When the WE Charity scandal first broke, Justin Trudeau told Canadians that a public servant made the decision to give WE a $912 million sole-source contract to administer a program for students.
Trudeau then changed his mind and said it was a cabinet decision but the public service came up with the idea.
Really? So which is it? Who’s fault is it?
True North’s Anthony Furey discusses.
Just when you thought Chinese interference in Canada couldn’t get any worse, the Liberal government has awarded an estimated $6.8 million contract to a Chinese-owned firm, Nuctech Company, to supply security equipment for 170 Canadian embassies and other foreign offices.
To say this decision is questionable would be an understatement.
Nuctech Company, founded in 1997 by the son of former Chinese president Hu Jintao, has deep roots in the Chinese Communist Party. Utilizing this influence, Nuctech has managed to score a number of high-profile security contracts across the globe, including providing the systems used in many European airports to record the personal data of millions of travelers.
Cybersecurity experts have long been raising concerns about the real possibility that Nuctech may be passing on sensitive personal data of travelers and other information to the Chinese government. European Union (EU) lawmakers are currently grappling with these concerns, and the United States National Security Council have recently begun a campaign to lobby these European governments to ban Nuctech equipment.
The United States previously barred Nuctech technology from many of their own airports in 2014.
All of these concerns make it even more shocking that Canada approved the Nuctech contract, and only after the details of the contract were made public did Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Phillipe Champagne promised he would review “any possible issue relative to security or safety … all appropriate actions (will be) taken to ensure the safety of our missions around the world.”
Not only should have these concerns been considered before the contract was awarded to begin with, it must be questioned why we even allowed Nuctech to submit bids for government contracts.
Currently, Ottawa’s bidding process rewards government contracts to those who bid at the lowest price. However, Chinese state-owned companies – by nature of subsidies from their communist government – can make artificially low bids to ensure they are awarded contracts. This is not only concerning because of its anti-competitive nature, but the sensitive nature of these contracts. In fact, the real benefit Chinese technology firms like Nuctech may be getting for Canadian government contracts isn’t the payment from Canadian taxpayers – but the data they can harvest on Canadian citizens in the future.
Rather than go through the time and expense of some bureaucratic review of Nuctech, the Liberal government should show leadership and stand up to China at a time that Canadians demand it. This should include scrapping the latest Nuctech contract, banning their equipment from Canadian airports, preventing Chinese state-owned companies from bidding on Canadian government contracts, and working with the United States to pressure our European allies to take similar steps.
No amount of cost-savings for Canadians is worth an increased risk of Chinese influence and espionage.
A quick scan of the news on any given day may give Canadians the impression that we’re sliding from a well-governed first-world democracy into a dysfunctional third-world kleptocracy.
The prime minister is deeply entrenched in yet another ethical scandal — this time, his government shovelled nearly a billion dollars to a charity that seems to exist solely to excite Canadian teenagers about the Trudeau family, while also enriching the Trudeau family with lucrative speaking fees.
The Liberal cabinet is back peddling to make excuses for Trudeau and his habit of using the public purse like his own personal trust fund, but they’re also going full-speed ahead with reckless spending decisions — racking up unthinkable debt to offload onto future generations.
Meanwhile, political elites across the country have begun a campaign to delegitimize Canadian police officers, calling them “racist” and attempting to cut their resources to appease a trendy yet violent political movement coming from the American far-left.
The mainstream media is cheering on these illiberal efforts, all the while, crime levels are rising, police funding is being cut and young Canadians from minority communities are being told that Canadian police officers are the enemy and not to be trusted.
On a more local level, Canadians are being harassed, bullied and punished with hefty fines by local bylaw enforcers for the crime of breaking vague and ever-changing COVID-19 social distancing rules.
Canadians deserve much better than this. We need to push back against elite opinion — especially when paternalistic elites are corrupt and rotten to the core.
And while we have a lot of work to do here at home to preserve and restore our free society, it’s also important that we stand in solidarity with freedom fighters from real third world dictatorships.
On Friday, July 17, a group of Iranian dissidents who call themselves the National Council of Resistance of Iran hosted the largest annual summit pushing for freedom, justice and dignity in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The online summit featured delegates from 30,000 locations and 102 countries, including elected officials from Canada, the U.S., the UK and France.
Canadian MPs from both sides of the aisle — Liberal MP Judy Sgro, Conservative MP Candice Bergan and former prime ministers Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper — have spoken at past events organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Harper spoke once again this year, taking a lead role in condemning the Islamist regime in Iran for oppressing its own people while also pushing terrorism and instability throughout the Middle East. He reiterated the need to hold the regime responsible for shooting down a commercial airliner in January and murdering all 176 souls onboard, most of whom were headed to Canada.
This year’s conference is particularly important because it comes as the Iranian regime is asking for a $5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, which it claims will be spent trying to mitigate the damage of the coronavirus.
Ironically, the Iranian regime has lied to downplay the death toll COVID-19 has taken. The regime claims that 13,000 people have died from the virus, while local groups peg the number at 70,000.
Regardless, the despotic Iranian regime cannot be trusted with more money from the international community — and Canada has the power to stop it.
The decision to grant this loan falls on the IMF’s Executive Board, which includes a Canadian delegate responsible for voting on behalf of Canada and eleven Caribbean nations.
Canada should demonstrate that it remains a beacon of freedom, justice and dignity — despite the bad behaviour of our own politicians and officials — by voting down this bid to write a $5-billion cheque to an unabashed terrorist regime with Canadian blood on its hands.
Why did Justin Trudeau wait so long to restrict flights from China? Why did his top health bureaucrat tell us not to wear face masks? Why did the Liberals gather up Canada’s medical equipment and ship it to China as a gift?
Rebel News’ Ezra Levant joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss all these glaring questions and his new book – China Virus: How Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Communist Ideology Is Putting Canadians in Danger.
The province of Quebec, city of Toronto, and other regions in Ontario have made masks mandatory in public indoor spaces such as malls, grocery stores and public transit vehicles.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is pushing the idea that those who oppose mandatory mask bylaws are psychologically unwell. Is it really such a kooky position to be against mandatory masks?
True North’s Lindsay Shepherd doesn’t think so.
This week a group of ragtag protesters who labelled themselves Black Lives Matter (BLM,) showed up outside a downtown Toronto Police station displaying their double digit IQs.
I’m not really sure who they think they are to make demands, but they had a list of demands. Here they are:
At the centre of their demands is to defund the Toronto Police by 50% and to “demilitarize” them. I’m not really sure what that means. But they had other confusing demands like reduce the scope of the police – huh?
But chief among their demands was to say no to police body cams – seriously? Body cams are the one thing that ensures the police act properly in their dealings with the public – and these protesters want to say no to them.
Let’s be realistic. These are not serious people. They are primarily white, spoiled children infused with the teachings of their socialist teachers and they know nothing of the real world.
On Saturday morning they were on display again, this time rampaging around some downtown Toronto parks and defacing statues and demanding the defunding of the police. Toronto Police say three people were arrested as they were kept busy with the moving crowd. From the videos I saw, there sure could’ve been a lot more arrests.
These protesters are Marxists. They want to undo all of the things which make this country what we are – such as capitalism and the rule of law.
They want all manner of free stuff without a thought about how any of it will be paid for. These protests have nothing to do with black lives or any other lives at all. Anyone remember George Floyd? We haven’t heard his name mentioned in weeks.
The “anti-racism” protesters are no different than Antifa. In fact, most of them are the same folks going from one cause to another.
Frankly, I am sick of the lot of them. It’s high time the police do their job and start making arrests. In the interests of political correctness, the police have laid back and allowed the nonsense to occur much to the detriment of their cities.
We are still a society of the rule of law and the police are responsible for enforcing that rule of law. If these violent protesters don’t like it, they can deal with the consequences of that which may and should include jail time.
We are not a perfect society. But we are a free society and we should not be dictated to by anarchists whatever the label they choose to wear.
A Chinese state-owned company was awarded a $6.8 million contract from the Canadian government to provide security equipment to Canadian embassies.
On Thursday, it became public that Nuctech will be providing X-ray machines to 170 embassies, consulates and high commissions around the world, as well as the machines’ installation and software.
Nuctech was founded by the son of a former Chinese president General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and is owned by the Chinese government.
The firm is nicknamed the “Huawei of airport security.”
In a statement to Global News, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the deal has not been finalized and will be reviewed.
“We are currently looking into the offer with Nuctech Company to provide some security screening equipment in our missions abroad,” he said.
“In addition, I have today directed GAC officials to review our purchasing practices when it comes to security equipment and to continue reviewing the security of our missions around the world.”
Critics argue that the Chinese-owned firms have an unfair advantage because they are subsidized by the Chinese regime, allowing them to offer products at lower prices.
Former Canadian ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques told the National Post that Canada should be more cautious when dealing with Chinese companies, as using low prices to enter key sectors is part of China’s foreign policy strategy.
“The problem of competing with state-owned companies is very difficult,” he said.
“There are long-term implications for Western economies.”
Nuctech has a history of controversy. In 2009, the firm was caught bribing officials in Namibia to secure a contract, and earlier this year a report by the Government of the Philippines determined that X-ray machines the Filipinos bought from Nuctech were overpriced and poor quality.
Canada has made deals with several Chinese state-owned companies.
In 2019, a state-owned firm was approved in December to explore for oil off the coast of Newfoundland. Recently, a deal to let a state-owned firm buy a Nunavut gold mine is currently under review.
Further, the future of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei’s role in Canada’s 5G network has yet to be decided by the Trudeau government.
The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour Gil McGowan compared the Kenney government to Nazi Germany – seriously?
It’s a ridiculous statement to make, but it’s also problematic for various reasons.
True North’s Sam Eskenasi says making Nazi analogies lowers our political discourse and is intellectually lazy.
The WE Charity scandal continues to develop, but the Trudeau government has refused to be forthcoming with Canadians.
As more information comes out, it’s clear that an RCMP investigation is needed.
True North’s Leo Knight says the Prime Minister needs to be held accountable. An apology for not recusing himself from the cabinet table is simply not enough.
A filibuster by Liberal MPs on the Ethics committee has successfully postponed a vote to open an investigation into the WE Charity scandal.
On Friday, the committee was debating a motion to open its own investigation into how WE Charity was handpicked to manage a $912 million fund while having close connections with the Trudeau family.
The motion would have required documentation from several individuals and allow the committee to “review the safeguards which are in place to avoid and prevent conflicts of interest in federal government procurement, contracting, granting, contribution and other expenditure policies.”
The meeting was hijacked when Liberal MPs began giving long, sometimes rambling speeches.
Liberal MP Élisabeth Brière gave a 30-minute speech which included quotes on political theory and detailed accounts of her life and previous careers.
Liberal MP Guy Fergus used part of his 30 minutes to teach the committee about ancient Greece, even speaking in Latin for a time.
The Liberal members successfully drove the meeting nearly an hour late and forced the vote to be postponed.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett told reporters that the Liberal filibuster was an embarrassingly obvious attempt to stop an investigation.
“So it’s laid bare for everyone to see that the Liberals have attempted to filibuster this committee,” he said.
“If playing hardball is filibustering the committee, waiting and running the clock until two o’clock and slyly passing a point of order to try and adjourn the committee, that’s clumsy, but I’m not sure if that’s hardball.”
It was recently revealed that the prime minister’s mother and brother had been paid by WE Charity for speaking gigs prior to the government’s decision to have the organization manage a $912 million fund for students. WE Charity could have received as much as $43 million for the administration role.
WE Charity’s co-founder has said that the Prime Minister’s Office personally offered WE Charity the contract, a claim the prime minister has disputed.
Earlier in July Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion opened an investigation to determine if the prime minister violated the Conflict of Interest Act. Finance Minister Bill Morneau is also under investigation.
The Finance and Government Operations committees have both voted to investigate different aspects of the WE Charity scandal.
The Prime Minister has been invited to testify in front of the Finance committee. However, Trudeau has not indicated whether or not he will accept the invitation.