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The facts are these: in August 2000, Trudeau was the subject of an editorial in the Creston Valley Advance, a local B.C. paper. The former prime minister’s son—then a 28-year-old high school teacher two months from delivering a stirring eulogy at his father’s funeral—was upbraided for reportedly touching one of the paper’s female reporters (“groped” and “inappropriate handling,” according to the paper) at the Kokanee Summit, a music festival. Trudeau apologized “a day late” to the unnamed journalist, the editorial stated, who was also reporting for the National Post and Vancouver Sun. Trudeau is quoted: “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper I would never have been so forward.”
The initial description of the incident, as per the resurfaced, unsigned “Open Eyes” editorial in the Advance, accused Trudeau of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” of the reporter on assignment. And while the publisher has since suggested it was “a very brief touch” on Knight’s backside, her then-supervisors—who both corroborated Knight’s account and vouched for her excellent reputation and solid character—
The troubling power dynamic underlining Trudeau’s 2000 statement—”If I had known you were reporting for a national paper I would never have been so forward”—that conceded unwanted behaviour had occurred is again on display. If the woman was so affected by an alleged interaction with Trudeau that it become the subject of an angry newspaper editorial, it’s safe to say it was “negative” from her point of view. And her point of view is what matters here, not what Trudeau “doesn’t think.” It’s not about him. Anyone sensitive to the nuances of reporting about any form of personal assault should know that.
A bigger one, of course, is that any admission on the Prime Minister’s part would subject him to the high standards of behaviour he demands from others. The fact he refuses to make himself accountable to those very standards is why the “Kokanee Grope” matters.
