Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau skipped the opening day of a session of Parliament that his Government had scheduled even as discussions in the House of Commons were dominated by the controversy over the grant of a contract worth nearly a billion dollars to a charity with close links to his family.
The contract to WE Charity has already been cancelled after an outcry and revelations that Trudeau’s mother, brother and wife was paid fees by the organisations at various times. This has already led to a formal investigation being launched by the country’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioners while two Parliamentary panels are also looking into the matter.The new sitting on Monday was to discuss legislation to extend a sweeping subsidy package to businesses in the country to help them retain employees in the wake of the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Trudeau was missing and his official schedule said that he had taken a personal day.While one Opposition party Bloc Quebecois has already asked Trudeau to step aside and for Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to take charge in his place, on Monday, the leader of principal opposition Conservative Party Andrew Scheer said the onus was on Liberal MPs to seek Trudeau’s resignations. In a press conference in Ottawa, Scheer said, “If they allow him to continue, if they don’t demand that he resign, then they are telling Canadians that they are comfortable with his corruption.”
Freeland, in fact, bore the brunt of questioning in the House of Commons, and her response was, “Obviously, the way this unfolded was regrettable, and that is why the charity is no longer administering the project.”
The Opposition attack came after Liberal members of the House of Commons Ethics Committee prevented the resolution of a motion to examine the contract and question some of the parties involved by resorting to the tactic of a filibuster, which meant taking up the prescribed time for the meeting with long-winded speeches. As the outlet CBC News reported this included “30-minute long monologues on various topics — their personal resumes, democracy, ancient Greece, French political theory and the virtues of the University of Sherbrooke, among others — that pushed the committee meeting’s duration well past its scheduled end time.”
