The halo over Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is a rare bright spot amid the political turmoil sweeping the globe. While US presidential candidate Donald Trump deals in sexist soundbites, Trudeau makes women swoon with his three-word explanation for bringing gender balance to his cabinet. For each of Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s xenophobic speeches, there’s Trudeau, photographed hugging Syrian refugees in Canada.
Trudeau can dance to Bhangra, march in a Pride parade, and poke fun at his own hairstyle, and—not that anyone cares (everyone does)—he’s really good looking. Basically, he’s the walking embodiment of Canadian soft power. All the time. Everywhere.
This week, Trudeau took his irresistible public persona to Sun Valley, Idaho, where he was scheduled to attend the exclusive meeting of 300 titans of media and technology (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos among them) hosted annually by the boutique investment bank Allen & Company.
“A senior government source says Trudeau is going for the same reason he went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and to New York,” Canada’s Global News reports. (That is, he is hoping to attract foreign investment to Canada.)
The trip caps a busy couple of weeks of heavily documented jet-setting, as the prime minister spreads his bilingual bonhomie to every corner of the globe. After jogging with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and paddling at sunrise in an aboriginal canoe, can the prime minister possibly outdo himself? Or have we finally reached peak Trudeau?
As evidence, consider this gallery of images from a few recent photo ops:
