WE really need to get rid of this guy

Ron in Regina

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spaminator

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GOLDSTEIN: Weak conflict law rewarded Trudeau for unethical behaviour
Prime Minster escaped censure because of a loophole in the law

Author of the article:Lorrie Goldstein
Publishing date:May 15, 2021 • 1 day ago • 3 minute read • 64 Comments
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference in Ottawa on Friday, May 7, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference in Ottawa on Friday, May 7, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
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When it comes to political ethics, little is expected of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — and he seldom disappoints.

For example, his conduct in the WE Charity affair.


Contrary to myth, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s report on Trudeau last week was not an exoneration of Trudeau’s conduct, but a searing indictment of it.

Dion made it crystal clear the only reason he did not find that Trudeau had violated the Conflict of Interest Act was due to a fundamental weakness in the law — it has no provisions for censuring a politician who creates the appearance of a conflict of interest by his actions.

While Dion concluded Trudeau did not have a conflict of interest in awarding the administration of the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) to WE, he equally emphasized there was “a strong appearance of conflict between the Trudeau family’s relationship with WE and Mr. Trudeau’s duty to make decisions that best serve the public interest.”

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Anyone reading Dion’s judgment would reasonably conclude that had the conflict law contained a provision for censuring politicians who place themselves in an apparent conflict of interest, he would have found Trudeau guilty.

Dion cited rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada recognizing, the importance of “actual and apparent impartiality” when public servants carry out their duties, “the importance of preserving not only the integrity of government, but also the appearance of integrity” and that “public trust may be harmed just as easily by the appearance of impropriety as with the actual impropriety itself.”

He referenced a “guiding principle” in the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons — pointedly noting Trudeau is an MP — requiring them to “fulfill their public duties with honesty and uphold the highest standards so as to avoid real or apparent conflicts of interests.”

Further, they must “arrange their private affairs so that foreseeable real or apparent conflicts of interest may be prevented from arising, but if such a conflict does arise, to resolve it in a way that protects the public interest.”

Finally, they must “perform their official duties and functions and arrange their private affairs in a manner that bears the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that may not be fully discharged by simply acting within the law.”

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Dion also noted the Code of Values and Ethics for federal public servants “is replete with references to apparent conflicts of interest” that “public servants, like public office holders, hold a public trust” and that “they must make decisions in the public interest, and must be seen to be fair and impartial and to act with integrity.”

Trudeau in his own signed declaration on “Open and Accountable Government” in 2015 instructed his cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries to “avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interest.”

Dion said Trudeau “recognized (his) apparent conflict of interest, which in this case was based on his and his family’s association with WE, before he participated in making the decision … to select WE to administer the CSSG” and “acknowledged publicly that he should have recused himself because of the appearance of conflict.”

Despite that, Dion said, he had to acquit Trudeau because, “while it is always advisable to recuse oneself … when facing an apparent conflict of interest, there is no requirement to do so” in the Conflict of Interest Act.

Trudeau escaped censure because of a loophole in the law.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com
 
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Mowich

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Diane Francis: A country run by amateurs who hire more amateurs

The consultant gravy train is well-established in Ottawa. What’s new is the unprecedented scale


An investment guru once told me that when a public company provides a jet, cars and drivers for its executives, and spends a fortune on consultants, it’s time to short the stock. The same applies to Canada, a nation state with lousy leadership and soaring consultant fees, because few, if any, of our federal political leaders know what they’re doing.

Last month, my colleague Jesse Snyder wrote a piece about the staggering increase in public salaries and third-party consultancy fees paid by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government since 2015. According to the latest budget, the costs for “professional and special services” are expected to hit $16.4 billion by 2022, which is up from $9.5 billion when Trudeau took over in 2015 and represents the highest level of spending on consultants since the 1990s.

“At the same time, the cost of paying government worker salaries has also increased sharply from $39.6 billion before 2015 to $47.5 billion in 2020,” wrote Snyder. This is because the size of the federal public service has grown by 10,000 bureaucrats a year since the Liberals came to power and now totals 380,000, which is bigger than the population of Victoria.

Yet this shouldn’t surprise anyone. The consultant gravy train is well-established in Ottawa. What’s new is the unprecedented scale.

Why do the Liberals need so many public servants and consultants? The underlying reason for all this is that the Trudeau government cannot run a pop stand and his cabinet is run by amateurs. Many ministers — who make $270,000 a year plus a huge expense account, along with a car and driver — are there for one of two reasons: they are either buddies of the prime minister, or Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s former chief of staff.

Butts, a green fanatic and serial job killer, advised former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for years. The two ran the province into the proverbial ground through excessive spending and by building shockingly expensive solar and wind power projects that have made the province’s manufacturing industries noncompetitive.

The Butts’ group includes a few cabinet ministers but is headed by his replacement as chief of staff, Katie Telford. She was implicated in the WE Charity scandal and has no professional credentials, as she has only ever worked as a political operative.

The Trudeau buddy team includes Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc, who babysat Justin and whose father was a friend of Pierre Trudeau’s. Another is Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, who attended the same elite private school with Trudeau, was in his wedding party and was present at one of the prime minister’s scandalous “Blackface” performances.

Then there’s the singularly unqualified Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan, a pal of Trudeau’s who was a minor television celebrity and engaged in ethically shady behaviour, as did the prime minister, by taking a lavish freebie holiday compliments of the Aga Khan.

The rest of the roster is downright depressing, so it’s little wonder that this is the group responsible for hiring an army of new civil servants and a battalion of third-party consultants at a cost to taxpayers of tens of billions of dollars.

As for the man at the top, here’s an example of his management style: He hired an unqualified former astronaut to be governor general. She failed miserably. Then, rather than simply firing her, a firm called Quintet Consulting was hired and taxpayers paid nearly $400,000 to analyze a situation that Trudeau and others should have known about.

As was obvious in the vaccine procurement debacle, Canada is run by amateurs, who hire more amateurs, who hire Liberal consultants because they don’t know how to run a country.

 

bob the dog

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380,000 people is a big number. All earning top dollar with the best perks. Stumble and fumble and be rewarded for life with a fat pension.

Meanwhile the banks suck $50 billion annually while the feds look the other way. There is no hope for this.

It's like a curling rock that needs to curl quite a bit and is not.
 
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bob the dog

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Best solution would be to give Canada back to the First Nations and let them sort it out. Not possible that it could be worse for the general population.
 

bob the dog

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Annamie Paul raising concerns about the NDP blindly supporting the climate legislation as the Liberals try to get it done before summer vacation. She speaks very well.

Thing about Trudeau and his greenhouse gas emission reduction plan is that the only ones left of the big polluters are multi-national corps that are here because of an advantage be it the resources are cheap, electricity, or whatever. Once they are told to increase spending on pollution control they will move on to the next country. Venezuela is waiting. It's crazy Trudeau and his band of dummies are going to enact binding legislation 30 years in advance. Does his fantasy include a balanced budget by 2050?
 
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taxme

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Best solution would be to give Canada back to the First Nations and let them sort it out. Not possible that it could be worse for the general population.

I doubt very much that if we gave the country back to the native Indians that our lives would be any better. Things could really get worse. Judging by the way they live and the way they keep their land full of debris and garbage tells me that I have nothing to learn from any native Indians. On the contrary, it was the white people that brought them into the modern world. The problem and reason for the native Indian that still lives in abject poverty is because of their own doing. For decades, now the Canadian taxpayer's have been handing over to our native Indians hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year to prop them up, but yet, look at what they have done with all of that money. Sweet dik all.

The best solution for Canada right now is to end native Indian and multiculturalism handouts now. This is one of the reasons why Canada is going deeper and deeper in debt. Our Canadian welfare recipient political leaders are clueless and quite stupid when it comes to handling our tax dollars. They the taxpayer seems do enjoy watching those useless welfare recipient politicians taking our tax dollars and blowing our tax dollars willy-nilly. When will the sheeple ever start to give a shit? It truly is a sad state of affairs indeed when the taxpayer's do not give a shit as to how their tax dollars are blown. Most Canadians are truly a stupid lot indeed. :rolleyes:
 

taxme

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Diane Francis: A country run by amateurs who hire more amateurs

The consultant gravy train is well-established in Ottawa. What’s new is the unprecedented scale


An investment guru once told me that when a public company provides a jet, cars and drivers for its executives, and spends a fortune on consultants, it’s time to short the stock. The same applies to Canada, a nation state with lousy leadership and soaring consultant fees, because few, if any, of our federal political leaders know what they’re doing.

Last month, my colleague Jesse Snyder wrote a piece about the staggering increase in public salaries and third-party consultancy fees paid by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government since 2015. According to the latest budget, the costs for “professional and special services” are expected to hit $16.4 billion by 2022, which is up from $9.5 billion when Trudeau took over in 2015 and represents the highest level of spending on consultants since the 1990s.

“At the same time, the cost of paying government worker salaries has also increased sharply from $39.6 billion before 2015 to $47.5 billion in 2020,” wrote Snyder. This is because the size of the federal public service has grown by 10,000 bureaucrats a year since the Liberals came to power and now totals 380,000, which is bigger than the population of Victoria.

Yet this shouldn’t surprise anyone. The consultant gravy train is well-established in Ottawa. What’s new is the unprecedented scale.

Why do the Liberals need so many public servants and consultants? The underlying reason for all this is that the Trudeau government cannot run a pop stand and his cabinet is run by amateurs. Many ministers — who make $270,000 a year plus a huge expense account, along with a car and driver — are there for one of two reasons: they are either buddies of the prime minister, or Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s former chief of staff.

Butts, a green fanatic and serial job killer, advised former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for years. The two ran the province into the proverbial ground through excessive spending and by building shockingly expensive solar and wind power projects that have made the province’s manufacturing industries noncompetitive.

The Butts’ group includes a few cabinet ministers but is headed by his replacement as chief of staff, Katie Telford. She was implicated in the WE Charity scandal and has no professional credentials, as she has only ever worked as a political operative.

The Trudeau buddy team includes Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc, who babysat Justin and whose father was a friend of Pierre Trudeau’s. Another is Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, who attended the same elite private school with Trudeau, was in his wedding party and was present at one of the prime minister’s scandalous “Blackface” performances.

Then there’s the singularly unqualified Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan, a pal of Trudeau’s who was a minor television celebrity and engaged in ethically shady behaviour, as did the prime minister, by taking a lavish freebie holiday compliments of the Aga Khan.

The rest of the roster is downright depressing, so it’s little wonder that this is the group responsible for hiring an army of new civil servants and a battalion of third-party consultants at a cost to taxpayers of tens of billions of dollars.

As for the man at the top, here’s an example of his management style: He hired an unqualified former astronaut to be governor general. She failed miserably. Then, rather than simply firing her, a firm called Quintet Consulting was hired and taxpayers paid nearly $400,000 to analyze a situation that Trudeau and others should have known about.

As was obvious in the vaccine procurement debacle, Canada is run by amateurs, who hire more amateurs, who hire Liberal consultants because they don’t know how to run a country.


Talk to your welfare recipient politicians like Castro Trudeau and ask them if they really care about anything that they are doing to Canada and Canadians today. Christ, even the majority of Canadians appear to be too stupid to even care. Our politicians know this and that is why they get away with what they are doing to us all every day. The majority of Canadians really does not give a shit anymore. They are the problem. Period. :(
 

bob the dog

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Talk to your welfare recipient politicians like Castro Trudeau and ask them if they really care about anything that they are doing to Canada and Canadians today. Christ, even the majority of Canadians appear to be too stupid to even care. Our politicians know this and that is why they get away with what they are doing to us all every day. The majority of Canadians really does not give a shit anymore. They are the problem. Period. :(
380,000 of them are not biting the hand that feeds them. Twice that for municipal and provincial employees. The business of government is doing quite well and has a loyal base.
 

bob the dog

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Aug 14, 2020
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I doubt very much that if we gave the country back to the native Indians that our lives would be any better. Things could really get worse. Judging by the way they live and the way they keep their land full of debris and garbage tells me that I have nothing to learn from any native Indians. On the contrary, it was the white people that brought them into the modern world. The problem and reason for the native Indian that still lives in abject poverty is because of their own doing. For decades, now the Canadian taxpayer's have been handing over to our native Indians hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year to prop them up, but yet, look at what they have done with all of that money. Sweet dik all.

The best solution for Canada right now is to end native Indian and multiculturalism handouts now. This is one of the reasons why Canada is going deeper and deeper in debt. Our Canadian welfare recipient political leaders are clueless and quite stupid when it comes to handling our tax dollars. They the taxpayer seems do enjoy watching those useless welfare recipient politicians taking our tax dollars and blowing our tax dollars willy-nilly. When will the sheeple ever start to give a shit? It truly is a sad state of affairs indeed when the taxpayer's do not give a shit as to how their tax dollars are blown. Most Canadians are truly a stupid lot indeed. :rolleyes:
Its a sooner or later thing.

From a management perspective of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the feds are exceptionally poor at the latter three. It's been propaganda all along that keep telling us what we are doing is right.

Canada's plan treated First Nations like children and tried to do everything for them but somewhere along the way it became about the process rather than the people. Just like the school system. Results were as you describe. But it's changing because it is clear to all that the white man is as frigging dumb as they come. They are users who turn on themselves in a heartbeat over nothing.

It's not that crazy to let Indigenous people deal with multiculturalism. Might be interesting to see how they deal with Quebec.

At least they know enough to protect the resources and imagine what would be left if it weren't for them. Just saying.
 

taxme

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380,000 of them are not biting the hand that feeds them. Twice that for municipal and provincial employees. The business of government is doing quite well and has a loyal base.

And the signs of a more and even bigger and not so much better government should tell us all that this has to be a sign of government communism well on it's way for Canadians. The covid scamdemic has hurt only those in the private sector. The public sector and it's employees still carries on with no losses of jobs. The government may have even got bigger thanks to this covid scamdemic. While our dear comrade leaders diddle away, we the sheeple twittle away. :rolleyes:
 
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taxme

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Its a sooner or later thing.

From a management perspective of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the feds are exceptionally poor at the latter three. It's been propaganda all along that keep telling us what we are doing is right.

Canada's plan treated First Nations like children and tried to do everything for them but somewhere along the way it became about the process rather than the people. Just like the school system. Results were as you describe. But it's changing because it is clear to all that the white man is as frigging dumb as they come. They are users who turn on themselves in a heartbeat over nothing.

It's not that crazy to let Indigenous people deal with multiculturalism. Might be interesting to see how they deal with Quebec.

At least they know enough to protect the resources and imagine what would be left if it weren't for them. Just saying.

It's time to abolish the Indian Affairs Department and stop giving taxpayer's dollars away to people who do not deserve those tax dollars anymore. How long does the Canadian taxpayer have to keep bribing native Indians to try and keep their mouths shut? The native Indians will have to live with french Quebec and multiculturalism just like the rest of English Canada has too. French Quebec and multiculturalism are two sacred cows and sacred taboos that must never be questioned or challenged and where we must all bend the knee too. Otherwise, you will be called that scary word to shut you up called racist. LOL.
 

bob the dog

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It's time to abolish the Indian Affairs Department and stop giving taxpayer's dollars away to people who do not deserve those tax dollars anymore. How long does the Canadian taxpayer have to keep bribing native Indians to try and keep their mouths shut? The native Indians will have to live with french Quebec and multiculturalism just like the rest of English Canada has too. French Quebec and multiculturalism are two sacred cows and sacred taboos that must never be questioned or challenged and where we must all bend the knee too. Otherwise, you will be called that scary word to shut you up called racist. LOL.
Politicians at the top of that list for me.
 
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spaminator

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LILLEY: WE spent big to fly Sophie to U.K. for gig
Author of the article:Brian Lilley
Publishing date:Jun 02, 2021 • 2 hours ago • 3 minute read • 7 Comments
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau are flanked by We Day co-founders Craig Kielburger, left, and Marc Kielburger, right.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau are flanked by We Day co-founders Craig Kielburger, left, and Marc Kielburger, right. PHOTO BY FILE PHOTO /Postmedia
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The average Kenyan earns a little over $2,000 Canadian per year.

Think about that as you absorb the news that WE Charity spent the equivalent of nine people’s annual income to fly Sophie Trudeau and her daughter to London to speak briefly at a WE Day event in March 2020.


WE Charity is supposed to be all about helping people in places like Kenya; instead, they used their funds to make the comfortable even more comfortable.

This news puts all those pennies your kids saved for WE Charity when the coins went obsolete or the Rafiki bracelet made by a women’s collective that you bought in a new light doesn’t it. The community events, the fundraisers, the volunteer hours, the special place WE was given in the schools of the nation all seem hollow as we learn more about this organization.

Documents tabled with the House of Common ethics committee show that WE paid $18,134 for two return flights to London, plus an additional $1,617 for a hotel, adding up to a total of $19,751. WE maintains that fundraising dollars didn’t go to pay for these flights but were instead covered by corporate sponsors.

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That’s still money that could have gone to the children, they chose to allocate it elsewhere.

What did that exorbitant cost get the WE organization?

I’d argue nothing more than goodwill with the Trudeau government.

It’s hard to argue that the 13 year-old kids in Britain filling Wembley Arena were clamouring to hear from the wife of a prime minister in a country across the Atlantic — it’s more likely that most couldn’t have named Sophie Trudeau nor her more famous husband.

Little about the WE association with the Trudeau family makes much sense.

It’s not like Sophie was on stage all that long — she appeared for less than 10 minutes alongside former Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard and British singer Leona Lewis. Is it worth $19,751 to bring Sophie and her daughter, Ella Grace, across the pond for that amount of time on stage?

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Ella Grace did appear on stage briefly with her grandmother Margaret Trudeau, the one who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars appearing at WE events. Maggie’s time on stage was less than four minutes but she took a hefty speaking fee for that on top of the expenses like flight and hotel — an average of $17,000 per event but likely higher for the London appearance based on Sophie’s airfare.

Again, who benefits from this? It wasn’t the kids wondering who the grandma telling them to look beyond themselves was.

It was the Trudeau family — in terms of payments and luxury accommodation — and it was WE Charity in terms of access to Canada’s most powerful family. WE didn’t pay for the Trudeau family to be at their events just for the time spent on stage, it was for more than that — something WE admits.

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“Ms. Gregoire Trudeau, her daughter, and Ms. Trudeau participated in multiple speaking events on March 3 and March 4 in London supporting the charity as well as participating in WE Day,” the organization said in a statement.

WE never hired Margaret Trudeau once before her son became prime minister; they never hired the PM’s brother Alexandre until after the 2015 election. She’s billed as a mental health advocate but speaks platitudes for a couple of minutes — at one event telling kids to eat kale instead of donuts so that they feel better.


But once the $479,944 in appearance fees and expenses started rolling to Margaret Trudeau, the money started flowing the other way to WE.

While government records show the charity receiving roughly $500,000 in grants and contributions over the last several years of the Harper government, that figure shot up to more than $5 million in the first few years Trudeau government.

This is the only way the investment of $18,134 for airfare for Sophie and Ella Grace makes sense. It’s the only way the contracts to Maggie and Alexandre make sense.

WE saw it as an investment in future earnings, forget those kids in need of clean drinking water in a remote Kenyan village, forget the kids who can’t go to school — there are Trudeau family members to look after.

The more we find out about these connections, the more this story stinks to high heaven.
 
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Twin_Moose

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Throw another log on the Trudie lied dumpster fire

Paid China Cash Up Front For No Vaccines; House Is Misled

A federal agency paid an upfront cash advance to a Chinese company for pandemic vaccines never delivered. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had denied the contract with CanSino Biologics Inc. of Tianjin existed, calling it “disinformation.” The agreement was disclosed through Access To Information records obtained by Conservative MP Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard): “That is simply not true.”

 

bob the dog

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Throw another log on the Trudie lied dumpster fire

Paid China Cash Up Front For No Vaccines; House Is Misled

A federal agency paid an upfront cash advance to a Chinese company for pandemic vaccines never delivered. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had denied the contract with CanSino Biologics Inc. of Tianjin existed, calling it “disinformation.” The agreement was disclosed through Access To Information records obtained by Conservative MP Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard): “That is simply not true.”

We'll never find out the true cost. Like everything else. Elect a clown, expect a circus.