I have no unusual compunctions about speaking ill of the dead, but it is generally considered rude. At the very least, if you have unpleasant things to say they should at least be unimpeachably accurate, since the dead guy is in no position to defend himself.
I do however object to the mawkish outpouring of sentiment which is de rigeur for so many people today. Even more than that, I object to being told that I'm out of line by not caring too much about the death of people I don't know.
With that up front, I will come out and back up Christie Blatchford (link) for saying what a lot of us are thinking. Not all of us, maybe not even most of us any more, but still a lot. Jonathan Kay, one of her co-workers at the NPost says it as well as I could hope to:
Eleven years later [after Trudeau's death], it is Jack Layton who has died. And the same climate of enforced sentimentality is in effect: The entire Canadian media has given a free pass to Jack Layton’s widely published deathbed political manifesto, which promiscuously mingled laudable paeans to love and optimism with not so laudable snipes at the Harper government (such as Layton’s encouragement to NDP followers to “restore [Canada's] good name in the world,” as if Canada had somehow become a rogue state under the Conservatives).
There is more, but the freedom of speech here, imperfect as it is, does cover not being sucked in by posthumous propaganda, so those who dare to rail against it should do so and know that they are not alone. As for the late Jack Layton, I never agreed with much he had to say, and I shudder at the thought of his party running Canada, but I wished no ill on the man. The good side? The odds are that the socialist tide is going out with Jack, so I'll wait for the afterglow to fade and hope that we continue to have a solid economy and good governance.
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