Justin Trudeau haunts us still.
This time he is doing so from inside a Home Hardware in Montreal. Life after public office is a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Some politicos retreat from the spotlight. Others make a fortune on the speaker’s circuit. Some sit on boards. Others remain policy wonks, boring family and friends with abstract ideas about how to make the world a better place.
Justin Trudeau has chosen to dance with a toilet plunger.
Whatever you think of our former PM — and he remains as polarizing as pineapple on pizza — the man is a publicity hound. Getting attention is in his nepo baby blood. He has modified Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum: I am seen, therefore I am.
He was seen at a Home Hardware on Saint-Laurent this weekend. Girlfriend Katy Perry filmed him busting out the dad moves as his son Xav’s new R&B song came over the store speaker.
The clip was allegedly of a proud papa spontaneously gyrating with joy as his 18-year-old son’s song unexpectedly played on the radio. Right. This was PR Stunt Justin. Perry is filming before Trudeau enters the frame while hoisting a plunger and tray of DIY sundries?
Is she psychic? How did she know Virgin Radio was about to play “Downtown”?
I’m also confused as to why Trudeau continues to inflict retinal harm on us by dancing, whether it’s inside a Home Hardware or in one of Perry’s videos. He has the rhythm of an irregular heartbeat. Is he bopping to a catchy tune or getting subdued by a Taser? It’s not clear. If that toilet plunger was a placard, Trudeau looked like he was on a picket line to protest the foxtrot.
Meanwhile, when Perry briefly turns the camera on herself, her head is violently shaking up and down as if she is cosplaying a thoroughbred balking at entering the starting gate before the Kentucky Derby.
Here’s what I don’t get: why isn’t Trudeau using his PR instincts to help Canada?
As this great nation is forced to negotiate with Tariff Man in the White House, couldn’t Trudeau at least film one PSA to help prevent the closure of a Stellantis plant? Yes, he is now a private citizen. Yes, he can gorge on fast food at Coachella or take a glitzy summer Euro tour with his superstar babe.
But he also led Canada for nearly a decade. It would be nice if he took a break from juggling Timbits in a backward baseball cap to fight back forcefully as Tariff Man threatens a 50 per cent levy on everything from our exports of dairy to hockey sticks. Speak up, dude. Say something.
His fluency in optics and social media could be useful right now.
The other living former PMs do not possess Trudeau’s natural sense of new media. Stephen Harper donning a cowboy hat and riding a mechanical bull while extolling the virtues of free trade is not going to electrify Gen Z. Kim Campbell is a great ambassador for many causes.
But she is to TikTok as a rotary phone is to a livestream.
Trudeau left office and is now a superhero in the Katy Perry Cinematic Universe. Good for him. But there should be some ROI for Canadian taxpayers who funded his mastery of publicity. We gave him the runway.
We were the ones who, um, footed the bill for his “socks diplomacy.” We paid “the internet’s boyfriend” to photo-bomb weddings and jog past prom grads. During a state visit to India, we financed his preposterous Bollywood costume changes while praying he didn’t show up for a bilateral meeting in brownface.
Is there no way for PM Trudeau and Stunt Justin to morph into one person as Canada stares into the abyss of an escalating trade war? Can’t he still make out with Katy in Santa Barbara while finding time to help his country that is currently locked in mortal combat with Tariff Man?
Why can’t he blend old statecraft with new stagecraft?
He’s keenly aware of his nationality and capacity to remain in the spotlight. Hours after leaving office, Trudeau shared a selfie at Canadian Tire while shopping for kitchen supplies. Mercifully, he wasn’t doing the tango with a spatula.
The problem? He didn’t say boo about national affairs while in aisle 7. The point? Canada is now in an all hands on deck crisis and the hand of our former leader is holding a toilet plunger.
Nobody is suggesting Trudeau be the antivenin for poisonous current affairs. Mark Carney is our leader. He must negotiate trade and navigate the necrotizing fissures as America, once our staunch ally, treats us the way Angelina Jolie would react to Brad Pitt during a chance encounter at Trader Joe’s.
Tariff Man wanted to rule us. Now he wants to destroy us.
Justin Trudeau should put down the plunger and say something.
