Tag Archive: Liberal Party of Canada

My latest, on the so-called “digital charter”

— 05.25.2019 07:44 AM

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development blinked. Then he blinked again. 

He has just been asked if his government’s “Digital Charter” would apply to his own political party. You know, the governing Liberal Party of Canada. 

He doesn’t answer. The host on CBC’s “Power and Politics” genially tries again. Will the Liberal Party agree to go along with the rules it proposes to impose on everyone else? Will the Grits practice what they preach on data privacy?

Navdeep Bains, the Minister with the aforementioned long title doesn’t answer. Again. 

Bains rallies. He sternly says the penalties for violating Canadians’ privacy will be “substantial.” The CBC inquisitor asks what that means. 

Navdeep Bains doesn’t say. 

And so it goes, as with much that the Justin Trudeau regime does: do as they say, but not as they do. Talk the talk, but don’t walk the talk. 

Justin Trudeau does that sort of thing a lot: you know, oversell, then underdeliver. Insincerity, phoniness, dishonesty. It’s his brand, pretty much. 

And there is no better recent example of that sort of rank hypocrisy than Justin Trudeau’s so-called“Digital Charter.”

Announced a few days back with much fanfare, but not much detail, the “charter” sketches out some basic principles about data protection and online privacy. 

Justin Trudeau, as is his wont, revealed the “Digital Charter” in Paris, where he knew his audience was likely to be less critical than the ones back home. Overseas, Prime Minister Chewbacca Socks can still command the occasional round of applause.

Not so much back here in the colonies, where the “Digital Charter” is like so much that Trudeau does – all sizzle, no steak. All talk, no action. 

That’s not to say Trudeau’s “Charter” – he calls it that, presumably, because it sounds like he’s serious, when he isn’t, really – doesn’t have some laudable goals. It wants to combat the spread of hate and violent extremism online, and who could be against that?

Except, well, Justin Trudeau has had nearly four full years to do something about the explosion in hate online. Every other Western democracy has done something about it. But Justin Trudeau? He waits until we are a mere 100 days or so from the 2019 election kick-off, and then claims he’s The Hate Fighter™️. 

Oh, and his “Charter” isn’t going to become law until (a) after said election takes place, and (b) he is re-elected. The chances of which, all the pollsters tell us, is presently somewhere between slim and none. 

It’s a problem. A big one. In an era where Facebook and other online behemoths regularly steal the private information of citizens, and profit from it, Canadians actually need something like the “digital charter.” At the moment, regular folks don’t have the ability to control – or consent to – the way all the political parties use their data, either. 

In 2019, when the tech giants steal your private information, they get fined pocket change. And the political parties – when they do likewise – they don’t get fined at all. They get away with it. 

The federal Privacy Commissioner, who has saint-like patience, has recently held press conferences about this outrage. He’s even brought along the Elections Commissioner, who has nodded his head and soberly agreed: the Trudeau government needs to be subject to the law, just as every other citizen and corporation is. 

But Justin Trudeau refuses. 

With less than a month to go until the House of Commons rises for the Summer, not to return for many months, Justin Trudeau needs to put his mouth where our money is. He needs to agree, finally, to practice what he preaches to the rest of us. 

Will he? Don’t hold your breath. 

But hold onto your data. 

(Justin Trudeau wants it.)


Comments (7)

The “feminist”

— 05.13.2019 06:33 AM

Ah, The Feminist.

There he was again, last week, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. All moist-eyed sincerity, all sotto voce.

The Feminist had just athletically jogged down a flight of stairs, and paused to take media questions, en deux langues. The questions were about the total and complete collapse of his planned show trial. You know: the one to destroy Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, who had had the temerity to disagree with The Feminist’s desire to hand over a fat military contract to a Liberal Party donor.

The Feminist said that the criminal prosecution of the Vice-Admiral – which The Feminist had coincidentally said was coming, well before charges were even laid – was on the up-and-up.

“The process involved in a public prosecution like this is entirely independent of my office,” he said, and lie detector machines miraculously started to stir to life, all over Central Canada. “We have confidence done in the work done by the director of public prosecutions.”

Well, that’s good to know, because the Director of Public Prosecutions Canada sure doesn’t have much “confidence” in The Feminist. Back in March, on the very morning The Feminist had refused to apologize for destroying the career and reputation of Jody Wilson-Raybould – on the very morning he refused to apologize when he and his senior staff were caught interfering in another criminal prosecution more than twenty times, over a four-month period in 2018 – the public prosecutors did something extraordinary. On Twitter.

Here is what they tweeted, in apparent direct response to The Feminist’s claim to have been “entirely independent” of a public prosecution of another Liberal Party donor. Here is what the prosectors said to the world, capturing the attention of the OECD Anti-Bribery Working Group, among others: “Prosecutorial independence is key to our mandate. Our prosecutors must be objective, independent and dispassionate, as well as free from improper influence—including political influence.”

Sound like an act of defiance? It was.

But as he lingered there, for a moment or two, none of the assembled media asked The Feminist about something else. Something important. Namely, his repeated claim to be a feminist.

It would have been a very relevant question, too. Across town, Mark Norman’s extraordinary lawyer, Marie Henein – with whom my firm has done work, full disclosure – had just held a press conference with her client. And, as things were getting underway, she had eviscerated The Feminist.

“Before we get started,” she’d said, pausing. “I’d just like to introduce the all female team that represented Vice-Admiral Norman.” She emphasized the words “all female.” Then, introductions made, she went on, and no one mistook her meaning.

“Fortunately,” Henein said, “Vice-Admiral Norman didn’t fire the females he hired.”

Did you hear that? That was the sound of a metaphorical shiv, sliding between The Feminist’s ribs, aimed at the spot where his soul is supposed to be. It was Marie Henein, who actually knows a thing or two about feminism, pointing out that The Feminist had destroyed the careers of three women – Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and Celina Caesar-Chavannes – simply because they talked back to him. Simply because they said “no” to a bunch of men who refused to take no for an answer.

Henein wasn’t done, however.

She next took aim at The Feminist’s months-long effort to deny Mark Norman – and, inferentially, Wilson-Raybould, and Philpott, and Caesar-Chavannes – the most basic courtesies. To deny them natural justice, which is at the root of all our laws. To deny them fairness.

Said Henein: “You should be very concerned when anyone tries to erode the resilience of the justice system or demonstrates a failure to understand why it is so fundamental to the democratic values we hold so dear,” she said, referring to The Feminist’s repeated efforts to interfere in the criminal justice system to reward a supporter (SNC-Lavalin) or to punish a whistleblower (Vice-Admiral Norman).

“There are times you agree with what happens in a court room there are times you don’t. And that’s fine. But what you don’t do is you don’t put your finger and try to weigh in on the scales of justice. That is not what should be happening.”

She could have mentioned, here, that The Feminist had “put his fingers” on a reporter at a beer festival in British Columbia a few years back, and about which he said “the same interactions can be experienced very differently from one person to the next.” Said “interaction” being what is regarded – in other contexts, among lesser people who don’t ride for free on the Aga Khan’s private jets – as “sexual assault.”

Marie Henein could have said that, but she didn’t say that.

Instead, she used the occasion of her client’s exoneration to point out something important about The Feminist.

He isn’t one.


Comments (12)

My latest: the Trudeau regime gets caught – again

— 05.08.2019 11:54 AM

Don’t get caught.

If your political party has been caught obstructing justice — as the political party led by Justin Trudeau assuredly was, in the SNC-Lavalin scandal — what’s the one thing you need to avoid, at all costs?

Getting caught obstructing justice again, of course.

And that’s what the Trudeau regime’s prosecution of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman would have exposed: Senior Trudeau government officials, implicated in a scheme to use the criminal justice system to punish an alleged whistleblower. In this case, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Canadian Forces.

The “crime” Norman was accused of wasn’t a crime at all. In the early days of the Trudeau government, some senior cabinet ministers and political staffers tried to interfere in a multimillion-dollar contract that had been awarded for a much-needed supply ship for the Royal Canadian Navy. As in the LavScam scandal, senior Grits wanted the contract to go to a firm that had supported them politically.

A whistleblower blew the whistle — just like in LavScam — and leaked the story to the media. The Trudeau government was livid. They went after the alleged whistleblower — just like they went after Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott for blowing the whistle on corruption.

Norman — like Wilson-Raybould and Philpott — deserved the Order of Canada, not persecution, for refusing to break the rules to help out a Trudeau government political crony. They didn’t deserve to have their lives and reputations destroyed.

Justin Trudeau — who, angelic visage notwithstanding, is a vengeful and petty little man — went after Norman, viciously. The vice-admiral was criminally charged with breach of trust. Norman vehemently denied he was the source of the leak, and hired one of the best lawyers in Canada, Marie Heinen (who, full disclosure, this writer’s firm has worked with in the past).

That’s when things got interesting.

Back in February, during the pre-trial legal skirmishing over documents Trudeau’s staff were covering up, a shocking revelation came to light. Norman’s lawyers alleged that prosecutors had been talking trial strategy with Trudeau’s personal bureaucrats in the Privy Council Office (PCO).

That’s a big no-no. As in the LavScam case, criminal prosecutions must always be independent of politics. If the likes of Trudeau can use the criminal justice system to reward friends (like SNC-Lavalin) and punish enemies (like Norman), we will have fully become a totalitarian regime. We are no longer a true democracy.

“By all appearances,” one of Norman’s lawyers told the trial judge in February, “this is a more direct influencing of the prosecution … the Prime Minister’s Office, via its right arm the PCO, is dealing directly with the PPSC (Public Prosecution Service of Canada). And the prosecution service is allowing this to happen.”

The presiding judge was not impressed. “So much for the independence of the PPSC,” declared Judge Heather Perkins-McVey.

And, it was at that moment that many of us knew that Norman’s trial — scheduled for August, just weeks before the election writs were going to drop — was never going to happen. In open court, a senior judge had taken note of political interference by Trudeau’s PMO and PCO. And, at that point, for Trudeau and his winged monkeys, it became crucial that the trial never be allowed to happen.

And, now it won’t. As Christie Blatchford revealed in a Postmedia scoop, the Trudeau government abruptly decided to suddenly drop the prosecution of Norman. On Wednesday, they stayed the charges.

After LavScam — and after the attempted show trial of Norman — we can now be left with only one conclusion:

This is the most corrupt federal government in Canada’s history.

And they must — must — be defeated.


Comments (27)

Pray for Justin’s Jeremy

— 05.07.2019 06:09 AM

Pause, for a moment, to say a prayer for Jeremy Broadhurst.

A few days ago, Broadhurst was named the campaign director for the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2019 re-election effort. He was not the first choice.

The first choice was Katie Telford, Trudeau’s Chief of Staff. The 2019 plan was for Telford to reprise her 2015 campaign role, with principal secretary Gerald Butts riding on the campaign plane with Justin Trudeau. Telford would again oversee the campaign back in Ottawa, and Butts would be on the road, hectoring journalists on Twitter and explaining big words to the Liberal leader.

Then, LavScam hit. Obstructions of justice, breaches of trust, plummeting popularity, resignations aplenty.

It remains an enduring mystery why Gerald Butts was the one to resign, and Katie Telford wasn’t. By Jody Wilson-Raybould’s own admission, Butts was the prime ministerial factotum she spoke to the most. He was the one she liked and trusted. His only sin, according to the incomplete evidentiary record, was to acknowledge the reality of what was going on.

There was no solution to the SNC-Lavalin matter “that does not involve some interference,” Butts blandly informed Wilson-Raybould’s Chief of Staff at a now-infamous December 18, 2018 meeting. It was Telford, however, who was far more direct.

“We don’t want to debate legalities anymore,” Telford said to the Attorney-General’s shocked Chief. “Legalities,” here, refers to “the law,” “the Rule of Law” and “the criminal justice system.” In effect, the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Canada said that the law didn’t matter, and – allegedly – that it could be bent, if not broken.

How Katie Telford could survive that, and Gerald Butts could not, is mystifying. We will need to wait for Prime Minister Andrew Scheer to relieve Jody Wilson-Raybould of solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality, one supposes.

But we digress. Jeremy Broadhurst, as is his wont, has stepped up to the proverbial plate. Or, in this case, the chopping block. His dedication to the Liberal cause is so complete, one is moved to wonder if he has the party logo tattooed on one of his body parts.

He’s a lifer, Broadhurst is. Attended one of the better law schools in Canada (U of T), was an associate at one of the better law firms (Davies Ward Phillips), and then…he gave it all up and moved to Ottawa.

He has served every permanent and interim Liberal Party leader for the past decade-and-a-half, which is testament to his fealty, if not necessarily his sanity. Mostly, he’s laboured on the policy side of the campaign divide, but he did act as Telford’s second-in-command during the successful 2015 election effort.

His most-senior post – before he was invited to breathe the rarefied air of PMO in 2015 – was to act as the lead guy on “Parliamentary strategies and tactics” after Michael Ignatieff fired everyone he knew, and hired a bunch of people he didn’t. Ignatieff – and, by extension, Broadhurst and others – then giddily piloted the Liberal Party of Canada into the ditch in 2011, leading to its worst electoral result in its history. Third place, 34 MPs. Ignatieff spoke glowingly of Broadhurst in the book he wrote afterwards, the one that confirmed that he was, in fact, just visiting.

Prior to Ignatieff’s OLO bloodletting, this writer met Jeremy Broadhurst. He was an enigma to me. Unlike every other Liberal I knew, Broadhurst had declined to choose sides in the leadership wars that had beset the Liberal Party for most of two decades. Personally, I had always subscribed to Graham Greene’s view: in order to remain human, one must choose sides. Broadhurst didn’t.

At meetings in the panelled confines of room 409-S, Broadhurst would therefore sit alongside all the senior MPs and senior staffers and this is what he would say:

Nothing.

After quite a bit of this, I came to understand how Jeremy Broadhurst had survived so long. He didn’t take anything that resembled a clear position. He didn’t take clear positions at all, really.

Is that the sort of fellow you want running your election campaign, when just one recent poll pegs you at 13 points behind the aforementioned Andrew Scheer? Someone who doesn’t have a theory of the case to prosecute?

The winningest Liberal campaign managers were John Rae and Keith Davey, for Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau, respectively. Both men ran the same sort of campaigns: let Chretien be Chretien, let Trudeau be Trudeau. Ruthlessly hammer your opponent, and always talk about your issues – not the other guy’s issues.

Jeremey Broadhurst can’t do any of that. In particular, he can’t let Justin be Justin – because, as Maclean’s famously put it on a recent cover, Justin is “The Imposter.” He has no core beliefs or persona. He’s truly what he always was: an actor.

Say a prayer, then, for Jeremy Broadhurst. His devotion to the Liberal Party cannot be questioned.

His judgment, this year, can be.


Comments (11)

My latest: Trudeau, Liberals, and the inevitable sinking ship metaphor

— 05.04.2019 05:25 PM

Cue the soundtrack from Titanic.

Once upon a time, Andrew Leslie was a star Liberal Party candidate. A decorated former commander of the Canadian Armed Forces, Leslie was hailed by Justin Trudeau as proof the Liberals were pro-military.

Way back in 2013, when Trudeau named the 35-year veteran to an advisory committee on international affairs, he said as much.

Having Leslie around showed “a tremendous amount of support and pride for our Canadian Forces,” Trudeau said.

Well, that was then, this is now.

Lots of people thought Leslie was a shoo-in for a senior cabinet post. But it was not to be. Trudeau made Leslie whip, which is the Parliamentary equivalent of a hall monitor. But he never bestowed on Leslie a senior cabinet minister post.

Now we may have learned why.

On Friday, CTV revealed that Leslie is readying to testify in the sensational trial of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman — and against the Trudeau government, no less.

The shocking revelation is bad, bad news for the Trudeau regime. But it’s good news for those of us who still believe in the Rule of Law. And it certainly suggests that Andrew Leslie deserved to be a minister.

Adam Vaughan probably felt he deserved one, too. The former Toronto city councillor was recruited by Trudeau with great fanfare back in 2014. It was a big deal.

Trudeau’s factotums even leaked news of Vaughan’s candidacy to the Toronto Star, which dutifully ran it on the front page like it was a moon landing.

“Adam Vaughan’s decision to seek the Liberal nomination in the Trinity-Spadina by-election was sealed with a handshake over lunch at Le Select Bistro!” the Star gushed. “There’s no question (recruiting Vaughan) is a coup for Justin Trudeau!”

After reading that, Adam Vaughan could be forgiven for thinking he was destined for ministerial limousines and a “P.C.” appended to his surname. But, like Andrew Leslie, it was not to be.

The closest Vaughan ever got to the big leagues was “Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs.” Which, as we say back home in Calgary, is a title that is all hat but no cattle. It’s the square root of diddly.

Bill Blair too. Recruited with fanfare by Trudeau and his fart-catchers, then dropped into the anonymity of the Liberal backbench for years.

A former Toronto Police chief, Blair achieved distinction for overseeing the largest abridgement of civil rights in modern Canadian history, during the G20 summit in 2010. Trudeau — whose family had hands-on experience with abridging civil rights, too — was unperturbed.

“Mr. Blair was a first responder for over 39 years and having him by my side…emphasizes how seriously we take the responsibility of service in this party,” Trudeau said.

And, then, poof! Bill Blair disappeared.

Along with Leslie, other Liberal MPs are disappearing, too. At the moment, a total of 18 ridings won’t have an incumbent Liberal on the ballot in the Fall.

Scott Brison, whose sudden resignation gave Trudeau the pretext to jettison Jody Wilson-Raybould, has decided to spend more time with his family back in Nova Scotia. Same with Bill Casey, Mark Eyking, Colin Fraser and Rodger Cuzner — all Nova Scotia Liberal MPs, all choosing discretion over valour.

Thunder Bay Liberal MP Don Rusnak. Newmarket’s Kyle Peterson. Quebec’s invisible Grit MP, Nicola Di Iorio. The fearless and principled Celina Caesar-Chavannes, who was rightly disgusted by Trudeau’s grubby efforts to secure a sweetheart deal for SNC-Lavalin in court. She’s leaving, too.

Oh, and Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott — the two ministers who resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet because they could no longer abide the corruption and cronyism. And who were later kicked out of caucus by Trudeau for telling the truth to power. Liberals no more.

Trudeau’s spinners, naturally, are all insisting the departures are natural and normal.

The rest of us, meanwhile, can be forgiven for wondering whether the S.S. Trudeau is cruising towards the proverbial iceberg.

And whether those 18 Liberal MPs have decided, wisely, to abandon ship.


Comments (25)

Joe and Justin: one’s a winner, one isn’t

— 04.30.2019 06:34 AM

Joe and Justin?

There’s a connection. Stay with me, here.

In 2015 and 2016, I proudly volunteered for Hillary Clinton in two states, and at her Brooklyn headquarters. I’m going to be proudly volunteering for Joe Biden in 2019 and (if he’s the nominee) in 2020.

The reasons are threefold, and all of them – coincidentally – are quite relevant to Justin Trudeau’s political predicament in 2019.

One, we know why Joe Biden is running again. With Justin Trudeau, we don’t.

Joe commenced his campaign in a comparatively low-key way: he released a video on YouTube. He said he’s running to beat Donald Trump, because he’s the only candidate who can. Successive polls have shown that Americans know who Joe is, they like who he is, and they like him way more than Trump. He’s competitive with multiple demographics: African-Americans, older Democrats, Independents, the true working class.

Biden has what the advertising guys call a USP – a Unique Selling Proposition. That is, he can say things that his 19 Democratic competitors can’t. Experienced, likeable, scandal-free, Hell Of A Guy.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, no longer has a USP. In 2015, he was the self-proclaimed feminist. He isn’t any more. Gropegate – and his expulsion of Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes, coupled with his nauseating decision to keep a sexual harasser like Kent Hehr in his caucus – have obliterated his “feminist” credentials.

In 2015, he was the Indigenous reconciliation guy. No longer. He demeaned and defamed Wilson-Raybould, the most prominent Indigenous leader in our collective lifetimes. And, as the former Attorney-General pointed out in a widely-reported speech last week, Trudeau’s government “has fallen back into a pattern of trying to manage the problem.” And the problem is colonialism.

And Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau was the guy who promised to bring back ethics to government. He said he’d be open and transparent and not at all like the secretive and autocratic Stephen Harper. But the seamy, sordid LavScam scandal – which saw Trudeau and his minions pressuring Wilson-Raybould dozens of times to give help a corrupt Quebec company avoid a richly-deserved prosecution – has laid waste to the Liberal leader’s claim to the moral high ground.

What, now, is Justin Trudeau’s USP? Unlike Joe Biden, Trudeau has lost the narrative. He is unlikely to acquire a new one in the dwindling number of weeks that remain between now and the election.

Two: Joe Biden has what it takes to win, because he never forgot his roots. He never stopped boasting about his hardscrabble Scranton, Pa. youth. He grew up in a big Irish Catholic family in Scranton – in a crowded apartment – and the Bidens were forced to move to Delaware when Joe was ten, where his father secured a job as a used car salesman. He got into law school only because he got a scholarship. He participated in anti-segregation sit-ins. He struggled for everything he got.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, is the guy who likes to talk a lot about the middle class – but has never, ever experienced the middle class. Trudeau has never had to worry about paying the rent, or the next mortgage statement. He has never wondered where he’ll get the money to pay a hydro bill. He has never wanted for anything. His life has been one of mansions, private jets, and hanging out with celebrities.

Against Andrew Scheer – who, like Biden, grew up in a big immigrant Catholic family, and whose family didn’t have any wealth – Trudeau will likely appear privileged and out-of-touch. Scheer worked as a waiter and a salesman. Trudeau, meanwhile, wears a $15,000 IWC Portuguese Regulateur watch and drives a Mercedes-Benz 300SL. (Which, apparently, can sell for as much as $5 million.)

Third and final reason: traditional assumptions about politics are long gone.

You’re not guaranteed a second term anymore. You’re not going to win simply because your candidate is more charismatic and more photogenic. You don’t win if you have the slickest social media.

If the 2016 presidential race taught me anything else, it’s this: everything in politics is different, now. Hillary had the best-organized, best-funded, best-staffed, best-led campaign I have ever been part of. But it didn’t matter: we still lost.

Politics has been upended, everywhere. So, traditional assumptions about campaigns – whether Joe is too old, too politically-incorrect, too centrist – are kind of irrelevant, now. Trump showed that.

Running the 2016 campaign again will get Democrats another 2016 result, and Biden knows it. He will therefore be at the centre of a decidedly un-Hillary-like campaign.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, is still fighting the last war. He’s using against Andrew Scheer the same stuff he used against Stephen Harper: that Scheer is mean and a neo-Nazi and has a hidden agenda. While he’s the middle class, feminist, ethical paragon. Blah blah blah.

As the Canadian and American national races edge ever-closer, we all know who Joe Biden is, and what he wants to do.

With Justin Trudeau, we just don’t.


Comments (23)

100 days of #LavScam: Trudeau has defeated himself

— 04.29.2019 06:36 AM

One hundred days.

 

A lot can happen in 100 days.  Because, per the saying, a week can be a lifetime in politics.

 

One hundred or so days ago, Justin Trudeau fired Jody Wilson-Raybould.  One hundred days ago, the Liberal leader – the one who claimed to be feminist, the one who declared himself the champion of indigenous causes, and the ethical epitome – terminated Wilson-Raybould because she refused to do what he wanted her to.

 

Because she – a proud, smart, courageous indigenous woman – refused to interfere in the criminal prosecution of a sleazy Quebec company facing innumerable corruption charges.  Because she had the guts and the principles to say “no” to a bunch of men who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

 

In the 100 days that have gone by since January 14, 2019, everything has changed.  The guaranteed second Trudeau majority?  Gone.  Polls now say Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are ahead – or way ahead.  Trudeau, meanwhile, is viscerally disliked pretty much everywhere outside of Quebec.

 

Hell, in Prince Edward Island’s just-finished election, Liberals told Trudeau to stay away, because his very name was dragging them down. The PEI Grits still finished a distant third, a rump, behind the Tories – and the Greens!

 

Out in Alberta, most observers agree that Jason Kenney won a majority – and Rachel Notley lost a majority – because the latter leader had gotten too close to Trudeau.  And because the former leader had done all he could to associate Notley with Trudeau.  (It worked.)

 

In the hundred days since Justin Trudeau politically lynched Jody Wilson-Raybould, plenty of other things have happened, too.

 

  • The Globe and Mail published a series of stories detailing Trudeau’s apparent efforts to obstruct justice to help out SBC-Lavalin.  Trudeau called the stories fake.  But all of the Globe’s stories turned out to be true.  Every word.
  • Trudeau insisted he didn’t fire Wilson-Raybould from the job she loved – from the job she was great at.  He said her continued presence in cabinet was proof.  A day later, Wilson-Raybould quit his cabinet.
  • The clowns on the Justice Committee refused to let Wilson-Raybould testify about LavScam.  After a tsunami of political blowback, they reversed themselves.  
  • But the committee’s Liberal trained seals – and Trudeau – refused to let Wilson-Raybould testify about what Trudeau said and did after that fateful cabinet shuffle.  When, sources tell me, Trudeau threatened recriminations, and promised rewards, when he spoke to his former Minister of Justice.
  • Trudeau’s best friend and principal secretary – and the Clerk of his Privy Council – are both implicated in the metastasizing LavScam scandal.  Both insisted they did nothing wrong.  But both abruptly resigned.
  • The Liberals defeated each and every Opposition attempt to get the truth.  At the Ethics Committee, in the Justice Committee, in the House of Commons: in vote after vote, the panicked Grits continued to coverup.  They continued to stonewall.
  • PMO trotted out obscure Liberal backbenchers and banshees to defame and demean Jody Wilson-Raybould and her ally, Jane Philpott – who had resigned cabinet because she could no longer go along with the Trudeaupian sleaze.  One PMO attack poodle, Sheila Copps, actually calls Wilson-Raybould and Philpott pus-filled “boils.”

 

And on, and on. A hundred days later – a hundred days after he made the insane decision to martyr Jody Wilson-Raybould – pollsters say Justin Trudeau is heading towards inevitable defeat.

 

Of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott?  The other parties are trying convince the pair to run for them.

 

Jody, polls say, is believed and supported by the vast majority of Canadians.  

 

And, one hundred fateful days later, Justin just isn’t.

 


Comments (6)

How Trudeau elected Kenney

— 04.23.2019 06:42 AM

Last month, I was back home in Calgary to teach at the law school. So, I got together with a couple high school buddies – one a lawyer, one an engineer – at Michael’s on Tenth Avenue. (Michael’s has the best pizza in Canada, by the way. Hands down.)

We got to talking about the coming Alberta election, and what was going to happen. Some people at neighbouring tables chimed in. (Calgary’s like that.)

Here’s a summary of what I was told:

• they all respected Rachel Notley but disliked her party
• they didn’t really like Jason Kenney but figured they’d vote for his party
• they thought the rest of Canada didn’t give a shit about them
• they deeply hated Justin Trudeau

And when I say “deeply,” I mean deeply. One of my fellow Michael’s fans even suggested that it would be a bad idea for Trudeau to travel to Alberta. Because he might be placed at physical risk.

Seriously.

The conversation continued. My lawyer buddy, who works at a major construction and engineering firm, was unhappy about Trudeau’s slavish devotion to the fortunes of the oily Quebec-based construction and engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin. He looked at me.

“You know, Winkie,” he said, using the nickname my Calgary pals gave to me way back when, “My firm had to lay off more than a thousand guys last year. No one back East noticed. No one. If that had happened to SNC-Lavalin, it would’ve been all you’d hear about.”

He was right, of course. Albertans are right: if something bad happens in the Centre of the Universe, in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto axis, the whole country hears about it for weeks. But if hundreds of families lose their livelihood in Calgary, nobody in Ontario gives a shit, basically. Certainly not Justin Trudeau, who has repeatedly claimed to support Alberta – and then repeatedly done precisely nothing to help Alberta get oil to market.

I later tweeted what my friend said about those layoffs, and Ontario and Quebec’s total indifference to same. Jason Kenney was one of the many who retweeted what I said. It struck a chord.

And that, really, is mainly why Jason Kenney swept the much-admired Rachel Notley from power. Because Justin Trudeau and his government are now more despised in Alberta than was Trudeau’s father’s government, way back during the nadir of the National Energy Program. And Notley is seen, in Alberta, as having letting Trudeau get away with murder. The murder of Alberta’s economy.

Other factors were at play in last Tuesday’s night vote, of course. In politics, there always are. Jason Kenney brought together the warring factions of the Right, and avoided the vote-splits that helped Notley’s Crüe sweep to power four years ago. And, while the NDP leader was herself admired, her caucus generally was not. Notley had a Safeway employee, a yoga instructor and a bunch of twenty-somethings. Few had real political experience.

In 2015, Notley’s Progressive Conservative opponents also ran one of the worst campaigns in modern Alberta history. Nationally, the NDP was polling respectably in 2014. And Notley’s family was (and is) admired in Alberta. Her Dad was a much-loved former MLA who died tragically in a plane crash in 1984.

But, mostly, Rachel Notley lost because of Justin Trudeau. She trusted him, as did other Albertans. And she shouldn’t have. His early promises to Alberta were deceptions. They were intended to win him seats – but Trudeau clearly never had any intention of helping Alberta families survive.

My engineer buddy, who has had to lay off dozens of engineers, and take whatever work he can get, nods grimly at all this. He was born in Montreal, grew up in Manitoba and Alberta, and was always a Liberal. No more.

“He’s a liar,” my friends says, holding a glass of the best local stuff, Trad. “He’s a goddamn liar. He’s way more hated than his father ever was, in Alberta. And Notley is the one who is going to wear it.”

That was unfortunate, my engineering pal said, because he regarded Rachel Notley as “decent, smart and principled.” Many people in Alberta admired the NDP Premier, he said.

“But she was unlucky. She won when the bottom was falling out,” he said. “That’s not her fault. But her alliance with Trudeau, at the start, is something people will never forgive.”

And they didn’t. Once again, anything with the “Liberal” brand is anathema in Alberta, thanks to Justin Trudeau. On election night, the Alberta Liberal leader – a smart, hard-working constitutional lawyer, David Khan – was creamed, finishing a distant fourth in Calgary MountainView. His party was wiped out across the province, not winning a single seat.

Justin Trudeau may not have been on the ballot in Alberta, but he surely helped determine the result, more than any other Canadian politician. He helped elect Jason Kenney and defeat Rachel Notley. He did that.

My engineering buddy looked at me.

“Alberta hates Justin Trudeau,” he says. “And we are going to teach him a lesson in October.”


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