National
Paul Wells: Perhaps Freeland isn’t the victim here. Perhaps it’s Freeland who set Trudeau up
The minister of everything
Did Trudeau just blink?
And now we interrupt my own previously-quiet Sunday night for some rampant speculation. There is a lot going on. I am left to generate hypotheses that might explain some of it.
On Sunday night we watched the last two episodes of The Madness on Netflix (stylish but not entirely persuasive), then it came time to check the headlines, as one does in Ottawa after Netflix.
Holy frijoles: Sean Fraser is said to be leaving the federal cabinet and, when the time comes, federal politics altogether. This is surprising but plausible: the 338Canada projection (which, always remember, is not based on local polling, it’s just an extrapolation, but still) has him 17 points behind the Conservatives in his Central Nova riding, he’s got young children, and one wiseacre wrote 14 months ago that we should expect talent to leave this government:
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But that wasn’t even nearly the night’s biggest big-if-true story: John Ivison is reporting from his tropical outpost that Chrystia Freeland’s getting ready to deliver a fiscal update without the profligate, unworkable free-cheque plan. That’s the $250 “working Canadians rebate” described in this backgrounder, which I should now maybe screenshoot because who knows whether it’ll be there in the morning.
Instead I screenshot Chris Selley on X, who is reliably entertaining:
But here’s where the speculation begins. I’m not sure “they” tried and failed. I think there’s another hypothesis that fits the available data.
The double-reverse Morneau?
It’s been less than a week since the Globe published an article on “tensions” between the PMO and Freeland’s office over “GST holiday, $250 cheques.” The piece, by Globe Ottawa bureau chief Bob Fife and reporter Marieke Walsh, quoted many unnamed sources to the effect that “tensions have risen between Ms. Freeland’s office and the PMO over spending.”
You might say all of this appears to be similar to what happened with Ms. Freeland’s predecessor, Bill Morneau, before he departed the government in 2020. If so, you must be one senior Liberal, because Fife and Walsh quote “one senior Liberal” who says the current situation “appears to be similar to what happened with Ms. Freeland’s predecessor, Bill Morneau, before he departed the government in 2020.”
And indeed, the story was strongly reminiscent of the extraordinary moment, which I can still hardly believe, when a bored Prime Minister had his lackeys organize a leak campaign against his own finance minister during a global fiscal calamity in 2020. Then as now, reporters were breathlessly informed that Trudeau had, at some point, even managed to get The Great Mark Carney on the phone, as if that could justify anything.
(Indeed, one of the underappreciated aspects of Trudeau’s 2020 ejection of Morneau was the way Carney wandered through the story, entirely oblivious, before simply vanishing.)
So Tuesday’s Fife/Walsh story triggered much outrage in Ottawa circles. How dare the PMO set up another finance minister? And a woman at that, even as Trudeau himself was parading as a champion of feminism?
But if Ivison is correct that the cheques will be gone from Monday’s fall update, that leaves open a very different possibility.
Perhaps Freeland isn’t the victim here. Perhaps it’s Freeland who set Trudeau up.
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Indeed, the quotes nearest the top of Fife and Walsh’s story suggest that at least some of their sources are not mere PMO conduits, but rather people who have spent some time energetically rolling their eyes at the PM’s behaviour. “The sources say the idea for a sales-tax break… was driven by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), as was the pledge to send $250 benefit cheques,” the reporters write. “The Finance Department viewed the $6.28-billion plan as fiscally unwise, with one source saying Finance officials described the GST holiday as making little economic sense.”
The Globe story does point out that the NDP supports the (also profligate, also unworkable) point-of-sale GST “holiday) but not the $250 cheques, because the NDP, like the Bloc, wants the cheques to go to more people, including seniors. My revered colleague Occam of Razor would say that’s the only explanation anyone needs for the apparent climbdown on the cheques: it’s only prudent to take everything out of a fiscal plan that might lead to a minority government’s defeat in the Commons.
But the tone of Tuesday’s Globe story, the moment of its appearance, and the apparent result — the wreck of the cheque plan — suggest this may be a case of something everyone in Ottawa has seen many times during the Trudeau government: a tactical decision to take a private dispute public, because if there’s one thing that can get this PMO’s attention, it’s an embarrassing headline.
Again, I need to emphasize: I don’t know Fife and Walsh’s sources or their motives. I have found that speculation about a reporter’s anonymous sources is usually just bad guesswork. And the repeated mentions in the Globe story of its “ten sources” suggests the reporters pieced together their account from several sources, that they weren’t passive conduits for anyone.
But as I’ve written a few times in the past, many organizations that deal with this government learned along ago that it is pointless to hope that their concerns will be addressed through routine channels. Instead, you have a much better chance of getting satisfaction by escalating your file out of a dusty cabinet and onto the front page of the Globe and Mail. As I wrote here more than two years ago:
“Everybody knows that if the government of Canada is doing something they don’t like, they should tell a reporter about it, because the government of Canada will instantly reverse course to make the bad headline stop hurting. Issues management squads have the only autonomy in this government. They react to headlines as Dracula did to garlic. This realization is now baked into the procedural book of everyone who deals with this government in any capacity — and, plainly, of increasing numbers of people who work inside it.”
Imagine reading Tuesday’s Globe story if you work in the PMO and you’re not actively scheming to get Chrystia Freeland out of the government. The story would be full of surprises for you: (1) the cheque plan is despised by the Finance Department; (2) somebody is mighty eager to make sure everyone knows it was your idea; (3) somebody is talking about the government losing its finance minister. If you don’t have Carney lined up to take the job, the prospect of a looming vacancy starts to look more like a threat than an opportunity.
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I first met Chrystia Freeland in 1999, when she began a brief stint as deputy editor of the Globe and Mail. (Fife was then working for the Globe’s crosstown rivals at the National Post, as was I.) To say the least, I’ve seen little in recent years that suggests Freeland is a superb communications tactician. But brushing a stunned or recalcitrant PMO back by escalating a story onto the Globe’s front page doesn’t take a deft touch, either. These days, it seems just about everyone can do it.
Anyway, that’s my speculation. Here’s what we know, or will if these stories are confirmed on Monday: Trudeau has formidable resources available to keep himself in his cabinet, but he has no particular such influence over his ministers. All of whom are now being reminded of their autonomy by the example of Fraser. And a multi-billion-dollar scheme that seemed, only days ago, to be the point of the fall update now seems unlikely to be implemented.
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Business
Trudeau BLOWS through his deficit guardrail
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is demanding spending cuts after the federal government broke through its own budget guardrail by running massive deficits and wasting $1 billion every week on debt interest charges as outlined in today’s Fall Economic Statement.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went $20 billion over budget with his deficit,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Trudeau said he had a guardrail in place to keep Canada’s finances safe and he just drove the deficit right through it.
“It’s dangerously irresponsible to blow through fiscal guardrails and the federal government needs to hit the brakes on spending immediately.”
The federal government repeatedly promised to keep the 2023-24 deficit within its own fiscal guardrail “at or below $40.1 billion.” However, today’s Fall Economic Statement shows the 2023-24 deficit was $61.9 billion. This year’s deficit is projected to be $48.3 billion.
The debt will total almost $1.3 trillion this year. When Trudeau first became prime minister, the debt was $616 billion. That means the Trudeau government is responsible for doubling the national debt.
Interest charges on the debt will cost taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. For context, the government will spend $52.1 billion through the Canada Health Transfer this year.
“Interest charges on the government credit card are costing taxpayers more than $1 billion every week,” Terrazzano said. “Years of massive deficits mean the government is wasting more money on debt interest charges than it’s sending to the provinces in health transfers.”
Budget 2024 forecasted spending this year to be $534.6 billion, but the Fall Economic Statement now forecasts spending to increase to $539.5 billion.
“Trudeau has lost control of the finances and our kids and grandkids will be paying the price for years to come,” Terrazzano said. “Canadians can’t afford to keep paying for a reckless government in Ottawa. Canadians need our federal government to cut spending and balance the budget.”
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
False Claims, Real Consequences: The ICC Referrals That Damaged Canada’s Reputation
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Nina Green
The University of Manitoba has not provided the name of a single Indian residential school student who went missing and whose parents did not know at the time what had happened to their child. Not one.
Why has Canada twice been referred to the International Criminal Court on the basis of false claims about Indian residential schools?
The answer is simple.
The ultimate cause is the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial which falsely claims that it is a list of students who died on the premises of Indian residential schools and students who went missing from Indian residential schools. The University of Manitoba site tells users to:
Click on a region below to see a list of residential schools. Each residential school page contains a list of students who died or went missing at that school.
Those claims by the University of Manitoba are not true.
Firstly, the majority of the 4139 students currently on the University of Manitoba’s Student Memorial Register did not die on the premises of an Indian residential school. Most died elsewhere, as established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report entitled Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, which is in Table 4. Location of residential school deaths, 1867–2000 on page 21 states that only 423 named students died on the premises of an Indian residential school over the course of 133 years, an average of 3 students a year.
Thus, the majority of students did not die on the premises of Indian residential schools. They died elsewhere – in public hospitals or of illness or accidents on their home reserves, accidents which included house fires, drownings, gunshot wounds, vehicle accidents, falling trees, being hit by trains, and other accidental deaths, as established in hundreds of provincial death certificates.
Secondly, none of the students on the University of Manitoba’s lists went missing from an Indian residential school. To date, the University of Manitoba has not provided the name of a single Indian residential school student who went missing and whose parents did not know at the time what had happened to their child. Not one. And far from being ‘missing’, in fact hundreds of provincial death certificates establish that the students were buried on their home reserves by their families and communities.
Based on the University of Manitoba’s misleading lists, the media and the federal government uncritically accepted the false claim by the Kamloops Band on 27 May 2021 that the Band had discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’. After three years, the Band downgraded that false claim on 18 May 2024 to the claim that it had merely discovered ‘215 anomalies’, which could be anything, and are almost certainly the remains of the 2000 linear feet of trenches of a septic field installed in 1924 to dispose of the school’s sewage.
The first referral to the International Criminal Court by a group of 22 lawyers
Only a few days after the Kamloops Band made its false claim, on 3 June 2021 a group of 22 lawyers sent a 14-page complaint to the ICC requesting the Prosecutor to initiate an investigation of a ‘mass grave’ of Indian residential school students which had been discovered at Kamloops. The claim by the 22 lawyers that a ‘mass grave’ had been discovered at Kamloops was, of course, false.
The International Criminal Court quickly declined jurisdiction in November 2021, and on 13 September 2022 Dr Chile Eboe-Osuji, former President and Judge of the International Criminal Court, informed Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray and those present at her National Gathering in Edmonton of the reasons for doing so. As reported by Chief Derek Nepinak, Dr Eboe-Osuji stated unequivocally that:
There is no pathway to the International Criminal Court for the situation of the historical Indian residential school system in Canada.
Dr Eboe-Osuji’s presentation has never been made available on the Special Interlocutor’s website, and requests to both Kimberly Murray and Dr Eboe-Osuji for a copy of his presentation have gone unanswered.
The second referral to the International Criminal Court by Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray
Undeterred by the ICC’s refusal to accept jurisdiction and the reasons offered by Dr Eboe-Osuji in his presentation to her 13 September 2022 National Gathering, Kimberly Murray pursued the issue based on the University of Manitoba’s lists falsely claiming that all the students on its lists died on the premises of specific Indian residential schools or went missing from those schools.
On 29 October 2024, Kimberly Murray delivered her final report to Minister of Justice Arif Virani. However, as she told the Senate Standing Committee on Indigenous Peoples on 27 November 2024, Kimberly Murray also sent her report to the International Criminal Court, requesting Canada’s prosecution by the Court.
How the ICC will react to Kimberly Murray’s referral of Canada for prosecution is as yet unknown.
Damage to Canada’s international reputation
Canada’s reputation has been irreparably damaged by these two referrals to the International Criminal Court based on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial which falsely claims that it is a list of students who died on the premises of specific residential schools or went missing from those specific schools.
It cannot be reiterated often enough:
(1) that most students whose names are on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial did not die on the premises of a residential school;
(2) that most students on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial died in public hospitals or of illness and accidents on their home reserves;
(3) that the University of Manitoba has never provided the name of a single student who ever went missing from an Indian residential school whose parents didn’t know what happened to their child; and
(4) that the majority of students whose names are on the University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial were buried by their families and communities on their home reserves. Over time, their families and communities have forgotten them, and through neglect of the grave markers, no longer know where in their reserve cemeteries they are buried.
The University of Manitoba’s National Student Memorial has misled Canadians and has resulted in two referrals of Canada for prosecution by the International Criminal Court based on false claims about ‘mass graves’ and ‘missing’ and ‘disappeared’ Indian residential school students.
The federal government and the Catholic Church must demand that the University of Manitoba take down its false and misleading National Student Memorial.
Nina Green is an independent researcher who lives in British Columbia.
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