Canadians employed by global affairs — the renamed foreign affairs office — will no longer be taking their cardboard cut-outs of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to promotional events in the U.S. where Americans can gather around the life-size picture and pose for photographs.
The practice has apparently been limited to the U.S., where liberal Americans view Trudeau as a counterweight to President Donald Trump. The trend started last July when the Canadian Embassy ordered a cut-out for its Canada Day (July 1) celebrations in Washington and visiting Americans went wild putting cocktail glasses next to Trudeau’s photo and then posted them all over the internet.
Embassy staff called the proposal a “hoot” that was guaranteed to provide “some serious selfie action,” say released emails.
Less zany advisors argued, “It just doesn’t seem very prime ministerial.”
Ultimately, it was then-president Barack Obama who decided the matter. Someone noted that the U.S. embassy in Ottawa had already used an Obama cut-out for their July 4th party — one of the most coveted invitations of the year.
Just last week, revelers at a Canadian tourism booth in Austin, Texas indulged themselves with groups photos with the prime minister’s image.
The cut-out cutoff occurred after Conservative Party communications people snitched to the media about the practice and sent out links to the online imagery.
Almost immediately, the Liberal government made the practice verboten.
“We are aware of instances where our missions in the United States had decided to purchase and use these cut-outs,” department spokesperson Michael O’Shaughnessy said in an email.
“The missions have been asked to no longer use these for their events.”
The first Trudeau cut-out was a last-minute brain wave by some embassy staffer who ordered the item online from HistoricalCutouts.com, a company based in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, according to access to information documents ordered by the Conservatives. It cost $147.79, with shipping.
The company’s owner and operator, Stephen Taren, says the Trudeau cut-out is the only one that has any sales power and other prime ministers that the company offers don’t attract much interest from American consumers.
“The Canadian historical cut-outs are not as popular as you may think,” he told CBC. “We probably have sold about 10 to 20 Trudeaus since he became prime minister.”
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