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The ads feature video of Trudeau doing a mock strip tease for a charity event, his head surrounded by fairy dust as a narrator sneeringly recounts his past experience as a camp counsellor and drama teacher.

Casault, who teaches at Ecoles des voyageurs in Orleans, said she didn’t raise the issue. One of her students did.

“He said, ‘Yeah, they’re really not nice, he did a charity and they’re laughing at him and he looks like a clown and they’re saying he’s just a simple teacher and that’s not fair. They can’t do that, madame, that’s cyberbullying.”‘

Other students agreed, so Casault suggested they could write letters to the prime minister. One little girl did and read it to the class a few days later, which eventually prompted six others to write letters of their own.

“They said, ‘You know, if it was me right there, I’d be crying.’ And they’re cute because they would say, ‘You know, I think Justin is really sad about this,”‘ Casault said.

“One of the boys wrote down _ and I thought that was really, really genius of him — he said, ‘You know, there are better strategies, Mr. Prime Minister. You could talk to us about all the great things that you want to do for the country, instead.”‘

Casault said the kids know nothing about politics or partisanship but they do know all about cyberbullying, following recent high-profile suicides by teenagers who had been traumatized by devastating pictures or video of them online.

“They’re hearing all the time, ‘Don’t be disrespectful, be courteous to people, be nice to people, don’t say things that you wouldn’t want said about you’ … These are the speeches that I keep giving them every day.”