“It’s disappointing,” Hastings-Lennox and Addington MP Mike Bossio says.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been embroiled in a scandal over multiple pictures and a video of him in blackface when he was younger, including one that was published by Time Magazine from when he was 29-years-old. “What I did was hurtful to people who live with intolerance and discrimination every day,” the Prime Minister said Thursday in Winnipeg. “I know that I let a lot of people down with that choice, and I am deeply sorry.”
Bossio adds that he’s glad the Prime Minister apologized. “We need to focus on the policies and the election before us to determine which policies are best going to represent the interests of Canadians,” he goes on to say.
“I think the Prime Minister spoke well and was genuine in his remorse,” Bossio says.
“It’s a staggering situation,” NDP candidate in the riding David Tough tells My Bancroft Now. He says no one expected to see or hear something like this about Prime Minister Trudeau. “I grew up in Ottawa in the 70s and 80s the same as Justin Trudeau and the idea that I would be at parties or at sporting events in the 90s with black paint or brown paint on my face is a staggering level of cultural ignorance,” he says.
Sari Watson is the newly minted Green Party candidate for the area. “We in the Green Party are deeply shocked by the racism shown in this photograph,” she says. Watson says a leader of the country should be committed to learning and appreciating the requirements of social justice leadership and we believe he failed at doing that.
The People’s Party of Canada’s candidate Adam Gray says Trudeau needs to step down as Prime Minister in the wake of this scandal. “I think he’s hypocritical in everything he’s done over the last week and especially over the last four years for calling people out,” he says. “He should have known better, especially as the son of a Prime Minister.” Gray says, in this situation, sorry isn’t enough.
Conservative candidate Derek Sloan has not responded to My Bancroft Now’s request for comment.
The federal election is set for October 21st.