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TV commentator John Oliver famously and hilariously roasted Justin Trudeau in the lead up to the PM’s first electoral win, focusing on the then candidate’s touted “emotional intelligence.”

Expertly edited news clips quipped that the junior Trudeau may lack his father’s intelligence but made up for it in his “emotional intelligence.” I’m paraphrasing, but Oliver followed this up with his usual wit, taking us back to a fictional young Trudeau’s elementary school report card: perhaps a B in science and in phys-ed … but he gets a “squirrel” on emotional intelligence.

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Oliver is right. You can’t really quantify or “grade” an intangible like emotional intelligence. Given the 2019 that Trudeau had, we can see that his younger self would not exactly get an A+ in EI after some of the missteps of decades past.

But this week in 2020, the man who was referred to as “Justin” and “not ready” in previous political campaign ads was indeed ready. Ready to be what Americans would call “Consoler in Chief.” In the past few days, Trudeau’s emotional intelligence brought the needed humanity and leadership to a devastating week for Iranian-Canadians, Canada, Iran and the world.