Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was forced to apologise on Wednesday for wearing brownface make-up to an Arabian Nights-themed gala he attended when he worked as a teacher in 2001.
Time magazine published a yearbook photo of Mr Trudeau in the garb, forcing him to make an apology aboard his campaign plane as his Liberal party is in a fierce battle for re-election.
“I dressed up in an Aladdin costume and put make-up on,” he told reporters after the photo of the costume came to light. At the time, Mr Trudeau was a 29-year-old teacher at West Point Grey Academy, a private school in Vancouver.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I should have known better. And I’m sorry,” he said.
The revelation about the photo comes with just a little over one month to go before the country’s October 21 federal election. Polls on Wednesday showed Mr Trudeau held a narrow lead over his main rival, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. The prime minister has repeatedly accused Mr Scheer of allowing intolerance to flourish in his party.
Mr Trudeau also admitted to reporters that in a high school talent show he performed the Jamaican folk song Day-o while wearing blackface make-up.
Asked directly if he had considered resigning over the photo, Mr Trudeau said he took “responsibility” for his actions but said he would be “asking Canadians to forgive” him.
“It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time but now I recognise it is something that is racist,” he said.
And on Thursday morning, Global News in Canada published what it said was a third instance of Mr Trudeau appearing to wear racist make-up, in an undated video that was reportedly shot in the 1990s.
Mr Trudeau was elected in 2015 with a majority government following a campaign that relied heavily on a message of tolerance, optimism and “doing politics differently”. He appointed a cabinet in which half of the ministers were women, that also included a wide range of visible minority members of parliament. Mr Trudeau joked in 2016 that he had more Sikh cabinet members than Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
Nonetheless, Mr Trudeau’s latest mis-step drew sharp criticism from political opponents.
Mr Scheer said he was “extremely shocked and disappointed” and that wearing brownface is an “act of open mockery and racism”.
Brownface was “just as racist in 2001 as it is in 2019”, he said.
