The Unauthorized List of Trudeau Untruths: Outright Lies, Evasions, Non-Answers, and other Equivocations

By Josh Lieblein

Have you ever looked at Daniel Dale’s “Unauthorized Database of False Things” said by U.S. President Donald Trump and said, “Boy, I wish our media would apply the same level of scrutiny to our leaders”? Of course you haven’t, because nobody has looked at Daniel Dale’s list in the last year. We just content ourselves with the fact that it exists.

Here, then, because Daniel Dale doesn’t have time to make one, is the definitive and continuously updated list of false statements Trudeau has made. Here are the rules:

1. This list contains untruths, falsehoods, evasions, and other factual inaccuracies. It does not include Trudeau’s many awkward statements, bizarre utterances like “The budget will balance itself”, or his more well-known word salad answers such as “Indigenous Canadians… want to connect back out onto the land”, because nonsense cannot be evaluated for truth or falsehood.
2. These statements must be verifiably false. If Trudeau says he feels anger about the Khadr settlement when he very clearly does not, that is a falsehood of a sort, but since we cannot prove Trudeau’s emotional state or whether he has real emotions at all, we unfortunately cannot make a call one way or another.
3.  We won’t include the slogans Trudeau breathily mouths in lieu of actual answers, because they are clearly meant to trigger his opponents into writing lengthy think-pieces on how diversity ISN’T actually a strength, which would just humour Trudeau and the PMO.

Where possible, we will try to organize Trudeau’s falsehoods into something resembling a coherent classification system. Given the nature of our subject, however, this may be something of an impossible task.

April 8, 2018 update:

Site C Dam and Pipelines:

Sometimes you just can’t please anybody — and it looks like that’s what the Trudeau government was hoping people would say about the hash they’ve made of approving energy projects. The Trudeau government’s attempted compromise is one of those lovely Liberal attempts to make everyone mad at them for different reasons in the hope that these disgruntled groups will fight each other come election time instead of organizing around the common goal of booting the government out who let them down in the first place.

Specifically, the promise broken here — to kill two out of four pipelines, instead of all four — is one of those Trudeau promises you might be happy he broke (if you are pro-pipeline), but we advertised an exhaustive list of broken promises and we intend to make good on that.

Delays plaguing the remaining two could be why many in Alberta are giving him the side-eye as he goes there on another one of his royal tours. You would think, being at home this time where the international media won’t notice, he would leave well enough alone. You would be wrong, as he tried — falsely — to lay the blame at Harper’s feet and by extension, those of Jason Kenney, who as you might imagine was having none of it.

On the other hand, Trudeau giving the go-ahead to the construction of the Site C hydroelectric dam has upset many on the West Coast. David Suzuki’s months-old labeling of Trudeau a liar has gotten a bit of attention lately as a result, although that comment was specifically in reference to Trudeau’s flip-flop on electoral reform (see above). The grizzled environmentalist (living in his own lavish lifestyle), along with many Indigenous people, are understandably mad about Trudeau’s failure to live up to his commitment to consult more closely with them before approving projects like Site C. So, Trudeau wasn’t just hoping to misdirect Canadians — he was also banking on their naivete, too!

February 6, 2018 update:

Military procurement: Every government manages to botch up buying new equipment for the Canadian Forces somehow, so maybe it was somewhat predictable that the Trudeau government would fall about $2 billion short of their target.  They can, however, be criticized for promising a ridiculously optimistic quadrupling of defence spending over the next seven years and massively under-delivering.

Veteran Compensation: “If I earn the right to serve this country as your Prime Minister, no veteran will be forced to fight their own government for the support and compensation that they have earned. We will reinstate lifelong pensions and increase their value in line with the obligation we have made to those injured in the line of duty.”

So said Justin Trudeau during the 2015 election. And yet, if you were watching Trudeau’s latest townhall, you know that he has decided that some veterans were asking for “more than we are able to give right now.” However, there’s enough money to bring in more refugees.

Please submit examples that we have forgotten so that we can make this THE go-to source for Untrue Trudeau Statements.

The Balanced Budget Promise: “Trudeau was asked Wednesday how cast in stone his pledge was to balance the budget in four years. “Very,” he said during a year-end roundtable interview with Canadian Press journalists in Ottawa.”- Canadian Press Interview, December 15, 2015

So if your party plans to break an election promise, it’s definitely not a good idea to have your leader still promising it will be cast in stone a year after he was elected.

Open Nominations: “Open nominations, which I continue to be committed to and have always been committed to, is about letting local Liberals choose who is going to be their candidate in the next election….” CTV News, March 18, 2014.

So this was never a promise Trudeau was going to keep, but we should keep a running list of ridings where it was egregiously broken.

1. Don Valley North: Geng Tan, who was later found to be acting as some sort of advocate for a Liberal Party donor accused of fraud through the Canadian embassy in Beijing, got the nod over Gerald Butts’ buddy Rana Sarkar in a nomination battle where, and I quote here, “the Liberal party caved to pressure by the Chinese community to cancel the race, three sources, insisting on anonymity, told The Huffington Post Canada.”
2. Bay of Quinte: Former Liberal Candidate Peter Tinsley gets screwed by an unnecessary rushing of the vote and voters’ list shenanigans.
3. Vancouver South: Under what looked for all the world to be pressure from Liberal higher-ups, Barjinder Singh Dhahan in favour of serial-exaggerator Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, leading to resignations on that riding’s LPC riding association executive.
4. Vancouver East: A face-saving “internal investigation” helped to shove allegations of people being signed up a LPC members without their consent or knowledge under the rug.
5. Steveson-Richmond-East: Wendy Yuan alleges that the LPC blocked her from running and produced an affidavit to support her claim.
6. Vancouver-Granville: Rumblings that the LPC cleared the decks for Jody Wilson-Raybould.
7. Ottawa-Orleans: David Bertschi gets steamrolled in favour of General Andrew Leslie, leading Bertschi to sue Trudeau.
8. Ville-Marie–Le Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Soeurs: Marc Miller, buddy to Trudeau, earns votes from people who say they never signed up as members.
9. Trinity-Spadina: Christine Innes is told not to run in University-Rosedale against Chrystia Freeland, gets blocked by Trudeau, initiates 1.5 million lawsuit after a smear campaign is launched against her, settles out of court, triggers angry resignation of privileged Paikin progeny Zach in faraway Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas.

No Protection For Incumbent Liberals: In 2013, Trudeau was very clear: Sitting MP’s could and would and should be taken down.

“I had to fight a really tough nomination (in 2008), where I wasn’t the candidate that the party wanted to win,” Trudeau said.

 

“As we know, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” – Too many times and places to mention.

Well, unfortunately that isn’t always the case. As Graeme points out in a National Post piece, the Trudeau government has been busily deporting Canadians citizens while terrorists like Amor Ftouhi, who stabbed Lt. Jeff Neville in the neck with a 12-inch knife, get to stay.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada“ aka the Trump Subtweet, Jan 28 2017

Another lie called out by Graeme, this time in a CBC piece where he points out that lots of people fleeing persecution, terror, etc. are turned back by Canada’s system.  But if that doesn’t convince you, consider this tweet where Trudeau bizarrely commented that El Salvadorans weren’t welcome in Canada. The only way this makes sense is if Trudeau suddenly became worried about infiltration by MS-13 — but regardless, it still puts the lie to his claim of being welcomed “regardless of your faith.”

“We’re working very, very hard to share that instinct of openness and transparency throughout levels of government and across the country through institutions, because we know people have confidence when they see what’s going on when people are held to account for the mistakes they make and there are real significant measures taken to improve.” Hamilton Town Hall, Jan 10th

Well, sorry Justin, but you redacted the details of your own transparency plan, which didn’t improve the access to information request system like you promised, but instead your government is now weakening it.

Electoral Reform: It’s common knowledge that Trudeau completely abandoned his pledge to change how we vote. If you’re a conservative, this is one that you are glad he broke, but no list of Trudeau lies would be complete without it. If you are an NDPer and Trudeau duped you into voting for him because of this promise, well… then you’re an NDPer.

The Aga Khan is a Close Family Friend of the Trudeau’s: Ever since Trudeau got caught vacationing on billionaire Aga Khan’s private island he has been insistent he’s close friends with the spiritual leader whose foundation is registered to lobby the federal government. The outgoing Conflict of Interest and Ethics Comissioner Mary Dawson determined this was not the case, with her only finding Trudeau and the Aga Khan only met once, for Trudeau’s father’s funeral, over a decades-long span. It was only after Trudeau became LPC leader that the Aga Khan and Trudeau suddenly renewed their non-existent friendship.

Restoring Home Mail Delivery: Helpfully subtitled here, Trudeau promised in French to restore Canada Post’s home mail delivery. Well, now Trudeau changed his tune and said he wouldn’t cut any more door-to-door services, but he sure isn’t restoring the ones eliminated by Harper.

Abandoning UNDRIP: Part of the reason for the increasingly dysfunctional relationship between Trudeau and Canada’s First Nations is his backing away from his promise to implement The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.