News   Jul 12, 2024
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News   Jul 12, 2024
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PM Justin Trudeau's Canada

Anyone who wants to do anything in that part of the country has to go through the Irvings.

Indeed. Atlantic conservatives are as enmeshed with the Irvings as Atlantic liberals. People in the rest of Canada have no idea the power the Irvings have out east. They practically own the maritime provinces as fiefdoms.

In this particular case though, it's not entirely clear that it was solely about the Irvings' interests putting doubt on the contract to Davie. Project Resolve's main competitor was actually the Protecteur Class being built by Seaspan on the West Coast. It was some outside the box thinking from the naval staff and industry. Delivered at substantially lower cost and significantly reduced timeline. There was lots of support internally for Davie's proposal for a second ship. Both the Senate and the House Defence Committees also unanimously supported buying a second interim AOR. So plenty of politicians, industry experts and military staff agreed with this project. The only people that didn't were politicians representing the interests of Irving and Seaspan. With that in mind, it becomes particularly questionable to accuse VAdm Norman of breach of trust. There are so many people who had the same knowledge and even more motivation to share that information.

I have no concerns with former high ranking military members, or any retired civil servant, seeking elected office or corporate executive positions. I do have a problem when the new corporate positions engage them with government contracts and procurement without an appropriate 'cooling off' period.

There's a mandatory restricted post-employment period for most military and public service positions. And the further up you go, the higher the scrutiny. As it stands, there's rules on say a guy like me jumping to a defence contractor. I might be able to get clearance to take up a job, but have to avoid all business relationships with former colleagues.

I suspect one of the reasons Leslie was passed over (besides the regional and gender balancing as mentioned) was that he developed a reputation for speaking truth to power, particularly in his NDHQ/command staffing analysis. That type of critical thinking is scary to political parties.

Yep. I wish more people (especially the public) had read that report. He slaughtered practically every sacred cow at the command level. And for that earned respect from practically anyone without the rank of general or civilian executive. He would have been an amazing reformer in any government department.

Leslie's ability to cut through the BS and call out managers and organizations for not delivering or being overly bureaucratic is amazing. Which is incredible when you consider that he navigated through the arcane maze of defence bureaucracy to the very top. We've often wondered if he was collecting complaints in his underwear drawer since he was a toddler (his paternal grandfather was Commander of the Army and Minister of National Defence and maternal grandfather was also MND). So detailed and searing was his critique of the institution....

He said what many of us wish we could say out loud and would never have the courage to say....especially at that rank. This is the equivalent of working at a company for 30 years and then calling all your senior colleagues (who are also friends of yours since college) underperformers who have failed to deliver, at your retirement party. He clearly wasn't banking on a post-employment industrial or public service career with that tone.
 
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And we taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the at minimum 1/2 million dollars in legal fees the VA incurred.

If VAdm Norman doesn't get several hundred thousand in additional compensation in the settlement, with his NDA, to avoid the civil suit from going to trial, I'll be surprised. It's disgusting what they did to him. Sure, generals get paid well. But they are still public servants. And even with their pay packets, carrying half a million dollars in legal fees is no joke.

Here's a timeline of the whole affair. Including when they found, suspended and charged another suspect.

https://capebretonspectator.com/2019/03/20/updated-the-vice-admiral-norman-nss-timeline/

And coordination between the PCO and PMO are big no-no's for anybody who doesn't understand government. The Privy Council Office is the highest agency in government, advising cabinet. But it is staffed with public servants and is non-partisan. The PMO is a political outfit, filled with the elected government's staffers. The PCO isn't there to serve one party. And doing so is a breach of ethics and their professional obligations. Coordinating on the timing of a trial to minimize embarrassment during a trial is bad form. And I expect, if the Liberals don't win, there will be a few senior public servants at PCO who will be retiring very quickly after the election.
 
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Indeed. Atlantic conservatives are as enmeshed with the Irvings as Atlantic liberals. People in the rest of Canada have no idea the power the Irvings have out east. They practically own the maritime provinces as fiefdoms.

And what they don't own, the McCains do.

There's a mandatory restricted post-employment period for most military and public service positions. And the further up you go, the higher the scrutiny. As it stands, there's rules on say a guy like me jumping to a defence contractor. I might be able to get clearance to take up a job, but have to avoid all business relationships with former colleagues.
Thanks for that - I was unaware of the policy. It just seems a high-ranking/profile former military member/public servant who I recalled from the news all of a sudden showing up shilling for something or somebody. One year doesn't seem all that long but I suppose we can't condemn them to professional purgatory.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...-threat/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bcaf9c59b832

Agree? Disagree?

Stephen Lautens @stephenlautens
2h


So, the NDP blocks a candidate, who then runs for the Greens and defeats the NDP candidate in a safe NDP seat... and it's bad news for the Liberals? #cdnpoli

This is in response to a media pundit calling the by-election bad news for the Liberals, when they haven't held a seat in that area for decades. Nanaimo-Ladysmith has always been a contest between the NDP and whatever the main conservative party is at the time.
 
This is in response to a media pundit calling the by-election bad news for the Liberals, when they haven't held a seat in that area for decades. Nanaimo-Ladysmith has always been a contest between the NDP and whatever the main conservative party is at the time.
It's actually surprising that the NDP had enough morals to not allow the candidate to run for them in the past (https://nationalpost.com/news/polit...dp-over-israel-paved-the-way-for-his-election).
Good example that it always pays to be anti-Semitic in Canadian politics.
 
Thanks for that - I was unaware of the policy. It just seems a high-ranking/profile former military member/public servant who I recalled from the news all of a sudden showing up shilling for something or somebody. One year doesn't seem all that long but I suppose we can't condemn them to professional purgatory.

The restrictions are specifically on lobbying, conflicts of interest and insider knowledge.

For example, if you work in the project office to buy new jets, you can't just retire and go to work for one of the bidders. And even if you do (after a year), you can't then use confidential information to the benefit of that employer.

Next, they did deliberate longer terms. But there's lots of issues with that. Mostly to do with how they can facilitate earning. Pension payments can take up to 6 months to kick in. And they eliminated severance for us. We are also not eligible for EI despite paying into it. So all in all, if they made the period longer they'd have had to reinstate severance and make it generous.
 
It's actually surprising that the NDP had enough morals to not allow the candidate to run for them in the past (https://nationalpost.com/news/polit...dp-over-israel-paved-the-way-for-his-election).
Good example that it always pays to be anti-Semitic in Canadian politics.

That allegation (anti-Semitic) could get you sued. Its a serious allegation to make, not one to be taken lightly. There is no evidence of such a trait in the very article you link to; and at the moment I'm no longer just disdainful of your weak and nonsensical arguments posted here, but of your character.
 
Postmedia going after a non-CPC candidate is just what I would expect.

Also, Warren Kisella is a bitter man who shouldn't be taken seriously. Might I remind people that he took legal action against James Sears in the past and now he defends Faith Goldy.
 
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Pension payments can take up to 6 months to kick in. And they eliminated severance for us. We are also not eligible for EI despite paying into it. So all in all, if they made the period longer they'd have had to reinstate severance and make it generous.

I've heard that on numerous occasions from former CAF members and it strikes me a totally bizarre. I retired from the Ont. PS and my first pension cheque was in the bank the next month, which is the norm. I know former colleagues who were seconded to the Feds and the rules and layers of bureaucracy are off the dial compared to Ontario. I've had people try to explain public vs. non-public funded and they might as well be speaking Swahili.
 
Canadian jobs report confirms over 1,000,000 new jobs added to economy in last four years...

Canada's economy reported its biggest one-month employment surge since 1976, when the government started collecting comparable data.
Statistics Canada reported Friday the labour market added 106,500 jobs in April, and the bulk of them were full time.
The increase helped drop the unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent last month, down from 5.8 per cent in March.

Employment grew 0.6 per cent with the April increase — the highest proportional monthly expansion since 1994.

Year over year, average hourly wage growth for all employees in April was 2.5 per cent, up from a reading of 2.4 per cent for March.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/economy-adds-record-jobs-april-1.5130682
 
I was told that the country is a disaster now.

Harper saved the economy from ruin himself too, yet the media started to spin in 2015 that we were heading towards a recession to help buoy their pick Trudeau into power. Not surprised the spin doctors would be trying to help Trudeau out now too.
 

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