PM CANNOT DODGE ISSUE
Back at the beginning of the year, there was little indication Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be ensnared in anything resembling a #MeToo allegation.
It’s important to quote in full a question Trudeau was asked by a CBC reporter in January: “As you look back into your own career, is there a chance at some point that your actions might not have been construed the way they were intended?”
A chance. At some point. Misconstrued. The question wasn’t if he was some heinous serial abuser, but if he’d ever slipped up in the eyes of another.
Here’s his response: “I don’t think so. 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.”
The PM then said everyone must be held to a zero-tolerance policy. “There is no context in which someone doesn’t have responsibility for things they’ve done in the past,” the PM added.
If the PM truly believes what he said, it means he now has some explaining to do.
An editorial from British Columbia’s Creston Valley Advance has surfaced from the year 2000. It describes an incident allegedly involving Trudeau, then 28 and a teacher, who had came to town for a fundraiser in honour of his late brother, and suggested Trudeau had “groped” and “manhandled” one of its female reporters.
The editorial states that after the troubling encounter Trudeau told the young female reporter: “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper, I would never have been so forward.”
The newspaper’s publisher has said “the editorial is authentic,” as reported by Mark Bonokoski in the Toronto Sun, one of the first mainstream media pieces to raise questions on this issue. The story has slowly picked up steam after Bonokoski wrote about it and now everyone is talking about what’s become known as the Kokanee Grope.
Trudeau isn’t outright denying the incident. “He remembers being in Creston for the Avalanche Foundation,” Trudeau spokesperson Matt Pascuzzo told the Sun. “But he doesn’t think he had any negative interactions there.”
At least one woman, 18 years ago, apparently disagreed. Doesn’t this fall under Trudeau’s own zero-tolerance policy?
Trudeau’s non-answers to date are unsatisfactory.