Trudeau shrugs off profanity spoken at charity boxing match
AJAX, Ont. — Using the F-word in public earned Justin Trudeau a scolding from his wife, but the Liberal leader said Monday he would not accept criticism from the Harper government, which questioned his judgment.
Trudeau dropped the F-bomb over the weekend while speaking at an annual cancer charity boxing match in Gatineau, Que., which he had starred in two years ago.
“There is no experience like stepping into this ring and measuring yourself,” he told a cheering crowd at “Fight for the Cure,” on Saturday.
“Your name, your fortune, your intelligence, your beauty, none of that [expletive] matters.”
Trudeau conceded Monday he may have gotten a little carried away while speaking at the event.
“Listen, it was fight night at the casino on Saturday night and I found myself once again in a boxing ring and I guess I let my emotions run a little hot,” he said in Ajax, Ont., after delivering a speech to the local board of trade.
“But rest assured: I got an awful lot of talking to at home from Sophie and nothing anyone else can add will be worse than that.”
When asked if he wished he had chosen another adjective, Trudeau added: “If you had seen the scolding Sophie gave me you would have wished you used a different adjective as well.”
The Conservatives went after Trudeau’s choice of words on Monday, with at least three Tory MPs referencing the matter in the House of Commons.
“The Liberal leader clearly lacks the judgment, the decorum and the maturity to be prime minister of this country,” said Costas Menegakis.
“It is too bad that his decision to speak candidly resulted in profanity instead of praise for the event organizers.”
Trudeau, however, rejected any suggestion he had displayed behaviour that was unbecoming of a leader and instead rattled off a string of references to issues the Harper government has had to grapple with recently.
“It’s interesting that someone who would have had the poor judgement to put Patrick Brazeau or Mike Duffy in the Senate, someone who chose Arthur Porter, Bruce Carson or even botched a Supreme Court nomination process, would be criticizing anyone else for judgment,” he said.
Brazeau and Duffy were embroiled in the Senate spending scandal; Porter, who was appointed by the prime minister to a committee that monitors Canada’s spy agency, now faces fraud charges in connection with a scandalplagued hospital contract; and Carson, a former senior prime ministerial aide, was investigated by the RCMP at the PMO’s request amid allegations he illegally lobbied the federal government on behalf of a company that employed his girlfriend.
The Supreme Court recently rejected Harper’s choice of Marc Nadon, a semi-retired Federal Court of Appeal judge, for a Quebec seat on the high court.