Truth-Telling can be a Lonely Business

HillTimes: By using their majority on the House Justice Committee to gag Ms. Wilson-Raybould, the Liberals showed once again they are not interested in finding out if the Trudeau government improperly intervened in the criminal justice system: Michael Harris, Hill Times, photo: Andrew Meade 


​Truth-Telling Can Be a Lonely Business

If, as the Hill Times asserts in the photo caption above, the Liberals are not interested in the truth, then Anne McLellan may well be the exact right "Special Advisor" to the Prime Minister.

PM:GC.CA: Prime Minister announces former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan as Special Advisor

• Canadians expect a government that is not only open and transparent, but continually challenging itself to raise the bar. Ms. McLellan’s work will be an important step toward that.”

From Wikipedia: This is how McLellan helped "raise the bar" for Canada during her tenure as Minister of Justice. Why does it seem to be more like raising the secrecy levels?

• McLellan served as Minister of Justice from 1997 to 2002, with responsibility for implementing new anti-terror and security laws following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, and the implementation of the Canadian gun registry.
• She served as Minister of Health from 2002 to 2003, and then was made Deputy Prime Minister of Canada under Paul Martin.
• The position of deputy prime minister was created by Pierre Trudeau in 1977.
• Joe Clark's government did not have a deputy prime minister. Similarly, Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau did not designate a deputy prime minister, meaning Canada's most recent deputy prime minister was Anne McLellan, who in 2006, was also the first deputy prime minister to lose her seat in the House of Commons.

What great things did McLellan do that she should have suddenly been awarded a position that no one else has since risen to?  Was it because she knew how to keep secrets? That she knew how to spin? Is it a surprise that she lost the following election, and that maybe the uptake of voting Canadians was keener than most politicians care to think it is?

That's something Trudeau needs to consider seriously right now, instead of grasping at any help he can get to protect himself.

Wikipedia:

• According to a former Deputy PM, Sheila Copps: "very often, the DPM's job was to protect the prime minister from the political damage that Question Period can inflict on a leader".

(See also: Sheila, How Could You?)

From Paul Martin's point of view, McLellan was a stalwart supporter through thin and thinner, much as is (was) Gerald Butts to Justin Trudeau. Her claim to fame may well have been a talent for being privy to all secrets and a purveyor of none, especially throughout all those years of the Sponsorship Scandal.

From the point of view of some others, including myself, she's responsible for the fact that Mohamed Harkat has been a prisoner of the system for over 15 years without ever being allowed to know the charges against him -- in Canada, the "true North strong and Free", under a supposedly "liberal" government.

It seems her only claim to retention of her cabinet seat when Chretien took over was that he needed to have upstart Alberta represented in his government -- despite McLellan making no secret of her preference for Paul Martin over Chretien.

That's right; she remained a faithful supporter of Paul Martin under whose watch the sponsorship scandal quietly thrived for years -- while neither she nor her boss, purportedly, had any inkling at all -- not to mention that, during that time, Canada became joined at the hip to the US, along with Mexico:

​JournalForces.gc.ca: The purpose of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed by Prime Minister Paul Martin, President Vincente Fox, and President George W. Bush on 23 March 2005 was to:

• “Establish a common approach to security to protect North America from external threats, prevent and respond to threats within North American, and to further streamline the secure and efficient movement of legitimate, low risk traffic across our shared border.”
• Over 300 initiatives from the SPP are aimed at harmonizing North American policies dealing with food, drugs, security, immigration, refugees, manufacturing, the environment, and public health – with the following over-arching fundamental goals:
• --- Coordinate our security efforts to better protect citizens from terrorist threats and transnational crime and promote the safe and efficient movement of legitimate people and goods;
• --- Expand economic opportunity for all our people by making our businesses more competitive in the global marketplace, cutting red tape, and providing consumers with safe, less expensive, and innovative products; and
• --- Enhance our common efforts to combat infectious diseases, develop responses to man-made or natural disasters to enhance our citizens’ quality of life, protect our people and our environment, and improve consumer safety.

In other words, Canada was allowed by the Paul Martin government to be placed under the virtual control of the United States along with Mexico. And that's the reason you need to have your body invaded by strangers before being allowed to travel by plane, as well as a plethora of other things one normally would not have thought of as Canadian.

All in all, if Anne McLellan were a man, she'd be hailed as "a good old boy".  Not surprisingly, she received honours and awards everywhere she set foot.

Just as Justin Trudeau apologizes in 2019 only for not being aware of the stresses on Jody Wilson-Raybould prior to her testimony before the Justice Committee, Paul Martin asserted in 2004 that he had no knowledge of the sponsorship scandal prior to the Auditor General's report -- though as PM, as guardian of the best interests of the public as well as the public purse, one might think that both of these deniers ought to have been somewhat more aware.

Read the Sponsorship Timeline and you will learn the true nature of the politician. Nobody knew anything but everybody wanted a commission to investigate -- after the scam had operated unmolested throughout the entire tenure of Martin and McLellan.

And/or read what this UK writer has to say about career politicians:

Internationalman:The Nature of a Career Politician

• Career politicians assume that the nature of leadership is to burden the populace with legislation and taxation [YYC: think "Security Certificate and carbon tax, for instance]. They truly don’t understand the concept of limited government.
• In a politician’s mind, the purpose of the existence of the populace is to fill the trough for the leaders. And, of course, the fuller, the better.
• Indeed, I’ve rarely been successful when appealing to any leader to drop a proposal because it might not be in the interest of the populace. I have, however, often been successful in getting a leader to drop a proposal when I’ve advised him that it may be used by the opposition to cost him votes in the next election.

I've become increasingly annoyed of late at how often government officials and senior government employees call themselves "public servants", as if they were missionaries sacrificing everything for the benefit of humanity, yet all the while drawing a much higher salary, with far better perks and pensions, and greater lifetime honours automatically bestowed upon them than ever upon the vast majority of those they claim to serve.

In other words, a "self service" government.

Despite Charles de Gaulle's faux pas while visiting Quebec at the height of secession fever ("Vive le Quebec libre"), I like the frankness of this statement attributed to him: "In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant".

It's gratifying to find I'm not the only one feeling insulted by people claiming to "serve" me. If you scan the full article here below, you might be surprised to find out which current political leader never uses that hypocritical term, even if he does demand special treatment for himself:

NYDailyNews: Politicians who call government 'public service' are a disgrace

One might also ask oneself why a seasoned, supposedly neutral "Public Servant" like Michael Wernick would risk losing favour with Trudeau's political opposition to the point where he had to flee the chicken coop, expressing panic that he might literally be killed and - what? eaten for dinner?

What did he imagine was in it for him all this time he's stood behind the Liberal PM?  Maybe we'll find out when we see where he lands.

Added to the general angst Wernick evokes, is this:

• Last month, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion announced he'd investigate claims that the Prime Minister's Office tried to influence Wilson-Raybould on the SNC-Lavalin file.
  
• Dion has stepped aside temporarily for health reasons. His office says it will continue to gather information on ongoing investigations in his absence​.