Within the next month, Katie Telford will gain a new distinction — she will be the longest serving chief of staff to any Canadian prime minister since the position was created in the late 1970s.
It might not be how Telford would have predicted things would turn out when she first met Justin Trudeau almost 17 years ago in Toronto, but much about their working relationship has hinged on what wasn’t exactly expected.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is criticizing former governor general David Johnston for his previous membership with the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation, which has received funding from the Chinese regime in the past.
Johnston was recently appointed “independent special rapporteur” by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate Chinese interference in Canada’s elections.
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation says it will be launching an independent review of the organization’s acceptance of a donation “with a potential connection to the Chinese government.”
The foundation’s board reached this unanimous decision prior to dissolution, according to board chair Edward Johnson.
“This review will be conducted by an accounting firm instructed by a law firm, neither of which were previously involved with the Foundation,” Johnson said in a statement to CTV News.
The taxpayer-backed Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation was plunged into crisis in March, several weeks after the Globe and Mail reported that a major 2016 donation ultimately came from the Chinese state rather than a Beijing billionaire, according to an internal document obtained by La Presse.
Shortly after the Globe story broke, the foundation publicly announced it would return $140,000 to the Chinese benefactor.
Newly released documents show that a federal government department asked Facebook and Twitter to delete a newspaper article that it felt contained errors — but both social-media giants denied the request.
The request to remove social-media posts that linked to an unspecified Toronto Sun article came from a director of communications at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on Sept. 27, 2021.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and three western premiers are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to disassociate his government from comments made by his justice minister — who promised last week to “look at” a decades-old law that gives control over natural resources to the four western provinces.
“The federal government cannot unilaterally change the Constitution,” the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba said in a joint statement Tuesday. “It should not even be considering stripping resource rights away from the three Prairie provinces.
This government needs to be gone.
Justin Trudeau insisted to reporters on Tuesday that he has “absolutely no intersection” with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the non-profit organization that funds humanities research.
But the foundation has found that Mr. Trudeau’s politics keep intersecting with it. Over and over.
Trudeau is an habitual liar, dishonest to his core.
Trudeau addresses the resignation of the Board of Directors of the Trudeau Foundation. https://t.co/Jl61yVHAeK pic.twitter.com/RkN7iuwOrg
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) April 11, 2023
Roh Roh!
More emerging on the upheaval at Trudeau Foundation. La Presse citing sources alleging conflict of interest and lack of transparency from Foundation members that accepted massive PRC-linked cheque, now turns out name on it doesn’t look legitimate. https://t.co/h75ACjCkyB
— Sam Cooper (@scoopercooper) April 12, 2023
Ask a Canadian why the government is increasing immigration and more often than not they will tell you: “to grow our economy.” Ask an economist and you’ll rarely get that answer.
Boosting the economic well-being of a population is indeed a worthwhile objective of immigration, but that requires more than simply making the economy bigger.
India’s economy is 60 per cent bigger than Canada’s and Switzerland’s is 60 per cent smaller. Is India’s economy what we are aiming for? Making the economic pie as big as possible is clearly not the objective. What matters is the size of the average slice when the pie is divided by the population.
It’s a great policy if your goal is to treat citizens like shit. Canada’s China Class loves it.
Canada has been rocked in recent weeks by leaks indicating the government knew about Chinese meddling in recent elections. A Feb. 17 report in the Globe and Mail newspaper suggests that Beijing was actively meddling in Canada’s democracy at every level: federal, provincial and municipal. The leaks also reveal that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has responded to reports of interference with obstruction, obfuscation and only minor concessions.
Citing politicization of a 2016 donation allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese government, the board of directors for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has stepped aside.
A statement posted to the foundation’s website early Tuesday morning broke the news, saying President and CEO Pascale Fournier and the board made the decision to jointly resign.
“In recent weeks, the political climate surrounding a donation received by the foundation in 2016 has put a great deal of pressure on the foundation’s management and volunteer board of directors, as well as on our staff and our community,” read the statement.
Is Canada’s China Class starting to sweat?
h/t Clink
It has been just over one year since the Liberal-NDP coalition formed a confidence-and-supply agreement. CBC News says this agreement could be “a model for the future.”
But it’s clear this coalition has not been good for Canadians who don’t buy into a woke political agenda, including the “anti-woke left.”
… Does not Mr. Johnston see that both the ties of friendship with the family, and his heading an organization exclusively set up to honour the prime minister’s father, are at the very least cause for a perception of conflict of interest?
He knows, he just doesn’t give a shit. Not that it matters as everyone knows it’s a pointless pantomime of transparency.
The China interference story has ‘long legs, and some twists and turns.’ The Liberals should be ‘quite concerned because if the current Conservative advantage consolidates and the longer the numbers stay here, it becomes the new normal, and it will require more effort to dislodge the trend line,’ says pollster Nik Nanos.
During the Cold War, the term “Finlandization” was derogatory.
Sharing a 1,300-kilometre border with what was then the Soviet Union, Finland had to endorse (or at least not oppose) the U.S.S.R.’s foreign and military policy in order to retain some semblance of independence.
Finland wasn’t exactly a puppet state, but it wasn’t entirely free, either.
The term became a symbol of capitulation in the face of a powerful nation.
One in three Canadians say they are struggling financially due to the high cost of living, a level not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a recent survey from the Angus Reid Institute finds.
The survey of 1,600 Canadians, released on Thursday, found that 34 per cent of Canadians are in “bad” or “terrible” shape financially, up six percentage points from last July.
Read the comments in r/canadahousing I don’t recall this level of pessimism & defeat ever before in Canada.
Texted my niece this morning she lives in the Pontiac where I am from in PQ. They are still without power in her her little village from last week’s storm, lines are literally down in the street. Hydro Quebec does not consider them a priority over more populated areas.
I wonder if reader Raftsman has power he is nearby.
