“Just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president. Everywhere, women’s rights and women’s progress is under attack. Overtly, and subtly.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed Tuesday that the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris to President-elect Donald Trump is an example of women’s rights being “under attack.” Trudeau made the claim despite his own role in attacking women’s rights by removing two female cabinet ministers in his government because they challenged his authority and questioned his ethics. A black female Liberal Member of Parliament has said that Trudeau has treated her with "contempt."
Trudeau told the Equal Voice Foundation — an organization dedicated to improving gender representation in Canadian politics — that women's rights are under attack, the National Post reported.
“It shouldn’t be that way. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress,” Trudeau said, claiming to be "now and always ... a proud feminist" who understands the issues.
“And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president. Everywhere, women’s rights and women’s progress is under attack. Overtly, and subtly.”
Trudeau made the comments as he is desperately trying to forge a united front in Canada against President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian products in retaliation against Trudeau’s loose border policies. Trump has also offered to made Canada the 51st state and Trudeau its governor since the prime minister visited the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago during the Thanksgiving weekend.
Trudeau’s own record with female lawmakers might not inspire optimism from feminists. Both former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Health Minister Jane Philpott were forced to resign from the Trudeau cabinet because they insisted Trudeau had judicially interfered in the prosecution of Quebec contractor SNC Lavalin. Wilson-Raybould emphatically insisted Trudeau was pressuring her to defer bribery and fraud charges in a criminal prosecution against the Quebec contractor.
Member of Parliament Celina Caesar-Chavannes (Lib-Whitby), who was a parliamentary secretary for Trudeau, said she tried to approach Trudeau twice about her decision to not run again as a Liberal candidate and both times he exhibited rage and dismissal, The Globe and Mail reported. Caesar-Chavannes recently recounted her frightening encounter with the prime minister in an interview with Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson, when she said Trudeau treated her with "contempt" and that she had "never felt more scared" in her life than during a meeting with Trudeau. The prime minister has referred to himself as a feminist whose brand of leadership can be described as “listening, learning and compassionate.”
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