Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s many woes include accusations of sexism, as the self-described “proud feminist” tried to shift blame for his policy failures to his trade minister Chrystia Freeland, who resigned from his Cabinet this week rather than accept a humiliating demotion.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre was quick to point out Trudeau’s “hypocrisy”
“Just blame Chrystia Freeland and make her wear it all. Some feminist,” Poilievre snorted at a press conference on Tuesday.
“The same week as Trudeau was insulting Americans for not electing a woman president, he was busy throwing his own woman deputy prime minister under the bus to replace her with a man. You can’t make this stuff up,” he said.
Poilievre was referring to Trudeau’s bizarre tirade at a “gender representation” gala in Ottawa on December 10, in which the Canadian prime minister harangued American voters for handing a crushing defeat to Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris is nominally female, although her party has not retained the services of a biologist to certify that fact.
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“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult, march towards progress – and yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau whined in Ottawa, presumably referring to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, who is also nominally female.
Canada has had exactly one female prime minister and she only held office for six months in 1993.
“Everywhere, women’s rights and women’s progress is under attack, overtly and subtly. I want you to know that I am, and always will be, a proud feminist. You will always have an ally in me and in my government,” Trudeau declared, one week before he tried to scapegoat his female deputy prime minister and force her to accept a humiliating demotion.
Freeland wrote a fiery resignation letter to Trudeau in which she slammed the prime minister for using “costly political gimmicks” to stay in power as his popularity declined. She accused Trudeau of taking the wrong approach to dealing with incoming U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened to level tariffs against Canadian imports unless Canada improves its border security.
Freeland did not explicitly accuse Trudeau of sexism in her resignation letter, but CBC News quoted female conservative MPs joining Poilievre in slamming the prime minister for his hypocrisy:
Prominent Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner asked how any woman in that caucus could “defend that man instead of calling for an election now,” while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Trudeau needed to start proving himself if he was going to keep declaring himself “to be such a supporter of women.”
MP Melissa Lantsman referred to an “old boys’ club” being in charge.
“It’s time for credible leadership in the seriousness of this moment, not the fake feminism of this phoney prime minister,” said Lantsman, who represents the Conservatives in the Thornhill riding.
Former Liberal MP Celina Ceasar-Chavannes, who left Trudeau’s party to become an independent in 2019, recalled Trudeau becoming “hostile” with her, and noted Freeland was just the latest in a series of women who were “thrown under the bus” after “challenging someone whose name is Trudeau.”
“This is a moment of leadership for Canadians where we need to say enough is enough of a leader who decides that whenever he is challenged on something that someone else has an authority to speak on, like economics, that he’s just going to throw them away,” she said.
The National Post on Tuesday found Liberal MPs rallying around Freeland and questioning Trudeau’s professions of feminism. Many of them noted Freeland is more popular and respected in the party than Trudeau at the moment. Several female Liberals were uncomfortable discussing the Trudeau-Freeland blowup at all.
Trudeau was already facing heavy pressure from members of his own party to resign, with polls showing the Conservatives headed for a 20-point blowout in the next election if the unpopular prime minister remains at the helm. Freeland’s resignation put the Trudeau government into crisis mode, with the leaders of allied parties saying they would no longer vote to protect Trudeau from no-confidence votes.
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It appears to be dawning on Canadian feminists that Trudeau’s plan for surviving his spat with Freeland involved her meekly accepting a demotion and agreeing to sit quietly at future Cabinet meetings.
Poilievre was no fan of Freeland, blaming her on Tuesday for helping Trudeau “double the national debt” by racking up “more debt than all prior prime ministers combined,” but he found it telling that even the big-spending finance minister thought Trudeau’s latest spending binge was too much.
“As we were approaching the fall update, he grabbed the wheel entirely, jerked it to the left, smashed the bus through the guardrail and off the cliff. And then he thought he would blame Freeland before it all,” Poilievre said.
The conservative leader dismissed Trudeau’s administration as a “ridiculous clown show of chaos,” made to look even more unserious by the prime minister’s feminist hypocrisy. Like a growing number of critics, he feared Trudeau was too much of a lightweight to go up against hard-charging Donald Trump.
“President Trump has made it clear that he wants our jobs and our money. Justin Trudeau’s chaotic clown show will only help him get it. We need a strong leader who will negotiate with backbone and brains,” he said.