDP Social Democrats, led by Mulcair, an English-speaking Quebecer, 41. The Bloc Quebec, 10, and the Green Party, one.

The Liberals won 39.5% of the vote, according to provisional data. They were the leading party in the Atlantic provinces of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia on the west coast. The Conservatives took 32.1%.

In the 2011 election, the Liberal Party was the third strongest behind the NDP and the Conservative Party.

Trudeau was born in 1971, when his father was prime minister. His mother, Margaret, who followed the investigation with him, was an actress and celebrity, friend of the Rolling Stones and queen of Studio 54 in New York. The next prime minister grew up at 24 Sussex Drive, the residence of Canada’s prime minister in the capital, Ottawa.

Justin’s political education was precocious. Since childhood, he has accompanied his father to G-7 summits. It is said that the first corpse he saw in his life was that of Leonid Brezhnev, at the funeral of the Russian leader.

He began his professional career away from politics and his city, Montreal, as a French teacher in Vancouver. His speech at the funeral of his father’s death in 2000 projected his image in the country as a figure of promise. Elected MP in 2008 for the Papineau riding of Montreal, he became leader of the Liberal Party in 2013, after the defeat of candidate Michael Ignatieff in the previous election.

Harper’s Legacy

Harper, the longest serving G-7 prime minister after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has broken many taboos in Canada. He got the country out of the Kyoto Protocol and was one of the best allies of the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu. It also recovers certain monarchical symbols and promotes a new Canadian nationalism. During the campaign, he explored the fear of radicalism in the Muslim community and allowed himself to be photographed alongside Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto who rose to world fame with the release of videos in which he appears to be consuming crack.

The Conservative Party announced in a statement that Harper would step down as party leader. “People are never wrong,” said Harper in his redoubt in Calgary, Alberta, the oil capital.