The treatment Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland received at a Grande Prairie hotel was horrible. It wasn’t just bad manners but whoever was responsible for this behavior made Alberta look like a province of banjo-playing hillbillies from the movie Deliverance. Goodness knows, Freeland is from Alberta and she has a perfect right to visit anytime she pleases. She should not have to endure profanity and threats and told to get out of the province. We never want to be people who decide who is welcome in our province and who is not, based on their politics..Yes, Freeland can really get under your skin with her lecturing and hectoring. She’s giving away money to Ukraine as fast as the Bank of Canada can print it. And I’ve been severely critical of her. But let’s stay civil about this..A personal anecdote. When I worked on Parliament Hill, I found then-Justice Minister Anne McLellan to be particularly annoying and loud. But when I met her at a reception, I found her to be a charming woman and I told her so. I still didn’t like her politics or agree with her policies. But I could like her as a person and there was no need to be rude. So Freeland has every right to be upset, but at least she acknowledged that there are a lot of nice folks in Alberta..Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s outrage is another matter..Trudeau routinely dismisses his political enemies as 'racist' or 'white supremacist.' It’s difficult to know whether he learned this political tactic from U.S. President Joe Biden or if the two are in political mind-meld because Biden — despite an extremely sketchy racial legacy — is doing the same thing to Republicans..Trudeau was quick to label the Freedom Convoy as racist because someone was sighted holding a Nazi flag on the first day of the protest. It didn’t matter whether that individual had anything to do with the demonstration, or drove a truck, or was unvaccinated, or not. The prime minister used that one image to define the racial bias of everyone in the convoy — even though there were dozens of black and indigenous people there. I know: I was out there in the February cold, talking to them..In another interview, the prime minister suggested all the unvaccinated were racists..Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson imagined the convoy participants were misogynistic and homophobic. Why? Because he said so. He also accused them of arson, based on a tweet that presented no evidence but only the hatred of the writer..Trudeau even infamously implied that a Jewish Conservative MP was harboring Nazi sympathies by supporting the Convoy. Mellissa Lantsman, (CPC-Thornhill) said Trudeau, "fans the flame of an unjustified national emergency,” during the Freedom Convoy protest. "When did the prime minister lose his way?" she asked..Trudeau ludicrously replied, "Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas."."They can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag," he said, justifying the unjustified use of the Emergencies Act..Need I say it again? Trudeau is the one who moonlighted as a blackface performer for his friends and colleagues over the years. We have the pictures and videos to prove that. He is the one who showed real racial intolerance..So we have a real double standard here. No doubt, Trudeau will assiduously try to target Freeland’s tormentors as unvaccinated or members of the Freedom Convoy or at the very least, white supremacists. But he will never acknowledge that he has smeared as 'racists,' vast numbers of people who disagree with his authoritarian policies..It’s always somebody else’s outrage.
