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The election is over, Thanksgiving is over.

What better time, then, to give thanks about what happened, and what didn’t, in the 2021 federal general election?

And, yes, sure: Justin Trudeau isn’t now in a job for which he is suited, like cleaning leaves out of gutters. He’s still prime minister, and that’s nothing to be grateful for, if you ask me (and you did).

But we still have things to be thankful for, electorally speaking. Here’s 10:

1) The Conservatives didn’t falsely allege they won the election. The Tories could’ve done what Donald Trump did, and does. They could’ve pointed to the fact (because it is a fact) that they won a bigger share of the popular vote than the Trudeau Liberals. They could’ve kvetched and complained that only 20% — TWENTY PER CENT — of eligible voters voted for Trudeau. But they didn’t. Kudos. 

2) Canadians got to know who would govern them within hours, not days.Remember the U.S. presidential election, which had all the hallmarks of a three-ring circus, without any of the fun? It went on for day after interminable day, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jon King standing in front of their infernal magic board thing, trying to keep viewers viewing. Canada? We got the results hours after polls closed, and then we got to change the channel to Netflix. Yay! 

3) The losers conceded. Tory boss Erin O’Toole accepted the results with grace. So did the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh. Everyone was restrained and modest — well, maybe not Justin Trudeau, because he’s never restrained or modest. But it was all very civilized. Good. 

4) No one made false claims about mail-in votes or ballots. None of them did. In the United States, post-vote, Republican sore losers were to be seen everywhere. They endlessly made baseless claims about election fraud. In Canada, precisely no one did that, mainly because the system worked. Merci. 

5) No one called journalists “enemies of the people.” Trump, as despicable and dishonest as he is, built a flourishing career on calling every legitimate critic a purveyor of “fake news.” He was always on a war footing with the Fourth Estate. Up here in Canada, none of the politicians particularly like those of us in the news and commentary business, but they understand we have a job to do. Bonus. 

6) No one cooked up crazy and/or illegal schemes to overturn the election result. Trump did — up to and including urging his crazier followers to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. In Canada, we had a few recounts in the tighter races, but the law provides for that. We Canadians just shrugged and carried on. Very Canadian. Very good. 

7) Similarly, nobody called for the imposition of Martial Law. Sure, we’d like impose a better hockey team on Toronto, and better coffee at Tim’s, and better weather in February, but Martial Law? Isn’t that a law firm on Bay Street? Possibly. 

8) No one sacked Parliament Hill.Sightseers took selfies out front. Tour buses cruised by. And construction workers continued working on fixing up the Parliamentary precinct, which is taking more time than the construction of the pyramids. But no one ran around in Centre Block, wearing horns, makeup and a bearskin hat. Phew. 

9) No one chanted “stop the steal.”Because there was no “steal.” Not one of the political parties actually won anything — they all got precisely what they had before the unnecessary, unwanted election was called by a craven Justin Trudeau. But not one of them claimed that victory had been “stolen” from them. Victory! 

10) Our elections aren’t perfect. Our government isn’t perfect. Our politicians, God knows, aren’t perfect. But we’ve still got a pretty good country — and, election-wise, we look a lot wiser than the Americans, with their whackadoodle system of picking winners. 

So, give thanks, Canada. It could be worse.

Down South, it usually is.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant

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Sorry, but Justin Trudeau likes apologies. He does.

He makes them all the time. Everyone has noticed. The BBC even published a story about The Apologist-In-Chief, asking: “Does Justin Trudeau apologise too much?”

Their answer: Yes, probably. (And, yes, they spelled “apologize” in the Brit way, naturally, with an “s” and not a “z.” Apologies.)

Here’s a partial list of Justin’s apologies. It’s partial, because we literally do not have enough room to publish all of the details about the Liberal leader’s apologies. We’re a tabloid, not an encyclopedia. (Sorry.)

— When Trudeau and his family were caught with their snout deep in the WE Charity trough, Trudeau apologized. “I made a mistake in not recusing myself immediately from the discussions given our family’s history and I’m sincerely sorry about not having done that.”

— When Trudeau and his family were caught with their well-appointed beaks in another trough — the Aga Khan’s lobbyist trough — he was again super contrite for not getting permission from the ethics czar first. “I’m sorry I didn’t, and in the future I will be clearing all my family vacations with the commissioner.”

— When Trudeau and his family were caught lying on the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation — lying about where they were, lying about what they were doing, and lying about where they were doing it (an $18-million oceanfront mansion owned by the wife of one of the alleged tax avoiders identified on the Paradise Papers this week, according to the Journal de Montreal) — he again issued another post facto Act of Contrition: “Travelling on September 30th was a mistake, and I regret it.” He didn’t utter the word “apologize,” notably, but he claimed to have done so in a call with an Indigenous leader: “I apologized for not being there with her and her community for (Truth and Reconciliation) day.”

Do you see the oily, serpentine thread that weaves through all of Trudeau’s dewey-eyed, butter-wouldn’t-melt apologies? Yes: They all involve his family. You know: his multimillionaire family, who rarely seem to resist the temptation to plunder the treasury, or someone else’s bank account. About which Prime Minister Penitential then apologizes — always after getting caught. Never before.

But like we say: Justin Trudeau loves apologies. They turn him on. There was his apology for the Komagata Maru incident, wherein a ship full of mostly Sikhs were turned away from Canada about 100 years ago. Then there was the one he made for elbowing NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau in her chest during a nasty debate in the House of Commons in 2016.

Then there was the one he made for residential school survivors in Newfoundland and Labrador in November 2017. Four days later, he made another one to LGBT people for what he called “state-sponsored, systematic oppression.”

He apologized to the Tsilhqot’in First Nation for the killings of their chiefs in 1864. In that same year, 2018, he apologized because his Liberal predecessor, Mackenzie King, turned away 900 Jews on the MS St. Louis in 1939, most of whom would go on to be murdered in Nazi death camps.

And so on, and so on. Apologies followed to the Inuit, to the Poundmaker Cree Nation, and on and on. And now, because he made the first Truth and Reconciliation Day a farce, a bad memory.

Here’s the best response to your fetish for apologies that are never, ever, ever accompanied by changes in your behaviour, Justin Trudeau. It comes from Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald.

“Hollow apologies will no longer be accepted,” Archibald said. “As national chief, on behalf of all First Nations, I expect concrete action and changed behaviours.”

There you go, Justin Trudeau: Take your apologies and shove them.

Sorry.

— Warren Kinsella was a federal Ministerial Representative to dozens of First Nations across Canada from 2003 to 2015

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Always look for the silver lining, our moms told us. It’s there.

In the case of the Justin Trudeau surf vacation, it’s hard to spot the silver lining. Because the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation wasn’t a good one. At all.

To recap:

• Justin Trudeau and his office bald-faced lied about where he was on Sept. 30. He wasn’t in Ottawa for “meetings,” as they claimed.
• He was on a Challenger jet with his entourage, heading to British Columbia, spewing greenhouse gases that were the equivalent to what an average Canadian family generates in an entire year.
• He and his office said he would be meeting with “residential school survivors.” That was a lie, too. He allegedly made a phone call or two to some Indigenous people. We don’t know who or how many, exactly.
• Trudeau and co. headed to Tofino, which is at the heart of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, a sacred place of profound significance to Indigenous people. Trudeau wasn’t there for any of that, or even to meet briefly with the First Nation. He was there for the surfer’s beach, which he’d been to many times before.
• Oh, and the mansion. Trudeau and his entourage were staying at an $18-million oceanfront estate.

All this, on a day that Trudeau himself created to remember thousands of Indigenous children who had lost their lives at so-called residential schools and then were dropped into unmarked graves.

When the truth emerged — thanks to some outstanding media sleuthing by the Toronto Sun’s Bryan Passifiume, Global News and others — Trudeau’s office disappeared the false statement about his whereabouts.

They also belatedly claimed Trudeau apologized to Tk’emlA0ps Nation Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir. Casimir had previously twice invited Trudeau to spend the first Truth and Reconciliation Day with her people, where the bodies of Indigenous children were discovered, months ago.

Trudeau went to a mansion on a surfing beach instead.

Indigenous leaders reacted as you would expect they would — with shock, with dismay, with outrage. Speaking for many, Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said Trudeau’s after-the-fact apology wasn’t good enough.

Said Archibald: “Hollow apologies will no longer be accepted. As national chief, on behalf of all First Nations, I expect concrete action and changed behaviour.”

But will the behaviour change?

With Trudeau’s cult-like followers, that is unlikely. Initially, they said the scandal wasn’t one. After Trudeau apologized, they did a volte-face and said his apology put an end to the scandal.

What else would one expect from such a cult, which one CNN broadcaster once called “TruAnon?” If they could rationalize racist blackface, allegations about groping a woman, and obstruction of justice, the Tofino scandal would be barely an afterthought.

But what about Trudeau? Did he notice the outrage? Did he — does he — care?

Trudeau famously pays little to no attention to the mainstream news media, so his surfing holiday was likely undisturbed by any of that — save and except a brave Global News crew who tried to question Trudeau on a Tofino beach, and were chased away by taxpayer-funded security goons.

What about the avalanche of anger on social media? There, too, Trudeau doesn’t spend much time. Apart from approving the photos his official photographer uploads to Instagram, Trudeau doesn’t run his own Twitter and Facebook accounts.

So, maybe he doesn’t truly know how angry people are. Perhaps he doesn’t know, either, the damage he did to Canada-Indigenous relations. Those are all dark, dark clouds, as our moms would say.

But here is the silver lining: I don’t think Justin Trudeau wants to do the job anymore. I think he wanted a majority government, didn’t get one, and now he wants out.

I now think, more than ever before, he wants to leave.

And that, my friends, is a real silver lining.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant

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Neither truthful nor reconciling.

Justin Trudeau, that is.  With Canada’s Indigenous peoples, he promised to be both.  He hasn’t been either.

Tomorrow, on one day of all days, the day the Trudeau government itself designated as the “National Day for Truth and Reconciliation,” it’s important. But not for the reasons Trudeau typically likes to cite.

Because that day is emblematic of his failure to address the priorities of Indigenous people. Politically, socially, legally.

Politically?  Well, as this writer has noted in these pages in the past, the Indigenous vote is significant.  In tight electoral contests – like the one we just had – Indigenous voters can make the difference.

Fully 5% of Canada’s population identify as Indigenous — which is close to two million people. First Nation, Inuit and Metis voters, age 18 and up, can number as many as a million voters.

But as no less than Elections Canada has acknowledged: “A significant number of Aboriginal [sic] people, as individuals and communities, still regard participation in non-Aboriginal elections or plebiscites as a threat to their unique rights, their autonomy and their goals of self-governance. Such persons hold a philosophical belief about the legitimacy of Aboriginal self-governance that differs fundamentally from that of the Canadian government.”

It’s not just a “philosophical belief,” either. Indigenous systems of government existed for centuries before white Europeans got here.  When those colonialists arrived, they started to impose European-style government on Indigenous communities, by force.

In the intervening Centuries, not much has changed, either.  Trudeau’s minister in charge of Crown-Indigenous Relations has repeatedly refused to meet with Chiefs and clan mothers who don’t accept colonialist rules about elections and representation.

Not very reconciling, is it?

Socially, too, Justin Trudeau’s actions have not matched his soaring rhetoric. He promised, repeatedly, to better the lives of Indigenous people. His 2015 election platform, for instance, solemnly promised to provide clean water to Indigenous communities – thereby ending the so-called boil water advisories. But Trudeau’s government hasn’t done that.

As Indigenous activist Jonny Bowhunter has noted on Twitter, there are 45 long-term and 35 short-term boil water advisories in place in Canada right now, today.  As Bowhunter puts it: “The Trudeau government talks of reconciliation, but breaks every promise they made on the ongoing [Indigenous] water and housing crisis.”

His failure doesn’t include just water and housing, either.  Trudeau and his ministers pledged to make Indigenous lives safer and better.  But, at places like Grassy Narrows, mercury still poisons the environment and the people who live there.

And, when a single female protestor tried to draw attention to that fact at an exclusive Liberal Party fundraiser in 2019, Trudeau had her ejected, sneering: “Thanks for your donation.”

That’s not reconciliation.

Legally, too, there has been little truth, and no reconciliation at all.  On Wednesday, the Federal Court threw out Trudeau’s attempt to deny or delay a landmark human rights tribunal compensation order for First Nations children.  That means the federal government may need to pay out billions in compensation for their failures to help poverty-stricken Indigenous children.

But Wednesday’s ruling didn’t stop Trudeau from spending astonishing $100 million on legal fees, fighting that human rights decision for half a decade.  One hundred million dollars: think how reconciliation could have been advanced with that much money.

But Indigenous truth and reconciliation – even on this, the day dedicated to both – has never really been Justin Trudeau’s priority.  Yeah, sure: up above our heads, he flies the flag at half-mast to remember thousands of Indigenous children killed at residential schools.

But down here on the ground, where it matters, he spends millions on lawyers to fight them in court.

Kinsella was a federal ministerial special representative to Indigenous communities from 2003 to 2015. His Daisy Group represents First Nations from B.C. to Ontario.

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Meng Wanzhou, who did wrong, goes free.

The two Michaels, who didn’t, remained imprisoned until tonight.

Welcome to justice in the Justin Trudeau era: the guilty win, and the innocent lose.

It all happened yesterday, a Friday afternoon, which is typically when governments do the dirtiest deeds, in the hope that fewer will notice. But we noticed.

Here’s what happened: as this newspaper has previously reported, Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was facing prosecution for bank and wire fraud charges in the United States — for allegedly lying about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.

She was detained at Vancouver’s airport in 2018, at the request of American authorities, and was facing extradition to the U.S. And she’s been fighting extradition ever since.

Huawei, meanwhile, was charged by the Americans with operating as a criminal enterprise, stealing trade secrets and defrauding financial institutions. It has pleaded not guilty and still faces prosecution.

But Meng Wanzhou isn’t anymore. U.S. Justice Department officials reached a deferred prosecution agreement on Friday afternoon with Meng Wanzhou that freed her from house arrest in Canada and enabled her to jet back home to China.

It was, the Washington Post dryly noted, “a major development in an ongoing investigation that could have geopolitical implications.”

It sure could. But not, apparently, for Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, who were illegally imprisoned in China on bogus charges of espionage for more than 1,020 days.

Spavor and Kovrig — whose family members allege have faced torture — remained behind bars. Any attempts by the government of Justin Trudeau to secure their freedom had failed, utterly.

Pointing out that the Trudeau regime is useless internationally isn’t really front-page news, of course. Trudeau’s efforts internationally have been a laundry list of abject failure: he failed to get a seat on the United Nations security council.

He failed to boost foreign investment in Canada. He failed to rebuild our reputation as peacekeepers in international hotspots. Internationally, Trudeau has led Canada to defeat after defeat.

The Meng Wanzhou deferred prosecution agreement is yet more evidence of that. How in God’s name can she be permitted to go free, and the two Michaels weren’t before now? How could Trudeau permit the Joe Biden administration to cook up such a deal without addressing the plight of our own citizens before now?

Under the so-called deferred prosecution deal, federal prosecutors agreed to defer — and then ultimately drop — the charges against Meng.

To anyone who has followed this sordid affair, it has been obvious that the imprisonment of the two very innocent Michaels was China’s petulant and illegal response to the detention of Meng Wanzhou — even though Meng’s “detention” was mere house arrest and included plenty of posh shopping sprees and high-end jaunts around British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.

Trudeau, now returned to power with a mere minority, was immediately under more pressure than ever before to secure the freedom of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. The single largest roadblock to their release had been removed.

Would Trudeau try? Would he be successful?

Joe Biden was. The two Michaels are coming home because of him. Not Justin Trudeau.

— Kinsella was special assistant to Jean Chretien

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What happened?

Erin O’Toole looked like he was doing good. Justin Trudeau looked like he was doing badly.

What went wrong?

Well, as a public service, Yours Screwly put together a few random, linkless thoughts.

There are 10. Here they are:

1) As I opined in these pages mid-campaign, the assault weapon thing hurt O’Toole. It was in his platform, and it was therefore pretty hard to erase. When the Conservative leader realized it would hurt him with urban women, he tried to execute a pivot, but it was too little, too late. The assault weapon thing hurt him.

2) The unvaccinated candidates issue hurt O’Toole, too. Why? Well, the pandemic is the biggest economic, cultural and political event of our lifetimes. Eighty per cent of Canadians favour vaccines, masks and tough rules. O’Toole was offside on vaccines. People noticed.

3) But — if you are fair — you have to admit O’Toole otherwise ran a good campaign. He came across as decent and relatively centrist. He was positive, he wasn’t angry. The fact that he couldn’t improve his seat count means something important.

4) And what it means is this: There isn’t a Liberal media conspiracy. There isn’t even a political Liberal conspiracy. But there are Liberal voters in Canada — lots of them. As it becomes much more urban and diverse, Canada is much more Liberal. That presents a structural problem for the Tories.

5) A lot of Tories will think the solution to that is changing their leadership, yet again. But that’s superficial. That’s stupid and knee-jerk. That’s what they always do, and it never really works, does it? Their problems go a lot deeper than that, Virginia.

6) Consider this: Justin Trudeau was accused of groping a woman. He indulged in racist tropes, many times. As prime minister, he obstructed justice and leads a deeply corrupt administration. But he still clings to power. How?

7) The fact that a corrupt, allegedly groping, parlour-room racist could win again says more about us than it does about him. It says the country’s attachment to the Liberal brand is real and deep. It says Canadians are usually going to give Liberals (and a celebrity Liberal leader) the benefit of the doubt.

8) Lots of folks are saying that the election was about nothing. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. It confirmed something pretty big: The country has changed. And if you want to defeat Liberals, you need to change, too, Conservatives.

9) That means making no mistakes, at all. That means campaigns that are micro, not macro — fight in regions, inch by inch. That means getting life-and-death issues — guns, vaccines — right the first time. That means having the very best candidates and the very best policies and the very best strategy.

10) But here’s a final thought, folks: The sun is up, where I am. The birds are chirping. Prime ministers come and go, but the country always goes on. And it’s a pretty great country, Justin Trudeau notwithstanding. If you want to change it, do that. There’s no time like the present.

Yours sincerely,

Warren

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant

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