LILLEY: Poilievre gives Trudeau something he wasn’t expecting, a fight

On Thursday, Justin Trudeau tried to turn the tables on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and started asking him questions.

As Pierre Poilievre stood up to ask questions about the increasing cost of a Thanksgiving dinner, Trudeau began asking questions about a Global News story that said Poilievre had been using a misogynist hidden hashtag on his popular YouTube videos.

It didn’t go as well as Trudeau had hoped, with Poilievre pushing back hard against Trudeau.

“The Conservative Leader has been purposefully using his videos to appeal to far right misogynistic online. Anti-women, they have devastating real life consequences. Mr. Speaker I call on the Conservative Leader to stand in this house take responsibility and apologize,” Trudeau said.

I’m not sure he was expecting Poilievre’s response.

“I took responsibility and corrected as soon as it became known to me,” Poilievre said.

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The issue at hand was a hashtag #MGTOW which stands for men going their own way. It’s tied to an anti-feminist, and frankly anti-women, movement. Poilievre’s response was to denounce misogyny, saying he had the hashtag removed, and then turn the tables on Trudeau’s track record with women and even funding extremists.

“He funded a vicious anti-Semite to spread hatred online with taxpayers’ dollars. He repeatedly, in fact, so many times he can’t even keep track, dressed up in racist costumes for which he has not ever come fully to account. And he drove many women of his own caucus, out of the party and out of Parliament all together with his mistreatment of them,” Poilievre said.

“We condemn all that behavior. We condemn misogyny always and everywhere, and we ask the Prime Minister to finally do the same.”

Trudeau kept punching back at Poilievre before getting hit back harder by the Conservative Leader.

Poilievre is not a misogynist

Let’s be honest, this was an own goal by Poilievre and his team – this hashtag should never have been there. That said, much of the voting public has little understanding of the intricacies of posting YouTube videos online, they will just want to know, is Poilievre someone who doesn’t like women?

With his wife standing by his side or introducing him at events, with his daughter in his arms, that’s a tough claim to make. The most likely scenario here is that some young staffer working on Poilievre’s team several years ago thought they were being smart using this hashtag and it’s been copied and pasted ever since.

I live and breathe the online world and I had no idea what this hashtag meant until this story broke.

The Liberals will use this for all it is worth, it is clearly a story they planted – something all parties do – and they were ready to pounce on it. In addition to having rehearsed lines for Question Period, the Liberals sent out a fundraising email a short time later to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians on their email list.

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Make no mistake, this could hurt Poilievre with a key demographic that he needs to win in the next election – women.

The difference this time is, rather than play by the Liberal narrative, Poilievre turned the tables on Trudeau and aggressively took him to task on his own record.

From firing Jody Wilson-Raybould, losing Celina Caesar-Chavannes, elbowgate or the Kokanee Grope, Trudeau has his own issues. Not to speak of policy problems like overseeing the continuing problems that women face in the military.

Poilievre threw that all back in Trudeau’s face and said he has nothing to learn from the Liberal Leader. He was like Rocky taunting Clubber Lang with, “Ain’t so bad,” but instead of just taking the shots, Poilievre was hitting back.

The Liberals have a new Conservative Leader to deal with, I’m not sure they have figured out what that means just yet.

blilley@postmedia.com