CDN Election 2019
- Thread starter Ocean Breeze
- Start date
We know...................................
from hard won experience..........................
that deforestation leads to increased rainwater run off and flooding..................................
We know that erecting lots of buildings....................................
limits the ability of rain water to sink into the ground.................................
We know that channeling rain water run off into the nearest river increases the chance of flooding along that river...............................
And we know that the marshes and wet lands that we are filling in.........................
act as NATURAL rain water retention ponds....................................
And WE KNOW that if govt builds artificial retention ponds...............................
these artificial ponds can reduce flooding...........................................
But we know also that LIE-berals DO NOT like building retention ponds because it cuts into their gravy supply!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fist there is the cost to design and build the pond...........................
and then there is the LOST TAX REVENUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A retention pond takes up land that could otherwise have structures built on it and be generating PROPERTY TAXES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And we know how LIE-berals feel about LOST GRAVY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So how much of our yearly flooding problem is related to deforestation, filling in of wetlands and masses of pavement and buildings????????????????
With NO LIE-beral thought given to WHERE all that rainwater run off is supposed to go????????????????????????
I know people living in the Whitby area.........................
in the old part of town.....................................
and they watched as huge new subdivisions were built to their north...................................
and govt just kept on connecting new storm sewers to the existing system...........................
with NO THOUGHT of how much water the old system was designed to actually HOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And these people living on older streets ended up with basements full of RAW SEWAGE THREE TIMES in 5 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After that- local govt took note of the RAGING POPULATION...............................
and built a bunch of storm water retention ponds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And there has NOT BEEN A FLOODED BASEMENT in that district in the ten years since the ponds were built!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NO more floods in that area....................................
IN SPITE of our weather growing ALLEGEDLY EVER WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is bad that our govt is being run by ARROGANT HOGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is even worse that the HOGS THINK they can sucker us with their mouldy green PROPAGANDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well HOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For one thing we can reduce global warming by limiting the amount of HOT AIR you spew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And cutting back on gravy for HOGS will ensure they live like the rest of us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Smaller houses.............................
smaller cars................................
less driving....................................
less frequent refueling of sea doos, atv`s and skidoos...............................
less frequent trips on air planes....................................
and cutting back on air travel IS THE BIG ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And cutting gravy to HOGS will give us MORE MONEY to build public transit and persuade people to drive less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You see how SIMPLE it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All we have to do is persuade people like you to STOP being a GREEDY LIE-beral asshat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then you can help save the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But we know that will NOT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Because you ENJOY being a BUTT UGLY HAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[FONT="]The liberal party election poster should read: We do sleaze with ease.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Stephen Mayo[/FONT]
[FONT="]comment on the NP
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[FONT="]Stephen Mayo[/FONT]
[FONT="]comment on the NP
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The commercial showing a picture of Trump and talking about the short comings of the leader then linking it to Trudeau at the end is pretty good makes me laugh a little
OH THAT IS a good one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I must remember that one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I guess I should go read Steve Mayo to see what other gems he offers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We aren't kidding. Justin Trudeau just gave Loblaws $12 million, of your money, to buy fridges.
If you wanted a sentence that sums up just how out of touch and irresponsible Justin Trudeau really is, there it is.
This isn't the first time Justin Trudeau has been irresponsible with your money -- Pierre Poilievre explains.
Congratulations harrylee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For your promotion of civil service union HOG BULLSH+T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cdns use more oil per person than just about anybody else on the planet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That MAKES US MAJOR drivers of global warming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are juts like my idiot brother in law who blames the Chinese for global warming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But brother in law would GO NUTS if he had to live in a 4 story walk up apartment ins some city!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He much prefers his cabin in the Muskoka woods....................................
the one that he heats with SIXTEEN CORDS of fire wood each winter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The guy despises all the development around HIS forest..................................
and yet he happily BUYS the firewood that is produced by the developers as they clear the land for buildings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then after scorning developers and "dirty Chinese" ........................................
brother in law hops into his Korean built SUV and drivers off to Pearson airport and burns thousands of gallons of jet fuel so he can spend a couple of weeks riding diesel powered chair lifts in B.C.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The HYPOCRISY of harrylee and my brother in law.................................
and others like them is STAGGERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Want to save BOTH the environment and the economy??????????????????
And get all the FAT ASSES OFF the airplanes that happen to be the absolute DIRTIEST WAY to move either passengers or cargo!!!!!!!!
Less gravy for HOGS means less debt for govt and less gravy means less HOGS Flying and polluting the air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How SAD that such a simple solution is IGNORED by LIE-berals and their grossly privileged HOG allies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then cut back on HOG GRAVY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LIE-berals should be careful what they wish for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Referring to Justin as "little potato" is surely better than referring to him as...................................
"Our idiot Boy"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And calling Justin "Our idiot Boy" IS BETTER than some of the other labels he has been wearing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Courtesy of an ENRAGED PUBLIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Talk about being thin-skinned.
Okay, lets put it to a vote...who thinks the moniker fits??
Chrystia Freeland 'quite proud' Trudeau is called 'Little Potato' in China
Looks like the "eyes" have it.
John Ivison: AG report more evidence of a Liberal government more taken with grand visions than actual governing
Another day, another dumpster fire.
The release of the interim Auditor General’s report Tuesday has given the opposition parties five new avenues from which to assault this beleaguered Liberal government.
The performance audits of government programs unveil shortcomings that most emergent nations would kill to have. Not being able to reach an agent at a government call centre or having a sales tax system that is unable to keep pace with the evolving digital market are first-world problems, to be sure. But we are five months away from a general election and each chapter of interim auditor Sylvain Ricard’s report is a damning indictment of the government’s lack of command of the details of governing — as if the actual running of the country is less important than setting bold visions.
In at least two cases, the problems are less a matter of neglect than the direct consequence of weak and wrong-headed decisions.
Let’s take the report in order of egregiousness — from clown-car policy to the merely careless.
It will come as no surprise that the Liberal government’s inept handling of the asylum seeker issue has had an effect similar to closing Highway 401 in rush-hour: system gridlock.
Canada’s refugee determination system was reformed in 2012, after the backlog reached 59,000 cases. New timelines for processing asylum cases were introduced — for most claimants, within 60 days. The system was funded to process 22,500 claims per year. But the surge of asylum seekers who crossed into Quebec from the U.S. saw the number of claims rise to 55,000 in 2018. As a result, fewer than 20 per cent of claimants received protection decisions within the required 60 days. By December 2018, there was a backlog of 71,380 claims.
The government has thrown money at the problem promising in the March budget to spend $1.18 billion over five years to attempt to process 50,000 claims a year. But that pledge will require much improved productivity from the agencies involved — Canada Border Services Agency, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada and the Immigration and Refugee Board, which continues to rely almost exclusively on paper files for its work and which shares its thoughts with other organizations by sending faxes.
While there is clearly a bureaucratic logjam, the real blame lies in government policy. The Liberals created the problem because getting tough with refugees was not on-brand — even when it became clear that the lax Canadian system was being played by economic migrants flying into the U.S. from countries like Nigeria.
If Canadians are not mad about the border, chances are they are upset if they have ever tried to contact their government.
The interim AG looked at call centres operated by Employment and Social Development Canada (which handles Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security), Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada and Veterans Affairs Canada. The statistics are damning. Of the 8.9 million callers who asked to speak with an agent over an Employment Insurance query, 40 per cent were prevented from reaching an agent by being redirected to an automated system or a website. A further 8 per cent just hung up after waiting on the line.
The numbers for those trying to access CPP or OAS were worse: 42 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.
And if you were hoping to reach an immigration agent on the phone, your chances were about one in five — in all probability after having waited on the line for half an hour.
In total more than half of 16 million callers could not speak to an agent and more than a million hung up.
The AG found call centres were not focused on the needs of their clients when making decisions about services. And things are not about to get better quickly: a five year modernization project has resulted in upgrades in only eight of 221 call centres.
A third chapter looked at the collection of sales tax in the evolving digital marketplace, where the Ottawa is missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars because we don’t impose sales tax on foreign vendors.
The auditor’s remit extends only to looking at the roles of the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Service Agency, and the report was critical of both.
But the real opprobrium was reserved for the “existing legislation” — a bureaucratic euphemism for the deal the Liberals struck with Netflix to give the company a pass from sales tax and regulation in return for $500million investment in Canadian content (about the same amount as they would have had to pay anyway, if bound by the same rules as domestic cable companies). Many countries have introduced measures to ensure tax neutrality (equal treatment of foreign and domestic vendors with regard to sales tax). The province of Quebec has adapted its legislation to require foreign businesses to register for, collect and remit sales taxes.
But Canada is still relying on consumers to voluntarily declare they owed taxes. The auditor estimated the federal government lost $169 million in 2017 in GST that was not paid on foreign digital products — a benefit that gave those companies an unfair advantage over domestic vendors.
“We concluded that the Canada Revenue Agency was limited by its legislative authority and could not ensure that the sales tax system was applied in a neutral way,” the report said.
There was more. One chapter found the RCMP has not distributed hard body armour and carbines efficiently, despite having almost three times the amount of equipment it did in 2014, after the Moncton shooting that killed three officers and wounded two others.
There was criticism that the government’s oversight of the $39.2 million it spends on advertising was not robust enough to ensure that it was meeting its commitment that public funds were not being spent on partisan ads. By now, you get the picture. This is a government so enamoured with the beauty of its own plans, it seems to think the actual operational nuts and bolts are not its problem.
But they are. Election results across the country in recent months suggest Canadians are more concerned about having a government that picks up the phone and listens to them, than one that professes it is saving the world.
nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-auditor-general-report-more-evidence-of-a-liberal-government-more-taken-with-grand-visions-than-actual-governing
Another day, another dumpster fire.
The release of the interim Auditor General’s report Tuesday has given the opposition parties five new avenues from which to assault this beleaguered Liberal government.
The performance audits of government programs unveil shortcomings that most emergent nations would kill to have. Not being able to reach an agent at a government call centre or having a sales tax system that is unable to keep pace with the evolving digital market are first-world problems, to be sure. But we are five months away from a general election and each chapter of interim auditor Sylvain Ricard’s report is a damning indictment of the government’s lack of command of the details of governing — as if the actual running of the country is less important than setting bold visions.
In at least two cases, the problems are less a matter of neglect than the direct consequence of weak and wrong-headed decisions.
Let’s take the report in order of egregiousness — from clown-car policy to the merely careless.
It will come as no surprise that the Liberal government’s inept handling of the asylum seeker issue has had an effect similar to closing Highway 401 in rush-hour: system gridlock.
Canada’s refugee determination system was reformed in 2012, after the backlog reached 59,000 cases. New timelines for processing asylum cases were introduced — for most claimants, within 60 days. The system was funded to process 22,500 claims per year. But the surge of asylum seekers who crossed into Quebec from the U.S. saw the number of claims rise to 55,000 in 2018. As a result, fewer than 20 per cent of claimants received protection decisions within the required 60 days. By December 2018, there was a backlog of 71,380 claims.
The government has thrown money at the problem promising in the March budget to spend $1.18 billion over five years to attempt to process 50,000 claims a year. But that pledge will require much improved productivity from the agencies involved — Canada Border Services Agency, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada and the Immigration and Refugee Board, which continues to rely almost exclusively on paper files for its work and which shares its thoughts with other organizations by sending faxes.
While there is clearly a bureaucratic logjam, the real blame lies in government policy. The Liberals created the problem because getting tough with refugees was not on-brand — even when it became clear that the lax Canadian system was being played by economic migrants flying into the U.S. from countries like Nigeria.
If Canadians are not mad about the border, chances are they are upset if they have ever tried to contact their government.
The interim AG looked at call centres operated by Employment and Social Development Canada (which handles Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security), Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada and Veterans Affairs Canada. The statistics are damning. Of the 8.9 million callers who asked to speak with an agent over an Employment Insurance query, 40 per cent were prevented from reaching an agent by being redirected to an automated system or a website. A further 8 per cent just hung up after waiting on the line.
The numbers for those trying to access CPP or OAS were worse: 42 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.
And if you were hoping to reach an immigration agent on the phone, your chances were about one in five — in all probability after having waited on the line for half an hour.
In total more than half of 16 million callers could not speak to an agent and more than a million hung up.
The AG found call centres were not focused on the needs of their clients when making decisions about services. And things are not about to get better quickly: a five year modernization project has resulted in upgrades in only eight of 221 call centres.
A third chapter looked at the collection of sales tax in the evolving digital marketplace, where the Ottawa is missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars because we don’t impose sales tax on foreign vendors.
The auditor’s remit extends only to looking at the roles of the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Service Agency, and the report was critical of both.
But the real opprobrium was reserved for the “existing legislation” — a bureaucratic euphemism for the deal the Liberals struck with Netflix to give the company a pass from sales tax and regulation in return for $500million investment in Canadian content (about the same amount as they would have had to pay anyway, if bound by the same rules as domestic cable companies). Many countries have introduced measures to ensure tax neutrality (equal treatment of foreign and domestic vendors with regard to sales tax). The province of Quebec has adapted its legislation to require foreign businesses to register for, collect and remit sales taxes.
But Canada is still relying on consumers to voluntarily declare they owed taxes. The auditor estimated the federal government lost $169 million in 2017 in GST that was not paid on foreign digital products — a benefit that gave those companies an unfair advantage over domestic vendors.
“We concluded that the Canada Revenue Agency was limited by its legislative authority and could not ensure that the sales tax system was applied in a neutral way,” the report said.
There was more. One chapter found the RCMP has not distributed hard body armour and carbines efficiently, despite having almost three times the amount of equipment it did in 2014, after the Moncton shooting that killed three officers and wounded two others.
There was criticism that the government’s oversight of the $39.2 million it spends on advertising was not robust enough to ensure that it was meeting its commitment that public funds were not being spent on partisan ads. By now, you get the picture. This is a government so enamoured with the beauty of its own plans, it seems to think the actual operational nuts and bolts are not its problem.
But they are. Election results across the country in recent months suggest Canadians are more concerned about having a government that picks up the phone and listens to them, than one that professes it is saving the world.
nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-auditor-general-report-more-evidence-of-a-liberal-government-more-taken-with-grand-visions-than-actual-governing
I thought you air heads learned your lesson when Rick Mercer ran his petition to have Stockwell Day change his name to Doris Day.
Kelly McParland: Trudeau adds another chapter to his Book of Things Not to Do
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals ought to rename the supply ship at the heart of the suddenly abandoned case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. I’m thinking the Disastro would be an appropriate appellation.
The charge against Norman was dropped Wednesday, the latest in a series of mistakes, missteps and colossal botchings that have trailed the Liberal government like residue on a sinking ship.
The public prosecution service said it was quitting the case because there was no longer a reasonable chance of success. New information provided “greater context … that we were not aware of,” said federal prosecutor Barbara Mercier, which would seem to mean a respected naval officer with a lifetime of service was dumped from his job and subjected to public humiliation over a matter of context.
They might as well have blamed the retreat on The Curse of the Handsome Prime Minister. There was a time when anything Trudeau touched seemed to turn to gold, or at least another cover photo. Now it’s all dross. Dross, dross, dross. And as Gerald Butts — newly hired to share his climate skills with an American consulting firm — could attest, too much dross is bad for the environment, especially the political one.
The case against Norman has had the smell of death for some time. You may recall that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, in her famous phone conversation with senior bureaucrat Michael Wernick, compared the Norman case with the one involving SNC-Lavalin. “The cases are not dissimilar. The principle, or the integrity, of how we act and respond to the tools we have available and what we should and shouldn’t do, again,” she told him. She was more accurate than she could have known: the Lavalin situation, of course, spiralled into crisis and confusion. Now the Norman file has joined it.
In trying to pin a breach of trust charge on Norman, there have been plenty of examples of “what we should and shouldn’t do.” For example, don’t try to blame one senior officer for alleged leaks when there’s plenty of evidence that the information in question was being shared all over Ottawa by various insider chatterboxes. Don’t expect the chief of defence staff to impress anyone by loftily declaiming that he hadn’t bothered to keep notes when conferring with the prime minister. Don’t respond to a request for documents with a desultory search, a bundle of redacted memos and a 60-page missive to the prime minister that is completely blacked out.
Don’t expect help from witnesses who admit, in their “search” for documents, they didn’t even check their own phone. Or from information indicating top defence officials long ago learned to foil such requests by making up code names that wouldn’t turn up in search requests. When Andrew Leslie, a former general and star Liberal recruit, indicates he’s willing to testify on Norman’s behalf, have an answer ready when asked why the government is paying Leslie’s legal expenses but not Norman’s. And when someone like Leslie has provided plenty of advance warning of his intentions, don’t wait until the eve of an election to let it become known on the same day he says he’s quitting the government — which welcomed him with such ballyhoo — after just one term.
Trudeau must be wondering when all the pain will stop. From the time he decided to combine his trip to India with a costume show, it’s been one stumble after another for the prime minister and his government, which now seems to bounce helplessly from one catastrophe to the next. On the same day word emerged on the Norman file, byelection voters in the British Columbia riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith reduced the Liberal candidate to fourth place with just 11 per cent of the vote, less than half its share in the previous election. Equally ominous was the success of the Greens in stealing the riding from New Democrats, a sign that Liberal hopes of winning over disaffected NDPers might not work out as hoped.
Without those votes, the Trudeau camp has less chance of replacing the support it’s lost in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, which it needs to counter the wall of disaffection that has arisen from Ontario to the Pacific in the wake of bungled battles over pipelines, carbon taxes, trade troubles and the distinct impression that this is a government that sees its core interests stretching all the way from Montreal to Ottawa and back again.
Speaking of Montreal, while B.C. voters were turning their eyes to the Greens, reports indicated that executives at Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin had alerted investors they might break up the company and sell off the parts, the better to unlock value that’s been beaten down by past scandals and the looming criminal trial on charges of bribery and fraud. The prime minister and his top aides and officials sought mightily to blame Wilson-Raybould for the mess they made of their rescue attempt on the company, only to have public sympathy side mainly with her. Lavalin’s continued troubles suggest there’s far more to the situation than one recalcitrant minister: a company whose prosperity depends solely on its ability to escape a day in court is not what most onlookers would hold up as a national icon. Pain is never endless, and eventually an end does arrive. For Trudeau, that day could come in October, when the next election is due. Looking back, he will have a lot of causes to cite. A great many of them will lead straight back to his door.
www.nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-trudeau-adds-another-chapter-to-his-book-of-things-not-to-do?video_autoplay=true
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals ought to rename the supply ship at the heart of the suddenly abandoned case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. I’m thinking the Disastro would be an appropriate appellation.
The charge against Norman was dropped Wednesday, the latest in a series of mistakes, missteps and colossal botchings that have trailed the Liberal government like residue on a sinking ship.
The public prosecution service said it was quitting the case because there was no longer a reasonable chance of success. New information provided “greater context … that we were not aware of,” said federal prosecutor Barbara Mercier, which would seem to mean a respected naval officer with a lifetime of service was dumped from his job and subjected to public humiliation over a matter of context.
They might as well have blamed the retreat on The Curse of the Handsome Prime Minister. There was a time when anything Trudeau touched seemed to turn to gold, or at least another cover photo. Now it’s all dross. Dross, dross, dross. And as Gerald Butts — newly hired to share his climate skills with an American consulting firm — could attest, too much dross is bad for the environment, especially the political one.
The case against Norman has had the smell of death for some time. You may recall that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, in her famous phone conversation with senior bureaucrat Michael Wernick, compared the Norman case with the one involving SNC-Lavalin. “The cases are not dissimilar. The principle, or the integrity, of how we act and respond to the tools we have available and what we should and shouldn’t do, again,” she told him. She was more accurate than she could have known: the Lavalin situation, of course, spiralled into crisis and confusion. Now the Norman file has joined it.
In trying to pin a breach of trust charge on Norman, there have been plenty of examples of “what we should and shouldn’t do.” For example, don’t try to blame one senior officer for alleged leaks when there’s plenty of evidence that the information in question was being shared all over Ottawa by various insider chatterboxes. Don’t expect the chief of defence staff to impress anyone by loftily declaiming that he hadn’t bothered to keep notes when conferring with the prime minister. Don’t respond to a request for documents with a desultory search, a bundle of redacted memos and a 60-page missive to the prime minister that is completely blacked out.
Don’t expect help from witnesses who admit, in their “search” for documents, they didn’t even check their own phone. Or from information indicating top defence officials long ago learned to foil such requests by making up code names that wouldn’t turn up in search requests. When Andrew Leslie, a former general and star Liberal recruit, indicates he’s willing to testify on Norman’s behalf, have an answer ready when asked why the government is paying Leslie’s legal expenses but not Norman’s. And when someone like Leslie has provided plenty of advance warning of his intentions, don’t wait until the eve of an election to let it become known on the same day he says he’s quitting the government — which welcomed him with such ballyhoo — after just one term.
Trudeau must be wondering when all the pain will stop. From the time he decided to combine his trip to India with a costume show, it’s been one stumble after another for the prime minister and his government, which now seems to bounce helplessly from one catastrophe to the next. On the same day word emerged on the Norman file, byelection voters in the British Columbia riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith reduced the Liberal candidate to fourth place with just 11 per cent of the vote, less than half its share in the previous election. Equally ominous was the success of the Greens in stealing the riding from New Democrats, a sign that Liberal hopes of winning over disaffected NDPers might not work out as hoped.
Without those votes, the Trudeau camp has less chance of replacing the support it’s lost in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, which it needs to counter the wall of disaffection that has arisen from Ontario to the Pacific in the wake of bungled battles over pipelines, carbon taxes, trade troubles and the distinct impression that this is a government that sees its core interests stretching all the way from Montreal to Ottawa and back again.
Speaking of Montreal, while B.C. voters were turning their eyes to the Greens, reports indicated that executives at Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin had alerted investors they might break up the company and sell off the parts, the better to unlock value that’s been beaten down by past scandals and the looming criminal trial on charges of bribery and fraud. The prime minister and his top aides and officials sought mightily to blame Wilson-Raybould for the mess they made of their rescue attempt on the company, only to have public sympathy side mainly with her. Lavalin’s continued troubles suggest there’s far more to the situation than one recalcitrant minister: a company whose prosperity depends solely on its ability to escape a day in court is not what most onlookers would hold up as a national icon. Pain is never endless, and eventually an end does arrive. For Trudeau, that day could come in October, when the next election is due. Looking back, he will have a lot of causes to cite. A great many of them will lead straight back to his door.
www.nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-trudeau-adds-another-chapter-to-his-book-of-things-not-to-do?video_autoplay=true
