By Joan Janzen
There’s rumours floating about that suggest an election may be in Canada’s near future. It’s a time when many folks in western Canada are finding it a challenge to discern how they have benefitted from the current administration. However there are those who have benefitted.
A line in the lyrics of an ancient Beatles tune comes to mind … “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.” It may be a suitable tune for those who benefit from their personal ties with Justin Trudeau.
Rob Silver, the husband of Trudeau’s chief of staff, was awarded an $80 million contract to a new company he had established, to manage a Liberal government program to aid small businesses.
Trudeau’s half brother, Kyle Kemper, the son of his mother Margaret Trudeau and her second husband, was given a $12,430 contract in June, 2019 by Global Affairs Canada to give a speech in Switzerland.
In 2020, a contract was awarded to a Montreal firm, which was founded and operated by a former Montreal Liberal MP and personal friend of Trudeau. The non-competitive contract worth $237 million, was granted to produce 10,000 medical ventilators. An identical ventilator, produced by a Mississauga, Ont. firm was sold around the world for half the price paid by the federal government.
It pays to be a friend of Trudeau. Last year he appointed 19 federal public servants to work part-time to advise former Finance Minister Bill Morneau in his efforts to become Secretary General of a Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He was also given $6,265.76 to spend on hospitality, but Global Affairs said it had no projections as to the final price tag for this undertaking.
Trudeau’s friendships extend beyond our borders. In 2013, when asked which country he admires most, he replied, “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”
After becoming Canada’s Prime Minister, he said Ottawa intends to pursue deeper trade ties with the Chinese communist regime. In 2016 and 2017 he visited China in order to pursue talks towards a free trade agreement, even though there was a $50 billion imbalance in trade between the two countries in China’s favour.
In 2017, Canada committed hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Trudeau may mistakenly believe his openness to China will result in a positive responses from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but China has more lofty goals than friendship.
The senior editor of China News, Dana Cheng, who earned her doctorate in the United States, explained, “When I was growing up in China a few decades ago, we were told the communists were going to liberate the whole world.”
These are all things to take into consideration as we hear of rumours of an upcoming election.
You can contact me at joanjanzen@yahoo.com
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