‘Like a lot of Canadian families, we went to stay with friends for the Christmas holidays,’ smirking PM said defending Jamaica holiday trip,days after Globe and Mail reporter Marieke Walsh asked Justin Trudeau about the optics of accepting a pricey holiday vacation as many Canadians struggle to put food on the table, the Canadian prime minister is still being jeered online for his robotic response in which he defended his decision to accept a free Jamaican getaway.
“You just laid out the tough economic times that Canadians are facing, you say that you are seized with the issue. Did you consider that backdrop when you decided to take an $80,000 free vacation?” Walsh asked Trudeau earlier this week.
With his lips curling into a smirk, Trudeau replied: “As many Canadians did, I stayed with friends over the holidays.”
Walsh pressed the prime minister saying, “Many Canadians don’t have access to $90,000 free vacations, so can you explain the thinking as to why you take these vacations and how you think Canadians receive them?”
Unflinchingly, Trudeau nodded with a look of condescension as he responded in a robotic-like manner: “Like many Canadians did, I stayed with family friends over the holidays.”
As the clip went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views on X, where it was shared by several media outlets including True North Centre, Rebel News, CTV and 6ix Buzz, Canadians slammed the Liberal leader on social media for his seemingly flippant response.
“What a smug p****, smirking while going on a vacation worth 1.5 times the average Canadian salary … for a week,” one person wrote on X. “He knows he can’t do any wrong to his supporters so he just laughs in everyone else’s face. This is a spoiled trust fund brat.”
“His smug smile is what really pisses me off,” another added.
“If I ‘answered’ a question like this at my work … I’d get fired,” a third person wrote.
As many renewed calls for the ethics commissioner to investigate the trip, one critic suggested Trudeau’s laissez-faire response indicates that even he knows his political career is nearing an end.
“When you know you are being fired … you do not care,” they wrote. “He is laughing at us.”
“He should just give the middle finger to the camera as he answers that question,” another suggested.
On Reddit, several users claiming to be government employees said that they would be disciplined for behaving like Trudeau.
“We have to be super ethical and worry about whether coffee and muffins should be declared otherwise risk getting into trouble. And this guy takes yearly vacations paid for by special interests,” one person wrote.
“I work for the feds and I got a talking to for accepting a hat from a supplier of ours. They said it was going to influence my decisions. But apparently all inclusive vacation will not sway JT. What a joke,” a second added.
“Each quote gets more unbelievable with him,” a third Redditor weighed in. “As though a $9,000 a night complimentary room is along the same lines as sleeping in your aunt’s spare bedroom on a futon. He’s so relatable!”
Trudeau’s remarks echoed a statement he said in French during a news conference in New Brunswick on Jan. 17. “Like a lot of Canadian families, we went to stay with friends for the Christmas holidays. All the rules were followed,” the Liberal leader said.
Earlier this month, Trudeau came under fire after the National Post reported that the prime minister enjoyed a 10-day vacation at a $9,300-per-night luxury resort provided to him and his family at no cost over the Christmas holidays.
The Jamaican property is owned by the family of Peter Green, a businessman who has known the Trudeaus for decades.
Before the trip was revealed as a gift, the PMO told The Canadian Press that Trudeau would be paying for his family’s getaway.
Trudeau consulted with the ethics commissioner before jetting off for some fun in the sun, but Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre’s party wants to hear from the federal ethics watchdog on rules regarding gifts.
“This is incredibly problematic,” Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett said.
When it comes to free trips, Trudeau has run afoul of ethics guidelines in the past. In 2017, the federal ethics commissioner ruled that the prime minister violated conflict of interest rules when he spent Christmas at the private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan in late 2016.
Trudeau was also lambasted for travelling for a family vacation to Tofino, B.C., on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021 despite his official itinerary saying he would be in “private meetings” in Ottawa that day.
After his Tofino trip was made public, Trudeau meekly apologized. “The ‘how it happened’ is far less important than that it happened, which I regret,” he said.