Canada's Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau

"There's never been two resignations in recent memory of people resigning on principle ... together."
"The difference here is that Trudeau explicitly promised in the last election to do business differently than previous governments [transparency, equality, ministers free to run their departments free from prime ministerial interference]."
"In the past, one of the things -- and there are exceptions to this -- that would have characterized the cabinet appointment would have been, at a minimum, vetting for pretty severe levels of loyalty to the party. In this case, that wasn't something the prime minister prioritized when he put his cabinet together."
"[Wilson-Raybould and Philpott hadn't been] socialized to that norm [of the leader-centric model that Trudeau has claimed he rejected]. When he tried to tell them what to do on a particular issue, they just said no."
Chris Cochrane, politics professor, University of Toronto

"Secret in-camera meetings or private notices should not be a shield to prevent the upholding of the law and members' [Members of Parliament] rights."
"We were expelled prior to the commencement of the Liberal caucus meeting. The prime minister's words that night to the Liberal caucus are important to underscore, because expulsion should not be his decision to take unilaterally. However, the decision had been already made."
"This is a constitutional convention [one codified in the Parliament of Canada Act]."
"[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to eject former cabinet ministers Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal caucus represented] a breach of the Parliament of Canada Act."
Former Minister of Health and Treasury Board President Dr. Jane Philpott

Former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott have been expelled from the Liberal caucus. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Dr. Philpott, now sitting as an Independent in the House of Commons since last week being ejected from the Liberal caucus by Justin Trudeau, and refused, along with Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, to run in the forthcoming federal election as Liberals as they had intended, accuses the Liberals of having failed to hold a legally required caucus vote in the wake of the 2015 election in recognition of expulsions from caucus, upholding the reality that MPs are not accountable to the party leader; the leader is accountable to Members of Parliament.

But then, bypassing legalities, particularly those that were passed into law by the previous Conservative-led government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a favourite with this parliament. When Justin Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister he intended to fashion a new Canada and began by re-naming government departments to better reflect his agenda and his 'new direction' for Canada, while ironically proclaiming when abroad to his G-20 peers, "Canada is Back!"

He meant, of course, Liberal-led Canada. And like his father before him, his Canada would be socialist, progressive in orientation, with a kind eye toward repressive, socialist countries like China and Cuba. Trudeau was anxious to make his mark on the world stage and he began by demonstrating how cheerfully Canadian he is, open to progressive idealism that embraced the world at large, women and labour, the environment and refugees, Indigenous Canadians and the LGBTQ-2 community in an equal and open setting of mutual admiration.

He set out to cut a dashing figure in India, and succeeded. He somehow managed to ally himself repeatedly with those suspected of terrorist activities, sympathetically offering them 'understanding' and Canadian tax awards to ameliorate hurt feelings. He endeared himself to minority enclaves and brought into his cabinet ministers born in Afghanistan and Somalia, authorized to act in the very best interests of their adopted country. Muslims have pride of place in the Liberal caucus and "Islamophobia" does not.

Although the previous cabinet under Stephen Harper's Conservatives had almost equal representation between men and women, Justin Trudeau was quick to strut with pride and exclaim his 'feminist' credentials for dividing positions equally between men and women, issues such as experience and qualifications set aside as irrelevant. At every turn Trudeau made a concerted effort to set aside anything the previous government had brought into law, including the aforementioned Parliament of Canada Act with its amendment to decentralize political power back into the hands of ordinary legislators.

The deposed Wilson-Raybould had been a Crown prosecutor, a treaty commissioner, the regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations when she was crowned by Justin Trudeau as the first Aboriginal woman to hold the cabinet post of Minister of Justice. She has testified that she was hounded aggressively by order of the prime minister to have her change her mind about not instructing the prosecution service to offer engineering-construction giant SNC Lavalin a deferred prosecution rather than a criminal trial. She refused and was removed from her post.

Dr. Philpott's career was as a family doctor, an associate professor at University of Toronto, with advocacy work for HIV/AIDS in Africa in her portfolio. She decided to support Jody Wilson-Raybould with whom she had worked in close collaboration while both were in Cabinet, protesting that she had been dealt with unethically and unfairly, and calling upon the prime minister to do the honourable thing and admit his culpability. She resigned her post voluntarily, after Wilson-Raybould had resigned from her brief stint as Minister of Veterans Affairs to emphasize her claims of political interference.

There is a mystery to all of this. The Liberal caucus embarked on a smear-whisper campaign against both these women who have stood their ground, demanding accountability of the prime minister and his loyal henchmen for having pressured Wilson-Raybould to accede to Justin Trudeau's plan to save SNC-Lavalin from a criminal trial and the fall-out from conviction which would eliminate SNC from any government contracts for a decade, to which the company threatened a move of its corporate offices abroad, and the relinquishing of Canadian jobs.

Given the extent of what the public knows now about the behind-the-scenes, unethical behaviour and bullying on the part of the prime minister and his flunkies, and the associated condemnatory behaviour of the Liberal caucus in standing firm behind the prime minister as they are expected to do as ideologues and participants in a personality cult of a leader who will not be denied his way, why would both these women who resigned and spoke the truth on a matter of conscience and principle, insist they must be reinstated as Liberals?

• Jody Wilson-Raybould (far left) and Jane Philpott (second from left) were illegally bounced out of caucus without a vote, contends long-time Vancouver Liberal Bert Paul. MCPL MATHIEU GAUDREAULT, RIDEAU HALL

Moral Acuity Blindsided

"The former government was not always wrong. It's not true that we'll start from scratch from what was done [by the Conservative-led government of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper]."
"Somebody will have to explain to me in what way it is helping Ukraine that Canada has not engaged Russia about the Arctic. Canada and Russia are neighbours."
"If we don't engage in Russia, we don't help Ukraine [and] we don't help Canada or Canada's interests [similarly with Iran]."
"[The Liberal government will] engage Iran with open eyes; [the Conservative position was "irrational and ideological", harming Canada's interests."
"If Canada does what my Conservative colleagues have asked us to do - be alone to keep our sanctions -- the result is that it will be barely noticed in Iran. [And] it will hurt Canadian industry, the Canadian citizens that have families in Iran, and so on and so on. What is the rationale to do that?"
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion

Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion answers a question in the House of Commons. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

This is a man who wants to reduce a complex issue to its most basic formula; to place Canada in a position favourable to its bottom line, and in so doing reducing it to the position where moral ambiguity is more suitable than moral certainty, resulting in moral bankruptcy. But that's the kind of formula that appears to appeal to the Liberal Party of Canada, which now holds the majority position in Parliament, placing an egotistical dilettante politician in the position of prime minister of the country.

As a miscast foreign minister Mr. Dion who once himself aspired to the highest office in the land and dismally failed to haul the Liberals out of the purgatory which they had placed themselves deservedly into, inconvenient little details such as having the courage of one's convictions come a distant third to snatching trade and investment opportunities at the expense of national political decency. From former Prime Minister Jean Chretien whose years in office he used to feather his nest in China, the current Prime Minister was delivered the gift of advice.

China may be a human-rights-abusing Communist regime whose ambitions threaten the Asian world's stability and whose voracious appetite to become the world's dominant trade partner, soon emerging as a world power equal to the United States with no constraints from any quarter to its all-consuming energy needs to propel its vast population into a unity of the Communist ideal with its quaint consumerist capitalist streak, and its stealth purloining of other nations' industrial secrets, but there's profit to be made in doing business with the giant.

As for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, material and military support of ethnic Russian Ukrainian secessionists and the Russian grab of the Crimean Peninsula, with all the deaths and injury and destruction that accompanied Vladimir Putin's schemes of an expanded Russian Federation in memory of the Soviet  Union, and including the sacrifice of 298 passengers and crew of Malaysian airlines Flight 17, bygones are best to be recognized as such in favour of doing business....


And then there is Tehran's absolution from scrutiny and sanctions with the completion of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1. So best to overlook that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the world's premier sponsor of terrorist groups, not averse itself to terrorizing its own population, let alone those of its neighbours, including lending its heavy hand to sacrificing Sunni Syrians in aid of the butcher of Damascus's Shiite regime. Iran's illegal testing of international ballistic missiles whose sole purpose would be to carry a nuclear warhead, is unfortunate to be sure, but trade is important.

These have become Canadian values, thanks to the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau who has chided Israel for its West Bank settlements, and penned a mournful paean to the Holocaust taking care not to mention that the genocide targeted Jews primarily and that the Holocaust is linked with the deliberate, state-planned-and-executed murder of six million European Jews; an unfortunate tragedy that the Liberal government empathizes over, having neutralized it of its victims' identity.

François Hollande and Hassan Rouhani before a meeting at the Élysée palace in Paris. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Now, what Mr. Dion is looking forward to is having a comfortable little tete-a-tete with the "moderate" President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, just as Pope Francis has done, and just as France's President Francois Hollande has done at the Elysee Palace, so that he can beam with approval and satisfaction, nodding his head in agreement as Rouhani repeats what he stated in Mr. Hollande's presence:
"We must fight terrorism … We must help the Syrian people so that the Syrian people can build a sustainable future for the country. The main problem in Syria is not such and such person, the main issue is terrorism and Daesh", and of course, the al Quds Republican Presidential Guard corps, the Iranian proxy terrorist group Hezbollah and the Iran-sponsored Shiite militias helping to ravage the country and destroy its citizens' lives.

A Stalwart of High Principle in the Public Good

Honour Among Friends

"I am proud to be representing Desire2Learn before the Ontario government as well as all other governments and businesses around the world."
"I’m done with Harvard, I’m back in Ontario. I’m delighted to be back here. I’m pursuing a few opportunities and I’ll have the opportunity to speak to more about those in more detail in the future."

"One of the things that I’ve had a lot of opportunity to do is to take courses and do some teaching at Harvard. And one of the things we talked about is how we need to distinguish between reputation and character."

"Reputation is what people think you are and character is what you are truly. In this contact sport where there are no referees — and that distinguishes this contact sport from all the others — it can be very hard to protect reputation."

"But you can always protect your character. How do you do that? You do what you think is right and that’s what I always tried to do."

"It’s never too late to do the right thing."
Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty speaks at the gas plant cancellation hearings at Queen's Park in Toronto on June 25, 2013. Photo: Peter J. Thompson/Postmedia News/Files

How soon we don't forget. From the auditor-general's report into the scandalous waste of a billion dollars in Ontario's eHealth agency's fiasco in 2009 to the Ontario air ambulance service Ornge's corrupt, self-serving CEO Chris Mazza's entitlements, wink-wink, to nepotism at Ontario Power Generation (news: Premier Kathleen Wynne's brother-in-law interim CEO of eHealth), to the wasteful 'new-(clean)energy' sources and giveaways of excess electricity to New York while Ontarians get stiffed, Dalton McGuinty certainly made his mark.

His sloughing off of personal responsibility for his decision to cancel two gas plants to enable him to win another four years in office to continue ruining the Ontario economy and make a laughing stock of law and order when it comes to belligerent First Nations take-overs of private property, threatening people and laughing all the way to highway blockades, certainly gave the voters a chance to turn out the Liberals, but we muffed that one big-time.

But entitlements are entitlements and as long as they're not illegal, they're fair game, even if they amount to ethical black holes. So Dalton McGuinty has decided, as private citizen McGuinty to haul in all those IOUs and get himself a lobbying position with a former recipient of millions of taxfunds. He waited the obligatory year, to exercise his options to convince former colleagues whom he helped to reach public office that whatever he claims about the usefulness of his client to the Ontario taxpayer is right and proper.

As far as personal codes of conduct go, this man proved long ago that he is predatory and oblivious to the need of a public figure to present as unbesmirched by personal interests at the public trough. And so, Dalton McGuinty has launched himself on yet another principled journey to the future, burnishing his prospects on the way, personal morality be damned, because that, my friends, bespeaks his nature, not to be confused by his character which some may think describe one and the same thing.

His reputation was already tarnished, the legacy wanting. So what has he got to lose, after all?

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young   Ontario's Premier Kathleen Wynne greets former Premier Dalton McGuinty as she arrives with Lt.-Gov. David Onley for the Throne Speech at Queens Park in Toronto July 3.