TheRage

Article Link: https://calgarysun.com/news/local-news/corbella-nep/wcm/290e9bf7-fda4-44f9-8aa0-e2bbe5b91887

On Oct. 28, 1980, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s newly elected federal government brought down its budget and with it Alberta’s economy — rendering Canada’s oil boom a bust seemingly overnight. “Because of what that idiot in Ottawa did, thousands of other skilled people were laid off almost immediately all across Alberta,” says Duckworth. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that the effect of the National Energy Program on Alberta was immediate. The budget was so cataclysmic that the Calgary Herald ran its editorial on the front page of the paper on Oct. 29, 1980, writing: “Alberta must fight this flawed policy.” The editorial board predicted — rightly — that the “imposition of a Canada-first policy . . . will deliberately drive from this country the foreign firms that created our energy industry.

Article Link: https://calgarysun.com/news/national/otoole-says-liberals-can-play-politics-tories-will-focus-on-issues

The Liberals will not turn a Conservative motion into a test of confidence in their minority government — despite arguing the motion is so broad and its demand for documents so massive that it could get in the way of running the country. However, they are warning there is no way they can produce all the documents demanded by the deadline stipulated in the motion, which calls for a sweeping probe by the House of Commons health committee into a host of issues relating to the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Conservative motion is to be put to a vote Monday and has the support of both the Bloc Quebecois and NDP.

Article Link: https://calgarysun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-trudeau-wins-canadians-lose-in-commons-showdown

In 2009, the Liberal Party joined the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebcois to demand that the Harper Conservatives hand over documents on the handling of the prisoners in the Afghan war. The issue was being studied by a Commons committee and had been looked at by a military watchdog but the opposition wanted more. The demand was a full release of documents related to the handling of Taliban prisoners even while the war in Afghanistan was ongoing. “Bits of blacked-out documents with key information missing are not disclosure. Non-answers in the House are not disclosure. Rhetorical personal attacks are not disclosure. We need to get at the truth,” Justin Trudeau thundered in the Commons.

Article Link: https://calgarysun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-trudeaus-desperation-to-hide-the-truth-could-spark-an-election-wednesday

By the end of Wednesday, Canadians could be heading to the polls to elect a new federal government just over a year after the last election. It’s not because any opposition MP or party wants an election, it’s because Justin Trudeau does. Yes, the prime minister is so desperate to stop the opposition from looking into his handling of COVID-19 and the WE Scandal that he wants to force an election during a pandemic he has described in the gravest terms. Parliament, said the PM, should be focused on helping Canadians on COVID-19. If Trudeau was actually as focused on COVID-19, as he claims, then he wouldn’t have prorogued Parliament at all. What he would have done is kept MPs working through August and early September to pass a replacement for CERB and then unveil his throne speech.

Article Link: https://calgarysun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-trudeau-liberals-threaten-election-to-keep-things-hidden/wcm/0d87b1d6-430a-426e-a311-40d8088386ef

How bad are the documents that the Trudeau government is trying to hide? I don’t just mean the WE Charity documents that they have been trying to hide but also the documents that opposition members of the Commons health committee would like to see related to the government’s COVID-19 response. So, let’s get this straight: the Liberals have prorogued Parliament, filibustered committees and are now threatening an election all to stop the release of documents? That doesn’t sound like the open and transparent government that Justin Trudeau promised when he was elected. “Government and its information should be open by default,” Trudeau promised in the 2015 Liberal platform.