Trudeau on deficit concerns, his 2021 regrets, and what he thinks will define 2022

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sat down with Evan Solomon, host of CTV's Power Play and Question Period, for a year-end interview, reflecting on the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging concerns over inflation. The prime minister discussed deficit concerns, the timeline for getting boosters into Canada, why he went to Tofino, the state of Canada's international relationships, and what he thinks will define 2022.

Here’s a full transcript of that conversation, it has been edited for grammar and clarity.

Evan Solomon: Here we are at the end of 2021, and the number one issue is inflation. It's at an [eighteen] year high. You get questions about this every day, people are deeply concerned about the cost of living every day. The answer the government, and you provided a lot is ‘look, we've got this national childcare strategy,’… and affordable housing. Those are long term solutions. What in the short term will your government do to alleviate the pain of inflation?

Justin Trudeau: Well first of all, inflation is a direct consequence of the global COVID crisis. I mean, COVID remains the number one issue people are dealing with. We don't want it to be the number one issue anymore, everyone's tired of it, but we're dealing with supply chain disruptions and price disruptions related to COVID. And therefore, the number one thing we can do to support people right now in the economy, is get done with COVID. And that means continuing vaccinations, getting people to get their boosters as well. The boosters are strongly effective against Omicron even as they are right now. We need to keep doing the things we do to get through this crisis. So that we can get our economy back to normal, so people can get back to the things they love to do and we can move forward.

Solomon: I appreciate that, although—and we’ll get at the causes of inflation in a minute— but are there other short-term levers that the government has? [U.S. President] Joe Biden said ‘you know what we're going to do? We're going to do ports in Los Angeles, we're going to go 24 hours a day to alleviate supply chain issues.’ What will your government do?