I find his fairly repellent. And he comes from a background, in terms of his educational experience, that seems to produce wankers. I often think, he must not know how he comes off to people.
However, I think that it's also the case that at the time, almost 20 years ago, the discourse around blackface was rather different than it is now.
Then it seemed, at least outside of isolated parts of academia, to really mean people mimicking African-Americans, usually for comic effect, that was seen as very problematic. You didn't hear the term "brownface" which is what a lot of the Canadian press is using in relation to this incident. And while it was becoming much more common for actors to be cast to play someone with plausibly their own ethnicity, the sense of it was a little different - it was more about making sure that marginalised groups of actors got work, and less about a taboo around playing the role of another identity. I think that's really attached to the dominance of identity politics.
At the time, I think people would have tended to think it was in bad taste, but I'm not surprised that Trudeau or those around him wouldn't have seen it in the way people are thinking of it now, looking back.
Anyway, wankers are going to wank, he's the same as he always has been and so's his party. I am far more upset with the Greens who have gone from being the only party that even attempted a traditional sort of leftism, to totally drinking the individualist liberal-progressive kool-aid.