OTTAWA — A parliamentary committee issued a scathing report Thursday on the Trudeau government’s now-cancelled deal with WE Charity that includes calls for stronger measures to protect against inappropriate lobbying and conflicts of interest.
The report from the House of Commons ethics committees followed months of contentious hearings and the release of thousands of pages of documents since last spring, when the government first inked the agreement with WE.
The WE Charity is in hot water again, this time with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which has levied penalties against it for improperly issuing donation receipts of $1.8 million. The charity has filed an appeal with the tax court and a trial date must now be scheduled.
If there’s one thing that’s booming in Canada, it’s government revenues. According to the latest IMF statistics, our federal, provincial, and local governments will raise close to $1 trillion in taxes, user fees and other revenues this year. This tidy sum accounts for 41.8 per cent of Canada’s economic output. Just six years ago, in 2015, governments collected a fifth less – about $800 billion – or 40 per cent of GDP.
LILLEY: WE spent big to fly Sophie to U.K. for gig
The average Kenyan earns a little over $2,000 Canadian per year.
Think about that as you absorb the news that WE Charity spent the equivalent of nine people’s annual income to fly Sophie Trudeau and her daughter to London to speak briefly at a WE Day event in March 2020.
I am becoming convinced that a great many “charities” are scams.
An investment guru once told me that when a public company provides a jet, cars and drivers for its executives, and spends a fortune on consultants, it’s time to short the stock. The same applies to Canada, a nation state with lousy leadership and soaring consultant fees, because few, if any, of our federal political leaders know what they’re doing.
If you thought Canada’s domestic carbon tax was controversial, just wait for its new global equivalent now being negotiated behind closed doors, say Canadians who have been following its progress.
It’s not a secret. In fact the new charge got its own subheading in the recent federal budget.
The plan is to “make sure that regulations on a price on carbon pollution apply fairly between trading partners,” said the budget document. “This levels the playing field, ensures competitiveness, and protects our shared environment.”
It’s prompted, in part, by fear of a Rust Belt repeat. Then, industries hollowed out in rich countries as manufacturing chased cheaper labour. This time, the draw would be from countries with climate regulations to those without.
Horseshit. All it means is that even more money will be extorted from citizens. You can bet the China class will ensure the communist regime and their investments are exempted.
The fact that 80% of Canadian workers who are in the private sector can no longer afford to pay the salaries, benefits, and pensions of the 20% in the public sector was a crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coming out of the pandemic, it’s going to be a disaster.
In the last election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals got 6,018,728 votes, or a puny 33.12 per cent of the total, and the Tories got 6,239,227. Even so, Trudeau ended up with 157 seats and the Tories only 121. I analyzed the numbers in a piece I wrote last year in The Post which revealed the need for electoral reform.
This electoral injustice was due to gerrymandering which has given the poorest part of the country — everything east of the Quebec-Ontario border — 14 more seats than it deserves, based on representation by population.
Ontarians are becoming poorer and their economy is growing weaker compared to their American neighbours living in the eight Great Lakes states on their southern border, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.
“When we compare the average income of Ontarians relative to Americans in neighbouring states, the situation is getting worse,” said study co-author Ben Eisen in Measuring Ontario’s Regional Prosperity Gap.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised carbon taxes April 1 and pledged deeper cuts to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions at a virtual climate change summit convened by U.S. President Joe Biden last week, global emissions are projected to skyrocket this year.
Canadians can be grateful Ottawa’s parliamentary secretary for housing isn’t afraid of saying what’s on his mind in front of a microphone.
Liberal apparatchiks must be going squirrely after loquacious MP Adam Vaughan inadvertently outed what has been the party’s real scheme on housing for six years — pushing a policy that only worsens extreme unaffordability in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.
Canada’s immigration policy does not benefit Canadian citizens unless you’re a member of the ruling class. We are a Banana Republic.
The federal government hopes to convert more than 90,000 temporary foreign workers and graduated international students into permanent residents as part of its ambitious goal of admitting 401,000 immigrants this year, despite borders being closed by the pandemic.
The new measures, announced Wednesday by Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, will allow 20,000 temporary foreign workers in health care, 30,000 workers in other occupations deemed essential and 40,000 international students who have graduated from a university or college to apply to become permanent residents. There will be separate, dedicated spaces for French-speaking or bilingual applicants residing outside Quebec.
OTTAWA — Air Canada and the federal government have reached an agreement on a $5.9-billion aid package that the company says will speed up customer refunds, protect industry jobs and return service to some communities that were shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a news release, Air Canada said the $5.879-billion liquidity agreement is provided through the government’s Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF) program and includes $4 billion in loans, a $500-million investment in Air Canada stock and a separate $1.4-billion loan to help facilitate customer refunds.
Boy am I shocked.
In exchange for ~$6B in Canada govt financing, Air Canada agreed to, among other things, complete the purchase of 33 Airbus A220 aircraft, produced by Airbus's (formerly Bombardier) facility at Mirabel, Que.
— Paul Vieira (@paulvieira) April 12, 2021
… The point here is plain. Why does it take months to make a ruling on what is, substantially, a very limited and understood question? Did Justin Trudeau’s engagements, his multiple appearances as a high-banner speaker at WE Day events, and his therefore obviously friendly relationship with Craig and Marc Kielburger, play any part in the decision, since abandoned, to pay the brothers’ WE Charity up to $43.5 million to run a program worth almost $1 billion? Were any other organizations consulted, offered an opportunity to apply for management of that program, or was WE plucked out because of its high profile with the prime minister? Was this a plain conflict of interest or the plain appearance of a conflict of interest, which in this context, are more or less the same thing?
When I was training to become a Chartered Accountant (now Chartered Professional Accountant or CPA) one of the most important lessons they drilled into us was the notion of independence. When conducting an audit, the auditor signing off on the auditor’s report cannot be related to or best friends with the owner of the company being audited or be heavily invested as a shareholder.
