In light of yet another scandal involving the Trudeau Liberals, many are speculating a fall election.
What will it take for the opposition parties to lose confidence in the government? Will an election depend on who becomes the new Conservative leader?
True North’s Sam Eskenasi addresses these key questions.
The emergency supplies stockpile overseen by Canada’s Public Health Agency was so ill-equipped that expired medical goods were sent out by the federal agency to help provinces battle the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the stockpile was in such a poor state that over a million expired medical gowns were distributed by the Agency along with “guidance” on the use of expired N95 respirators and masks.
“The Agency is in the process of allocating approximately 1,400,000 expired gowns from the national emergency strategic stockpile,” wrote a staff memo.
“This includes guidance on the use of expired N95 respirators and masks.”
Under the guidance of the Liberal government, the failure to maintain an adequate supply of emergency equipment has cost Canadian taxpayers approximately $1.8 billion.
Disclosures by the Treasury Board reveal that the Canadian government has been forced to buy personal protective equipment at prices inflated by up to 380% due to the poor state of the stockpile.
During testimony before the House of Commons government operations committee, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam admitted that there was not enough equipment in the stockpile to deal with a pandemic of such proportions.
Further, in 2019 the Liberals ordered that two million N95 masks and 440,000 pairs of gloves be thrown away and the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile warehouse in Regina was shut down without ever being refilled.
According to the Executive Director of the Public Health Association Ian Culbert, the government’s handling of the emergency stockpile has been its “largest failure” to date.
“I would say the national emergency stockpile is probably the largest failure as far as our response goes to date,” said Culbert during a testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health in April.
Critics have also accused the Liberals of mismanagement after deciding to ship 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China during the early stages of the pandemic.
“In hindsight, was it the best decision? Probably not. But I think it was made in good will with the best information available at the time,” said Culbert during the same committee appearance.
As the Liberal government continues to encroach on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights is planning a large scale march on Parliament Hill to ensure gun owners are seen and heard. CCFR CEO and executive director Rod Giltaca joined the Andrew Lawton Show to discuss the march and why it’s important.
Watch the full episode of the show here.
The co-founder of Democracy Watch said that the Liberals deserve an “F” in ethics during testimony before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on Monday.
Democracy Watch is an Ottawa-based NGO that promotes accountability and transparency in government. It was co-founded by Duff Conacher in 1993.
Conacher was invited to testify before the committee and made the statement in response to a question by Conservative Ethics Critic Michael Barrett.
“What grade would you give Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his adherence to ethics laws since being elected in 2015?” asked Barrett.
“Well, both in ethics laws but also in terms of breaking open government promises, the Liberals grade an F in both cases,” said Conacher.
“For sure, it’s been a complete failure. He sent a great letter to ministers with great talk in it… Prime Minister Trudeau has not walked his own talk.”
The prime minister could potentially be found guilty of breaking ethics laws a third time after his government became embroiled in a conflict of interest scandal involving WE Charity.
The organization was awarded the management of a sole-sourced $900 million federal student service grant despite its many connections to the Trudeau family and members of the Liberal cabinet.
During his own testimony, Trudeau skirted responsibility for his involvement in the decision, suggesting that the public service was responsible for who would get the contract.
“There was never any direction by or attempt to influence from me or my staff that the public service recommend WE Charity,” said Trudeau.
Earlier appearances by WE co-founders Mark and Craig Kielburger revealed that Trudeau’s mother was paid by the charity up to $167,944 for various speaking engagements.
“My mother and my brother are professionals in their own right who have engagements and have for many, many years, with many different organizations across the country, and I don’t have the details of their work experiences or expenses,” Trudeau said about the matter.
Among others who have been implicated in the ethics scandal is Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who accepted free trips from the organization to Kenya and Ecuador.
Morneau has since apologized for the trip and reimbursed the organization $41,366.
Both the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Finance Minister’s office have refused to comment after the company which employs the husband of Trudeau’s chief of staff was tapped to manage an $84 million federal contract.
Last week, it was revealed that the federal government had outsourced its Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program (CECRA) to mortgage firm MCAP.
MCAP’s Senior Vice-President Robert Silver is married to Katie Telford, the prime minister’s chief of staff.
The PMO told the National Post that Silver had not reached out specifically to discuss CECRA. When asked if Silver had discussed anything else with PMO, a spokesman refused to answer.
“My response is nothing further to add,” spokesman Alex Wellstead wrote.
Morneau’s office also refused to elaborate on possibile discussions they may have had with Silver, with a spokeswoman saying they have “nothing to add to our previous response.”
In exchange for administering CECRA, MCAP is expected to profit around $8.4 million from the contract – a similar arrangement the federal government made with WE Charity to administer a federal student grant.
Silver had at least one meeting with federal officials prior to the contract being signed. Silver is not a registered lobbyist.
On Sunday, the Conservatives called for the lobbying commissioner to open an investigation into the deal, saying the deal shows signs of cronyism.
“So often when governments make programs unnecessarily complicated, it’s not out of incompetence, it’s because somebody stands to benefit from all of the complexity,” Conservative finance critic Pierre Poillievre told reporters.
“We want to know how that decision happened. Who pushed this multi-billion dollar program out of the department where it belonged so that it would be contracted to a company that just happened to have, as its senior vice president, the husband of the prime minister’s chief of staff?”
According to a PMO spokesman, Telford took a voluntary conflict of interest screening before the contract was signed.
A Montreal-based firm given a contract to supply the federal government with face masks has so far not delivered a single mask.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the total value of contracts awarded to AMD Medicom to produce face masks was $381,693,476, a sum number 338% higher than previously reported.
While the terms of the contract have not been made public, Public Health Agency Spokeswoman Natalie Mohamed confirmed that so far, “the Public Health Agency has not received surgical masks from Medicom’s Canadian production facility.”
Although the government’s ten-year contract with AMD Medicom stipulated that masks must be manufactured in Canada, AMD Medicom has no factories in Canada. Instead, the company depends on factories in China, the United States, Taiwan and France.
No other firms were given the opportunity to bid on the lucrative contract.
Since signing the contract in March, AMD Medicom has received a $4 million loan from the Quebec government to build a facility in Montreal.
In June, public officials told the House of Commons government operations committee that they were hopeful AMD Medicom would start supplying them with masks soon.
“We know the company is working to meet the commitments it has made to the Government of Canada for supply,” testified Senior Assistant Industry Minister Mitch Davies.
“We would hope that very soon – I would say in the summer period – it would be up and running and beginning manufacture in Canada. At this point I would indicate that in the late summer period we expect to see it beginning its production in Canada.”
AMD Medicom was first contacted about the contract just days after the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 pandemic.
While officials have not spoken about the terms of the contract, a Memorandum To The Minister from April states that made-in-Canada masks were due by July.
“Today Canada has no domestic N95 or surgical mask production capacity and is completely reliant on imports,” Public Works staff wrote.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a pressing and critical need to build domestic capacity, mitigating the risk of shortages in the near and long term.”
With less than two weeks until Conservative Party of Canada members must submit their leadership ballots, True North’s Andrew Lawton talks about the candidates in the race and shares some highlights from his Independent Press Gallery Fireside Chats.
Also, NASA says some space names are racist, and the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights’ Rod Giltaca joins the show to tee up next month’s march for gun rights on Parliament Hill.
Toronto police have arrested suspects after reports emerged on Sunday morning of two blood-soaked men wielding chainsaws at Cherry Beach.
Various eye witness accounts of the incident describe the suspects being covered in blood and running through a trail while wielding the weapons.
“2 guys with chainsaws covered in blood charging people. #CherryBeach STAY AWAY” said Twitter user ShadeSlayer.
Officers arrived on scene at 9:49 a.m. and made several arrests. According to police, the suspects were involved in a large fight prior to the incident.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident, however they do not believe that the chainsaws were used as a weapon.
Toronto Mayor John Tory addressed the arrests on Monday morning, suggesting that the incident was somehow connected to a weekly protest at Queen’s Park.
“There is a protest that seems to happen weekly at Queen’s Park and it seems, according to the information that has been given to me, a number of the very same people then end up at Cherry Beach having some sort of a gathering,” Tory told reporters.
“Clearly an incident like this would cause us to want to keep a very careful eye on both these gatherings themselves, because gatherings beyond certain numbers and at certain times… are regulated at this moment in time and also ones that scare or otherwise disturb people, we want to keep an eye on as well.”
One video of the altercation posted to Facebook shows the men yelling and revving the chainsaws as they bleed from various cuts.
“Who hit me?” yells one of the suspects.
“Who the f*** hit me?”
The federal government is allocating $150,000 in taxpayer dollars on four-day seminars for public service workers on “contemplative dialogue” and “awareness and the human person.”
A notice of the training sessions claims that “select staff [are to] attend four-day intensive training on active engagement,” followed by “coaching and mentoring.”
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the training sessions are being conducted by the Center for Contemplative Dialogue of Georgetown, Indiana for the Canada Energy Regulator.
This is not the first time that the federal agency has coughed up thousands on communications workshops.
Two years ago, the Canada Energy Regulator spent $49,641 for its employees to attend training sessions titled Active Engagement: The Practice Of Mindful Leadership.
Among the topics covered in the training sessions are lessons on “the non-defined self”, “active noticing” and awareness and the human person.
Officials with the Canada Energy Regulator did not respond for comment on the spending.
The Trudeau government has made many questionable spending decisions in the last few months.
In July, it was revealed that the Liberal government spent $10.5 million on climate change research which was never completed. Despite the fact that funds were given to seven different studies, none of the research culminated in any reports.
In March, AMD Medicom was awarded a 10-year, $113 million contract by the Trudeau government to produce face masks despite having no factories in Canada.
In June, the Trudeau government selected WE Charity to administer a $912 million fund through the Canada Student Service Grant program. Through the agreement, WE could have earned as much as $43 million and pay for hundreds of positions with its organization.
When the deal was announced, it was not publicly known that WE had paid members of the Trudeau family for speaking gigs since 2016. Margaret Trudeau, the prime minister’s mother, received $312,000 from WE. Alexandre Trudeau, his brother, received $32,000.
The coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdown gave the Trudeau government something that Liberals have long coveted: the social licence to spend obscene amounts of money, dole out sweetheart deals to crony friends, and rack up insurmountable levels of debt without consequence.
When Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced that Canada’s deficit this year would surpass $323 billion — contributing to a new total of $1.2 trillion in debt — he did so with a shrug.
The government insisted that the situation warranted such extreme and costly measures, and they insisted that Canadians were convinced that drastic government intervention was the only way to keep the economy from collapsing.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, was riding high in the polls — which is easy to do when you’re handing out cash left, right and centre.
But as the economy recovers and the dust begins to settle on Trudeau’s COVID-19 response, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Liberal government was up to all its old tricks and that they mishandled their pandemic response from Day 1.
It turns out the sordid WE charity scandal is just the tip of the iceberg.
We learned this week that the Trudeau government handed out a $113 million sole-sourced contract to produce medical masks to a Quebec firm, despite the fact that firm had no manufacturing facilities in Canada.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, an independent news agency based in Ottawa, government records show that cabinet approved the sweetheart deal with AMD Medicom on March 20, 2020, just nine days after the pandemic was declared.
Trudeau even boasted about the “made-in-Canada” solutions his government was funding.
“Canadian companies are answering the call to protect our health-care professionals with made-in-Canada solutions,” said Trudeau at the time. Oops.
It turns out that AMD Medicom was given $113 million from the Trudeau government and another $4 million from the Quebec government, despite the fact that it closed its last Canadian factory in 2019. Instead it offshores mask production to its factories in China, Taiwan, the U.S. and France.
Not only did Trudeau award this contract without sending notice to competitors, the Quebec firm then turned around to hire none other than SNC-Lavalin as its contractor for the deal.
Must be nice to have friends in Liberal places.
While the WE charity and AMD Medicom are just two of the many head-scratching deals awarded by Trudeau, his government is doing everything in its power to protect other crony contracts from public scrutiny.
As reported by the Canadian Press this week, the Trudeau government is refusing to reveal details of $5.8 billion worth of lucrative federal contracts awarded during the pandemic response. The identities and dollar figures given to private companies are being hidden from the public.
“We are guarding our supplier information carefully to make sure we have access to that supply chain on a continual basis should we need it,” said the deputy minister for Public Services and Procurement Canada in defence of the government’s secrecy.
Or perhaps it’s because most of this $5.8 billion is going overseas to foreign suppliers. The latest figures provided by the feds show that less than 40% of these contracts were given to domestic suppliers.
And even the so-called Canadian suppliers may or may not actually be doing business in Canada.
Herein lies the problem with enabling governments with sweeping new spending powers during a crisis: they don’t get any better at their jobs. Bureaucracies don’t magically become more competent, and politicians don’t become any more honest.
The best lesson Canadians can learn from this mess is that the next time a politician claims to need unprecedented public money to spend their way out of a crisis, the answer should be: thanks, but no thanks.
