Trudeau Is In Trouble In Canada

NEED TO KNOW

CANADA

The Tiger’s Stripes

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is handling yet another embarrassing political scandal while he also oversees his massive country’s response to the coronavirus.

The scandal stems from Trudeau giving an almost a billion-dollar contract to WE Charity after the organization has paid his wife, mother and brother hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees, explained Politico. The BBC has a nice explainer on the issue, too.

Many viewed the 48-year-old prime minister as the next great hope for liberalism. But his approval ratings have taken a dive amid a series of controversies and ethics probes that have dogged him since he took office three years ago.

Those scandals included images surfacing of him wearing a brownface years ago; conflict-of-interest violations in handling corruption charges against a major engineering firm; a 2018 trip to India where he had to rescind a dinner invitation to a Sikh extremist; and breaking ethics rules when he accepted all-expense-paid family trips to the Aga Khan’s property in the Bahamas.

Over the latest scandal, Trudeau has since apologized. “I made a mistake in not recusing myself immediately from the discussions given our family’s history, and I’m sincerely sorry about not having done that,” he said, according to the New York Times.

The scandal is not going away anytime soon, however. A WE Charity worker told the Canadian broadcaster, the CBC, that the organization was more concerned with serving elites than retaining its ethical integrity. A parliamentary committee recently released documents showing the charity was slated to receive CAD 900 million (US 678 million) for a student-grant program of which only 500 million was slated to be given to students as grants.

WE Charity representatives have claimed they wouldn’t have benefitted from the grant, however. Speaking to lawmakers, they claimed political ties had nothing to do with the contract, CTV wrote.

Something fishy appears to be going on at the organization, however, many believe. The former chair of the charity’s board of directors also told lawmakers she resigned because executives wouldn’t produce financial documents as they fired hundreds of staff, the Globe and Mail noted. The Royal Bank of Canada has cut its ties with the charity, according to Reuters.

Trudeau, meanwhile, faced a grilling over the matter before lawmakers late last week, the Washington Post reported. He said the charity received no special treatment from himself and that he was unaware it was chosen until late in the game.

“As I said, I should have recused myself from this decision to avoid the appearance of favoritism,” he told lawmakers. “I know that appearances can harm a good program and, of course, that’s exactly what happened here.”

Trudeau was punished at the polls in the aftermath of prior scandals – his party is in the minority in parliament now. And yet he is embroiled in another controversy and fielding calls for his resignation.

The worst part, says Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, is that none of Trudeau’s political allies could have stopped the prime minister from making such an obvious political misstep: Trudeau punishes officials who speak out against him.

But that’s a different problem…

W