Right in the centre - Pay for the smoke to hide the mirrors
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- Published on Friday, February 15, 2019
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
It is understandable that Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal party wants to retain as many seats as possible and to expand the number of seats, if possible. It is therefore quite reasonable to see that the Prime Minister flew into Winnipeg this week to visit and campaign a bit with his MPs. A couple of things about the visit are a bit puzzling, though.
One is that the nature of his announcement was in the news media well ahead of his arrival and as usual, leaked by a person in the department who spoke anonymously, as they were not authorized to comment. That phrase keeps jumping off the pages every day. If not authorized, then why are they speaking? If found out, will they be disciplined or fired?
The size of the leaked announcement was puzzling as well. Stated as a $5 million announcement for Winnipeg Transit (buses), it is really only $2.5 million, as the City of Winnipeg is going to put up the other half. In the whole scheme of things, the cash will be welcomed, but let’s put it in perspective. That amount of money would only re-build a very few blocks of streets with water sewer, curb, gutter and sidewalk. It is welcomed money I am sure, but it seems like a very small amount for a prime minister to be involved with in an in-person announcement.
There are other reasons for this announcement. It is to build up support for the Liberals in the next election among people who regularly take the bus. Fair enough. There is a bigger reason also. It is one of many diversionary tactics we will see to take our attention off the fact that Trudeau has a major scandal on his hands. SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering and construction company, is charged with a lot of nasty stuff and it would appear Trudeau is doing his best to protect his political friends in Quebec. The SNC-Lavalin scandal won’t go away, nor should it.
John Feldsted, a political consultant and strategist from Winnipeg, says, “I wondered how often SNC-Lavalin has lobbied the government and who it lobbied. After a bit of digging on the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada website and learning how to use the search function, I found the list of lobby efforts by SNC-Lavalin over the past 12 months. There are nine instances of SNC lobbying someone in the Prime Minister’s Office or the Privy Council Office. The topic of Justice and Law Enforcement was raised on 22 occasions.
My conclusion is that the amount of smoke in the air suggests a fire is near. The hospital scandal in Quebec is the tip of a rather large iceberg. SNC-Lavalin is facing a laundry list of criminal actions at home and in foreign dealings. Senior officials are pleading guilty to charges to avoid having details revealed in court.
The PMO has its hands full denying that the full court lobbying press by SNC-Lavalin did not lead to some action to mitigate its public pillaring.”
The SNC-Lavalin scandal needs to go to a full investigation as to where money flowed and to whom it flowed. Trudeau has, on numerous occasions, denied that he has interfered with his own Department of Justice investigations into SNC-Lavalin, but few believe him, especially after the Justice minister was demoted in cabinet.
We can expect a number of relatively small announcements in the weeks ahead, as Trudeau divides up his grants to as many projects as possible across the country. Trudeau is running for his political life and he will use every cent of taxpayers’ money to fuel that run and to divert attention away from the scandal.
It sounds strange, as $2.5 million still is a significant amount of money, but it is amazing how much diversion a couple of millions can buy when the bigger corruption picture shows much larger sums of money.
Disclaimer: The writer serves as a volunteer president of the Manitoba Community Newspaper Association. The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the MCNA board or Banner & Press staff.
