Barf 
there's a lack of good charismatic politicians nowadays.
Mélanie Joly, Canada’s top diplomat, has already faced off against India and China, with Donald Trump up next. She’s also considered a top contender to replace Justin Trudeau.
The offer was as enticing as it was unexpected for a relative political newcomer. Three years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Mélanie Joly to become foreign affairs minister, among the most prestigious and highest profile portfolios in Canada’s cabinet.
But Ms. Joly, who at the time held a significantly less influential ministerial role, turned him down flat.
Her refusal wasn’t because of the fact that she lacked foreign policy experience. She said no because she feared that the travel involved in the globe-trotting job would force her to abandon her yearslong quest to conceive a child through in vitro fertilization.
But Canada’s leader refused to give up.
Mr. Trudeau offered to make whatever arrangements necessary to maintain Ms. Joly’s treatment anywhere in the world. “‘If you become pregnant,’” she remembers him telling her, “‘it would be a fantastic message you would send to the world.’”
After consulting her husband, parents and siblings, Ms. Joly relented, becoming Canada’s top diplomat.
Like her counterparts around the world, Ms. Joly has since had to grapple with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Then there are the diplomatic stresses specific to Canada.
She is still trying to heal a rift with China that developed after that country jailed two Canadians in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Chinese executive at the request of the United States.
Now she’s at the center of Canada’s greatest diplomatic crisis in recent years: accusations that the government of India and its diplomats worked with criminal gangs to intimidate and even murder Canadian citizens who are supporters of a separate Sikh state.
And the return of President-elect Donald J. Trump, and his threat to impose large tariffs on Canadian goods, poses so many diplomatic, economic and immigration issues that Mr. Trudeau has revived a cabinet committee on U.S. relations that includes Ms. Joly.
Her handling of all these challenges has brought Ms. Joly, 45, both praise and criticism.
But what is less open to debate: The high-profile job has placed her among the likely successors to Mr. Trudeau, whose political popularity has cratered over the past year.
Like all members of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, Ms. Joly is publicly supportive of the prime minister. But other members of the Liberal Party have urged him to resign to let a new voice lead the party into elections that must be held by next October.
Mr. Trudeau has rebuffed these calls to quit as party leader, which would also mean resigning as prime minister. But speculation in the Canadian news media about who his successor will be — whenever that time comes — invariably includes Ms. Joly.
“I’ve known Trudeau for a long, long time, and he has my hundred percent support — period,” she said. “But the middle class is hurting, and Canadians expect us to be there for them.”
She added: “We need to be able to adapt.”
www.nytimes.com
there's a lack of good charismatic politicians nowadays.Mélanie Joly, Canada’s top diplomat, has already faced off against India and China, with Donald Trump up next. She’s also considered a top contender to replace Justin Trudeau.
The offer was as enticing as it was unexpected for a relative political newcomer. Three years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Mélanie Joly to become foreign affairs minister, among the most prestigious and highest profile portfolios in Canada’s cabinet.
But Ms. Joly, who at the time held a significantly less influential ministerial role, turned him down flat.
Her refusal wasn’t because of the fact that she lacked foreign policy experience. She said no because she feared that the travel involved in the globe-trotting job would force her to abandon her yearslong quest to conceive a child through in vitro fertilization.
But Canada’s leader refused to give up.
Mr. Trudeau offered to make whatever arrangements necessary to maintain Ms. Joly’s treatment anywhere in the world. “‘If you become pregnant,’” she remembers him telling her, “‘it would be a fantastic message you would send to the world.’”
After consulting her husband, parents and siblings, Ms. Joly relented, becoming Canada’s top diplomat.
Like her counterparts around the world, Ms. Joly has since had to grapple with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Then there are the diplomatic stresses specific to Canada.
She is still trying to heal a rift with China that developed after that country jailed two Canadians in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Chinese executive at the request of the United States.
Now she’s at the center of Canada’s greatest diplomatic crisis in recent years: accusations that the government of India and its diplomats worked with criminal gangs to intimidate and even murder Canadian citizens who are supporters of a separate Sikh state.
And the return of President-elect Donald J. Trump, and his threat to impose large tariffs on Canadian goods, poses so many diplomatic, economic and immigration issues that Mr. Trudeau has revived a cabinet committee on U.S. relations that includes Ms. Joly.
Her handling of all these challenges has brought Ms. Joly, 45, both praise and criticism.
But what is less open to debate: The high-profile job has placed her among the likely successors to Mr. Trudeau, whose political popularity has cratered over the past year.
Like all members of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, Ms. Joly is publicly supportive of the prime minister. But other members of the Liberal Party have urged him to resign to let a new voice lead the party into elections that must be held by next October.
Mr. Trudeau has rebuffed these calls to quit as party leader, which would also mean resigning as prime minister. But speculation in the Canadian news media about who his successor will be — whenever that time comes — invariably includes Ms. Joly.
“I’ve known Trudeau for a long, long time, and he has my hundred percent support — period,” she said. “But the middle class is hurting, and Canadians expect us to be there for them.”
She added: “We need to be able to adapt.”
Tapped by Trudeau to Steer Foreign Affairs, She’s Now His Possible Successor
Mélanie Joly, Canada’s top diplomat, has already faced off against India and China, with Donald Trump up next. She’s also considered a top contender to replace Justin Trudeau.
