Our Plans/ Your Money: The Flexibility Of Liberal Contradiction

We don’t have public executions anymore in Canada. We do, however, have people hoisted by their own petard in the public square. 

Which brings us to the metaphorical dancing feet of our esteemed prime minister Justin Trudeau. The moral compass of the nation has fashioned himself a length of rope through his unctuous preening about zero tolerance, no excuses, one-strike-and-you’re-out on sexual assault.

Now, caught up in the same #metoo allegations he considered sufficient cause to punt his caucus members, he’s trying every dodge in his virtuous arsenal to avoid having to make the same plunge he forced on his fellow Liberals.

The issue for M. Trudeau is an alleged incident 18 years ago in which a young woman reporter in Creston, B.C., says Trudeau groped her at a party. The details are in dispute as to how much he may have groped, whether the woman was paid to tell her story, that this whole thing happened in a long time ago when feminist shills hadn’t turned sexual relations into an Alexander Solzhenitsyn nightmare.

But, pace Trudeau in earlier cases, details don’t matter when the groped party seems sincere. He has stated there is no statute of limitations on a failed pass after a glass of Chablis. Quibbling about a burden of proof is another assault on the poor victim. Etc.

In 2014, Trudeau, then leader of the Liberal Party, suspended two male members of parliament who were facing allegations of sexual harassment from other female members of parliament (one in a consensual relationship). The MPs resigned from the party before Trudeau could permanently expel the two. 

Well, those were the standards before the PM himself was accused. Now, in tandem with a compliant media, he’s suddenly all about process and fairness. Or a faulty memory. When someone from the media mob finally piped up about the story, he told reporters “I had a good day that day. I don't remember any negative interactions that day at all.”

After months of the story lying dormant (CBC had it for months and held it) it looks like Trudeau won’t be able to shrug off his accuser so easily. Even his ardent press supporters are suddenly looking to put a little light between themselves and his “forgotten” escapade. 

Still, let’s not get lost in the progressive weeds. It likely won’t be enough to get him to square the sexual-assault circle with his own job. The fact being that, as a good progressive, Trudeau reserves the right to contradict himself when he or any other members of the Left Choir are caught in a trap of their own making on any policy. 

It’s one standard for them and one for those who must be sent to re-education camps. A standard honoured by media who receive direct and indirect financial help from his office. Some pigs, after all, are more equal than others.

Here’s how they play do-as-I-say-not-as-i-do. Trudeau and good Liberal apparatchiks like Kathleen Wynne are all in favour of a minimum wage— or even a minimum income to protect the poor. But then, as kind hearts on immigration, they want to import thousands of unskilled illegal… sorry, refugees… to undercut the market value of those same low-wage workers. 

Trudeau bails to eastern politicians and ultra-greens in his mother’s home province of B.C. by cancelling projected oil pipelines within Canada. But there is no similar reaction when his government allows Montreal, Quebec City, Vancouver and Victoria to dump oceans of untreated sewage into the waters near them.

There is his government’s professed interest in free speech. At the same time, he and his ministers label climate critics as deniers and push to have social media sites shut down for mocking his thin skin.

There is is his commitment to diversity and intersectionality. But he’s not so committed if you’re a religious group seeking federal funds and support the pro-life calls to ban third-trimester abortions. Or a community that’s not onside for transsexual men in the girls’ showers.

Or how about concept of a sustainable environment by reducing carbon output? Even as he and his zealot climate-change minister jet about the world to conferences in which they promise to hand over sovereignty on Canadian industry to unelected NGOs and pressure groups.

Speaking of Canadian industry, Trudeau has talked about supporting a vibrant, competitive economy open to international investment. Yet he waffled so long on the Trans Mountain pipeline that his government was forced to spend a minimum of $4.5 B to assume a private-sector firm’s investment.

Liberals would never sympathize with a parent who leaves his child in a locked, hot car. Yet they display so much sympathy for parents who drag kids along on a dangerous voyage, break the law and then make false claims to cast other immigrants of their place in line?

We could on, but Trudeau’s talking himself into a corner is nothing new. Liberals are long on Their Ideas/ Your Money. And getting the benefit of the doubt from the pearl clutchers of the Toronto Star is likewise nothing new.

What is new is that, censorship attempts aside, Trudeau cannot control the social-media forces that aren’t getting a billion dollars like the CBC. The same sort of social-media forces that vaulted Donald Trump to power under the noses of Hollywood and the establishment cliques. They are having nothing of the double-standard dance. 

And they have an opportunity to remind him of that in about a year’s time. At which point the trap door he assumes is kept locked shut by his friends may swing open beneath him.  

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy.is the host of the podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on his website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand will be available this fall.