For one day 54-year-old Kathy Katula represented all Canadians who feel overwhelmed by government taxation.
Now she’s being attacked online by people who object to her criticism of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The mother and grandmother was at a town hall in Peterborough, Ontario last week when she told Trudeau, “I feel like you have failed me, and I’m asking you today to fix that. My heat and hydro now cost me more than my mortgage. I make $50,000 a year Mr. Trudeau and I am living in energy poverty,” Katula said with tears in her eyes.
Katula told the Toronto Sun that she’s the target of online harassment from people who aren’t taking Trudeau’s message of tolerance very seriously. “I’ve been trying to block people, so they can’t get into my Facebook,” she said. “There are people all over the place who think I’m hired by a politician and I’m a criminal committing fraud. There are things on there you couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams.”
“That was pure from the heart what I did the other day,” she said. “I wanted to go to church this morning and I was afraid to go out of my house.
Cyber thugs were apparently offended by this question: “I’m asking you, Mr. Trudeau, how do you justify to a mother of four children, three grandchildren, with physical disabilities, and working up to 15 hours a day, how is it justified for you to ask me to pay a carbon tax when I only have $65 left in my pay check every two weeks to feed my family?”
The exchange with the prime minister, in which Trudeau offered nothing but a hug, may prove to be a defining moment for Trudeau, who enjoyed over a year of cheerleading media coverage before taking a Christmas vacation on an island owned by billionaire and Muslim spiritual leader the Aga Khan. Trudeau may have broken the Conflict of Interest Act when he used one of the Khan’s private helicopters to fly to the island. This week the federal ethics commissioner is officially opening an investigation into the affair.
Trudeau is due in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Monday as he fights off suggestions that the town hall tour is turning into a political liability. The opposition Conservatives accused Trudeau of using his cross-country tour for partisan fundraising purposes but the response that Trudeau has received thus far in Ontario has seemed to rock the usually cheerfully composed prime minister.