generalspeaking

Justin Trudeau's Imperious Vendettas

"The Clerk of the Privy Council, in consultation with relevant [deputy ministers], should strongly consider referring this matter to the RCMP for appropriate follow-up."
"We believe there is enough evidence to warrant launching a criminal investigation in order to review email/PIN correspondence in any meaningful manner, a police warrant will be required."
"Referring the matter to the RCMP would also send a strong signal that this unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information is serious and unacceptable, and is being addressed to the full extent of the law."
Privy Council report into shipbuilding leaks

Left: Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. Right: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Adrian Wyld, Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

"The facts gathered in this review were shared with [Privy Council Office] which confirmed on September 15 2017 that the PSPC [Public Services and Procurement Canada] is no longer within the scope of the review into this matter [charge of breach of confidentiality on the part of Admiral Norman]."
PCO continues to move with other Departments in its attempt to identify the source of the leak."
Public Services and Procurement Canada report

"Any disclosure of confidential information is a breach of the Public Service's Values and Ethics Code."
"As Public Servants, we swear an oath to serve and are entrusted to protect information of a confidential nature. This disclosure, ['settlement' reached with former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr] while a breach, did not constitute a risk to the Canadian public."
"We do not comment on personnel matters."
Stephane Shank, manager of media relations, Privy Council Office

Justin Trudeau two days ago in the House of Commons announced that the former president of the Treasury Board and the former Minister of Justice, Dr. Jane Philpott, and Jody Wilson-Raybould respectively, may no longer remain in the Liberal caucus, and will not be permitted to run as Liberals in the upcoming fall election. Both their political careers as Liberal Members of Parliament and Ministers of high-profile Cabinet posts are ended. Each chose to challenge the government and the prime minister on an issue of ethical malfeasance.

Newly Independent Members of Parliament Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould speak with the media before Question Period in the Foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa, Wednesday April 3, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Jody Wilson-Raybould refused continual pressure from the prime minister and his advisers to overrule the decision of her public prosecution office to continue with a criminal case against Montreal-based engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin on the pretext of 'saving jobs' for Canadians by opting to set aside the potential for a criminal conviction on charges of $48 million in bribes to Libyan officials for contracts by offering the company a remediation agreement. Because of her perceived intransigence in insisting that justice must not face political interference she was relieved of her ministerial portfolio.

On a point of ethical agreement with Jody Wilson-Raybould and a principled stand against government collusion with a corrupt company, Dr. Philpott chose to surrender her Cabinet post in protest, a decision that cost her dearly. Both women, thrown out of caucus and locked out of running in the next election as Liberals now have time to consider their futures outside politics for neither sees the option of crossing the floor to join the opposition. Puzzling, in that they both claim themselves to be Liberals by inclination, yet the Liberals have demonstrated their traditional arrogance and propensity to corruption that the women have both refused to condone.

Their experience represents yet another instance where this prime minister promised a fair and open government would prevail under his stewardship, yet the public has time and again been treated to episodes when ethics have been shunted aside and the government has preferred to operate in a mode of dense secrecy. When government negotiated an agreement with Omar Khadr whose family supported Osama bin Laden, for whom the family patriarch was a hero, leading him to place his sons in jihad training camps, the public was never informed of the situation.

Khadr, permitted to leave an American prison system before his sentence was completed for throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Army medic and blinded another, was given early release from his Canadian prison where his U.S. sentence was to have been completed. A media and sympathizer-groups-launched support of Khadr as a 15-year-old innocent caught up in a conflict not of his choice opened an opportunity for the now-grown man and his lawyer to launch a $20-million lawsuit against the government of Canada claiming that when Canadian foreign service officers and members of the RCMP questioned him while under the U.S. prison system his Charter rights were infringed.

In the event, the government agreed to pay Khadr $10.5 million as a settlement of the case, in June of 2017. This was to have been kept secret from the public, but a civil servant in one of six government departments who had knowledge of the situation, leaked the information to the press. Which caused a backlash, also undisclosed to the public, where the Privy Council Office that answers to the Prime Minister's Office was instructed to discover who the informant was so he or she could be penalized. For two months following the public disclosure of the settlement enraging Canadians, an intensive investigation was carried out to punish the leaker.

A third instance of Justin Trudeau's rage at being publicly embarrassed when another leak had revealed to the public that "a federal insider" had given to the press classified information, embroiled the second in command of the Canadian Armed Forces, Admiral Mark Norman who was relieved of his position and eventually charged with disclosing information the government shielded from the public with respect to two shipyards contesting the conversion of a supply ship for the Canadian Navy. In fact, a public servant had indeed released the information but that didn't stop the vendetta against Admiral Norman.

Whose trial is ongoing, and whose lawyers have been blind-sided at every turn by a government refusing to hand over data, emails, correspondence and even the Admiral's own files and computer to enable his defence team to properly defend their client at trial. Justin Trudeau, long before charges were actually laid, in the interim of a year where Admiral Norman was left dangling, had stated publicly that the case would go to trial; his need to vindictively punish those he believed had 'betrayed' him, causing him public discomfiture overruling the decency of honest self-examination.

"The government today attempted to lay blame elsewhere for their decision to conclude a secret deal with Omar Khadr."
"The decision to enter into this deal is theirs, and theirs alone, and it is simply wrong. Canadians deserve better than this."
former Prime Minister Stephen Harper