2020-23

Saturday July 11, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday July 11, 2020

PM’s mother Margaret and brother Alexandre were both paid to speak at WE Charity events

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mother Margaret and his brother Alexandre have both been paid tens of thousands of dollars to appear at WE Charity events.

In a response to an inquiry from CBC News, WE Charity has provided details of the speaking fees paid to both individuals for their participation at events between 2016 and 2020.

Both Margaret and Alexandre are registered with the Speakers’ Spotlight Bureau, which arranges appearances for clients in exchange for negotiated fees.

Margaret spoke at approximately 28 events and received honoraria amounting to $250,000. Alexandre spoke at eight events and received approximately $32,000.

May 20, 2016

Prime Minister Trudeau and his government have been under fire since announcing on June 25 they were awarding a $19.5 million sole-source contract to WE Charity to administer the Canada Student Service Grant, a $912 million program offering grants of between $1,000 and $5,000 to post-secondary students in return for supervised volunteer hours.

WE Charity said last week it was pulling out of administering CSSG, citing the ongoing controversy surrounding it and the government’s decision to give the sole-source contract to WE. Prime Minister Trudeau said the federal government would take over the program.

September 22, 2017

News of the payments to two members of Trudeau’s family seems to contradict WE Charity’s earlier claim that it had “never paid an honorarium” to Margaret Trudeau.

The federal ethics commissioner is investigating the WE contract to administer the volunteer grant, after Conservative and NDP MPs contacted the office raising concerns about the relationship between the charity and the prime minister’s family.

This evening, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that — as CTV News first reported — the prime minister’s spouse, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, “received $1,500” for participating in a WE event in 2012, before Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party.

August 20, 2019

“The prime minister has never received payment for any events with WE,” the PMO said.

Trudeau admitted to reporters earlier this week that he did not recuse himself from cabinet discussions that led to the decision to award the contract to WE Charity.

December 3, 2015

CBC News contacted WE Charity to clarify the terms under which the prime minister and members of his family had appeared at past WE Day events.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Madame Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Madame Margaret Trudeau have participated in WE Charity events and programs over the years,” a WE spokesperson told CBC News late in the evening on June 25.

“The charity has never paid an honorarium to these individuals for their involvement in these programs and events.”

The charity said Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s involvement as an “ambassador and ally” has been “entirely on a volunteer basis and travel expenses related to this involvement were paid for by WE Charity.”

On Thursday, WE Charity emailed CBC News, saying the organization wanted to reach out “proactively” to “provide you with some updated information.”

Less than an hour after the WE statement went out Thursday, Canadaland reported on its website that it had records showing Speakers’ Spotlight had invoiced Free the Children (the not-for-profit arm of WE, now called WE Charity) directly for some of Margaret Trudeau’s speaker’s fees — and had asked WE about the discrepancy. (CBC) 

 

Friday July 10, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 10, 2020

Fauci says he hasn’t briefed Trump in two months as Covid-19 cases rise

June 3, 2020

Donald Trump says Dr Anthony Fauci is “a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes”. Fauci says he last saw Trump on 2 June and has not briefed him in two months.

The president was speaking to the Fox News host Sean Hannity. The most senior non-political member of the White House coronavirus taskforce and America’s top public health expert was having lunch with the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, nearly 3.2 million coronavirus cases have been recorded in the US and almost 133,000 people have died. More than 60,000 new cases were confirmed on Thursday, the latest in a succession of unwelcome records.

April 29, 2020

States which reopened early, Arizona, Texas and Florida prominent among them, are facing steep rises in cases and crushing pressure on testing and hospital beds. Early hotspots, such as California, New York and New Jersey, are pausing or modifying reopening, or considering re-entering lockdown.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have a serious ongoing problem, right now, as we speak,” Fauci said. “What worries me is the slope of the curve. It still looks like it’s exponential.”

He continued: “I think we have to realise that some states jumped ahead of themselves. Other states did it correctly. But the citizenry didn’t listen to the guidelines and they decided they were going to stay in bars and go to congregations of crowds and celebrations.”

March 26, 2020

Fauci put that down, in part, to a very American problem with authority. It is one the president seems to share.

“A lot of them said don’t wear a mask, don’t wear a mask,” Trump told Hannity about advisers including Fauci. “Now they are saying wear a mask. A lot of mistakes were made, a lot of mistakes.”

Many observers charge that Trump has made them, by refusing to wear a mask or consider a national mandate and by declining to “listen to my experts” in general. The president told Fox News he would probably wear a mask to visit Walter Reed hospital on Saturday. But he also mocked Joe Biden, his presumptive opponent in November, for wearing a “massive” mask in public.

COVID-19 Cartoons

Before bad weather intervened, Trump had been due to stage a rally in New Hampshire this weekend, although in the open air rather than in an indoor arena as in Tulsa, Oklahoma last month. Public health authorities said that event contributed to a surge in cases.

To Hannity, Trump said: “We have cases all over the place. Most of the cases immediately get better, they are people, young people, they have sniffles and two days later they are fine and they are not sick to start.”

That was an echo of his claim last week that 99% of Covid-19 cases are “totally harmless”. (The Guardian) 

 

Thursday July 9, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 9, 2020

Highlights of Bill Morneau’s 2020 fiscal ‘snapshot’

November 2, 2016

Finance Minister Bill Morneau has delivered an update on federal spending and economic projections linked to the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Morneau is calling today’s statement an “economic and fiscal snapshot” rather than the traditional economic and fiscal statement that comes between budgets.

Morneau was forced to put off his spring budget in March after the devastating economic effects of the pandemic became clearer.

October 19, 2017

The deficit for 2020-21 is expected to rise to $343.2 billion from the $34.4 billion deficit projected before the pandemic. 

A big chunk of that additional deficit can be attributed to the $212 billion in direct support measures the federal government is providing to individuals and businesses.

The snapshot says that, aside from the pandemic program spending, the economic slowdown is estimated to have added another $81.3 billion to the deficit in 2020-21.

March, 1, 2018

The Canadian economy is projected to shrink by 6.8 per cent this year before bouncing back by 5.5 per cent next year, making this crisis the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression. The economy is expected to decline in 2020-21 more than twice as much as it did in 2009-10 in response to the global financial crisis. 

Due to the the financial supports provided by the federal government, the federal debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to rise from 31 per cent in 2019-20 to 49 per cent in 2020-21.

The federal government says it’s getting a better deal on that debt through very low interest rates. “As a consequence of these developments, the government will save over $4 billion in public debt charges in 2020-21 compared to the forecast presented in the 2019 Economic and Fiscal Update in December 2019,” the snapshot said.

COVID-19 Cartoons

Between February and April, 5.5 million Canadians either lost their jobs or saw their work hours significantly reduced.  Those losses pushed the unemployment rate to 13.7 per cent in May — the highest rise on record — from a pre-crisis low of 5.5 per cent in January.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said that without government pandemic programs, the GDP would have contracted by more than 10 per cent and unemployment would have risen by another 2 per cent. (CBC) 

 

Wednesday July 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 8, 2020

Ontario plans to stop Grade 9 students from streaming into applied or academic tracks

Series: Young Doug Ford

The Ontario government plans to stop its Grade 9 “applied” and “academic” track streaming, a spokesperson for the ministry of education confirmed Monday.

High school students in Ontario typically have to choose between more practical, hands-on applied courses or more theoretical academic courses in core subjects.

“Students, families and staff deserve an education system that is inclusive, accountable, and transparent, and one that by design, is set up to fully and equally empower all children to achieve their potential,” Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

December 5, 2019

“This government will move quickly and decisively to combat systemic racism so that every child – irrespective of colour of skin, heritage, faith or ability – can have a fighting chance at success.”

The streaming process was developed in the late 1990s as a way to cater to students with different learning styles, but experts say that streaming has disproportionately impacted racialized and low-income students, affecting graduation rates and test scores.

Advocacy group People for Education has long been calling for an end to the streaming process. They argue that it ends up dividing students rather than providing them with more options.

January 25, 2019

“There as a high disproportionate amount of kids in the applied stream who were Black, who were Indigenous, who came from low-income families,” Annie Kidder from People for Education said. “All of the research, every single year when it was looked at on who goes to applied found a disproportionate portion of kids from certain backgrounds.”

Kidder said that while eliminating the practice is the right thing to do, she wants to know more about how students with different learning styles will be supported during the transition as well as teachers.

“You can’t just flip a switch,” she said. “You have to be willing to do the other part of the work.”

Five years ago People for Education called on the Liberal government to merge the two levels of Grade 9 math classes after a survey found that students in the applied version of the course were less successful on EQAO tests, less likely to graduate and less likely to go on to post-secondary education. (CTV)