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Trudeau’s strident performance in rooms full of his devotees is a masterful distraction from the slap on the wrist he received from Canada’s ethics commissioner — for galivanting on a billionaire’s yacht during a Christmas vacation in 2016.

You see, he told the ethics commissioner he accepted “hospitality from a close family friend” which actually meant an he accepted an extravagant vacation on a private Island from the Aga Khan.

Turns out the Aga Khan was someone the Prime Minister had not seen in 30 years which we later found also received over $50 million dollars of government funding.

It sounds bad, right? That’s because it is.

This kind of behaviour that fosters conceit among our leaders.

And it inspires even more disgraceful conduct by the government around them — a government that believes the rules just don’t apply.

Last year, we learned Finance Minister Bill Morneau set up a numbered company which owned shares of his family’s pension management firm. That company, it turned out, stood to benefit from the very rules he introduced on pensions.

If you don’t recall — it was about the same time as when Morneau — rather than divest the shares in question — kept them inside a numbered company to pay less tax on them.

It sounds bad, right? It is bad.

And while Morneau broke no laws — he certainly shattered the confidence required to present us with yet another document outlining a ballooning deficit, I mean “budget.”

It also begs the question: What else might be happening behind the closed doors if there are no consequences for Trudeau’s ethical breach?

Will anyone be surprised when it happens again? Or will we shrug our shoulders and say, “meh?”

That sends a very troubling message: Trudeau can act badly, as long as he looks good doing it.

And again, that’s bad for democracy.

— Lantsman was a senior political adviser to the previous Conservative government. She currently lives and works in Toronto.