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John Ivison: All that remains to be seen is whether voters care enough about this to defrock Trudeau

Trudeau apparently believes that an apology and an acknowledgment of his 'layers of privilege' is sufficient and everyone should just move along

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SAINT-HYACINTHE, QUE. — The reaction on the streets of Saint-Hyacinthe to Justin Trudeau’s recurring tendency of blacking up for his own amusement was subdued. It seems we do not expect much of our politicians, so we are rarely disappointed.

There were expressions of exasperation about the mud-slinging that has characterized this campaign. By and large, though, an unscientific sample of Quebecers did not indicate a shift in vote intention — something that may or may not be explained by this province’s curious cultural approach to race and ethnicity. For reasons not entirely clear to me, dressing up as a caricature of a black or brown person is not considered particularly offensive.

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It’s never easy to identify a game-changing moment in an election but it felt like one on Wednesday night when the block-busting Time Magazine pictures landed. It has certainly been deemed to be one by the keyboard warriors who would like to see Trudeau gone. They are, it has to be said, hardly a representative sample of average, or even lucid, Canadians.

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If this scandal proves fatal to Trudeau’s political ambitions it will because there are enough people who agree with Brian Denes, who spoke to reporters on the street in this southwestern Quebec city. He said he found Trudeau’s behaviour “deplorable” and is now leaning towards the Conservatives. He preferred not to say whether he had voted Liberal in 2015 but said the events of the past 24 hours have left him embarrassed. “It’s the cherry on top,” he said.

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This is the danger for Trudeau — that the latent unease many people feel about him — that he is lightweight or a hypocrite — intensifies.

His performance on the campaign plane on Wednesday did not help in that regard. He lamented the decline of our politics. “If everyone going to stand for office has to demonstrate every step of their lives, there is going to be a shortage of people running for office,” he said, as if it had nothing to do with him that Liberal party black ops tried to end the political careers of four Conservative candidates in the past week. In Brampton North, Liberal incumbent Ruby Sahota called for the resignation of her Conservative rival, Arpan Khanna, for using a homophobic slur in comment on Twitter that the Liberal research team dredged up from nine years ago when he was a teenager. Khanna apologized but it was not enough for Sahota, who called for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to deliver his head. (Scheer accepted the apology and Khanna is still the candidate).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seen wearing brownface at a party in 2001.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seen wearing brownface at a party in 2001. Photo by Time

By contrast, Trudeau apparently believes that an apology and an acknowledgment of his “layers of privilege” is sufficient and everyone should just move along.

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That is not going to happen. It’s not only the blacking up that is a pattern of recurring bad behaviour. The Liberal leader has disillusioned just about anyone who ever believed in his rallying cries “diversity is our strength” and “doing politics differently.”

While some disenchanted progressives may opt for the Conservatives, a more likely home is the New Democrats. Scheer was astute to give Jagmeet Singh a shout-out in his press conference, saying the NDP leader “showed a lot of class and dignity” in his response, where he spoke about growing up with the “pain of racism.” The Conservatives are careful not to be seen to be gloating but there is no doubt this bombshell has the potential to change everything. Scheer did not even mention the brownface saga in his evening event in Sherbrooke but earlier said there is nothing in his past that “rises to this level — nothing like this at all.” He’d best hope not. The Liberals are wounded and will be looking to strike back.

It’s never easy to identify a game-changing moment in an election but it felt like one on Wednesday night

But their credibility has been badly damaged by this story. Even ardent supporters are becoming sceptical. At his press conference in Winnipeg, did Trudeau mist up with contrition or was he conjuring up an image of his party sitting on the opposition benches to coax a tear?

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He claimed to have forgotten all about the third occasion he blacked up and could offer no concrete assurances that more disturbing images wouldn’t emerge.

Who can take seriously all his fine buzzwords about his government fighting “racism, intolerance, systemic discrimination, intersectionalities, and micro-aggressions,” given his admission he has a “massive blindspot” when it comes to marginalized Canadians?

There is no prospect that Trudeau will resign over the revelations, unless forced to by his caucus members, and there are few signs of that. One MP said there is a “growing number” of candidates who are distancing themselves from their leader. “I don’t think much can or will happen,” he said. “But it shows the dangers of climbing up on a soapbox and then being found less virtuous than you said you were.”

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. Photo by Gary Clement/National Post

One of the best lines to emerge on Twitter was that Trudeau is fortunate he isn’t a statue, or he’d be hauled down as politically unsound and shoved into storage.

A prime minister who has made sanctimony part of his standard operating procedure; a leader who believes his opponents are not only in error, they’re in sin, has been revealed as an imposter. All that remains to be seen is whether voters care enough to defrock him come Oct. 21. For his doubters, he has just provided the cherry on top.

• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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