The prime minister’s problems with the now-cancelled WE Charity contract blew up yesterday, as it was revealed that Justin Trudeau’s mother and brother have been paid by WE to speak at events, that his wife had once been paid by them in 2012, all of which contradicts their previous statements that they don’t pay speakers. (Trudeau maintains that he has never been paid). Suddenly this makes the fact that Trudeau didn’t recuse himself from any decisions around that contract at the Cabinet table look very bad, because his family does benefit from the organization, and they’re not just donating their time and profile as had been previously stated. And for WE’s part, they have done themselves no favours by saying that it was their social enterprise arm, ME to WE, which paid them, except for the times when there was a billing error and WE Charity paid them instead. This as more parliamentary committees are (finally) doing their jobs in calling ministers and bureaucrats before them to explain their decisions. And to cap it off, Yves-François Blanchet is now demanding that Trudeau step aside and let Chrystia Freeland run things until everything is cleared up. So that’s something.
It’s hard not to see that the Liberals’ capacity for self-harm knows no bounds, between these self-inflicted wounds and their inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag/manage an issue, means that they inevitably make it worse for themselves – which they did yet again today by essentially saying that the only thing that matters is that Trudeau was really concerned about the youth. Seriously? It is not only obvious that Trudeau seems to lack any sense of self-awareness, in part because he has grown up as a kind of celebrity, but it’s also combined by the fact that there clearly isn’t anyone in his office who will stand up to him and say that no, this maybe isn’t a good idea, and no, it’s going to come across well no matter how well-meaning it all is. I mean, the first couple of years in office, Trudeau dismantled any way for the party mechanism to push back against the leader and his office, and that was a fair bit more autonomous than what goes on in PMO. This being said, I will add that our ethics and conflict of interest regime in this country is ludicrous, and subject to the whims of successive Ethics Commissioners, who either read their mandates so narrowly that nothing was ever her problem, except when she took it upon herself to decide who is and is not a family friend of the Aga Khan (that being Mary Dawson), or her replacement, who has invented new statutory interpretation out of whole cloth on numerous occasions to baffling results. None of this excuses Trudeau’s constantly stepping on rakes – he should absolutely know better, but seems incapable of figuring that out.
Or it’s perfectly illustrative of how virtually all of this government’s wounds have been self-inflicted, and that they can’t help but step on every rare in their path. https://t.co/Ainl6a5LBY pic.twitter.com/7dSlztqx0y
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) July 9, 2020
Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt remarks on how repetitive Trudeau’s ethical lapses are getting, and how every time he promises that he’s learned his lesson – until he does makes yet another blunder. Matt Gurney is baffled at PMO’s tone-deafness on this whole affair. Chris Selley, while boggled at Trudeau’s constant blunders, is even more incredulous at how Andrew Scheer keeps being so bad at responding while creating his own distractions.
And they refuse to address the problem. Perhaps because they simply haven’t needed to yet.
— Chris Selley (@cselley) July 10, 2020
Good reads:
- Student volunteer placements are on hold as a result of the confusion now that WE is no longer administering the programme.
- Businesses are frustrated at the lack of details coming out from Bill Morneau on planned changes to the wage subsidy (who is not terribly communicative).
- The government has committed to changing the Citizenship Act to make it easier for same-sex couples to obtain citizenship for children born abroad.
- The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says it’s time to decriminalise small amounts of drug possession in order to fight the opioid epidemic.
- The Senate’s social affairs committee says that the country isn’t ready for a second wave of the pandemic and wants a plan from the government by Labour Day.
- Leslyn Lewis was subjected to racist slurs from participants during an online leadership debate this week.
- Mocking gestures, accusations of bullying, and some very dubious behaviour from the deputy speaker in the Alberta Legislature give you a taste of how it’s going there.
- Mike Moffatt illustrates how Basic Income’s problems manifested in how the Ford government tackled the autism file with cheques over needs-based programming.
- Colby Cosh needles the proponents of Basic Income who think that now is a great time to start implementing it, without checking any of their basic assumptions.
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This is all so very sad and heartbreaking. But still nothing about this tells me that he’s “corrupt” no matter how much “Crooked Justin” BS gets spun by the memeheads and now Skippy wanting to call the cops. I sincerely think Trudeau’s own problems are due to naivete rather than malice; as you said, he grew up as kind of a celebrity, and whoever is on his team are giving him terrible advice. Maybe he isn’t well, I don’t know. He grew up not just as a celebrity but with the dysfunctional upbringing of a 1980s child actor. I have long had my suspicion that the Liberal Party has been taking advantage of a figurehead, who they’ll callously spit out if they determine that his “brand” is no longer to their favor. It appears the same goes for WE organization. I think he got taken for a ride. This hurts.
In which case shame on them, and maybe he is better off letting Chrystia fend off the ghouls while he takes a break for awhile. I don’t think he’ll stick around for very much longer anyway. *Maybe* see out the remainder of this term and then call it quits. He looked tired even before this. This all seems so very Clintonesque and, we know how the opposition and the press were quick to tear apart her family foundation only to find nothing. Today she seems much happier doing philanthropic work on her own. So maybe that’s where Justin Trudeau’s real niche is, and not the vicious grind of public life.
It really is tragic, because I think he has a good heart but sometimes his head isn’t on straight, and the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. I think people are using him and this angers me. But the scumbags in the media and the bloodthirsty opposition dragging his mom and brother into this miasma is still an unacceptable low blow, particularly on the part of that shxt disturbing podcaster who I’ll call Jesse Brownshirt. He’s nothing but the left-wing version of Ezra Levant and he can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. He’s trash. But that’s another reason I don’t see Justin sticking around much longer: he loves his mom more than anything else in the whole world, and he’s not going to want another friendly sausage maker to take it upon himself to go after her, after having been radicalized by the media drumbeat about the “Trudeau crime family.” It’s horrifying to see Canada turning into the USA. Closing the border hasn’t worked.
Politics has become the refuge of scoundrels is all I can say, and I agree about the ethics commish’s unpredictable standards being an absolute joke. Remember when he got a ding over sunglasses? Dion is an attack dog and he even looks like a pit bull. Trudeau has his flaws but he’s not a bad person, and as for leadership, right now he’s the best of an absolutely pathetic lot. Which is saying something about the p!ss poor quality of leadership in the opposition parties. Literally none of them even comes close to prime ministerial quality, and that goes for MacToole and O’Kay too. Enter Chrystia, I guess. Add women, change politics. I really do hope he’s doing OK in all of this, now with seeing his poor mom and kid brother dragged through the mud. I’m still sympathetic towards him, even more so now. Pictures I see of him now, press conferences, he looks so sad, and then seems to force a smile. Is he all right? Maybe he needs to go to rock and roll rehab?
I read in another article that Harper had recused himself from a decision where his brother was involved but I say that might have been the only decision that he made that was good. If Canada had elected Harper and the Conservatives again in 2015 this country would be a mini United States right now, a total boondoggle on all fronts. Trudeau and the Liberals may have made a few decisions that should have been different but their good decisions far out weigh their bad decisions by miles.
One would hope that voters are able to recognize that, but my faith in the electorate gets dimmer and dimmer as time goes on. More so, my faith in the media to have any sense of perspective or priorities is completely shot. News about jobs and the epidemic of racism in this country is being obfuscated by an obsession with this stupid manufactured outrage.
Here’s my question, why is the CBC sole-sourcing to Jesse Brownshirt? He finally got his big break, I take it? All he had to do was come up with a series of hit pieces about Trudeau and voila, he hit the big time.
This is turning into a bloodthirsty vendetta against the Trudeau family, just like it was against the Clintons. I’m convinced that for his own sake and that of his loved ones, he probably should step down. Some QNutter is going to turn the MSM’s relentless drumbeat about “crooked Justin” into action and then they’ll really have a ratings bonanza on their bloody hands. Lying press, nasty reporters, enemies of the state.