Tasteless and Grubby

"As we've said many times, the Prime Minister engages regularly with many different kinds of media."
Kate Purchase, PMO spokesperson

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, are featured in the January issue of Vogue. The magazine's profile on 'the new young face of Canadian politics' hits newsstands Dec. 22. (Norman Jean Roy/Vogue)

On the campaign trail prime ministerial candidate Justin Trudeau bad-mouthed the Conservative plan to give additional financial tax breaks to parents of young children, contending that it would only serve to give handouts to the wealthy, like himself, who needed no tax-funded breaks for things they could well afford themselves. It played out very well among the electorate, as did many other of his promises.

The campaign promise to lower middle-income tax brackets which would be paid for by increasing the tax bracket for the top one percent of Canadian earners, post-election doesn't look quite as rosy as promised; it now stands to generate a 1.3-billion deficit, what an amazing surprise, who could have guessed it? Well, the top one percent's tax wizards could, and they're prepared.

The Prime Minister's wife Sophie's decision to wear on loan costly jewellery from a Canadian jewellery chain gave a terrific boost in publicity to that chain, and they're quite happy about it. She is going the way of American entertainment and film celebrities, wearing costly jewellery and garments 'on loan' for official events and garish galas, generating publicity for the jewellers and the exclusive clothing brands.

Oh, and the sneering allusion to top earners not requiring tax funding to pay for their children's needs aside, Justin Trudeau and wife Sophie have decided that to enhance the care of their three young children two nannies would do just fine. And those two nannies previously employed by them and paid from his Parliamentary salary, are now being paid for by the taxpayer, an elected perk of the office, in Mr. Trudeau's faultless judgement.

But wait: we've not seen everything yet ... the latest appears to be a celebrity photo-shoot to appear in Vogue Magazine, of a truly inappropriate-verging-on-spicily-suggestive pose of husband-and-wife in an intimate pose for the delectation of the devoted unwashed masses. The wife is wearing an Oscar de la Renta garment valued at $5,700. This is where good taste and common sense have parted.

Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau seems to have invented herself as a fashion plate, one who uses her husband's office leading to public appearances at home and abroad to style herself a fashion model, wearing designer clothing whose publicity gains them much that mere money cannot buy.

The new Canadian Prime Minister lent himself happily to the cult of celebrity worship, an image he has long himself cultivated and encouraged, submitting to professional American stylists and hair and makeup artists preparing him for those exclusive photo shoots as a male model engaged in helping the world to recognize glamour and youthful sex appeal when they see it.

To hope that the federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson might see fit to rap the knuckles of the ebulliently self-adoring Prime Minister over his decided lack of intelligence, trashing the dignity of the public office he holds in such a grimy bit of glitter, is hoping for too much, obviously.

Canadians will have to make do with the promise by the PMO that reports of fashion item loans by wife of the PM will be duly reported to the Ethics Commissioner. That assurance in and of itself informs the public that this tawdry practise is set to become a common occurrence, diminishing the office, presenting it as a setting for celebrity shots to titillate an adoring public.

This is what Canadians voted for ... sad, sad, sad ... almost forty percent of us, at any rate. The remaining sixty percent are cringing and whispering to themselves that they certainly didn't get the government they feel they deserve.

This is in truly execrable taste, worthy of a Harlequin romance cover but quite expressive of how the Trudeaus see themselves; Margaret must be chortling happily, it's right down her back alley.