Funny how Trudeau was going to be different, eh? Oh he was going to empower parliament and set forth the most stringent ethical rules in history! I guess, that comes after changing the way we vote - which got stalled somehow or other when he realized it wouldn't help the Liberals. So his finance minister has no problems introducing tax legislation which directly benefits himself and Trudeau has no problem taking free vacations from billionaires lobbying his government for money. I guess he tried to keep that a secret at the time simply because he's such a shy guy who shuns public attention...
The three major items which come out of this is that Trudeau's so-called friendship with the Aga Khan hadn't resulted in any contact in 30 years - until he became leader of the Liberals and might be seen as useful, and that Trudeau subsequently did not recuse himself from discussions about granting the Aga Khan's center for pluralism a $15 million government grant. BTW, why does a billionaire need government grants anyway?
The third major item is that Trudeau, when confronted acts like a deer caught in the headlights. He freezes and gapes and fumbles around for what to do. His performance the other day when a CBC reporter basically said "Come on, how could you not know this was wrong?" was priceless. You should look it up on youtube.
Andrew Coyne had some relevent questions on this topic he's unlikely to ever be able to put to Trudeau. I'm sure they would have Trudeau gaping even more.
Prime Minister, thank you for this. Might I just start with the news of the day? With regard to your holidays on the Aga Khan’s private island in the Caribbean, you’ve been found by the ethics commissioner to have broken the conflict of interest law in four places. Yet you face no penalties of any kind. You’ve said the decision should give Canadians confidence in the process. Why?
You claim you accepted his hospitality because he was a “close family friend.” Yet the ethics commissioner found you hadn’t seen him in 30 years, but for a hug at your father’s funeral. She seems quite clear the Aga Khan’s interest in you had more to do with your official position and his dealings with the government you lead. If she could see that, why couldn’t you?
While we are on the subject of conflicts of interest, you’ve defended your finance minister, Bill Morneau, in the matter of his ownership, through a numbered company, of shares in his family’s pension management firm, which stood to benefit from changes to pension rules he introduced. Your defence is that he worked with the ethics commissioner and followed her advice. Why didn’t you?
The revelation that Morneau, rather than divest the shares as required, kept them inside a private corporation, where he would pay less tax on them, came just as your government was proposing to crack down on people who set up private corporations to avoid tax — though not in ways that would affect him. Or you, for that matter, notwithstanding your own use of private corporations. Did it not occur to you this might look a bit, I don’t know, two-faced? Or did you think no one would notice?http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-my-exclusive-interview-with-the-prime-minister-minus-the-prime-minister/wcm/8f1e6505-0c5f-4f97-bbfa-083d56654c96
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