Sort of. I think it is a minor scandal, but definitely not zero. I think they made a clear mistake. I called on morneau to resign, for instance, over the forgotten travel reimbursements. But I also think a very large amount of the current attack lines are either obviously bad, or completely unproven, and that this is far from the size of scandal many people think it is.


I think this argument, for instance, is going to be effective. Firstly, I don't think ANYONE - including the civil service - has done anything like this before, particularly with the timelines in the middle of a pandemic, it is truly unprecedented. So that isn't the right issue. THey certainly have a large number of things going for them that would make it reasonable for the civil service to recommend them. They are a large and prominent charity, working in this type of space, already making proposals that while quite different are involved in this kind of youth outreach, they have the largest social media connections to the target audience, relationships with teachers etc around the country, a lot of things make them a natural first choice if the civil service can't do it, which they have said they couldn't and that appears to be correct given the current roll out. We can debate the recommendation till the cows come home, but there is no question they are in the basic ballpark here.

I had a couple hours of it going on in the background. THe opposition really tried to make it a big thing, but they basically completely wiffed on anything connected to trudeau, and mostly wiffed on any attempts to make WE charity just look bad a a charity, which isn't really relaed to trudeau but some people care about it.

I just remember you saying Mourneau must go but agree

Though the We-Me organization looks really strange for a charity. The have for profit entities linked to the charities.

The one other point that I thought was not good was the fact they did not start paying the Trudeau family till after 2015 and never paid anyone but them to speak

It really isn't. ME to WE donates half their profit back into WE and reinvests the other half. This is not at all uncommon for charities to have for-profit arms that allow them to engage in business activities that generate revenue and feedback into the charity. As a charity, WE couldn't generate revenue by selling products or experiences the way ME to WE does. There are a lot of armchair sleuths worrying about charity structures here as if that somehow makes some difference to whether trudeau acted inappropriately.



A minor point that there was one payment before 2015, and also that they explicitly denied that the rudeaus were the only ones paid. But either way, as with almost all of the testimony, it doen't actually undermine the argument hte liberals have been advancing here. From all indications margaret trudeau was extremely effective at generating fundraising dollars, something presumably much more true when her son is the PM than otherwise. That doesn't mean some conspiracy theories like the "quid pro quo" of your just-askin-questions article from earlier. It does mean Trudeau should have recused himself - that was a mistake he correctly apologized for - but not much more. To get to more we need evidence. And the simple fact is that after dozens of hours of testimony from the civil service, the PMO and We, the evidence the opposition was clearly hoping for hasn't come up yet. Maybe it will on thursday.

Even NDP leader wants to know why Trudeau opted to have the charity run the program when there were better ways to help financially strapped students.

Now Margaret Trudeau reported to receive $125,000 also for expenses as did Justin's brother. So Margaret made a 1/2 million bucks over 3 years but Justin knew nothing about it.

If you believe that than you must believe cutting Alberta's corporate taxes will bring back Alberta's economy

At least tomorrow will hear its all about the children. All Justin wanted to do was help children.

What better ways, exactly? The civil service is obviously massively over it's head running the huge amount of programs that would normally take multiple full terms to roll out in a non-pandemic situation. Look at how terribly the roll-out is going after the civil service took it on when WE pulled out if you need an indication. A charity makes absolute sense to contract it out to and WE is the largest in this space. What organization, specifically, do you think would be the "better way"?

It's important to listen carefully to the ways the opposition tries to attack this. They have more or less not even bothered to attack whether WE had the functional capacity to execute this, which as the civil service indicated is the primary evaluation metric. It's all blah blah blah real estate holdings and whatever about back-end governance and long term financials of WE. But it is absolutely reasonable to believe they could have very capably handled the role out over the few months of this summer better than most other options, if not better than every other option.

She didn't "make a 1/2 million bucks" if 125k of it was for expenses. Do you make money when someone reimburses you for flights and hotels? Come on buddy. And let's be clear, this is completely standard. Invited speakers having expenses covered is the must duh thing ever, heck I'm just a lowly professor and I've had my expenses covered to speak many times.

You tell me how you get to $125,000 in expenses? First Class airfare, Presidential suites maybe. What about the children?

Lets be clear your paying Margaret Trudeau that kinda of money. Not Wayne Gretzky or someone actually famous

I wonder if the committee could are did request details of those expenses?

Organization never pays speakers. 2015 rolls around and she earns 1/2 million bucks and the liberals give them more money than any other government and a billion $ contract.
Like I said Justin could shoot someone on Bloor Street and you would say " Well they didnt die" this is a minor scandal he had the right intentions it was Andrew Scheer"

Uh she did like 28 trips or something, 4k a trip is not unreasonable as expenses for a high profile speaker. I'm sure she was flown first class, absolutely nothing illegal or wrong about that.

Stop making **** up. Reimbursement for expenses are not money earned. It isn't income. Sure you can make up some conspiracy theory or leave some margin for error that maybe there is something nefarious in the expenses that is yet to come out, but there is nothing wrong with it right now. You should have EXPECTED expenses to be paid, and indeed even for people who are not paid speakers you'd expect expenses to be paid!


I think this is a perfect illustration of the problem. You take two facts, juxtapose them, and then dot dot dot hyperboles to murdering.

At this point in time it is nothing but a pure conspiracy theory to think that the liberals gave the contract as a "quid pro quo" - as that terrible list of questions you posted earlier puts it - to connect these two facts. You can't just juxtapose them and let your mind wander into a fantasy. You have to provide actual evidence that this was the case.

Lets just face the truth if you support Trudeau he gets a pass on most of this and if you do not you want him to resign

The fact that he has not yet asked Bill Mourneau for his resignation from cabinet for something that could be viewed as criminal tells you everything you need to know about what is accepted in Justin Trudeau's cabinet.


You have yet to tell me why Margaret Trudeau deserves those kind of fees? Not like many young folks even know who the heck she is.


Is this a Corrupt Government?

https://youtu.be/P9TmJoO6jBQ

You keep saying things like this and I've mostly ignored them. You are projecting. As in, I believe the latter half of your statement, that since you do not support trudeau, that you want him to resign.
One of the consistent features of your posting is a relentless hatred for Trudeau that has resulted in a lot of pretty bad arguments against him over the months. Because I push back at those bad arguments, I believe you have conflated me with some undying trudeau lover to match your trudeau hatred. But it just isn't true. I've repeatedly in this thread stepped aside from time to time to describe the significant policy differences that I have with the trudeau government. I am not calling for Trudeau's resignation because 'I support him', but because the evidence is not currently there to suggest this is more than a minor scandal.

By all accounts - even opposition accounts - she is an excellent public speaker who speaks for tonnes of events in and outside WE with a passionate dedication for one of the core WE mission objectives of mental health, has obvious notoriety given her connection to the past and present PMs. As they talked about during the testimony she appeared excellent particularly at being able to generate fundraising dollars, and seems quite reasonable to believe she was consistently able to draw in the money and attention to justify it. Had it not been been for the contract with WE, nobody would have batted an eye that this was happening. The issue isn't that she was paid, that's fine, it's that justin trudeau didn't recuse himself from the decision in the whirlwind move to get a massive summer program up and going in a months time.


Adrienne ****ing Batra? Really? You really gotta diversify your media consumption buddy, you're stuck in orthrodox conservativeland.

Alright, "trip report" from trudeau's testimony. Firstly, let's state the obvious: the opposition was more or less useless. They got basically no new information and barely tried, instead they just tried to play politics, in a mostly feckless way. They repeated a few talking about like "one strike two strike three strikes" (and then repeated it en francais for good measure) but ok. Polivre, who has always been a joke, kept weirdly focusing on like the exact number of the most recent reimbursement (instead of the published number from a period) from Sophie which nobody thinks is problematic and her work already cleared by the commissioner.

Most of the significant points, good and bad, came from Trudeau from the opening remarks.

The good, taking him at his word: Trudeau didn't know about this at all before May 8th. It came from civil service. When it came to him on May 8th he took it off cabinet agenda for that day and pushed it back for two weeks down to committee to study again that it was the right partner. The civil service wasn't pushed or influenced by trudeau in any way. They also didn't present a menu of multiple options, and ALSO ruled out the service corp which is what trudeau initially thought it would be. The options were WE or nothing at all. And he also did answer in response to quesetions he was no aware of the major criticisms of WE (like chair of the board resigning and the default issue and so forth).

The bad: He also volunteered that he was worried about the perception of conflict on May 8th, which was part of why he pushed it back down to committee to make sure they were really sure. This is the big new negative, in the sense that it means they were aware of the perception, double checked that WE really was appropriae, then moved forward. This is worse than being unaware it would be a perception of conflict because it means it was conscious.

Also a minor side note that I didn't realize that the conflict of interest act doesn't include his mother or brother, family is defined to be spouse and dpendents, which I guess is why they were focusing on Sophie's unpaid volunteer work that was clear by the commissioner.

Collectively, a decent win for Trudeau. And I can't watch Telford in real time, but she is beginning like the ****ing bomb that she is at the start.

I would say the person I trust most is Vassy Power & Politics . Ill be honest I had no clue whom this woman was.

As for your trip report I think it is pretty accurate. I thought Pierre did the best and the Bloc guy was the worst. Problem was they only had an hour. Smart on Trudeau's part look transparent but little time for them to dig

I have absolutely no issue with Sophie's involvement as she wasn't paid.

I still have an issue with Margaret being paid

Here is a list of all the people not having the last name that were paid by WE to speak





Its pretty short

Overall I think this pales in comparison to SNC and no question Trudeau will end up with a 3rd ethics violation.

The folks that I think still could be in some trouble are Bill Morneau as he may be guilty of a criminal act and the WE organization overall and of course all the students that applied for what was a good program

What's the deal the Margaret having Trudeau as a last name? Didn't she remarry after Pierre?

THIS is what you are worried about? This is entirely up to any individual women and entirely reasonable she wouldn't change her name a third time on remarrying, especially with three children at that time. Basically just STFU.

Its so she can keep her popularity and garner outrageous speaking fees from folks trying to garner large government contracts.

Relax Uke its a joke. kinda

She changed her name a 3rd time to Kemper and has 2 children with that last name.

So what? It is up to a woman which name she wishes to go by, not random men on the internet. Especially as a prominent public figure known to the public by the Trudeau name.

So I am not sure how true these stories are but the WE executives refused to answer the questions regarding id they hired a US PR firm that than hired PI's to follow reporters family members.

Ok this isnt about WE or to say how bads JT is doing but a good interview on all the relief for biz. I know its that radical right winger Vassy

https://youtu.be/Llf3IB0NgEw

The one point thew owner of the bar makes is so many biz applying for the $40,000 really do not need it and the ones that did got it to late/

I didn't watch the video, but my recollection was that the structure of the business supports was that businesses with less than 70% of pre-covid revenues were eligible. Thresholds are always a bit arbitrary, but that seems broadly reasonable. Yes there are some business at 60% that "don't really need it" or some at 80% that really do, but personally I'd err on the side of giving TOO MUCH supports than not enough. Timing must be frustrating, and much like the youth programs the civil service was never designed to deliver programs on this scale so quickly. Most businesses I think that are shuttering are because they don't think they can survive with depressed revenue for many months on end, not because of small delays in getting the wage assistance, but there are always going to be a few edge cases that could have survived the next 6 months or year, but can't survive this month because the supports didn't come in quite fast enough.

Taking into the time frame I get why its so difficult to monitor. I guess the Fraud tip line is being swamped with folks ratting out the cheaters.

They did a report a while back to the commons and someone said (Sorry for vagueness) the overwhelming majority of incorrect cases were going to be caught at tax filing time, because it’s easy to get supports by lying now (which is a feature not a bug, it should be easy!) but much harder to be able to file taxes for the business without being overly toy fraudulent like hiding income which they can police in the “normal” ways. Either way, the predictions for fraud after tax assessment I believe are expected to be fairly low.

See the problem with Revenue Canada was Harper gutted it. They are so short on staff and over worked. My company got audited a few years ago and we are not large but it took 3-4 months. The guy was super nice when he did my home inspection as I ran my office out of the home. He said they were so short staffed.


On a side note how is it that CDN taxpayers are paying over 10 million $$$ to renovate Justins cottage?

I do not get this. I understand if he was one of these climate science deniers or a Herman Cain

Hope he recovers

Never thought I would like this guy when he was elected. But I do since covid, his border talk, and now this

https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/we-...iffs-1.5055353

Not like the pussy leading the country would say anything like this.

Rob Ford has been impressive unlike the dipshits running our country or my province