(Caricatures by Niall O’Loughlin)

  I wrote in my last essay, in which I ranted about the lies, disinformation, and nastiness of the populist Pierre, that I was reluctant to enter into the world of commentary about partisan politics. However, having done it once, it seems to me that it would be only fair for me to take a shot at Trudeau too, and thus regain at least some appearance of neutrality. Recently on the CBC program Power and Politics, we were informed that the knives are out for Trudeau within the Liberal party and it appears that his days might be numbered. I’m thinking I’d better get this out quickly before it’s yesterday’s news. 

       Governing parties have a problem. Nothing they do gets forgotten. So, let’s look at the debris that JT has left in his wake.

December 2016 – Trudeau  and his family jet off to the Bahamas to stay at the Bell Cay residence of the Aga Khan. News media jumped all over the story, including the fact that the vacation had cost taxpayers $215K. To a certain extent, I would argue that this is just a cheap-shot story. Every vacation costs taxpayer money, because there is, of necessity, a cost for security and senior aides who must accompany the PM. However, this story was complicated by a subsequent $50M Canadian government donation to the Aga Khan Foundation. 

Trudeau’s response was to identify the Aga Khan as an old family friend. Eventually (Dec 2017) Canada’s ethics commissioner Mary Dawson called him a liar. As quoted by Wikipedia, Ms. Dawson wrote “there were no private interactions between Mr. Trudeau and the Aga Khan until Mr. Trudeau became Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. This led me to conclude that their relationship cannot be described as one of friends for the purposes of the Act.” Ms. Dawson found that Trudeau had committed ethics violations under the Conflict of Interests Act. Trudeau apologized for his action and promised to clear future trips with the Ethics Commissioner’s office first. 

Since then he has had numerous trips, often with family, and the media consistently reports the cost to Canadians of having a globe-trotting PM and accuses him of being “tone deaf” for travelling like a rich man while Canadians are tightening their belts.

May 2017 – The government announces that the cost to fix the Phoenix pay system (more of an albatross than a phoenix) had risen to $402 M, which was more than the original implementation cost of $309.5M under Harper’s Conservatives. The Trudeau government can argue persuasively that they inherited this massive problem. The problem is that they cannot argue that they’ve ever come close to solving it. By July of this year, the pay system is estimated to have cost the federal government $3.5 billion, and there is still a backlog of about 215,000 unresolved, complex problems with the Phoenix pay system.

       The Auditor General reported in 2018, that “the Phoenix project was an incomprehensible failure of project management and oversight.”  

       June 2017 – Trudeau announces that electoral reform, promised in the lead-up to the 2015 election, would not be coming and was no longer on his agenda. Well, you might say, it’s not the first time that a politician has reneged on a commitment, so what’s the big deal? An article by Aaron Wherry from CBC probes the lessons learned from that broken promise. “A committee was struck to study the issue, dozens of town hall forums were convened, an online survey was conducted and postcards were mailed to millions of households inviting Canadians to participate.” It turned out that public feedback was strongly in favour of proportional representation. But Trudeau preferred a ranked ballot process, which, in the opinion of Mr. Wherry, would strongly favour the centrist Liberal Party as the likely second choice of both the left-wing and right-wing voter. And when that choice became controversial because it wasn’t what the community input requested, the whole electoral reform issue was summarily scrapped. It turns out electoral reform is only a good thing if it can be manipulated to favour your own party.

       February, 2018 – Trudeau went on an official visit to India. Although it included only one day of official engagements the trip lasted a week and was notable for several things. It was notable for the size of the party. According to a subsequent National Security and Intelligence Committee report, the delegation “included six Ministers and was accompanied by 16 Parliamentarians, who travelled independently to India to participate in portions of the itinerary.” The Economic Times of India reported that “his tax-payer funded tour looked more like another lavish family vacation — including his own celebrity chef flown in from Vancouver — than a diplomatic bilateral meeting”

It was also notable as an example of bad taste by Trudeau. He and his family were called out by the world press for their elaborate Indian costumes and faked Indian mannerisms. Vanity Fair magazine, the authoritative voice on style, compared the Trudeau family pageant to “Donald Trump’s taste in interior decorating…” 

       Bad taste is one thing. Bad relationships are another. Trudeau went to India in 2018 in part to smooth relationships with India over perceived Canadian support for Sikh independence from India – the Khalistan dream for Sikhs. A CBC News report said that in a meeting with a Punjabi cabinet minister “the prime minister had successfully defused an ongoing controversy about whether his government is sympathetic to Sikh separatist extremism.” 

That bit of diplomacy was almost immediately blown out of the water by the news that Jaspar Atwal, ex-convict, ex-member of a banned Sikh terrorist organization had been invited to accompany the tour, had been invited to a formal dinner at Canada House, and had been part of a photo-op along with Justin Trudeau’s wife during the tour. Atwal, who had been invited by a Vancouver back-bench MP who was along for the ride (and who took the blame), apparently went through no serious vetting process for the events in question. 

       February, 2019 – on Feb 7^th, the Globe and Mail reported that Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former Attorney General had been demoted from that position because she had refused to intercede in the ongoing prosecution of SNC Lavalin.  SNC Lavalin was charged with corruption and fraud relating to the use of bribes to obtain contracts from Libyan strong-man Muammar al-Qaddafi. 

Trudeau denied the allegation that he’d been pressuring her.  Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet and on February 27^th in compelling televised testimony before a Commons Justice committee, she refuted Trudeau’s claims. She testified that that there had been a “consistent and sustained effort to pressure her to intervene to obtain a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for SNC-Lavalin. She also testified that she had received veiled threats relating to the matter from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office, and the finance minister’s office.” By the time the shouting was over, Wilson-Raybould and her good friend Jane Philpott had resigned from cabinet claiming loss of confidence, and both the clerk of the privy council Michael Wernick and Trudeau’s private secretary Gerald Butts had resigned. Despite many suggestions that he ought to, Trudeau did not resign.

       Once again, the office of the Ethics Commissioner got busy, and once again they reported that Trudeau was guilty of ethics violations – no matter how much he denied the allegations. The ethics commissioner’s report said that, despite Trudeau’s protestations to the contrary, “Trudeau, either directly or through the actions of those under his direction, sought to influence the attorney general. The authority of the prime minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit the decision of the director of public prosecutions as well as the authority of Wilson-Raybould.” 

       Somewhat lost in the news of the ethics verdict was the little tidbit that the DPA provisions in the law of Canada had been promulgated specifically so that they could be used to get SNC Lavalin off the hook. Mario Dion, the Ethics Commissioner, reported that JWR told him “the push for a DPA regime was not only rushed, but was driven by the SNC-Lavalin case and as such she did not participate in the presentation of the changes to cabinet and refused to speak publicly or before a parliamentary committee about them either.”

       Trudeau stepped up manfully and took all the responsibility, but none of the guilt. He refused to give an outright apology. He acknowledged the commissioner’s report and said “the way that this happened shouldn’t have happened. I take responsibility for the mistakes that I made.” However, he gutted that already weak statement by saying that he disagreed with some of the commissioner’s findings and that he was only trying to avoid the consequences of the prosecution of a major Canadian employer. “I can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs.”

June 2020 – the government announced that WE Charity would administer a $912M Canadian Student Service Grant (CSSG) program with an administration contract worth $43.5M, of which $8.75M was available to share between the partnering charities. (Think of that as about $35M worth of administration effort with a 25% markup.) The contract was awarded because the responsible civil service department, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) “recommended a third party administer the grant “given the scope and scale of the program” and the “urgent need to deliver this new program,” and that ESDC’s recommendation was the third party be WE Charity.” It went through no formal tendering process. ESDC claimed to have considered other organizations for the job, but have declined to identify what other organizations were actually considered. 

OK, sloppy looking work, but this was in the chaotic early days of Covid-19 when incredible efforts were being made to keep the economy from collapsing. Why did this become a scandal? Because the WE Charity principles are old friends of the Trudeaus and the Morneaus, that’s why. Trudeau’s mother Margaret and his brother Alexandre had received $483K in appearance fees and expenses for speaking at numerous WE Charity events. Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s daughter Grace, worked at WE in the travel department. His other daughter, Clare, had spoken at WE Day events. WE Charity covered $41,000 in costs for Morneau and his family in 2017 for trips to Ecuador and Kenya to view the organization’s humanitarian work. Neither Trudeau nor Morneau recused themselves from cabinet discussions of the WE Charity contract proposal discussion, despite these close family connections.

Here comes the Ethics Commissioner again! This time they found Trudeau not guilty, but Morneau was guilty of ethics violations. Both gentlemen did the Canadian thing – they apologized.

July 2020 – CBC broke the news that there was extremely high staff turnover at Rideau Hall, the office of the Governor General. The story identified a toxic work environment with staff frequently harassed and bullied. In early September JT announced that Julie Payette was an excellent Governor General – but confirmed that the government was spending $88K for an independent consultant to investigate the allegations. 

The CBC responded with a follow-up article which revealed that “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his officials never conducted checks with Julie Payette’s former employers at the Montreal Science Centre and the Canadian Olympic Committee that might have raised red flags about her behaviour with co-workers and subordinates before her appointment as Governor General… Payette was given severance of roughly $200,000 when she resigned from the Montreal Science Centre in 2016 following complaints about her treatment of employees, say multiple sources. In 2017, Payette left the Canadian Olympic Committee after two internal investigations into her treatment of staff including verbal harassment, sources said.”

 In January 2021, the consultant released their conclusions which I’ll paraphrase as “Yep, that Payette’s a real stinker”, and she resigned.

The significant question is how the Hell did she get there? A very interesting follow-up report was filed on HillNotes. It tells us that PM Steven Harper established an ad-hoc advisory committee prior to the appointment of David Johnston, and that he formalized the advisory committee with more detailed terms of reference for future appointments after Johnston was appointed. And then it notes that “Following the 42^nd general election, the Committee became dormant.” (JT don’t need no stinking committee man – JT can do it hisself). 

CBC reporting says that in addition to the $88K for the consulting firm’s investigation, Rideau Hall spend more than $150K on legal fees in responding to harassment allegations.

Jan2023 – The government announced a $19B contract to purchase 88 F35 fighter jets. “The deal represents a dramatic turnaround for the Liberal government, which promised not to buy the F-35 and to instead purchase a cheaper jet fighter and use the savings to bolster the navy (CBC). You can rip Trudeau for going back on his campaign promise, or you can praise him for finally accepting reality. Whatever way you look at it, the harsh reality is that his campaign bravado burdened our military with crapped out second hand F18’s that the Trudeau government purchased over the objections of the Senate’s Defence Advisory Committee and delayed the upgrading of our military capability in a time of rising global tensions.

Sept 2023 – In something of a stunning reprise of the Jaspar Atwal embarrassment in India, in Sept 2023 Canada invited Ukrainian President Zelinsky to Ottawa and in his presence, we praised and thanked for his service one Jaroslav Hunka, who turned out to be a 98 year old Ukrainian Nazi. The Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, took responsibility for this embarrassing faux pas and then promptly resigned. The Speaker invited Hunka on the request of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, so to a certain extent that were lured into a trap and you might argue it was not the PM’s fault. But several months after the event, Rota said this in an interview: “someone came in and requested that they be there, then that goes to protocol, protocol takes it and what they will do is then they issue the invitation. Prior to that, normally it goes to the Prime Minister’s Office and they go through it with a fine-tooth comb.” Sounds like the PM’s office mis-placed that fine-toothed comb.

Feb 2024 – ArriveCan arrived, like a stinking pile of crap on the PM’s carpet. CTV reporter Don Martin wrote that “What started out as a modest $80,000 piece of basic traveller-tracking software during the pandemic became a $60-million-plus boondoggle where juicy contracts were farmed out without competitive bidding to those without the skills or staff to deliver the goods.” The record keeping was so poor that the Auditor General had difficulty identifying exactly what happened and precisely what the real cost was. Auditor General Karen Hogan found that government agencies “repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application. This is probably the first example that I’ve seen such a glaring disregard for some of the most basic and fundamental policies and rules”. Several senior government officials subsequently came under investigation and appear to be taking the blame for this one.

Before I try to summarize the Trudeau record I should note that, first of all, the foregoing is the partial record of the entire government, not just the PM. And second, there were some praiseworthy things in those years that I’ve left out. Despite the decision by the Federal Court that the use of the Emergencies Act to stop the Freedom Convoy nonsense was “unreasonable and illegal”, I heartily support the action of the Trudeau government in that situation. I think the court is full of crap your honor. I was happy to hear India called out on their involvement with a murder on Canadian soil (and there’s more happening on that issue today!). I’m encouraged by evidence that Canada’s climate change efforts are beginning to bear fruit. I think Canada has done our best to help Ukraine and I applaud that support. But on the down-side? Man, there’s just so much down-side.

Observations:

       1 – Trudeau is really good at apologizing.  Three investigations by the Ethics Commissioner (Twice guilty and one “not-guilty, but your buddy was” verdict ) are too many. Maybe he should stop violating ethics codes and apologize less.

       2 – When he denies an allegation, you are justified in reserving judgement until you hear the Ethics Commissioner’s report. He’s been known to lie.

       3 – If you work for him, you should invest in a Teflon coat. Check out how often someone else took the blame in those little stories I’ve listed.

       4 – Trudeau has a good ol’ boys’ network, and he can even have a law passed especially for your needs if you’re in the right circles (SNC Lavalin, WE Charity). 

       5 – Trudeau loves being the centre of attention. That’s why Mclean’s magazine referred to him as the Mr Dress-up prime Minister. 

6 – He might be a little bit entitled. I think he feels that expensive vacations at someone else’s expense are a prerogative of the rich and famous even though the press always crucifies him for them. It seems he can’t stop stepping on the same doggie poop.

7- JT and the people around him have no regard for process. They just make it up as they go. How else do you explain the inexplicable hiring of Julie Payette, or the assignment of a major contract to the WE Charities with no apparent process or oversight? How else can you invite a former Nazi to your celebration of Ukraine’s jewish President, or Sikh separatist to your dinner with India’s PM. Did no-one think to put a process in place on which to base decisions?

8 – Finally, the Trudeau government has been financially incompetent. The Civil Service in 2015 numbered 257,034, with a little over 23% of those being “outside agencies” or contracted services. In 2024, that number is 367,772, an increase of 43%. Population has only increased by 15% in that time. Rather more damningly, the ArriveCan debacle, the waste of time energy and money associated with the F35 procurement, the failure to fix Phoenix – they all argue (and the Auditor has repeatedly said) that these guys fail at basic project management.

I can’t tell you who to vote for in the next election. The choices are fairly bleak. I think Trudeau has shown himself to be an incompetent, cynical, political opportunist who probably deserves to be defeated. Unfortunately, his defeat by Poilievre might take this country down the path being blazed by Trump and Vance, and I don’t think we want to go there either. Tough choices for Canadians.