Tag Archive: SNC-Lavalin

Failure-ology

— 03.06.2020 08:23 AM

Why did Justin Trudeau lose a million votes in the 2019 election? Why did he lose his majority? Why did he lose his standing in the world, and with Canadians?

Because of LavScam.  Because of the Aga Khan, and unbalanced budgets, and no electoral reform, and serial scandals.  Because of things he did personally, too: Aga Khan, LavScam, and Gropegate, and elbowing a female MP, and blackface, and the unrelenting solipsism and conceits.

All that.  But it has been the arrogance of Trudeau and his cabal, too.  Konrad Yakabuski writes up an indictment about that, here.  Highlights below.

One of the great ironies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is that it has proved so ineffective in the one area where it so emphatically promised to outdo its predecessors.

It was always presumptuous on the part of Mr. Trudeau and his former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, to suggest they would run a more effective government than any of those that came before them. But by dropping the ball so spectacularly on so many key files, Mr. Trudeau’s Prime Minister’s Office set itself up for the failure that has now befallen it.

…The Trudeau PMO has never seemed clear on its own priorities. So how could it expect the senior bureaucracy to be clear on them? At both the micro-policy level (electoral reform, balancing the budget by 2019) and macro-policy level (reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, supporting economic growth while fighting climate change), the Trudeau government has continually sent mixed signals to the bureaucracy about how seriously it takes its own promises.

When it has sprung into action, the Trudeau PMO has typically made a mess of it. The SNC-Lavalin affair, which started out with a straightforward move to bring Canadian law on deferred prosecution agreements in line with that of other developed countries, nearly destroyed Mr. Trudeau’s government all because the PMO failed to abide by its own deliverology credo.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the Trudeau government’s most notable successes – the implementation of the Canada Child Benefit and medical aid in dying, and the negotiation of new health-care funding agreements with the provinces – were overseen by low-key ministers who kept their eyes on the ball rather than their Twitter feeds. Social Development Minister Jean- Yves Duclos and Jane Philpott, Mr. Trudeau’s first health minister, were focused on results, not retweets.

Overall, however, execution has proved to be the Achilles heel of this government. It has proved inept at buying fighter planes or fixing the Phoenix pay system. It promised a bigger role for Canada in global affairs but has earned a reputation abroad for being fickle and stingy. The Canada Infrastructure Bank extends its record for overpromising and underdelivering.

Indeed, the scariest words in Canadian English may have become: “I’m from the Trudeau government, and I’m here to help.”

 


Comments (46)

The system works

— 12.18.2019 08:03 PM

It does.

This is a massive fine. This is a guilty plea to a serious crime.

This is justice.

If only they had listened to Jody Wilson-Raybould, they’d still have the Clerk of the Privy Council. They’d still have the Principal Secretary.

They’d still have a majority.

All of that could have been avoided – if they had resisted the temptation to obstruct justice. To interfere with prosecutorial independence.

Our system works. The Rule of Law is the best and only way.

This is vindication for Jody. This is a serious sentence for the company. And it is a valuable lesson for Trudeau et al.

Will they learn it? Who knows.

But I do know this: those 6,000 jobs Trudeau said over and over would be lost?

Not one will be.

And, tonight, SNC’s stock is way up.


Comments (21)

#LavScam latest: former SNC exec found guilty

— 12.15.2019 10:47 AM

Among other things, this verdict suggests some of us (Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott in particular) were right when we said that crimes had indeed taken place – and that no politicians should be interfering in the resulting trials.

I wonder what they’re thinking in PMO right now? Do they ever say: “Hey, maybe we were wrong to do what we did.”

Kind of doubt it.

Former SNC-Lavalin executive vice-president Sami Bebawi has been found guilty on all counts at his fraud and corruption trial.

He will remain free until sentencing.

Bebawi, 73, was on trial over the last six weeks at the Montreal courthouse. The jury had been deliberating since Thursday.

Serving as the firm’s executive vice-president from 2000 to 2006, Bebawi faced five charges in all: fraud, bribing a foreign public official — former dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Saadi Gadhafi — laundering the proceeds of crime, and two counts of possessing property obtained by crime.

Throughout the trial, the Crown positioned Bebawi as the man behind what it described as SNC-Lavalin’s “business model” in Libya: paying millions in kickbacks and bribes to keep obtaining lucrative contracts.

“The company adopted an unusual, unlawful and dishonest practice,” Crown prosecutor Anne-Marie Manoukian told jurors in her closing arguments, “by artificially inflating the prices of contracts, paying bribes and misappropriating money for personal gain.”


Comments (34)

My latest: Trump trumps Trudeau, and why

— 10.17.2019 09:36 AM

Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump.

Say it aloud, so that those still considering voting for Trudeau can hear you.

Because, you know, Donald Trump. The most sexist, most racist, most dishonest US president is more highly regarded than the Canadian Prime Minister. That’s hard to do, but Justin Trudeau has done it.

As far back as March, Trump was doing better than Trudeau. In that month, Ipsos found Trump’s approval rating was 43 per cent. Trudeau’s was 40.

In August, it got even worse. Zogby Analytics revealed that Trump had an approval rating of 51 per cent. Trudeau was “underwater,” Zogby reported, at 43 per cent.

And Toronto Sun pollster John Wright, of DART, has analyzed the data, and come up with the same conclusion as the others. “Trudeau’s personal approval numbers are below Trump’s,” says Wright. “So more selfies won’t help.”

And therein lies the rub. Wright has put his finger on the zeitgeist: this election isn’t remotely about issues. It’s a referendum on Justin Trudeau. And he’s been losing it.

What went wrong? How is Justin Trudeau – once the darling of international media, the beneficiary of Trudeaumania II, and the guy who propelled his party from a Parliamentary third place to first – now facing what HuffPo’s Althia Raj, no less, has declared the “possibility he won’t be Prime Minister much longer.” How did that happen?

Three reasons. The first: he over-promised and under-delivered.

Trudeau did that a lot. On electoral reform, on balanced budgets, on ethical reform, on being the feminist champion and the Indigenous reconciler: in every case, he promised the Earth but delivered only dust.

Trudeau’s true legacy is seen in the LavScam scandal, where he obliterated his credentials as the ethical paragon and liberator of women and Indigenous peoples. There, he cravenly tried to rescue a Quebec-based Liberal Party donor facing a corruption trial – and, along the way, revealed himself more than willing to brutalize two women, one Indigenous, who bravely stood up for the Rule of Law.

Second reason: he thinks he’s far more charming and entertaining than he actually is.

Some time ago, a member of Trudeau’s insular inner circle told this writer that one of their biggest problems was Trudeau’s unshakeable belief that he is funny. “He thinks he’s a comedian,” said this man. “He isn’t.”

Thus, making blackface his go-to party favour. Thus, his puerile penchant for dress-up, even when it humiliates Canadians, as in the infamous Griswolds-style Indian vacation. Thus, his utterly bizarre penchant for making jokes – remember “peoplekind?” – that aren’t merely jokes. They’re jokes that render him one.

Recently, this writer was told by a very senior Grit that Trudeau referred to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh as “Marge Simpson” – presumably a reference to Singh’s turban. (A Liberal campaign spokesman declined to comment about the allegation; an NDP war room member said they were aware of the “joke.”)

Why, why would Trudeau say such a thing? “Because he thought it was funny,” said this Parliamentarian.

The third and final reason that Justin Trudeau is less popular than Donald Trump is neatly, and expertly, mirrored in the Conservative Party’s shrewd attack ad slogan: “Justin Trudeau. Not as advertised.”

That pithy catchphrase, more than anything else, is why Trudeau is plumbing the polling depths, even more than Trump. Canadians have grown to believe that the former drama teacher is, indeed, just an actor.

Donald Trump, as detestable as he is to so many, is at least truthful about who he is. He doesn’t hide it.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, wears blackface to parties.

Because he’s never as comfortable as when he is wearing a mask.


Comments (29)

Why I can’t vote for Trudeau

— 10.16.2019 08:09 AM

I was Jean Chretien’s special assistant. I helped oversee his war room when he won in 1993 and 2000. I ran for the Liberals in B.C. in 1997.

And I can’t vote Liberal. I won’t. And I don’t think you should either.

Here’s why.

People vote for (or against) politicians for different reasons. In 2015, they voted for Justin Trudeau because he wasn’t Stephen Harper, who they’d grown tired of.

They voted for Trudeau because he was fresh and new and charismatic. Because he had his father’s surname. Because we (me especially) thought he’d be different.

They voted for him because he promised ethical and accountable government. They voted for him because he promised electoral reform, and balanced budgets, and harmonious relations with First Nations and the provinces and the world.

And now, many Canadians are voting against him because he didn’t do any of those things. He did the exact reverse.

He lied about balanced budgets and electoral reform. He didn’t deliver on harmony with other levels of government: First Nations and the provinces, and important international players — like China and the U.S. and India — think he’s a child.

And ethics? That didn’t work out so well, either. He’s the first sitting prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking ethics laws — in the Aga Khan and Lavscam scandals. In the latter case, the RCMP have said they are now reviewing the conduct of Trudeau’s government “carefully.” Some people may go to jail.

But for this writer — who happily voted for Liberal Nate Erskine-Smith in the Toronto Beach riding in 2015 — I can’t vote again for the Trudeau Party, which bears no resemblance to the Liberal Party of John Turner and Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. I can’t vote for it because it isn’t a political party.

It’s a cult.

It bears all the hallmarks of a cult. Slavish and unquestioning devotion to the leader. The willingness to punish and isolate critics and outsiders.

The fundamental belief that they are everything — in Trudeau’s case, that the Liberal Party is Canada, and vice versa. If you are against them, you are literally against Canada. That’s what they think.

Along with running some campaigns (winning and losing), I’ve written books about politics. Along the way, I’ve learned that people vote based on emotion, not reason.

In my case, my reasons for objecting to the Trudeau cult are deeply personal and real. I have written about, and opposed, racism for more than three decades. I am also a proud father of an indigenous girl.

How can I look my daughter in the eye and say I voted Liberal, after what Trudeau did to the female indigenous hero named Jody Wilson-Raybould? After he attacked her and exiled her for telling the truth? For saying no to a group of grasping men? For standing up for the rule of law?

I can’t do that.

How, too, can I vote for a man-boy who donned racist blackface — not once, not twice, but at least three times that we know about — and still say I fight racism? How can I claim to be against bigotry when I legitimize the bigotry of a clueless, overprivileged brat with my vote?

Politicians like to say that elections are about choices, because they are. They also are choices that are highly emotional and highly personal. Emotionally, personally, rationally, I cannot bring myself to vote for this loathsome cult.

And, with the greatest respect, I don’t know how you could either.


Comments (79)

My latest: debate? What debate?

— 10.07.2019 12:33 PM

Here’s the thing about Monday’s leader’s debate, Canada.

You won’t be watching it.

Well, let’s amend that. Sun readers are a scrappy, elbows-up lot, who dig politics and a good scrap. Sun readers are likelier to be watching the debate. They like debates.

But most everyone else? They won’t be.

Everyone else will be watching Shark Tank (which this election kind of is) or Wheel of Fortune (which this election isn’t). Or, they’ll be binge-watching old episodes of Arrested Development (which neatly describes most of our federal political leaders).

Increasingly, voters simply don’t watch leader’s debates in Canada. For example, Maclean’s magazine put together a debate in 2015, but it had fewer than 40% of the viewers who took in the 2011 English-language debate. And Maclean’s actually counted people who only watched part of that debate, not all of it.

Master Chef got way more viewers.

Last time around, there was a Globe and Mail debate, too, and it was absolutely awful to watch. YouTube later found only about 400,000 Canadians did so. That’s in a country, in 2015, with 36 million people in it. Ipsos later did a poll and found only about 20% of Canadians watched the first couple debates in 2015.

There’s been one debate in 2019 that Justin Trudeau has deigned to attend. It was entirely in French.

Around 1.2 million Quebecers allegedly took in the TVA leader’s debate, in which Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh and the separatist leader, Yves-Francois Blanchet, also participated. In a province with more than six million eligible voters, 1.2 million viewers isn’t anything to brag about, although TVA did.

Oh, and in English Canada — in English — nobody got to watch the French debate when it was happening. Because it was entirely in French. To get a sense of what happened, the vast majority of Canadians needed to check out the media after the fact (Widely-held consensus: the separatist guy won, hands down).

As someone who owns a public opinion firm — Daisy Data, at your service! — I can relate one empirical statistical fact: a dwindling number of voters watch debates from gavel to gavel. They may in take part of a debate, sure. But not all of it.

What voters do, instead, is watch the news media’s coverage of a debate. They’ll see a clip of a fiery exchange on TV, or they’ll hear a so-called defining moment on the radio heading into work, or they’ll read expert commentary in the pages of the Sun and hopefully nowhere else.

But they don’t watch all of the debate.

I’ve prepared prime ministers and premiers for debates, and I now know I did it all wrong. I assumed, as did my debate-prep colleagues, that everyone else watched the debates as closely as we did. That was a flawed assumption.

It also explains how Justin Trudeau was seen as a winner in the 2015 debates, even against two superior debaters — Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair. Trudeau’s strategy in 2015 was a lot like what he did in his celebrated boxing match with Patrick Brazeau: he waited in his corner for an opening, then he’d go in with a flurry of punches.

He didn’t try to dominate all of the matches — he just did what he needed to do to get clipped on TV, then he’d sprinkle the results all over social media.

It worked, because he knew that Canadians were more likely to see clips of a debate than all of a debate.

That’s what he’s going to do on Monday night, too. In an era of shrinking debate audiences, it works. Will the other leaders let him get away with it in 2019 like they did in 2015? Tune in and see.

Or, join everyone else, and go watch Shark Tank.

— Sun columnist Warren Kinsella will be providing debate commentary on Bell Media radio on Monday night


Comments (25)

My latest: why isn’t Andrew Scheer way ahead?

— 10.04.2019 09:48 AM

So, Andrew.

You don’t mind if I call you Andrew, do you? It’s better than what I sometimes used to call you, which was Blandy Andy.

I stopped calling you that because you figured out a way to make the bland thing work, like Brampton Bill Davis did. You embraced your inner ordinariness.

You starting hanging out in hockey rinks and you commenced rubbing Timbits all over your torso – which, unlike Prime Minister Blackface, you have never exposed to a grateful nation. You became the Canadian Everyman, and you made it work for you.

The pocketbook stuff, too. That was good, too. You and Hamish concluded, rightly, that voters regard everyone in politics as an unindicted co-conspirators, so you stopped hollering all the time that Justin is a crook. You just kept talking about how hard it is for regular folks to get by, and left the scandalmongering to the media. That was smart.

And the polls bore fruit, sort of. Ipsos says you’re ahead, and you have been for the entirety of the campaign. Nanos says you’re tied with Trudeau for best choice for Prime Minister, which is way better than you’ve been in the past.

But. But, Andrew, seriously?

Why haven’t 110 per cent of respondents declared you their favoured choice for Prime Minister? Why isn’t your party a kabillion points ahead of the Liberals? Why, Andrew, why?

Because that’s the question everyone is asking themselves, Andrew. Hell, that’s the question members of the Liberal caucus are asking themselves – many of whom had purchased political funeral insurance, and now they’re wondering if they can convert it to another kind of policy at the insurance brokerage where you used to fetch coffee and answer the phone.

By any reasonable standard, Andrew, Justin Trudeau leads the most corrupt – the most casually evil – government in Canadian history. It is shiftless; it is reckless; it is soulless. It is a mess.

And they could still win, Andrew. They could still beat you. How can this be?

A scan of Trudeau’s press clippings reads like a grand jury indictment.

• In LavScam, he obstructed justice when he tried, repeatedly, to stop the criminal corruption trial of a Québec-based donor to his party.
• He violated conflict of interest laws when he accepted freebies during a junket to the Aga Khan’s private island.
• He lied about electoral reform, and balancing the budget, and improving relations with the provinces and the world.
• He made us an international laughingstock with his Griswolds Vacation India trip, and enraged the world’s largest democracy – our ally and Commonwealth partner.
• And, most recently, he admitted he repeatedly mocked black people by wearing blackface and jumping around like an ape – and he admitted that there’s more of it out there in the ether, but he doesn’t know how much, because he was wasted a lot of the time.

After all that, Andrew – after all that scandal, more of which this newspaper has been investigating for weeks, stay tuned to this bat-channel, everyone – why aren’t you way ahead? Why aren’t you creaming Chewbacca Socks?

Why, to cite just two examples from the past 24 hours, did you attract fewer people at a Brampton rally than Justin Trudeau’s Portuguese Water Dog, Kenzie, gets during a stroll through the park?

Why can’t you put an end to the interminable questions about your CV, and simply joke that you’re so boring, you’re the only guy in Canada who brags about being an insurance broker?

None of it makes sense, Andrew. None of it. You should be playing Fortnite with Hamish about now, getting ready to move into wherever we put Prime Ministers these days.

Instead, you’re fighting to get a decent lead. Instead, your caucus are whispering about the next leader.

It’s crazy, Andrew. But one thing isn’t crazy at all:

You’ve got three weeks left to win this thing.

And if you don’t, you’ll forever be remembered as the guy who couldn’t beat Prime Minister Blackface.


Comments (63)

Trump and Trudeau: brothers of another mother

— 09.27.2019 06:44 AM

Trump and Trudeau: They’re not that different, really.

Sons of millionaires. Never had to worry about a hydro bill, never needed to fret about a mortgage payment. Never experienced the pocketbook terror that is everyday existence for lesser mortals.

Bodyguards, maids, chauffeurs, private jets: These were the emblems of the lives that Trudeau and Trump led and lead. They breathed the same rarefied air as other millionaires and billionaires. They got invited to all the right parties. We in the media hung on their every utterance, stupidly believing that being born rich renders someone worth listening to.

No military service for either. No involvement in government before they both somehow seized the top job. No known ideas or policies. But models, yes. Lots.

And famous. Trump became famous for The Apprentice, and for his expert manipulation of New York City’s viciously competitive media. He’s the assignment editor for all journalists, and he bragged about it in his various ghosted books. Said he in The Art of the Deal: “Most reporters, I find, have very little interest in exploring the substance of a detailed proposal for a development. They look instead for the sensational angle.”

Trudeau gets that, too. He became famous because of the sensational eulogy he gave to his father — the one that his pal, Gerald Butts, told everyone that he wrote — and he became even more famous when he sensationally beat up an indigenous man.

He actually bragged about that. Trudeau actually crowed that he consciously targeted an indigenous man for a public beating. Said Trudeau to Rolling Stone: “I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy, tough-guy senator from an indigenous community. He fit the bill. I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.”

So: Rich, privileged, famous. There’s a reason why Trump and Trudeau have mostly gotten along so well: They both are charter members of the lucky sperm club.

But there is one characteristic that they share above all others. There is one thing, in government and out, that makes them brothers of another mother.

They believe the rules don’t apply to them.

This week, Trump reminded us of that. This week, we learned that he really, truly had called the newly minted president of Ukraine, and requested, seven times, that Ukraine investigate a U.S. citizen, one Joe Biden. Conservatives may not regard that as a “high crime,” but it sure as hell is at least a “misdemeanour” — and, therefore, an impeachable offence.

And how did we get the evidence that Democrats are now relying upon to impeach Trump? Well, they got it from Trump himself. He provided his political executioners with the rope they needed to fashion a noose.

Because he doesn’t think the law should apply to him.

Ditto Trudeau. He can brag about beating up someone who is indigenous (Patrick Brazeau), he can try and destroy an indigenous woman who refused to break the law for him (Jody Wilson-Raybould), he can wear racist blackface to mock others (black Canadians) — and then brazenly claim he isn’t racist.

(Oh, and he and his cabal can come up with a racist name for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, too. More on that in my next column.)

Trudeau can do all those racist things, and then insist he believes in tolerance and diversity. Which is standard operating procedure for someone who believes the rules don’t apply to him.

Only one thing differentiates the two leaders right now: Donald Trump is facing impeachment for his sins, and Justin Trudeau isn’t.

Shame, that.


Comments (34)