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By contrast, the one thing lacking in the follow-up tweets and statements by Trudeau, Wynne and Tory after their initial indignant tweets which assumed the story was true, was any acknowledgment they had made a mistake.

Instead of admitting they were in error, they continued to self-righteously lecture the rest of us on how, while they were relieved this incident hadn’t happened, we must all remain, as they do, on guard against hatred, racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc.

What was also missing from these statements was any warning or even acknowledgment that false allegations of hate crimes are dangerous because they intimidate real victims into not coming forward, for fear they may not be believed, and they increase public skepticism about the reporting of hate crimes.

It’s as if our leaders think we’re all just one step away from race riots without their moral guidance to keep us from turning on each other. As opposed to the reality that Canada works because most Canadians want to get along with their fellow Canadians, regardless of their differences, in our common goals of working hard, obeying the law and building a better life for our children.

What we used to call Canadian values, at least until Trudeau boasted to the New York Times,with equal parts arrogance and vapidness that, “there is no core identity or mainstream in Canada.”

Do we have racists in our midst? Of course, and our institutions often fail minorities. While we’re better than most, what country doesn’t have those problems?

But the idea the vast majority of Canadians would be fine with any child being terrorized by an adult over her religion, were our virtue-signaling politicians not there to remind us it’s wrong, is absurd.

When politicians fail to acknowledge the painfully obvious – in this case that the lesson to be learned is not about the danger of hate crimes but about the danger of falsely reporting them – they encourage public cynicism about all hate crimes.

Far from being an indication of their respect for Canadians, it is an expression of their thinly-veiled contempt.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com