Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struggled through a response Monday morning when challenged on how his family cuts back on the use of plastic products to help the environment.
Trudeau was speaking at the Gault Nature Reserve to announce an eco-conscious government plan to ban single-use plastics by 2021. The list of banned items has yet to be finalized, but would include items such as cotton swabs, drink stirrers, plates and balloon sticks, a source told the CBC.
“We have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of… water out of… when we have water bottles out of plastic. Sorry! Away from plastic towards paper like drink-box water bottles sort of things,” the visibly flustered liberal politician said when asked by a reporter what his family does to “cut back on plastics.”
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Video footage of Trudeau’s response sparked mockery on Twitter, received more than 400,000 views and went viral.
“Please tell me this is a fake video. It can’t be real,” quipped Canadian Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel in a tweet that garnered more than 2,000 retweets.
Please tell me this is a fake video. It can’t be real. pic.twitter.com/IvynwHMmaq
— Michelle Rempel Garner (@MichelleRempel) June 10, 2019
Justin Trudeau response about the environment
In the eyes of many, Trudeau is a poster boy for mainstream international wokeness. And as a a fawning 2017 Rolling Stone feature showed, progressive Americans aren’t immune to the Canuck heartthrob’s charms.
But his reputation as a global liberal icon has taken some blows in recent years, even among sympathetic outlets and circles. Liberals’ skepticism toward Trudeau extends to his record on the environment.
In an op-ed for left-leaning The Guardian, Bill McKibben demanded that progressives “Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau,” who he called a “stunning hypocrite when it comes to climate change.”
McKibben slammed Trudeau with the most damning of liberal smears: a comparison to President Donald Trump.
“Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over,” he wrote.
“But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.”
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