Tag Archive: Andrew Scheer

Five free comms tips for Justin Trudeau

— 06.18.2019 06:58 AM

The Gettysburg Address it was not.

Standing on the picturesque shores of some picturesque lake in Mont-Saint-Hillaire, Quebec, Justin Trudeau was asked what he and his family had done to cut single-use plastics out of their lives.

Here is what he said, verbatim.

“We…uh…uh…we have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of…water out of when we have, uh, bottles out of, uh, plastic, sorry, away from plastic towards, uh, paper.  Like, drink box water bottles sort of things.”

The Liberal Prime Minister’s was so proudly unintelligible, so defiantly incomprehensible, it instantly went viral, supplying fodder for dozens of anti-Trudeau memes across the Internet for the next 100 years.  It was mocked and maligned from coast to coast to coast, including by people who actually still sort of like Justin Trudeau.  Heck, the clever Sodastream beverage people even put together an ad about it, with the tagline: “Justin, just say Sodastream.” Trolled by a big international company: ouch.

It reminded all and sundry that Gerald Butts has indeed left the building, and that Justin Trudeau has started to sound like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, except way worse.  Or Zoolander, even, but on a bad day.

How did the oxymoronic brain trust in Trudeau’s PMO not see that coming?  How did they not supply the Actor-In-Chief with an answer to one of the three most enduring political questions, namely: “Do you practice what you preach? (The other two being: “What did you know and when did you know it?” and “Why did you party on that boat with a bunch of topless co-eds?”)

Since it is becoming evident that Chief of Staff Katie Telford and Liberal campaign manager Jeremy Broadhurst couldn’t communicate their way out of a moist, environmentally-friendly paper bag, it is incumbent upon the rest of us to provide Prime Minister Chewbacca Socks with some communications guidance.

Herewith and hereupon, the Hill Times’ Five Immutable Comms Rules, gratis.

  1. Don’t mangle the message, man.  Last week, in the wake of the important report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Justin Trudeau declined to say “genocide” had taken place.  A few hours later, he flip-flopped and said genocide had taken place.  Then, a couple days later, he changed his mind again, and said it wasn’t genocide, but “cultural genocide.”  In the process, Trudeau sounded like the aforementioned Messrs. Gump and Zoolander.  As such, it was essential that Trudeau’s Great Big Announcement about single-use plastics be clear, consistent and coherent.  It wasn’t.
  2. Don’t sell snow shovels in June.  Or, in this case, don’t make a Great Big Announcement – and we know it was a Great Big Announcement because your office had been telegraphing that for days – when the biggest sporting event in Canadian history was also taking place.  You know: that little match-up between the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors.  It was in all the papers, Katie and Jeremy: it was kind of a big deal, in the immortal words of Ron Burgundy.  Pro tip, Justin: if you are proposing something to fundamentally change the way millions of Canadians will live their lives, don’t do it when Canadians are paying attention to someone who has fundamentally changed the way millions of Canadians now live their lives, cf. Kawhi Leonard.  Just don’t.
  3. Don’t wait too late.  In slightly more than 100 days, the writs will drop for the 2019 Canadian federal general election.  Why, why, why did the Trudeau Party wait untilnow to make their plastics announcement – when the European Union, among others, had done likewise long ago?  Announcing something this big, this late, convinces the few folks paying attention (see point two, above) that it was a cynical, desperate move to halt the undeniable momentum of the much-admired Liz May.  Because it was.
  4. Don’t forget to make it relevant. The banning of plastic straws became an early and frequent target of Trudeau’s announcement.  Parents of autistic kids, for example, reminded Trudeau that their kids needed such straws to, you know, consume liquids.  Why, then, didn’t Trudeau focus on the number one source of single-use plastic pollution.  Namely, cigarette butts.  They’re unsightly, they’re ugly, and they’re universally disliked.  They’re made out of cellulose acetate, which is plastic.  But Trudeau’s press release didn’t even mention them.  Dumb.
  5. Don’t be a hypocrite.  Mere moments after Trudeau said what he tried to say, the Internet was flooded with recent photos of the Prime Minister swilling water from plastic bottles – and it was reported that Trudeau’s family had spent $300 in a single month on water in plastic bottles.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Justin.

Anyway.  Will Justin Trudeau listen to all that excellent free advice?  Not on your life.

Because, these days, there’s no one who personifies the phrase “single-use plastic” better than the guy who, you know, made the announcement.

 


Comments (23)

Prime Minister Single-Use Plastic

— 06.13.2019 11:25 AM

From next week’s Hill Times column. It’s pointy, like a juice box straw.

The Gettysburg Address it was not.

Standing on the picturesque shores of some picturesque lake in Mont-Saint-Hillaire, Quebec, Justin Trudeau was asked what he and his family had done to cut single-use plastics out of their lives.

Here is what he said, verbatim.

“We…uh…uh…we have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of…water out of when we have, uh, bottles out of, uh, plastic, sorry, away from plastic towards, uh, paper. Like, drink box water bottles sort of things.”

The Liberal Prime Minister’s was so proudly unintelligible, so defiantly incomprehensible, it instantly went viral, supplying fodder for dozens of anti-Trudeau memes across the Internet for the next 100 years. It was mocked and maligned from coast to coast to coast, including by people who actually still sort of like Justin Trudeau. Heck, the clever Sodastream beverage people even put together an ad about it, with the tagline: “Justin, just say Sodastream.” Trolled by a big international company: ouch.

It reminded all and sundry that Gerald Butts has indeed left the building, and that Justin Trudeau has started to sound like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, except way worse. Or Zoolander, even, but on a bad day.

How did the oxymoronic brain trust in Trudeau’s PMO not see that coming? How did they not supply the Actor-In-Chief with an answer to one of the three most enduring political questions, namely: “Do you practice what you preach? (The other two being: “What did you know and when did you know it?” and “Why did you party on that boat with a bunch of topless co-eds?”)


Comments (19)

My latest: it isn’t genocide

— 06.11.2019 02:57 PM

Genocide is one of those words that one does not toss about, like confetti. One does not treat “genocide” like it has no meaning.

It has a very specific meaning.

Justin Trudeau knows it is a serious word, because of what he has said in the recent past. He knows that the word “genocide” describes the most serious crime there is: murder on a massive scale, by a state power, targeting citizens because of their religion or race or ethnicity.

He knows that.

So, in the House of Commons in September 2016, as Prime Minister, Trudeau said: “This government recognizes that acknowledging genocide should be done on the basis of extraordinary facts and wise counsel internationally, not just on political grandstanding by members like the member opposite.”

That’s what he said. Earlier, in June of that year, the Liberal Prime Minister said this: “Mr. Speaker, we feel that determinations of genocide need to be done by objective measures and through proper research on the international stage. We will not trivialize the importance of the word ‘genocide’ by not respecting formal engagements around that word.”

In the same month, Trudeau also said that his government “understand[s] how important it is not to trivialize the word ‘genocide’ and to give it the international legal weight it deserves. That is why we are asking the international community to examine the facts and make an objective determination. We do not want to play petty politics with this issue and these atrocities. Canadians expect better than that from this government.”

And, again in June 2016, when the Conservatives were hounding him about the Islamic State and genocide: “We do not feel that politicians should be weighing in on this first and foremost. Determinations of genocide need to be made in an objective, responsible way.”

And so on, and so on. You get the point. He knows what genocide means. He knows that it is a word that must be used with great, great care.

Last week, Justin Trudeau said that Canada, and Canadians – and every government that preceded his – had committed genocide against Indigenous people. Specifically, the thousands of women and girls whose murders were documented, and lamented, by a National Inquiry he himself created.

The head of the inquiry said that Canada, and Canadians, committed genocide. You, reading this newspaper, committed genocide. Me – the proudest father imaginable, to a beautiful and sweet and perfect Indigenous girl – committed genocide.

You didn’t. I didn’t.

Were we – as a people, as a nation – indifferent for 150-plus years? Yes. Were we inattentive? Yes. Were we ignorant? Yes. Were some of us racist and cruel and simply evil? Yes, yes and yes. All those things.

But the murder of thousands of Indigenous women and girls was not a state-sanctioned, state-led, state-mandated act of genocide. It was a series of murders, committed by individuals, not the state. Fully deserving of investigation and prosecution, still, because there is no statute of limitations on any murder.

When the National Inquiry’s report was handed to him, Justin Trudeau did not say this: “Was it state-sanctioned genocide? No. But we, as a nation, were negligent. We were wrong. We were to blame. So, today, I’m announcing the creation of a fully-funded national police task force to investigate and prosecute these many murders. We will not rest until we get justice for these women.”

That’s what Justin Trudeau should’ve said. He didn’t.

Instead, he spent the morning in Ottawa doing some verbal gymnastics, trying to avoid acknowledging that genocide had taken place. By the time he got to Vancouver, however, he had reversed himself. “It was genocide,” he said at a conference, to some applause.

The international community – the one which Canada belongs to, and which we regularly give pious lectures about things like genocide and crimes against humanity – immediately took note. Within a matter of hours, the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States had formally written to one of Justin Trudeau’s government, demanding its compliance in an investigation of acts of genocide committed by Canada against Indigenous people.

Justin Trudeau, at that moment, had made history: he will be the first Canadian Prime Minister to be investigated for genocide during an election campaign. It is a bit of history that will not end well, for him.

Justin Trudeau, being an actor before he is anything else, knows the importance of words. He knows the impact they can have on one’s audience. That is why, until last week, he was always careful not to use one word, above all. He knew its power: “genocide.” The crime of crimes.

The power of that word will now be used against him.

He won’t like how it turns out.


Comments (26)

My latest: when Trudeau calls it genocide

— 06.08.2019 04:14 PM

Genocide.

That’s what the Prime Minister of Canada says Canada is guilty of — the crime of crimes.

That’s what the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal called it, too, when passing judgment on Jean Kambanda, who oversaw the slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu civilians in Rwanda in the Spring and Summer of 1994: “the crime of crimes.”

Said the tribunal: “Genocide constitutes the crime of crimes, which must be taken into account when deciding the sentence.”

Kambanda, like Justin Trudeau, was a prime minister. Like Justin Trudeau, too, he admitted he had facilitated genocide.

Unlike Justin Trudeau, Kambanda is now serving a life sentence.

Trudeau, however, has imposed a political sentence — on himself. On Tuesday, in Vancouver, he talked about the report released by the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls.

“It was genocide,” Trudeau said.

On Wednesday, one day after the Canadian Prime Minister said Canada had committed genocide against thousands of Indigenous women and girls, the Organization of American States announced it expected Canada to cooperate with its investigation.

Justin Trudeau is now the first Canadian Prime Minister to be investigated for state-sponsored mass murder by an international body in which Canada is a member state.

During a federal election. That, too, is a first.

In a letter sent to Canada’s government, the Secretary-General of the OAS wrote: “The mere presumption of the crime of genocide against Indigenous women and girls in your country should not and cannot leave any room for indifference from the perspective of the Inter-American community and the international community. Given that your country has always sided with scrutiny and international investigation in situations where human rights are violated in different countries, I am expecting to receive a favourable response to this request.”

It didn’t matter, at that point, that various eminent Canadians had said Trudeau had been wrong to say his government, and all of his predecessors’ governments, committed genocide. Former Liberal minister of justice Irwin Cotler was one.

Said Cotler: “If we say everything is a genocide, then nothing is a genocide.”

Retired general Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda when Jean Kambanda was facilitating genocide there, was another. Dallaire, a former Liberal Senator, sounded angry at Trudeau.

“I’m not comfortable with that,” he said. “My definition of genocide (is) a deliberate act of a government to exterminate, deliberately and by force and directly, an ethnicity or a group of human beings. And that meant actually going and slaughtering people.”

That’s how most other experts define genocide, too. State-led, state-sponsored, state-sanctioned mass murder of citizens belonging to a particular race or religion or ethnic group.

On the day the inquiry issued its damning report in Ottawa, calling the murder of thousands of Indigenous women and girls genocide, Trudeau declined to go along. He wouldn’t call it genocide. By the time he got to Vancouver, however, Trudeau had changed his tune.

“It was genocide,” he said.

At that point, the OAS — and, possibly, the International Criminal Court, and other such bodies — had no choice but to act. And Canada, having called for investigations into other nations over the years, has no choice but to cooperate. Its Prime Minister had admitted to the crime before an investigation had even begun.

Was it the ethical thing to do? Was it morally right? Was it the biggest self-inflicted political wound in Canadian history?

None of that matters. Genocide is the crime of crimes.

And the defendant, Justin Trudeau, says he is guilty of it.


Comments (33)

About that new CPC spot

— 06.07.2019 07:33 AM

It’s good, but:

• it tries to cover too many subjects in too few seconds

• it’s pretty busy, visually

I think there’s enough stuff here for three different spots: the Liberals abandoning ship, the scandals, and the mistreatment of women.

It’s that last one that deserves its own spot. In recent days, Justin Trudeau has been frantically making big announcements aimed at one key demographic: women. Without female votes, his octopus is cooked.

(Andrew Scheer needs more female votes to win. Refusing to march in a single Pride parade won’t help him get any.)

That’s the wound I’d keep picking at: Justin Trudeau’s appalling treatment of women, from Elbowgate to the beer festival groping to LavScam. I’d pick at it until it becomes infected.

Anyway. Here’s the Tory ad. Comments are open.


Comments (24)

JWR is vindicated, again

— 05.29.2019 10:10 AM

There is enough evidence against SNC-Lavalin for the engineering corporation to be tried on fraud and bribery charges, a Quebec court judge has ruled. 

SNC-Lavalin spent months lobbying the federal government to avoid finding itself in this position. It hoped to use a new legal mechanism — a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) — to pay a fine rather than risk conviction. 

But its efforts ignited a major political scandal in Ottawa when the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, accused the Prime Minister’s Office of pressuring her to arrange a deal for SNC-Lavalin. 

The court’s decision was handed down in Montreal on Wednesday. It followed an extended preliminary inquiry into accusations from federal prosecutors in 2015. 

They allege SNC-Lavalin paid around $48 million in bribes to Libyan officials between 2001 and 2011, a violation of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act.

Federal prosecutors also allege SNC-Lavalin defrauded a number of Libyan institutions out of $130 million over the same period.


Comments (9)

My latest: Scheer, Trudeau and racism

— 05.29.2019 09:27 AM

When everyone is a Nazi, no one is a Nazi.

When you falsely insinuate your principal opponent is a Klansman – as Justin Trudeau’s party has done, repeatedly and recklessly, with Andrew Scheer – it fosters cynicism and disbelief.

Most of all – and I say this as someone who has researched, opposed and written about organized hate groups for more than three decades, and has received innumerable death threats along the way – likening a partisan adversary to a white supremacist makes it impossible for activists like me to sound the alarm about real white supremacists.

Despite all that, for many months, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal echo chamber have hissed that the Conservative Party leader is a far-Right racist. It has been despicable and dangerous.

The experts agree, too. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is professor of History at Fairfield University, and he’s the author of The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present.

Says Rosenfeld, who knows more about this subject than anyone alive: “Too many hyperbolic comparisons – for example, between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler – dulls the power of historical analogies and risks crying wolf.”

Crying wolf: that is what Trudeau and his party have been doing. So desperate are they to be re-elected, they have been prepared to imply that Scheer is the worst thing that one can say about anyone: that he is a fascist. That he is an adherent of the ideology of murder.

Last night, Scheer – finally, firmly – slammed the door on Trudeau’s slur, and strongly condemned organized hate. It was overdue.

“There is absolutely no room in a peaceful and free country like Canada for intolerance, racism and extremism of any kind. And the Conservative Party of Canada will always make that absolutely clear,” Scheer thundered in a Toronto speech.

“I find the notion that one’s race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation would make anyone in any way superior or inferior to anyone else absolutely repugnant. And if there’s anyone who disagrees with that, there’s the door. You are not welcome here.”

For weeks, Scheer had been dogged by an allegation that he willingly appeared onstage at a February “United We Roll” protest in Ottawa with a notorious white supremacist, Faith Goldy. In fact, Goldy was nowhere near Scheer. She wasn’t even in the permitted area, she wasn’t invited to speak, and she was later condemned by official organizers.

Scheer – who, like Justin Trudeau, has had past media encounters with Goldy, before she went full-blown bigot – should have denounced Goldy’s ilk sooner. But this week’s speech has now left no doubt about his views. Haters have no place in his Conservative Party, he said, in the important speech titled “Unity in Diversity.”

Said Scheer: ”We should be able to have an immigration debate in this country without the government calling its critics racists and bigots,” he said. Trudeau’s willingness to to do so, Scheer added, amounts to “cheap partisanship” and it hurts our collective ability to oppose the very real threats of racism, bigotry and extremism.

If Trudeau wants to denounce real bigotry – and he, and all of us, should – he should train his sights on Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party. Bernier and his cabal have devolved into the porch-light of Canadian politics, attracting all the bugs and the creepy-crawlies. (Which should make it easier to deploy the necessary political insecticide.)

But this dishonest Justin Trudeau campaign against Andrew Scheer? It must stop. It has engendered cynicism and distrust, and that’s the last thing any democracy needs in the Trump era.

Andrew Scheer has told us where he stands on one of the crucial issues of our time.

Will Justin Trudeau finally heed what he says?


Comments (22)

Exclusive in the Sun: JWR speaks!

— 05.21.2019 06:12 AM

The truth.

She says it’s true — the actions of the Liberal Prime Minister should be “of great concern for many Canadians, across the country.”

She says, truthfully, that Justin Trudeau has acted in a way that is “questionable.”

She says what happened her is “a wake-up call” — and, while she’s not happy about what Justin Trudeau did to her, she’s running again.

And — when, say, a Prime Minister Andrew Scheer gives her the legal green light to do so — she plans to tell all.

She plans to reveal what really happened “behind the veil” in Trudeau’s Ottawa.

The true story.

She’s Jody Wilson-Raybould, and she’s speaking out.

In an exclusive interview with the Toronto Sun this week, the former Attorney-General of Canada spoke at length about how she’s feeling, the issues she cares about, and what the future holds for the courageous woman who shook Canadian politics to its foundations in 2019.

It’s been quite a ride for Wilson-Raybould, the Member of Parliament who started the year as the most powerful lawyer in the land — and, just 100 days later, was expelled from the federal Liberal caucus.

For being a whistleblower on corruption. For speaking truth to power. For having the guts to say “no” to Justin Trudeau and the men around him, who refused to take “no” for an answer.

The fundamentals in the LavScam scandal, by now, are well-known.

For four months in 2018, Trudeau, the Minister of Finance, and their unelected apparatchiks bullied and threatened Wilson-Raybould, demanding that she rig the system to help a seamy Quebec company — SNC-Lavalin — escape criminal prosecution for corruption charges.

Wilson-Raybould refused to do so.

By the time the whole sordid affair lurched to a close, Wilson-Raybould and her cabinet ally Jane Philpott had been defamed, demeaned, and dumped from the Liberal caucus.

Trudeau had lost his two closest and most powerful advisors — Principal Secretary Gerald Butts and Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick.

And the Liberal Party commenced a truly dramatic slide in the polls.

If an election was held today, in fact, Trudeau’s formerly-invincible party would suffer a humiliating loss to the Conservatives.

With the dust now settled, somewhat, what does Jody Wilson-Raybould think about it all?

“I am still somewhat sad,” she says.

“But, mostly, disappointed over what transpired the last number of months – given how I was removed from caucus through a questionable process and treated for doing what, at the end of the day, was the right thing to do, for the right reasons.”

She adds: “Having said that, I’m embracing my new position as an independent MP for Vancouver Granville and remain inspired by the incredible reception I’ve received from thousands of Canadians and their encouragement for me to stay in politics.”

Are they encouraging her to run again? Will she?

“My time in federal politics is not over,” Wilson-Raybould says, a bit mysteriously. “I will be making a decision shortly. Stay tuned.”

The LavScam scandal — more than the Aga Khan mess, more than the disastrous India trip, more than Trudeau’s policy fumbles on China, NAFTA, pipelines and federal-provincial relations — dealt the deadliest blow to the Liberal leader’s re-election hopes.

Before LavScam, most everyone had seen a second Trudeau majority government as inevitable.

Not now.

Wilson-Raybould agrees.

Says she: “[LavScam] was a wake up call for many – a peek behind the veil of how Ottawa works. I know, like me, many of the class of 2015 who came into federal politics for the first time truly believed there was a different way to do politics. We knew what this was supposed to mean. Unfortunately our experience did not match expectations or the standards we had set ourselves. The last months have led me – and I suspect many of my former colleagues, and I know countless Canadians – to pause and consider the way the system works.”

Can that system ever change? What needs to change? Wilson-Raybould doesn’t hesitate: politics which are “less partisan,” she says.

Freeing MPs to “truly represent their constituents.” And – contrary to what happens in Justin Trudeau’s Ottawa – a Parliament “where truth is expected.”

After all that has happened — after all that she has endured — does Jody Wilson-Raybould still have a truth to tell?

If Justin Trudeau is defeated, and his successor removes the cabinet confidence/solicitor-client privilege gag he’s slapped on her, will Wilson-Raybould finally tell us what happened “behind the veil?”

Jody Wilson-Raybould doesn’t hesitate about that, either.

“I will speak the truth,” she says, adding that she will certainly do so — when she is finally “free to do so.”

Promise to give Jody Wilson-Raybould the freedom to speak her truth, Andrew Scheer.

Put it in your election platform.

The truth, as they say, will set you free.

It may get you elected Prime Minister, too.


Comments (15)