Justin Trudeau leadership race. On October 2, 2012, Trudeau held a rally in Montreal to launch his bid for the leadership of the Liberal Party. The core people on his campaign team were considered longtime friends, and all in their 30s and 40s. His senior advisor was Gerald Butts, the former President of WWF-Canada who had previously served as principal secretary to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. Other senior aides included campaign manager Katie Telford, and policy advisors Mike McNeir and Robert Asselin, who had all worked for recent Liberal Party leaders. His brother Alexandre also took a break from his documentary
Justin Trudeau and avalanche victims. After the event, an unsigned editorial in the "Creston Valley Advance" (a local newspaper) accused Trudeau of having groped an unnamed female reporter while at the music festival. The piece stated Trudeau provided a "day-late" apology to the reporter, saying, "If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward." The editorial eventually resurfaced during his premiership, and in July 2018 he publicly said he didn't recall the incident. Several commentators described Trudeau's refusal to act on the allegation as hypocritical given his previous actions against others accused of