It wasn’t about left versus right. It wasn’t about serving up a powerful digital cudgel for those seeking to bludgeon Justin Trudeau’s Liberal brand to oblivion.It wasn’t really about politics at all, according to the activists who planned and provoked the prime minister’s disastrous confrontation Wednesday night in front of a downtown Toronto audience of core Liberal supporters. Their goal wasn’t to feed the hyperpartisan beast such a tasty, virally shareable morsel so that everyone could feast upon Liberal arrogance. All they were looking for — the only thing they really want — is justice for the people of Grassy Narrows, a community that has seen 50 years of federal governments come and go, Conservative and Liberal alike, without a single one of them ever “doing the right thing” for Northern Ontario’s longest-suffering victims of mercury poisoning.But one day, nearly half a million views and one official Trudeau apology later, the engineers who delivered the 45-second video clip — in which Trudeau responded with glib sarcasm as protesters hijacked the donor-only gathering, telling them again and again, ‘Thank you for your donation’ — found themselves scrambling to steer attention away from what they regard as the sideshow of Trudeau’s reaction and back upon the actual issue. “Liberal arrogance became the story – and so now we’re all really trying to turn the story back where it actually belongs, with the focus on Grassy Narrows,” said Mark Calzavara of the non-partisan Council of Canadians.Calzavara was the person holding the cellphone camera on Wednesday night inside the 17th-floor ballroom of the King Edward Hotel – and simultaneously, he was shouting down Trudeau, demanding the Prime Minister follow through on his government’s pledge to fund a $17-million treatment centre for Grassy Narrows victims.But the telltale encounter h ...
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