Canadians were treated to an eventful week as MPs returned to Ottawa. Pictured: Bloc Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet. Photo Credit: Yves-Francois Blanchet/X.
This first week that MPs were back on Parliament Hill proved as volatile as pundits and politicos thought it would be. It began with surprising by-election results. The week included bombshell revelations about Ottawa’s newest rampant white knight, and more stories of incompetence and the lack of transparency, and it ended with a rushed cabinet shuffle. Layered on top of this cacophony of news was the confirmation that the Bloc Québécois (BQ) will be gaming Parliament – and the country – for “what we can grab.”
The MPs’ rowdy return was punctuated on Monday night with the upset by-election defeat in the Montreal riding of LaSalle-Emard-Verdun of the Liberals’ star candidate, City Councillor Laura Palestini. The handpicked darling of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was humiliated when Liberal support collapsed from a 43 to 27 per cent vote share in a riding the Grits had held forever. This was the second by-election embarrassment for the Trudeau Liberals in four months, having lost another of the party’s strongholds in Toronto in June. But Monday’s result is worse for Trudeau and 15 cabinet ministers, who personally canvassed door-to-door in the riding, given Palestini is a well-known and popular personality at city hall, and inner-city Montreal is Trudeau’s political backyard.
On the morning after the electoral debacle, Trudeau suggested the loss was a test for the Liberals and a lesson for Canadians. He said the results indicate the Liberals must fight on, “We know that we have a lot of work to do to regain the confidence of people in LaSalle and people across the country who are concerned about the situation they’re in… The big thing is to make sure that Canadians understand that the choice they get to make in the next election, about the kind of country we are really matters, and that’s the work we’re going to continue to do.”
Trudeau and his concert of ministers – from Melanie Joly to Francois Philippe Champagne to Karina Gould – took turns repeating the refrain from their Liberal talking points about the fact “Canadians do not want an election” and “Canadians want us to govern and get on with the job.”
As this performance was being choreographed for Ottawa’s press scrums, the lead Quebec minister and stalwart Trudeau ally Pablo Rodriguez was quietly cleaning out his office. Rodriguez excused himself so that he can run for the Quebec Liberal leadership (but he is staying on as an independent MP so that he can continue to vote with his colleagues in their increasingly desperate attempts at prolonging their mandate).
Just off the Hill precinct, Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue resumed the Foreign Interference Commission hearings with a pronouncement that the Commission would not name the names of the parliamentarians who Canada’s intelligence and security community had identified as having colluded with foreign countries. She stated, “It is not this Commission’s function to attempt to identify individuals as alleged wrongdoers” and, “In the present case the allegations are based on classified information which means the Commission can neither make them public nor even disclose them to the people who might be the subject of these allegations.”
As this news was being absorbed, Canadians learned from the Commission’s hearings that the Vancouver Chinese Consulate had interfered directly against MP Kenny Chiu to successfully defeat the Conservative, the same consulate had issued an edict for the Chinese business community to cut support for NDP MP Jenny Kwan, and there were more details on how the highest offices of the land, including the Prime Minister’s Office, failed to warn Conservative MP Michael Chong of possible harm to him and his family.
A frustrated MP Chong testified before the commission, “We have become a foreign interference playground.” He observed, “… at the end of the day if Ministers and their staff and the Prime Minister and his staff are not willing to uphold their responsibility to protect the security of this country then no amount of process or no amount of new policy is going to change that abdication.”
It is now over 100 days since the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians report made public that as many as 11 MPs and Senators have committed potentially treasonous activities against the country. The Trudeau government is resolute that Canadians will not be told the identity of the potential traitors.
The Trudeau government’s economic development strategy was brought into question with three news stories breaking through the week. Though not thoroughly covered in English media, the Quebec media heralded the federal government’s $2.14 billion financial package to Telesat to expand Canada’s space program. The Montreal-based company was given generous loan conditions, and a Quebec manufacturer is to produce a low-earth orbit broadband satellite constellation project that will deliver high-speed Internet to remote Canadian consumers.
At the media announcement alongside the Quebec premier, Trudeau gushed, “Yes, it’s about investing in satellites and space and all sorts of really cool stuff, but it’s fundamentally about making sure that Canadians and people in more distant communities and smaller northern communities and in remote parts of the world can be connected…”
The Telesat fanfare caught Starlink satellite company owner Elon Musk by surprise. Musk posted on X that his company could provide the Internet service for “less than half” the multi-billion-dollar price tag. Starlink currently holds a licence for a high-speed Internet program for rural communities and now serves more than 400,000 Canadians across the country.
Another item that received scant coverage in government-sponsored legacy news was a story that Blacklock’s Reporter broke about the dismal performance of the department of environment in its management of hundreds of millions of dollars of green subsidies. Blacklock’s exposed that, “Federal auditors cite Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department for poor oversight of millions… management of taxpayer funds was so sloppy it represented ‘potential legal and reputational damage.’” Since 2016, the government’s green transition subsidies have spanned 45 separate programs managed by 11 different departments and agencies, and as much as $625 million has been handed out “with little corresponding scrutiny of where the money went or why.”
Lastly, it was revealed that Trudeau’s newly feted economic growth advisor Mark Carney has been whispering more than Liberal Party policy in Ottawa’s corridors. The Globe and Mail reported that Brookfield, the mega-investment firm that Carney chairs, is soliciting the federal government to complete an investment package of Canadian holdings worth upwards of $50 billion. Brookfield is seeking $35 billion of investment from Canada’s pension funds, a financial commitment of $10 billion from the government, and the balance of approximately $4 billion in this fund will come from Brookfield investors’ capital.
Tristin Hopper, writer at the National Post, commented, “This means that Carney is taking on a new job at the right hand of the prime minister at the precise moment that he oversees a company seeking to secure one of the largest contributions of federal cash in the country’s history.” In a Western Standard column, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner summarized, “The brazenness of this move is stunning, even if measured by the low bar of Mr. Trudeau’s wobbly ethical standards.”
As a sidenote to this sordid affair, the National Post also reported, “The Brookfield fund is only the second time in the last week that Carney has been personally connected with a project involving billions of federal dollars transferred to a private company. Carney also happens to have personal ties with Telesat…Carney and Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg have often been described as ‘good friends’…”
Brookfield spokespeople, and Carney’s close friend, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, declined to comment on the new fund.
The rollicking week in Ottawa politics ended with a cascade of headlines about next week’s non-confidence vote. The Liberals have given the Conservatives their wish to schedule an early vote that has the potential to dissolve parliament and prompt an election. The Conservatives will move a non-confidence motion: “The House has no confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government” to be put to a vote on Wednesday night.
There will be no suspense with the vote however as the BQ MPs have already indicated they will support the Liberals. BQ Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet explained to a national press corps media scrum, “Quebecers want less an election than Canadians. I believe they understand that there is an opportunity to get something out of this situation. So, what is the point of replacing one person who doesn’t work for Quebecers by another person that will not work for Quebecers. In the meantime, let’s grab something.”
Blanchet would later slap down Quebec Premier François Legault when he urged the BQ to pull the plug on Trudeau, saying that the BQ serves Quebecers “according to my own judgment.” In support of their federal separatist party cousins, the provincial PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon chimed in by stating the BQ should not join the “Conservatives of Alberta,” and that, “Whether it’s Poilievre or Trudeau, we would get nothing and regress on a linguistic, financial, environment or social level.”
So, if this first week is any indication of how the fall session of parliament will unfold, Canadians are in for more of the same, except worse, much costlier, and all about Quebec.
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
