Tag Archive: Jane Philpott

#LavScam lawsuit lunacy, latest

The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson called it “needs-to-have-his-head-examined foolish.” The National Post’s Matt Gurney said it was “absolutely bonkers” and evidence of having “utterly lost [his] mind.”

Former Chretien communications boss Peter Donolo suggested it was “a mistake in a number of ways.” The Post’s Andrew Coyne cheerfully quoted other pundits, who themselves termed it an “unfathomably stupid move” and “the most ill-advised defamation suit since Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensbury.”

My personal favourite? Former BC Liberal top guy Martyn Brown, who abandoned all subtlety and simply declared it “batshit crazy,” quote unquote.

In fact, when one checks all known media – and this writer did, as a public service, gratis – it is impossible to find a single sane pundit who thinks Justin Trudeau’s libel lawsuit against Andrew Scheer is in any way defensible.

Oh, wait. Sheila Copps – who says Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott are pus-filled “boils,” and who said that Wilson-Raybould had an “aboriginal agenda” and cared more about “aboriginal” jobs – loved Trudeau’s lawsuit.

She thought it was a really good idea, and falsely claimed Scheer retreated after being served with the requisite libel notice (the Conservative leader has in fact repeated the alleged libels, word for word, outside the privileged confines of the House of Commons).

Pro tip, Prime Minister Chewbacca Socks: when Sheila Copps is giving you legal advice, you have well and truly reached bottom. Your octopus is cooked.

Now, this writer teaches media law at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law, and previously did so at Carleton University’s School of Journalism. This writer has also been involved in winning defamation cases all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada – cf., Macdonald v. CBC and Kinsella. This writer knows a bit about defamation law.

So, trust me when I say: Justin Trudeau has done many, many stupid things during the three months that LavScam has been a raging political dumpster fire. None, however, is as stupid as his decision to sue Andrew Scheer for telling the truth.

Three reasons.

1. Trudeau’s handed control to Scheer. Justin Trudeau’s apparatchiks on the Justice and Ethics committees shut down any further inquiry on LavScam. They showed Canadians, in effect, that there’s no justice to be found at Trudeau’s Ethics Committee, and no ethics on Trudeau’s Justice Committee.

The Ethics Commissioner’s “investigation,” meanwhile, has been buffeted by illness and possible conflicts of interest. Trudeau is leading a Nixonian-style coverup, ruthlessly crushing any possible legal avenue for Jody Wilson-Raybould to talk about the threats Trudeau directed her way.

So what does Trudeau’s oxymoronic brain trust do? They create a forum for Wilson-Raybould to tell her story – one that Trudeau cannot control. Watch for Scheer to push for Wilson-Raybould to become a witness. It’s coming.

2. Trudeau has alienated many, many media people with his ill-advised stunt. Reporters and editors do not like libel actions, at all. Why? Because they are the people who get sued most often. Media organizations, meanwhile, have spent many millions pushing the courts and lawmakers to adopt a more liberalized defamation law – and they’ve succeeded, to some extent, with the historic case of Grant v. Torstar Corp., back in 2009.

That is why not a single media person – save and except Chief Justice Copps – could be found to applaud Trudeau’s idiotic move. Not even Susan Delacourt, Heather Mallick, Chantal Hebert, Althia Raj or Joyce Napier celebrated Trudeau’s ludicrous litigation. Not even them.

The media have a deeply-held antipathy towards defamation actions, and understandably so. By launching this one, Justin Trudeau has alienated many ink-stained scribes. And he’s helped keep the story alive, now into its third consecutive month.

3. Trudeau may be Canada’s chief law-maker, but he clearly doesn’t understand the law. The thin-skinned Liberal leader’s lawsuit is a classic SLAPP action – a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Laws have been passed in various provinces to slap down SLAPP suits – including the one in which Messrs. Trudeau and Scheer reside, Ontario.

There’s another established part of the law Trudeau doesn’t understand: defences to defamation claims. In this case, all of them arguably apply: fair comment, privilege, and justification – or, truth. Because what the Conservative leader said was demonstrably true: Trudeau, his Minister of Finance, his Principal Secretary, his Chief of Staff, and his senior staff did pressure Jody Wilson-Raybould more than 20 times over a four-month period to help a sleazy Quebec-based donor, SNC-Lavalin, avoid a criminal trial. It’s the truth.

When this writer graduated from law school, he didn’t remember very many cases. He did remember what his criminal law professor recommended clients be told in criminal and quasi-criminal situations. You know, like Justin Trudeau’s LavScam scandal.

“When in a hole,” he’d say, “stop digging.”


#LavScam latest: Trudeau wants to give these creeps a sweetheart deal

An excellent Lavscam investigative report by CBC, no less.  And it’s a doozy.

Millions of dollars in a safe to facilitate bribes.  Massive fraud.  And Justin Trudeau’s favourite engineering firm still up to its ears in slime.  The same firm which, also this morning, we are hearing in the indispensable Hill Times that what I reported weeks ago is true: they are going to get the deferred prosecution sweetheart deal that Jody Wilson-Raybould fought, and was martyred over.

Some of the CBC yarn below.  Full story here.

If called to testify at an SNC-Lavalin trial, he could expose who else in the senior ranks may have known about $47.7 million in bribes and $130 million in fraud tied to projects in Libya — crimes the RCMP alleges were committed by the company between 2001 and 2011.

SNC-Lavalin has been lobbying hard behind the scenes to secure what’s called a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to avoid going to trial. The company, as well as its supporters in government, argue thousands of jobs are at risk if it is convicted and barred from bidding on federal contracts.

But a CBC News investigation reveals why 12 top directors who left the company years ago also have plenty at stake if the case goes to trial. SNC-Lavalin’s former board is an influential who’s who of the corporate elite that includes former senators, banking executives and members of the Order of Canada. They will all likely face close — and very public — scrutiny if called to testify about whether they knew of any corruption happening on their watch.

By piecing together public records, including past testimony, exhibits, depositions and separate civil suits involving the company, CBC News has uncovered a string of instances where those board members were allegedly told of financial irregularities — including a $10-million stash of cash kept in an office safe in Libya.

…if the claims and allegations are true, it means the company, despite red flags, continued its lavish spending to win contracts from Libya’s Gadhafi regime.

In 2008, SNC-Lavalin played host to Saadi Gadhafi. The playboy son of the Libyan dictator spent three months in Canada, visiting Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in a trip arranged by Ben Aïssa.

Outside auditors raised concerns about the bills totalling $1.9 million.

RCMP forensic accountants have since scoured 44,000 pages of company records. At the 2017 preliminary hearing for bribery charges against an SNC-Lavalin financial controller, Stéphane Roy, investigators testified that they uncovered bills for private security and hospitality that included:

  • $30,000 for escorts.

  • $180,000 for a stay at the Hyatt Regency in Toronto.

  • $193,501.81 for limousine rides.

  • Cash advances of up to $15,000.


#LavScam by the numbers: Trudeau is losing – badly

Wow.

The Toronto Star, of all media organizations, commissioned a poll after Justin Trudeau martyred Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. And, according to the most Liberal-friendly paper of all, he’s in a free fall.

Story here, key facts below:

A new poll suggests Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives continue to have the most support among decided and leaning voters, while a majority of respondents to the survey said they disapprove of Justin Trudeau’s performance as prime minister. 

Forty-two per cent of decided and leaning voters said they support the Conservative Party. That compares with 29 per cent who intend to vote for the governing Liberals, and 12 per cent who support the New Democratic Party.

At the same time, 60 per cent of respondents to the latest poll said they disapprove of Trudeau’s job performance as prime minister, while more than half — 57 per cent — said Canada is either “much worse” or “a bit worse” than in 2015, when the Liberal government came to power.


#LavScam lesson

I teach crisis communications to lawyers-to-be at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law, my alma mater.

My students, as always, are terrific. And, for the whole term, we’ve been focussing on just one topic: LavScam.

It makes sense. LavScam is the perfect fusion of a communications crisis and the law. It has all the requisite elements. Possible obstruction of justice, possible breach of trust – and, indisputably, a raging dumpster fire of a comms crisis.

In every class, we’ve analyzed the latest LavScam controversies. We’ve watched, and re-watched, Justin Trudeau’s now-infamous press conference. “Why didn’t he apologize?” asked several of my students, bewildered. (Good question.)

We analyzed Jody Wilson-Raybould’s evidence as she testified at the clown show that masquerades as a Justice Committee. “She should be Prime Minister,” several of my students said of her, with something approaching reverence. (Agreed.)

We developed communication strategies, early on, to extricate the Liberal Party from the ethical quagmire that – pollsters say – is rendering them a one-term government.

Those strategies, with minor variations, all involved sincere and public apologies to Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott; an admission that SNC-Lavalin is not, and never was, entitled to a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA); a dismissal of every staff person who was attempting to pervert the course of justice; and – as Jean Chretien did in the sponsorship scandal – calling in the RCMP to investigate.

Like I say: I have smart students.

Now, Professor Kinsella is writing this before the final class of the term, which was on Friday. At that one, we will almost certainly discuss the big news of the week – which, as the civilized world knows, was Justin Trudeau’s corrupt, cowardly, craven decision to expel Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus. Because, you know, they objected when Trudeau and his senior staff tried to interfere in a criminal case to help out a donor.

Still in Trudeau’s caucus, however, is Kent Hehr – the Calgary Liberal MP who was found guilty of sexually harassing women. I don’t know if one of my students will raise that unequal application of justice, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s an interesting legal distinction, after all: two women who gave up everything to uphold the Rule of Law, and who were defamed, demeaned and destroyed for their efforts.

And, a man who sexually harassed two other women, kept in the family. Kept as a Liberal candidate.

“Not the actions of a feminist,” one of my students might say. And they’d be right, of course.

Also newsworthy, at that final class of Law 599: Gerald Butts’ saturnalian decision to submit text messages and emails and notes to the aforementioned clown show.

A January conversation between Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould, provided by Butts as a verbatim transcript, stood out.

Wilson-Raybould: “I love being Minister of Justice and Attorney General. I’m not going to lie. Indigenous Services is not my dream job. I’m not going to lie about that.”

Trudeau: “I know it is not your dream job, but it is core to this government, to maintain a legacy. And, to be crass about it, our political legacy.”

Wilson-Raybould: “I feel I’m being shifted out of Justice for other reasons.”

Trudeau: “We would not be doing this if it weren’t for Scott [Brison]’s decision.”

Wilson-Raybould: “I don’t agree. This is not how we change peoples lives.”

Trudeau: “After an election, everything is fresh again.”

Now, my students, who are exceptionally bright, will likely know that Gerald Butts and Justin Trudeau made three critical errors in submitting that transcript.

One, it’s a transcript. Unless Gerald Butts has enhanced shorthand skills no one knew about, it is highly likely that someone taped that conversation. Which, as any sharp-eyed law student will know, is the very pretext Trudeau used to expel Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal caucus: a secret taping.

Two, Wilson-Raybould was not aware Butts was listening in. That’s not breaking a law, per se, but it’s certainly not ethical sunny ways, either.

Thirdly – and most ominously, because my students all know who Marie Heinen is – Gerald Butts submitted many notes. When, in the pre-trial manoeuvrings in the trial Heinen’s client, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, PMO and PCO solemnly swore that those sorts of notes simply don’t exist. Uh-oh.

If Messrs. Trudeau and Butts don’t think Canada’s best criminal lawyer didn’t spot that error, they’re dumber than dirt found at an SNC-Lavalin job site. She did. And she will be cross-examining them about it starting in August, mere weeks before the election is scheduled to kick off.

There’s a lot more of that sort of thing, but you get the point. In the final minutes of my final lecture, I therefore intend to tell my amazing students this: “In your future legal practice, remember what Justin Trudeau’s party did in LavScam in the year 2019,” I’ll say. “And, if you want to win, always just do this:

“The opposite.”


Five things about Scheer’s #LavScam press conference today

1. He looked and sounded Prime Ministerial. Moreover, most Canadians want Trudeau gone; the election is therefore now a referendum on whether Andrew Scheer is up to the job.  Moments like these suggest he is.

2. Justin Trudeau is clearly attempting to libel chill any public discussion of Lavscam.  It won’t work.  With this SLAPP suit, the Liberal leader looks scared.

3. Trudeau has given Scheer an opportunity to re-state, and re-affirm, the criticisms that pretty much everyone has: namely, that Trudeau and his senior staff pushed for a sweetheart deal for a sleazy donor to the Liberal Party. In my opinion, they broke the law. I dare them to sue me, too.

4. Scheer’s press conference also reminds Canadians that Lavscam is about something else that is important: Justin Trudeau brutalized three amazing and accomplished women, two of whom are minorities, simply because they were whistleblowers.  He claimed to be a feminist; he claimed to be ethical; he claimed he would reconcile with indigenous people.  The principled actions of Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes have shown everyone what Justin Trudeau really is, which is a hypocrite and a fucking liar.

5. Julian Porter should stick to writing coffee table books about art and wine.


Your #LavScam weekly roundup (and this is just a sample of a few papers, folks)

  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “THE LIBERALS HAVE ABANDONED THEIR MORAL PRINCIPLES…and it’s Justin Trudeau’s fault…It is dismaying to me, a political agnostic, that thuggery is now attached to the federal Liberal party. It is appalling to me, a feminist, that so many who claim to respect women, who call themselves feminists — most especially the piously feminist prime minister but all his acolytes in the partisan media — have turned themselves inside-out to rationalize the bullying of female Liberal ministers. Because, readily admitted even, the existential threat of Andrew Scheer at 24 Sussex Drive looms as such a calamity, come the October election, that anything, anything, would be preferable, up to and including the abandonment of all moral principles.”
  • Andrew Coyne, National Post: “It’s hard to see what is accomplished by this latest bout of thuggery — not only expelling Wilson-Raybould and Philpott, but revoking their nominations. It seems to be motivated by little more than sheer delight in retribution: vindictiveness for vindictiveness’s sake. And yet they are not one whit diminished by it; only the prime minister is. “
  •  Christie Blatchford, National Post: “They’re thugs — the senior people in the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the clerk of the privy council and the nation’s top bureaucrat, the people in the office of Finance Minister Bill Morneau — or so close as to be indistinguishable from them. I refer to their collective behaviour around the SNC-Lavalin imbroglio, in particular their relentless effort to strong-arm the deposed attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould…The day after Justin Trudeau pointed to her ongoing presence in cabinet as evidence that should allay any concerns about the propriety of government conduct in relation to SNC and said her presence “spoke for itself,” she quit. “I trust my resignation also speaks for itself,” she said. What a pistol she is.”
  • Andrew Coyne, National Post: “[Liberal MPs] knew what kind of party they wanted to be a part of from the moment they accepted their nominations; indeed, were they not the type of person that party attracts they would not have been recruited for it. It is the kind of party, and person, that unquestioningly puts loyalty to party before principle — and mercilessly punishes those who do not…What has agitated Liberal MPs is not the former attorney general’s recording of a conversation she correctly anticipated would be improper and could have guessed would be denied, or her failure to alert the prime minister at whose behest it had taken place (and who could not fail to have been informed of its contents), but rather that she has contradicted and embarrassed the leader. Or rather no: I suspect what truly outrages them is the sight of a person of conscience, unwilling to sacrifice her principles so readily on the altar of partisanship. For those who can still remember what that was like, it must be deeply shaming. For the rest, there is only one principle — blind loyalty to the leader — in which cause they are prepared to sacrifice any number of colleagues.”
  • Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail: “Mr. Trudeau, owing to his own inattention to details and sheer arrogance, has created a royal mess. By ousting Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott, he looks more interested in preserving power than upholding the principles he was elected on. It’s not “because it’s 2015” any more: Instead, it’s because it’s 2019, and there’s an election, the Liberals were born to win. Trying, however, to paint Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott as the villains of this story just doesn’t wash. Canadians are smarter, and more principled, than that.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “It is grotesque, to me, how small and vindictive Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had become — lifted on the shoulders of his party disciples — trying to make a virtue out of the jettisoning of two women who dared to vouchsafe integrity, falling afoul of the caucus cabal…There was nothing remotely illegal about Wilson-Raybould “covertly” recording her telephone conversation with Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick — what Trudeau classified as “unconscionable.” It’s perfectly licit to record an exchange as long as one person knows it’s happening. Journalists do it all the time, to back up their notes, particularly when the other person on the line might later challenge the veracity of the content.”
  • Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail: “It’s not hard to see why most Liberal MPs felt Jody Wilson-Raybould should be booted out of the caucus. There’s no “I” in “team,” but in the Liberal team, there’s a capital “T” for Justin Trudeau. There really wasn’t much more of an explanation than that from Mr. Trudeau, when you get right down to it, for why Ms. Wilson-Raybould and another former minister, Jane Philpott, were kicked out.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “It seems to me that if someone you work with is pressuring you into doing something you don’t want to do —if you think it is potentially illegal or wildly unethical — secretly taping them isn’t “unconscionable.”Especially if you’ve repeatedly said, to a variety of different people, that you did not feel comfortable with what was being asked of you. And when you tried to tell people, nobody seemed to be listening. No, instead they were telling you, explicitly and implicitly, that you were the one with the problem, that you just don’t seem to “get” how the whole system works. That this is how it’s always been done and you are an outsider if you don’t play by our rules.”
  • Andrew MacDougall, Globe and Mail: “For a prime minister positioned as the leader that the West’s liberal world order needs, doesn’t it feel just a little bit Trump-like? If you find that comparison a little tart, think again. Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal caucus have been channelling Donald Trump and the Republican Party, with Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott jointly playing the role of former FBI director James Comey, ejected from the President’s orbit for refusing to play ball on the Russia investigation.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “How very patronizing the prime minister was — has been throughout, actually, from his diminishment of Wilson-Raybould as “Jody” to his pained forbearance of this wilful woman — in the House on Tuesday, asserting he’d tried to show “patience and understanding,” as one would with an incorrigible child, but heavens, his sufferance had been wasted on so recalcitrant and defiant a Liberal liege, to the point that banishment was the only option to avoid a “civil war.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “Given what was at stake and what Wilson-Raybould has experienced, none of what she asked for was unreasonable. As she has said from day one, she stood up for the truth. So did Philpott, a medical doctor who held the top portfolios in Trudeau’s government. She told CBC Radio’s The Current she had to resign from cabinet because if a member of the media asked her what she thought, she could not lie, she could not forsake the truth and toe the party line. If she did, how could she face her children, her family? “I chose the truth,” Philpott said. “I chose to act on principles that are so important to the future of our country. That is more important than my political career.”
  • Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail: “When the Prime Minister is nonchalant about intervening in the judicial process because, you know, he’s used to getting what he wants, then someone needs to take him aside and explain the facts of life, not to mention constitutional democracy. He may very well have good reasons to think the DPP made the wrong call on SNC-Lavalin. But tough: There is a greater principle at play – the independence of prosecutors to act free of political interference – that cannot be sacrificed simply because, as PMO aide Mathieu Bouchard reportedly told Ms. Wilson-Raybould, “we can have the best policy in the world, but we need to get re-elected.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “Politics is a dirty rough-and-tumbled business not intended for the faint of heart. Or, apparently, those in possession of a moral compass. There is no redeeming dimension to Trudeau’s brutality. He has dissembled and shammed his way through nearly two months of tortuous squabble. If the Liberal party is in crisis, the seeds were sown in the PMO and a PM of towering hauteur. A phoney feminist to boot.”
  • Anthony Furey, Sun: “In recent weeks there have been several stories floated to attempt to smear Wilson-Raybould’s character and suggest she’d made previous errors in judgments. Anyone who has been peddling these smears should now feel deeply ashamed of themselves after this tape has come out.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “On Wednesday, the Daughters of the Vote filled each seat in the House of Commons as part of the Equal Voice program that was created to attract more women into politics. Trudeau dumped Philpott and Wilson-Raybould the night before the Daughters’ arrival. But as Trudeau stood to address the Daughters, about 40 women stood up and turned their backs on the prime minister. The silent demonstration spoke volumes. If Trudeau was going to exclude Philpott and Wilson-Raybould, they would not listen to his words. They understood exactly what Trudeau’s actions against Philpott and Wilson-Raybould meant. He shut them out. I’m willing to bet a majority of Canadians understood as well.”
  • Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star: “For the opposition parties, all of this is a gift. The New Democrats can cite Wilson-Raybould and Philpott as proof that Trudeau is not as progressive as he claims. This should help them in the fall election. By splitting the left-liberal vote, it may in some ridings also inadvertently help Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. The Conservatives have long made Trudeau himself, as opposed to his often popular policies, the focus of their attack. They must be grabbing themselves with glee. This story will not easily die. It is in the interest of too many to keep it going.”
  • Mitch Potter, Toronto Star: “Hold it up to the light at a certain angle and the mess our prime minister finds himself in today seems like the most Canadian of scandals — a terrible, perhaps even politically lethal outcome borne of ridiculously benign intentions all around. Justin Trudeau, his handlers will assure you, was thinking only to protect Canadian jobs. And his now ostracized former attorney general and justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was thinking only of prosecutorial independence…And if trust broke down in the admittedly grey area between jobs and justice, well, that’s really just a formatting error, many would argue. Once the dust settles on the slow-motion SNC-Lavalin affair, the lesson here involves fixing the format — break apart the two-hatted position of AG and JM into separate jobs and voila, no more grey area. But that rose-coloured version of the Liberal government’s slow-motion winter of discontent is finding few buyers. Instead, a bigger problem now is taking hold — the weakening of the prime minister’s personal political brand, a fact sealed this week.”
  • Alicia Elliott, Globe and Mail: “Not long after the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke in February, Mr. Trudeau and much of the Liberal Party, which once held Ms. Wilson-Raybould up as a star MP, turned on her. On Tuesday, she was turfed from the Liberal caucus, along with another former cabinet minister, her friend Jane Philpott, one of the few Liberals willing to back Ms. Wilson-Raybould. If a woman who was considered by many to be a “Good Indian” can be used and disregarded this way, what does it mean for those of us who are considered “Bad Indians”? Those of us who have suffered tremendous trauma and loss, such as Tina Fontaine?”
  • Amos Barshad, Globe and Mail: “Rasputins [like Gerald Butts] don’t act – they make a powerful few others act. The actions of those powerful few then reverberate. Why don’t they act? Because they lack the abilities to do so. The manipulative pop producer can’t sing or dance. Those grandiose fiction editors can’t write a line of decent stuff themselves. That’s the heartbreak: The dark control always stems from a place of deep and profound longing…The definitive trait of a Rasputin is control over one, or a few, prominent others. And that control must be controversial. Rasputins must have enemies. If their manipulations haven’t won them enemies, well, then their control is not quite untoward enough for the status of true Rasputin.”

My latest in the Sun: the Trudeau cult

Dear Liberals:

This is an open letter to all of you. I want to start it by telling you why I became a lawyer. 

It was a movie, called The Oxbow Incident. It was a Western, released some 75 years ago, and it starred Henry Fonda. It was about how a mob hanged a man. The wrong man. 

At the end, the lynch mob all gather in a bar, and Henry Fonda reads a letter the dead man wrote to his wife. Here is some of it. 

“Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong,” Fonda says, reading the dead man’s letter. “It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody’s conscience, except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?”

That speech is why I became a lawyer. What Henry Fonda said,  in a long-ago Western. What he said about justice, and how it is the thing that makes us human. 

Jody Wilson-Raybould, who I have never met – and Jane Philpott, who I have – remind me a little bit of Henry Fonda, reading that dead man’s letter. They seem to believe, as I do, that if we do not have justice, we have not much left. They proudly gave up everything for it, after all.  

After what you Liberals did, I suppose you are expecting me to liken you to a lynch mob. And, it is true: you were a bit like that. 

Hell, you expelled Jody Wilson-Raybould on the pretext of a making a tape on which a powerful man threatens her. When, a few days later, the Prime Minister of Canada spoke to Wilson-Raybould about why she’d been demoted – and he didn’t bother to tell her his Principal Secretary was secretly listening in. Keeping a record of what was said. 

To use against her. 

But, still, I will not call you a lynch mob. What you are, more accurately, is a group of people who belong to a cult. It is not a political party anymore. It is a cult. 

It’s kind of understandable, although not ever forgivable. Justin Trudeau, to most of you, is the Liberal Party. He lifted the party from third place to first, and he propelled most of you into power. He made three big promises. 

He said he’d be a feminist. He said he’d reconcile with indigenous people. And he said he’d bring back ethical government. 

Well, he lied. His willingness to brutalize Wilson-Raybould, Philpott and Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes – and to cut a sweetheart deal for a sleazy donor – showed him to be none of those things. It showed him to be what this newspaper memorably called him this week: the fake feminist.

But still you follow him. Still you belong to his cult. Even when you know he has done wrong.

And so, you will end like all cults do: you will go down with your leader. You will perish with him, and you all richly deserve it.

Because voters understand – as they did at the end of The Oxbow Incident – that justice is all that keeps us from devolving into a lynch mob.

Which, as I say, you all resemble quite a bit. 

And for which you will all pay. 

Sincerely,

Warren


The fake feminist, exposed

…and this is just the start, you phony SOB.