Always:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau receives three memos a day, a political aide testified yesterday. The Commission on Foreign Interference is attempting to determine why Trudeau failed to act on repeated warnings of alleged illegal activity by foreign agents: “Would you agree with me the Prime Minister of Canada should not have any problem reading?”
THREE whole memos?
He must be exhausted!
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to shuffle his cabinet after four cabinet ministers told the Prime Minister’s Office they will not be running in the next election, adding more pressure to a government facing an internal caucus revolt.
The minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, Filomena Tassi, and Sports Minister Carla Qualtrough have announced on social media they will not run again.
Other ministers that will not be running again include Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal and National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, a government source confirmed to The Canadian Press. The two ministers have not yet put out statements.
The announcements come during an unstable time for the prime minister, whose party has been lagging behind the Conservatives in the polls for over a year. The latest Nanos Research poll from Oct. 15 shows the Liberals holding the support of 23 percent of Canadians, compared with the Tories at 39 percent and the NDP at 21 percent.
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Former Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe thinks the writing’s on the wall for the federal Liberals — which is why no one is clamouring to replace beleaguered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ahead of the next election.
In an interview with Mercedes Stephenson that aired Sunday on The West Block, Duceppe said he’s heard from Liberals in Quebec who are unhappy with Trudeau’s leadership and the party’s electoral prospects. But with no one waiting in the wings to chart a new course, there’s little that can be done.
“They’re not happy, but they don’t have another choice,” he said.
“The problem is, nobody is ready to replace Trudeau or want to replace Trudeau because they know they will lose. So it’s not very interesting running when you know you will suffer a very severe defeat.”
Why could that be, I wonder?
I think I might know:
The number of federal executives and their associated costs have surged under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration, according to new data and access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
As of 2024, there are 9,155 federal executives, a 42% increase from the 6,414 executives in 2016. The CTF criticized the dramatic expansion, citing the significant rise in costs tied to these high-level positions.
“The government has ballooned the bureaucracy across the board, but even more concerning is that this government is swelling the ranks of its most expensive bureaucrats,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF.
“Trudeau should go after the fat cats first and that means cutting back the size and cost of the federal c-suite.”
Salaries for federal executives range from $134,827 to $255,607, and the total compensation for these positions reached $1.95 billion in 2022 — a 41% increase since 2015.
During the same period, inflation in Canada rose by 19.4%, highlighting the disproportionate rise in executive pay compared to cost-of-living increases.
In addition to salary hikes, about 90% of federal executives received annual bonuses. In 2022, the government paid out $202 million in bonuses, with the average executive receiving $18,252. Terrazzano questioned whether taxpayers were seeing the value of these expenditures.
“Taxpayers are paying for more executives taking bigger salaries and bigger bonuses, but the government still can’t deliver good results,” said Terrazzano. “Can anyone in government explain why we’re paying so much for so little?”
The increase in federal executives is part of broader growth in the public sector. Since Trudeau took office, the federal bureaucracy has grown by 42%, with over 108,000 new employees added to the payroll. Spending on federal bureaucrats hit a record $67.4 billion last year, marking a 68% increase since 2016.
**
“At this time of backlash against progressive policies of inclusion and diversity, you know, are we going to double down on making sure that everyone gets to participate or play?” Trudeau said in an interview with Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith on his podcast “Uncommons” released Oct. 1.
Trudeau has been facing pressure to step down by current and past Liberal MPs as the party continues to slide in the polls, with the Conservatives sustaining a 20-point lead over the Liberals in national polls in recent months and after the upset loss in two byelections that were previously Liberal strongholds.
Are these foreign interventionists in the room with you right now, Justin?:
If Justin Trudeau had his way, Canadians would never know about foreign interference in this country, never mind the names of those involved. Trudeau made that abundantly clear in his highly partisan appearance at the Foreign Interference Commission on Wednesday.
In his testimony, Trudeau lashed out at those who leaked information to the public and explained how this could all be handled without coming clean to the public.
If you were hopeful that Trudeau would heed the call by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to “release the names of all MPs that have collaborated with foreign interference,” don’t hold your breath. If it were up to Trudeau, there wouldn’t even be a Foreign Interference Commission.
“There is no question that the criminal who leaked the information to the media, had a role to play in our decision,” Trudeau said of the government’s expulsion of Zhao Wei.
The decision to declare Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat, persona non grata in Canada only came after The Globe and Mail published a story exposing his gathering of information on Conservative MP Michael Chong and his extended family in Hong Kong.
“We will not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs,” Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement at the time.
The truth is, the Trudeau government had been allowing this Chinese diplomat to gather information on Chong, and New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan, who also has family in China. They were both targeted because they had been critical of the government in Beijing.
Despite knowing about these activities and other questionable acts of Mr. Wei, the Trudeau government did nothing. They allowed him to continue to operate for years and only acted when the story hit the media.
Worse, they didn’t even inform Chong or Kwan that a Chinese diplomat in Canada was gathering information on them and their family members in China and shipping it back to China’s domestic spy agency. Trudeau even tried to downplay that these actions constituted a threat against the family members of Kwan or Chong.
Perhaps that’s why he allowed the illegal Chinese police stations to operate in Canada for so long, he didn’t see Chinese officials telling Canadian citizens to smarten up or something would happen to their family in China as a threat.
The pattern here is that Trudeau only acted when his government was embarrassed into doing so through a public shaming. It was the same with Han Dong, the now former Liberal MP accused of being helped by China in securing his Liberal nomination for the riding of Don Valley North in 2019.
While Dong has denied any knowledge or complicity with China’s actions, the inquiry has heard that Chinese officials worked to help him win the Liberal nomination. Trudeau was informed of this weeks before the 2019 election but allowed him to run and then didn’t follow up.
Dong ran and won again as a Liberal in 2021 and only left the Liberal caucus when a story was published about the allegations in March of 2023. Trudeau knew about the allegations for three years and did nothing with Dong, nor did he act against the Chinese diplomats involved.
On Wednesday, while going on several partisan rants to attack Poilievre, Trudeau explained more than once that a leader can drop candidates without ever going public. He described how they can deny to sign papers for candidates, or invent a story about past problems for public consumption.
It was another example of how Trudeau simply doesn’t want the public to know the depths of foreign interference. This is why he won’t release the names, this is why he called an inquiry with a very limited mandate only after public outrage.
It’s worth remembering that Trudeau originally rejected the idea of an inquiry, that his party shut down Commons committees looking into the issue, and that he tried to whitewash the whole thing by appointing his ski buddy David Johnston.
Poilievre has called for names of those involved to be released for more than a year, but Trudeau wants the public to know as little as possible. That tells you all you need to know about both leaders.
**
“None of them significantly altered, or altered at all my perception of China’s behaviour, China’s focus, China’s engagement, influence, and in some cases, interference in Canada, to any significant degree,” he said.
Former CSIS director David Vigneault told the inquiry on Sept. 27 his agency’s report contained “exquisite intelligence” on Beijing interference and that he expected it would have been briefed to the prime minister.
**
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office had enough “concerns” about one Liberal MP it vetoed his appointment to a Commons committee, the Commission on Foreign Interference disclosed yesterday. Cabinet has yet to explain why MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) remained a Liberal candidate through two elections: “Un-endorsing Mr. Dong would have direct electoral consequences.”
**
It's not "guile"; it's a slur, and it is not at all believed:
When questioned, Mr. Trudeau launched into a lecture about why it’s awkward for the prime minister to get involved in questions about opposition politicians who might be involved – and the importance of party leaders to get classified briefings so they can deal with it.
Then he dropped the bomb: “Because I am Prime Minister and privy to all these informations, I have the names of a number of parliamentarians, former parliamentarians, and/or candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada who are engaged or at high risk of or for whom there is clear intelligence around foreign interference.”
It was a startling statement, both for its substance and its guile.
The public can’t check if it’s true. Or even know what the allegation is. The information is secret. Mr. Trudeau raised it on what was the last day of witness testimony, so officials with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service won’t be called back to the inquiry to testify on how accurate his statement is.
Even Mr. Poilievre can’t say he personally knows that it’s not true, because he hasn’t received a security clearance to obtain a full intelligence briefing – which was the very point Mr. Trudeau was trying to exploit. And the Prime Minister kept hammering away at the Conservative Leader for failing to take the briefing.
How strange that this should all pop up now that Justin is in a bind.
A liar and a buffoon.
**
For the next five minutes, Trudeau lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to take a security briefing on these allegations: “The decision of the leader of the Conservative party to not receive the necessary clearance to get those names and to protect the integrity of his party is bewildering to me … It also means there is nobody there to stand up for those individuals if the intelligence is shoddy or incomplete or just allegations from a single source.”
It was a classic setup: insinuation, accusation and implication that Poilievre isn’t fit to lead. And for a moment, it opened a tantalizing possibility: has Trudeau been hanging in there all this time because he had shade to throw at the Conservative leader? Some serious, career-ending shade that was kept in reserve for the moment close to election-time, when it could inflict maximum damage? ...
But Trudeau may have miscalculated. In response to his revelations, Poilievre said the PM is lying, and challenged him to release the names of all the politicians – Conservative, Liberal, or whatever party — that he says are in cahoots with foreign powers. Trudeau testified on cross examination that he knew of Liberal parliamentarians who could also be compromised, but did not say what he was doing about this.
Unless Trudeau really has a grenade in his pocket, and not a damp squib, this story might do little more than buy him time. A group of MPs is supposedly set to ask him to quit next week, and four more ministers have told the PMO they’re not running again. While it isn’t a full-throated caucus revolt, it’s hard to see how the PM can stay on if his team starts abandoning him.
**
Conservatives yesterday demanded Prime Minister Justin Trudeau name names after he said he had “explosive” top secret evidence Opposition members were acting for foreign agents. “Release the names,” said Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre: “Share it with the public.”
Justin can waive any privilege any time he likes.
He can prove or disprove any foreign interference accusations.
So why won't he?
I think we know.
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