Everything he has done — everything he has said — has been wrong. Everything.

Justin Trudeau’s response to his burgeoning China crisis, that is.

Criminal interference by the Chinese regime in multiple Canadian elections. A million dollars pumped into Trudeau family interests by China – including thousands for the Trudeau Foundation, and even $50,000 to fund a statue of Pierre Trudeau. Chinese-Canadian seniors being bussed to Liberal nomination meetings to vote for candidates friendly to the People’s Republic — with the name of the chosen Grit candidates inked on their arms.

These are just a few of the deeply troubling revelations that have been oozing out of the Liberal-China scandal in recent days. It’s a fetid, putrid stew — one that the Globe and Mail, Global News and Postmedia have pursued for weeks.

The media have been aided by a flood of leaks, some allegedly coming from intelligence services within and outside this country. It’s happening because the intelligence community is clearly appalled by the degree to which the Chinese regime has wrapped its tentacles around the Trudeau Liberals — and by the truly Nixonian denials being bleated daily by Trudeau and his desperate-sounding cabal.

I’ve taught crisis communications to young lawyers and journalists for years. Here’s just a few of the things Trudeau had gotten wrong.

— Don’t deny, deny. With every new development in the China scandal, Trudeau and his ilk have issued denial after denial, to no effect. The story just keeps unspooling in the media. Trudeau needs to recall the lessons of the SNC-Lavalin scandal: Namely, that denials never work if there isn’t a compelling counter-narrative — and if the denials are lies.

Trudeau lost all credibility in the SNC scandal: Despite his attacks on the media, despite his smearing of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the truth came out. And the truth, I like to say, is like water: It always finds a way out.

— Take responsibility: Justin Trudeau, as is well-known, loves to offer up dewy-eyed apologies for the misconduct and misdeeds of others — but never himself. Most often, Trudeau only fesses up when there is absolutely no escape route left to him — and even then, he will usually engage in lots of whattaboutism: Saying, in effect, he had made a mistake, but that his political opponents make more and bigger mistakes.

That approach only works with die-hard TruAnon types. Most voters want their leaders to swiftly take responsibility for their mistakes – and they tend to be very forgiving thereafter, too. Unless the mistake has happened too many times, that is.

— Do it early. Don’t wait! Keeping silent, and waiting for the story to fade from the headlines, simply doesn’t work — in the Google era, scandals now live forever online.

Instead, Trudeau needed to move swiftly to clean up the China mess, but he didn’t. When the first election interference story broke months ago, Trudeau had an opportunity to take responsibility and make some long-overdue changes, but he didn’t do that, either.

He let the story fester, and now it’s infected — and the infection is getting worse daily.

— Words aren’t enough! As noted above, it’s no longer good enough to make an act of contrition. An apology isn’t good enough.

In the post-Watergate era, voters have seen too many scandals too many times. And, after the issuance of an apology in both official languages, they are no longer content to let a politician off the hook. They want to see action, not just words.

Here, Trudeau could have created a foreign agent registry, as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called for — so we can know which foreign powers are trying to persuade Canadian governments. He could have toughened up the Criminal Code, and election laws, to mete out tougher penalties for abuse. He could have worked with other Western allies — who have also been the targets of Chinese wrongdoing — to develop a multi-nation response.

He’s done none of those things.

Instead, all that Trudeau is doing is deny, deny, deny — and refuse to take even a modicum of responsibility for what is metastasizing into a real threat to his government’s survival. It’s not working. Because the China crisis?

It isn’t going away.

Comments (36)

Comments (38)

Governments defeat themselves.

But opposition parties can defeat themselves too. And, this past week, the Conservative Party of Canada was busily doing just that.

Three well-known Conservative MPs — one of them a two-time leadership contender — met with Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). The three Ontario Conservative MPs, Leslyn Lewis, Dean Allison and Colin Carrie, are seen smiling as they stand alongside Anderson, who is on a cross-Canada tour.

Big deal, some might say, and have. But Anderson — and the AfD — are extremists, and the meeting led to a condemnation by Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

Wrote CIJA: “We’re deeply concerned by CPC MPs Leslyn Lewis, Dean Allison [and] Colin Carrie meeting with Anderson – a member of the far-right German AfD party known for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views. We raised this directly with [the Conservative Party].”

Lewis, Allison and Carrie can be (and have frequently been) dismissed as fringe kooks within their own party. Last year, when leadership contender Lewis likened vaccination to — as another Conservative leadership contestant put it, “being tortured in a Nazi concentration camp” — she was condemned widely. The Jewish Independent, among others, called her words “irresponsible and base.”

Colin Carrie, for his part, last achieved fame when he told the Commons the “subversive” World Economic Forum (WEF) organization had “infiltrated” the Liberal government — adding that the WEF had “penetrated more than half of Canada’s cabinet.” Which earned Carrie condemnations by other opposition MPs.

Allison, meanwhile, has promoted his links to anti-vaccination types — among them Paul Alexander, a Canadian who worked for the Donald Trump administration in the U.S., and who famously called for American health officials who advocated for vaccines and public health measures to be imprisoned.

So, a trio of Canadian kooks met with a European kook. Does it matter? When one examines the words and deeds of Anderson and her AfD it does.

A summary:

— Anderson has attacked Muslims on social media, calling Muslim immigration “billions in costs for the welfare state.” She supports Russia over Ukraine. She’s participated in street marches organized by PEGIDA, a group whose acronym stands for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident.” PEGIDA has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “far-right, anti-immigrant street movement.”

— Her AfD is anti-immigrant, anti-Islam and — often — anti-Semitic. Formed in 2013, the AfD has already established itself as a force in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, and the European Parliament.

— Two years ago, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution called the AfD “a right-wing extremist endeavour against the free democratic basic order” and as “not compatible with the Basic Law,” and actually placed it under intelligence surveillance for being an extremist group.

— Evidence of the AfD’s extremism isn’t difficult to locate. The Anti-Defamation League has described it as “proudly extremist, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority [and] its leaders have made anti-Semitic statements and played down the evil of the Nazi regime.”

— Its party leaders have called Holocaust memorials “shameful.” They have dismissed the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime as “bird shit.” They have defended former Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, and promoted the notion that “not a single Jew” died in the Nazi gas chambers. They have referred to Jews as “Satanic elements in the financial oligopoly” who have “political control over Germany.” They have said of Auschwitz and refugees: “Both are wrong.” And so on.

There is much, much more about Anderson and her AfD online. Lewis, Carrie and Allison could have found it in a simple Google search, as this writer did. There, too, they would have found Israel’s ambassador to Germany adamantly refusing to meet with Anderson’s party because they are “highly insulting for Jews, for Israel and for the entire issue of the Holocaust.”

So why did Leslyn Lewis, Colin Carrie and Dean Allison meet with the AfD’s Christine Anderson?

After the Toronto Sun brought the issue to his attention, Pierre Poilievre strongly condemned Anderson and the AfD. The three MPs then rushed out a tweet, claiming they didn’t know about the extremism views of Anderson or her party.

But few will believe that claim.

Do governments defeat themselves? They do, they do.

And, this week, the opposition Conservatives were defeating themselves, too.

— Warren Kinsella is the author of the national bestseller Web of Hate.

Comments (51)

Is Canada broken?

Most Canadians apparently think it is.

The political debate about whether the country is broken or not has been going on for a few weeks, now. On the one side is Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who says that it is – or, at least, that it “feels” broken.

On the other side is Liberal leader Justin Trudeau who says Canada isn’t broken at all.

Back in November, Poilievre told a press conference that “most everything in Canada is broken and Justin Trudeau carries a good deal of the blame.” A few days later, Trudeau responded, telling lobbyists and staffers at the annual Liberal holiday that “Canada is not broken.”

Then, after the Christmas break, and as the Tories were kicking off a two-day caucus retreat, Poilievre doubled down. Said he: “Everything feels broken.” Pause.“Oh — I just offended Justin Trudeau. He gets very angry when I talk about these problems.”

Trudeau was unmoved and unimpressed. In late January, the Prime Minister said: “Mr. Poilievre has no real solutions. He’s just trying to exploit people’s anger and concerns. When you twist the facts or make things up for political gain, that’s not responsible leadership.”

The punditocracy weighed in on one side or the other, as it always does. (This writer, for what it’s worth, opined that the country isn’t broken – its politics and politicians are.)

Inevitably, the pollsters decided to step in to name the winner of the debate.

And: it’s Pierre Poilievre – and it’s not close, either. Because most Canadians agree with him. To them, the country indeed feels broken.

The pollster Leger went first. They issued a survey last week, and it found that nearly 70 per cent of respondents – across Canada – agreed with the view that “Canada is broken.” A whopping 30 per cent even told Leger that they “strongly agreed” the country was broken.

Four per cent said they were happy. Thirty-seven per cent said they were only “somewhat happy.” And the majority – 50 per cent – said they were very or somewhat angry.

Abacus, another polling firm that tends to offer optimistic perspectives on the Trudeau government, got into the field. They asked 4,000 Canadians for their opinions on the “Canada is broken” argument. And, in the resulting poll released Thursday morning, they found that Leger got it right.

Abacus’ numbers spell big, big trouble for the sunny ways of the Trudeau regime. The Ottawa-based firm found that nearly 50 percent of Canadians are dissatisfied with Canada – and more than 20 per cent of them are “very dissatisfied.”

Out on the prairies, where Poilievre does well and Trudeau doesn’t, the dissatisfaction with the country was most pronounced – around 60 per cent in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But over in vote-rich Ontario, things aren’t going too swimmingly for Trudeau’s side of the debate, either: there, nearly 50 per cent aren’t happy at all.

What’s causing the unhappiness, the dissatisfaction, the “Canada is broken” sentiment? It varies from region to region, and demographic to demographic – which explains why Poilievre cleverly points to an array of issues as the source. Crime, cost of living, taxes, even airline travel woes: Poilievre now regularly offers up a laundry list of misery, and it gets heads nodding.

And not just older white and white-haired heads, either. The polls show that Poilievre – who remains unpopular with female and Quebec voters – is beating the even-more-unpopular Justin Trudeau because he is talking about the main issue Canadians outside of Ottawa are talking about.

Namely, that Canada is broken.

Because Canadians increasingly think it is.

[Kinsella was Jean Chrétien’s special assistant.]

Comments (20)