Canadian Politics

Eriol

Eriol

So the former attorney general has testified about the SNC-Lavalin affair: The PMO's office for 4 months (at least) tried to pressure her into a sweetheart deal with the company so they could avoid prosecution, because "votes in Quebec."

I thought she'd get the waiver of confidentiality and basically say "We had conversations, but it was not coercion" to toe the party line. What she actually said was something closer to "they made my life a living hell for 4 months, and then kicked me out of the job, then out of cabinet." (I'm paraphrasing here)

She said that for four months, the prime minister, people in his office, members of the Privy Council Office and staff in the office of finance minister Bill Morneau conducted a “consistent and sustained” effort to intervene politically to secure a deferred prosecution agreement for Montreal-based engineering giant SNC Lavalin.
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Links (pick your preferred bias)
CBC - Wilson-Raybould says she faced pressure, 'veiled threats' on SNC-Lavalin; Scheer calls on PM to resign
National Post -
Damning testimony from a principled witness
Wilson-Raybould's convincing testimony may cost Trudeau his job
Global - The Trudeau brand takes a hit after Jody Wilson-Raybould testimony
Sun - Wilson-Raybould: I was pushed, got veiled threats on SNC-Lavalin
Macleans - Trudeau and senior Liberals kept linking SNC-Lavalin prosecution to elections
Toronto Star - SNC-Lavalin scandal a ‘constitutional crisis,’ lawyers say

This is basically evidence of corruption at the highest levels (INCLUDING the Prime Minister). The best quote IMO is from the first National Post opinion there: "Either Wilson-Raybould is flat out lying about this, or Trudeau and his people are. It is difficult to see why she would. It is easy to see why they might" Both of the National Post articles include embedded transcripts of her 4 hour testimony.

Remember: it's an election year Nationally this year folks.
 
LittleSin

LittleSin

And to think I was coming here to post about my dear province having a Womens conference...that only had men as speakers and passed out pamphlets advising them to 'smile', 'pray', and 'rest to retain your looks'.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Her opening statements are really the most damning of all:
For a period of approximately four months between September and December 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the Attorney General of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with SNC-Lavalin. These events involved 11 people (excluding myself and my political staff) from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office, and the Office of the Minister of Finance. This included in-person conversations, telephone calls, emails, and text messages. There were approximately 10 phone calls and 10 meetings specifically about SNC-Lavalin that I and/or my staff was a part of.

Within these conversations, there were express statements regarding the necessity for interference in the SNC-Lavalin matter, the potential for consequences, and veiled threats if a DPA was not made available to SNC. These conversations culminated on December 19, 2018, with a phone conversation I had with the Clerk of the Privy Council a conversation for which I will provide some significant detail. A few weeks later, on January 7, 2019, I was informed by the Prime Minister that I was being shuffled out of the role of Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada.
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This is the opposite of Rule of Law. Anything else happening in the country right now pales in comparison.
 
Adam

Adam

LittleSin said:
And to think I was coming here to post about my dear province having a Womens conference...that only had men as speakers and passed out pamphlets advising them to 'smile', 'pray', and 'rest to retain your looks'.
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Is this Manitoba? Because it sure sounds like Manitoba.
 
Gruebeard

Gruebeard

Eriol said:
Her opening statements are really the most damning of all:

This is the opposite of Rule of Law. Anything else happening in the country right now pales in comparison.
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One of the really annoying things about this is that China can crow about being right in calling us hypocrites over the Huawei business.
 
LittleSin

LittleSin

Dirona said:
Newfoundland, if the other news I saw is correct.
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Yeh, NL.

Also, loving this quote as it reads as being said by a Ferengi:

"We have reached out to females for this session," Haley said. "Unfortunately we couldn't get anyone available, the ones that we were looking at. So next time we will look a little further, I guess, for a female."
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

LittleSin said:
Also, loving this quote as it reads as being said by a Ferengi:

"We have reached out to females for this session," Haley said. "Unfortunately we couldn't get anyone available, the ones that we were looking at. So next time we will look a little further, I guess, for a female."
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"You let your feeeemales wear shoes? That's disgusting!"

--Patrick
 
Vrii

Vrii

Frank said:
God, that is such a Liberal party scandal. Boring and grossly corrupt at the same time.
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And it might be enough to let the conservatives win the next election and dismantle the country like they're doing to Ontario. Ugh.
 
Eriol

Eriol

So, this keeps getting worse, internationally too now!
OECD anti-bribery officials ‘concerned’ by SNC-Lavalin affair, plan to ‘closely monitor’ case
As a Party to the Anti-Bribery Convention, Canada is fully committed to complying with the Convention, which requires prosecutorial independence in foreign bribery cases pursuant to Article 5. In addition, political factors such as a country’s national economic interest and the identity of the alleged perpetrators must not influence foreign bribery investigations and prosecutions.
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I heard analysis about this, and it basically boils down to "they basically never point out EXACTLY what a country is doing wrong unless it's an egregious violation." Even if the "Quebec would lose 9000 jobs unless they get an agreement" claim were true (it's not, they're stuck there for years because of a previous deal for their headquarters with Quebec), it would STILL be illegal to do, and pressure on that basis is ALSO illegal.

And then there's our "illustrious" former Deputy PM staying "classy" on twitter by using the "B-word" to refer to the two Women cabinet ministers with enough integrity to resign:


And then accusing the former attorney general of being a racist:


And yes they're both still up, and she actively defends them.
 
Frank

Frank

My province is so keen to have Jason Kenney as it's premier despite the, oh I dunno, billion corruption scandals he's currently embroiled in. Not to mention his direct ties to racist and homophobic groups.

Blech.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Frank said:
My province is so keen to have Jason Kenney as it's premier despite the, oh I dunno, billion corruption scandals he's currently embroiled in. Not to mention his direct ties to racist and homophobic groups.
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We here in America feel your pain.

--Patrick
 
Eriol

Eriol

In news from the other national scandal right now, Admiral Mark Norman gives an interview with the National Post giving his side of the story: 'The fight of your life': In a Postmedia exclusive, Mark Norman tells his side of the story

Not short, give it 20 minutes to read. The section below is particularly damning of many things happening at the DoD:
There was another moment of high drama when a young major in the Canadian Forces came forward to testify on Norman’s behalf.

On Dec. 18, 2018 the officer, whose name is protected by a publication ban because of fears of professional reprisal, testified that his superior told him Norman’s name was deliberately not used in internal files — meaning any search for records about Norman would come up empty.

The witness said he was processing an access-to-information request about Norman in 2017 that returned no results. When he sought clarification, the officer testified, his supervisor — a brigadier general — smiled and told him: “Don’t worry, this isn’t our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name. Send back the nil return.”

“He seemed proud to provide that response,” the witness said.

The witness told court he has no relationship with Norman, and came forward only because it’s “the right thing to do.”

“It just doesn’t seem right, the way the whole situation kind of played out, when I was thinking back about it,” the witness said. “I just wanted to make it known, whether it’s relevant or not.”

As the witness testified, Norman said, he could hear an audible response ripple throughout the courtroom. “It was a shocking piece of testimony. There was a lot of people sucking air through their teeth when that happened.”

Justice Heather Perkins-McVey described the testimony as “very disturbing.”

“I was really impressed by that young officer, by his bravery, his composure,” Norman said.

But he wasn’t surprised at the officer’s testimony. Past investigations and documentation have showed the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence have a track record of destroying, hiding or delaying the release of potentially embarrassing records requested under Access to Information law. “The organization had spent a lot of time and energy over the course of my career, from my personal observation, to figure out ways to deny people access to information, whether it was in a formal application process or whether it was in a broader general sense,” Norman said.
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I'm glad he's "cleared" though that they're only staying the charges is additional layers of bullshit.
 
Frank

Frank

The north is on fire. My hometown is still on the cusp of annihilation and Jason Kenney is in fucking Ontario campaigning for Ford.

Cool. I remember how furious conservatives were that Notley wasn't right there boots on the ground during the MacMurray wildfire. I see nothing about this.
 
Timmus

Timmus

Frank said:
The north is on fire. My hometown is still on the cusp of annihilation and Jason Kenney is in fucking Ontario campaigning for Ford.

Cool. I remember how furious conservatives were that Notley wasn't right there boots on the ground during the MacMurray wildfire. I see nothing about this.
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Why do you hate jobs and business Frank? Sarcasm aside I wonder if you took that stupid blue truck to Ontario.
 
Timmus

Timmus

As long as Ford keeps Fording I'm hopeful Ontario won't give us another blue federal government.
 
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Eriol

Eriol

How stupid the plastic bag ban is: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-sorry-banning-plastic-bags-wont-save-our-planet/
We also need to consider the wider environmental impact of our bag choices. A 2018 study by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food looked not just at plastic waste, but also at climate-change damage, ozone depletion, human toxicity and other indicators. It found you must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less environmental damage than a plastic bag.

If we use the same shopping bag every single time we go to the store, twice every week, it will still take 191 years before the overall environmental effect of using the cotton bag is less than if we had just used plastic.

Even a simple paper bag requires 43 reuses to be better for the environment – far beyond the point at which the bag will be fit for the purpose.

The study clearly shows that a simple plastic bag, reused as a trash bag, has the smallest environmental impact of any of the choices.
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And if we really want to make a meaningful impact on ocean plastics coming from land, we should focus on the biggest polluters such as China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, and emphasize the most effective ways to cut the plastic load, namely better waste management in the developing world.

We should also recognize that more than 70 per cent of all plastics floating on oceans today – about 190,000 tonnes – come from fisheries, with buoys and lines making up the majority. That tells us clearly that concerted action is needed to clean up the fishing industry.
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Remember, the Danish Ministry of Environment did this study.

The plastic ban is just more virtue-signalling from our PM that actually does more harm than good.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Yup, and the whole EU is going along with it, too. Banning plastic q-tips, but letting oil tankers clean their holds with ocean water, is just completely ridiculous. I mean, i'm all in favor of going more green in all kinds of ways, but we're well past "trying to do some good and not be wasteful" and well into the "pestering the small man while pretending not to notice the elephnat i nthe room" territory. If Belgian household CO2 emissions and plastic go to 0 and all houses are turned into completely energy neutral buildings, it will still have less impact than a 5% tax on kerosine use, invested in environmental clean-up, if the airlines actually filled up where they land. Obviously they don't, which is why kerosine taxes need to be European or global, but, you know.
 
Eriol

Eriol

HCGLNS said:
Canada's ambassador to the USA is retiring after 31 years 9 months on the job.
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Where exactly are you getting your information from man?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_MacNaughton

David MacNaughton is a Canadian diplomat, business leader, political strategist, and strategy consultant who most recently was the Chairman of StrategyCorp, a communications, public affairs, and management consulting firm. He is currently Canada's ambassador to the United States, succeeding Gary Doer. MacNaughton presented his diplomatic papers to US President Barack Obama on March 2, 2016.
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I heard about how he's retiring. That's fine. But what's the joke (or something) with the 31 years thing?
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Okay so March 2, 2016 to today. That's 3 years, 5 months, 10 days. Or, to put it another way...

125.8 Mooches.
 
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