“Because it’s 2015,” Justin Trudeau said, in what many believed was the setting of a new standard of recognizing the true equality of women. “Because it’s 2015” became the rallying cry for those who looked to Canada’s new prime minister as the minstrel of gender fairness. “Because it’s 2015.”
And now that it’s no longer 2015 and playing the numbers game is no longer accepted as a definition of gender respect, and because since 2015, men like Bill Cosby, Massimo Pacetti, Harvey Weinstein and Scott Andrews, have been tagged as bearers of public scorn and alleged or convicted opportunists on the merry-go-round of sexual miscreants.
Cosby’s name was legendary. Dr. Huxtable, Fat Albert and Alexander “Scotty” Scott for those with sufficient battle scars to remember I Spy and Pierre Trudeau. Massimo Pacetti and Scott Andrews? Local big shots at home, but MPs just long enough to be fired from Liberal Party ranks by Pierre’s kid.
Ah yes, Pierre’s kid. The lifelong feminist whose activist support of sexually manhandled women predated by years his alleged “inappropriate handling” of a young, female reporter at the Kokanee Summit Festival in August 2000.
Alleged.
Yet 18 years later, and now himself Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau acknowledged his apology to the Creston Valley Advance reporter. Why? Because the woman appeared upset. Justin, though, after said that “reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago and again I feel — I am confident — that I did not act inappropriately. Part of this awakening we’re having as a society, a long-awaited realization, is that it’s not just one side of the story that matters.”
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Utter baffledeegabble. Or as Valerie Bourne, publisher of the Creston Valley Advance in 2000, and in whom the young reporter confided, put it: “tap-dancing.”
In this, the year of #MeToo, should Justin Trudeau become the subject of an independent investigation? Of course not, declared the prime minister.
“Part of this awakening that we’re having as a society, a long-awaited realization, is that it’s not just one side of the story that matters, that the same interactions can be experienced very differently from one person to the next,” he said.
Notching the self-absolvency gear more firmly in place, Trudeau continued: “But at the same time this lesson that we are learning, and I’ll be blunt about it, often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently. We have to respect that and reflect on that.”
This self-serving drivel which would meet rejection from the manager of a small department in a Canadian start-up.
The shameful cover fire for Trudeau provided by federal Employment Minister Patty Hajdu, who insisted she was “proud” of the prime minister’s response to the complaint, simply confirms for many, if not most, Canadians that their impression of politics and politicians is spot on.
Trudeau had already been judged as lacking ethics by Parliament’s watchdog in such matters.
Pierre’s son lauded murderous Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, a great family friend, as he would share. This prime minister has attempted to persuade Canadians of his personal outrage over being forced to deliver a $10.5-million settlement to Omar Khadr. And when a Canadian military veteran demanded to know why Trudeau continues to fight his wounded fellow veterans in court, the reply was “because they’re asking for more than we can give right now.”
It has been a mere two weeks since the nation demanded its prime minister satisfactorily explain what he apologized for in Creston, B.C., in 2000. The nation continues to wait and must not allow the self-described feminist to escape true public judgment.
Because it’s 2018!
Roy Green is the host of the Roy Green Show on the Global News Radio network.
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