Trudeau to call Singh to apologize
Details given of third blackface incident at Quebec rafting company
• As he ended a news conference Friday, Justin Trudeau moved up and down three rows of Toronto-area Liberal candidates — including his finance and foreign affairs ministers — and gave each politician a hug.
Bill Blair, the tall, burly former Toronto police chief, grinned politely but seemed particularly bashful at being embraced by his boss, the prime minister.
Trudeau may have been at the hotel to announce a new Liberal promise to ban assault rifles, but again spent much of his time showing contrition — by word and gesture — for appearing in blackface on repeated occasions.
As well as physically reaching out to candidates facing backlash over the scandal on the election hustings, he confirmed he would be calling NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to personally apologize.
The Liberal leader also offered some detail of the third blackface incident to surface — it was at a staff “costume day” for the Quebec whitewater rafting company where he worked in the early 1990s.
He was a bit less definitive in ruling out future scandals. Asked about a report in La Presse newspaper that there were more blackface photos still to emerge, he said he had “nothing to confirm” on that matter. Asked if there were other embarrassing episodes from his pre-politics past still to be revealed, he said he did not “recall” any.
“I hadn’t remembered the incident with the rafting company, and that’s why I am wary about being definitive,” said Trudeau, his voice growing quiet and a little hoarse at times discussing the issue.
Singh’s emotional reaction to the initial photo to surface of Trudeau in blackface as a 29-year-old private-school teacher seemed to encapsulate the hurt expressed by many Canadians of colour.
The prime minister said he wanted to connect with him directly, an unusual gesture in the midst of a closely fought federal election.
“I’m apologizing to him personally as a racialized Canadian, as I’ve been apologizing to Canadians who have suffered intolerance their entire lives in ways that some of us — like me — have never had to experience on a daily basis,” he told reporters.
If the Liberals wanted to change the channel with their gun-control announcement — which included an earlier walkabout by Trudeau at the scene of a mass shooting in Toronto — they were only partially successful.
After a few inquiries on the assault-rifle ban, he fielded mainly questions about the images of him in blackface that have deeply shaken the party’s campaign.
The prime minister himself revealed a second incident that took place when he was in high school, after Time magazine broke the story of the blackface appearance at West Point Grey Academy in 2001. Then Global News obtained a video of a third episode, where a black-faced young Trudeau smiles to the camera, the context unclear until now.
“It was the costume day for river guides … in the whitewater rafting operation that I worked at in the summer, between ’92 and ’94,” he said Friday about that incident.
Trudeau skirted around a question Friday about whether the affair will undercut his credibility on the world stage, where he has sought to promote gender and racial equality.
“My focus is on Canadians who face discrimination every day, Canadians who are racialized, who live with intolerance … who I hurt,” he said. “I apologize deeply to them, and I will focus on continuing to do what I have always tried to do as a leader, which is stand against racism and discrimination, at home and on the world stage.”
I’M APOLOGIZING TO HIM (JAGMEET SINGH) PERSONALLY AS A RACIALIZED CANADIAN.