Juno News - They couldn't care less

00:00:00.000 Welcome, everyone, to Ratioed. My name is Harrison Faulkner. Well, in the least surprising

00:00:11.680 news of the year, another cabinet minister in this government has been found guilty of

00:00:15.840 breaking the ethics laws. This time, Mary Ng, this lady, gave $20,000 of taxpayer money to 1.00

00:00:22.640 her good pal for some media training. It's starting to become a pattern with this government,

00:00:26.720 who have given up, it appears, on any attempt to try and look ethical in the eyes of Canadians.

00:00:31.280 We're going to get into this latest scandal and see how it shocks up to all the others that this

00:00:34.400 government have gotten themselves into. And that leads us perfectly to the common question for

00:00:38.320 this episode. Of all the great ethics scandals that this government have found themselves in,

00:00:42.480 which, in your mind, is the most egregious? We're going to get into all of them later on in the show,

00:00:46.880 but let me know in the comments what ethics scandal, in your opinion, is the absolute worst,

00:00:51.360 the most egregious, that this government have found themselves in. Drop a like on the video,

00:00:55.280 help us out by subscribing to the True North YouTube channel, and let's get into it.

00:00:58.400 So, here we go, number six, ladies and gentlemen, the sixth ethics scandal that this government

00:01:02.880 have gotten themselves into. Earlier this week, Mary Ng, the Minister of Small Business and

00:01:07.360 International Trade, was found guilty by the Independent Ethics Commissioner for breaking the

00:01:12.080 law by contravening conflict of interest rules. Mary Ng gave over $20,000 of our money, our taxpayer 0.94

00:01:18.960 dollars, of which they take far too much to begin with, to her good friend Amanda Alvaro's company

00:01:24.880 called Pomp and Circumstance. I mean, just come on, the jokes write themselves, don't they?

00:01:29.280 So, in this report by the Ethics Commissioner, there are two contracts that Mary Ng gave to Pomp 0.98

00:01:34.480 and Circumstance, one in 2019 and one in 2020. Now, the money that she gave to Pomp and Circumstance

00:01:40.880 was for media training, which, in better terms, is paying someone to teach you to speak English

00:01:46.480 better in front of the camera. Such a great place to put our money, right? By the way, have you ever heard

00:01:50.720 one of these ministers speak on camera? They have about as much charisma as a wet rag. $20,000 isn't

00:01:55.520 going to do it, and, frankly, neither is $100,000. Anyways, the Ethics Commissioner, Mary O'Dean,

00:01:59.840 absolutely slammed Mary Ng in his report, and rightly so. She gave our money, our taxpayer dollars, 0.99

00:02:05.760 to her good friend, her former colleague, from back in the day. Now, this is taken straight from

00:02:09.920 the report, but just read what the Ethics Commissioner has to say about this.

00:02:13.200 Minister Ng twice failed to recognize a potential conflict of interest involving a friend,

00:02:17.920 and oversight of her obligations under the Conflict of Interest Act. There is simply no excuse

00:02:23.120 for contracting with a friend's company. Now, this is how Mary Ng responded to the controversy.

00:02:28.160 As the Commissioner's report indicates, and I repeat now, I take full responsibility for my actions.

00:02:33.360 I should have recused myself and apologized to all for not having done so. At no time was there

00:02:38.080 an issue of any personal benefit for me, nor any intention for anyone to benefit inappropriately.

00:02:43.360 My sincere efforts in the moment fell short of my own high personal standards for transparent

00:02:47.600 and accountable conduct, which Canadians have right to expect from their elected officials.

00:02:52.240 I am sorry for the shortcoming, and it will not happen again.

00:02:54.800 Just to show you how brazen this government has become about routinely breaking the law over

00:02:59.120 conflict of interest violations, just watch how Justin Trudeau responds to a reporter

00:03:03.600 who asks if Mary Ng should resign.

00:03:05.440 Mary Ng and ethics, you know, another one of your ministers, you've been dinged twice on ethics rules.

00:03:12.080 Is it time for people to start resigning once they've been convicted of ethics?

00:03:15.280 We thank the ethics commissioner for his hard work, and the minister spoke directly to that,

00:03:19.600 and has apologized in a statement.

00:03:22.400 And perhaps even worse, in question period, Pierre Polyev doesn't even ask if Mary Ng should resign.

00:03:28.080 He simply asks the prime minister if she should do the honorable thing and pay back the $20,000

00:03:33.760 to all of us, the taxpayers, for wrongly giving the money to her good pal, her good friend.

00:03:39.200 From incompetence to bad ethics, we have another liberal minister found guilty of violating the

00:03:45.360 Ethics Act, this time for giving a $23,000 contract to one of her best friends at a company called

00:03:53.760 Pomp and Circumstances. It reminds us of the prime minister giving a half billion dollars to an

00:04:00.400 organization called the WE Charity that gave his family a half million dollars. So, Mr. Speaker,

00:04:06.080 will this minister be held accountable, and will she be required to pay back the $23,000 in improper

00:04:12.320 contracting that she gave out?

00:04:13.760 Mr. Speaker, in this House there's a lot of debate and back and forth, but every now and then there's

00:04:21.920 an opportunity for Canadians to weigh in directly on what's going on in federal politics. And

00:04:26.480 yesterday, the residents of Mississauga Lakeshore had a choice. They could choose between the

00:04:32.160 Conservative Party's politics of division and reckless proposals that included recommending

00:04:38.400 you opt out of inflation by investing in crypto, or our government's approach of being there for

00:04:44.080 Canadians every step of the way and putting more money back in their pockets. Well, Mr. Speaker,

00:04:49.120 the people of Mississauga Lakeshore have spoken and elected a Liberal member of Parliament.

00:04:56.400 Now, maybe this isn't the case, but it sounds an awful lot like he is justifying an ethics violation,

00:05:01.040 an ethics breach, the sixth of his government, by the way, because voters in Mississauga decided to

00:05:06.960 choose a Liberal over a Conservative in a by-election the night before. Strange. Now, folks, shall we break out

00:05:12.800 the scoreboard and take a trip down memory lane to see if we've got the numbers right, if we've got the

00:05:17.680 six, right? Because once you reach five, right, what's another one to the whole list? Now, in 2017,

00:05:23.360 the government decided to test the waters to see what they could get away with when Justin Trudeau

00:05:27.760 took a private vacation on the Aga Khan's island. Now, the Aga Khan, the guy is a registered lobbyist,

00:05:33.760 so, I mean, it's a pretty obvious ethics violation, right? You'd think at least. And this is funny,

00:05:39.360 you can see how fresh they are, you can see how new to the whole game they are of breaking ethics laws,

00:05:44.240 when Justin Trudeau could barely respond to a question from Rosemary Barton, of all people. Yes,

00:05:49.920 Rosemary Barton of the CBC. He could barely get through a very basic question from Rosemary Barton.

00:05:56.480 With all due respect, you were going to take a free holiday from someone you consider a friend,

00:06:00.880 but obviously you have a different definition of a friend than the commissioner. You knew that

00:06:04.880 they had a lobbying registry, that they were set up to lobby the government. How could it not have

00:06:09.040 occurred to you that that might not have been okay? The fact is, we work, sorry, let me just try to

00:06:17.840 reorder the thoughts. We worked with the lobby conflict of interest commissioner on a regular

00:06:30.560 basis on a broad range of issues when the issues come up. On this issue of a family vacation with a

00:06:36.880 personal friend, it wasn't considered that there would be an issue. Notice how he struggles with

00:06:42.000 this one compared to how he casually brushes off the new ones. Like they're just like it's water off

00:06:47.200 a duck's back. And in that same year, then finance minister Bill Morneau was also found guilty by the

00:06:52.960 ethics commissioner for failing to disclose a corporation that he owned that held a lavish

00:06:58.240 French villa for him and his wife. Now for that ethics violation, Morneau, who was a multi-millionaire

00:07:04.080 many times over, had to pay a dangerously high fine of, wait for it, $200 and he remained finance

00:07:12.560 minister. The next year, then fisheries minister and now minister of intergovernmental affairs,

00:07:17.920 Dominic LeBlanc was also found guilty by the ethics commissioner of breaching conflict of interest

00:07:23.360 rules. This time he awarded a fisheries contract to a relative. His punishment? Well, some might say he

00:07:29.040 got a promotion because he went from fisheries to intergovernmental affairs. Starting to see a

00:07:34.320 pattern here? And now this is where all the fun begins. In 2019, Justin Trudeau was found guilty

00:07:40.400 for a second time of breaking the ethics law. This time for politically pressuring Jody Wilson-Raybould,

00:07:46.640 then attorney general of Canada, to offer a deferred prosecution agreement to Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin,

00:07:52.880 the construction firm, in order to protect them from an ongoing criminal case. A big deal,

00:07:59.120 a big time violation. Now Trudeau offered to apologize for the first ethics violation.

00:08:04.480 This time, of course not. Are you apologizing for anything today?

00:08:09.920 Um, I will be making an Inuit apology this afternoon, but in regards to, uh, and in regards to standing,

00:08:16.400 in regards to standing up for jobs and defending the integrity of our rule of law, um, I continue to

00:08:26.080 say that there was no inappropriate pressure. Now we get to the WE Charity scandal. In 2020,

00:08:30.800 the Trudeau government awarded a contract to the WE Charity Group, a sole source contract,

00:08:35.280 for a government project that would cost taxpayers up to $912 million. The WE Charity,

00:08:41.280 by being awarded this contract, were to receive $30 million. Now, without getting into the

00:08:46.080 details, which you already know about, the WE Charity paid Trudeau's family nearly $300,000

00:08:52.000 in speaking fees alone. And his wife, Sophie Trudeau, hosted a WE Charity podcast. Well,

00:08:58.560 the Ethics Commissioner actually cleared Justin Trudeau of any wrongdoing in this case,

00:09:02.320 but not Bill Morneau. The Ethics Commissioner found that Bill Morneau broke three conflict of

00:09:06.960 interest rules, three ethics violations in one scandal. And it turns out actually that if you break

00:09:12.160 three conflict of interest rules in one Ethics scandal, that is what is enough to get you booted

00:09:16.640 from the Liberal cabinet. Sure enough, Bill Morneau announced his resignation shortly after the result

00:09:21.680 of that report. And thanks to the WE Charity scandal, we got one of the absolute best battles between

00:09:27.440 Pierre Polyev and Justin Trudeau during the WE Charity hearings. Now, you've already seen this clip,

00:09:31.920 but since we're on this trip to memory lane, why don't we watch it for old time's sake?

00:09:35.200 Your 16 seconds are up. Your 16 seconds are up. I'm going to ask you again, because nobody believes

00:09:43.200 you when you say you don't know how much money your family has got from the WE Group. You've had a month

00:09:49.920 to look into that. You knew you were going to testify here. Again, how much money total have your brother,

00:09:57.440 mother and spouse received from this organization? How much?

00:10:02.240 That information has been publicly shared, but I will highlight…

00:10:06.000 Well, then tell me what it is. My mother has…

00:10:08.800 It's just the dollar figure.

00:10:10.800 Throughout her life… The dollar figure, Prime Minister.

00:10:13.360 …in various ways and is proud of the work that she's done and I'm proud of her.

00:10:17.280 How much? I'm looking for a dollar figure.

00:10:19.840 We can get that number for you if you like. It's been out in the media.

00:10:23.440 It's been in the media, but you don't know it? I don't have it in front of me.

00:10:26.640 You don't know how much your family has received from this organization, which you tried to give a

00:10:30.960 half-billion dollars. Really?

00:10:34.400 Can I answer, Mr. Paulyev?

00:10:36.080 I'm waiting. You haven't done an answer so far. Let's make this the first one.

00:10:39.520 Point of order to suspend?

00:10:40.960 Point of order to suspend, please.

00:10:43.600 Point of order to suspend, please.

00:10:45.120 I've come to learn that the chairperson's power has gone out and is no longer part of this meeting.

00:10:51.520 May I propose that we…

00:10:52.640 It's okay, we can keep…

00:10:52.960 It's okay, we can keep…

00:10:54.480 Prime Minister and I can continue talking.

00:10:56.560 No, no.

00:10:57.520 I suspect that that might be a problem. It's very convenient timing for the lights to go out.

00:11:01.840 Look, I got a message to the effect that his power has gone out. I have no reason to distrust him.

00:11:07.440 I hope you don't pull the fire alarm now.

00:11:09.520 Yeah, well, look, there's no intent in my own private home here in the middle of a pandemic.

00:11:14.160 I don't have a fire alarm.

00:11:15.280 Mr. Fraser, the general process is that the Vice Chair assumes the chairing of the meeting, so we'll continue.

00:11:24.400 And that would be me.

00:11:26.960 So we'll continue the meeting. And I now give the floor to the member for Carleton.

00:11:32.000 Now look guys, you know it's really bad for Justin Trudeau when the Globe and Mail of all places,

00:11:36.560 the Globe and Mail editorial pages are calling for Mary Ng to resign over this.

00:11:40.960 Take a look at this headline from The Globe.

00:11:43.040 There are no grey areas in Mary Ng's ethics breach. Apologizing is not good enough. 0.95

00:11:48.240 What Ms. Ng did was what the law prohibits. She had a ministerial decision that benefited a friend.

00:11:53.680 She apologized, but there has been no consequence. There was no grey zone area in Ms. Ng's case.

00:11:59.120 And this was no marginal friendship with some obscure contractor. They are both veterans of

00:12:03.440 the inner circle around the person who sets the accountability standards in this government,

00:12:07.680 Mr. Trudeau. But the problem is not in politicians having friends. It is when ministers arrange public

00:12:12.720 business with their friends. When Mr. Eggleton did that 20 years ago, he was bounced from cabinet.

00:12:17.840 Ms. Ng faces no consequences. That's not enough. And it's not like Justin Trudeau's ethics scandals

00:12:23.520 haven't gone unnoticed around the world. It is having a real-world impact on Canada's perception

00:12:29.520 for being an ethical country. The Global Corruption Perception Index, which basically ranks the entire

00:12:35.760 world on a leaderboard for most ethical, least corrupt to most corrupt, ranks Canada 14th in the

00:12:43.040 world. Now, you might think to yourself, well, 14th, that's not that bad, actually. And actually,

00:12:46.400 in a way, 14th isn't that bad. But you also want to look at the year-over-year numbers to see how the

00:12:51.040 world perceives Canada. And it's actually not the best-looking picture. The rankings are done on a

00:12:56.000 point basis, 100 being the least corrupt, 0 being the most corrupt. And since Justin Trudeau took over

00:13:02.880 as Prime Minister in 2015, Canada's Global Corruption Perception Index ranking was at 83. Again, not very

00:13:11.120 bad. In fact, if you took 83, that would place us a lot closer to the top of the global leaderboard.

00:13:16.880 But now, our score has fallen down to 74. So our perception around the world has gotten worse over

00:13:23.840 this period of time. And it's not just by party either. It's across the board in this country.

00:13:28.720 And if you zoom out even further and you go back to 2000, to see where our country was 22 years ago,

00:13:34.640 our ranking on the Global Corruption Perception Index was 92. So we were at 92. We were the fifth

00:13:41.600 least corrupt country in the world. And now we're down to 14th. Sure, it's not the United States with

00:13:46.720 a score of 67. But I think we can do better. And I think all of us should have higher standards.

00:13:51.680 All right, ratio of the week time, the most coveted prize in Ottawa. This week,

00:13:55.520 it's going to a man who really should spend less time on Twitter, and perhaps more time working for

00:14:01.120 his constituents. I'm, of course, talking about Mark Gerritsen. Now, Mark Gerritsen, as many left-wingers

00:14:07.760 have been prone to do over the past few months, had a complete meltdown over Elon Musk owning Twitter.

00:14:14.160 I mean, he's a bit late to the party, right? It's kind of, it's kind of almost past the news cycle

00:14:18.080 now. But earlier this week, Mark Gerritsen just had a complete hissy fit, a complete meltdown on

00:14:23.760 Twitter and dropped a long thread about how Elon Musk attending Queen's University in Kingston

00:14:28.640 was a stain on the city. Check out this thread. Someone should tell at Elon Musk his $44 billion

00:14:35.040 experiment is failing. I can't believe he once lived in Kingston and attended at Queen's U,

00:14:39.760 a real stain on our city. Imagine the world's richest person bending over backwards to impress 0.82

00:14:44.800 Donald Trump, only to be snubbed. And of course, like any man who is confident in his beliefs,

00:14:50.160 he blocks responses on Twitter. But that didn't stop the ratio, and that's why he's the real worthy

00:14:55.280 winner. 388 likes in that first tweet, 582 quote tweets. The tweet when he wrote,

00:15:01.280 a real stain on our city. Well, he got 186 likes and 320 quote tweets. So he's been getting

00:15:07.520 absolutely blasted for this, as you can imagine. What an absurd thing to write on Twitter. I'm going

00:15:12.000 to pull some of the some of the funniest comments we got from it all. Aaron Woodrick of the McDonnell

00:15:16.640 Laurier Institute quoted this, as an MP, perhaps you should worry a little bit less about billionaires

00:15:22.000 who waste their own money and a little bit more about governments that waste tax dollars. The great

00:15:26.880 Spencer Fernando also got in on the action. This really says it all. At Elon Musk is one

00:15:31.600 of the most influential people on earth, helping humanity make great strides further into space.

00:15:36.400 He's also a Canadian citizen. Instead of taking pride in this, a liberal MP is calling him a stain.

00:15:42.000 This attitude holds Canada back. And this Twitter user writes, Mark, pick a lane. You're an idiot.

00:15:47.600 And he pulls up a post from Mark Gerritsen from, what, back in 2016, when Mark Gerritsen wrote this. 1.00

00:15:53.920 Here's something you might not know. Elon Musk, who invented PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX,

00:15:58.800 went to Queen's University back in the early 90s. So it seems like back in 2016, Mark Gerritsen was all

00:16:04.480 pretty excited about that fact. He wasn't a stain on Kingston then, but now, of course,

00:16:08.080 because Musk stands up for free speech, because Musk is taking aim at Bill C-11, it appears. Well,

00:16:13.840 now Elon Musk is a real stain on Kingston. Now, if I could say one thing to Mark Gerritsen, it would be

00:16:17.760 this. You've got such bad takes that if you do decide to open up your replies, well, we're not going to

00:16:22.400 have much of a ratio of the week award because you're just going to take it home every single

00:16:26.400 week. So maybe for your sake, and maybe for our show's sake, best to keep them blocked like any 1.00

00:16:31.920 confident man would. All right, everyone, that's going to do it for us this week on the show.

00:16:35.440 Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Harrison Faulkner.

00:16:37.920 I'll catch you next Monday, and this is Racial. 0.64

Juno News - December 15, 2022

They couldn't care less

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