Governing Like An Unquestioned Autocrat

"Justin Trudeau is walking out on Canadians in the middle of a major health and economic crisis, in a disgusting attempt to make Canadians forget about his corruption."                                                                                                               "At a time when Canadians are looking for stability and leadership. Justin Trudeau has given them corruption, chaos, and cover-ups."                                           Conservative leader Andrew Scheer

"Shutting down Parliament in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis, with a planned sitting next week and committees working hard to get answers and solutions for Canadians is wrong."                                                              "[Canadians] shouldn't be forced to pay the price for Mr. Trudeau's scandals."          "If the Liberal government continues to focus on helping their close friends instead of helping people, if they continue to be caught up in fighting themselves instead of helping families that are worried about their future, then we'll have to look at all options."                                                                                                                        Leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh

"It's time to get some grown-ups in Ottawa. The post-COVID debt hangover is reason enough to clear Trudeau's economically inept crew out of Ottawa as soon as possible. And given Trudeau's alleged WE malfeasance, his government's spending spree must be audited and some of its more erroneous pieces of legislation, which will only serve to sabotage Canada's economy by halting resource development, must be rescinded. Finally, a giant broom must sweep all the green radicals, anti-capitalists and Trudeau fanboys and fangirls out of Ottawa." Diane Francis, journalist, editor-at-large, author, Distinguished Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto 

Canada has a prime minister who believes in a post-national society. He sees himself as a progressive and states so frequently, invested in improving the lives of Canada's middle class, even as he is himself a member of the entitled elite class of Canadians, as was his Minister of Finance with whom the prime minister has just sundered ties. Up until two days ago, Bill Morneau was Justin Trudeau's choice to head the finance ministry. And then came the WE scandal where both men distinguished themselves by failing to recuse when a cabinet vote took place giving WE Charity close to a billion dollars to disburse financial rewards up to $5,000 to university students doing volunteer work.

The charity happens to be one with a close and cozy association with both men and their families, where Justin Trudeau's mother and brother were paid for speaking engagements at WE events, to a total of $300,000, and Mr. Morneau's daughter has contract employment with the charity. A charity whose board of directors had decamped over murky financial transactions, a charity which had laid off hundreds of employees, a charity which habitually honoured wealthy prospective supporters with paid trips abroad to visit at some of their charitable worksites.

Co-founders Craig (left) and Marc Kielburger introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau as they appear at the WE Day celebrations in Ottawa, Tuesday November 10, 2015. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

But this was only the most recent of the scandals enveloping Canada's prime minister who had been found involved in harassment of of women despite his boasting of being a 'feminist', who had indulged in Blackface hijinks, who had initiated an unfounded investigation into Vice-Admiral Norman, second in command of the Canadian military, accusing  him of releasing secret documents to the media, who had accepted a family vacation on the private island resort of the Aga Khan, known to lobby for government support of projects in Canada, who had attempted to suborn the Attorney General's decision for a court trial against SNC Lavalin.

A current investigation into the WE Charity scandal by the Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner represents the third such investigation into Justin Trudeau's ethical lapses, the previous of which he had been found guilty of ethics violations, and the second for Bill Morneau, who had been found guilty of the first. It was, ostensibly, Bill Morneau's family trips to Kenya and Ecuador in 2017, which he only recalled in July of 2020 he owed the charity $41,000 for that embarrassed the prime minister, though he felt his family receiving payment from the charity for services rendered was quite acceptable.

 Justin Trudeau, House finance committee (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

In the end, Morneau announced his resignation as Minister of Finance,  hinting disagreements over fiscal matters caused a rift between himself and the prime minister, which it likely did, but speculation abounds that the real rift was occasioned by the WE Charity all-expenses-paid trips benefiting the Morneau family which just happens to be the wealthiest family ever to have held public office in Canada, that caused Trudeau unease, spurring him to ask for the resignation. The outrageous thing is that if Morneau is guilty of poor ethical judgement, his boss Trudeau is even guiltier, and if Morneau paid for his indiscretion with the loss of political stature, Trudeau most certainly has done so in excess and should leave office.

Chrystia Freeland, sworn in as finance minister by Clerk of the Privy Council at Rideau Hall.  Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Instead Justin Trudeau has appointed Chrystia Freeland, his recently-appointed vice-prime minister to take Mr. Morneau's place as Minister of Finance. A former journalist, Ms. Freeland has no experience in economics. And it was at this juncture that the Prime Minister decided he would prorogue parliament. A parliament that he has already, in essence prorogued, having decided despite the objections of other parliamentarians, to shut down for the past six months, in preference to remote sessions over Zoom.

With the prorogation, all government business comes to an end. Translating to three parliamentary committees, all looking into the perceived and real malfeasance on the part of Justin Trudeau in deciding that WE Charity was the only group capable of administering the $912 million Student Summer Jobs program, of which the charity would have kept $64 million, a project that did not go to tender and was, Mr. Trudeau continued to argue, the choice of the civil service, not himself.

The Sordid Saga of a Prime Minister's Culpability

"[Evidence] abundantly shows that Mr. Trudeau knowingly sought to influence Ms.Wilson-Raybould [former Attorney-General of Canada] both directly and through the actions of his agents."
"As prime minister, Mr. Trudeau was the only public office holder who, by virtue of his position, could clearly exert influence over Ms.Wilson-Raybould. The authority of the prime minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit the decision of the director of public prosecutions as well as the authority of Ms. Wilson Raybould as the Crown's chief law officer."
"Because SNC-Lavalin overwhelmingly stood to benefit from Ms.Wilson-Raybould's intervention, I have no doubt that the result of Mr. Trudeau's influence would have furthered SNC-Lavalin's interests. The actions that sought to further these interests were improper since the actions were contrary to the constitutional principles of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law."
"During this examination, nine witnesses informed our office that they had information they believed to be relevant, but that could not be disclosed because, according to them, this information would reveal a [cabinet] confidence."
"Despite several weeks of discussions [with the Privy Council Office] the offices remained at an impasse over access to Cabinet confidences. Because of the decisions to deny our office further access to Cabinet confidences, witnesses were constrained in their ability to provide all evidence."
"I was, therefore, prevented from looking over the entire body of evidence to determine its relevance to my examination."
"[Despite these limitations, Mr. Trudeau] directly and through his senior officials, used various means to exert influence over Ms. Wilson-Raybould."
Public Sector Integrity Commissioner Mario Dion

Federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released a report Wednesday about the SNC-Lavalin affair, finding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin enjoys close relations with the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, a government that was determined to ensure that the global company charged with bribing Libyan government officials in 2001 and 2011 to the tune of $48 million, facing a ten-year ban on qualifying for federal contracts on conviction would avoid a trial. SNC-Lavalin lobbied hard and successfully to have the government introduce a process called remediation agreement to circumvent a criminal trial.

Despite which the public prosecutor deigned not to offer a remediation agreement to the company and to proceed with trial, a decision that then-Attorney General and Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould decided not to overturn. That decision led to a persistent campaign from the Prime Minister's Office, the prime minister himself, and senior government officials to urge her to change her mind. To all of which overtures she firmly insisted that hers was the final word given her official capacity and justice would be done.

Time and again the Attorney General indicated that she had no intention of instructing the prosecutorial services to reverse the decision to bring SNC-Lavalin to trial on criminal charges levied against it. And that the pressure being applied to her was illegal, and must be stopped. Time and again the aggravating overtures continued through various sources, all obviously under the imprimatur of the prime minister who himself informed her that nine thousand jobs in Montreal were at stake, and an election campaign was in the offing.

Finally, Ms. Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of the position of Minister of Justice and Attorney General and given the down-graded ministry of Veterans Affairs. An unidentified source leaked all of this background information to the press and from then on a publicly-revealed drama of political malfeasance hit headlines, day after day with each new charge, contradiction and denial. Ms. Wilson-Raybould was frozen out of Cabinet, and one of her colleagues resigned her cabinet position with Treasury Board.


As the revealing controversy simmered on with occasional flare-ups amid accusations and denials, both women were dismissed from cabinet and caucus, to sit as independents, denied the opportunity to represent the Liberal Party in the forthcoming October election. An internal Parliamentary Committee investigation, half-hearted given the majority member makeup of Liberals commenced and was summarily shut down as more embarrassing revelations ensued. Leading to the Ethics Commissioner's own investigation.

With the conclusions he reached presented publicly yesterday; unequivocal and damning, representing the second time in two years that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been found guilty of ethics violations; the first time for accepting an expenses-paid exotic Christmas holiday family trip to an island luxury getaway as guest of the Aga Khan, a lobbyist and beneficiary of government funds for his projects, clearly breaking parliamentary ethics rules.

"Even though I disagree with some of his [Dion's] conclusions, I fully accept this report and take responsibility for everything that happened. Where I disagree with the commissioner, amongst others, is where he says, and takes a strong perspective, that any contact with the [attorney general] on this issue was improper."
"We recognize that the way this happened shouldn't have happened. I take responsibility for the mistakes that I made. I think we recognize that what was done over the past year, as we tried to both defend judicial independence, of prosecutorial independence, and stand up for Canadian jobs and workers, wasn't exactly the right way to do things. And we thank the ethics commissioner for the hard work that he did in highlighting that."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks about a watchdog's report that he breached ethics rules by trying to influence a corporate legal case regarding SNC-Lavalin, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, August 14, 2019.   Andrej Ivanov / Reuters

Egotistically, patronizingly dismissive. Predictably stylistic. The accusations like water off a duck's back. It is not his place to unabashedly contradict such a finding. He 'accepts' the ultimate responsibility, but will not accept that he did anything out of the ordinary, abridging parliamentary rules, much less the basic rules of decency in lying and plotting, deceiving and playing the innocent while slandering someone who will not bend to his edicts. The royal 'we' aside, this man is shameless.

While the commission investigation was underway, Trudeau's lawyers sent a missive to Mr. Dion describing Ms. Wilson-Raybould in the most unflattering terms as difficult to work with; inherent in the message that anything that might have gone awry was her fault for being inflexible, not his for being ethically compromised. His concern for workers in Montreal failed to manifest equally with the far greater number of workers who have lost employment in Alberta resulting from Mr. Trudeau's complex machinations and hypocritical stance on the environment versus petroleum extraction.

A situation where the Canadian extraction industry is hobbled, investment has been halted, pipeline construction has been refused, to transport oil from the west to the east coast of Canada. Instead Canada continues to import oil from Saudi Arabia for domestic use, despite that Canada's proven reserves match those of the Saudis. And Canadian oil exports mostly to the United States, for lack of efficient transport, sell at below market value, cheating Alberta and Canada out of needed revenue.

"Justin Trudeau is guilty again. What we have now is a clear picture [of] who Justin Trudeau truly is, and it's not who he promised he would be. He promised he would be accountable and ethical. Instead, time and again, he has used the power of his office to enrich himself, reward his friends and punish his critics", charged the Conservative leader of the opposition, Andrew Scheer. While the RCMP has stated it is "examining this matter carefully with all available information and will take appropriate actions as required".

"There should be sanctions because there aren't any currently (for misbehaving parliamentarians. One should not ignore the dissuasive effect that sanctions can have. They help to focus the mind. They also provide Canadians with the assurance that there are consequences for breaching the act that are more serious than what has been called 'naming and shaming'", Mr. Dion once said. But under current rules there is no degree of 'punishment' that can be meted out to Mr. Trudeau, other than at the ballot box in October, and it's debatable how many voters who will 'trust' this man irrespective of anything he has done and will continue to do, would vote against his return for a second four years of misrule.

He will, as usual, wrap himself in the condescending cloak of entitlement and continue to hoist the standard of progressivism and globalism in a country he considers to be an example of post-nationalism under his knowledgeably exalted realm.

Trudeau rejects call for apology in wake of Ethics Commissioner's findings. Globe and Mail

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

A man protests the $10 million payout to Omar Khadr on Parliament Hill on July 30, 2017. Darren Brown/Postmedia