Premier Doug Ford has strongly denounced Justin Trudeau’s previous penchant for donning blackface and charged there’s a “double standard” over how the Liberal leader’s past misdeeds are being reported.

“It was unacceptable back in 2001, it’s unacceptable now,” said the Progressive Conservative premier, who has emerged as a favourite target of the federal Liberals during this election.

“The people are going to decide. They’re going to have the opportunity to decide if they want the prime minister to continue being prime minister or they want a change,” he told CTV News Toronto on Friday.

“I always believe that the people always make the right decision.”

Last Wednesday, Time magazine published a 2001 photo of Trudeau dressed as Aladdin at a gala when he was a 29-year-old private school teacher at Vancouver’s West Point Grey Academy.

In the wake of that embarrassing revelation, other photos have surfaced of him in blackface and brownface dating back to his high school days.

While Trudeau has repeatedly apologized for his transgressions, on Sunday and Monday he ducked reporters’ questions when asked if he could recall the last time he wore racist makeup.

The Liberal leader did not, however, shy away from mentioning Ford by name 14 times during his campaign event Monday in Hamilton — twice in French and a dozen times in English.

“Doug Ford threatened cuts to Ontario’s autism program, cancelled an out-of-country OHIP program, and he cut Ontario’s pharmacare program that was focused on the needs of kids and young adults,” Trudeau said in his prepared remarks.

Recent polling suggests the premier is not personally popular so the Liberals hope to exploit that by tying him to federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

A Campaign Research survey conducted earlier this month found he has a 25 per cent approval rating at a 63 per cent disapproval rating for an overall -38 per cent.

Ford took a swipe at the media, saying there’s a “double standard right across the board” in how the controversy is being covered.

“If it was a Conservative, I think it would have been a different story,” the premier told CTV.

In a separate interview with AM640’s Alex Pierson, Ford was asked if he had ever donned blackface.

“No. I wouldn’t be that stupid,” he told Pierson.

The premier has been a lightning rod in the Oct. 21 federal election campaign with the Liberals mocking his “for the people” slogan in their advertising and Grit candidates in Ontario attacking his government’s policies.

Scheer, at the same time, refused to utter the name “Ford” even when campaigning 700 metres from his Etobicoke home last week.

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The latest Tory ad ties Trudeau to former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne, whom Ford’s Tories trounced in the 2018 provincial election, but does not mention the current premier.

On Monday in Vaughan, Scheer name-checked Wynne four times but again avoided citing her successor.

Robert Benzie is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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