Conventional wisdom suggests that governments defeat themselves. There is a shelf life of every administration because sooner or later the accumulative negatives outweigh the positives and the populous becomes agitated seeing the same faces providing the same excuses. American author Mark Twain summed up this phenomenon rather colourfully when he observed, “Politicians are like diapers, they need to be changed often, and for the same reasons.”
Justin Trudeau’s government is noted for its scandalous behaviour, but more serious is the fact that its core policies have placed Canadians in a worse position than they were when the Liberals ushered in their “sunny days” in 2015. The Trudeau government’s policy record speaks volumes. Every week there are new facts surfacing and new evidence of deceit or incompetence, or both, that speaks to why Canadians need a change of government in Ottawa.
The greatest impact on the policies of the Trudeau government, unquestionably, has been the Liberals’ personal and business relationships with China’s political leadership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PM Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberals continue to evade inquiries and obfuscate the facts surrounding their involvement with the CCP. It appears with the Trudeau government, Canadians will never know of the ties that bind us to China and the undue influence applied by the CCP.
In previous Niagara Independent columns over the last couple of years I have referred to a top-ten list of critical issues that scrupulously tie the Trudeau Liberals with the CCP – issues that have had and continue to have a significant impact on Canada’s reputation within the international community.
Cover up of the virus research in the Winnipeg lab and link to the genesis of COVID-19
CCP ties to Liberal business network, anchored by Power Corporation
Cover up of fraud and interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections
Beijing money flowing into the Trudeau Foundation (and Liberals’ riding associations)
Permitting CCP police stations and agents to operate in Canada
Failure to respond to forced labour and human rights violations of the Uyghurs
“Mishandling” of foreign intelligence as forwarded by CSIS (which endangered MPs and families)
Federal investment in China – CCP and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Avoidance of establishing a foreign agent registry
Deteriorating national defense leaving arctic territories unprotected to Chinese encroachment
Space will not allow for an examination of the full list. But here are some details of the three most significant.
It has been three months since the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report was made public with the startling revelation: “Unfortunately, the committee has also seen troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are, in the words of the intelligence services, ‘semi-witting or witting’ participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics.”
This bombshell security and intelligence report shared with Canadians the facts that Justin Trudeau, and likely his PMO staff and senior ministers have known for years. There are MPs and Senators in parliament who have collaborated and are actively working with foreign governments, notably China and Inda -- and they have committed potentially treasonous acts. When the story broke back in June, Wesley Wark, a national security expert, commented in a CBC News interview that the NSICOP report provides a glimpse of “underbelly stories” that are “nausea-inducing.”
The NSICOP report was expressly critical of the Trudeau government, which failed to appropriately respond to the concerns of foreign interference. It states, “The slow response to a known threat was a serious failure and one from which Canada may feel the consequences for years to come… The implications of this inaction include the undermining of the democratic rights and fundamental freedoms of Canadians, the integrity and credibility of Canada’s parliamentary process, and public trust in the policy decisions made by the government.”
Most troubling, this report identified a list of as few as 12 MPs who were involved in a variety of nefarious activities with foreign agents. Repeatedly, the Trudeau government has refused to release the list and, in withholding the dozen names, it has placed a cloud of suspicion over all parliamentarians.
It has become a popular game of speculation to name those who may have sold out Canada for support from Beijing’s networks. Who might be identified as a traitor when the curtain is finally pulled back and the CCP agents are exposed? Terry Glavin, veteran newsman and argumentatively the most informed Canadian journalist on CCP influence in Canada, has written that one can “full(y) expect to see the prime minister’s name at the very top of it (the list). Glavin states, “Justin Trudeau has been a one-man Chinese influence operation for years, and he hasn’t even tried to hide it.”
As it is, Trudeau continues to rag the puck on sharing the information in his possession because, one can surmise, he and his caucus have been benefitting from the CCP for years – likely dating back before his initial election in 2015, but certainly in the elections of 2019 and 2021. But, of course, Canadians will not get the list of MPs implicated by CSIS in the potentially treasonous acts from this Liberal government.
Let’s also consider the Trudeau government’s close cooperation with China, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Justin Trudeau and his senior ministers should be held accountable for the policy decisions that resulted in these questionable activities with the CCP:
shipping Canada’s emergency store of PPEs to China in late 2019 (and concealing the fact that China did not pay for or return the PPEs)
delaying a travel ban for flights from China destinations – including Wuhan - in the early months of 2020, even after US and Europe had halted China-flights
insisting Wuhan lab was not the origin of the virus – and that any criticism of China was labelled by the PM and his ministers as being racially motivated
promising in 2020 that a Canada-Sino vaccine was being developed and close to being finalized – which delayed Canada from ordering vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna
withholding the news that the vaccine research and manufacturing deal with China had collapsed – and knowing this, still the Trudeau government delayed ordering vaccines, which cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars extra
The greatest COVID-related scandal that the Trudeau Liberals must account for are the activities surrounding the gain-of-function virus research that was being conducted at Canada’s Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory and passed along to the infamous Wuhan Institute for Virology. When will Canadians get the details of what happened with scientists Xiangguo Qiu, and Keding Cheng? It is outrageous to think that the Trudeau government maintains a code of silence on this matter – and that the legacy media dares not to pursue the story, especially when the connection between the Winnipeg and Wuhan research work has been mentioned in public inquiries in other countries, including in a U.S. congressional hearing.
Since 2015 when the Liberals took office, there has been a behind the scenes “business as usual,” “steady as she goes” approach for the many corporate and personal relationships dating back generations between senior Liberals and China’s ruling elites. The foundation of most Canadian-Chinese business relationships is Power Corporation, which has significant investments in China. These include assets bought from the China International Trust Investment Corporation, a conglomerate owned by the CCP with one of the largest pools of foreign assets in the world. The company has also held more than a quarter of the stakes in one of China’s biggest asset managers, China Asset Management Corp, which oversees hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese investments around the world.
Old-guard Quebec Liberals and the Desmarais family’s Power Corp have many incestuous relations:
former PMs Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau all served within Power Corp
Jean Chretien’s son-in-law Andre Desmarais served as President and co–CEO
Jean Chretien has served (may still) as a Power Corp lobbyist in China
John Rae, brother of former Liberal leader Bob Rae is a long-serving senior manager
Trudeau-appointed Senator Peter Harder is one of Justin Trudeau’s lead advisors on China, and was a Board Member of Power Financial Corp a wholly owned subsidiary of Power Corp, as well as having served as President of the Canada-China Business Council
grandson of Jean Chretien and Paul Desmarais, Olivier Desmarais, is senior VP of Power Corp and today serves as Chairman of the Canada-China Business Council
The Trudeau Liberals’ business interests within China are not limited to Power Corp’s empire. Consider the ties with the Bartons, the former Trudeau-appointed ambassador to China and his wife’s financial interests in China. Dominic Barton lived in China for decades operating within corporate and financial circles, serving in senior managerial posts at the McKinsey consulting firm (the same company exposed for promoting Chinese street opioids worldwide). His wife, Geraldine Buckingham, was Senior Managing Director and Head of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, where she managed billions of dollars of investments in Asia-Pacific. This multimillionaire power couple has intricate business and personal relations within China and the CCP (which explains a lot about the former ambassador’s counsel to the Canadian government).
It is truly a Gordian knot that binds the Liberals with the CPP and, perhaps, one day in the future Canadians may come to learn the price we have paid for the Trudeau government’s Beijing relations.
National Security
The crisis swirling around Canada’s Capital at the moment concerns Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi and his son Mostafa Eldidi, who face multiple charges after being discovered plotting an Islamic State terrorist attack in Toronto. Incredibly, the father was given Canadian citizenship in 2016, despite allegedly appearing in an ISIS propaganda video in which he is seen dismembering a prisoner.
This shocking thwarted attempt at terrorism on Canadian soil comes at a time when the country is witnessing increased pro-Palestinian protests and lawlessness in the streets, and an increased rate of antisemitism. Deaf to Canadians’ growing anxiety over safety and security, the Trudeau government maintains its defence of Canada’s temporary resident visa program that is increasing the number of asylum seekers from Gaza.
In a recent National Post editorial, a national security analyst on Middle East and South Asia affairs, Joe Adam George cut to the heart of the matter on taking in large numbers of poorly vetted Gazans, “There are concerns that the new arrivals may join the hate-filled mass rallies and aggravate an already toxic situation created by months of unabated violence and threats against the Jewish community by Hamas supporters.”
The Trudeau government is the only government in the world accepting Gazans – even wealthy Middle East countries that are predominately Muslim, such as Saudia Arabia, Egypt and Qatar are refusing entry to Gazans. American Senators recently wrote to the U.S. President to state their concern, “The possibility of terrorists crossing the U.S.-Canada border is deeply concerning given the deep penetration of Gazan society by Hamas.” Just this past week the U.S. Department of Homeland Security instituted new changes to tighten up the border procedures and make it more difficult for migrants to cross into the U.S..
This American border initiative is a reflection of their concern for the inadequacies of the Canadian administration. Consider that a government audit found nearly half of more than 7,000 foreign nationals with “serious security concerns” took up residency in Canada between 2014 and 2019. Recent government figures show in the period of 2016 to 2022 a total 13,605 foreigners were ordered to be deported, but 8,723 of them (64 per cent) remain in Canada. Last month, data surfaced from Immigration Canada that there are as many as 500,000 undocumented foreigners in the country that the government has lost track of – these are illegal immigrants and those who have exhausted their appeals, not the lawfully landed immigrants, foreign students and migrant workers.
Immigration
In the past nine years, perhaps no policy has proven to be as harmful for the Canadian society and its economy than the Trudeau government’s immigration policy. This harm has been brought into sharp focus in the past few years as the population increases have placed immense pressure on the country’s health care, housing, and social services. The statistics show that in 2022 and 2023 Canada’s population grew by more than one million-plus people each year. The population growth rate was 3.2 per cent in 2023, which is the highest rate in the world outside of African countries. Almost all (98 per cent) of that growth came from migration.
Some economists question whether this population growth rate is sustainable. In spite of the pressures being felt, the Trudeau government persists with an immigration schedule that is to welcome 485,000 new permanent residents in 2024, 500,000 in 2025, and another 500,000 in 2026. Even though there has been some lip service paid by the immigration minister to checking immigration numbers, the most recent government data reveals the country is on track to welcome 511,410 new permanent residents in Canada this year. That is 5.4 per cent more than what the Trudeau government scheduled. It is an 8.4 per cent increase over last year, which is considered a record-breaking year for the country’s immigration levels.
The permanent resident numbers are less than half the story though, as government figures reveal 1,160,000 temporary residents came to Canada in the last 18 months. There may be more than an astonishing 2,200,000 foreign workers and students in the country. The Trudeau government is solely responsible for an unchecked influx of temporary residents into Canada. In 2024, Ottawa is approving temporary foreign workers’ applications and international students’ visas at a record pace, even as PM Trudeau and his ministers tell Canadians they are cutting back. And the situation has been allowed to go so badly that the United Nations made public this week a report that concludes Canada’s temporary foreign worker program is a “breeding ground for contemporary slavery.”
Housing
Another core policy matter where the Trudeau government fails Canadians is in addressing the country’s housing crisis. The government has promised that by 2031 it will oversee the completion of 3.9 million new homes in addition to current construction rates. This Trudeau policy promise would require 731,500 starts annually, almost triple the average 225,104 houses built per year since 2015. In doing the math, the government will have to build roughly one home per minute, more than 575,000 houses per year. It’s simply inconceivable and it defies reality. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported a seven per cent decline in housing starts last year – and there has been a decline in the first six months of this year.
The current home ownership situation in Canada is worrisome. More than six million Canadians will need to renegotiate their mortgages at much higher interest rates this year or in 2025. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) reported that two of three Canadians (65 per cent) holding mortgages are having difficulties paying them today, and more than half of these struggling Canadians (55 per cent) are sinking further into debt by having to use their savings to meet their monthly payments. A RBC Economics report stated that just one in four Canadians who want to buy a home (26 per cent) can afford to buy a single-family home right now, according to a recent report by RBC. The FCAC data reveals two in three Canadians who rent (67 per cent) are having difficulties paying their monthly rent - more than half of renters (59 per cent) are actually using their savings to pay their monthly rent.
In a sadly ironic convergence of Canadian immigration and housing data, Immigration Canada reports the federal government has 3,810 hotel rooms billed to taxpayers for illegal immigrants to live in, according to news reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. Since 2017, taxpayers have paid $1.76 billion for hotels across Canada – including those in Niagara Falls. Room and board for the kept migrants costs $224 per day, according to a May 3rd Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in parliament – with meals averaging $84 per day and rooms $140 per night, again as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter (certainly, the government-subsidized legacy media would not publish this type of data).
Here is a shortlist of some of the Trudeau government’s marquee polices that indicate nothing less than this government’s mismanagement, sheer incompetence, or calculated deceit – or a combination thereof.
TREES: In 2019 the Liberals promised to plant two billion trees by 2030. It took nearly two years for the Trudeau cabinet and Ottawa bureaucrats in the department of natural resources to finalize their tree-planting plan. In October 2023, at a parliamentary committee, an official reported that there were 100 million trees planted and plans to plant another 370 million trees by 2031 (that’s less than 25 per cent of the original goal). An internal department memo that has become public and reported out by Blacklock’s Reporter states the tree planting promise was fake. The government estimates the decade-long program will cost $3.16 billion, but the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) calculates actual expenses at $5.94 billion (to plant 470,000 million trees!). Consider Canada has 318 billion trees or the equivalent of 25 per cent of the planet’s forest cover.
GUNS: Four years ago the Trudeau cabinet proposed mandatory buyback of some 200,000 “assault-style” firearms. The department of public safety estimates that there are approximately 200,000 high-powered firearms affected by the ban, but the PBO estimates this figure is 518,000 firearms. Cabinet budgeted $37.4 million for the operations of the buyback program – this does not include the actual costs of buying back the guns, estimated by cabinet to be “between $300 million and $400 million” (but the PBO forecasts a cost of $756 million). In fall 2023, the police had taken in only 2,123 blacklisted firearms (one per cent of their estimated total), according to public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc. Cabinet has now suspended the gun program until October 30, 2025, after the next election, due to the unknown costs of program implementation (and likely the fact this initiative in no way addresses illegal gun smuggling, sales and crime).
SCHOOL LUNCHES: On April 1st of this year, PM Trudeau announced his 2021 promised national school lunch program to start in fall 2024. According to Trudeau, the $200 million annual program will feed 400,000 students. Social development minister Jenna Sudds further claims the program will save a family with two children $800 per year in grocery costs. But in a parliamentary committee hearing, Breakfast Club of Canada reports the program is considerably inadequate: to feed 400,000 students over 180 days, on an average of $4.50 per day, it would cost $324 million annually. In Canada, currently there are a million school children enrolled in such lunch programs. The government math calculates meal costs for the program at $2.78, a little more than half of the actual costs of lunch. Minister Sudds will not share how she calculated the $800 of family savings and her department officials would not comment.
DENTAL PROGRAM: The government indicated in 2021 that it would establish a national, universal dental care program, promised as a condition of the NDP support for the Liberal minority government. The Trudeau government committed in December to spend $13 billion over the next five years on a national dental plan for kids and seniors, who have no access to dental insurance and earn less than $90,000. Health minister Mark Holland has publicly reported that 2.3 million Canadians have been approved for the dental program and nearly 450,000 have received care, although not all were provided with 100 per cent coverage. Approximately 19,000 (75 per cent) of dental care providers are participating in the program. These are promising first steps, however aside from questions concerning the total costs of the universal program, outstanding issues include complaints from dental care offices about increased administrative duties, and additional costs of the program when employers begin offloading private dental plans to the public program.
GREEN SUBSIDIES: An $8 billion green subsidies program to help manufacturing industries reduce their emissions has been labeled “a failure” by the federal commissioner of environment and sustainable development and the government refuses to provide MPs any details of the program’s operations. Another government agency created to manage subsidies for green ventures has been unceremoniously shut down this year after a government audit. Auditor general Karen Hogan found the agency paid out $856 million in subsidies and violated conflict of interest guidelines 90 times in providing tens of millions of dollars to companies with ties to its own directors and managers. Perhaps most alarming, the PBO now estimates the Trudeau government has subsidized the development of EV factories at more than $30 billion; the total $50 billion federal-provincial subsidies for capital and operating expenses has taxpayers actually spending more than the EV companies are spending.
CARBON TAX: According to Liberal Party policy backgrounders, the carbon tax is specifically designed as a punitive consumer tax to increase the cost of fossil fuels and encourage consumers and businesses to pursue cleaner, greener alternatives. The Liberals have defended it as a centrepiece of their green plan, “Canadians’ price on pollution.” The government-appointed environment and sustainable development commissioner Jerry DeMarco concluded this Trudeau green plan is a failure with “too many unrealistic assumptions and projections” and “no cohesive plan to reach the targets set for 2030 or 2050.” He concludes it is nothing more than a “punitive tax approach” and has failed the government’s stated objective, given that Canada’s emissions have risen since 2015. Today, the country has the worst performance of any of the G7 nations when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the most recent U.N. Emissions Gap Report, Canada is set to miss its next emissions target in 2030 by 15 per cent. Meanwhile, the government annually hikes its tax at the pump and on -home fuel.
CRIME: Statistics Canada reports that violent crime continues to rise and the murder rate stands at the highest it has been since the early 1990s. The severity of violent crime is at its worse since 2007. Between 2015 and 2022 violent incidents have increased 39 per cent – driven by increases in homicides, armed robbery and extortion. In 2019, the Trudeau government introduced a new bail system that has been nicknamed a “catch and release” system by law enforcement. In 2023, provincial premiers sighted that this new administration of law has compounded an increasingly bad situation with “a small number of prolific and violent offenders.” This year the government moved to make adjustments to strengthen the bail system for serious repeat violent offenders, after continuous criticism of the lax bail policies. There remains a high recidivism rate for non-violent offenders; case in point, the Toronto Police revealed 44 per cent of their carjacking arrests this year were people out on bail.
DRUGS: The Trudeau government’s pioneering drug policies are being recognized internationally for their disastrous outcomes. The federal government’s pilot program with the province of BC -- safe supply programs, “safe” injection sites, and decriminalizing small amounts of all drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, etc. -- proved tragic. The Economist sums up the Canadian experience: “In 2012 fentanyl was involved in just 5% of overdose deaths. In 2023 that figure was 85%. The annual body count has risen ten-fold over the same period… BC’s fatal overdose rate is more than double Canada’s overall rate… overdoses are now the leading cause of death for British Columbians aged 10-59, taking more lives a year than murder, suicide, accidents and natural disease combined.” The BC Premier asked that the pilot program be stopped and, after some consternation, the Trudeau cabinet agreed to suspend the program.
ASSISTED SUICIDE: The Trudeau government legalized state-assisted suicide in 2016 and then expanded access to its program in 2021 for Canadians who do not have a terminal health condition. Today, Canada has the most permissive and easy to access – and fastest growing – state-assisted suicide program in the world. From 2017-22, the program accounted for 4.2 per cent of all deaths in Canada. Of those who requested the service in 2022, 81 per cent were accepted and resulted in a death (3.5 per cent of requests were deemed ineligible) and the median length of time between a request and the euthanization was eleven days (in 2021, people waited only nine days). The Trudeau government is planning to open the program to mentally ill persons, an expansion they have put off until after the election.
BUREAUCRACY: Since 2015, the Trudeau government has grown the bureaucracy by 42 per cent – adding more than 108,000 federal employees. During this time, Canada’s population only grew by 14 per cent (even with the Trudeau’s “open border” immigration policy). The average annual compensation for full-time federal bureaucrats is $125,300, when pay, pension, and other perks are accounted for, according to the PBO. In doing the math, bureaucrats are paid 31 per cent more on average than those in the private sector. On top of this, the government has handed out more than $1.5 billion in bonuses since 2015. The federal government is the single largest employer in the country – and still the Trudeau government has exponentially increased the number of external consultants on contract. In a word: unsustainable.
FISCAL POLICIES: The Trudeau government has delivered nine successive deficit budgets in its nine years, accumulating more debt than all other governments in the history of Canada – combined. The federal debt has doubled from $619.3 billion in 2015-16, the first year of Trudeau's government, to $1.2 trillion last year. It's expected to climb to $1.4 trillion by 2028-29. Since Chrystia Freeland has become finance minister in 2020, Canada’s debt has grown more than $400 billion. Annual spending has ballooned 75 per cent and the national debt ceiling had to be raised twice since 2015. Underscoring the Trudeau government’s fiscal mismanagement has been many contracting scandals: McKinsey’s sole-sourced contracts, GC Strategies’ $250 million contract largesse including the ArriveCan app, Catherine McKenna’s $188 billion infrastructure program, countless COVID contracts for everything from vaccines to ventilators, SNC-Lavalin, just to name a few of the more noteworthy boondoggles.
To return to that Mark Twain quip about politicians, this government record is certainly a full diaper to dispose of!
The content within this article first appeared in the Niagara Independent in a three part series published on August 16th, 23rd, and 30th.
A tour de force that should be read by every single citizen. Well done Mr. George.
The general public is deprived of the opportunity to read your articles which so clearly point out what is happening in this once great country. Thank you for the detailed overview of the NDPiberals stewardship of the past years. We can only hope that the legacy media will wake up to the need to awaken the voting public as to what how this country has actually been run since the last election.