What the F***, Trudeau!?

Justin Trudeau was elected on the basis of his name.  Anyone who thinks differently, well, that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But much like our neighbour to the south, Trudeau had no political experience prior to becoming our Prime Minister.  The closest he came is being the son of the Prime Minister in the 1970s. 

The Trudeau Administration has been wrought with controversies since Trudeau was first elected in 2015.

He has committed several ethics violations.

The most recent one is the one that is being discussed currently in the news.  

Trudeau awarded the We charity, run by brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger, management of a $900-million student grant program. That decision has now been canceled in light of the new scandal.

What scandal you ask?  The charity has ties to the Trudeau family. They have paid the family up to $300,000 for speaking engagements. Trudeau said that despite his family's involvement with the charity, he did not see any conflict of interest.  But then realized and stated that he should have recused himself from Cabinet discussions on awarding the grant management. 

If only this were the only scandal in the Trudeau administration.  But it's not. It's just the most recent. 

His first ethics violation was in 2017. Trudeau accepted a vacation with his family to the private island in the Bahamas of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam (ipolitics.com). The Ethics Commissioner ruled that this could cause influence within the Liberal Party through the Prime Minister.

His response was that he would clear all his family vacations through the Ethics Committee. 

The scandal had the effect of dropping his approval rating from 43.2% down to 37.3% (CBC.ca)

But one ethics violation wasn't enough.  His second came just last year, 2019, when Trudeau tried to influence the then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Reybould to overrule a decision not to grant a deferred prosecution agreement to SNC-Lavalin. (CBC.ca). 

This brought his approval rating down to 29.6%.  But Trudeau has time on his side. He currently has a majority government, and polling done before the most recent scandal showed support for Trudeau's government at about 40.4% (CBC.ca)

What will be interesting to see will be how this scandal, coming during the government's handling of the coronavirus, will affect post-scandal polling. 

But really, what the F***, Trudeau?