Wente, G&M: Personally, I don’t much care what Mr. Trudeau did at a beerfest back in 2000. If he did it he should just come clean, do his grovel, take his lumps and move on. But he can’t, because in his zeal to prove his feminist credentials he has insisted that the only appropriate response to any form of sexual misconduct – no matter how slight or how ancient – is zero tolerance and punishment.
It was Mr. Trudeau, you may recall, who suspended two Liberal MPs from caucus in 2014 on the basis of unproven misconduct allegations. He also banished Kent Hehr from cabinet for inappropriate comments of some kind. “The fact that we have no tolerance for this – that we will not brush things under the rug, but we will take action on it immediately – is part of the modelling that we hope to see ... throughout work forces and workplaces in Canada,” he told The Canadian Press. As for himself, he told the CBC: “I’ve been very, very careful all my life to be thoughtful, to be respectful of people’s space and people’s headspace as well.”
But the real story here is not the details of an alleged ancient indiscretion at a beerfest. It’s about what happens when it appears you apply a set of standards to other people that you yourself can’t meet, after declaring that you are holier than everybody else. It’s about perceived hypocrisy. And that’s a story that’s eminently worth telling.
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