Liberals’ weirdness in absence of policy.

Iam clearly not Justin Trudeau’s target audience. I don’t mean his policies: I support some, oppose some, worry many are undeliverable and will collapse in a cynicism-breeding heap. I mean the way he carries himself. When he delivered his “because it’s 2015” zinger, I wondered why he would be so glib; why not talk up some of his very accomplished female cabinet ministers? Then I noticed a fair chunk of the Canadian population had collapsed in an appreciative swoon. Maybe it was a pretty good line, I thought. Maybe I’m just a crank.

The swooners seemed to enjoy this story, too, as reported by Canadian Press: speaking at the Canadian embassy in Washington last month, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland recalled an unnamed foreign leader asking Trudeau “about picking so many women for his cabinet — and Trudeau left him speechless by replying that his cabinet would have fewer men if he’d gone on the basis of talent.”

“The look on the face of this head of state, who I won’t name, I could just see him thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, Canadians really are bonkers,’ ” said Freeland, reportedly to appreciative laughter.

We’re meant to picture Trudeau smacking down some Berlusconian fossil. But that was, objectively, a bonkers thing for Trudeau to say — and this isn’t just me being a crank. As Freeland tells it, the self-styled Prime Minister of Feminism said, in so many words, that he left qualified women out of Cabinet so as to ensure there were enough men at the table. Why on earth would anyone applaud that?

This week, many more Canadians are partaking of this befuddlement — welcome aboard! — thanks to Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s Instagram account, where she posted a photo of her and Justin holding hands and staring mesmerized into each other’s eyes. “This week, as we mark International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are, who treat girls and women with respect, and who aren’t afraid to speak up in front of others,” she wrote. She advised locating a “male ally,” clasping his hand, (presumably) gazing mesmerized into his eyes, and posting a photo of the scene under the hashtag #TomorrowInHand.

This did not go over well, as you might imagine, among women who think International Women’s Day is a pretty stupid occasion to celebrate men. Half-hearted defences have been mounted along the lines of “it’s a good thing when men support women,” and it is. But look again at the people Grégoire Trudeau wants to celebrate: men who “encourage” women? Who “treat (them) with respect”? These are nothing more than the most rudimentary obligations of being a friend to anyone.

It’s such a stinker that I’m prepared to believe Grégoire Trudeau wrote it herself. But the presence of communications professionals has been no panacea for the Liberals: notably, they botched the hell out of Trudeau’s vacation with the Aga Khan. And this isn’t the first time the impossibly earnest Trudeaus have angered an activist community. In January, on his cross-country rolled-upsleeves listening tour, the PM suggested First Nations chiefs didn’t appreciate their young residents’ needs — an extraordinarily ill-advised statement even before he said what he thought they do need: “a place to store their canoes and paddles so they can connect back out on the land.”

He said that not at one town hall meeting, but at two. The reaction was, quite rightly, furious.

I can imagine someone believing that what troubled First Nations communities need isn’t so much clean drinking water, functional schools and economic opportunity but as a profound re-connection with their ancestral lands. I can imagine such a person in a TV sitcom that’s set on a Canadian university campus, for instance. The character would have dreadlocks, and be an idiot. It boggles the mind that the prime minister of Canada would think it was true, or think people would appreciate hearing it.

As Trudeau demonstrated with his gender-balanced cabinet, Canadians are gluttons for political symbolism. There are people in my industry who honestly think Stephen Harper might still be prime minister had Patrick Brazeau won a charity boxing match. And even in this age of instant all-pervading outrage, Grégoire Trudeau’s hand-on-heart feel-goodery is a powerful currency: she sang that bloody song on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and didn’t suffer much for it.

But this gang in Ottawa traffics in both political symbolism and earnest feelgoodery to a truly remarkable degree, and with a boundless confidence that sometimes seems unfounded. The more the Liberals’ agenda grinds against reality, the more their transformational aura erodes, the more we are seeing supposedly substantial people saying things that aren’t just insubstantial or off-message or politically unwise, but actually quite weird.

CANADIANS ARE GLUTTONS FOR POLITICAL SYMBOLISM — CHRIS SELLEY