There was no sunlight, Canadians are still left in the dark
Thanks to the prime minister’s chief of staff we now know that Justin Trudeau reads everything that is put in front of him. What is put in front of him and when, who wrote it, what it contains, and what did he do with the information remains a mystery.
After Liberal MPs wasted days to save her from a Commons committee appearance, Justin Trudeau’s office brain finally showed up Friday for a much-anticipated inquisition over foreign interference in Canadian elections.
It was a spectacular fizzle in terms of fresh revelations, which is precisely how Trudeau chief of staff Katie Telford wanted it as she set out to smother her testimony with a national security blanket.
This is big, La Presse report is saying PMO's claims of wall between PMJT and the Trudeau Foundation, are unraveling. So if it is now confirmed this is a CCP donation, lots of implications. https://t.co/D4ewDPzGoY pic.twitter.com/SvbhThXJcM
— Sam Cooper (@scoopercooper) April 14, 2023
Katie Telford wanted to be very clear, she could neither confirm nor deny any allegations about China’s election interference.
Telford, chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau since he was first elected in 2015, was testifying before a Commons committee on Friday.
When the CEO and the entire board of directors of the Trudeau Foundation resigned en masse this week, they issued a statement blaming the “political climate” surrounding a donation that it now appears was connected to the Chinese government. It was all to do with “the politicization of the foundation,” they said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added to that narrative the same day. After making clear he’s had nothing to do for the past 10 years with the foundation created to honour his father, the PM declared “it is a shame to see the level of toxicity and political polarization that is going on in our country these days.”
That, as they say, did not age well …
Katie Telford refuses to answer a question on whether Global News’ reporting on foreign interference is accurate. pic.twitter.com/EXHaaM1sAI
— The Real Andy Lee Show (@RealAndyLeeShow) April 14, 2023
Twitter “Katie Telford”
The former Liberal cabinet minister who oversaw the creation of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation claims Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is engaging in “ignorant, irresponsible and highly partisan” attacks.
Poilievre called for an investigation into the foundation earlier this week, posting on Twitter about a need to know who “got rich” as a result of donations to the foundation, as well as “who got paid and who got privilege.”
Allan Rock created the corrupt Trudeau Foundation with $125M of our taxdollars. https://t.co/DcELlBzX62
— Dean Skoreyko (@bcbluecon) April 14, 2023
The federal government’s efforts to further restrict the purchase and ownership of firearms could push domestic extremists to launch a terror attack, according to an internal government document.
The report was prepared last October by the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), the federal agency that assesses terrorism threats based on classified and open-source information.
Ahead of Friday testimony from his chief of staff on foreign election interference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he and Katie Telford have talked about the issue “many” times over the years.
“The conversations I have with my chief of staff, and with my entire government, and with our defence and security experts, are ongoing,” Trudeau told reporters on Thursday. “We have been talking about foreign interference for years.”
A businessman whose reported donations to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation led to the resignation of its CEO is the president of a Chinese cultural organization that says it operates under the authority of the communist government.
Probably some of our readers are chuckling this week at the chaos that has broken out on Twitter over the correct verification labels for various public broadcasters. A couple of days ago, Elon Musk, the owner and CEO of the social media site, made an appearance on BBC television and was challenged on Twitter’s decision to give the BBC’s main account a “government-funded media” label. The “government-funded” tag isn’t meant to be purely a criticism or warning: in Twitter’s scheme of tags, a media company or news agency that is directly government-controlled and used to promote a country’s foreign policy would attract a different “state-affiliated” label.
Canadian polls show young adults are drifting away from the federal Liberal party. It seems they’re slowly figuring out that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite his sympathetic rhetoric, is working against their dream of buying a first home.
While it’s taken a while for young and old to realize it, top bankers, retired civil servants, housing analysts, former property developers and housing activists are now declaring the Liberals are directly causing house-price inflation.
The retired head of B.C.’s civil service, Don Wright, recently wrote a piece titled, “Will Trudeau make it impossible for Eby to succeed?”
It explained how B.C.’s effort to reduce housing prices and build affordable dwellings “will be largely hostage to the federal government’s immigration policy.”
Wright, an economist, said Trudeau’s government routinely raises the “almost entirely fallacious” argument that Canada has a labour shortage to justify welcoming a record 438,000 new permanent residents in 2022, while adding another 680,000 non-permanent residents, including foreign students and other guest workers.
Surely, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now realizes that his self-appointed “special rapporteur” and life-long friend, David Johnston, isn’t going to solve his problems when Johnston advises him by May 23 whether he should hold a public inquiry into alleged interference by Beijing in the last two federal elections.
The Trudeau Liberals are as committed as ever to the shameless argument that the scandal is not Chinese interference into Canadian affairs, but the fact that China’s meddling was revealed to the public. It is a tactic that can’t withstand anyone looking too closely, or facts getting in the way, as was the case with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation this week.
The charity said Wednesday that it would conduct an investigation into a $200,000 donation allegedly made on behalf of the Chinese government in an apparent attempt at influencing Justin Trudeau. That announcement came after the CEO and the entire board of directors of the foundation resigned, and after the Liberals tried to blame “Conservative” attacks for the upheaval.
The strange death and rebirth of the Liberal Party under Trudeau
The 2011 federal election seemed to have fundamentally changed Canadian politics. And maybe it did. Just not quite in the way it was imagined.
In theory, that vote heralded the arrival of a new political era. The Liberal Party’s day was done — the broadly centrist institution that dominated Canadian politics in the 20th century was no longer fit for purpose. Canada would finally become more like its sister democracies, with a clear contest between a distinct party of the political right and a distinct party of the left. The future seemed to belong to the Conservatives and the NDP.
CBC lays it on thick to support their scandal plagued Boss.
h/t Mauser
On Sept. 29, 1972, a story appeared on the front page of The Washington Post that began as follows: “John N. Mitchell, while serving as U.S. Attorney General, personally controlled a secret Republican fund that was used to gather information about the Democrats, according to sources involved in the Watergate investigation.”
Not “allegedly.” Not “reputedly.” The story flat out accuses the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government of running a political espionage operation on the side, with the obvious implication that this might have included the Watergate break-in.
