Since he was first named the federal government’s special rapporteur on foreign election interference, David Johnston has been accused of being unfit for the job because of his connections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The leaders of the Conservative and Bloc Québécois parties have both said Trudeau and Johnston are self-declared friends, that their longstanding ties are too close to allow Johnston to judge the prime minister’s actions.
“… It has been painful to watch Mr. Johnston, a heretofore model Canadian with an unimpeachable record, twist himself in knots trying to dissociate himself from Justin Trudeau, as if their previous encounters were mere coincidences that have no bearing on his personal feelings for the man. It is even worse to see him drag a former Supreme Court justice (who is also his friend) into the mix to try back him up.”
Johnston is protecting his own interests and that of his China educated daughters and fellow grifters. He is no great man of Canada.
Weeks of crisis talks to keep Stellantis from moving a massive EV battery plant out of Canada are at an impasse as Ottawa’s latest offer falls short of what the company wants, the Star has learned.
The Trudeau government has proposed to spend billions more as part of a package for Stellantis — parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Fiat — to convince the company to restart construction on a $5-billion electric vehicle battery factory in Windsor, halted nearly two weeks ago.
One highly placed source told the Star the latest proposal is more than the initial $1-billion contribution the federal and provincial governments had promised Stellantis to construct a facility that would make 400,000 batteries a year.
Can’t blame Stellantis for holding out for more of our money and it’s a given they understand the EV market better than Junior understands ‘drink box water bottle sorta things.’
Stellantis CEO complains about being forced to make EVs and not knowing how to profit from them
Stellantis head warns EV battery shortage could hit by 2025
Slightly more than half of Canadians believe that Special Rapporteur David Johnston should have called for a public inquiry into foreign election interference, according to a new Angus Reid poll on May 26.
The national public opinion survey found that 52 percent of respondents said an inquiry should have been called, while 32 percent thought it was unnecessary, and 16 percent were unsure.
Leaders of Canadian activist and religious groups targeted by Beijing are calling for a public inquiry into foreign interference, saying it isn’t enough for former governor-general David Johnston to hold hearings to listen to their concerns about China’s efforts to silence their criticism.
Groups representing human rights activists, Muslim Uyghurs, Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners and supporters of independence for Tibet told The Globe and Mail they’ve been sounding the alarm for years about Beijing’s harassment and intimidation tactics.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will “use all our tools” to push for an independent public inquiry into China’s election meddling. He should reach for the one closest at hand: scrapping his parliamentary alliance with the Liberals, as a clear warning to the government that it cannot continue to ignore the will of Parliament.
Not gonna happen. He’s on the take like Justin.
The story the two men are telling now is vastly different from happier times.
Were Justin Trudeau and David Johnston telling the truth about their friendship this week or were they telling the truth in 2010, 2016 or 2017?
The decision not to call a public inquiry was wrong, is wrong, and will be wrong forever
There have been so many Liberal scandals that the public’s supply of justified outrage has been long exhausted. David Johnston should never have been given the (dubious) authority to make the determination he has made. Only in a spavined Parliament — robbed of its central power of the confidence vote by the cynical and nefarious deal between Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau — could the travesty of the past few days been possible.
The Singh-Trudeau pact is itself anti-democratic.
Estimates of the SCC championed by Guilbeault are not science
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault recently announced that the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), or the dollar value of supposed damages associated with each tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, is about $247, nearly five times higher than the old estimate of $54. He made it sound like a discovery, as if a bunch of experts had finally been able to measure something they previously only guessed at. Like when scientists were finally able to measure the mass of an electron or the age of the Earth, now finally we can measure the SCC.
State-sponsored hackers from China have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, cybersecurity officials from around the world, including Canada, warned Wednesday in a co-ordinated effort to root out the perpetrators.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security was just one of several international agencies, all of them part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, that took part in amplifying the alert issued by the U.S. National Security Agency.
I doubt they need to look hard Canada, Junior’s handlers have likely handed it all over.
Canadians would have greater trust in the government’s handling of Chinese state interference if Ottawa appointed a judge – with full subpoena powers – rather than relying on the advice of former governor-general David Johnston, according to former lead counsel of two major public inquiries.
Paul Cavalluzzo, who was lead commission counsel for the Maher Arar inquiry, and Mark Freiman, who was lead counsel for the Air India inquiry, say a full-scale public inquiry into China’s meddling in Canadian politics would help restore public faith that Ottawa is taking the matter seriously.
In response to the G7 leaders’ communique, issued after last weekend’s meeting in Hiroshima, China sent out a riposte that said “gone are the days when a handful of Western countries can just willfully meddle in other countries’ internal affairs.”
China, of course, would never engage in the tactics of imperialist running dogs.
Democracy is built on trust.
It’s the opening line in David Johnston’s first report on foreign interference in our electoral process and it was repeated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his response to that report.
But that trust is built on public confidence that can only come from transparency. On that count, Canadians had no reason to be more confident in the government’s vigilance and response to Chinese interference after hearing from Johnston.
This was a Banana Republic Farce. Johnston is in China’s pocket as is the Liberal party.
Johnston has professed that it would be “wonderful” if all Canadians learned to speak Chinese — his three daughters have done so, having attended several universities in China. When he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Nanjing University in 2012, Johnston had already made more than a dozen visits to China. As president of the University of Waterloo, Johnston oversaw the establishment of one of China’s propaganda-and-espionage Confucius Institutes. He has met Xi Jinping several times and has accompanied several trade delegations to China.
Assuming Singh continues to support Junior then I am on for a march on Ottawa.
It’s easy to see what Volkswagen and Stellantis get out of the billions in subsidies that Canada is dangling in front of them for domestic battery plants. Such subsidies clearly improve the companies’ returns on investments enough to attract these electric-vehicle battery plants away from other jurisdictions such as the United States or Europe. It’s harder to see what the Canadian and Ontario governments get in return.
“I asked the Prime Minister and Ministers if they were aware of any orchestrated effort to elect a LPC minority. They were not.” ` Moron
Give David Johnston credit for one thing. It takes no small amount of courage, when your impartiality has been called into question and when the whole world is expecting you to call for a public inquiry into Chinese interference in Canadian elections – if only to demonstrate your impartiality – to then reject a public inquiry.
