Last July, our government bought a replacement residence for the Canadian consul general in New York. Outraged, opposition House leader Andrew Scheer gave the following statement: “While Canadians can’t afford a home because the Trudeau government has doubled housing costs, Justin Trudeau has spent $9 million on a luxury apartment on Billionaires’ Row for his retired media buddy that he appointed Consul General.”
During Wednesday’s question period, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre continued the attack, noting the condo’s master bathroom with its “handcrafted copper soaking tub.” Prime Minister Trudeau’s response was that he’d just spent time at the residence “engaging with international leaders,” to which Conservative MP Garnett Genuis heckled, “Does he engage with them in the bathtub?”
Trudeau accused Genuis of making a “casual homophobic comment” and NDP whip Heather McPherson demanded that Genuis “apologize for his homophobic and disgusting comment,” later adding that “It makes this an unsafe work environment for so many of us.”
Genuis denied the allegations: “It had nothing to do with sex. I wasn’t thinking about sex at all.” He asked that MPs remember the context of Poilievre’s bathtub dig. “The point of that comment is to illustrate that, of course, meetings don’t take place in a bathtub. A luxurious bathtub has nothing to do with meetings.”
Unfortunately, context and intention matter little in today’s bad-faith Parliament. The Conservatives intended to draw attention to government waste at a time of high housing costs in Canada and to represent the purchase as a gift to a political pal. But in doing so, they left the proper context out: The residence is for the office of the Consulate General of Canada to the United States in New York, not an individual. The old five-bedroom apartment, last refurbished over 40 years ago, required millions in renovations. Now listed on the market for $13 million, its sale will more than cover the purchase of the new unit; $9 million for a 3,600 square-foot residence capable of hosting international dignitaries for dinner is a bargain. And real estate is a solid investment, especially in New York.
Those are the common-sense counterpoints Trudeau should have made. Instead, by touting his meetings at the residence, Trudeau needlessly opened himself to Genuis’s joke. The subsequent Liberal and NDP pearl-clutching was an appalling deflection. Any LGBT or T parliamentarian who thinks Genuis created an unsafe work environment is too precious to be an MP. Nor would they have survived the 20th century.
It’s undoubtedly true that the Canadian conservative movement has a long history of anti-gay policy. It fought Charter protections for us in the ’80s and was fierce in opposing equal marriage in the ’90s and Aughts. Even today, despite Poilievre’s pivot in support of our rights, homophobes are not uncommon in the party’s grassroots. From the beginning, right-wing voices have tried to disqualify Trudeau by coding him as gay, as they did with his father when he decriminalized homosexuality in 1969.
That context may account for some of the initial hysteria. But it doesn’t excuse the refusal to acknowledge Genuis’ perfectly reasonable explanation of his intent, nor the continued attempts to smear his character. According to Liberal MP Ken Hardie, “A lot of very, very reasonable people perceived that to be a homophobic comment. So, it would have been just simple for Mr. Genuis to stand up and say, ‘I regret that it was received in that way and I apologize.’ That would have been really simple.”
Nonsense. If people apologized every time they were misinterpreted, the world would be one non-stop apology. This is especially true in an age that valorizes victimhood and provides incentives for the professionally offended. Further, as Hardie well knows, non-apology apologies only lead to further attacks. And such performative sensitivity is especially rich from a Liberal Party that routinely spouts Hamas talking points without apology to Canadian Jews.
Liberals have worn out the springs of their fainting couches with their non-stop attempts to cast their opponents as bigots regardless of issue or context. Disgracefully, Trudeau linked Conservatives to white supremacists and Nazis during the convoy protests and accused them of racism for raising concerns about Chinese scientists at a Winnipeg lab who leaked classified material to the CCP military.
Trudeau offered no apologies for white supremacist and Nazi slander, nor for his racism allegations when the rogue scientists were fired, and the depths of this national security scandal were made clear. And the charge of racism has always been strange coming from a prime minister whose blackface escapades — even one — would have felled any Conservative leader on the spot.
Whatever the party, refusing to consider intention and context is ultimately self-defeating. It reduces the effectiveness of a party’s talking points and opens it to charges of hypocrisy. Poilievre has an objectively nasty style, but it’s hard for Liberals to make that case without appearing hypocritical when they indulge in equally vicious knee-jerk accusations of racism and homophobia. Similarly, the Liberals are profligate self-indulgers: witness Trudeau’s $6,000-a-night stay in London for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral and his lavish high-carbon junkets. Diluting serious examples of Liberal extravagance by insinuating crooked cronyism in the purchase of an official consular residence in New York reeks of shabby politics.
Social media partisans should also touch grass. Liberals outraged that Conservatives mock Trudeau’s socks should recall that Trudeau himself has made them part of his political brand, even drawing attention to them at meetings with unimpressed world leaders. And Conservatives outraged at charges of intolerance should ask if Poilievre’s willingness to entertain lunatics is the best look for a future prime minister.
Intention. Context. They matter. And the inability of our political class to grasp that simple truth leaves all of us wanting a bath.
National Post
Allan Stratton is the internationally award-winning author of “Chanda’s Secrets” and “The Dogs.”