For Justin Trudeau, being his father’s son is both a blessing and a curse.
It’s a blessing in that it assures him media coverage and public attention that he wouldn’t get if his name were Justin Jones. But it’s a curse in that it causes him to be held to a dauntingly high standard, and amplifies the embarrassment whenever he falls short of the expectations his famous name engenders.
Unfortunately for him, the gaffes have been coming with remarkable frequency.
There was the occasion last March when he quibbled about honour killings being characterized as “barbaric” in the new Canadian citizenship guide. Then there was last December’s outburst when, on the Commons floor, he called Environment Minister Peter Kent a ruder word for a piece of excrement.
His latest is perhaps the most egregious.
It came in a French-language radio interview last weekend, when he allowed that the Harper government’s policies could conceivably drive him to side with the Quebec separatists:
“I always say that if, sometime, I believed that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper, and if it was going against abortion and it was going against same-sex marriage, and that it was moving backward in 10,000 different ways, maybe I would think about making Quebec a country.”
He did add (when the astounded host asked if he were serious): “But I believe profoundly in Canada and I know that Quebec within Canada can restore all this.”
But the damage was done. The separatists were gleeful, and fellow Liberals were dismayed. And once again Trudeau looked the fool.
What he could reasonably have said, as others have, is that Harper-government policies such as promoting the monarchy, abolishing the long-gun registry and filling up the jails more copiously – things Quebecers more typically than other Canadians oppose – risk serving the sovereignist cause. But saying that those policies could push even him that way crossed a line he should reasonably have recognized.
There was also an element of demagogy in his suggestion that the Harper government is bent on outlawing abortion and repealing same-sex marriage. Those are things the prime minister has flatly and repeatedly denied he will do.
Trudeau has ruled out any run for the Liberal Party leadership this time around. His fellow Liberals must increasingly be feeling relieved.
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