PM loves being Canada’s tearful, moral compass
The good news is there aren’t lots of shady men driving around cities trying to lure innocent kids into their cars, offering candy or a chance to pat a puppy.
Thankfully, while such worrying instances do occur, they are rare — much less frequent than most people believe. Reports of such happenings are not quite so uncommon, however.
That’s because, like it or not, kids sometimes lie. They make things up, trying to get out of trouble or to bring attention to themselves for the most appropriately childish of reasons.
Police know this only too well, and while that doesn’t stop them investigating such reports of lurking or luring strangers with appropriate speed and vigour — because sometimes, they are true — they don’t throw experience and a healthy dose of skepticism out the cruiser window.
So, back in the day, when an allegation of such an attempt was announced, an experienced police reporter would chat off the record with investigating officers to get a better sense of just how big to play this news — a reply that it was probably best not to hold the front page quite yet, would be a good indicator all was not as first appeared.
Sadly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was too busy taking drama lessons in his earlier life to learn such reticence before launching into yet another almost inevitable, dewy-eyed rendition of a cloying message of love and support, mixed in with suitable, heartfelt condemnation of his own citizens.
For heaven’s sake, anyone with an ounce of common sense would have been a tad suspicious about the alleged scissor-wielding attack on a girl wearing a hijab in Toronto earlier this month that has since proven to be a hoax.
Forty-plus years of working in and around daily newspapers would make anyone eventually pass through skepticism and land on cynicism as a mindset. So, on hearing the initial report, it smelled a little off from the get-go.
Why try to cut a child’s clothing, run off, then reappear for a second go? Yes, there are racist idiots capable of terrorizing a youngster sporting such a head covering these days. But why cut it, why not rip it off, and why, given the police might be coming, return for a second go?
Cutting fabric with scissors is never quick and not something a man usually gravitates to, even a crazy man. They like knives. And there was not a single independent witness, despite two supposed attacks minutes apart?
These questions arose as this became international news, and the poor girl was paraded before the world’s media — yes, we find out later she made it up, but that’s what kids sometimes do. She should never have been pushed before the cameras with her full name released. Have some mercy — she’s only 11.
Oh, but this was heaven sent for Trudeau. He couldn’t wait, nor resist.
“My heart goes out to the young girl who was attacked, seemingly for her religion. I can’t imagine how afraid she must have been,” he said. “I want her and her family and her friends and community to know that that is not what Canada is, that is not who Canadians are … We are better than this.”
Of course he’d be asked, but a wiser, less narcissistic prime minister would have simply said it was a disturbing incident and no doubt the police were doing everything in their power to discover what happened.
“This is not what Canada is.” “We are better than this.” Come on, this man is making a worldwide name for himself by shaming his own country. Even if the incident were true, then the actions of one braindead idiot should not reverberate in the slightest as an indictment of this great country’s reputation.
But he can’t help himself. He loves this stuff — being the tearful, moral compass of this vast land. Maybe he never landed the lead in Hamlet back in those younger days, so he’s still rehearsing. Alas, poor Canada. Chris Nelson is a Calgary writer. This first appeared in the Calgary Herald.