OTTAWA –- Being prime minister means fewer impromptu trips to Canadian Tire, and running out to get a double double can cause "a bit of a kerfuffle" says Justin Trudeau.

After being whisked away by his security detail from a suburban Toronto shopping mall while campaigning with a byelection candidate on Wednesday, Trudeau acknowledged that it’s harder for him to step out in public without drawing a crowd.

Just after stepping into the Bridlewood Mall alongside Jean Yip, the federal Liberal candidate in Scarborough-Agincourt, a crush of people pushed to get close to Trudeau. In just minutes his security turned him around and whisked him back to his motorcade.

While the drop-in at the mall was a scheduled event, Trudeau said in a P.E.I radio station interview on Thursday, that he recognizes even his impromptu public outings can cause “a bit of a kerfluffle.”

For him, this means no more quick shopping trips, to buy a new tool from the hardware store or grab cup of coffee, without his security entourage tagging along. He said this can make it hard to find moments to just "hang out with friends and be chill."

Having grown up in the public eye when his father was prime minister, being surrounded by RCMP is nothing new to PM Trudeau. In the radio interview he called his protective detail "the best of the best."

When asked about the mall incident and whether security would be changed for future campaign stops, the Prime Minister’s Office said it doesn’t comment on matters relating to the prime minister’s security, and pointed further questions about the event to the Liberal party.

Liberal party spokesperson Braeden Caley told CTV News that the crowd of "well over six hundred people far exceeded all expectations for Mr. Trudeau's drop-in visit" resulting in his time there being cut short.

Caley said safety for the families and children at the event is the party’s "top priority."

"The large numbers that turned out yesterday just meant there was a need for added precautions," he said.

Yip is running to fill the seat vacated when her husband, Arnold Chan, died in September. After receiving her own jostling in the crowd, Yip did stay behind to speak with those who came out, the party said.

CP24 full interview with former RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster

'Cleary, things got out of hand'

In an interview with CP24, former RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster said that despite official assurances that Trudeau’s personal safety was never compromised, anything could have happened on Wednesday.

“People were standing about as close to the prime minister as one could possibly get,” Inkster, who served as RCMP commissioner between 1987 and 1994, said. “Fortunately, it was a friendly crowd… But one needs to think about those events when his popularity has declined and there’s someone in the crowd who wants to do him harm. It would have been easy to do.”

For appearances like this, Inkster said that a security expert would usually be embedded in the crowd ahead of time to assess its manageability, temperament and size.

“If the size of the crowd outstrips the capacity and the capabilities of the Prime Minister’s [security] detail, then they go away, go around the block and come back when they’ve got everything under control,” Inkster said. “There are protocols in place, and for reasons that are not yet clear, [they] seem to have failed on this occasion.”

Inkster guesses that the prime minister’s security detail failed to anticipate the crowd’s enthusiasm.

“I think the prime minister enjoyed it,” he said. “But I can assure you the detail are having long and hard discussions as to what happened and what went wrong.”

Managing Trudeau’s security could pose unique challenges, Inkster said, particularly because of the politician’s love of immersing himself in crowds. Regardless, Inkster doesn’t think an incident -- or appearance -- like this will happen again in the near future.

“You do need to keep a cordon around the prime minister so that no one can get within reach of him should they want to do him harm,” Inkster said. “Clearly, things got out of hand.”