Aside from Canada’s ongoing economic decline, a key reason the Prime Minister has become so unpopular is the wide gap between his words and deeds.
From the start, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cast himself as a feminist and made that a key part of his political offering to voters.
Trudeau’s rhetoric on feminism has often been decent. He has focused on the importance of equal rights for women, the need to promote women’s rights in the many parts of the world where women are still subjugated, and the importance of women in politics.
However – like with many things Trudeau says – his behaviour and rhetoric are worlds apart. This is receiving renewed attention, given Trudeau’s recent remarks regarding the U.S. Presidential election:
The problem here is that Trudeau lacks credibility when it comes to respect for women in politics. As we have seen, Trudeau’s top priority is personal loyalty to himself (a personality trait he shares with Donald Trump).
To the extent that he can use others to burnish his image, he is glad to promote women in politics. But as we saw with Justin Trudeau’s treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, any sense of magnanimity or respect for diverse perspectives evaporates immediately once people act upon their own sense of ethics rather than being a player in the ‘Justin Trudeau Story’.
Here’s how the BBC wrote about it back in 2019:
“As attorney general, she helped usher in landmark legislation, including legalising cannabis and assisted dying. She was often pointed to in the press as an example of Mr Trudeau’s modern, feminist approach to politics.
But Ms Wilson-Raybould found herself under a different kind of spotlight last February, when the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on a falling out between her and Mr Trudeau over her decision to prosecute SNC Lavalin.
The Quebec firm was accused of bribing officials in Libya to win contracts under Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. It had been lobbying the government for a deal that would avoid prosecution.
Ms Wilson-Raybould says she was subjected to mounting pressure from the government to cut the deal, which would have gone against the advice of her legal staff. Mr Trudeau says he was concerned that if SNC Lavalin went to court, they’d pull out of Quebec and it would cost thousands of jobs.
In January, amid a cabinet shuffle, she was moved out of the justice ministry and given the job of minister of veteran’s affairs, a role she and many others viewed as a demotion. Mr Trudeau denied it was retaliation.
Soon after, she resigned from cabinet, as did her friend MP Jane Philpott, who said “there can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them”. In response, Mr Trudeau ejected them both from the Liberal caucus, accusing them of not being team players.
Ms Wilson-Raybould says she was vindicated in August, when the ethics commissioner found that Mr Trudeau “used his position of authority over Ms Wilson‑Raybould to seek to influence, both directly and indirectly, her decision”, which violated ethics rules.”
Does Justin Trudeau think Canadians have forgotten about this?
Does he think we’ve forgotten that his commitment to ‘feminism’ disappeared the moment a strong female cabinet minister sought to follow the law and follow her sense of right and wrong in opposition to the Prime Minister’s desire to protect the ‘old boys club’?
If so, he thinks as little of the Canadian People as many of us do of him.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – Twitter
