A conservative journalist who tracked down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his beach vacation and ended up interviewing him is defending his decision.
Keean Bexte, publisher of the Counter Signal, was criticized online – and by Trudeau himself – for approaching Trudeau on a family holiday, but Bexte said the prime minister’s record with independent media left him with no choice.
“Trudeau carefully selects which government-funded journalists are allowed to speak to him. Press conference rosters are managed by the PMO, and independent journalists are frequently arrested,” Bexte told True North.
When Bexte confronted Trudeau alongside a colleague who goes by the name Kat Kanada online, the prime minister was annoyed that his vacation time had been interrupted. Nonetheless, he waved his security team away and granted a spontaneous interview.
Bexte, a former Rebel News journalist, and Kanada tracked down Trudeau’s plane by reviewing open-source information and approached him on a beach in Tofino, B.C.
Bexte and Kanada told True North that they wouldn’t have been able to speak with Trudeau if they hadn’t taken this approach.
Trudeau alternated between answering Bexte’s questions and challenging him on the ethics behind interrupting his family vacation.
“Do you think the prime minister should be able to have a family life?” Trudeau asked. “A lot of people look at the aggressiveness of tracking someone down and challenging them on vacation while they’re on the beach, And say ‘Wow, I don’t know that I’d want to sign up for this.’”
The interview touched on Trudeau’s political future. He told Bexte that he wasn’t looking for a replacement and that he would be running in the next election.
He said he’s not concerned about the polling numbers, which some show the Conservative Party coming out with a majority government, because he spends “a lot of time talking with Canadians—a lot of time, focusing on the things that we’re actually doing to deliver for people.”
Trudeau also said the Online Harms Act is “entirely focused on protecting kids” and is “actually not doing any censoring of the internet,” despite claims by free speech advocates and numerous legal analysts.
Bexte asked Trudeau how he could justify taking flying across the country vacation less than two months after his health minister, Mark Holland, said that families who take road trips are destroying the planet.
Trudeau said that because he only has ten days to vacation, he needs to fly to visit B.C., and as prime minister he must take a Royal Canadian Air Force Jet for security reasons, as was standard practice with his predecessors.
“If I’m going to go away with my family to a beautiful part of this country, where I spent time growing up, I need to do it this way,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau also said he works more than “the vast majority of Canadians” and deserves a holiday, though there have been reports that 24% of Trudeau’s time in office has been devoted to personal days.
“My kids spend all their life dealing with me as prime minister,” he said. “My son was just out there in the water splashing around and he came to see me because he was so excited that I came up to see him, and instead, he saw me giving an interview, being prime minister again. He just wants me to be (his) dad, and I’m gonna give him a little bit of that right now.”
Bexte agreed that politicians should be able to have private time with their families but clapped back that they should also answer questions from independent journalists.
“I think Canadians need to get answers from you more often than they do,” Bexte told Trudeau. “I think that you hide behind press conferences, that you determine who gets access to.”
Trudeau said he does more press conferences than any other politician. Bexte noted that his government does not answer questions from independent media or invite them to press conferences.
Independent media, including True North and Bexte, then working for Rebel News, had to sue the government for access to the federal election debates in 2019.
Trudeau said he had nothing to do with which journalists got access to the federal leaders’ debates and that the Parliamentary Press Gallery, an organization made up of journalists, decides who qualifies as media.
Bexte said he thinks the interview went well. “Trudeau put his narcissistic personality on full display, lied frequently, and I’m glad we were able to show Canadians that,” he said.