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Tuesday August 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 20, 2019

Justin Trudeau’s ‘Just Watch Me!’ Moment

June 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau doesn’t apologize, at least for non-historical transgressions. His non-apology apologies tend to follow a formula: to assert his behaviour was “appropriate” and unimpeachable, to suggest “people can experience interactions differently” (and that his interpretation of the experience is the correct one), and then to wrap it all into a “teachable” moment.

But the prime minister’s flagrant “I can’t apologize” on Wednesday after he was found in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act for not the first, but the second time, established a breath-taking new level of righteous imperiousness, even for him. It even brings to mind his father’s defiant “Just watch me!” line during the 1970 October Crisis. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was responding at the time to a reporter’s question about how he planned to restore order in Quebec. Days later, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, leading to a police crack-down against dissidents—and a national controversy.

May 10, 2019

The subject under discussion now isn’t civil liberties. It’s another democracy bedrock: a justice system free from political interference. After conducting an independent investigation, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released a damning report Wednesday that found the prime minister and his staff made a “flagrant attempt to influence” the judicial process in efforts to press justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson Raybould to halt criminal prosecution of the Montreal-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin. Dion found Trudeau violated a section of the Act that prohibits public-office holders from using their position to try to influence a decision that would improperly further the private interests of a third party, in this case SNC-Lavalin.

January 15, 2019

Trudeau’s response to the report suggested a haughty disregard on several levels—to the office of the ethics commissioner, to the Conflict of Interest Act, as well as to Canadians’ basic comprehension of what words mean. He “accepted” Dion’s report and took it “very seriously,” Trudeau said, while also saying that he disagreed with a central conclusion: “Where I disagree with the Commissioner is where he says that any contact with the attorney general on this issue was improper.” He delivered a generic: “What happened over the past year shouldn’t have happened.” And, for good measure, he said, “I take full responsibility,” calculated to be repeated in media headlines, which it was.

But not only did the Prime Minister not take any responsibility, he reframed his violation of the Conflict of Interest Act as a civic virtue, and a probable campaign-trail mantra: his job is “to stand up for Canadians and to defend their interests,” Trudeau said. And Canadian “interests,” by Trudeau’s own metric, equals jobs: “I can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs because that’s part of what Canadians expect me to do.” (Chatelaine) 

Thursday November 8, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday November 8, 2012

U.S. budget crisis could push Canada into a recession

Budget monster lurks behind victorious Barack Obama

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is urging U.S. politicians to get back to work quickly on resolving their budget crisis now that the election is over, warning that failure would plunge both America and Canada into recession.

The minister has voiced concern before about the so-called “fiscal cliff,” but the re-election of both Democrat President Barack Obama and a right-wing Republican House on Tuesday has led to new fears of the risk becoming reality.

“Of course we’re worried because it would mean, were the entire fiscal cliff risk to come to reality … (it) would put the U.S. economy into a recession quite quickly and the Canadian economy would follow shortly thereafter, and would have a significant effect on the global economy,” Flaherty told reporters Wednesday.

Flaherty said all his colleagues at the G20 meeting of leading economic powers last weekend in Mexico expressed concern about how U.S. policy-makers would deal with the threat.

North American markets also seemed to take the threat seriously. The Dow Jones Industrials plunged more than 300 points at one point before recovering slightly. There was also a significant, but more modest, sell-off in Toronto.

Flaherty’s comments came amid warnings that gridlock in Washington could prevent a deal to extend about $600 billion in tax cuts and spending programs beyond Dec. 31. That would represent about a four-percentage-point hit to an economy only growing at 2 per cent.

Economists have considered the issue a no-brainer, but Obama and the Democrats have insisted that taxes on the rich rise as part of the deal, something Republicans have balked at the past two years (Source: Hamilton Spectator)