Alex Christoforou
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Canadian PM Trudeau’s tough re-election bid, which has been hit with a scathing rebuke, delivered by an ethics watchdog report.
With less than 10 weeks before the October vote independent ethics commissioner Mario Dion said Trudeau improperly pressured his former attorney general to spare engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group from a corruption trial. The scandal erupted in February and helped push Conservative candidate, Andrew Scheer, to the top in polls for several months. With no new developments or headlines, Trudeau’s Liberal Party was recovering in the polls.
The 63-page report undermines Trudeau’s narrative, which is that he is a young and dynamic progressive on a mission to “do things differently” and more transparently in Canada.
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SNC – Lavalin Report Exposes Justin Trudeau’s Corruption by The Duran
The Duran Quick Take: Episode 286. The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Canada’s Trudeau tough re-election bid, which has been hit with a scathing rebuke, delivered by an ethics watchdog report. With less than 10 weeks before the October vote independent ethics commissioner Mario Dion said Trudeau improperly pressured his former attorney general to spare engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group from a corruption trial.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada got some bad news at a very bad time.
The big picture: Trudeau was already in danger of losing October’s general election — polls show his Liberals in a dead heat with the Conservatives. Yesterday, the biggest scandal of his tenure burst back into the spotlight.
Flashback: The scandal began in February with a Globe and Mail report that Trudeau’s aides pressured Canada’s former attorney general to cut a deal with SNC-Lavalin. The engineering giant faced corruption charges over past dealings with the Gadhafi regime in Libya.
- The minister in question, Jody Wilson-Raybould, had been demoted and later resigned. More resignations followed the news. The ensuing uproar was disastrous for Trudeau’s reputation, but slowly faded to the background.
- That was until Canada’s ethics commissioner ruled yesterday that Trudeau violated ethics regulations by intervening in the case.
- Trudeau insists that he was merely “standing up for Canadians jobs.” It’s true that many were at stake; if convicted, SNC-Lavalin would have been banned from government contracts for 10 years.
- But that argument didn’t convince voters back in February, when the Liberals “lost about 10–12 points almost overnight,” says Darrell Bricker of Ipsos Public Affairs.
Why it matters: Bricker says the SNC-Lavalin affair is now the dominant issue in a campaign that will ultimately be a referendum on Trudeau.
“The No. 1 asset that the Liberals have going for them is Justin Trudeau. He is their brand. It’s not a great place to be starting an election campaign from.”
The flipside: Trudeau’s main opponent, former parliamentary speaker Andrew Scheer, is hoping to capitalize. He called Trudeau’s actions “unforgivable.”
- Scheer cuts a low profile. While his proposals so far have been relatively moderate, Bricker says, “there’s a lack of awareness about who he is or what he stands for.”
- “The narrative the Liberals are pushing hard is that he becomes ‘Trump North,’ or more accurately Doug Ford at the federal level.” Ford is the populist, right-wing, and deeply controversial premier of Ontario.
What to watch: While Scheer’s political identity is still taking shape, Trudeau’s has been called into question.
- “If there’s a word that describes the last 4 years and Justin Trudeau’s performance, I think generally that would be ‘disappointment,’” Bricker says.
- The big question, Bricker continues, is whether the scandal is already “factored in” for voters. If so, Trudeau’s skills as a campaigner put him in a strong position to win. If not, “he’s in really big trouble.”
The bottom line: Bricker says the rock star image — magazine covers, viral videos — that Trudeau projects globally was embraced by Canadians 4 years ago. Now, many view him as out of touch or unserious.
“The picture is the same. He’s always done the same thing. What’s changed is how people look at him now.”
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Hi there: Enjoyed your video. I am a Canadian geopolitical blogger and there’s another scandal brewing in Canada that is even worse.
https://greencrowasthecrowflies.blogspot.com/2019/08/pompeo-in-canada-to-discuss-huawei.html
Thanks for post Green Crow .Good link.
RBL
Sadly this new scandal will not be enough to kick him out of the Parliament this come October.,
Totally disgusted with Justin Trudeau .It was not very long after he got elected as Prime Minister that he reneged on his promise that if he was elected as Prime Minister ,it would be the last “first pass the post “election in Canada and a form of proportional representative government would be instituted . Then we got involved in the Ukrainian coup by siding with the US which caused the color revolution, https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=kaMvh_1532013681 through his faux foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland .That was just the beginning . Today we can all see what he was/is made of .Not much better than… Read more »
Canada didn’t just side with the US on Ukraine. Canada massaged Obama’s oboe to get the whole thing rolling.
The entire coup was cooked up in the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress’ back room. You know, the one with all the swastikas on the walls. (and don’t think I’m just exaggerating for effect)
I remember some heated discussions with some gal heavy into that Congress that raised horses or something way before Maidan. She was posting love poems to Norway’s Breivik after his shooting spree and talking about how she’d love to have kids with him. I could maybe understand having some white pride if you had something to show for it and not a country second only to Zimbabwe in economic and corruption terms but these ukie-nazis are as pathetic a bunch as ever celebrated a genocide. Degenerates in every sense of the word. I suspect even the Aryan Brotherhood may have… Read more »
Could you give me her number?
The young weed smokers love Trudeau, that’s how he won the last election and he will win again.
Andrew Scheer is an incompetent meathead that even an imbecile love-child like Justine Trudeau will club to death in the debates.
I think they should elect one of the Ukrainian-Canadian ranting neo-nazis as PM. Why settle for a sycophant when you can have the real deal?
A bit of context in the SNC affair. Deferred Prosecution Agreements are not unique to Canada. They exist in the US and UK. and they are meant to protect a major economic asset, as well as the thousands of employees, shareholders and retirees from being wiped out in the case of corporate malfeasance by a few executives,. The corporation has been cleaned out, and is under new governance, so it is argued that there is no practical point in prosecuting, and then have the company go bust. In a DPA, the company recognizes its wrondoing, and agrees to substantial penalties… Read more »
How does a conviction “wipe out” a company? Shareholders will have to accept a loss, big deal. If they want to dump their shares, some other investor will buy their stock. At the end of the day, what matters in financial terms only, is for the company to run a profit. But if it runs a net loss in a given year, due to a large fine, it’s not the end of the world.
A conviction wipes out a company when it is barred from bidding on government work for 10 years as a result of a criminal conviction. It also ruins their reputation abroad, also resulting in loss of revenue, as the other large engineering companies, such as Bechtel Corporation from the US, pick up the slack. SNC is second only to Bechtel Corp. No Canadian engineering has the size to compete with Bechtel. A criminal conviction does absolutely nothing to those executives who have already been removed and criminally prosecuted. You cannot put a corporation in prison. All it does is destroy… Read more »
I see that you feel Rule of Law, and in fact anything to do with ethics and morality, should be brushed aside whenever they become inconvenient. That probably makes you a corporate Fascist, within Mussolini’s definition of the term as “The marriage of the state and the corporation.” Your position is odious to most Canadians and exactly the kind of degenerate view nowadays preeminent among ‘Liberals’. With Trotskyite, Bolshevism on one side (Liberal Party) and the mock-conservatism of Preston Manning’s Western Canadian Separatist Reform Alliance Party (Conservative Party) on the other, Canadians are caught between two, ultimately corporate Fascist, extremes… Read more »
You sound like Jerry Butts, Trudeau’s disgraced, and resigned, brain.
Jerry came crawling back from the swamp lately as Trudeau becomes more and more insane and thinks that he can piss in the face of Canadians all day and they will call it rain.
More context. What SNC is charged with is bribery. It has been an open secret in Canada since the mid-1980s, when the provincially owned Manitoba Telephone System was charged similarly, that paying baksheesh was the norm for doing business in the Arab/Muslim world. A DPA was available to Wilson-Raybould, she refused to consider it. https://taxchambers.ca/bribery-rule-of-law/ Personally speaking, as bad as Trudeau Sr. was for Canada, every one of his successors have been worse, with Jr. being a total disaster. The fact of the matter is Canada, like every other “Western liberal democracy” is doomed no matter who becomes the head… Read more »
What would be the alternative? The conservatives?
To bad that the NDP’s Tom Mulcair stepped down just because he lost an election.
With their new guy Jagmeet Singh they do not have a chance. Apparently he is East Indian first and Canadian second.
Mulcair jumped from the Liberals to the NDP, in order to destroy it. His insistence on “modernizing” traditional NDP policies, such as leaving NATO and armed neutrality, at a time when most Canadians were opposed to US/NATO war-mongering, gave the NDP no real separation from the other parties. They are hues of the same colour. The NDP, like Britain’s Labour Party, have abandoned the interests of the people who created and supported the party.
What is sad Mangina Trudeau will be re-elected this coming October. Canadians aren’t the smartest when it comes to elect their leaders.
We don’t elect our leaders. We elect politicians through political parties, and the political parties elect the leaders. Parliament elects the Prime Minister, through a rubber stamp process, when one political party has a majority of seats on the House of Commons. While there are many politicians elected with a majority of the popular vote, there have been instances where the person elected has won by less than 100 votes over the candidates finishing 2nd and 3rd. We don’t elect governments, we un-elect one set of political whores and replace them with another set of political whores.