Amy Hamm: Remember when Katy Perry’s boyfriend tanked our economy?

Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry attended the Coachella music festival together Photo by Katy Perry/Instagram

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I cannot take any more of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry’s public romance. Yes, I know that by writing about it I am only drawing more attention to the matter — but please allow me to indulge in some catharsis, here. I’m certain that swathes of us Canadians are feeling the same revulsion towards the pair’s very public displays of affection, which include Trudeau staring Perry down like a famished tiger. (Shudder.)

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That said, not everyone hates it: most of the time, when I come across the pair it’s because some apolitical social media influencer has shared the latest photos or videos of the duo, announcing how adorable they are together and claiming that Trudeau deserves this happy timeline after his years of public service.

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My problem is an inability to look at Trudeau and see anyone other than the man largely responsible for Canada’s Liberal Lost Decade. Trudeau was less of a public servant than a man who served the public a platter of stagnating GDP, a reduction in entrepreneurship, collapsing investment, enormous deficits, a cost-of-living crisis, a health-care system pushed towards collapse, an increase in hate crimes, the addition of biological males in women’s prisons (and sports, rape crisis shelters and toilets), the unlawful invocation of the Emergencies Act, a preposterous prorogation of Parliament, and, of course, extra heapings of woke virtue signalling and divisive rhetoric that contributed to our country being more polarized than at any other time in its history. The hangover from Trudeau’s leadership will remain for years, and probably decades.

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But now, Trudeau has somehow managed to rehabilitate his reputation from a blight on Canada to a Coachella-attending, backwards ballcap wearing celebrity boyfriend. “The former prime minister of Canada wore a backwards baseball cap and ate instant noodles with his girlfriend, Katy Perry,” gushed online gossip magazine Jezebel. Well, gosh golly, doesn’t that sure make Canada’s economic and cultural destruction under Trudeau a bit more tolerable? (No.) The glowing media coverage of their relationship is unrelenting. It also appears that Trudeau behaves, around Perry, in a manner that baits Paparazzi types.

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It is undignified and unserious for a former prime minister to transition into a new career that consists of making international headlines about how well he’s doing being the boyfriend of a popstar. (Trudeau appears otherwise jobless.) It is, however, an accurate reflection of how little intellectual substance Trudeau demonstrated during his years in power.

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“’Boyfriend duties call,’ Trudeau says after skipping Canada (soccer) match to watch Perry” reads a recent BBC headline. “Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau steal kisses during Santa Barbara picnic ahead of one-year anniversary,” reads a Fox News headline. Or how about the Page Six story: “Justin Trudeau couldn’t keep his hands off Katy Perry during the premiere of her new concert movie.” They are the type of headlines that only a lovesick teenage girl or narcissistic adult could feel proud of.