OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s “confident” he did not act inappropriately toward a female journalist at a music festival 18 years ago, but conceded Thursday that she may have experienced their encounter “differently.”

The prime minister made the statement in response to questions about a 2000 editorial in British Columbia’s Creston Valley Advance that has resurfaced in recent weeks. The newspaper article accused Trudeau of “groping” a female reporter who was covering the local Kokanee Summit music festival and also on assignment for the Vancouver Sun and National Post.

Trudeau, who was 28 at the time, is quoted as apologizing and then stating: “If I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper, I never would have been so forward.”

Media outlets in Canada and abroad — including the Washington Post and Britain’s The Times newspaper — have picked up the story in recent days, after the editorial resurfaced online. The Star’s attempts to interview the journalist referenced in the article have so far been unsuccessful.

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Trudeau first addressed the allegation on Canada Day in Regina, where he told reporters that he does not recall any “negative interactions” that day in Creston.

On Thursday, Trudeau was asked again about the allegation after he met with Ontario Premier Doug Ford at Queen’s Park.

“I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way, but I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently,” Trudeau said, describing how he has been “reflecting very carefully” on the interaction over the past few weeks.

He said that if he apologized about the interaction — as the Creston editorial says he did — then “it would have been because I sensed that she was not entirely comfortable with the interaction that we had.”

Recognizing that people can experience the same interaction differently is a key lesson of “this awakening we’re having as a society,” Trudeau said — a reference to the #MeToo movement that has seen women speak openly about their experiences with sexual harassment, inappropriate conduct, and abuse of power.

“I’ll be blunt about it,” Trudeau said. “Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign, or not inappropriate, and a woman — particularly in a professional context — can experience it differently, and we have to respect that and reflect on that.”

Trudeau has also dealt with allegations of sexual misconduct against members of his caucus and the Prime Minister’s Office. In January, he called an independent investigation after then-cabinet minister Kent Hehr was accused of making lewd remarks to a former staffer. The following month, the PMO’s deputy director of operations, Claude-Eric Gagné, resigned in the wake of a third-party investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.

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Asked Thursday why he hadn’t called an investigation into his own alleged behaviour, Trudeau did not reply.

“I don’t want to presume how she feels now,” he said. “I haven’t reached out to her. No one on my team has reached out to her. We don’t feel that would be appropriate at all. I’m responsible for my side of the interaction, which certainly as I said, I don’t feel was in any way untoward.”

At the time of the alleged incident, Trudeau was in Creston to raise money for alpine awareness, two years after his younger brother Michel was killed in an avalanche in southeastern B.C.

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