'Fuddle duddle': When the PM denied saying the F-word in the House

"The prime minister interrupted me in a way that you wouldn't expect on the streetby mouthing a four-letter obscenity," saidConservative MP John Lundrigan.

Thatwas fifty years ago:Feb. 16, 1971. The prime minister was Pierre Trudeau, and according to the Globe and Mail the exchange took place during a question about Trudeau's plans to combat unemployment.

Another Conservative MP, Ontario's Lincoln Alexander, was more specific about what Trudeau had said.

"He mouthed two words," added Alexander, to a group of reporters outside the House of Commons shortly after the incident."The first word of which started withF, the second word of which started withO."

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But Trudeausworehe did no such thing and that Lundrigan and Alexander were being "very sensitive" and were"crying to mama or to television."

When journalists asked him exactly what he was thinking as he made a "gesture of derision" during the exchange,Trudeau couldn't hide hisexasperation.

"What is the nature of your thoughts ...when you say 'fuddle duddle'or something like that?" he asked the reporters.

According to CBC reporter Peter Zimonjic, reporting on a September 2020 incident in the House of Commons,areview of Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debates in Canada, "reveals that the F-word has been dropped in the Commons on two other occasions since January 2001."