Is it time to at least think about looking for a different Prime Minister ?

SwP thumbnail graphicBy Pepper Parr

February 15th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

We are for the most part proud of the country we live in. Most of us were born here, many chose to come and many were invited to be here.

Think about the War Brides, or the Syrians who arrived at the airport to be greeted by the Prime Minister who was handing out winter coats.

We do not show our pride the way our friends to the South do. We seldom choose to wear a flag but we enjoy the feeling we get when we see those Olympians walking into a stadium bearing that flag.

We are for the most part a tolerant people. We respect the government that leads us and are quick to boot them out when they don’t live up to what we expect of them.

Justin Trudeau handiing out a coat tp Syrians

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handing out winter coats to families arriving as refugees from Syria

So what to make of the Prime Minister we have? His lineage excited most of us – another Trudeau – that would be nice. Yes, there were and still are many who did not share my view of what Justin Trudeau was going to be able to do.

There are now reasons, too many of them, to ask – what happened.

We are going to get the vaccines we need – the when is the question and where they are going to come from is a huge concern.

It sounded as if every pharmaceutical country in the world had a contract with the government of Canada. We had so much in the way of vaccines in the pipe line that we were deciding who we were going to let have some of the vaccine we wouldn’t need.

COVAX, an organization Canada was part of putting in place a global initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and others. (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, abbreviated as COVAX.)

It was in place as a distributor of the vaccines that would be made available to the third world countries.

Goulds in House defending ranked

Karina Gould as a newly minted Minister for Democratic Institutions defending a decision not to go forward with a different approach to federal elections.

Karina Gould, a Member of Cabinet and currently serving as the International Development Minister was left carrying the ball again as she did her best to explain what COVAX was, the role Canada played in its creation and assuring Canadians that what Canada draws down at this point would be returned when we had a surplus.

Recall that Minister Gould once had to defend not going forward with something other than First Past the Post in future elections.  She had been Minister of Democratic Institutions for less than a month when she has handed that ball.

Now we learn that Canada is going to have to draw down some of the vaccines we need from COVAX. That is so embarrassing.

This gets added to the list of embarrassments that is getting pretty long.

There was that unfortunate trip to India, there was the shameful way MP Jody Wilson Raybould and Jane Phillpot were treated when they showed the courage to stand up for what they believed to be right and got tossed out of Cabinet for it. Turned out they were right as well.

Add to that the need now to find another Governor General because a mistake was made in the failure to fully vet the one we had.

Kevin Sneader McKinsey

Former McKinsey Consulting, Global Managing Partner Kevin Sneader now the Ambassador to China. Another example of poor vetting.

And, the latest, learning that our Ambassador to China was the top man at McKinsey Consulting, Global Managing Partner Kevin Sneader.  The firm that agreed to pay a $6 million fine for advising on how to best sell prescriptions of OxyCodone , the addictive drug that has been the responsible for the death of hundreds of young men and women from over dosing.

What is so galling is that we get told almost every time he speaks that we are going to have all the drugs we need and that everyone will be vaccinated by September.

Are we absolutely certain those vaccines are going to be in the hands of the provinces so that they can pass everything along to the provinces who will in turn get it into the hands of the Public Health Units who will oversee that actual vaccinations.

Did the people in Ottawa who were overseeing the purchasing of the vaccine take the steps needed to ensure that we had the supply we needed. Did they not realize that the vaccines being manufactured less than a half day drive way – in Detroit – were going to go to Americans. Goodness knows that country really really needs all the help it can get to dig themselves out of the hole their then President put them in.

Chrystia Freeland and PM

Chrystia Freeland, currently the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister.

Did someone not ask if there would be problems with the European Union that determines what goes where in Europe?

Was there not a risk analysis done – looking really hard at just what we were up against?

There is going to be a federal election soon. Justin Trudeau will look for a time when his image is going to be as good as he can make it and then we will be asked to re-elect him.

The choice for the Liberals is to hold a leadership convention very soon and choose Chrystia Freeland as Prime Minister and have her face the public.

She’s running the country now as it is.

Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

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11 comments to Is it time to at least think about looking for a different Prime Minister ?

  • Joe Gaetan

    I took note of and have been followng the 103 some odd promises this federal government made in the run-up to the 2015 elction. On that I will judge this PM and his entire cabinet incliuding our local MP and Minister. On top of that, I have kept a very close eye on the ethical lapses and boondogles that would have crash landed a former government in a New York minute. Whatever happened to politicians losing their jobs over a very expensive glasss of orange juice?

  • Michael Hribljan

    Much covered here, for those interested suggest reading The Librano$ by Ezra Levant, available on Amazon all footnoted. Far, far too many miss steps with far too many explanations/excuses – what ever happened to accountability. What has not been mentioned is the economic disaster that is ongoing not only from federal budget deficits, but investment moving out of Canada, and new investment on a decline since 2016. This will be interesting to watch as there is no longer the political chaos in the US that has provided cover.

    • Don Fletcher

      That’s a very insightful note about our PM’s vanishing cover of US chaos, Justin Trudeau has no clue on how to create wealth. just redistribute it. He is however very good at spending our children’s and grandchildren’s money and the electorate has become addicted to the endless handouts. As they say “we get the government we deserve”. May God help us.

  • g.fraser

    Hi David,

    1) “So please do not make this to be as if it’s our Prime Minister’s fault. It is not. It is the manufacturer’s fault”……………… “again criticize the Prime Minister when he acts to get vaccines to which Canada is entitled (from COVAX).”
    – We have hashed this out before. It is NOT Trudeau’s fault about the manufacturing supply chain, this does belong to Pfizer and Moderna BUT our domestic production could have been viable if he used current facilities in Calgary/Quebec instead of waiting to build at the National Research Council-owned Royalmount facility in Montreal. This facility maybe (but won’t) ready by Dec/21(???) and will produce Novavax’s vaccine which is protein-based and not mRNA.
    – 10-15yr too late as per prior discussions of SARS/H1N1 Task Force recommendations panelled by Dr. T. Tam. But this is the fault of all Federal parties.
    – Not having a Vaccine Supply network in place till mid-December now orchestrated by Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin was myopic at best and just ‘stupid is as stupid does’ at worse.
    – Finally, taking from the COVAX supply is just wrong and embarrassing on so many levels. I will gladly hold off getting my immunization if that is what it takes.

    2) Raybould & Philpott:

    “However as cabinet ministers they were obliged to maintain cabinet solidarity and not, in public, question the prime minister’s or the cabinet’s policy positions.”
    – Actually, JT stated that his new gender neutral Cabinet had the right to vote their conscience. This of course had as much truth to it as did his abandon electoral reform.
    – AG Raybould was correct and the so called feminist JT was found by the Ethic Commissioner to have breached Federal ethics rule, once again. AG Raybould understood, as a trained lawyer not a drama teacher, the separation of state from the judicial process.
    – Philpott showed by her exemplary Morales and quality of character for standing up to the rest of JT’s Cabinet surfs. She is no longer in Federal gov’t, which is our loss as we need individuals of this calibre, but is now Dean of Medicine at Queen’s University where under her tutelage the next generation of altruistic Healthcare practitioners will be groomed.

    3) GG Payette:
    “as remarked in other commentaries I have made, it seems everybody saw her appointment as a great move back then, being that she was seen as a Canadian hero and role model.”
    – We have been through this before. Not everybody, as you stated, thought this was a great move. Many questioned why JT side-stepped the Vetting process and made this unilateral decision and then stood by Payette for over a month while a plethora of allocations cascaded in.
    – JT’s defence of the beleaguered Governor General has rattled some of those who complained of Julie Payette’s behaviour at work……”His comments are appalling,” “It seems like he’s saying there’s nothing here, everything is just fine” another employee stated that prime minister’s comments amounted to “tampering” with the process.

    4) “Trudeau has made many mistakes for sure” (you should have stopped here). “But, in my view, every action he takes is done with a view to doing the best for Canada.”
    – Or what is best for his Family as per the ‘WE Scandal’ which is again under the Ethic Commissioner’s review. Correct me if I am wrong, but have any other PM’s been found guilty under the Ethics Commissioner…….ever, even once let alone twice and possibly thrice (crowed)?
    – W5 did a great expose on this recently.
    – not sure if CSIS would agree with you on JT doing what is best for Canada unless there is a new definition of Canada genuflecting to China’s PRC Xi Jinping. We should debate this.

    cheers
    gfraser

    • Phillip Wooster

      Return to August 10, 2015, during the federal election, Trudeau made the following promise, “we will make information more accessible by requiring transparency across the federal government” and went on to describe the Harper government as the “most secretive, divisive and hyper-partisan government in Canada’s history”. Judged by his own actions over the past 6 years, Trudeau’s promise not only was not true, but characteristic of the blatant hypocrisy with which he has conducted his own government business.

      On so many files, SNC, WE, vaccine procurement–Trudeau has failed to provide any transparency and certainly has made “secretive” a repeated characteristic of the Trudeau government.

      While David Barker seeks to justify Trudeau’s treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, he has misrepresented her role as the Attorney-General of Canada. In this role, she is not a part of the cabinet and her oath, both as Attorney-General and as a lawyer, is to uphold the role of law. Trudeau, given his “qualifications”, was either ignorant of this fact or blatantly chose to disregard it. On 6 separate occasions, Trudeau blocked investigation into the Lavalin Scandal, While he sought to dismiss the scandal as just being about jobs, common sense would dictate that you don’t expend this much political capital if that’s all there is to see–there is certainly much more–likely obstruction of justice as I believe a future judicial inquiry will reveal and for which Trudeau may yet face criminal accountability.

      Certainly this government’s track-record of deceit, corruption, and incompetence has already cemented Trudeau’s legacy as the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history.

  • bill

    Justin has been an embarrassment to us all from day 1. Time for a change!!

  • Penny Hersh

    What are Justin Trudeau’s qualifications for being Prime Minister ? His last name. He certainly did not come up through the ranks. That could be a good thing, however, in my opinion, this has not been the case. Did anyone but me notice that he uses man “ers” when speaking?

    His government continues to pander to China with 2 Canadians sitting in a Chinese jail for over 800 days. He now has allowed Huawei into Canadian Universities, when most other countries have decided this is not something that should be done, with this company so closely aligned to the communist regime, and China’s history of hacking. Not to mention his original alliance with China to produce a Covid vaccine that fell through.

    Mr. Trudeau continues to announce how Canada is protecting its residents with mandated quarantine in airport hotels at the travellers expense, but has yet to provide the people or the hotels to make this happen. Our land borders are not safe since truckers who travel from area to area are not required to provide proof of a negative Covid test.

    Now we are told that the government will be putting together a proper program to notify people when and where they are to be vaccinated. What have they been doing in the last year? Why is this happening now….it should have been completed months ago? Did he like Mr. Trump think this was going to magically disappear?

    Mr. Trudeau now has indicated that his government will take vaccine from Covax, (only Canada put in the stipulation when they donated money for this vaccine to go to third world countries that they could ask for half of the vaccine). I am embarrassed to be a Canadian at this point in time.

    Mr. Trudeau, has gone hat in hand to beg for vaccine from India, after interfering with the Indian Government policy regarding Indian Farmers. It was interesting to see a photo on the news of Mr. Trudeau and his family dressed in “Indian Garb” when he first visited the country. Who thought that was a good idea?

    Let’s not forget the WE scandal, that has magically disappeared after he prorogued parliament, or now his “gun control” that will be a total waste of time and money. I don’t have a gun, don’t want to own a gun or think that anyone other than someone hunting for food should have a gun in their home. Law bidding people will turn in their guns….those that use guns for illicit purposes will not.

    I call this deflection – to get people away from his abominable failure in handling the procurement and distribution of vaccine.

    I can honestly say that I did NOT vote for him.

    • Lynn Crosby

      Maybe there is another reason people may not reply to your constant barrage of “comments” …. knowing you’ll never stop the endless loop and just keep coming back like a dog grabbing a pant leg and growling being one that comes to mind. The comment section of the Gazette has been rather hijacked … notice far fewer comments? Hmmmmm.

  • Don Fletcher

    From all appearances, Chrystia Freeland handled the NAFTA negotiations admirably. Although a quick study, she’s not qualified to be Finance Minister and the longer she shills for Justin Trudeau with his the “budget will take care of itself” ways, the more she will/ should be painted with his brush. In my opinion, we need a different Prime Minister, as well as a different governing party.

  • Carol Victor

    I am not interested in criticism for the sake of criticism……a new leader will be chosen in good time. There is so much “bashing ” that it us surprising that anyone wants to run for public office never mind leading in the time of an unprecedented pandemic.