Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allegedly resorted to flinging an unspecified six-letter F-word at Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay when questioned about his use of the military to surveil truckers in Ottawa.
The exchange occurred during Wednesday’s question period session.
“The prime minister said, and I quote, ‘One has to be very, very cautious before deploying the military in situations engaging Canadians. It is not something that anyone should enter into lightly.’ Yet now we have learned that Canada’s special forces were operating surveillance aircraft. I’m sure they were just in training over Ottawa during the February trucker’s protest. This contradicts everything the government has said to date. Liberals didn’t put soldiers on the streets, but they did put them in the air,” said Findlay. [hyperlink added]
Trudeau avoided answering the question entirely and resorted to a flurry of insults like accusing the Conservatives of spreading disinformation.
“I want Canadians to pay very careful attention to this exchange. What the member opposite just engaged in is dangerously close to misinformation and disinformation designed to pick up fears and conspiracy theories around what happened a number of months ago,” responded Trudeau.
Reports suggest that soon after sitting down, Trudeau uttered the six-letter F-word.
“We were just asking a question about what was in a newspaper article. After my colleague Kerry-Lynne Findlay sat down, the prime minister used an unparliamentary term. He dropped an F-bomb. Everybody in the first two rows across from the prime minister heard it,” said Conservative House leader John Brassard.
“It was a six-letter reference followed by another word. It wasn’t the four-letter F-word, but it was a six-letter F-word.”
After that, Trudeau immediately fled the House of Commons debate room and did not apologize for it.
The Prime Minister has referred to his political opponents using unparliamentary language before. For example, while acting as Liberal leader in 2011, Trudeau called Conservative MP Peter Kent a “piece of shit.”
Given his history of abrupt outbursts of contempt for the opposition, it’s no wonder that Trudeau, with the help of Jagmeet Singh and the NDP-Liberal coalition, passed Motion 11, giving Trudeau the power to suspend parliament until September.
