Trudeau government has become the things it despised

 

Almost all governments eventually become the things they said they despised before they became the government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is no exception.

During the 2015 election campaign that brought them to power, Trudeau and the Liberals said they despised government secrecy as the default position of the previous Stephen Harper regime and they would deliver “open and transparent government.”

Almost all governments eventually become the things they said they despised before they became the government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is no exception.

During the 2015 election campaign that brought them to power, Trudeau and the Liberals said they despised government secrecy as the default position of the previous Stephen Harper regime and they would deliver “open and transparent government.”

In 2015, Trudeau promised to “strengthen Parliamentary committees” and ensure they were properly resourced to do their jobs.

Instead, when the Trudeau Liberals had a majority government in their first term of office, they used their majority in the parliamentary committee investigating Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin conflict of interest scandal to prematurely shut it down.

In their current term of office with a minority government, Liberal MPs used parliamentary tricks (see filibustering) to derail two parliamentary inquiries into Trudeau’s WE Charity affair when they resumed their work last September.

This after Trudeau had previously shut those inquiries down in August through prorogation.

In 2015, Trudeau and the Liberals promised to “make government information more accessible” by strengthening the Access to Information Act, in order to achieve their promise that “government data and information should be open by default.”

Despite that, federal information commissioner Caroline Maynard told a parliamentary committee in June that her office is backlogged with information requests because it doesn’t have the resources it needs to do its job properly.

“Openness and transparency in government has never been more important than it is during this pandemic,” Maynard said. “The Government needs to commit to proper resources and innovative solutions to ensure the right of access for all Canadians. Let’s not forget that access delayed is access denied.”

In responding to a question from Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner in October about an investigation by the Winnipeg Free Press revealing that less than half of freedom-of-information offices across the government were operating at capacity, Health Minister Patty Hajdu said: “Not once has a Canadian asked me to put more resources into freedom-of-information officers.”

Given what Trudeau and the Liberals promised Canadians in 2015, the fiercest critics of the Trudeau government in 2021 should be Trudeau and the Liberals.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-government-has-become-the-things-it-despised