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Rule of Law

Thursday February 13, 2020

February 20, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 13, 2020

Rule of law must prevail in gas pipeline dispute

A common misconception about the blockades and protests disrupting business and travel across Canada this week is that they are taking place with the support of the majority of Indigenous people. Obviously, some people — Indigenous and non-Indigenous — support Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in their efforts to stop the construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline.

February 6, 2020

But to suggest that the chiefs, or their supporters across the country, speak on behalf of Indigenous people in general is misguided.

Consider the situation among members of the Witset First Nation in the area of the pipeline.

All 20 elected band councils along the pipeline route have signed benefit agreements with Coastal GasLink and support the pipeline. Some of the communities held referendums that showed majority support. But, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline say those councils were established by the Indian Act and only have authority over reserve lands.

CBC’s “As It Happens” interviewed Wet’suwet’en resident Bonnie George who said, in part: “There’s quite a bit of support for this project. But people are afraid to speak up because, in the past few years, people that (have) spoken up were either ostracized … ridiculed, bullied, harassed, threatened, and being called a traitor — a sellout … People are afraid to speak up.”

April 23, 2006

Another resident, Philip Tait, told Global News: “Right now, this is probably got to be one of the biggest job creations in the province here, and we want to be part of it,” he said. “The hereditary chiefs’ office, they don’t speak for the whole clan.”

And yet, here we are. The chiefs’ protest has become a cause celebre across the country, with supporters blockading roads and railways, disrupting service. Some of the consequences are merely inconveniences, but others have serious economic impact. The lack of propane delivery, for example, threatens agricultural businesses that rely on it to heat barns during winter.

The pipeline project has met all environmental requirements. It has all the requisite approvals. It has the official support of Indigenous communities along the route.

And it has the potential to serve an important purpose, aside from the obvious one that it moves liquid natural gas from point A (Dawson Creek) to Point B (Kitimat).

Pipeline cartoons

The natural gas moved through the pipeline will end up at a huge complex in Kitimat. From there, LNG will be moved by ship to markets around the world. Some of those markets will include large nations like China and India that still produce a great deal of their needed energy by burning coal. LNG, while not perfect, is much less harmful to the environment as coal energy. So the LNG that comes from the $6-billion, 670-kilometre Coastal GasLink pipeline has the potential to make a significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.

But for that to work, the gas has to get from its source to market. And the best, safest, way to do that is by pipeline.

Given that construction has all official approvals to proceed, governments were left with little choice but to issue injunctions demanding protesters leave the area. When they refused, RCMP removed and arrested some. RCMP were operating under the rule of law, just as police in other jurisdictions, including Ontario, are doing by following legal direction to remove blockades on rail lines, ports and roadways.

Negotiations with the chiefs are continuing, as they should. But the rule of law must be observed, across Canada. That’s of paramount national importance. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2020-06, blockade, Canada, indigenous, justice, pipeline, protest, Rule of Law, scales of justice

Friday May 10, 2019

May 17, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 10, 2019

Trudeau says Norman case unfolded ‘completely independent’ of government

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the proceedings in Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s breach-of-trust case unfolded independent of government, despite criticism from the senior naval officer’s defence team.

March 1, 2019

Mr. Trudeau avoided questions from reporters on Friday about whether he will call an inquiry into Vice-Adm. Norman’s case and why his government withheld documents the defence had requested.

“Canadians understand that judicial processes, police investigations and court proceedings are all entirely independent of the government of the day, certainly of the Prime Minister’s Office. That is the way it should be,” Mr. Trudeau said in Edmonton.

“The processes in this case have unfolded in a proper manner, completely independent of government, as they should have.”

Crown prosecutor Barbara Mercier stayed the charge against Vice-Adm. Norman on Wednesday. She said new documents the prosecution had received from the defence revealed his actions in relation to a shipbuilding contract were “inappropriate,” but that does not mean they were criminal.

February 15, 2019

Vice-Adm. Norman was suspended as the military’s second-in-command on Jan. 16, 2017, and charged with breach of trust last year for allegedly leaking government secrets in an attempt to influence cabinet’s decision in a review of a $668-million contract with Quebec’s Davie shipyard for a supply vessel. He denied any wrongdoing.

Lawyer Marie Henein said the government prevented her team from accessing thousands of government documents she needed to defend her client, including communications by e-mail and text message between senior staff in Mr. Trudeau’s government.

“There are times you agree with what happens in a court, there are times you don’t and that’s fine. But what you don’t do is you don’t put your finger and try to weigh in on the scales of justice, that is not what should be happening,” Ms. Henein said at a news conference earlier this week.

The RCMP defended their handling of the case in a statement on Friday, saying: “Throughout the course of this criminal investigation, investigators from the RCMP National Division Sensitive and International Investigations section have conducted a thorough, independent and highly professional investigation.” (Globe & Mail) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2019-17, boxing, Canada, cookie jar, election, Justin Trudeau, Mark Norman, political interference, prosecutorial independence, Rule of Law, SNC-Lavalin

Friday March 29, 2019

April 5, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 29, 2019

Canada’s canola conundrum has Trudeau pinned between China and U.S.

March 1, 2019

Trade diversification was supposed to make Canada less dependent on the U.S. But as the canola dispute shows, it has had a perverse effect. It has made this country more dependent on China.

Beijing’s decision to ban two major Canadian companies from exporting canola to China has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government rattled.

Canola is Canada’s largest grain export after wheat. China is Canada’s number one market for canola. Last year Canadian canola seed exports to China were worth about $2.7 billion.

In short, the ban is a big deal — particularly since it is accompanied by a reluctance among Chinese importers to sign any new canola contracts with Canadians.

The ban has lowered canola prices and left Canadian farmers unsure of whether to plant a new crop this spring.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Animated!

Until now, canola has been the poster boy for Canadian efforts to diversify trade away from the U.S. and toward the new markets of Asia. A rapeseed variant both developed in and named for Canada, canola is a hometown success story.

Appropriately perhaps, Canada is the world’s largest producer of canola. Virtually all of it is exported, with China, Japan and Mexico being the top three destinations.

When Finance Minister Bill Morneau wrote in his 2017 budget about focusing on technological change in Canada’s agri-food industry, canola was almost certainly one of the examples he had in mind. When Trudeau mused about free trade with China, canola was front and centre.

But as Canada’s long and complicated history with the U.S. shows, trade relations come at a cost. (Continued: Toronto Star) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2019-12, Canada, canola, diplomacy, Justin Trudeau, Progressive, Rule of Law, Trade, Xi Jingping

Friday March 1, 2019

March 8, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 1, 2019

China invokes SNC-Lavalin controversy to advocate for Huawei exec’s release

China’s Foreign Ministry grabbed a chance to question the state of judicial independence in Canada on Friday, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government faced accusations at home that it had tried to intervene to stop a corruption trial.

February 15, 2019

Trudeau’s domestic troubles have attracted attention in Chinese state media due to his previous assertion that his government cannot interfere in the case of a senior Huawei executive arrested in Canada and now fighting extradition to the United States.

Canada is likely to announce on Friday that an extradition hearing against Meng Wanzhou, the telecommunication giant’s chief financial officer, can proceed, legal experts said, worsening already icy relations with Beijing.

China has repeatedly called for the release of Meng, arrested in Vancouver in December at Washington’s request. In late January the U.S. Justice Department charged Huawei and Meng with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran.

At a regular daily news briefing in Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry took the opportunity to take Canada to task over possible double standards, by commenting on a domestic Canadian political issue that does not otherwise involve China.

Trudeau has disputed allegations by his former justice minister that government officials inappropriately pressured her to help the SNC-Lavalin construction firm avoid a corruption trial.

January 24, 2018

Asked by a state media journalist if it was contradictory for Trudeau to say he couldn’t interfere in Meng’s case while his government is accused of trying to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he “really liked this question.”

“In fact on this case you have mentioned, people in Canada are paying it a great deal of attention,” he added. “In fact, not only Chinese and Canadian citizens, but the whole world are extremely interested to hear how the Canadian government answers this question.”

Both Meng and Huawei have denied the U.S. Allegations.

Ottawa has until midnight on Friday to announce whether it will issue an authority to proceed, which would allow a court in British Columbia to start a formal extradition hearing.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has stressed that Canada is a “rule of law” country and is acting without political interference in the extradition case of Meng. (Source: CBC) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2019-08, Canada, China, Huawei, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Justin Trudeau, Meng Wanzhou, Rule of Law, SNC-Lavalin

Thursday February 28, 2019

February 28, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay – Thursday February 28, 2019

The moral catastrophe of Justin Trudeau

The dangerous files are never the obscure ones. Scandals don’t happen in the weird little corners of government, in amateur sport or in crop science. They happen on the issues a prime minister cares most about, because everyone gets the message that the rules matter less than the result.

February 9, 2005

It’s a constant in politics. In 2016 I took one look at Bill Morneau’s first budget and wrote this, “The sponsorship scandal of the late Chrétien years was possible because it was obvious to every scoundrel with Liberal friends that spending on national unity would not receive close scrutiny from a government that was desperate to be seen doing something on the file. A government that considers the scale of its spending to be proof of its virtue is an easy mark for hucksters and worse.”

It wasn’t a perfect prediction. I kind of expected the hucksters and worse to be outsidegovernment. Unless the Trudeau Liberals can produce persuasive evidence that Jody Wilson-Raybould is an utter fabulist (and frankly, I now expect several to try), her testimony before the Commons Justice Committee establishes pretty clearly that the hucksters and worse were running the show. Led by the grinning legatee who taints the Prime Ministers’ office.

There will now be a period of stark partisanship. We’re in an election year. Loyal Liberals will tell themselves, and then everyone else, that the price of looking clearly at Justin Trudeau’s bully club (so many men; wonder how Katie Telford felt about that while she was signing off on every element of it) is ceding the field to Andrew Scheer. Who, they will tell themselves and then the country, is an actual Nazi.

September 22, 2017

I mean, after all, that’s pretty close to what they told one another, and then Jody Wilson-Raybould, last fall, isn’t it? There was an election in Quebec in the first week of October. And Ben Chin, a former journalist who did whatever Christy Clark needed done in B.C. before moving east to do whatever Bill Morneau and the PMO needed doing, used that thin reed of an excuse to try to sway Wilson-Raybould’s chief of staff, Jessica Prince. “If they don’t get a [deferred prosecution agreement], they will leave Montreal, and it’s the Quebec election right now, so we can’t have that happen,” Wilson-Raybould told the committee, paraphrasing Chin’s conversation with Prince.

I’ve never met a Liberal yet who doesn’t reliably confuse his electoral skin with the national interest. So much of what Trudeau and his minions have done in the last year stems from that instinct. Take the ludicrous half-billion-dollar bailout for people in my line of work, never explained, sprung out of nowhere in Morneau’s fall economic update—or as I now like to think of it, between Trudeau advisor Mathieu Bouchard’s meeting (yet another one) with Prince and Michael Wernick’s chat with Wilson-Raybould. You can get a lot of op-eds written with that kind of dough. Take the cool billion the Canada Infrastructure Bank coughed up  to pay for a politically popular and impeccably well-connected transit project around Montreal… (Continued: Paul Wells, MacLean’s) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: banana republic, Canada, corruption, dictators, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Justin Trudeau, Michael Wernick, partisanship, Rule of Law
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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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