Seeking the “safe space” that seem so vogue these days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to the safest city in the country for Liberals, and to the two safest spaces he could ever wish for.

He sat down the other day with the Toronto Star’s editorial board, and with the CBC’s top-rated Toronto radio show, Metro Morning.

These, after all, were the safest possible venues for Trudeau to play the type of Liberal identity politics that he slams other parties for employing, but which he himself plays like a virtuoso.

Between his lines, Trudeau can deliver some pretty ugly notes but, at hero-worship events, he is rarely called out.

When questioned by the CBC about Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s proposal to screen future immigrants for Canadian values, for example, a plan that has been twisted beyond recognition by progressives, Trudeau got down and dirty.

“No party gets to run against Muslim Canadians or any other group,” he said, making sure he didn’t utter Leitch’s name while ensuring capital letters were given to the innuendo.

Nowhere else would Trudeau be allowed to spout such baseless hyperbole without being challenged to explain himself.

It was Trudeau, after all, who inserted “Muslim Canadians” into the conversation. Out of the blue. Without foundation.

What Trudeau did, and he did it deliberately, was put his truth to the unconscionable lie that Conservatives are anti-Muslim.

He was race baiting.

Yet, because he was in a safe space, he was allowed to get away with it, and purposefully plant a vile seed.

There is no question that Canada depends on immigration, but in Trudeau’s world, immigration policies are racist if they seek to ensure immigrants have the necessary skills and mindsets to prosper here.

If that is what he truly believes, then his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was a horrible racist, for it was the elder Trudeau who first truly embraced immigrants from all the world’s regions when he was prime minister.

Our federal government has both a duty and the obligation to ensure those we admit to our country are not criminals, terrorists or otherwise a threat to those of us already here.

This is common sense Trudeau chooses to evade.

Trudeau used a roundtable with Syrian refugees to drop the bombshell subtly but skillfully directed at the Tories, that “no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians.”

“The other two political parties have leadership races on now,” said Trudeau. “I’d like to see more Canadians of diverse backgrounds engaging with parties that line up with their convictions and ideologies to make sure no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians or any other group of Canadians and demonize them.”

Demonize. Now there’s another strong word.

Again Trudeau dropped it out of the blue. Without basis, without fact. And obviously without a conscience.

No political party in this country is “demonizing” Muslim Canadians, let alone “any other group.”

This was a nasty piece of work on Trudeau’s part.

And Liberal identity politics at its worst.

markbonokoski@gmail.com