MONTREAL: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has set off a fierce backlash from the right of the political spectrum and turned himself into the subject of withering global criticism on social and mainstream media after using the term “peoplekind.”
The off-the-cuff remark was made last Thursday when Trudeau was fielding a rambling question from a woman in the audience at a townhall meeting in Edmonton, Alberta.
The woman, who said she was with the World Mission Society Church of God and thanked Trudeau for ensuring gender equality in his cabinet, talked about the need for more government support for religious charities and how maternal love is “the love that’s going to change the future of mankind.”
Trudeau, a self-proclaimed feminist, seized on the moment to interject, telling the woman, “We like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind. It’s more inclusive.”
The woman and many members of the audience cheered Trudeau’s use of the new word.
But the short clip of the exchange went viral, becoming fodder for conservative media and personalities who took the prime minister to task for, in the words of prominent British TV personality Piers Morgan, “the worst kind of hectoring, and bully pulpit smart-ass.”
“How dare you kill off mankind, Mr Trudeau, you spineless virtue-signalling excuse for a feminist,” Morgan wrote in an op-ed piece in the DailyMail.com.
Australian columnist Rita Panahi called Trudeau the “Kim Kardashian of political leaders.”
“A Zoolander character who’s really, really ridiculously good looks no longer distracted from his appalling judgment or capacity for asinine comment,” Panahi wrote in her column for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Potentially more troubling for Trudeau, “Fox and Friends,” one of US President Donald Trump’s favourite TV shows, did an entire segment on the controversy just as Trudeau prepares to leave for the US on a three-day charm offensive to drum up support for the troubled North American Free Trade Agreement.
President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the trade pact with Canada and Mexico unless he can get a substantially better deal for the US.
Despite six rounds of negotiations, the parties have failed to bridge the gaps in their positions. The Trump administration has demanded higher US content in the integrated North American car industry, an end of a dispute resolution mechanism and a five-year sunset clause.
Canada, in turn, is pushing for a “progressive” deal that would also enshrine labour and indigenous rights, as well as gender equality in the new trade pact.
The latest controversy comes just days after Canada’s Senate passed changes to the country’s national anthem “O Canada,” to make it more gender neutral.
The legislation now awaits royal assent before it becomes law, after changing the lyrics “in all thy sons command” in the anthem to “in all of us command.”
