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“I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”

That’s the apology Justin Trudeau gave a young woman — a “day late” (her words) — following the “not negative interactions” (his words) that allegedly included “manhandling” and “groping” (her words) at an immortal beer festival and charity day in Creston, B.C., in August 2000.

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The power of a full week’s reflection on the “no negative interactions” has summoned this apology back to the prime minister’s memory. He now says he “gave (the apology) in the moment,” a combination of words I have never met before. Whatever it may be taken to mean, as an apology, given in the moment or otherwise, it’s hardly blue-ribbon repentance. It was a pure dud.

For what he apologized for was his failure to recognize her status — she was, that day, a “national” reporter.

Photo by Handout

There was an interview. It was during the interview that the alleged “interactions” took place. So he knew the young woman was a reporter. But he thought she was just a local scribe. And that, to the status-regarding bon vivant, Mr. Trudeau, made her, by implication, not “fair game,” that’s a stroke too far, but someone not entitled to the courtesies and deference owed to others of her sex and vocation, the much more exalted aristocrats of the profession, women who were “national” reporters.