Carole and I would like to inform our readers that after a very difficult two years of the COVID pandemic we will be publishing new articles soon. We will be following up on our previous articles that focused on financial and political corruption in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and of course our breaking stories on how Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau is mishandling our government’s foreign aid programs in Africa and Southeast Asia.
The world and Canada have changed dramatically since early 2020. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic have all changed the world order forever. In Canada the upheaval of the trucker ‘Freedom Convoy’ protesting our COVID restrictions in late January paralyzed Ottawa and literally shutdown the main trade route with the US on the Ambassador Bridge (that links Windsor Ontario to Detroit Michigan) for over a month, resulting in Prime Minister Trudeau invoking the ‘Emergencies Act’ for the first time in our country’s history in order to clear out the protesters three weeks after the protest began. This must have made Trudeau reflect on his late father, former Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau, who in October 1970 invoked the ‘War Measures Act’ for the first time since World War Two in response to the FLQ terrorist group activities in Quebec. But there is a key difference here. While Justin invoked the ‘Emergencies Act’ to suppress Canadians protesting, Elliot invoked the ‘War Measures Act’ due to a serious terrorist threat from Quebec that ended up with the FLQ murdering a British diplomat ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis ).
This past Friday night a protest group calling itself ‘ Freedom Fighters Canada’ tried to occupy the streets of Ottawa again which brought a brutal response from the RCMP and local Ottawa police ( https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/30/americas/ottawa-rolling-thunder-bike-rally-arrests/index.html ). The political rally dubbed ‘Rolling Thunder’ organized motorcycle enthusiasts to descend on our nation’s capital which, from a logistical perspective, seemed much easier to do than bringing in trucks and riggs. But numerous truckers brought their vehicles to the highways outside Ottawa and tried to form a ring around the city. The Canadian political landscape has now irrevocably changed and exposed the deep divisions in our society between the Left and the Right movements. While Canada’s next federal elections are not scheduled until October 2025, Prime Minister Trudeau’s minority government will be feeling the political fallout from these events and he no doubt will do everything in his power to stave of elections for the next three years.
While Mr. Trudeau’s dilemmas at home over COVID restriction policies don’t go away and his appproavl ratings with the Canadian population dropping to nearly 30% his response to the war in Ukraine has been admirable and no doubt helps to prop up us lagging prestige. The “heratbrealing decisions” had to make which included falling into NATO’s policy of not enforcing a no-fly xone over Ukraine has been supplemented by a strong response to harsh sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus ( https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/heartbreaking-decisions-had-to-be-made-in-canada-s-response-to-ukraine-trudeau-1.5821762 ).
Perhaps the Prime minister could use the same bravado he used in Ukraine to shore up Canada’s muddled foreign aid programs in Africa where Canada has been an absolute embarrassment especially in Mali. I wrote about these blunders over the past 3 years and its obvious that Justin Trudeau needs a total reset on these policies (https://www.carolejustin.com/mali-coup-highlights-pm-trudeaus-flip-flop-on-peacekeeping-mission/ ). While Canada’s foreign aid budget rose in 2021 by 21% to 8.4 Billion CAD from 6.6 Billion CAD in 2020 ( https://cidpnsi.ca/canadas-foreign-aid-2012-2/ ) the Canadian government just can’t get its act together on coherent polices in Africa and Asia. To make matters worse the CFLI (Canada Fund for Local Initiatives) has seen too many failures with awards of between $30,000 CAD to $100,000 (for example in Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan) being given out to local dubious businesspersons (https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/funding-financement/cfli-fcil/2021/sri-lanka_maldives.aspx?lang=eng) . India and Pakistan are extremely corrupt countries, and the Canadian ministry of foreign affairs has to implement much more stringent measures to ensure that Canadian taxpayer dollars are not being wasted on corrupt business ventures. I am currently investigating stories involving corrupt companies and foreign nationals from several countries that are benefiting from not only the CFLI, but also from other Canadian foreign aid programs. These countries include India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia. I will be publishing these stores in the next few weeks and will as always keep my readers posted on these developments!