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Chris Selley: Carney benefited from not being Trudeau. Why is he channelling him?

As of Monday, both have now insulted Grassy Narrows protesters. This is political malpractice, at the very least

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This was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s quite astonishing remark at a housing announcement in Toronto on Monday, referring to a woman protesting on behalf of the mercury-poisoned Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwestern Ontario — one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history.

Chris Selley: Carney benefited from not being Trudeau. Why is he channelling him? Back to video

Somehow, the quip didn’t seem to make much news. But CityNews Toronto screen-capped the immediate aftermath of the quip, which was just as remarkable as the words themselves: Everyone on stage, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow burst out laughing. LOL! Pwned!

If I were newly installed NDP leader Avi Lewis I would be putting that photo on T-shirts, never mind that Chow is party royalty. We shall see how much of Lewis’s leadership platform makes it to the party platform: His chief of staff and principal secretary are veterans of relatively sane NDP politics in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, respectively. But if he has any chance of not riding the federal NDP into the ground like Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove, he needs to differentiate himself and his party from everyone on that stage, centrist establishment Dippers........

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