transparency

Tuesday December 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 6, 2022

Pierre Poilievre’s self-imposed media vacuum is about to face its first test

October 20, 2022

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre believes the voters whose support he needs to lead his party to government in the next federal election will not be reached via the mainstream media.

His strategy is about to be tested.

On Dec. 12, the voters of the GTA riding of Mississauga-Lakeshore will be going to the polls to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Liberal MP Sven Spengemann last spring.

Tuesday November 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 8, 2022

Doug Ford uses a big principle for small politics

There is no real substantive reason why the Premier of Ontario can’t testify before the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, but, as a Federal Court judge has ruled, he has a “lawful excuse.”

November 4, 2022

Doug Ford has found that he can indeed use an important, constitutionally entrenched principle to serve small political goals.

Mr. Ford and his Deputy Premier, Sylvia Jones, had claimed parliamentary privilege, the venerable precept that ensures the work of legislatures isn’t sidetracked by lawsuits and legal proceedings, to avoid a day of testimony this Thursday – on a day when the Ontario legislature isn’t even sitting.

He has won in court, so now he won’t have to explain why he felt Ontario’s policing laws, and Ontario’s police, weren’t enough to handle February’s truckers’ convoy protests and blockades of border crossings and city streets, or testify about those events, which took place mostly in his province.

Justice Simon Fothergill’s ruling made clear that Mr. Ford won in court because parliamentary privilege protects MPPs from having to testify before courts and inquiries – whether or not testifying would actually impede the work of the Premier, or the legislature.

February 5, 2022

In the end, Justice Fothergill acknowledged the breadth of parliamentary privilege. It isn’t some tiny technicality. It’s a principle of parliamentary independence from the courts that comes from Westminster and is entrenched in Canada’s Constitution.

But the key issue is still that Mr. Ford and Ms. Jones didn’t have to hide behind that privilege. Parliamentarians often waive it. The Premier used this big principle as a legal loophole to protect himself.

If you’re keeping score, you might notice that Mr. Ford has made a habit of invoking big constitutionally recognized mechanisms to deal with political challenges. He pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights in back-to-work legislation for support workers in Ontario schools. He backtracked on that Monday. Just because you can invoke big principles to further small politics, it doesn’t mean you should.

February 19, 2022

It is true, as Mr. Ford has argued, that the Emergencies Act inquiry revolves around a federal government decision. What’s at issue is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the act on Feb. 14 to respond to the convoy protests. That legislation, 

which allowed the authorities to employ extraordinary powers including freezing bank accounts, is only to be used when no other law will do. The inquiry must determine whether that threshold was met.

But to get there, the commission has to figure out whether normal policing – under the jurisdiction of the province – should have been enough. Mr. Ford felt it wasn’t. (The Globe & Mail) 

 

Friday December 18, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 18, 2020

Hold Iran accountable for Flight PS752

As this terrible year of COVID-19 lurches to a close, Canadians should remember another, entirely separate tragedy that started it off.

January 9, 2020

One hundred and seventy-six innocent people — most of them either Canadians or travelling to Canada — were slaughtered by the Iranian military on Jan. 8 when it blasted the civilian plane in which they were travelling out of the skies.

There has been no justice for the dead in the 12 months that have passed since then. There has been no justice for the families and friends they left behind. As for the duplicitous, obstructive Iranian regime that was behind this atrocity, it has refused to admit it is responsible or can be held accountable.

At the very least, the report by former federal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale that was filed with the Canadian government this week should remind everyone in this country of the crime that was committed against so many Canadians and people with ties to Canada. Goodale’s findings should convince us, too, that Canada must push relentlessly for justice.

January 10, 2020

When Iranian missiles downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 in the second week of January, the entire region was on high alert. Just four hours earlier, Iran had fired missiles at American military positions in Iraq in retaliation for the Jan. 4 American air strike that had killed a senior Iranian general.

In the midst of this ongoing conflict, Flight PS752 should never have been cleared for takeoff from the airport in Iran’s capital city of Tehran. But it was, and three minutes later, it was destroyed by two Iranian missiles. Every one of the 176 people aboard that plane died, and of those victims, 55 were Canadian citizens, 30 were permanent residents of Canada and 53 were not Canadians but travelling to this country, many as students.

January 15, 2020

For three days after the downing of Flight PS752, Iran’s authoritarian leaders denied Iran’s involvement in the disaster, suggesting mechanical failure was to blame. Then, when emerging evidence exposed the falsehood of their denials, they admitted their missiles had destroyed the plane but attributed it to a “human error” committed by a single, Iranian mobile air defence operator. After that, it took the Iranians six months to turn over the downed jet’s flight recorders for outside examination.

If Goodale’s report does nothing else, it proves Iran’s leaders lied, withheld vital evidence and attempted a crass, cruel coverup. Instead of human error, Goodale uncovered “indications of incompetence, recklessness and wanton disregard for innocent human life” on the part of the Iranians.

January 8, 2020

Out of all the troubling questions that still demand answers, the Iranian government must explain why it left open its airspace for civilian flights, such as PS752, even after it had begun its missile barrage. That decision strongly suggests an attempt to conceal Iran’s aerial assault from the Americans — even if it meant using the passengers of PS752 as sacrificial lambs.

It won’t be easy to force Iran’s rulers to accept accountability for what they did. Canada must keep trying. To maintain its pressure, the federal government should, as Conservative MP Michael Chong is urging, impose sanctions on Iranian leaders and list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. 

In addition, aware that Iran’s own investigation of the disaster — and itself — is a sham, Canada should persuade the international community to require independent reviews of all future tragedies that involve military strikes on civilian aircraft.

As for the rest of us, the best we can do is remember the dead of PS752 and keep calling for justice. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday July 30, 2020

July 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 30, 2020

The Kielburgers boys’ self-described ‘labyrinth’ organizational structure is still murky

July 24, 2020

WE Charity. ME to WE Foundation. ME to WE Social Enterprise. WEllbeing Foundation. Imagine1day. WE 365 LP, and at least two other entities that sound like the prototype numbers for do-gooder androids. There is such a long list of entities in the WE umbrella that the former chair of WE Charity’s board, Michelle Douglas, wasn’t confident enough to say how many.

The brothers clarified that they need to incorporate in every country where they operate. And under Canada Revenue Agency rules, charities can’t operate as businesses in the administration of “social enterprise,” said Craig. So they had to “build a labyrinth to adhere to Canadian laws and regulations.”

Marc later explained the two started the charity when they were children. He said it’s like building a house. “You add a wing, and add a skylight, and add a swimming pool for your kids,” he said. “This wasn’t out of malice.” A global consulting firm, Korn Ferry, has been hired to help streamline the structure.

July 11, 2020

The Kielburgers said the government was fully briefed on the fact they planned to use a separate nonprofit entity, the WE Charity Foundation—which had been set up to help limit liability—as a party to the contribution agreement. (In the agreement, WE agreed to full liability for participants in the program.)

Former board chair Michelle Douglas, in her testimony, described concerns around the executive team’s refusal to provide substantial financial records that would allow the board to fulfill its functions.

“I did not resign as a routine matter or as part of a planned board transition. I resigned because I could not do my job. I could not discharge my governance duties,” she said in an opening statement.

February 18, 2004

She described in March, the executive—including Marc and Craig—had not fulfilled requests for evidence, reports or data that could support their rationale for laying employees off during the pandemic. In a March 25 phone call, she alleged that Craig asked for her resignation. She gave it. Most of the rest of the board left the organization shortly thereafter, although Craig claimed in committee that this could be explained by an existing “renewal” process.

Douglas said she had also raised concerns, in early 2018, about the WE Charity Foundation. “The board was never satisfied that the operation of this foundation was in the best interests of the charity or its various stakeholders,” she said, adding her understanding at the time was that the organization was intended to hold property. In their testimony, the Kielburgers dismissed the real estate claim as an inaccuracy, saying there were “multitudes of purposes” for such an entity.

Although Douglas said nothing in the organization’s operations caused her “deep concern,” she described a climate characteristic of “founder-led” organizations: “We were always striving to get greater insight into the work.” (Maclean’s)



 

Friday April 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 3, 2020

Trudeau must reveal COVID-19 national projections

It’s time for Justin Trudeau to tell us just how bad the COVID-19 pandemic could get in Canada.

Coronavirus cartoons

The prime minister holds in his hands science-based models that project how many people might get this illness and, just as crucially, how many might die from it.

Yet he’s doggedly keeping this vital information secret, despite the fact many other political leaders are levelling with their public about the viral tsunami barrelling their way.

Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who had previously resisted publicizing such projections, just did a complete about-face.

“You deserve to know what I know,” he told Ontarians Thursday as he announced that the province’s top doctors would on Friday provide the modelling numbers for where Ontario was, is and could be. 

It was only Wednesday when Ford said people might panic if they learned those projections. Now, he says the information will provide the public with “a real wake-up call.”

This is one of those rare occasions when Trudeau should follow Ford’s lead. Trudeau’s condescending, father-knows-best rejection of the public’s right to know infantilizes mature Canadian adults and leaves them in the dark — just when they most need the bright light provided by the latest scientific research to guide them forward.

Not only are his excuses for doing this flimsy, they’re self-contradictory. In one breath, Trudeau says he won’t release the pandemic predictions prepared by Canada’s top public health officials until they’re more accurate. 

In the next breath, he suggests those projections are unreliable because the response of Canadians in the coming days will change them. But that argument, taken to its logical conclusion, means even Ottawa’s best projections will always be useless because they could always be altered by future events. 

And if that’s so, why does the government bother making such projections at all? If they serve no purpose in helping Canadians know how to act, they serve no purpose in directing federal policy.

Finally, if the pandemic models are so problematic, it made no sense for Trudeau to promise that he looks “forward to sharing more information with Canadians in the coming days” after he consults with the premiers.

The only way people will truly comprehend the life-and-death stakes of COVID-19 is if Trudeau gives them the facts as he knows them.

That’s what Premier Ford rightly decided to do. It’s what even the much-maligned Donald Trump has done. On Tuesday, the president allowed the release of sobering projections from the top U.S. scientists battling the coronavirus. They indicated it could kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans. 

Likewise, in mid-March new modelling from the Imperial College of London demonstrated stronger measures were urgently needed to cut the projected COVID-19 death-toll in the United Kingdom from 260,000 to 20,000. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who entrusted the nation with these numbers, changed course almost immediately.

Trudeau owes the public this kind of transparency — and trust. There are too many rumours and fake news stories spreading alarms in this country. There is no cure, as yet, to COVID-19. A steady flow of solid information from the government, however, is the best cure for public confusion and fear. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)