Trudeau has weaponized the Charter, using it as a sword against nonconforming citizens.

Trudeau has weaponized the Charter, using it as a sword against nonconforming citizens. 

He has forgotten that the Charter is meant to be a shield for citizens against the abuse of state power.


 With the change to Canada Summer Jobs, Trudeau is weaponizing the Charter, forgetting that it is meant to be a shield against the abuse of state power.           

www.policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/january-2018/canada-summer-jobs-and-the-charter-problem/

It is troubling when the state coerces citizens to think as it does on controversial moral issues. This tactic is expected in undemocratic states. It is concerning to witness it in a liberal democracy like Canada.

The Trudeau government is using this tactic in a peculiar context: the Canada Summer Jobs program. The program helps create summer jobs for secondary and post-secondary students by offering federal funds to entities such as not-for-profit organizations to hire these Canadians.

For the 2018 program, details of which were announced in December, any organization that requests funding for a job must attest that “both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights.”

So far, so good. The problem appears in the sentences that follow. The human rights that applicants must endorse include “reproductive rights” such as “the right to access safe and legal abortions.” As a result, applicants that oppose abortion on moral or religious grounds may be denied funding for their summer initiatives.

This move by the Trudeau government is not altogether surprising. In 2014, Trudeau decreed that all Liberal MPs must vote in a pro-choice manner on legislation concerning abortion. In March 2017, Trudeau announced that Canada will provide $650 million in foreign aid for female sexual and reproductive health — including abortions.

 Last fall, he defended the decision to block the appointment of a female MP as head of the parliamentary committee on the status of women on account of her anti-abortion views.

The reach of Trudeau’s views on abortion has steadily grown since he became Liberal leader in 2013. What started inside the walls of his caucus later spread across Parliament. With the requirement of this attestation for Canada Summer Jobs funding, it has now spilled into Canadian society.

There is reason to wonder if the federal government carefully scrutinized the lawfulness of the attestation. While it speaks of upholding Charter values, requiring the attestation may, ironically, violate the Charter. By requiring conformity to its moral position on abortion, the state may breach the freedom of conscience and religion of organizations that consider abortion to be immoral. 

The Charter guarantee of equality is also engaged, as the attestation discriminates against religious and other organizations due to their beliefs on abortion. An anti-abortion group in Toronto is challenging the attestation in court on these Charter grounds.

The state must justify Charter breaches. If it cannot, the breaches are unlawful. I suspect many Canadians are perplexed by the change to Canada Summer Jobs. What prompted it? What wrong is being righted? 

The only explanation given is that Canadians who disagree with the government on abortion have received summer job funds in the past. In this case, the actions of the federal government look like an exercise of power rather than principle.


Trudeau’s government is free to believe that access to abortion is a human right. It cannot, given the inescapable moral controversy surrounding abortion and the Charter rights of Canadians who profess a different moral view, impose this belief on all Canadians. Trudeau has weaponized the Charter, using it as a sword against nonconforming citizens. 

He has forgotten that the Charter is meant to be a shield for citizens against the abuse of state power.

Using the Charter to legitimize this tactic is disturbing given that Morgentaler — the Supreme Court of Canada’s key decision on abortion — suggested that the state can restrict abortion in certain circumstances. The state’s interest in restricting abortion, Justice Bertha Wilson noted, becomes more compelling the closer the unborn child is to birth. There has been a deliberate distortion of what Morgentaler stands for as a matter of law since its release in 1988. The ruling does not constitutionally guarantee unrestricted access to abortion in Canada.

The attestation may form part of Trudeau’s mission to create a Canada that is more inclusive and diverse. He often invokes these values. Yet by excluding many Canadians from participating in Canada Summer Jobs, the attestation does the exact opposite. It appears that the type of diversity and inclusion that Trudeau champions comes with some exclusionary fine print.

Some might argue that no one is automatically entitled to public funds. That may be true, but here the state has offered funds to the public. The Charter requires the state to make that offer in a manner that is not discriminatory and that respects the fundamental freedoms of Canadians.

The idea that certain groups in Canada should not receive public funds is often voiced by individuals who simply reject the views of the group that seeks funding. This attitude fails to recognize that this funding is not a pot of money that the governing political party brought to Ottawa when it assumed power. 

These funds come from taxes that all Canadians, with our range of views and beliefs, have paid. That these funds might at times be given to groups with which we disagree is part of the price of living in a truly inclusive and diverse society.

The notion that people who disagree with the government on controversial moral issues such as abortion must either adopt the government’s view or be excluded is acceptable in totalitarian regimes. It is not acceptable in Canada — a country that strives, in the words of the Charter, to be a “free and democratic society.”
Photo: student statue on Sherbrooke Street, Montreal. Shutterstock, by BakerJarvis.

Justin Trudeau woke a sleeping giant when he banned summer job grants to pro-life employers

Blogger note: #babyTrudeau is DE-Constructing Canada and building Babel ... he is so blinded by that fact.... that NO one in his office sees differently than he..... Pity. His kind of radical extremist feminism is a dis ease for him ..there is NO cure.

Justin Trudeau woke a sleeping giant when he banned summer job grants to pro-life employers 

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/justin-trudeau-woke-a-sleeping-giant-when-he-banned-summer-job-grants-to-pr

January 10, 2018 (The Bridgehead) – When it was announced several weeks ago that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government had decided to insist on an “attestation” from all organizations and non-profits applying for funding from the Canada Summer Jobs Program—an attestation that indicated that group’s support for abortion and transgenderism, among other things—I noted that although the Liberals were obviously trying to specifically target pro-life groups, that everyone from churches helping refugees to the Salvation Army would be rendered ineligible by this new ideological purity test. According to the National Post yesterday, it turns out that this is precisely the case:

Churches and religious groups across the country are struggling over what to do with a confusing clause in the Canada Summer Jobs application that seems to require them to endorse access to abortions in order to get funding. The new “attestation” on the grant application is aimed at anti-abortion groups who have received the federal grants in the past. It requires stating that your organization’s core mandate respects “reproductive rights,” along with other human rights, and the online application can’t be submitted unless the box is checked.

The Liberals began this process to ensure that organizations like the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, where I serve as communications director, would no longer be able to secure funding from the Canada Summer Jobs Program after a campaign by abortion activists insisting that pro-life groups be declared ineligible resulted in the Liberals declaring that pro-life Canadians would be rejected if they applied. CCBR and several other pro-life groups took the government to court, and the Liberals were forced to settle with three pro-life groups for the amount they had been approved for by the Canada Summer Jobs Program prior to the government interference. 

The attestation process was intended to ensure that they would never have to pay out pro-life groups again—but it seems that Trudeau and the Liberals, in their arrogance, had no idea just how many organizations this policy would impact and just how many Canadians do not support their abortion agenda:

But hundreds of churches, charities, day camps and other religious organizations who hire students for summer programming are upset about the attestation, saying they feel like they’re being forced to sign a statement that goes against their beliefs.

“As a small Christian church that was planning to apply for the Canada Summer Jobs program to offer a summer internship, the recent changes have been quite a shock and disappointment,” said Brad Jones, the pastor at Woodgreen Presbyterian Church in Calgary. 


He said their church has sponsored three Syrian refugees and offers a free English-as-a-second-language cafe to the community. “And yet, because of our commitment to the sanctity of life and to biblical teachings, our government is discriminating against us,” he said.
“The very groups that the Liberal government claims to care about — students, refugees, children and people in need — will all lose because of these changes.”
What many Canadians are discovering is that while Trudeau’s Liberals may claim to care about refugees and other marginalized groups, charity will always take the backseat to ideology. Progressives have been ferocious in their attempts to shut down charities, adoption agencies, and other organizations that do much-needed work, but do not agree with every jot and tittle of their far-left ideology. 


The Liberals may not have intended to exclude these churches and charities, but by a combination of their ideological rigidity and their belief that nearly all Canadians have the exact same beliefs that they do, this exclusion was inevitable. More:

Rosemary Redshaw, the executive director of Ontario-based New Life Prison Ministries, a Christian organization that works with inmates, says she can’t sign the attestation because of her own beliefs and those of her organization, and thus can’t apply for the grant this year.
“We have had extremely successful summer placements of students of all backgrounds,” she said. “We will feel the loss of students this summer.”

The Canadian Council of Christian Charities, which represents 3,400 organizations, says it has been slammed with phone calls and emails about the new application form.

“Right now, many members are saying ‘we can’t sign this attestation,’ and if they don’t click it on the online application, their application is stopped,” said Barry Bussey, the organization’s director of legal affairs. He has been advising groups to send in a paper application with a letter that includes their own interpretation of the attestation.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada says it’s heard from 160 churches and organizations so far who are disturbed or confused about the attestation and aren’t sure if they can send in a Canada Summer Jobs application this year.
“The wording of the attestation is either very ambiguous and it needs to be clarified, or it’s completely unambiguous and it needs to be changed,” said Julia Beazley, the EFC’s director of public policy.

“The end result, whatever the intent may or may not have been, is that those who can’t check off that attestation are being denied equal access to a public benefit solely because of their religious belief.”

Of course, this applies not only to Christian groups, but also to any number of other religious groups that oppose or are uncomfortable with abortion on demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy or the new gender ideologies. 

Trudeau’s Employment Minister, caught off guard by this backlash, is telling Christian groups just to check the stupid box and they’ll get the money—after all, it’s only a pinch of incense:

Employment Minister Patty Hajdu’s office says the attestation refers only to a group’s “core mandate,” and that there’s a distinction between an organization formed solely to oppose abortion access and a group that holds religious beliefs that include anti-abortion views. It has been encouraging religious groups to apply.

But that hasn’t mollified many organizations who are faced with having to check off the box. The ministry’s Applicant Guide says the attestation is consistent with “the Government of Canada’s commitment to human rights, which include women’s rights and women’s reproductive rights, and the rights of gender-diverse and transgender Canadians.” It says the government recognizes that “women’s rights are human rights,” and include “sexual and reproductive rights — and the right to access safe and legal abortions.”

As the pro-choice political commentator John Ivison noted earlier this week, Trudeau and the so-called “Party of the Charter” believe firmly in the right of Canadians to hold all of the beliefs that they hold, and if not—well, then you’re out in the cold. 

Trudeau sees the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a tool to implement his agenda, rather than something to be upheld for all Canadians. Now, the Liberals are discovering to their shock that Canadians have a far greater diversity of belief than they thought possible—and a political backlash is beginning:

The Canada Summer Jobs grants are normally a public relations bonanza for MPs, who build the lists of local priorities for their riding and then sign off on who gets the grants. The government announced an extra $113 million annually for the program last year, doubling the number of placements across Canada to 70,000.

But now the program has become controversial, with numerous stories already in local media where MPs are having to either defend the attestation (if they’re Liberals) or attack it as an unnecessary politicization of a federal grant program.

Conservative MP Ted Falk, the party’s critic for the file, says he’s heard from groups all over his rural Manitoba riding of Provencher, including from teen drop-in centres run by Youth For Christ and churches that run daycares and summer camps. He’s been telling them to send in a paper application with a letter.

“I wrote the minister a letter on Jan. 2 asking her to immediately rescind that requirement of the application, I have not heard back from her yet,” he said. “But I’m hoping that I will.”

Toronto Right to Life is already taking the government to court, and the Conservative Party is speaking out against the Liberal move. In all likelihood, this won’t budge Trudeau—he sees pro-life Canadians as second-class citizens, and if a few organizations helping refugees and the homeless get hurt during his campaign to sideline those who believe in rights for pre-born children, then so be it. 

But the Liberal MPs fielding angry phone calls are beginning to realize that there are millions of pro-life Canadians living in this country—and that discriminating against them comes with a cost.

Taking OFF the white gloves on Trudeau:

Bloggers note: Taking OFF the white gloves on Trudeau:

Please do NOT Comment unless you take one whole hour to read and reflect: That Justin Trudeau is “pro-choice” is no surprise, but one has to wonder where his passion for abortion comes from.

TO BE READ INTEGRALLY click on the links for related articles.

Here are a few Extraxct from this Trudeau Saga....

Justin Trudeau is passionate about abortion. Is it because his mom aborted his half-sibling? | Blogs | Lifesitenews https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/justin-trudeau-is-passionate-about-abortion.-is-it-because-his-mom-aborted

That Justin Trudeau is “pro-choice” is no surprise, but one has to wonder where his passion for abortion comes from.

-----------------------------------

One wonders if the fact that the half-sibling of Justin Trudeau was aborted the year before Margaret met Pierre at age 18 has ever given Justin any pause—or if that revelation has informed or solidified his own abortion support.

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Margaret, like Pierre, had rather schizophrenic views on abortion. After giving birth to her own children—Justin himself being the first—she noted that, “Because I have been pregnant and given life, I find that personally, I really believe a child to be alive from the moment it is conceived—that’s a mixture of spiritual and physical feeling. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that women should have abortion made available to them. I can certainly see many instances when it really is the best way.

--------------------------------------------

One has to wonder: Did his father’s actions and lifestyle and his mother’s confession to Playgirl magazine about her own abortion inform not only Trudeau’s beliefs, but his passion for abortion? Did these circumstances develop Trudeau’s conceptualization of abortion not as a “necessary evil,” as some politicians would phrase it, but as a genuinely good thing?

-------------------------------

Justin Trudeau has chosen to champion the Sexual Revolution and the abortion carnage that has resulted from it, but his own history provides us with a cautionary tale and highlights the ugliness and heartbreak that accompanies the so-called freedoms progressives like to celebrate.

The final tragedy is that Justin Trudeau has learned all the wrong lessons from his family’s history.

 

Justin Trudeau is passionate about abortion. Is it because his mom aborted his half-sibling? | Blogs | Lifesitenews https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/justin-trudeau-is-passionate-about-abortion.-is-it-because-his-mom-aborted

 

January 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Yet again this week, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party are in the news over an issue they enjoy accusing the Conservatives of wanting to raise: Abortion.
This time, it is because of a requirement in the application process for Canada Summer Jobs Program funding—that all organizations attest that they support abortion on demand, among other things.
The backlash has begun, although considering the fact that Trudeau has previously declared that no pro-life Canadian can run for Parliament as a Liberal, this move is as predictable as it is disgusting.

That Justin Trudeau is “pro-choice” is no surprise, but one has to wonder where his passion for abortion comes from.

• He pledged $81 million to the UN Population Fund, which funds abortion.
• He pressured Prince Edward Island to begin offering abortion on the island by threatening to withhold federal health funding.
• In response to Trump’s defunding of abortion services overseas, he announced an abortion fund of $650 million for developing countries to make up for the lost cash.
• On a visit to Ireland, Trudeau pushed Irish leader Leo Varadkar on the legalization of abortion—and Varadkar declared himself a feminist after claiming that Trudeau had explained what that meant to him.
• And the Liberal government insisted that a female Conservative MP could not become chair of the Status of Women committee because of her pro-life views. 

Previous Liberal prime ministers have been universally pro-abortion, but none of them have exhibited the level of passion Justin Trudeau has for the abortion cause. Some who have actually spoken to Trudeau about the issue have told me that he sees it as one of his most prized principles, and that abortion is far more than just another line item on the progressive checklist for him.

Trudeau, as his actions in the short time he has been prime minister prove beyond a doubt, intends to use his time in office to expand abortion access in Canada, fund abortions in developing countries, and recast pro-life Canadians as second-class citizens without the same access to government programs as everyone else.
So where did this passion come from?

Shortly after Trudeau’s election in October of 2015, I took a look at one of the reasons: The Trudeau family is one that is deeply rooted in the Sexual Revolution. Pierre Trudeau was the one to decriminalize abortion in 1969, although his belief in restricting the procedure would have rendered him ineligible to run in his son’s Liberal Party. Despite Pierre’s tumultuous marriage to Justin’s mother Margaret—he gave her black eye at least once—his sexual appetites remained legendary, and he even flaunted his girlfriends to his young wife (she was thirty years his junior) as their marriage broke down.

Most significantly, when Pierre fathered a daughter with lawyer Deborah Coyne at the age of 71, he took pains to inform Coyne that he had no desire to be a parent to his only daughter, even discouraging them from living in the same city as him. His “pro-choice” approach to parenting was hugely indicative.
But the key to understanding Justin Trudeau’s passion for abortion may lie not with his father, but with his mother.

Margaret Trudeau expressed her support for abortion and birth control very early on, saying that her views on those issues were “very liberal.” Later, in a train-wreck interview she granted to Playgirl in 1979 that Vanity Fair would refer to as “one of the biggest mistakes of her life,” she recounted, among other things, that she’d had an abortion at age 17. One wonders if the fact that the half-sibling of Justin Trudeau was aborted the year before Margaret met Pierre at age 18 has ever given Justin any pause—or if that revelation has informed or solidified his own abortion support.

Margaret, like Pierre, had rather schizophrenic views on abortion. After giving birth to her own children—Justin himself being the first—she noted that, “Because I have been pregnant and given life, I find that personally, I really believe a child to be alive from the moment it is conceived—that’s a mixture of spiritual and physical feeling. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that women should have abortion made available to them. I can certainly see many instances when it really is the best way.”

One wonders if she is referring to the abortion of Justin’s half-brother or sister here.

Any pro-life activist can tell you that one reason people become resolute in their support for abortion is because someone they love very much has had one—and as such, they equate supporting abortion with supporting their loved one. The discussion about abortion suddenly becomes a very personal one.

And according to Jonathan Kay, much about Justin Trudeau can only be explained by his relationship with his mother. As the ill-fated marriage between Pierre and Margaret collapsed noisily, Margaret hit the road to live a whirlwind life of drugs, drinking, and promiscuity, attempting to outrun or self-medicate her mental health issues and struggles with depression. The tabloids lapped it up, and photographs of her dancing in Studio 54 made headlines in Canada. She toured with rock stars, had affairs with prominent celebrities, and became a cultural symbol of the Sexual Revolution.
Occasionally, she came home to see her boys. As Kay wrote after working with Trudeau on his memoirs:

What remains in my memory are the stories from his childhood. It’s one thing for daddy to leave. That happens all the time, sadly. But when mommy walks out, that’s something very different. We are conditioned to think of a mother’s love as the one unshakable emotional pillar of a child’s life. When that pillar folds up and walks out the front door, how do you keep the roof from collapsing?
Many ordinary people never recover psychologically from that kind of rejection. And Justin’s case was far from ordinary—because the whole world knew he’d become motherless. There she was, on the pages of sleazy magazines, partying it up in skimpy clothing at Studio 54. Trudeau’s classmates showed these photos to him at school. Lots of boys endure “yo momma” taunts. Not all of them come with a glossy, full-colour appendix.
A need to deal with maternal rejection doesn’t just define Justin Trudeau. It defines the attitudes of people around him. Once you enter his world and know something of the emotional pain he experienced as a youth, the knowledge knocks the metaphorical silver spoon out of his mouth. What good is the glitz of being a prime minister’s son when you’re living a childhood parched of mother’s milk?

Trudeau and his mother, of course, famously repaired their relationship as Margaret came to realize the impact mental illness was having on her behavior and sought help in what would become a very public journey. But as Kay notes, her actions—and departures—have done much to create the man who now serves as Canada’s prime minister.

Trudeau adores his mother, and obviously adored his father as well. One has to wonder: Did his father’s actions and lifestyle and his mother’s confession to Playgirl magazine about her own abortion inform not only Trudeau’s beliefs, but his passion for abortion? Did these circumstances develop Trudeau’s conceptualization of abortion not as a “necessary evil,” as some politicians would phrase it, but as a genuinely good thing?

We can only speculate, of course. The evidence is circumstantial, although an examination of Trudeau’s childhood and background tells us much about the prime minister he would become. There is tragedy inherent in the Trudeau story: Little boys left without their mother after a marriage publicly collapsed, an aborted half-sibling they never met, and a little girl rejected by her father, who did not even want to reside in the same city as his daughter.

Justin Trudeau has chosen to champion the Sexual Revolution and the abortion carnage that has resulted from it, but his own history provides us with a cautionary tale and highlights the ugliness and heartbreak that accompanies the so-called freedoms progressives like to celebrate.

The final tragedy is that Justin Trudeau has learned all the wrong lessons from his family’s history.

 

 

 

 

 

Choose a picture

 

 

Rex Murphy: Justin Trudeau's year-long descent from celebrity selfie-prince to typical politician

2017 was not kind to the PM nor his government. And that last press conference? In Star Wars Yoda-tongue: Ill, it will bode for him.

 http://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-justin-trudeaus-year-long-descent-from-celebrity-selfie-prince-to-typical-politician

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with the media in the foyer of the House of Commons following the release of an ethics report in Ottawa on Wednesday December 20, 2017.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

 

What’s true about first impressions — that you never get a second chance to make them — is logically symmetrical with the truth about last ones. No do-overs for them either, by definition. The last impression many Canadians have of Justin Trudeau in this year of Our Lord, 2017, was of him, shock-faced, rattled and babbling incoherently for a TV eternity of a minute and a half. 

For all the sense he made, he could have been speaking Njerep ( I have a Masters in Google search) a language that survives only on the tongues of four people in the entire world, the youngest of whom is already 60.

It’s not because the question was tough, nor could it possibly have been unforeseen. He had been found guilty by the ethics commissioner of, not one, but four provisions of the conflict of interest law.

And, naturally, he was asked, how could a prime minister not have known that hopping on private helicopters on a “vacation” to the Aga Khan’s private island, with buddies and Liberal party personnel in tow, was not — to use a word much in favour at Wilfrid Laurier U — problematic?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with the Aga Khan on Parliament Hill on May 17, 2016. Sean Kilpatrick/CP

  This was not quantum mechanics. It was a hot issue for the PMO for all of 2017. Yet there he was in the Commons foyer, having been asked the inevitable question, looking gobsmacked and wounded, stammering like an old outboard motor on the last pint of gas, and stacking up enough non sequiturs and platitudes to fill a Costco warehouse. How bad was he? For that 90 seconds, he made George Bush look like the oratorical son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Thatcher.

That was the last impression for public view Mr. Trudeau left for the year now gliding into its final hours. In the Star Wars Yoda-tongue: Ill, it will bode for him. Not smart, it will seem.

The year 2017 was not kind to the PM nor his government. It began with his attempt to hide the Aga Khan vacation +and ended with a demonstration of why he tried to hide it. The course of the year marked his descent from a celebrity selfie-prince to an all too typical politician, equipped with a genetic sense of entitlement and personal exceptionalism. 

The press, here and abroad, were no longer half-worshippers. His initiatives were seen by all critics, and some friends, too, as less policies than postures.

 Next year's slogan will be more modest: 

Can I take a rain cheque on that?

On NAFTA, for example, the eerie attempt to inject his “feminist” proclivities and adoration of the green gods into trade negotiations did nothing for trade, greenism or feminism. He bungled mightily on trade with the Asian countries, too — not showing up, embarrassing Japan and angering the members of the TPP. The international press was starting to get a touch dismissive.

 Rightly so. After all, the “The world needs more Canada” sloganism, not showing up at all and ticking off a half-dozen world leaders was a curious choice. Next year’s slogan — “Can I take a rain cheque on that” — will be more modest.

His Number 2, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, made a perfect and protracted hash on the Trudeau tax policy — the one that was supposed to win the hearts of Mr. T’s beloved middle class. 

That ticked off almost everyone in the middle class or aspiring to it, from dentists to sales clerks. The finance minister’s campaign to sell the policy was a disaster, the climactic moment of which came with having the minister himself being, like his boss, under investigation for conflict of interest from the ethics commissioner.

A government that spent a fortune on deliverology (which I personally think of as the Scientology of spin doctors) proved itself incapable of getting cheques out to its employees. The Canada 150 celebrations were, in the main, a dull bomb. There was more fervour and kick in the Chase the Ace phenom in the small town of Goulds outside St. John’s.

The most sensitive cabinet position, the minister for disabled persons, was filled by the most insensitive person in the cabinet, Kent Hehr — a politician in the Don Rickles mode.

The MMIW inquiry is on yet another reset. The Energy East pipeline was, naturally, cancelled — another sacrifice to Mr. Trudeau’s woeful attachment to the ignis fatuus of global warming.  

Meantime, south of us, the Trump kingdom is both more successful in reducing the dreaded carbon dioxide emissions and simultaneously leading a revival in the U.S. energy industry and putting a shredder to the EPA’s cat’s cradle of over-reaching regulations. 

And Trump has just passed a monumental change in the U.S. tax code, which will inevitably — just as his energy policies — place Canada at a massive industrial and economic disadvantage.

And so Mr. Trudeau leaves this year with a bundle of negotiations unsettled, wounded ministers, pledges undelivered, in violation of the law governing conflict of interest, at odds with the UN economy, and no single major policy achievement. 

He caps that with that parting press conference horror, signalling a prime minister struggling, anxious and incoherent — an image which, if it takes, will be fatal for an administration that has made the prime minister’s image its only ace. Much like the Goulds, only in reverse.

A bad year, it was.

Entretien avec Justin Trudeau

In Conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

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The Tale of the Handsome Prime Minister Who Did Nothing Wrong

Colby Cosh: The Tale of the Handsome Prime Minister Who Did Nothing Wrong

Insofar as Trudeau's origins blind him to the necessity of meeting super high standards, they're a pretty serious weakness. And one that we need to stay on top of

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-the-tale-of-the-handsome-prime-minister-who-did-nothing-wrong

Everybody who has written about the prime minister’s violations of the federal Conflict of Interest Act—even if they did so cautiously, long in advance of this week’s formal finding of guilt by the Ethics Commissioner—is suddenly meeting with a great deal of social media resistance. I don’t think I’ve touched the Aga Khan-spiracy issue personally, but since this newspaper played an important role in creating the story and keeping it alive, “everybody” includes many colleagues.

These colleagues are meeting with grouchiness arriving in two flavours: Hysterical and Dismissive. These flavours are not mutually exclusive. One might say they appear to pair naturally, like ham and eggs. “There’s nothing wrong with having a nice vacation, and what about Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy, and, oh, yeah… nobody cares anyhow.”

As someone who has been off to one side of these discussions, I have to observe that this makes a pretty damned remarkable culmination to a year’s reporting and talk. The prime minister and his circle were caught concealing the receipt of free resort trips that would be a central event in the lives of most of us wage slaves. 

The press discovered that the trips were funded by someone who is at once a literal prince, an inconceivably wealthy businessman, and the leader of a global religious and ethnic constituency whose members are affected by changes on the geopolitical chessboard at almost every imaginable corner. 

There must be four or five distinct levels on which the Aga Khan’s access to and influence over a prime minister of Canada would be an appropriate topic of public concern and official scrutiny. (Hardly anyone has mentioned the words “foreign policy” this week.)

These colleagues are meeting with grouchiness arriving in two flavours

The report of the ethics commissioner, which is narrowly and appropriately concerned with the letter of Canadian law, focuses on the PM’s involvement with philanthropic activities of the Aga Khan Foundation on Canadian soil. 

These involve sums approaching the order of billions. Commissioner Mary Dawson absolves the PM of having intervened specifically to further the interests of the Foundation (which mostly does nice things for honourable reasons, but which certainly has underlying religious and political purposes).

The last few Canadian governments have all had a pretty cozy relationship with His Highness, and Dawson accepts Trudeau’s plea that he didn’t make any changes to plans already underway when he came to power. 

Having conceded all that, she also found that the prime minister had mangled the Conflict of Interest Act, and in several ways. 

He did violate the letter of conflict-of-interest law pertaining to Crown ministers, while abusing its spirit in a breathtakingly obvious way.

And at the precise moment she rules against him, there are cries of rage at the journalists who have been investigating the business, or even just wondering about it, all along.

Trudeau abused the law and its spirit in a breathtakingly obvious way

I can only say I am glad I was not one of those who smelled the scent of decaying fish, much less one of those who actually got out a flashlight to see if anyone had left the odd trout lying around. Their reward has been to be asked why they care so much about some stupid fish… 

Don’t they know this room used to smell way worse?… Maybe someone was preparing a Scandinavian rotting-fish delicacy they were brought up eating. Etc., etc., etc.
There is a lot going on psychologically with such imbeciles (and, in fairness, actual Liberal politicians are avoiding such self-humiliation).

 Before Justin Trudeau we had a nerdy Conservative prime minister of modest material ambitions and no family background to speak of. This was a strength and a weakness. Trudeau’s posh, globetrotting, prime-ministerial-timber origins also are a strength and a weakness.


Insofar as they blind him to the necessity of meeting super high standards of personal behaviour, they’re a pretty serious weakness. And one that apparently we need to stay on top of. (Dawson’s Trudeau report has a revealing comment about how, before Trudeau became PM, he “did not feel that he had achieved a level of success… that would allow him to have a peer-to-peer relationship” with the Aga Khan.)

If we allow status to become a requirement of the job, that will be a disaster

I do not know if anyone is suggesting explicitly that having a prime minister who is comfortable socializing with billionaires and princes is something regrettable. Regarding it as an advantage for Canada is fine. Even self-evident. If we allow it to become a requirement of the job, that’s a disaster.

Without doubt, Conservative and New Democratic partisans will go on trying to exploit Trudeau’s background. The most short-sighted supporters of the prime minister can only see “attacks” on him—up to and including any plain factual description of what he did wrong — as a manifestation of contrived, hypocritical, conservative austerity-mongering.

Clearly many Canadians do not make much distinction between electing a new government and having a handsome celebrity PM with a fashionable wife. Their genuine, legitimate political hopes are wadded together with their sexy daydreams in one glutinous, moist wad of feeling. 

Taken to its logical conclusion, this ludicrous tendency ought to make them angry at Trudeau for apologizing for Trudeau’s errors. How dare he? When will he apologize for his apology?