okay let's let's walk through that let's walk through that let's go back to 2015 so J Justin Trudeau was invited by the mavens of the liberal party at the end of the correct me if I've got any of this wrong by the way at the end of the uh end of the Harper term Harper had um been um running the country for for a substantial period of time and it's pretty typical for Canadians to throw out whoever's in charge on about a 10-year basis and so many Canadians felt that it was time for change and
the liberal party was in some degree of disarray and the powers that be went to Justin Trudeau and and I like I had some real trouble with that right at the beginning and so I'd kind of like your opinion about that um I'm not a fan of Mr Trudeau and so I may have a very biased perspective but I'd like to at least be accurate in my suppositions my sense was that he had no right to put himself forward in in a fundamental ethical sense he had no right he did as a Canadian obviously because
the only thing that Justin had going for him apart from his attractiveness and his charm which are both um obvious I would say he had an extremely famous name and but I didn't think that it he had the um experience or the education to dare to take on a role like that and then I you know I was I was thinking well that's a bit harsh because the Liberals did want someone who had name brand recognition and fair enough and he could have come to office and surrounded himself with real experts and learned like mad
carefully and perhaps had he had the ability became a stellar leader over some period of time although I didn't see much evidence of that either so and then he came out with this sunny ways campaign and I think that really did capitalize on his charm and and and very effectively and there was an optimistic mood in Canada at that point with regard to the possibilities of the new leadership so you were also swept up and that was reminiscent to me I was quite Young when his father first came to power but there was a wave
of trudo mania across the country because Pierre Trudeau senior obviously was um very charismatic and uh and and had that celebrity-like effect on the Canadian public that his son did okay so now that's 2015 and Trudeau comes to power and everybody's looking forward to having that happen that's when you become parliamentary secretary now you had a let's say a detailed plan for something that was quite practical and quite novel on the Neuroscience side let's say and you produced a plan and you put it forward to Jerry buts and and you you mentioned someone else at
that point Katie tford right right and as far as you could tell that was rejected out of hand and you don't believe perhaps that it even got to Trudeau's desk and although you were parliamentary secretary you didn't have a close relationship with him and so apparently you weren't even in a position to ask him whether or not he had seen this plan that you had spent some time detailing now I think it would be useful to outline for us what the role of a parliamentary secretary is and what it was that you expected that didn't
happen and whether or not your expectations were actually realistic like and you said you know you were disinclined to complain and you laid out the reasons for that so what's the typical as far as you understand how how are the relations between a prime minister and his parliamentary secretary generally managed and what is that role generally so typically what happens and you could check the record because I I attempt not to say things that are not that don't have receipts is that a parliamentary secretary especially to the Prime Minister has sworn into privy Council and
has access to you know a breath and depth of information that allows them to carry out their their Duty in a way that is fundamental to uh being able to have these meetings with individuals that are on High level or high level Securities although I had the security screenings from from CRA RCMP CIS that was all done but wasn't able to have those meetings now when I looked at other relationships with the Finance Minister Bill morau and fruis phip champagne who was his par parliamentary secretary very close very very much uh constantly having conversations constantly
involved in the policy development constantly involved in stakeholder engagement and relationships so there is a there is a there's no gaps between what th that minister is doing and what that parliamentary secretary is doing there has to be a tight relationship and as a first Minister as par as prime minister with the Parliamentary secretary there has to be an even tighter Gap because if there's any kind of Ripple or spaces in between the other Ministries we need to be aware of that we need to run a tight ship we have a lot to do on
the agenda so making sure that you have someone that's not only competent but has their ears to the ground they they know what is happening is what I thought would be the relationship that I had and I would say that maybe I I don't want to mislead anyone maybe it was my fault that that relationship didn't go as well the first meeting that I had with the Prime Minister was in December of 2015 and of course everybody remembers that during that first Administration he had a 5050 C cabinet and he came out and said you
know that this is the cabinet because it's 2015 not because the people had Merit not because you know I have excellent lineup he said it's because it's 2015 it was very disenfranchising and I think it was very much flippant for someone who was a leader of a G7 country to just say because it's 2015 okay let me let me dive into that let me dive into that just for a sec if you don't mind well because that also struck me that struck me really hard you know I spent a lot of time um assessing the
research literature on hiring and determining how you do that if you hire purely on Merit let's say and Merit is defined in relationship to the evidence you have that the people you're attempting to hire actually have the ability to do what that's specific job requires and there are various ways of determining that Merit uh you do a job analysis to find out what the job actually entails and then you go through the person's history and you see if they have the experience and the raw ability okay so now when Trudeau announced that 50/50 cabinet because
it was 2015 I thought something quite similar to what you thought I thought first hey that's pretty damn flippant and I thought second you've done something there that's really not good because only 25 % of the members of the House of Commons were female and that means you've reduced your applicant pool a priority by half and so there's no way that you pulled the most statistically speaking purely there's no possible way that you screened and pulled in the most qualified people into your cabinet and you did that for show and so well if you cut
your applicant pool by half on arbitrary grounds there might be other reasons to select people but but okay but you had reasons as well they may not have been the you had reasons for being irritated by that so delve more for me if you would into why it it put your teeth on edge certainly and I I I I won't speak to sort of the the skills of the individuals I think he had a very competent uh cabinet around him uh the the thing that really struck me with the because it was because it's 2015
is because it was so flippant because it was so it made it seem like it was arbitrary and it made it seem as as you said for show and so I went into that meeting saying to him that look I understand what my role here I understand I'm the only one that looks like me but what I said and I quote is if I'm here to fill any gender or racial Gap within your cabinet I don't want this role yeah I'm not that dangers that that is absolutely one of the dangers of gender and and
ethnicity sele let's say is that you like I saw this at the universities all the time I think it's a terrible it's a terrible thing to have happen around people who are from a minority background who are truly qualified because it's hard on them because they don't know why they're selected and it's hard on everybody else because they don't know why they're selected and so that's not fun it's not fun and and putting that forward right at the beginning I wanted to put him on notice that I am smart I'm more than capable so use
me for a particular role that you might have within this this position as parliamentary secretary but don't for a second think that I would be to a token throughout your entire Administration that was the notice that I was putting him under with saying those words and so after I said that he said you know what Selena do you trust my judgment dude I met you like five minutes ago so I said no I I don't trust your judgment I have no I have no reason to I've been married to my my partner for 17 years
I hardly trust his judgment most days but I mean I have to build a relationship with someone I'm not going to lie to you and say that I trust your judgment and I realized at that moment that the tension in the room got a little awkward America's Health Care system is lacking in any real care insurance companies regularly deny Progressive treatment options primary care physicians refuse to order comprehensive lab work and the standards of care lag years behind the leading research that's where mer health comes in merri health represents a paradigm shift in how we
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the the first reason you do you lined out one is because of the statements that Trudeau made about the composition of his cabinet and how he made that and then second because you were the only black woman in the entire House of Commons and so the combination of those two things made made it reasonable for you to wonder just what was going on and to make a statement now if I was going to play The Devil's Advocate I'd say um you know maybe and I'm not saying that this is right but I because I really
do want to go into this so I want to do it in the most in the harshest way possible so we get it straight you know you might say and I I think you kind of alluded to this given that you said that perhaps you put your foot forward wrong the first meeting you know you might say if you were thinking about it strategically you would have had a calm and somewhat contentless first meeting and just got to know each other a little bit before you put your foot down so to speak about the role
you were going to play but but maybe not too maybe the right thing to do was to make your case right off the B there's no way I can tell but but you said that but you were inclined to do that and then you said that when you did it the atmosphere in the room wasn't perhaps what you might have hoped for so so tell me what you saw and he asked you to trust him which is also that's something you remember and it is an it is a it's a it's a it's it's an
event worthy of note because the question is what did he mean because you don't know him now did he mean you should just trust him because he's just and and he's the prime minister of Canada or did he mean that you should start out by trusting someone if you're employed by them in a new role like I don't know what did you think yeah you know what I'm not even sure that question is warranted on the first day like do you trust my judgment on the first day I mean I know that your your your
platform was built by a number of different people it wasn't just you why are you why are you even asking that question and why are you asking that question of me do you think we could work together do you think we could achieve the objectives of our platform do you think that we're going to do right by Canadians with this particular mandate ask me those questions I don't really care about your particular mandate and it really speaks to Ego and it really speaks to a a particular sense of awareness or lack thereof that was pretty
evident right from the beginning and if we think about this this this whole episode me being in politics has driven me into the the PHD work that I'm doing right now on motivated cognition and understanding what motivates people you know their self appraisal their self-enhancement their self-verification it was really in that moment seeing that everything that needed to align for for Justin Trudeau at that moment needed to feed into his feelings or his motivation on self what he felt about himself and I came in and and within that first 15 minutes of a meeting said
uh no I'm not just going to arbitrarily fall into what you deem to be your methodology around your self-enhancement that is not my role my role is to represent the people of riy my role is to make sure that we execute a mandate and I didn't know that at the time but it really spoke to the fact didn't know what I didn't know at the time that probably that that wasn't the best move to make because I assumed that as as his parliamentary secretary as his right-hand person that he would have wanted someone who was
going to be honest and I don't think that's what he wanted he wanted someone to confirm a bias that he felt about himself or a lack of self-esteem that he felt about himself by saying yes I trust your judgment Justin I don't know you but I'm going to say yes I could played that game I didn't want to [Music]
