Justin Trudeau's leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has generally been steady, measured and in the whole exemplary (certainly when compared with some others I could mention), but it has not been perfect. Take, for example, his tone-deaf attempt to sneak through an unprecedented push for extreme and undemocratic emergency powers early on in the outbreak (granted, he quickly back-pedealled on it when challenged, but, even so ... WHAT WAS HE THINKING?)
Well, Mr. Trudeau has just generated another what-was-he-thinking moment when he joined his wife and children for Easter weekend up at the family cottage at Harrington Lake, Quebec. The faux pas emerged when his wife posted photos of the reunited family on her Instagram account (that may have been a mistake too, as without it the public may never have known, and Sophie is probably still in the dog-house for that).
Is it so bad that such a busy man, under such great stress and pressure over the ongoing and ever-changing pandemic measures, takes a bit of R&R, you ask? Well, perhaps not in itself, but the optics certainly stink.
Firstly, what are Sophie and the kids doing at Harrington Lake anyway? They are far from the only well-heeled family choosing to pass this enforced and extended down-time at the cottage, but people have been expressly and unequivalocably told by Canada's top doctor, Dr. Theresa Tam, not to ("#COVID time is not #cottage time"). These rural areas just do not have the capacity to deal with an influx of city-transplanted cases, and Dr. Tam and many cottage country mayors have urged part-timers not to visit.
But more to the point, Trudeau is contravening both Dr. Tam's and his own repeated exhortations to stay at home and avoid all non-essential travel. ("This weekend will be very different. You'll have to stay at home. You'll have to Skype that big family dinner, and the Easter egg hunt.")
A major national and international scandal? No. A misstep. Absolutely. You can't spend weeks telling the whole country to do one thing, and then do the opposite yourself. You're supposed to lead by example. Not everybody is totally thoughtless and self-centred, but you can nevertheless see people thinking, "well, if he can do it..."
In the interests of political balance, it should also be mentioned that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was also guilty of a distinctly suspect decision in imposing his whole family of wife and five kids (!) on a small plane chartered to ferry Scheer, Green leader Elizabeth May and Liberal MP Carla Qualtrough to Ottawa for an extraordinary sitting of parliament. The other original passengers, for whom social distancing was now impossible in the small plane, were less than impressed, but did not feel able to raise strenuous objections, given the circumstances. Scheer justified his action by claiming (facetiously?) that his wife carried wipes and they did not "speak moistly" on each other. Not a very serious response, I wouldn't say.
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