For the last 50 years, encompassing father and son, even with six prime ministers between Pierre and Justin, the Trudeau name has been a lightning rod, especially in Western Canada.
Yet the disdain heaped on Pierre in the 1970s and 1980s is polite compared to the vitriol Justin has received since becoming prime minister in 2015, mostly due to social media and an increasingly wide political divide.
The participants in the recent “Freedom Convoy” and the ongoing border blockades and community protests are mad about lots of things – public health orders, vaccinations, restrictions, masks, passports and so on – to varying degrees. But they all agree about Justin Trudeau and the loudest cheers and crowd chants go to “F*** TRUDEAU!”
One of the demands of the convoy participants when they reached Ottawa was for Trudeau to resign, never mind that, even if he did, the minority Liberal government elected just last fall would remain in place. Would anything really change if Trudeau quit, especially since most of the health orders and restrictions are provincial, not federal, mandates? Of course not.
The unhealthy fixation on Trudeau runs from pickup drivers virtue signalling with their F*** Trudeau bumper stickers to the entire Conservative Party of Canada and its Parliamentary caucus. The CPC has fired its last two leaders – Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer – and forced Stephen Harper to retire for a single unforgiveable sin: not being able to beat Trudeau in a federal election. Yes, there were other contributing factors, but failing to do job No. 1 was the big one.
Conservatives are still asking themselves how they lost two elections in a row to a prime minister stained with so much controversy and scandal. Blaming Trudeau (and the CBC and the mainstream media and Quebec and suburban Toronto and Vancouver and on and on and on) is much easier for Conservatives than looking in the mirror and at political priorities that simply don’t mean much in urban Canada, where most of the votes and the seats are.
But what is the glue that holds Conservative MPs and these rowdy protesters together? Trudeau.
Moderate environmentalists who fight for change through government action and public support are often frustrated and embarrassed by radicals chaining themselves to trees, vandalizing logging equipment and demonizing the police for having the audacity to enforce the law. So too are Canadians sympathetic to peaceful demonstrations loudly expressing displeasure with government and public health orders but horrified by the illegal and disgusting behaviour of many of these protesters.
The same crowd raging two years ago against the Wet’suwet’en blockades and supporting protests blocking rail lines and urban intersections across Canada now see nothing wrong with shutting down the downtown core of the nation’s capital and blocking major international border crossings for days on end with no consequences. People who wanted law and order immediately and harshly enforced two years ago now justify endless lawlessness with childish deflections like “oh, yeah, what about those guys?” and “look at how bad Black Lives Matters supporters were in the States.”
Maybe one day, the F*** Trudeau crowd will realize the louder and longer they say it, the more they’re just screwing themselves. But they probably never will.
Instead, they'll blame Trudeau for that, too.
