Opinion | Liberal-NDP deal: Canada doesn’t need two left-wing parties that support Trudeau - The Washington Post - "Though the NDP also had no realistic path to victory — the NDP has never come close to winning any national election — Singh’s campaign nevertheless chose to frame him as a plausible candidate for prime minister capable of unseating Trudeau... It’s one of the most breathtakingly dishonest traditions in Canadian politics, given it is equally established practice for the NDP, post-election, to conspire to keep Liberal leaders — the ones they just finished running to a minority — in power... The NDP fancies itself the embodiment of Canada’s authentic left, the party too good to fall for Trudeau’s cringe-normie-basic-bro liberalism, with the pinup calendars and the rest. In the last election, Singh constantly accused Trudeau of being an empty suit. He repeated this pitch in his high-profile interactions with ambassadors of the American hard left, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose own bases were receptive to ideological attacks against a figure as drearily bourgeois and kitschy as Trudeau. Today, that grotesque cypher of middle-class centrism — a man NDP propaganda has relentlessly portrayed as a phony who is soft on Indigenous genocide and racism and is a tool of Big Oil — is the leader Singh’s party has endorsed to steer the ship of state for the next three years. A strain of NDP folklore rationalizes this. NDP mythology holds that virtually every progressive achievement in Canada over the last century or so has been the product of the party’s behind-the-scenes pressure on Liberal prime ministers. For 50 years, NDP members have been trying to take credit for Canadian Medicare, which was supposedly created on the insistence of former NDP boss Tommy Douglas during the fragile 1963-1968 administration of Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson. (Historians dispute whether this actually happened.) Even at the time, voters didn’t buy the argument... If this is the NDP’s strategy for winning the prime ministership, it’s hardly a shock the party is so unsuccessful."
Trudeau has spent most money per person per year in Canadian history - "The Liberal government is on track to log the five highest years of per-person spending, even excluding COVID-specific spending"
So many liberals on reddit were bashing this article for ignoring inflation and population growth, when they are mentioned in the article (and the latter is even in the headline). Ironic that they then call the National Post biased and that they're morons
Conservatives had sudden drop in votes where interference suspected - "The National Post reviewed voting tallies from ridings identified as areas of concern by various reports and by Conservative campaign officials. The ridings are all home to large populations of Chinese Canadians. Across multiple ridings, a similar pattern emerged: Conservative candidates saw significantly fewer supporters coming to the polls, however the Liberals did not see large gains, indicating not that large numbers of voters switched allegiances, but that for some reason, large numbers of voters did not vote at all."
Our reports of Chinese meddling got ignored for years: advocates | The Star - "The first time Cheuk Kwan and Sheng Xue testified to a parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee was in 2006. They warned of Beijing’s desire to “control everything” including activities of Canadians, and urged Ottawa to adopt a stronger stance in order to “earn (China’s) respect and not wrath.”... Kwan alleges that his organization was targeted by United Front astroturfing: a new group arose with a very similar name, and it started issuing press statements and interviews that regularly opposed his own group’s messages, while boasting of connections to the Chinese consulate in Toronto. He and others also became suspicious when they saw buses of people arrive at federal political nomination meetings to support candidates who were known to shy away from critical messages about China, or when buses of international students in Toronto arrived to participate in counterprotests defending China’s position. Sources in the Chinese-Canadian community tell the Star that they have sent many tips, including copies of email correspondence, to RCMP and CSIS. In 2018, Mounties in Metro Vancouver probed allegations that the Chinese-state-linked Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society sent out messages on the social-media app WeChat urging chat group members to vote for certain candidates in mayoral elections — and offering a $20 transportation subsidy. But police later said they found no evidence of voter manipulation... And these are relatively subtle forms of influence, Kwan said: Beijing’s blunt tactic of coercion on Canadians is to threaten their friends, family members or business connections in China... A Chinese student in Quebec only had two followers on Twitter, but he still didn’t escape Beijing’s tactics, which he alleged included tracking his IP address and threatening his father living in China... She thought she would be safe living with her mother in Greater Toronto, But since 2014, the award-winning writer has faced a relentless online smear campaign, including fake nude photos and a photo that seemed to show her kissing a man who is not her husband."
Racists!
Public inquiry into Chinese election interference is the only way say MPs | The Star - "In picking Johnston, whom former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper appointed as governor general in 2010, Trudeau may have been hoping to win all-party support for a cooler approach to the hot-button issue. However, prior to the news of Johnston’s appointment, several Liberals who spoke to the Star had expressed doubt that anything less than a public inquiry would satisfy growing Canadian concerns about reported efforts, particularly by the Chinese communist-led government, to flex its muscle in Canadian elections and in other spheres... that MP, like several others who spoke only on condition they not be identified in order to speak freely, said that the only real option at this stage is to name an inquiry"
Trudeau 'friend' David Johnston won't restore confidence in elections - "A man with personal connections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Johnston should have never accepted the position of independent special rapporteur... Trudeau has described Johnston as a “family friend” and as a friend of Trudeau’s father. Johnston is involved with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, as a “member” who advises and helps select the board of directors. The foundation is, of course, implicated in allegations the Chinese government tried to use it to influence Justin Trudeau ahead of the 2015 election. That doesn’t mean Johnston himself is implicated, but someone with more distance from the matters being investigated would have clearly been preferable. As head of the federal leaders debate commission, Johnston appointed WE Charity cofounder Craig Kielburger to the advisory board. A Trudeau friend appointing someone whose charity regularly paid Trudeau family members to speak at events and was granted a plum government contract in 2020, is the sort of thing that is just expected in Liberal circles, it seems. Despite appearances, there is no indication that Johnston is anything but a man of integrity, which is why he should have stayed far away from the government’s so-called investigations into interference, lest he open himself up to attacks and allegations his appointment was motivated by partisanship... The prime minister has refused to answer questions about what he knew and when, despite mounting evidence that his government was warned by intelligence officials about Chinese interference repeatedly since at least 2017. Instead, Trudeau is tasking committees and panels to investigate China’s influence. He has dismissed calls for a public inquiry, but decided to appoint the rapporteur to recommend whether an inquiry is needed. The position is a pointless distraction, created for the nakedly self-serving and partisan reason of delaying Trudeau having to answer questions, perhaps until Canadians have stopped paying attention... During the period in which Johnston’s governor generalship overlapped with Trudeau’s government, he was entirely in tune with the Liberal approach to Beijing relations... As head of the debate commission, Johnston tried to deny accreditation to Rebel News so that it could cover the 2021 election debate in person. A judge overturned the decision after Rebel News argued in court “The imposition of these standards amounts to an attempt to regulate the media industry and profession.” Regardless of what anyone thinks of Rebel News, it isn’t the role of a government body to determine which media can cover which events"
Conflict of interest is only a problem when it threatens liberals
The Liberal government is in serious crisis mode on Chinese interference - "The politicization of the issue, while inevitable, isn’t helpful. But as long as the Liberal government prioritizes its electoral viability, the scandal will only intensify. The leaks did not help the work of CSIS, but rather damages the organization’s international credibility and will likely make it more difficult for CSIS to acquire sensitive information. Still, with an elected democratic government that has so far only sat on its hands, the leaks may have been necessary for the sake of Canadian democracy."
BONOKOSKI: Donations poured into PET foundation once Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader | Toronto Sun - " Back in 2016, an analysis of the Trudeau Foundation’s public disclosures found the amount of money contributed to the foundation by foreign donors grew each year after Trudeau claimed the party’s leadership. Moreover, a significant proportion of the charity’s donors, directors and members have ties to companies and organizations that are actively lobbying the federal government. Administration costs also blossomed, from $430,000 pre-pied piper to $1.6 million, with one unnamed payee pulling in $250,000-plus in salary and another $120,000-plus, and nine others at more modest incomes. As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. The Trudeau Foundation excels at that maxim."
Trudeau's relationship with China far uglier than Trump's with Russia - "John McCallum, the former Liberal cabinet minister and former ambassador to China, admitted in a July 2019 interview with the South China Morning Post that he’d been advising the Chinese foreign ministry on how to conduct its affairs so as to help re-elect Trudeau’s Liberals and hinder the prospects of the Conservatives. To draw out the more instructive comparisons between Trump’s susceptibility to Moscow’s entreaties and the influence Beijing can be said to exert over Trudeau, as a thought experiment, try to imagine how the American press and the public would have reacted had the following scenario played out in 2016. Immediately after his inauguration, Trump appoints the head of the Russian-American Business Council to name his cabinet and head the transition team that would carry him into the White House. He replaces all of former president Barack Obama’s senior officials with Russia-friendly bureaucrats. Trump then sees to it that the Russian-American Business Council boss takes up the most senior post in the United States Senate. Trump’s team then undertakes a root-and-branch restructuring of American foreign policy, snubbing old and enduring alliances and re-ordering the U.S. State Department to a new priority focus on relations with Moscow and the integration of the American and Russian economies. Trump’s team sketches out a series of radical initiatives: The Joint Chiefs of Staff should be on a “first-name basis” with the senior generals of the Russian armed forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favoured oligopolies should be granted equal status with American multinational corporations. All barriers in the way of Russian conglomerates acquiring America’s keystone industries should be pulled down. And a network of immigration and visa offices are to be opened in Russian cities. Anticipating a hostile response from the American public, the Trump White House sinks resources into a public-relations strategy designed to shift key demographic sectors of public opinion towards a favourable view of Russia and its kleptocrats and the benefits of their dirty money sloshing around in the American economy. Within a year of his inauguration, Trump is feted in Moscow as a kind of venerable pro-Russian American folk hero, just like his pro-Russian folk-hero daddy. Trump’s autobiography has been translated into Russian, and he’s the toast of the town, in state media and social media. There’s a lot of exciting talk about the new America-Russia relationship and the possibilities of a free trade agreement, perhaps an extradition treaty. Only days later, Trump brings Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev out on the ice in a New York Rangers jersey at Madison Square Garden, surrounded by hand-picked American and Russian journalists. The head of a seedy international consulting firm who has spent years nurturing the most intimate relationships with Putin’s most powerful oligarchs is given a formal role in the U.S. Treasury Department to map out a top-to-bottom overhaul of American economic, trade and immigration policy. Despite his firm’s notoriety for servicing police states and unscrupulous opiate manufacturers, the global guru-consultant is then appointed as Trump’s ambassador to Russia. Of course, Trump did none of these things. But Trudeau did all of these things in relation to China... The opinion-shifting project was to be completed by the Public Policy Forum, but it didn’t work, because Canadians are fairly unshakable in their distaste for the hideous police state in Beijing. Another thing that didn’t help was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s spiteful abduction of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as punishment for Canada’s detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request. Before long, almost everything Justin Trudeau had hoped the “golden decade” in relations with Beijing would secure as his legacy, in the tradition of his Mao-admiring father, Pierre, was falling to pieces. Trudeau did all these things. If Trump had done half of them in pursuit of his affections for Putin and Russian money, there wouldn’t have been a mere cornpone intefadeh of the type that stormed Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. By 2017 or thereabouts, there would have been, we might speculate, a great deal more colourful and thrilling example of American civil disorder replicated on Canadian television screens. The thought experiment I laid out here might help to explain some of the cognitive dissonance erupting in much of the news media... The dissonance involves difficult questions about how to “cover the story,” because Beijing’s election-interference operations are a function of Beijing’s higher-level influence operations in Canada. It’s all been unfolding right in front of our eyes — and in recent years, it’s become difficult to determine where those operations end and the Trudeau government’s official China policy begins. At times, it’s been difficult to find the line between these things, and difficult to know whether the line exists at all."
Even Liberals sense the China scandal could spell the end of Trudeau - "The Liberals were already trailing in the polls, looking tired and gaffe-prone. The list of missteps is long, even in recent months: from awarding money to an anti-semitic anti-racism consultant, to the trade minister granting government contracts to her best friend; from gun legislation that was defended for months before being withdrawn, to the appointment of a special representative on Islamophobia who was shamed publicly for having written about Quebec’s discriminatory religious symbols law. All this at a time when inflation is still outpacing wage rises and the cost of borrowing is threatening to cause a wave of mortgage loan defaults. However, the controversy over foreign interference rises above the level of a typical, business-as-usual screw up, and it has placed Trudeau’s Liberals under more pressure than at any time since at least the SNC Lavalin scandal four years ago... It was a deflection technique worthy of a Yes, Minister script — discredit the report by citing security considerations, claim the findings could be misinterpreted, and urge Canadians to wait on the conclusions of an in-camera committee of parliamentarians with high-level security clearance. The reaction of many, many Canadians is that Trudeau has something to hide... A Nanos poll on Friday found that 90 per cent of respondents are concerned about Chinese interference in Canadian society. In an Angus Reid Institute poll published Wednesday, two-thirds of Canadians said they felt the Liberals are afraid to act against China."
Opinion: We don’t need a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections - The Globe and Mail - "The interference that should concern us is not something that happens to Canadian democracy, but rather the kind that happens with the collaboration of certain of its domestic participants. The collaboration may be passive – winking at or acquiescing in foreign interference, rather than taking action against it. Or it may be active: taking orders, or receiving benefits, from foreign actors. In the present crisis, we have been given plenty of evidence of both, thanks to a series of extraordinary intelligence leaks. That is not why we are in a crisis, however. We are in a crisis because it took those leaks to bring the matter to light: because the Prime Minister and others in his party and his government, reportedly presented with much of the same intelligence, chose to do nothing about it, and to keep both the interference and their own inactivity a secret. As early as June of 2017, the Prime Minister’s national security and intelligence adviser, Daniel Jean, drafted a “Memorandum for the Prime Minister,” copied to the clerk of the Privy Council, advising that Chinese agents were “assisting Canadian candidates running for political offices.” It said officials had documented evidence China was attempting to infiltrate “all levels of government.” In 2019, three weeks before that year’s election, security officials reportedly gave an “urgent, classified briefing” to Liberal Party officials, “warning them that one of their candidates was part of a Chinese foreign interference network.” The candidate was allegedly Han Dong, a former member of the Ontario Legislature whom security officials had been monitoring due to his alleged close connections to the Chinese consulate in Toronto. He was allegedly selected as the nominee in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North on the recommendation of Michael Chan, another former Ontario MPP and a key organizer and fundraiser for the federal Liberal Party; he is also under scrutiny by CSIS due to his own close ties to the consulate... How much of all this was made known to the Prime Minister is uncertain. But it would be astonishing if he were not apprised of at least the broad outlines, on an issue of such importance, and with such explosive implications... intelligence officials at the highest level, including the Prime Minister’s own national security adviser, thought the information credible enough to present it to government – not just once, but on multiple occasions over several years. Whoever leaked the information also thought enough of its credibility, and importance, to risk imprisonment for leaking it to the press. That is why we need a public inquiry – an independent public inquiry – to get to the bottom of this. It is not just that China’s interference activities were allegedly carried out with the help of domestic enablers. It is that, as the intelligence suggests, those domestic enablers were, overwhelmingly though not exclusively, prominent members of the governing party. The government cannot be entrusted to inquire into itself; Liberals cannot be left to investigate Liberals... It is significant that the Prime Minister appears to have taken no action in response to the intelligence reports... A bank robbery may not imperil the bank’s overall solvency, but it is still a bank robbery. The question is whether the robbers had inside help."
Kelly McParland: After years of cozying up to China, Trudeau impotent in face of election interference - "The current prime minister famously expressed his enthusiasm for the one-party state’s “basic dictatorship.” As late as 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was still enthusiastically seeking a free trade deal with Beijing, even as China’s military aggressiveness grew and evidence of human rights abuses against minority Uighurs multiplied despite international condemnation. United States Ambassador to Canada David Cohen said concerns about Ottawa’s curiously wide-eyed approach were raised during his confirmation hearings. He expressed satisfaction that attitudes appeared to be shifting as Liberals “have clearly woken up to a significant issue.” Still, that awakening comes seven years into the Liberals’ hold on Ottawa. The chickens from those years of wilful blindness are now coming home to roost... Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne vowed to impose new strictures on Canadian universities’ co-operation with Chinese military scientists, but not until a Globe and Mail report revealed some 50 universities had been actively helping out with research and technology projects. A Chinese scientist and long-time federal civil servant was fired from the Winnipeg infectious disease lab, but federal authorities fiercely resisted attempts to get an explanation as to why. It all points to a government that remains determined to avoid accepting the degree to which its earlier embrace of all things China was naive, wrong-headed and, as has become glaringly obvious, dangerous — not only to Canadian institutions and public faith in the country’s leadership, but to the individuals targeted by Beijing with veiled threats and overt pressure. Trudeau’s initial response to the latest revelations seemed as focused on finding out who was leaking the reports as on confronting the substance. Liberals continue to study the idea of setting up a registry of foreign agents, as has been established in Australia and the U.S., but want more time to think about it. “We are very much looking forward to going out and having a good consultation,” Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino indicted in December, at the same time a survey by Nanos Research found 88 per cent of Canadians in support of the idea and just seven per cent opposed."
The Real Andy Lee Show on Twitter - "Guess what I found? Who was present at the donation signing when a million dollars was given by Niu Gensheng to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation? The man who wrote the report on foreign election interference and found that our election wasn’t compromised. Morris Rosenberg."
Don Martin: Trudeau can't continue to defer the China revelations - "The raging China saga has topped an annus horribilis year, which is not yet two months old, for a prime minister who now spends many days huddled in private meetings or touring the country to attend Liberal fundraisers while using ribbon-cuttings to disguise the travel tab as official government business. The latest shrugged-off response from the prime minister’s office to growing demands for an inquiry into allegations China attempted electoral interference to help the Liberals secure another mandate is starting to look a lot like wilful blindness for partisan gain. And Trudeau’s attempt at detonating a distraction from the ongoing controversy is transparently pathetic. Picture this: minutes before a Monday news conference the prime minister banished the popular TikTok app from government devices due to a security risk from China, this at the precise moment when demands for him to call an inquiry into Chinese manipulations of our electoral system reached a crescendo. It would thus appear Trudeau sees a greater security threat in an app of limited deployment on government devices than five-alarm warnings of election manipulation from inside a spy agency so frustrated by his inaction that it’s become a Titanic-level leaky ship... When former spy agency leaders, the opposition parties and even friend and former top adviser Gerry Butts unite to urge some sort of probe into Chinese electoral interference, it’s either time to surrender to the notion or explain in much greater detail why it’s such a bad idea. The dirty tricks outlined in Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents are not, as Trudeau alleges, a plot to shake Canadian confidence in our electoral system. They’re the dead canary demanding a better coal mine. Add all this incendiary fuel to a bonfire of controversies in the last few months - be it his lousy choice of an anti-Islamophobia representative; the continuing asylum-seeker invasion at Roxham Road; ethical lapses by cabinet ministers Mary Ng and Ahmed Hussen; the McKinsey consulting mess; delays in the flawed medical assistance in dying and firearms control bills and the still-irritating passport office and airport snafus – and you’ve got to wonder how long this Liberal trainwreck can stay on track with NDP in the caboose. Trudeau can’t continue to defer the China revelations to a parliamentary committee examining the issue. MPs on those committees never set out to get the truth in those partisan clashes. Their aim is to shape the narrative to fit their party’s position by badgering witnesses along ridiculous lines of questioning, which may or may not have anything to do with the issue under examination. An independent clearing of the air is essential, be it a public inquiry or a probe by a respected Canadian given access to secret documents and CSIS insiders to determine the extent, effectiveness and electoral implications of any China-driven meddling in key ridings."
I see liberals claiming all media in Canada is conservative except the CBC, so this won't convince them
CSIS uncovered Chinese plan to donate to Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation - The Globe and Mail - "China appears to have targeted Justin Trudeau in a foreign influence operation after he became Liberal Leader in 2013, according to a national security source who said Beijing’s plan involved donating a significant sum of money to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. The source said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service captured a conversation in 2014 between an unnamed commercial attaché at one of China’s consulates in Canada and billionaire Zhang Bin, a political adviser to the government in Beijing and a senior official in China’s network of state promoters around the world. They discussed the federal election that was expected to take place in 2015, and the possibility that the Liberals would defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and form the next government. The source said the diplomat instructed Mr. Zhang to donate $1-million to the Trudeau Foundation, and told him the Chinese government would reimburse him for the entire amount... Mr. Trudeau told reporters Monday that Morris Rosenberg, a former head of the Trudeau Foundation, had been selected in summer 2022 to write an independent report that will assess the effectiveness of a government panel that monitored the 2021 election for foreign threats... Mr. Rosenberg, a former deputy minister of foreign affairs, was chief executive of the Trudeau Foundation between 2014 and 2018. He was “involved in facilitating a controversial $200,000 donation from influential CCP official Bin Zhang, who was also intimately involved in Trudeau’s 2016 billionaire cash-for-access scandal”... Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China until October, 2016, said Mr. Zhang had told him before the 2015 election that he planned to make donations in Canada in memory of the senior Mr. Trudeau... Mr. Saint-Jacques wondered about the source of this largesse. Chinese President Xi Jinping had poured billions of dollars into the United Front Work Department, a Chinese Communist Party organization that advances Beijing’s interests abroad, including by making political donations, co-opting politicians and offering paid trips to China. Mr. Saint-Jacques noted that Mr. Zhang was often present at events when Canadian politicians and officials visited China. “I cannot claim he is someone who is recycling money from the United Front Work Department but, if I look at what he is doing, clearly the activities that he supports favour the Chinese regime by celebrating people who are old friends of China and so on,” Mr. Saint-Jacques said. Mr. Saint-Jacques said that during this period of time Chinese officials would often tell him they wanted Mr. Trudeau to become prime minister. “The Chinese are smart, because after eight years [of Stephen Harper] there is a good chance that the government will be defeated,” he said. “When Trudeau was elected, some Chinese officials were extremely pleased. They said red is good and blue is bad.” “It was clear they were very pleased and they thought the relationship was improving – and of course they did.” He noted that the Trudeau government initially sought to negotiate a free trade deal with China."
I saw people blaming Harper for signing a trade deal with China and so being equally culpable. Apparently China's future growing authoritarianism was public knowledge when he was PM, and a trade deal is as bad as being wilfully ignorant about election interference
Are Trudeau Liberals truly changing course on China? - "It’s highly unlikely any of this is happening because the Trudeau Liberals, after seven years in office, have had a big re-think about where they stand on crucial issues. Mostly it’s been forced on them in contravention to policies they have championed until now. With inflation rising, interest rates increasing, debt charges escalating, the dollar weakened, housing unaffordable, the Bank of Canada losing money and Big Bank CEOs fretting, Freeland could hardly go on claiming Canada “can’t afford not to” keep flooding out borrowed money. The Canada Revenue Agency, the country’s tax collector, is so desperate for cash to meet the government’s record spending levels that it’s clawing back $3.2 billion in money Ottawa sent out in COVID benefits. Some 825,000 debt notes have been sent to people who thought they were being helped by a generous government, only to be told Ottawa wants it back. Similarly, Joly couldn’t reasonably continue the decades in which Liberal China policy consisted of Team Canada junkets in search of elusive trade deals, compliant ambassadors tasked with keeping Beijing mollified, a blind eye turned to abusive trade practices, technology theft and industrial espionage, and a willingness to endure crude insults and diplomatic snubs, all in service to the belief that lots of money could be made if only we put up with enough baloney. If kidnapping the two Michaels hadn’t cleared Ottawa’s fog, Washington’s toughening stance and its determination that Canada get on board would have... While issuing carefully-worded denials about his knowledge of Chinese interference in Canadian elections — “I do not have any information, nor have I been briefed on any federal candidates receiving any money from China,” Trudeau allowed that “there are consistent engagements by representatives of the Chinese government into Canadian communities, with local media, reports of illicit Chinese police stations.”"
‘Unwarranted’: India slams Canada PM’s remarks on farmer protests - "Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks on the continuing farmers’ protests in India has not gone down well with the Hindu nationalist government, which dubbed his comments as “unwarranted”."
From 2020
YOU SAID IT: Where's our money going, Mr. PM? - "Just look at the irony. Former Conservative minister Bev Oda was hounded by the Canadian media to resign over purchasing an expensive glass of orange juice in London, England. Yet Trudeau spending $6,000 per night on a hotel room in London barely raised an eyebrow with most in the media. Kudos to the Sun for shining a light not only on such abuse of tax dollars, but also the all-out coverup efforts by the Trudeau government to keep secret the name of who used this lavish accommodation. I think we can safely conclude Trudeau used the accommodations. Unfortunately, Trudeau will keep doing such outlandish things as long as most of the media never holds him to account. The fact such a thing happened and there was no serious media investigation shows the sad state of our democracy. Canadians expect the media to ask serious questions, not simply be cheerleaders for Trudeau."
Trudeau government spent $6.8 million on hotel bill for 10 people | Toronto Sun - "Between April 1 and Oct. 30, 2022, the Trudeau government spent $6.8 million booking a single Calgary hotel to accommodate just 10 people for COVID quarantine... Paying $6.8 million for just 10 people from April to October, an average of $680,000 per person, is indefensible and makes Justin Trudeau’s $6,000 per night London hotel rooms look like a bargain. Any time the Trudeau government has been asked to explain outrageous COVID spending, they have deflected by saying they had Canadians backs during the pandemic. This isn’t having anyone’s back; this is picking our pockets for wasteful spending... In addition to the amount paid to the hotel, the federal government also paid the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires $1.7 million for security, $41,000 for medical transportation services, another $4,600 for bus services, nearly $1.5 million to the Canadian Red Cross for traveller support services and $1.1 million for cleaning services. Add on the $35,000 the government paid for repairs, and we get a grand total of $31.3 million or an average of about $21,000 for each of the 1,490 people who stayed there over the past three years. Were this spending at the beginning of the pandemic when we still really didn’t know what was going on — when it was panic mode for every level of government — it would be understandable, but this was happening just a few short months ago... “So, two questions: How many other hotels did this happened at? And has anybody been fired for this waste?” Rempel Garner asked. True to form, the government response focused on protecting people and claiming that is what this was about."
Canada’s designated COVID-19 quarantine facilities cost nearly $389M over 3 years: PHAC