Justin Trudeau Speaks with CNN’s Poppy Harlow

HARLOW: So two years ago, I was at a dinner and heard you speaking about diversity and heard you speaking about a cabinet that was equal men and women. Today it is gender balanced, 17 women, 17 men. It was clearly intentional, why did you do it?

TRUDEAU: Well first of all, before you can get to a cabinet that is gender balanced, it took a number of years of work recruiting great women and convincing them to run for politics which isn’t easy as it is so when you think about getting to better gender diversity, you realize you have to do a lot of work building the pipeline towards that. Why do it was fundamental to governing well. When you have a broader group of people with different perspectives, with different backgrounds, with different stories, with different life experiences, you’re actually much better able to solve different problems and solve them in a way that is going to respond to the needs people have.

HARLOW: I mean when you look Prime Minister at the under representation of women in the U.S. Congress, what do you think?

TRUDEAU: We have a similar under representation in Canada’s parliament. We are nowhere near 50 percent. We’re nowhere near 40 percent.

HARLOW: Right.

TRUDEAU: We have to do a lot better but I can’t control the numbers in parliament. I can control the numbers in my cabinet.

HARLOW: So the “Harvard Political Review,” just last month reported on some polling data – internally in Canada that showed that you have lost a bit of male support since your election and the pollster inferred from that was that quote, “a tacit assumption that they, meaning men, are not a priority. That thinking some have that as women rise up it is man down.” What do you make of that?

TRUDEAU: I can understand worries that people have any time there’s a status quo that is challenged. What we’ve seen time and time again is when you have more fairness, more equality, you actually create better prosperity, more opportunity for everyone.

HARLOW: President Trump has at times spoken more critically of you, Mr. Prime Minister, than he has of President Putin of Russia, Rodrigo Duterte of the Phillippines, Kim Jong-Un of North Korea whom he recently called terrific, a talented negotiator and said we fell in love. What do you think of that?

TRUDEAU: My job as a politician is to focus on what matters to Canadians.

HARLOW: You don’t take it personally?

TRUDEAU: In politics you get called a lot of things by a lot of different people and most of the time you’re just able to shrug it off. I’ve gotten pretty good at that. My focus is on how to build a constructive relationship that’s going to work for Canadians and that’s what I’ll always do.