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Trudeau promised openness, prefers secrecy to hide scandals

Trudeau promised openness, prefers secrecy to hide scandals

Trudeau wants to keep Canadians in the dark to hide what his government is really doing

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Justin Trudeau has a problem being honest with Canadians.

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Despite coming onto the national stage with a promise to be open and transparent, Trudeau and his government are not open.

Consider that for the past month the House of Commons has not dealt with any government business as they have debated the green slush fund and the government’s refusal to release documents. This is a debate over the public’s right to know about the misuse of taxpayer money in a billion-dollar fund that was the subject of a damning audit earlier this year.

The main report by the auditor general it was so bad — allegations of conflicts of interest and misspent money — that the Liberal government immediately shut down the fund. The documents that Parliament has asked for and the government has refused to hand over are clearly so damaging to the government that they would rather have the Commons locked up for a month than comply with the legally binding order to hand over the documents.

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The Justin Trudeau of 2014 would be very disappointed in the Justin Trudeau of 2024.

“A citizen’s ability to access information about what the government is doing with their tax dollars, on their behalf, is one of the fundamental principles of building trust around government.” Trudeau said in June 2014 when he introduced his first and only private member’s bill.

Trudeau’s bill aimed to keep the government open by default — he said Canadians deserve to know. He was so passionate about this issue that he ran on the concept in the 2015 elections.

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“Government and its information should be open by default. Data paid for by Canadians belongs to Canadians. We will restore trust in our democracy, and that starts with trust in Canadians.” said the 2015 liberal platform.

Then the Liberals were elected and instead of keeping their promise, they started restricting the release of information.

In the early years of their government, the Trudeau Liberals consistently boasted about openness and transparency. In reality, they have allowed the already broken access to the information system to collapse while fighting against any attempts to inform the public about what the government in Ottawa is doing.

The refusal to release the green slush fund documents is not the first time the Trudeau Liberals have ignored a vote in the Commons that legally requires the release of the documents. In 2021, the Speaker of the House of Commons found the government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to turn over documents in the Winnipeg lab case.

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Trudeau’s Liberals took the President to court in a case that was ultimately dismissed when Parliament was dissolved for the 2021 election.

Now, we have the issue of foreign interference, something Trudeau has known about in detail since at least 2019. Instead of dealing with the issue, including within his own party, he kept things under wraps for years, including from other party leaders and even MPs who were targeted by foreign governments.

Now Trudeau is trying to use the issue of foreign interference for a partisan gain by smearing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

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Trudeau would not release any names, but said he knows of Tory lawmakers involved in or subject to foreign interference. Poilievre dared Trudeau to name anyone involved so the air could be cleared, but Trudeau refused.

It doesn’t fit his agenda.

When independent MP Kevin Vuong asked Trudeau during question period about allegations that one of his cabinet ministers, Trade Minister Mary Ng, was an unwitting participant in Beijing’s foreign interference, Trudeau reacted with outrage. He did not address the allegations; he dismissed the idea as “absolutely disgraceful” while attacking Vuong’s character.

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It seems that in Trudeau’s Canada, he is the only one who can make accusations about foreign interference.

Against the background of green slime, about the Winnipeg Lab scandal, about the issue of foreign interference, the public deserves to know the truth.

Vote-seeking Justin Trudeau in 2014 would have agreed to this. But Justin Trudeau, desperately clinging to power in 2024, thinks being honest with Canadians is dangerous and scandalous.

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