PM’s aid pledge prompts backlash

Tweet a reminder of the risks of political theatre

We’ve all been there — on the sofa, watching a charity concert, when the celebrity host urges you to dial in and make a donation toward the worthy cause in question.

You reach for the phone or computer and make a pledge. The problem in this case: the commitment was for $50 million of other people’s money.

On Sunday, Justin Trudeau tweeted at comedian Trevor Noah, the driving force behind the Global Citizen festival concert in South Africa, where Beyoncé, Jay-Z and a host of other stars were performing in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s centenary.

“Hey @Trevornoah — thanks for everything you’re doing to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s legacy at the @ GlblCtzn festival" read the tweet from Trudeau’s account. “Sorry I can’t be with you — but how about Canada pledges $50M to @ EduCannotWait to support education for women & girls around the world? Work for you? Let’s do it.”

Few would argue with the cause — educating women and girls in poverty has to be the smartest investment in the global aid business. But the glib fashion in which it was announced gave the impression Trudeau had wandered over to the federal government’s money tree and plucked off a few million to dispense overseas.

The reality is that the money is part of a package of measures on global gender equality announced in the 2018 budget and re-committed at the G7 meeting in Quebec last summer.

Officials say the tweet was planned for three weeks.

Other countries made generous donations.

Ireland’s Leo Varadkar, Trudeau’s rival for the role international progressive poster boy, said his country would increase its aid budget by 15 per cent next year.

This was obviously a longplanned and pretty standard foreign aid announcement.

But the execution was horrible. It reminded people of everything they don’t like about this prime minister in 280 flippant characters — an impulsive, arrogant, profligate friend of the stars, apparently using public money as if it were his own to burnish his reputation.

The timing was inopportune from Trudeau’s point of view. In lieu of economic stress in Oshawa and Alberta, where the government offered little more than thoughts and prayers, the prime minister had apparently opened the government’s chequebook to send money abroad.

The outcry follows swiftly on the heels of comments he made in Argentina last week, where he talked about the “gender impacts” male construction workers make in rural areas. He told G20 business leaders that “women entrepreneurs tend to make better choices than others.”

Trudeau’s sweeping generalizations appeared to upset as many women as men.

“You don’t lift women up by tearing down men,” said Lisa Raitt, the Conservative Party’s deputy leader.

The wife of one worker took to Facebook to complain that the suggestion that construction crews were “not welcome or a danger in rural communities is absurd.”

It is possible that the only people truly dismayed by the incessant theatrics are those who would never vote Liberal. But the dip in the polls the governing party suffered after the India trip last spring suggests that unforced errors can be costly.

India played into the narrative that Trudeau is not serious; the Trevor Noah tweet reminded people that their prime minister believes himself an international celebrity.

In a period of relatively strong economic growth, benign inflation and low unemployment — faced with two rookie opposition leaders struggling to convince their own supporters of their worth — the next election should be in the bag already.

Perhaps it is. But Trudeau communicating his sense of his own state of grace will continue to make it worth watching.

THE OUTCRY FOLLOWS ON THE HEELS OF COMMENTS HE MADE IN ARGENTINA.