On Monday, the deputy leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, Candice Bergen, criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his comments labeling “Freedom Convoy” protesters as racists.
Breitbart News reports:
Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons of the trucker-led protesters known as the “Freedom Convoy,” Bergen said, “I do get very defensive of Canadians who are outside today: patriotic, peace-loving Canadians who are called misogynists and racists by the Prime Minister.”
Images of Trudeau wearing blackface, dark face paint used for racist mockery of black people, first surfaced in 2019. Trudeau admitted to the initial photos as more surfaced of him in racist costumes on other occasions. Asked by reporters if knew of other instances in which he had worn blackface, he admitted that there were too many of them and he could not be “definitive” about how many.
“I am wary of being definitive about this because the recent pictures that came out, I had not remembered,” Trudeau acknowledged.
On Monday, Bergen accused Trudeau of being divisive and “gaslighting” Canadians, saying, “All Canadians want to see a leader who will work to heal rifts, not further divide. A leader who will listen, even to those voices he might not agree with. A leader who will work to understand, not dismiss, name-call, and gaslight.”
Bergen was in the middle of a heated debate with Trudeau’s Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino, who responded saying, “I think we all support free speech in this House, but there’s a big difference between free speech and inciting hatred, inciting violence, desecrating war memorials, Mr. Speaker, and I would hope my honorable colleague would denounce that in the clearest terms.”
He called the protesters “radical leaders” who “are not really interested in free speech because they want to pretend as though vaccines don’t work.”
Bergen, to raucous applause, condemned all “hateful and destructive acts by a few at any protest,” making sure to note many instances of leftist violence and statue desecration in Canada.
“Whether it’s beheading the statue of Queen Victoria in Manitoba, tearing down the statue of Sir John A. [Macdonald] in Montreal, or putting flags on Terry Fox,” she said.
Bergen recited a list: “Whether it’s burning down churches, whether it’s wearing blackface, whether it’s Hezbollah flags, or NAZI flags, we all condemn it. But I’m not talking about that.”
