“Part of what makes people upset, is if you to stand back
and look at it, you have path A and path B, maybe both will fit within
the rules, but there’s clearly one that has less problems." “It’s very hard once you start getting
into the nitty gritty of what exactly was right or wrong. You’re trying to break it down into a little black and white decision.
It’s not really that simple." “But you step back and think, ‘My goodness, didn’t you think about this?’” Jennifer Quaid, law professor, University of Ottawa
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers an opening statement about
federal government's decision to task WE Charity — which has ties to the
Trudeau family — with running a $900-million student grant program. (CBC News)
Under questioning by the finance committee looking into the WE Charity connections to the Trudeau family, both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his chief of staff left the impression that the PMO (prime minister's office) was swamped with work related to COVID-19 and lacked sufficient time and motivation to do their due diligence over the appropriateness of selecting a charity with direct personal links to the very source preparing to sign the agreement to turn over close to a billion dollars to be administered to give financial relief for future tuition to university students willing to volunteer in their community.
They chose instead to rely on the civil service to investigate whether or not this would be a good move. On the part of the prime minister and the finance minister, both of whom were heavily compromised in their relationships with the charity, neither thought to apprise the federal department involved in the selection process of the depth of their indiscretions as elected officials in unethically accepting remuneration for services rendered or accepting paid vacations by the charity.
With two such executives holding the highest elected positions of trust in the country untroubled by having compromised their integrity and ethics in contravening Parliamentary rules in charge of discharging and distributing $350 billion from the nation's coffers for COVID-19 relief, how confident can the country be that the best interests of the nation are being looked after? Justin Trudeau states he was unaware of the state of the charity's finances, was unaware that Michelle Douglas the charity board's chair had resigned because of that issue.
Not was he aware that WE Charity was in breach of bank covenants. That because Ms. Douglas had insisted that the board needed to see and review WE Charity's financial status, and was outright refused, followed by an invitation to her to resign her position. Nor that most of the board voluntarily vacated their own positions on the board, directly related to Ms. Douglas's departure. He was unaware, he also stated, that his finance minister had accepted an expenses-paid trip to Kenya and to Ecuador for himself and his family, courtesy of WE Charity.
So, then, what did he know, what was he aware of, other than being quite in agreement that the charity that had paid his mother $250,000 for speaking engagements hadn't compromised him personally whatever, nor that his wife was a spokesperson for the charity. Oh, of course, all this was unimportant to begin with since, he has said, he hadn't been aware that the charity had been chosen to administer the program to disburse funds to university students for volunteer work. In all probability Mr. Trudeau is not aware that the very essence of volunteerism is that it is unpaid work. Trifles.
But he did, in the final analysis, approve the agreement to sign over the contract to WE Charity. Neither he nor the finance minister saw fit to recuse themselves; both voted for WE Charity to be given the contract. Nasty little details.
Mr. Trudeau is now openly musing that it might perhaps be a good idea if he took on staff someone whose specialization is to sniff out these inconvenient challenges to personal ethics. For the purpose of examining all future projects to ensure that Justin Trudeau places left foot before right. He has likely forgotten that there is already someone in place to be consulted whenever there is any doubt, just as he has mislaid the reality that his chief of staff is meant to function for that purpose as well. It simply hasn't occurred to him that he's the wrong man in the wrong position, unable to tell right from wrong.
Marc
and Craig Kielburger, the founders of WE Charity, and KatieTelford,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's chief of staff, also testified before
the House of Commons finance committee this week.
"We need to take stock of why we didn't get it. It is
embarrassing because it really is a bit of a wake-up call for many of us
Canadians who kind of thought, 'Well, why wouldn't they want us?' We're
really internationalized. We have this wonderful commitment to
multilateralism, we feel like we embody the United Nations' spirit of
diversity and inclusion in this country." "I think there's merit in being there. We can
absolutely talk about the question of whether or not we had the chops to
be at the table, or whether or not we had the investment in
organization and all the other things to go into consideration of our
bids, such as our official development assistance, peacekeeping and all
the rest." "But the merit of being at the table to me is still
very much there. And organizations are only as good as the people who
get engaged in them." "We have wonderful rhetoric, wonderful ideas … and at the end of
the day we really hope that others just, you know, bask in the glory of
our wonderful ideas with very little money. And that's not
how the international system works." University of Waterloo professor Bessma Momani, senior fellow,
Centre for International Governance and Innovation
"It would force us, over and over, to take defined positions when
the strategy often for Canada is to choose the areas where we want to
weigh in. We have made significant contributions to multilateral
institutions in focused ways." "I really think we're making a big mistake here if we treat this
as any kind of referendum on how Canada is viewed in the world. I don't think it tells us anything about the way we're
regarded in the world." "So really, the argument I'm making is we were focused on the wrong institution and the wrong part of the UN system."
Janice Stein, professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto
The
Security Council meets on Oct. 24, 2019, at United Nations
headquarters. Canada was beat out by Norway and Ireland this week in its
bid for a temporary seat on the Security Council.Mary Altaffer/AP/The Canadian Press
"Canada lost for many reasons. One of them was because of our
government’s timidity. It chose to say as little as possible on many of
the most emotive issues of the day, lest it offend a country and lose
its vote." "Until a few weeks ago, it was taboo for ministers to even utter the
word “Taiwan.” On importing 5G technologies from China, we have seemed
paralyzed long after our security agencies and most of our allies have
declared they want nothing to do with it." "Such a craven approach was a hopeless strategy to justify why Canada should have a place in the Security Council chamber." "The
reality laid bare by this stark rebuke is that Canada is hamstrung by a
preachy foreign policy that has latterly become heavily based on
imposing our domestic cultural orthodoxies on others. This has made us a
preening nag, a bore and — as the vote by the 190-odd countries that
make up the United Nations General Assembly demonstrates — largely
irrelevant, except to ourselves." "The
government’s pious sanctimony
has become almost cult-like since Trudeau foolishly declared that
'Canada is back', without providing a road map to explain where we had
been or where we’re going." Matthew Fisher, Columnist, Global News
"To
this country's friends all around the world, many of you have worried
that Canada has lost its compassionate and constructive voice in the
world." "Well, I have a simple message for you. On behalf of 35-million Canadians: we're back." Justin Trudeau, November 2015
Most Canadians had no idea that Canada had ever gone away; they
were under the impression that their Canada was hale and whole. But the
Liberal Party of Canada under its leader Justin Trudeau insisted that
Canada, governed by the Conservative Party under the leadership of Prime
Minister Steven Harper had lost its way. Mind, Mr. Harper was not
averse to informing Russia's Vladimir Putin at a then-G8 meeting that he
needed to 'get out' of Ukraine's Crimea after Moscow under his
direction had annexed it.
Senegal's President Macky Sall, left, walks alongside Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau during an official visit in Dakar, Senegal, Feb. 12,
2020. The visit was part of the Trudeau's government's charm campaign
for a seat on the UN Security Council. (Cheikh A.T/The Associated Press)
Whereas, in his zeal to gain votes for Canada's bid under the
Liberal government to succeed in Justin Trudeau's vanity project to gain
a temporary seat in the revolving UN Security Council, Mr. Trudeau
managed to mislay his progressive stance on human rights as he stood
smiling chummily beside Senegal's president as he spoke of his country's
maximum penalty laws against its LGBTQ community. Not a word of
objection passed the discreet lips of Canada's human rights champion on
that occasion.
Canada's formal relationship with three of the most powerful
members of the permanent Security Council nations is fraught with
tension. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is persona-non-grata in
Russia; so much for strained relations, while President Trump is
somewhat disgruntled with Justin Trudeau's showmanship of disdain for
the American president in a rather egregious dishevelment of
nation-to-nation diplomacy, and caught in the net of a trade war between
the U.S. and China; that nation of abusive human rights wouldn't help
Canada to a lift on a rescue mission.
Canada has not stood very tall for human rights, justice and the
rule of law in its relationship with Beijing, preferring to pursue
genteel diplomacy and not rock the boat too strenuously, despite the
effective state kidnapping of two Canadian citizens on trumped-up claims
of national security in charging the two with espionage and clamping
them in prison, denying them access to lawyers, keeping them
incommunicado, subjecting them to unsubtle psychological torture
techniques.
Spending millions on bribing other UN member-countries to pledge a
vote for Canada against the two other competitors for the two open
seats, Norway and Ireland ... pledging millions in foreign aid, making
common cause with dictators while throwing the human rights interests of
collegial countries to the winds of chance, Canada did not do itself
proud in abasing itself in unctuous servility to those nations whose
record of abuses and anti-democratic values drew no credit on Canada.
A security barrier that Israel erected to reduce the level of
violence it had experienced for years became an unwieldy tool of
recrimination on the part of Canada joining the usual anti-Israel crew
in the United Nations to denounce a fellow democracy, along with the
traditional Arab League and aligned critics to curry favour with the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation nations in yet another condemnation
of the Jewish state.
Trudeau and the Liberal government were happy to sell Canada's
moral values out for a mess of pottage that they proffered in a grand
sacrifice to be recognized by petty dictators and human rights abusers
as being entitled to that elusive, vanity-project seat to satisfy
glad-handing, back-slapping Justin Trudeau, happily smirking that
'Canada is back'. Only it failed to succeed. And Trudeau, flipping aside
any embarrassment for Canada he has once again engendered on the world
stage, carries on, business as usual.
The business at the present time being the continued erosion of
parliamentary democracy in Canada under the guise of necessity because
of the general threat of infection during the emergency response to
SARS-CoV-2, making it unsafe for Parliament to assemble physically in
the House of Commons' temporary quarters, recalling Members of
Parliament back to Ottawa, in preference to holding Internet interfaces
to conduct the nation's business and avoid inconvenient questions from
the official opposition.
This, while Canada begins to open up, and children will be
returning to the classroom, businesses will be re-opening, public arenas
where people will gather will resume to a degree returning the
country's public and private life to a version of normalcy, while it
remains 'unsafe' for the governing Liberal Party to entertain thoughts
of resuming Parliament as it is meant to be. And where Justin Trudeau
saw fit to expose himself to potential infection, attending a crowded
Black Lives Matter protest in his usual virtue-signalling style.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during the first hybrid parliament
committee in the House of Commons during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Electronic voting has been touted as a way resume normal operations in
the Commons without all 338 MPs needing to travel to Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
