New scandal breaks out at Liberal convention ..... Justin Trudeau's infatuation with Nathalie and oranges exposed for first time!

Woman laughing st sliced oranges: Star of Trudeau keynote speech doesn't actually, uh, exist

Glen McGregor
Saturday, February 22, 2014

Aping a technique often used in U.S. President Barack Obama’s speeches, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s speech to the party convention in Montreal on Saturday was themed around what appears to be an entirely fictional person.

Back in days of yore, politicians would cite the names and circumstances of real people in their speeches.

That was a huge hassle, though, because researchers had to dig up somebody emblematic of whatever policy problem or success was at issue. So, far easier to just make someone up — the rhetorical equivalent of stock photography.

Enter, stage right, “Nathalie,” who was referenced by name four times in Trudeau’s speech, including a lengthy exposition at the top of the address.

“There’s a young woman, let’s call her Nathalie,” Trudeau began. “She works hard.”

Then he began filling in a detailed biography.

Nathalie, he told us, possibly works in an office in Old Montreal. Or, maybe, at a retail outline along Sainte-Catherine Street.

She earns $40,000 a year, approximately the same as her spouse (Trudeau didn’t give him a name but let’s call him, oh… “Jebediah.”)

And - this is research! - Nathalie sits in traffic a lot on the Champlain Bridge, all the while wondering about whether it’s safe, he elaborated.

Then, with all pretext of reality tossed away in favour of the archetype, we get right into Nathalie’s head.

“She’s worried about whether her kids - who are, of course, growing up fast - will get a fair shot at good jobs. She’s bother by the debt she’s carrying.”

We also learn:

* She wonders if she can pay down debt and retire

* “She volunteers for her kids’s school”

* “Maybe she supervises a field trip, maybe she cuts up oranges for her daughter’s soccer team”

* “When she finds a spare moment, she gives it someone else. Her family or friends, her community, her country.”

Nathalie recurred thrice more in the speech, called upon conveniently as flag-bearer of the hope of ambitious Canadians. “Like Nathalie they want us to leave the old constitutional bickering and to take care of the priorities of the middle class.”