07.10.2020 03:37 PM

#Lavscam vs. #WEgate

76 Comments

  1. Nick M. says:

    I certainly hope media follow our Canadian Content tradition and name this WeScam, and not WeGate.

  2. the real Sean says:

    He’ll get away with it because people assume he’s too friendly and handsome to understand how a kickback scheme works.

  3. Chris Sigvaldason says:

    I wonder how the civil service feels about being thrown under the bus by the PMO and the Liberal Cabinet. Have any of Mr. Kinsella’s friends or connections said anything of interest? (off the record, as it were)

    • Chris,

      Well, we might find out that a new single is all the rage on the charts: “Watch those Manila Envelopes Fly Baby, Watch ‘Em Fly!” How’s about Billie Eilish for it?

      (Been known to happen.)

  4. Doug says:

    Like AgaKahnScam, GropeScam, LavScam, BrownfaceScam, BlackfaceScam I and BlackfaceScam II, Trudeau will survive unscathed because he is nobility. The media has always given him a free pass and always will.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Mike,

      If Trudeau is supposedly killing it nationally, why would that not be the case across the board? Are some premiers doing better than others even with the enlightened input of Trudeau and company? Must mean here in Quebec that we’ve tuned Trudeau out, and are now apparently paying the price. Got to be that, eh?

    • PJH says:

      Only until the CERB payments run out….you could have a corrupt buffoon doling out the cash, and everyone would be singing his praises…..on second thought, we already do…..

  5. Terence says:

    Trudeau is safe because what’s the alternative? Conservative policies are only good for the priviledged and out of sync with most of the country and as long as we have a phy electoral system that produces phony majorities — like the Chretien and Harper and Trudeau “majorities” — people will vote negatively. And that means keeping conservatives out of power at all costs. I don’t care what the leader does. The leader isn’t the government. The government’s policies have been largely excellent.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Terence,

      If CPC policy is so “out of sync” with Canadians, why did even Scheer manage to get 230,000 more votes than your guy?

      If people once again vote negatively, what’s lower for Trudeau than his current minority?

      • Terence says:

        It’s out of sync because 2/3 of voters voted for centre left or social democratic parties. Nice try though. The cons are a rump of the electorate. When we finally get a fair voting system, they’ll be out of office for the next 100 years.

        • Ronald O'Dowd says:

          Terence,

          Nice try right back at you. Of course, if I adopt your reasoning which I don’t, then please explain the three governments known as Harper 1 through 3. Don’t expect to have much wiggle room.

        • Walter says:

          If 2/3 of the voters want to destroy the country – do you expect all Political Parties to follow suit.
          Some Parties (thankfully) stand up for what is right and not what can buy votes in the short term but lead to destruction in the long.

        • Pedant says:

          Well first of all if you combine the CPC and PPC, plus an assortment of small right-leaning parties, it was more like 37/38%, not a third.

          Secondly, this simple-minded idea that you can simply add together the votes of the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and Bloc. That Canadians can be classed in a binary way into “left” and “right”.

          There are many Green and Bloc supporters who are socially conservative, for example. Most people don’t simply fit so neatly into an ideology. Some people, you know, are capable of thinking for themselves on an issue by issue basis.

          I think the results of a hypothetical proportional representation electoral system would be far different from what you expect.

          • The Doctor says:

            Pedant, you are absolutely right that some of the so-called thinking around this issue is grossly simplistic, bordering on outright stupid. Bolting Liberal and NDP supporters together and assuming they’re some sort of proggie monolith is the biggest example IMO. Blue Liberals have way more in common with Red Tories than they do with red parts of the NDP. There are a large number of CPC-LPC crossover voters.

    • Pedant says:

      “The government’s policies have been largely excellent”…. unless you pay taxes. I’m assuming, Terence, that you’re one of the 40% who pay zero net taxes.

      • Terence says:

        No I am in the top 10% of income earners and it is my duty to pay high taxes because high income earners like you and me are the ones with the money…and we get the most benefit from other people’s work and the political and legal infrastructure that makes business relatively easy to do compared to most, if not all, countries. By the way Ayn Rand was a sociopath who clearly suffered from PTSD. She should have been given treatment, not a media platform to start a cult of nerdy basement dwelling young men who couldn’t get a date. Not saying that’s you, but it describes many people who agree with you and who have influence in certain dysfunctional halls of power in several capitals.

        • Pedant says:

          Frankly I’m skeptical of your story. Most people who achieve higher income through merit (i.e. not inherited like Trudeau) recognize the folly of disincentivizing ambition and success through crushingly high taxation and means-tested benefits that exclude them. In addition, they are usually sufficiently sharp enough to realize that caricatures and insults are not arguments.

          The NDP was proposing free taxpayer funded dental care for everyone earning under $70k. You think that’s fair? A person earning $69k a year gets free cleanings while his neighbour earning $70k gets to pay full price?

          Has Trudeau raised taxes on his trust fund? Serious question. I’m honestly not sure. Seems like he wants to destroy everyone earning $100k but coddle inherited multi-millionaires.

          And people like you said Andrew Scheer was a “nerd” for marrying young and having lots of kids. So which is it? Are conservatives overly old-school who settle down early, or are they people who can’t get girlfriends?

          • “A person earning $69k a year gets free cleanings while his neighbour earning $70k gets to pay full price?”

            From the first paragraph of https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-dental-plan-fact-check-1.5289005 “It would also pay a portion of the costs — on a sliding scale — for uninsured households making up to $90,000.”

            There are people who believe they achieved a high income through merit, then there are those of us who recognize the huge part government support and luck played in it.

          • Pedant says:

            Thank you Darwin for this information. In that case I have upgraded by opinion of the NDP’s latest redistribution scheme from “outrageously unfair” and possibly criminal theft, to simply “very unfair”.

            Is there anything else you believe the upper middle class should give the lower middle class for free? Maybe free internet or Starbucks coffee for everyone earning under whatever income level the NDP and Liberals deem “rich”?

          • I would prefer that the NDP would propose universal social programs and increase taxes to pay for them. This has the benefit of being simpler to administer and give middle class and wealthy people a reason to advocate for them.

            Nationalizing the networks that provide household Internet access would be a good start. Making it free might be a next step.

            I am not in favour of providing free addictive stimulants.

    • Martin says:

      The alternative a lot of people are talking about is to put someone at least temporarily in charge like Freeland. She has an actual brain and would appear not to be a criminal. Maybe it’s just me, but they should be job criteria one and two. I would fine with that and, who knows, maybe would even be fine with some of the policies. With her in charge, we can have a proper debate about said polices instead of all of these ridiculous distractions.

      • Terence says:

        I agree. Trudeau has been a poor performer. Larger policy orientation and party ethos only thing that’s saving the Libs. Grownups badly needed.

        • Ronald O'Dowd says:

          The wind went out of Freeland’s sails when she did not stand in solidarity with JWR and JP. Apparently, she had other self-involved “pressing priorities”.

          • the real Sean says:

            R.O’D – that is so bang on. I would attach that to the entire cabinet who stayed after the winter / spring of 2019. The Liberal Party should not allow a single one of them to clean up the Justin mess once it is finally over. They are enablers of a cult.

      • Walter says:

        If Liberals get rid of Trudeau – they have to admit that they stood by and let a corrupt PM continue the previous 2 times.
        I say they ride it out and call on some favours from the media to bail them out. They may have already used up that $600M fund, but I am sure taxpayers would be happy to kick in some more.

    • Quo Vadis says:

      “The leader is not the government” but yet he speaks for the government. Odd – would you not say?

      And how do you round the circle by the fact that the government is complicit in what he does by remaining silent or by out rightly defending his actions.

      and what excellent policies would you be referring to?
      China?
      national debt?
      pandering to the UN?
      destroying resource industry?
      etc?

    • Derek Pearce says:

      Terence– Bingo. Trudeau is a POS ethically and is phoney emotionally. But I’m still thankful it was this government with people like Chrystia Freeland playing such a large roll in dealing with Covid. Could you imagine what a disaster for working Canadians this pandemic would’ve been under a Harper government?

      The Liberals should be hurrying up to push Trudeau out the door before he sinks them for the foreseeable future. 3 strikes and he’s out.

      • Yannick says:

        What would it have been a disaster under a Harper government?

      • Derek…they simply don’t have the balls to do that.

        • Derek Pearce says:

          Yannick- a Harper government would’ve penny-pinched working people and have only pretended to care about them losing their homes, whether rental or owning. (GM goes bankrupt? A genuine big deal. Individuals? Not so much. “It’s their fault for not saving for a rainy day.”)
          Ronald- I agree they dont have the balls and they may just pay for it.

          • Pedant says:

            Why should responsible people who saved for a rainy day have to hand over their hard-earned money to people who wasted their own by living beyond their means?

            Speaking of working people, why are Trudeau and Morneau crushing working people earning $100K with punitive taxation and means-tested removal of government benefits while leaving Trudeau’s multimillion$ trust fund untouched?

          • Pedant, I’m glad to hear you support the NDP’s call for universal social programs and a wealth tax for millionaires.

          • Pedant says:

            I’m perfectly fine with a tax on unearned wealth beyond a certain exempted amount, particularly that which is acquired through inheritance. Might make for fewer spoiled brats like the current Prime Minister. Work (i.e. income) should however be rewarded with lower taxation.

            Any further social programs must be universal. Means-testing the middle class out of the very programs they are paying for is immoral. Roll back the child care benefit to the Harper-era limits so that the middle class can take part.

            My preference of course would be to simply do away with these handouts and make people take more responsibility for their own lives. But I’m not so foolish to believe that will happen in my lifetime.

    • Chris Sigvaldason says:

      So the Liberals and Trudeau can do anything they want, no matter how illegal, immoral, or self-enriching, and you will still vote for them because Harper bad, Scheer bad.
      This is no longer about the Trudeau Liberals. It is about their increasingly sychophantic supporters and the Orwellian dystopia they’re leading us into.

  6. Pedant says:

    The CBC and Toronto Star seem to be giving this story less coverage than Bev Oda’s $16 glass of orange juice.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      The CBC has been all over it the past few days, especially Aaron Wherry and Eric Grenier. Their website has also had several articles along the line of “Trudeau will blow his Covid lead and sink again with this,” or “Is Trudeau going to survive yet another scandal” or “He just can’t help doing this stuff to himself.”

      • Quo Vadis says:

        Wherry on twitter..
        “One other thing about two of these episodes (Aga Khan and WE) is how you can trace them back to Trudeau’s own unique life status.
        Stephen Harper didn’t have to worry about getting invited to Aga Khan’s island and his mother and brother weren’t celebrities.”
        See how he absolves Trudeau and maligns Harper for good measure.
        You are an apologist just like Wherry. Sad.

        • QV,

          If memory serves, the PM said that the AK was not only a personal friend but also a very good friend of his Dad, as if that makes any difference as regards the ethics rules.

      • Pedant says:

        This would be the same Aaron Wherry excusing Trudeau because of his “status”, suggesting Junior doesn’t know any better, and coupling that with a snide remark about Stephen Harper being middle class and not so well connected? The nerve of Harper being successful on merit rather than inheritance.

        If Trudeau gets a pass for being a spoiled brat, then surely Trump also gets a pass for the same reason.

  7. joe long says:

    It seems like the unofficial motto of team Trudeau is; “ WE to Me”

  8. Max says:

    Justin is no dummy. He knows he can’t be touched with our ‘First Past the Post’ system and he’s got the MSM in his back pocket. He will shamelessly draw on his drama skills and do a few “presentations” full of moist eyes and breathless pauses. Simply pull out the LavScam playbook and substitute “I will not apologize for standing up for jobs” with “youth”. This whole incident would never have happened if Jody Wilson Raybold and Jane Philpott were still around the Liberal cabinet.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Max,

      And that’s precisely why a politically sentient leader of the party will finally offer to both JWR and JP a CPC nomination in their ridings. End result, both will win in a landslide.

      • Walter says:

        Both JWR and JP are left wing Liberals. It’s them who wouldn’t join the CPC.
        They might fit in with the NDP though.

        Their problem was they thought that if they stood up for honesty and ethics, then all Liberal MP’s who cared about these things would join them. Sadly, all Liberal MP’s who did care about honesty and ethics DID join them.

        • Ronald O'Dowd says:

          Walter,

          I take your point but under the new leader we are supposed to evolve into a truly big-tent party. So I say to MacKay and O’Toole, try again once the writ is dropped.

          • Douglas W says:

            Doesn’t matter who the party leader is, without an effective war room, the Conservatives will remain in Opposition.

          • Ronald O'Dowd says:

            Douglas,

            Trudeau’s defeat is a script that reasonably lately Trudeau and his PMO minions are foolish enough to write themselves…surely it doesn’t take Carville, or the late Atwater, to make hay with the Justin gift that keeps on giving?

            Warren said it all: governments defeat themselves and this PM is determined to be the next Harper and do precisely that.

    • Jeff says:

      HA!!!! Justin is no dummy …. That’s hilarious!!!!!

  9. Lyndon Dunkley says:

    This is just a slight variant on the game going on in the States for years.

    Politician’s family member sets up charity. Widget company donates to charity. Widget company wins “open bid” government contract. Charity does minimum required charity activity. Charity pays out balance in consulting/appearance fees to politician’s family members/cronies.

  10. PJH says:

    Offer them plum cabinet positions and a stone cold guarantee of no interference/corruption, and they would be foolish not to……We get two seasoned, smart, highly capable cabinet ministers that can go a long way towards rebuilding our parties reputation with the Aboriginal community in this country. Mr. MacKay would be foolish not to….:)

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      PJH,

      To win big, we need to be big encompassing all flavours of moderate and conservative conservatives. I know it, you obviously know it and so does Peter, Erin and Leslyn. The leadership race is but a tree, while the general and a majority stands out as the forest. I remain convinced that all three see the forest. Their strategists, advisers and organizers probably not so much, which no doubt thrills Trudeau, right up to a political orgasm.

  11. Robert White says:

    I woke up to the CBC radio journalists telling me that Trudeau family members got paid for their WE-day speeches, but nobody else got paid as all were volunteers except Trudeau’s family members.

    As a Liberal supporter I, for one, am not amused. Living on less than $11k CDN per year and supporting WE-Scam adherents is not my idea of how I should be participating in this participatory democracy.

    This time I am upset enough to be down right angry.

    If anyone should be accused of being stupid it is moi.

    RW

    • Walter says:

      Not just you. I think any Liberal voter in the past 2 elections who is honest with themselves will have to say they were stupid too.

  12. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    The rubber will really hit the road when people realize that the 2020 incarnation of the Trudeau family are at least millionaires in single digits. Given that context, contrary to the financial status of most other Canadians, why would any of them even contemplate giving for profit speeches?

    We all remember how much flack Justin got for doing precisely the same thing before he was the Member for Papineau. The PM should have immediately put his foot down and said NO the moment he or his staff got wind of this. Did they just let it slide instead?

  13. Gilbert says:

    Justin Trudeau is so arrogant that he thinks he can do whatever he wants and get away with it. Voters need to teach him a lesson.

    • Joseph says:

      That sounds like the starting line for one of those Johnny Carson jokes.

      Johnny:”Justin is so corrupt”
      Fred:”How corrupt is he?”
      JC:”Justin is so corrupt, there are phone scammers blocking his calls.”

  14. Derek Pearce says:

    I’m just going to say I don’t buy this line that the MSM in Trudeau’s pocket. This story is everywhere, including the Star and CBC. And the general tone is a forehead-smacking “why is this guy such a continual own-foot-shooter?”

    I’m not going to bet, but I would’t be surprised if he was pushed out of office somehow by his own caucus. If they know what’s good for them.

    • Quo Vadis says:

      When the MSM hits the incessant 24/7 reporting on this scandal as it did over Mike Duffy and $90,000 (which was paid back) then you can claim that the reporting is balanced.

    • Chris Sigvaldason says:

      Blackface was exposed by Time Magazine in the US. This WE thing was disappearing until some little independent blogger called Jesse Brown (Canadaland) exposed the cash going to Margaret and Sacha. The Canadian mainstream media, with minor exceptions, are very incurious with regards to the Trudeau Liberals. It took them one week before they started reporting on the Trudeau Groping story and within days it was dropped, never to be brought up again. Kavanagh got ten times the amount of Canadian media coverage that the Kokanee Grope got.

  15. Joseph says:

    I doesn’t matter if it was a sole source contract to a charity or advertising contract. When a process gets corrupted it degrades the quality of the decisions. It’s no longer about doing the right thing, it becomes a matter of going along to stay on the good side of the boss.
    Just ask Jody and Jane what happens when you start questioning decisions from the boss?
    The reason this keeps happening is because the cabinet members want to keep their entitlements.
    This ends when someone in that room either feels shortchanged or someone thinks someone is taking more than their fair share. In either of those scenarios the damaging leaks start spilling out and the pundits start looking to which ship isn’t the one that’s going aground.

  16. Douglas W says:

    Trudeau’s safe, as long as he doesn’t have to appear before a Parliamentary committee.

    Poilievre and Angus will have him for Lunch.

    • Douglas,

      We’ll get nowhere with this politically, in the House. The Bloc likely will vote with us, maybe the Greens but the NDP still has its grocery list that hasn’t yet been fully filled by this government.

      Remember how the PM refused and wouldn’t let his PMO staff appear before committees during SNC-Lavalin. Need I say more?

      • Maybe the House will find the Trudeau government in contempt of parliament (like Harper was in 2011) but guess what happened in the election? So, all bets are off in that event.

        • Walter says:

          As a member of the public, I much more care about the findings of a quazi-judge in the Ethics Act violations, than in the findings of a partisan opposition.
          That is why the Democrats made such a fool of themselves trying to impeach Trump – and now all the people who care about ethical government are all lining up behind Trump.

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