Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau ( , ; October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000), also referred to by his initials PET, was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada
The prime mini ...
on October 13, 1970, during the
October Crisis
The October Crisis (french: Crise d'Octobre) refers to a chain of events that started in October 1970 when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James C ...
. The term is still regularly used in Canadian political discussion.
Trudeau, who had in previous years been a strong proponent of civil liberties, spoke of the need for drastic action to restore order in
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. When questioned by CBC reporter Tim Ralfe on how far he would go in the suspension of civil liberties to maintain order, Trudeau replied "Well, just watch me."
Three days later, he invoked the ''
War Measures Act
The ''War Measures Act'' (french: Loi sur les mesures de guerre; 5 George V, Chap. 2) was a statute of the Parliament of Canada that provided for the declaration of war, invasion, or insurrection, and the types of emergency measures that could t ...
Catherine Annau
Catherine Annau is a Canadian documentary filmmaker and writer.
Annau's debut feature '' Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the '70s Generation'' won numerous awards including a Genie Award, and appeared at New York's Lincoln Center, the National Gallery ...
. The phrase has also been the title of several biographies of Trudeau, e.g., Larry Zolf's ''Just Watch Me: Remembering Pierre Trudeau'' (1984); Ron Coleman's ''Just Watch Me: Trudeau's Tragic Legacy'' (2003); and the 2nd volume of John English's biography, ''Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968–2000'' (2009).
Excerpt from interview
The following is a partial transcript of the impromptu interview between Tim Ralfe of the CBC and Trudeau.
Contemporary usage
In March 2013, Trudeau's son
Justin
Justin may refer to: People
* Justin (name), including a list of persons with the given name Justin
* Justin (historian), a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire
* Justin I (c. 450–527), or ''Flavius Iustinius Augustus'', Eastern Rom ...
, while running for the
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left.
__TOC__ Active liberal parties
This is a li ...
leadership, evoked his father's memory during his campaign by repeating this phrase. It was in answer to a fellow airplane passenger's question in a handwritten note, asking Justin if he could beat Conservative Prime Minister
Stephen Harper
Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Harper is the first and only prime minister to come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, ...
. The comment sparked a frenzy on Twitter, as well as mixed reaction from several commentators, some of whom saw the quote as a politically sensitive and risky one in Quebec. Two years later, Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada, beating Harper in federal election by a significant margin.
On September 12, 2021, Justin Trudeau said that
NDP
NDP may stand for:
Computing
* Neighbor Discovery Protocol, an Internet protocol
* Nortel Discovery Protocol, a layer two Internet protocol, also called SONMP
* Nondeterministic programming, a type of computer language
Government
* National ...
leader
Jagmeet Singh
Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal ( ; born January 2, 1979) is a Canadian politician who has served as the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) since 2017. Singh has sat as the member of Parliament (MP) for Burnaby South since 2019.Freedom Convoy protests in 2022, some commentators called for Justin Trudeau to have a "just watch me" moment of his own. The younger Trudeau later invoked the ''
Emergencies Act
The ''Emergencies Act'' (french: Loi sur les mesures d'urgence) is a statute passed by the Parliament of Canada in 1988 which authorizes the Government of Canada to take extraordinary temporary measures to respond to public welfare emergencies, ...
'' for the first time in Canadian history.
See also
*
Trudeaumania
Trudeaumania was the nickname given in early 1968 to the excitement generated by Pierre Elliott Trudeau's entry into the leadership race of the Liberal Party of Canada. Trudeaumania continued during the subsequent federal election campaign and d ...
*
Trudeauism
Trudeauism refers to the liberalism, liberal political ideology associated with former Liberal Party of Canada leader and Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Trudeauism involves Social liberalism, social liberal, Economic nationalism, ...
*
Fuddle duddle
The fuddle duddle incident in Canadian political history occurred on February 16, 1971, when Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau was alleged to have spoken or at least mouthed unparliamentary language in the House of Commons, causing a minor sc ...