Author: Stephen Taylor

Yesterday, in response to a story in the Sun News chain that brought to light comments that Justin Trudeau made two years ago on Quebec television, the Trudeau campaign released the following statement,

“The Conservatives are using out of context statements made years ago in a long interview. They are clearly concerned that they are losing the by-election in Calgary Centre and are resorting to smear campaigns to stop their slide.”
 
“Justin knows that Calgary, Alberta and all of western Canada are at the very heart of Canada’s future. That’s a message he has taken to every part of the country, from the beginning of the campaign. We need to get beyond the divisive politics of the Conservatives and include all Canadians.”

That didn’t really wow people as much as Trudeau’s team wanted it to, leading to criticism from the NDP, Conservatives and from media pundits, including from members of CBC’s At Issue panel.

Today, in BC, Justin Trudeau offered an apology,

“I’m sorry I said what I did. I was wrong to relate the area of the country that Mr. Harper is from with the people who live there and with the policies that he has that don’t represent the values of most Canadians”
 
“It was wrong to use a shorthand to say Alberta, when I was really talking about Mr. Harper’s government, and I’m sorry I did that.”

Yet earlier this year in a radio interview in Quebec, Trudeau described of Mr. Harper’s government (rather, his imagined image of it) and suggested that he would support Quebec becoming its own country,

“I always say that if I ever believed Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper and we were going against abortion and going against gay marriage, and we were going backward in 10,000 different ways, maybe I’d think of wanting to make Quebec a country”

So now we learn that Justin Trudeau didn’t mean “Alberta” when he was trying to say something about the “Harper government. Given this revelation, have we learned that he does favour breaking up the country even if he doesn’t mean to say any bad words about Alberta?

Here are my comments on this story on the Sun News Network,

Ouch. It could not have come at a worse time for the Liberal Party of Canada, which polls say are running a close second in a by-election in Calgary Centre.

Sun News has uncovered a two year old clip of Justin Trudeau, son of the former PM and now running for leadership of the Libearal Party, saying some unfortunate and shameful things about Alberta.

This comes on the heels of comments by National Resources critic David McGuinty’s comments yesterday that the Harper government was shilling for Big Oil and that Albertan MPs have a provincial focus and should “go back to Alberta”.

Trudeau remarked that he is running a campaign to unite all Canadians but he will found that this hopeful narrative has hit a brick wall when Canadians learn about his comments.

In an interview on the Tele-Quebec program Les francs-tireurs, he remarked,

Trudeau: “Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn’t work”

Reporter: “[we] better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans?”

Trudeau: “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes. Certainly when we look at the great prime ministers of the 20th century, those that really stood the test of time, they were MPs from Quebec… This country – Canada – it belongs to us.”

The Calgary Centre by-election is in 4 days.

UPDATE: Justin Trudeau’s campaign has reacted to the story in an emailed response to reporters,

“The Conservatives are using out of context statements made years ago in a long interview. They are clearly concerned that they are losing the by-election in Calgary Centre and are resorting to smear campaigns to stop their slide.”
 
“Justin knows that Calgary, Alberta and all of western Canada are at the very heart of Canada’s future. That’s a message he has taken to every part of the country, from the beginning of the campaign. We need to get beyond the divisive politics of the Conservatives and include all Canadians.”