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Zero tolerance.

That's what he said.  Those are the words he used.

Justin Trudeau has said, many times, that he and his party have "zero tolerance" for sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.

As recently as 2018, he gave inspiring interviews to Canadian Press and CBC about the subject.  Here's what he said.

"We have no tolerance for this — we will not brush things under the rug, but we will take action on it immediately," he declared to The Canadian Press, describing how his political party and government regard sexual harassment.

He said the same sort of thing to CBC Radio in an interview around the same time.  There, the self-proclaimed Feminist Prime Minister proclaimed: "I've been very, very careful all my life to be thoughtful, to be respectful of people's space and people's headspace as well."

He respects your headspace, our Prime Minister does.  So, as if to emphasize the point, he noted he had earlier banished a pair of Liberal MPs for alleged sexual impropriety.

In 2014, he expelled two MPs from the Liberal caucus — Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti — before he told them why.  An investigation came later, and it determined that Andrews had indeed engaged in harassing behaviour (groping and grinding), while Pacetti was found to have had having sex with someone (without explicit consent).

So far so good.  We don't need sexual creeps and crawlies in our lives.  We particularly don't need them in Canadian public life.  Well done, Trudeau.

And then, two years ago this week, this writer received a message from a female Member of Parliament.  One who really was a feminist, and one who had female friends in all of the political parties in the Hill.

"Have you seen the story about Trudeau groping a reporter in BC?" she said.  "It happened years ago, but still."

I had not, I told her.  The Liberal Party's "zero tolerance" policy was a hot topic, that June, because of a controversy swirling around Liberal cabinet member Kent Hehr.  An Alberta woman, Kristin Raworth, had tweeted to me vague allegations of sexual impropriety by Hehr, who was and is a quadriplegic.

Hehr properly removed himself from cabinet while an investigation was underway.  He later lost his Calgary seat in the 2019 election.  (Tellingly, perhaps, Raworth was later obliged to apologize, retract, and pay substantial damages for false allegations "he hit his wife" she made against this writer in March.)

But two years ago, the Kent Hehr story had made sexual harassment stories big news.  Me Too, too.

And a Member of Parliament had just told me Justin Trudeau had groped a reporter in BC.  She had the article, she said.  She sent it to me.

It was an editorial, unsigned, from the Creston Valley Advance.  It was easy to determine who the author was, but I would not name her (and have never named her).  I posted a screenshot of the editorial, the reporter's name on the Advance's masthead removed.  Apart from asking "what?" in the title of the post, I said nothing else.

The editorial was titled "Open Eyes."  The author stated that Trudeau had groped her, quote unquote, at a beer festival in 2020.  Trudeau had "inappropriately handled the reporter," the editorial read, while she was in assignment for the Advance as well as the National Post.

When confronted about his actions which, in many other cases, would be regarded as a sexual assault Trudeau offered an explanation, not a real apology.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I would have never been so forward."

Meaning: you're fair game, woman, if you're reporting for a small paper.

When I posted the screenshot of the editorial, it went viral, as they say.  It became international news.  When Trudeau now a Prime Minister finally deigned to respond, he offered up an explanation that has since become an object of ridicule.  There hadn't been a "negative interaction," he said, although the editorial certainly suggested that was not the case.

Said Trudeau about his victim: "Who knows where her mind was, and I fully respect her ability to experience something differently."

Implying the victim had some unnamed mental instability, and declaring that she experienced sexual assault "differently" doesn't sound terribly feminist, does it?  But Justin Trudeau survived the scandal.  He was re-elected.

Two years later, the issue is back.  This time, a Liberal backbencher is facing assault, break and enter, and criminal harassment charges from 2015.  A woman is among the victims.

And Trudeau knew all about it.  The allegations were substantiated by an internal Liberal Party probe, the CBC revealed this week.

But Trudeau let the backbencher run under his party's banner anyway.  Trudeau signed the MP's nomination papers.

We could go on, but by now you get the point.  And the point is this.

When Justin Trudeau said he had a "zero tolerance" policy, he didn't actually mean there was "zero tolerance" for sexual misconduct.

He meant there was literally zero that he wouldn't tolerate.

Photo Credit: Montreal Gazette

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Did you hear it? 

I'm talking about that loud clicking sound which recently reverberated across the entire country, as political journalists collectively jabbed the "delete" button on their computer keyboards, simultaneously erasing the column they had all written profusely congratulating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his amazing diplomatic triumph. 

I'm sure you know what I'm referring to here. 

Last week, Trudeau, despite a massive lobbying effort that included rabid costume changes, huge payouts to incompetent international organizations and kissing up to just about every dictator on the planet, miserably failed in his effort to win a temporary seat on the UN's security council. 

This was an extremely embarrassing setback not only for Trudeau, but also for Canada's mainstream media, which for the past five years has been committed to the running narrative that our prime minister is more than just a mere mortal, that he's a demi-god with blessed powers, or a white knight come to save us from evil dragons, or perhaps more accurately, an angel who descended from heaven to usher in on earth a golden age of pure bliss and happiness. 

And this is why, I believe journalists in this country were absolutely certain that the rest of the world would eagerly embrace a Trudeau-led Canada; indeed, that foreign leaders would sprinkle rose petals on Trudeau's path to the UN security council. 

After all, supposedly the only reason Canada failed to win a seat on that Council back in 2010 was because the dastardly Stephen Harper was running the show then, and he, the media told us, had destroyed our country's once stellar international reputation with his stubborn determination to turn our country into some sort of right-wing hell hole. 

As the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson noted at the time, "The humiliating rejection of Canada's bid to win a seat at the United Nations Security Council Tuesday presents Stephen Harper with a choice: acknowledge this rebuke from the global community and rethink how his government presents Canada to the world, or ignore it and accept an outsider status unique in this country's history." 

So, of course, given that Canada is now run by a certified, progressive, adorable, globalist such as Trudeau how could he not win a seat on the UN security council? 

Surely, it was a slam dunk. 

But at the end of the day, of course, the only thing that got dunked were Trudeau's pretentions. 

And this is not the only time Trudeau has failed to live up to the media's hype. 

For instance, the media sold us on the idea that Trudeau was, unlike the cynical Harper, an idealist; yet this is the same Trudeau who also twisted himself into moral and ethical knots to help ensure his corporate cronies over at SNC-Lavalin could escape their pesky legal problems. 

The media also assured us that, unlike that nasty bible-thumping Harper, Trudeau was a cultural and social progressive, yet later we discovered (thanks to an American media outlet) that our prime minister had, on more than one occasion, dressed up in racist blackface. 

And finally, we were confidently assured that, unlike the planet-hating Harper, whose sole desire was to wreck the environment, Trudeau, who's love of nature was legendary (remember the canoe photo ops?) would grant a "social license" to First Nations thus ensuring oil spewing pipelines would be welcomed by all then the railroad blockades happened. 

So yes, the UN fiasco is only the latest case of cognitive dissonance the media has endured over the past few years, but once you've made an emotional investment in adoring a prime minister it's hard to suddenly shift gears and accept reality. 

As a matter of fact, the media take on the UN fiasco so far is to basically conjure up theories as to why Trudeau's isn't to blame. 

If they can't congratulate Trudeau on his victory, they can at least rationalize his failure. 

And this determination by the media to keep the prime minister on his lofty pedestal shouldn't surprise us, because as Oscar Wilde once put it, "illusion is the first of all pleasures."

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.