Tag Archive: Justin Trudeau

My latest: hypocrisy, thine name is JT

— 06.30.2019 08:09 AM

“A hypocrite,” Adlai Stevenson said, “is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”

That’s all that the first Adlai Stevenson left behind in the sands of time, pretty much. He was the 23rd vice-president of the United States, he was from Illinois, and he was a Democrat. His grandson was the Democratic Party’s candidate for president a couple of times, in the 50s. But old Uncle Adlai, as he was called? He was just remembered for his aphorisms, pretty much.

That one above, the one about political hypocrisy, should be printed out, laminated, and pinned to Justin Trudeau’s shirt (You know, like parents do with kids who might wander away during field trips to the zoo).

Trudeau’s PMO staff, too, should have Adlai Stevenson’s pithy maxim tattooed to their foreheads, so that they remember the cardinal rule when they are at their next “deliverology” meeting: In politics, you can get away with all manner of misdeeds and sins. But hypocrisy? Political hypocrisy is lethal. It is toxic. It is the scarlet letter.

To wit: Justin Trudeau and his PMO are hypocrites. There is no shortage of evidence.

This week, for example, Prime Minister Selfie tweeted out a nice photo of himself with something called the “Papineau Youth Council,” whatever that is.  Fresh-faced youngsters ringed a table listening to Trudeau talk about, as he put it, ways “to fight climate change.”  That’s a quote.

Eyeballing the taxpayer-subsidized snapshot, we see:

• Pizza (not weird, it’s a political backroom staple)

• Trudeau’s pizza slices, both flipped over (super weird)

• None of the kids smiling, not even a bit (also weird, but who can blame them, really)

• Right in the foreground, a pile of plastic cutlery (weird AND wildly hypocritical)

Plastic cutlery?  That’s weird – because, really, who uses cutlery to eat pizza?

And it’s hypocritical, too, because this is the selfsame Prime Minister, boys and girls, who just a few days ago said he planned to ban so-called single-use plastics. Like, um, plastic cutlery. He also said his family uses “like, drink box water bottles sort of things,” and none of us know what that means. Still.

Political graveyards are littered with the remains of political hypocrites. Pat Buchanan, for example. As I write in my must-have book, The War Room, when he was making one of his many quixotic runs at the presidency, Buchanan started promoting the Trumpist “America First” tagline everywhere. Hire only Americans, buy only American. 

So the advisors to George H. W. Bush discovered a key factoid about Buchanan’s “America First” private life: he personally drove a Mercedes, made in far-away Germany. They passed along that little revelation out to the media hordes, and that was the end of Pat.

Another example:  Democrat Gary Hart.  Back in 1987, when the family-friendly Senator was making his second run at the top job, rumours were rampant he was following his little soldier into battle a bit too frequently. Gary was indignant about this scurrilous assault on his personal life. Said he: “Follow me around.  I don’t care.  They’ll be bored.”

The media followed him around. They weren’t bored.  Gary – thereafter photographed with model Donna Rice balanced on his senatorial knee, on a yacht called (we kid you not) Monkey Business – ended up caring, quite a bit.  And that was the end of Gary.

Have Justin Trudeau’s well-documented hypocrisies similarly doomed him to defeat in October? The polls suggest the best the Liberal leader can hope for is a minority government. If that.

So, if Trudeau loses, LavScam, unbalanced budgets, the Aga Khan and decidedly unharmonious fed-prov relations will figure prominently as causes.

 But one politically-fatal word, above all the others, will be seen on Justin Trudeau’s headstone:

 HYPOCRITE.


Comments (58)

My latest in the Sun: when they came for the Jews/Sikhs/Muslims, they said nothing

— 06.24.2019 01:29 PM

Silence.

That’s all that could be heard from the federal party leaders, essentially: silence, or something approaching that.

The occasion: the decision of assorted Quebec politicians to pass a law telling religious people what they can wear. Jews, Sikhs, but mainly Muslims.

The law, formerly called Bill 21, was passed last weekend in a special sitting of the so-called National Assembly. It makes it illegal to wear religious symbols at work if you’re a teacher, a bus driver, a cop, a nurse, or even a day care worker. It applies to everyone who gets a stipend from the province, basically.

The law is illegal. It is wildly unconstitutional, for all the reasons you’d expect: it stomps all over freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equality rights. It giddily shreds the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The law is against the law. So, Quebec’s ruling class – who have never been particularly fussy about Jews, Sikhs or Muslims, truth be told – also stipulated that their law would operate “notwithstanding” the Charter.

In Quebec, now, you’ve theoretically got freedom of speech and religion. Except, say, when the chauvinists in the National Assembly say you don’t.

Stick that yarmulke in your pocket, Jew. Remove that turban your faith requires you to wear, Sikh. Put it away.

As history has shown us, freedoms rarely get swept away with dramatic decrees. Instead, we lose freedoms by degrees. In bits and pieces. Fascism typically slips into our lives without a sound, like a snake slithering into the kitchen, unseen.

This week, the snake curled around the ankles of Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh. All of them pretended that the snake was not there.

Justin Trudeau, in his teeny-tiniest mouse voice, suggested that no one should “tell a woman what she can and cannot wear.” That’s all we got from him, pretty much.

Andrew Scheer, for his part, said he “would never present a bill like that at the federal level.” But, he hastily added, he would also leave the whole messy business to the “elected members in Quebec.”

Jagmeet Singh, who now couldn’t get a provincial job in Quebec because he wears a turban himself, said this about the law when it was tabled: “I think it’s hurtful, because I remember what it’s like to grow up and not feel like I belong.”

Words.

But action? Actually, you know, doing something to protect minority rights and religious freedoms in Quebec?

Not on your life. It’s an election year, pal.

During one of the many, many debates Quebec has had about this legislated intolerance – when controversy was raging about the then-Liberal government’s bill that would force women to remove veils when, say, getting on a city bus – Francois Legault, then an Opposition leader, was asked about the crucifix hanging in the National Assembly.

It should stay, he said. “We have a Christian heritage in Quebec,” he said. “I don’t see any problem keeping it.”

That’s when Francois Legault’s veil slipped, as it were. That’s when we got to see who he really represents.

At his very first press conference after the Quebec election, Legault dispensed with any notion that he would be the Premier to all. To the Muslims (with their headscarves), and the Jews (with their kippahs), and the Hindus (with their markings on their faces), Legault’s message was plain: I don’t represent you. I don’t care about you. You are lower-class.

And, now, from our federal leaders: a shrug. Indifference.

Jesus, from that spot He long had above the National Assembly, is (as always) needed. Right about now, Jesus could remind our politicians, federal and provincial, what he said in Matthew 23:3. You know:

“Do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”


Comments (16)

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)

Highly-scientific poll™️: Obama and Trudeau go pubbing

— 06.02.2019 08:52 AM

So, Barack Obama, the best president ever, was in Ottawa. I was there at the same time. Do the math.

Okay, no, I didn’t meet him or see him when I was in the Town That Fun Forgot, but Justin Trudeau did. The met at a pub. I am shocked, but apparently someone was there and able to take a photo.

I’m torn on this one. With the new NAFTA still unratified, and the Mango Mussolini going after another NAFTA partner (Mexico), is now a good time to raise the ire of the Unpresident?

Then again, Trump doesn’t get to vote in the Canadian election – now a bit over 100 days away – and Obama is much-loved by Canadians. So, perhaps it was shrewd electoral move by Prime Minister Chewbacca Socks.

There’s a third possibility, too: Barack Obama is a former President of the United States, and it would be unCanadian – and quite rude – for our top guy not to meet with him when he’s here.

What thinkest thou, O WK Dot Com readers? Vote now, vote often!


[polldaddy poll=10333770]


Comments (27)

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)

What JWR has to say

— 05.27.2019 07:03 AM

…about something that matters a lot.

**

“A new nation-to-nation process,” they said.

“We will renew the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples. It is time for Canada to have a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition, rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership,” they said. “This is both the right thing to do and a sure path to economic growth.”

That’s what they said. That’s what Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party pledged to do in their 2015 election platform.

It’s still online, and relatively easy to find. That’s surprising, because it all reads like the Soviet Constitution, now: all stirring, uplifting phrases, none of which are meaningful. Hope and change, signifying nothing.

It worked, however. In crass political terms, it worked.

When compared to 2011, the Indigenous vote went up significantly in 2015. On some First Nations, they ran out of ballots.

CBC’s resident election nerdling, Eric Grenier, wrote about it in the days after Justin Trudeau’s smashing triumph. The growth in Indigenous vote was “widespread and significant,” Grenier declared, and the Liberals “benefited most from this increase in indigenous voting.”

They sure did. Elections Canada said the Indigenous vote was up a huge 13 per cent, the biggest increase in a Century. And the Grits were obviously the clear beneficiaries, says Grenier: “In the seven ridings with at least one-third of the population identifying as aboriginal, the Liberals won four of them and came a close second in the other three as their vote increased significantly.”

2015: sunny ways, happier times. And then 2019 hit.

The LavScam fundamentals are well-known, by now, and don’t need to be repeated ad nauseum, because they are truly nauseating. Justin Trudeau and his underlings bullied and brutalized Jody Wilson-Raybould to give a corrupt party donor a corrupt deal to avoid a criminal trial for corruption. Obstruction of justice, interference with prosecutorial independence, no more debate about “the legalities,” as Trudeau’s inept Chief of Staff memorably put it.

Wilson-Raybould was dumped because she said “no” to Justin and the boys who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was driven out of the Liberal caucus, too, and attacked by the selfsame Liberals who promised, in 2015, to “renew the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples.”

This part bears repeating: Jody Wilson-Raybould is an Indigenous Person. She’s a former B.C. Grand Chief, too, and leader of the B.C. Treaty Commission. She’s been a councilor for the We Wai Kai Nation. And, most significantly, as Attorney-General – as Minister of Justice – she was an important symbol. She was one of the greatest success stories Canada’s Indigenous people have ever known. They were, and are, very proud of her and her achievements.

And now, they’re angry. Really angry.

“I’m absolutely pissed,” Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, told APTN when asked about Trudeau’s brutalizing of Wilson-Raybould. “The bullying and deceit coming out of the PMO in regard to this entire matter – it just represents the absolute dark underside of federal politics in this country.”

“Justin Trudeau, your misguided colonial approach to reconciliation has now cost you the most brilliant Cabinet member, [one who] has mountain ranges of integrity. First Nations and women voters will remember your actions in October 2019,” warned Bobby Chamberlain, former vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

Months later, First Nations are furious, still. But what does Jody Wilson-Raybould think?

In an exclusive interview, Wilson-Raybould is – characteristically – not bitter about Justin Trudeau’s broken promise to Canada’s First Nations. Asked whether Trudeau’s treatment of Wilson-Raybould has hurt federal relations with First Nations, the now-independent MP muses.

“Hmm,” she says. “I would say yes and no.”

She goes on: “On the one hand, these events have demonstrated that there is still a long way to go for transformative change in this country for Indigenous peoples. Words matter, and actions are required. Over the mandate of this current government, significant investments have been made in Indigenous communities to address day to day issues and this needs to be acknowledged.”

She pauses. “However, on creating the space for the more transformative change, increasingly many people – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – are questioning the legitimacy of the [Liberal election platform] mantra that ‘no relationship is more important than to this government than the one with Indigenous peoples’. For our Indigenous peoples, working hard to create the space to be self-determination in this country – based on the recognition of rights – has been and will continue to be a priority, one that has been pursued for decades. This will not change.”

But. There’s a but: “The events of the past few months perhaps has strengthened this resolve while at the same time highlighted that there is still a long way to go.”

What about her, though? What about what Justin Trudeau did to her? Jody Wilson-Raybould reflects.

She says: “If you are asking about how people view my treatment…I have been greatly supported across the country by Indigenous peoples. The actions of the Prime Minister and the government have been of great concern – to say the least – for Indigenous peoples, and certainly for many Canadians across the country.”

Will Indigenous people punish Justin Trudeau at the polls? Will they withdraw the support they gave him in 2015?

On that, Jody Wilson-Raybould pauses a last time. She says, definitively, that she is running again to represent her Vancouver riding.

And she won’t be running for Justin Trudeau’s party.


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