Imagine you’re Justin Trudeau.
A critical NATO summit lies a week distant. Donald Trump, the volatile U.S. President with whom you’re locked in an escalating war on trade, is now sending caustic letters about your defence spending, or lack thereof. Even worse, the mad tweeter has a point, a fact Trump will surely moan about when he meets with Vladimir Putin—the man who wants NATO to die—without notetakers present.
Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is revoking the province’s cap-and-trade regulation, putting your vaunted pan-Canadian climate change framework at risk. The auto industry is panicking at the prospect of Trump’s musings of new tariffs. The Kinder Morgan pipeline is missing precious months of summer construction time, despite being in federal hands. And you’ve just lost a seat in Quebec to the opposition Conservatives in a by-election.
Oh, and then there’s the small matter of an 18-year old allegation of “groping”—the so-called “Kokanee Grope” —coming to a boil in the press, including with members of the heretofore glowing international press corps, threatening your hard-won reputation as the world’s top feminist.
Now for the best part. After keeping a low media profile in the weeks since Trump’s damaging G7 freakout, you’re about to lock yourself into a plane to head to NATO HQ in Belgium with a pack of parliamentary journalists who haven’t had a chance to ask you much about any of this, especially the “groping” bit
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