Illustration by Emile Compion.

Dear Europeans,

Listen, we Canadians are fond of you. And sometimes you Europeans can even find our country on a map. We like the way you keep it post-colonial.

But we have to have a chat about Prime Minister Trudeau. The new one, Justin. Not Disco Trudeau—that was Trudeau 2.0’s dad. I’m talking about Yoga Trudeau, the guy with the tight pants. From Vogue. Yes, him, the underwear model. Gosh, you have not paid us this much attention since we blessed your airwaves with the “Safety Dance.” We’d be lying if we said we’re immune to flattery (Justin sure isn’t).

But, still… Oh, how to begin?

You know how China sends out adorable panda bears as love ambassadors? Justin Trudeau is our panda bear, if panda bears cared about their abs. We send him abroad and you take his picture and you, being well trained in monarchical reasoning, think that if the head of the country is that good looking, it must follow, à la Elizabethan Great Chain of Being, that Canada is also in fine shape. As above, so below.

Your questions about our Prime Beef Minister betray not only your adorably antique cogitating but also your own aspirations. How hard, you wonder, would it be to find a Trudeau for Europe? Not so hard. You have beer commercial casting agents in Europe, no? They sell men’s underwear on the continent, yes?

The thing is, he ain’t all that, politically speaking. I personally would not kick him out of bed for eating (likely gluten-free) crackers, but I might smother him with a pillow if he started talking policy—what little of it he has to brag about.

And since you will keep asking about him, here are the answers you don’t want.

How is our forward-thinking PM protecting Canada’s fragile environment from the ravages of global warming? By negotiating bad trade deals with the EU (that would be you lot, who are still buying coal from Russia) and by reviving cooperation on the Keystone XL pipeline with President Trump, which is a bit like driving a truck full of beer up to the gangway of an off-duty frigate and tossing the captain a bottle opener. It’s going to get messy very, very fast.

To be fair, the prime minister has become a true friend to the poor, the marginalized, and to Canada’s growing underclass. Whenever he meets with the disenfranchised, he wears denim. Denim and novelty socks.

And, yes, Trudeau’s dedication to democratic reform is indeed admirable—if you live in Belarus. To date, he has said the words “democratic” and “reform” out loud, in public, and highlighted each utterance with a look of athletic (by which I mean less-than-mindful) determination. But when you are building a film franchise… erm, rather, a political legacy, you don’t put all the good stuff in the first movie term. Justin Trudeau 2: Back to the Senate is being pre-marketed as a cross between A Few Good Men and one of those French movies with almost no dialogue. Because words, words are so, so empty.

That’s our sexy PM: snug trousers, same old ill-fitting policies. Canadians call this situation the “Canadian Compromise.” It’s how we comfort ourselves when we realize we’ve once again settled for the status quo in better tailoring.

Remember the weird “clear” trend in the 1990s, when everything from Coca Cola to Palmolive dish soap was manufactured without colouring? The marketers thought they could draw in buyers with the promise of literal transparency. Except the Coke still tasted like Coke and, to our wonder, so did the Palmolive. We got the bottles mixed up.

Justin Trudeau is clear cola: He looks as fresh and healthy as river water, and he’s full of crap.

Aaju Peter. Illustration by David Donald.

A majority of the 27 member states of the European Union voted to ban the trade of seal product imports such as pelts, oil, and meat last July. The ban comes into effect in August 2010. Although the EU did allow a partial exemption for Inuit populations, the ban will nonetheless have devastating consequences for Canada’s northern indigenous people, according to Aaju Peter, an Inuk clothing designer, lawyer, and activist. We spoke with Peter in Ottawa, where she is pursuing an additional degree in international law.

This: What work do you do with sealskins?

Peter: I design contemporary clothes that are inspired by traditional Inuit designs.

This: Such as?

Peter: Everything from tank tops, vests, skirts, pants, jackets, to mittens and slippers.

This: What do they cost?

Peter: A sealskin bag I can make for $350. For a jacket it can be between $1,500 and $4,000.

This: Where do you sell them?

Peter: Mostly in Iqaluit [in Nunavut]. Or by special order. [Former] governor general Adrienne Clarkson has a coat.

This: Is sealskin difficult to work with?

Peter: If you have 10 or 20 years experience it’s not that difficult. It takes a long time to acquire the skills that are needed to work with it.

This: How is business?

Peter: It’s slow right now because I’m working on my degree. But if I did sealskin full time I could be very, very wealthy.

This: What is your reaction to the EU ban?

Peter: It will have a devastating effect. It already has on the hunters. They normally would get $60 to $90 for a skin. Now they get about $5. The cost of living is very high in the Arctic. They won’t be able to get enough money to sustain their families.

This: Won’t the Inuit exemption protect them?

Peter: The exemption is very restrictive and absolutely useless. I won’t be able to sell my clothes in Europe. If [the seal] is traditionally hunted and is used for cultural trading purposes only, then it’s okay. They want us to be like little stick Eskimos who are stuck on the land and go out in our little Eskimo clothes with a harpoon. They will not let us hunt with rifles and snow machines. They will not let us sell commercial products. It’s a form of cultural colonization. A journalist in the Netherlands called it the Bambification of the Inuit, like we’re in some Disney movie.

This: Can you understand the opposition to the seal hunt?

Peter: I don’t wish to understand it. I can explain it. It’s become a moral issue that it’s not right to kill animals. It stems from a society that lives in large urban areas that are totally detached from nature and detached from a subsistence economy where you go out and catch what you need and try to make money out of that. It’s a culture that is pushed by a people who have absolutely no connection to the people they are affecting because it’s not affecting them.

This: Any chance of changing people’s minds?

Peter: I always try to be positive, which is why I went to Europe [to fight against the ban]. But I’ve come to realize that people who are living on selling or eating seal don’t have the same amount of money that special interest groups have. For instance, the animal rights groups had a humongous truck outside [the European Parliament] with a humongous screen where they were showing films of seals being slaughtered. And they put pictures of a seal head with “Vote Yes,” for a ban and put them on the doors of all the 800 members of parliament. We couldn’t [afford] anything like that.

This: What would you have wanted the Parliamentarians to understand?

Peter: That this is an issue that is very, very important for Inuit survival. I travel with the courts to the smaller communities. In the winter you see a frame with sealskin on it outside every home. You can see the importance for these families, who have nothing else, no other form of economy, to be able to sell the skins for what they’re worth. I see the harm that is being done to the communities but they’re not able to communicate this. How can a group of people who know nothing about this pass legislation that can have such harmful effects on others? I have a hard time believing those 800 parliamentarians would be able to sleep at night if they knew the harm they are causing.

With so little to gain politically from defending a convicted child rapist—and, one would think, plenty to lose—why would European politicians bother? The answer lies in Europe’s relationship to its artists, and the mythos of their genius. Simply put, sexual transgression, even to a criminal degree, has always been an accepted, even expected, quality of the continent’s most celebrated artists.

The French poet Charles Baudelaire frequented prostitutes so wantonly that he spent much of his time treating his syphilis and gonorrhea. His contemporary Arthur Rimbaud, was said to have offered a personal enemy a glass of milk spiked with his own semen. Things weren’t much different on the other side of the English channel. Oscar Wilde’s opposition to Britain’s draconian anti-homosexuality laws is justly celebrated today—but his predilection for underaged male prostitutes is hardly as laudable. Wilde did two years of hard labour for “homosexual acts,” but he would have spent as much time or more in jail today for statutory rape. Lord Byron once offered the mother of a 12-year-old girl 500 pounds for her. When the mother rejected his offer, he wrote “Maid of Athens, Ere We Part” in the girl’s name. Byron was eventually forced to leave England permanently amid allegations of incest, but when he died, the Times of London declared him “The most remarkable Englishman of his generation.” The sentiment survives today: on the sex lives of contemporary artists, the same paper recently quipped, “Even strait-laced Middle England bottles its outrage, accepting this side-effect of genius.”

Yet art critics and historians have often argued that the stories of artists’ wild sex lives are often overblown, the product of oversized egos and reputations. As the English conceptual artist Dinos Chapman recently said, “The truth is that artists aren’t that special. People just like to think so— especially artists.” Belatedly awaiting justice under house arrest, Polanski may yet find that to be true.