After Singh repeatedly asked who had called him that, nobody admitted to the insult
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh confronted a gaggle of protesters on Tuesday after one of them was heard to call him a “corrupted bastard.”
Accompanied by a staffer, Singh was walking towards the West Block of Parliament, tailed by two men recording him from cell phones.
“Are you voting non-confidence today?” asks one. “Corrupted bastard,” says another.
The latter comment prompts Singh to stop and turn around, saying, “You want to say something?”
“Who said that? You got something to say?” adds the NDP Leader as he approaches the pair.
One of the men, dressed in a light-blue shirt and a bandanna, replies, “I didn’t say corrupted bastard … somebody behind me said that.”
Singh then turns his attention to a man in a Toronto Maples Leaf hat and wearing a T-shirt reading, “Unmuzzled Unmasked Unvaccinated Unafraid.”
Stooping slightly to meet the man’s eyeline, Singh asks, “Was it you?”
“No,” replies the man, who has busied himself with his smartphone.
“You sure?” says Singh, prompting an, “If it was me I would admit it, buddy.”
The party leader then takes a step forward towards the man, asking again, “Was it you or not?” yielding the reply, “If it was me I’d admit it.” The man in the Maple Leafs hat then offers, “It was the gentleman behind me, I guess.”
After unsuccessfully asking the man to point “the gentleman” out, Singh then lifts a finger to the man’s face saying, “You’re a coward; you’re not going to say it to my face.”
The standoff then ends abruptly with the man once again declaring, “If I said something like that to you I’d admit it,” prompting an, “Alright,” from Singh, who then turns around and continues his walk towards West Block.
Three members of the Parliamentary Protective Service were at hand during the confrontation, but only at the end did they lightly head off the light-blue shirt man, who had once again begun asking Singh whether he would back a no-confidence vote.
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