So It's Come to This

It hasn't been a week since Uncle David resigned his appointed post of getting Justin off the hook special rapporteur.

 He has been bombarded with assertions that his obvious ties to the Trudeau family and to China no doubt cloud his judgment.

He clung unto his post until he finally threw in the proverbial towel.

Now Justin can either ride out the summer hoping that everyone will forget about this or repeat the same toothless, time and money-consuming procedure that will exonerate him:

The only accomplishment of Mr. Trudeau’s sly attempt to shed his responsibility as Prime Minister and load it onto the back of someone else is to have dug more than a few extra feet to the already deep sour well of Canadians’ cynicism about crony politics.

The selection of David Johnston as special rapporteur for foreign interference, the appointment of Johnston, the recurrent efforts to keep Johnston in place were all patented exhibitions of the the great Trudeau transparency-avoiding machinery working at its most furious.

And all, this time, futile. Futile that is from the viewpoint of media-management consiglieres of the PMO, the smart boys on high salaries in the back rooms and the timid league of front-benchers in the Trudeau cabinet who thought to massage this temporizing, evasive and explicitly inadequate appointment into something acceptable to the Canadian public are having a gloomy weekend. Not gloomy enough. ...

From the very absolute beginning of this Chinese government interference story, there has been only one person and only one office with both the power and responsibility to unearth the depth and cost to our democracy of that interference. The person is Justin Trudeau and the office is that of prime minister.

A real prime minister confronts the deepest issues that trouble the country, deals with them manfully, takes the lead and faces the storm — if storm there be. He does not farm them out to acquaintances or neighbours. Unless of course there is a Jagmeet Singh always ready to lubricate his evasions and provide the abysmally supine cover for the same.

Article content

By trying to sling that awesome burden away from himself and his office — and of course to spare his increasingly tattered party yet more opprobrium from a very disenchanted public — Mr. Trudeau, always politically cute, may this time have out-cuted himself.

The actual issue is back right where it was when it began. But lodged so much deeper into the minds of even non-political observers. Canadians are still ignorant of the depth or nature of Chinese interference. We have no particulars on how they have pressured or put their claws on our Canadian-Chinese citizens. No read on their interactions with MPs, their attempted or real influence in certain ridings. We are at near zero information on the biggest assault on our electoral system itself.

Article content

Time has been wasted, energies better used on the issue itself, diverted — all over what was a partisan manoeuvre, of the Liberals, from the beginning.

There was something hard and cruel about putting Johnston in the middle of all this — even acknowledging he didn’t have to take the job.

Where now? Well, there will not be another special rapporteur. Rapporteurs, special or otherwise, are gone the way of the great auk and the not so impressive dodo.

A real, open, qualified public inquiry? Not if the high wizards of the PMO scandal-evasion machinery have their way. There must be some other “tactic” to befuddle the public and decoy the political panels these sages can devise.

Prorogation? Certainly possible, even likely, if the fallout from Johnston’s falling out stirs the public. Summer provides a kind of political amnesia — what with announcement tours, conferences on cottage patios for the elites, and maybe a drag show or two to lift Liberal spirits.

As for advice — to whom now may they look? Where is the meistermind to haul them out of this well-spaded pit? It will have to be someone really special.

Do they still have Hillary’s number?

 

But you took the money, Morrie.

You took the money:

A gift of $200,000 is not enough to buy influence in the Government of Canada, former Trudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg testified yesterday. One MP on the Commons public accounts committee noted the figure is 117 times larger than the federal campaign contribution limit in Canada: ““I honestly don’t think $200,000 is very significant in the greater scheme of things.”

 

Oh, so sums DO matter?

Like twenty dollars to feed a trucker's dog?

I do believe that you would prostitute yourself even further for much, much less.

And let's not forget the accumulative sums of this "exotic" inference.