‘I tend to react a little strongly’

Justin Trudeau, asked after QP yesterday what his father would say about his outburst.

He would say that he was disappointed that I had to stoop to language that was unparliamentary, but I know that he would have probably been pleased that I was sticking up for someone else, it wasn’t something that I was attacked on myself. It was something that I can take an awful lot directed at myself. When someone attacks someone else in a way that is decidedly unfair and disrespectful, I tend to react a little strongly.

Here, for the record, is his explanation (and apology) for what happened.

Peter Kent, in answer to a question from Megan Leslie, the NDP environment critic, actually had the temerity, the gall to chide her in his patronizing way for not having attended the conference in Durban and if she had, she would have seen how well he was doing as Minister of the Environment. What incensed me to a tremendous degree and caused me to lose my temper and use language that is absolutely unparliamentary and was not worthy of the House in which we stand was that Peter Kent and the government, in contrast to all parliamentary tradition going back 20 years, had refused to allow any members of the opposition to attend the Durban conference, the COP17 conference on the environment. This is a tradition that goes back 20 years of bringing multiple voices to a conference. He did not, they did not. So when he chided her for not attending Durban, I lost my temper, I lost my cool and I used language for which I apologize out here and apologized in the House.