“I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an Indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint,” Mr. Trudeau says in the article. “I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.”

What JT is getting at? A "good foil" for what? A "very nice counterpoint" to what? What is the "right kind of narrative/story" here? I suppose one could be outraged and impute a racist context - for a segment of the First Nations commentariat, this is the default setting and it loses force when applied to everything. 

But I don't think Trudeau is a racist. Instead I think he is very poor at formulating and articulating a message that is not social media/selfie based. When you see his latest pic you can form an idealised view of the man. You see what he and his handlers want you to see. Unfortunately, when he speaks, you are confronted with the harsh reality that he is a not very clever and a bit of a doofus.