It didn’t even last a day.
Justin Trudeau was in Toronto on Tuesday night warning the next election would be nasty, but he wouldn’t be part of it.
“We are now looking at perhaps what will be the most divisive and negative and nasty political campaign in Canada’s history,” Trudeau said.
“I can tell you, we will do the same thing we did in 2015: No personal attacks, strong differentiation on issues of policy. I will not engage in personal attacks and none of our team will either.”
That was Tuesday night.
By Wednesday afternoon Trudeau was calling Conservative MP Lisa Raitt and her colleagues ambulance chasers.
So much for positive politics.
It started in the House of Commons as Trudeau was quized by Raitt on his government’s handling of Terri Lynne McClintic. McClintic is the child killer that lured 8 year-old Tori Stafford to her rape, torture and death at the hands of herself and her boyfriend.
She’s currently serving her life sentence in a healing lodge with no fences and children present rather than in a regular prison. The Conservatives want the government to send McClintic back behind bars. That is where Trudeau’s comments come in.
The PM doubled down.
Trudeau was called out for referring to Raitt, a lawyer, as an ambulance chaser. Rather than apologize the PM scurried out of the House of Commons just before a vote on the Conservative motion, then he doubled down.
Is this what Trudeau meant by practicing positive politics?
I always doubt any politician of any stripe when they say they won’t go negative. It is normally followed by saying they won’t be negative like those SOB’s on the other side.
Part of a pattern.
Trudeau said he wouldn’t go negative and then got very personal against Raitt.
We can expect more on this.
Remember that in the past Trudeau’s top adviser Gerry Butts has called people that disagree with his boss Nazis.
Raitt herself was called a “neanderthal” by Trudeau’s finance minister Bill Morneau.
Ontario MPP and cabinet minister Lisa MacLeod was told she was unCanadian by immigration minister Ahmed Hussen. That was for simply for asking when the feds would pay for the immigration problem they created for the provinces.
This idea that Trudeau and the Liberals are all smiles is false.
Anyone remember when he called then Environment Minister Peter Kent a “piece of shit” in the House of Commons?
As I detail in this column, Trudeau is on the wrong path here.
He has legal options to fix this that don’t run afoul of any law, the Charter or any practices at Corrections Canada.
He simply isn’t exercising those options.
For some reason, Trudeau is effectively defending a child killer. He’s taking a side that no one is on.
Why is anyone’s guess.