Kim Campbell – the country’s former PM – warns Republican’s comments could mean troubling consequences for women across the US

A Canadian politician who made history as the country’s first female prime minister has publicly voiced her concerns about Donald Trump, branding the Republican presidential nominee as a sexual predator who revels in his own inappropriate behaviour.



“He has described himself as a sexual predator,” Kim Campbell said of Trump’s 2005 leaked Access Hollywood tape. “The behaviour he has admitted to and celebrated in himself is predation.”

After taking helm of the country’s Progressive Conservative party in 1993, Campbell became Canada’s first – and to-date only – female prime minister. Her term lasted just over four months, coming to an end when her party lost the general election.

As justice minister in the early 1990s, Campbell was instrumental in reforming Canada’s sexual assault laws, and in an interview on Tuesday, she lashed out Trump’s remarks on kissing women and grabbing them without permission. “Unconsented sexual touching is a sexual assault,” Campbell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “And somebody who does that, who thinks he has a right to do that, who does it thinking that it’s a reflection of his value because he’s a celebrity, et cetera, I mean that is predation.”

Trump’s comments could hold wider, more troubling implications for women across the United States, warned Campbell. “He has released a wave of misogynistic rhetoric in the guise of being opposed to political correctness,” she said. “The giving permission of people to express the worst misogynistic attitudes is incredibly dangerous and very, very worrisome.”

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As news of the leaked tape broke, Trump issued an apology and said he regretted his words. During Sunday’s presidential debate, he dismissed his remarks as simply run-of-the-mill “locker room talk”.

The US presidential campaign has seen Canadian politicians from across the spectrum publicly air their concerns regarding Trump’s candidacy – with one notable exception. The country’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau – a self-described feminist – has repeatedly shied away from weighing in with his thoughts on the US election. On Wednesday a spokesperson for Trudeau reiterated that there would be no comment on the presidential election.

Campbell said Trudeau’s stance was not surprising. “Justin Trudeau is a sitting prime minister of Canada and normally we don’t like it when other governments wade into our elections.”

Any perception of interference could be magnified given Trump’s repeated claims that if he loses the election in November, it will be due to a “rigged” system. “The idea of delegitimizing the results, as a result of his own vanity, is something that he has taken on and it is very dangerous,” Campbell said. “The notion that you would want to open a wound and encourage people … to believe somehow an election was stolen from their candidate is really a crime against democracy.”