National
Liberal MPs stop police commissioner from testifying about SNC-Lavalin scandal
From LifeSiteNews
RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme was set to testify about whether Justin Trudeau blocked police from obtaining cabinet documents in the SNC-Lavalin affair when MPs on the ethics committee voted 7-3 to adopt a Liberal motion to abruptly adjourn the meeting
Canadian Liberal MPs on the ethics committee voted to stop the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commissioner from testifying about a bribery scandal involving the large Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme was set to testify about the bribery scandal to speak about whether Trudeau blocked the police from obtaining certain cabinet documents, which might have implicated him regarding his obstruction of justice charges that stemmed from the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Liberal, New Democrat (NDP), and Bloc Québécois MPs on the ethics committee voted 7-3 to adopt a Liberal motion to abruptly adjourn the meeting with Duheme only minutes after it began.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett called the abrupt meeting cancellation “unacceptable.”
“Witnesses were to give testimony and now we have government members looking to shut down a hearing on a very serious matter with respect to a criminal investigation into the Prime Minister and we have the Commissioner of the RCMP at this table,” Barrett said.
Liberal MP Mona Fortier, who serves as the ethics committee vice chair, claimed the SNC-Lavalin scandal had not been “discussed whatsoever by the committee.”
“I think the committee should at least have had the opportunity to debate the motion presented in due form. I don’t think this is necessarily the best way to go forward, having committees unable to make their decisions. So based on this reasoning, I would like to adjourn the meeting,” she said.
In June, LifeSiteNews reported on how the RCMP denied it was looking into whether Trudeau and his cabinet committed obstruction of justice concerning the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.
SNC-Lavalin was faced with charges of corruption and fraud concerning about $48 million in payments made to officials with the Libyan government between 2001 and 2011. The company had hoped to be spared both a trial and prosecution deferred prosecution agreement.
However, then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould did not go along with Trudeau’s plan, which would have allegedly appeared to help SNC-Lavalin. Back in 2019, she contended that both Trudeau and his top Liberal officials had inappropriately applied pressure to her for four months to directly intervene in the criminal prosecution relating to corruption and bribery charges connected to SNC’s government contracts in Libya.
Wilson-Raybould testified in early 2019 to Canada’s justice committee that she believed she was moved from her then-justice cabinet posting to veterans’ affairs due to the fact she did not grant a request from SNC-Lavalin for a deferred prosecution agreement rather than a criminal trial.
Of note is that a criminal conviction would have banned the company from getting any government contracts for 10 years.
Trudeau flat-out denied it was being investigated by the RCMP.
A little less than four years ago, Trudeau was found to have broken the federal ethics laws, or Section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, for his role in pressuring Wilson-Raybould.
MPs were hoping Duheme’s testimony would clear up many questions
Conservative MPs were hoping that Duheme’s testimony would have cleared up more questions about the SNC-Lavalin scandal after the group Democracy Watch on October 16 revealed a host of records regarding it.
These records show that the RCMP was stopped by Trudeau’s top cabinet members via a restricted disclosure order. This order stated that authorization to waive solicitor-client privilege would not be allowed in regard to information concerning communications between Wilson-Raybould and the director of public prosecutions regarding SNC-Lavalin.
The records released by Democracy Watch involve about 1,815 pages of records from 19 documents that the RCMP recently disclosed after an Access to Information Act (ATIA) request.
In July 2022, the group filed an Access to Information Act (ATIA) request with the RCMP about the SNC-Lavalin affair and Trudeau.
As for SNC-Lavalin, which now goes by the name “AtkinsRéalis,” in 2019 it pleaded guilty to committing fraud in a Québec Provincial Court and was hit with a $280 million fine. Company executives also admitted that they had paid some $47.7 million in bribes to get contracts in Libya.
After Duheme was blocked from testifying, Conservative MPs Barrett and Larry Brock said in a press release that Trudeau had “refused to hand over documents or let individuals who were involved in the affair testify” after it was discovered he broke Canada’s ethics laws.
National
Trudeau’s internet censorship Bill C-11 will not be implemented until late 2025
From LifeSiteNews
The delay is due to not having a framework to determine exactly how much streaming services will be forced to pay and also what kind of inclusion and diversity requirements will be mandated.
The implementation of a Canadian law passed by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that would mandate the regulation of online platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure they meet government requirements, has been delayed until late 2025.
As reported recently by the Globe and Mail, Bill C-11, known as the Online Streaming Act that was passed into law in April 2023, was already supposed to have been implemented by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the country’s broadcast regulator that is tasked with putting in place the law.
The law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada. Google has promised to do the same rather than pay the fees laid out in the new legislation.
However, the CRTC said it will not be until late 2025 that it will finally have a framework to determine exactly how much streaming services will be forced to pay, to be in line with mandates for more Indigenous and Canadian content.
As per the Globe and Mail, consultations will be held that will go into March 2026, on what kind of inclusion and diversity requirements will be mandated by the CRTC.
“The Online Streaming Act and the policy direction are both complex and multi-faceted, and we have announced an ambitious set of public hearings and proceedings to address all of the elements they contain,” CRTC spokesperson Leigh Cameron said.
“The CRTC anticipates that by 2026 it will have both had the opportunity to consult widely with Canadians and to have put in place the key elements of the new broadcasting framework,” he added.
Critics of recent laws such as tech mogul Elon Musk have said it shows “Trudeau is trying to crush free speech in Canada.”
This bill has been panned by other critics, such as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, after in October 2023 the CRTC said that certain podcasters must “register” with the government by November 28, 2023.
Regarding Bill C-11, Canadian law professor Dr. Michael Geist warned last year that new powers granted to CRTC via Bill C-11 will not stop at “Web Giants” but will lead to the government going after “news sites” and other “online” video sites as well.
“Bill C-11 was never just about ‘web giants’ and the latest CRTC decision confirms that an extensive regulatory framework is in the works that is likely to cover podcasts, adult sites, news sites, and a host of other online video and audio services,” Geist observed.
Geist said that the “crucial” issue with Bill C-11 was always whether “CRTC exemption from registration requirements, which it sets at $10M in Canadian revenue.”
“That isn’t trivial, but additional exemptions for podcasts, social media, adult sites, news services, thematic services were all rejected,” he noted.
Geist observed that the CRTC in its new rules is effectively saying that a “podcaster or news outlet that generates a certain threshold of revenue must register with the government.”
Delay means Bill could be rescinded before it’s ever implemented
The Conservative Party of Canada, under leader Pierre Poilievre, was a strong opponent to Bill C-11. With polls showing them on track to win the 2025 election in a landslide, it is conceivable the bill may be rescinded before it’s ever implemented.
After the bill was passed by the Senate last year, Poilievre promised a Conservative government would “repeal” Bill C-11.
“The power-hungry Trudeau Liberals have rammed through their censorship bill into law. But this isn’t over, not by a long shot,” Poilievre tweeted.
“A Poilievre government will restore freedom of expression online & repeal Trudeau’s C-11 censorship law.”
Recent polls show that the scandal-plagued federal government has sent the Liberals into a nosedive with no end in sight. Per a recent LifeSiteNews report, according to polls, in a federal election held today, Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority in the House of Commons over Trudeau’s Liberals.
Canadians are not happy as well with Bill C-11 or the other internet censorship laws put in place by the Trudeau Liberals.
Indeed, in light of the barrage of new internet censorship laws being passed or brought forth by Trudeau, a new survey revealed that the majority of Canadians feel their freedom of speech is under attack.
Trudeau’s other internet censorship law, the Online News Act, was passed by the Senate in June 2023.
The law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada. Google has promised to do the same rather than pay the fees laid out in the new legislation.
The Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, will target internet speech retroactively if it becomes law. The law, if passed, could lead to large fines and even jail time for vaguely defined online “hate speech” infractions, and has also been panned by Musk.
espionage
The Scientists Who Came in From the Cold: Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory Scandal, Part I
From the C2C Journal
By Peter Shawn Taylor
In a breathless 1999 article on the opening of Canada’s top-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, the Canadian Medical Association Journal described the facility as “the place where science fiction movies would be shot.” The writer was fascinated by the various containment devices and security measures designed to keep “the bad boys from the world of virology: Ebola, Marburg, Lassa” from escaping. But what if insiders could easily evade all those sci-fi features in order to help Canada’s enemies? In the first of a two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor looks into the trove of newly-unclassified evidence regarding the role of NML scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng in aiding China’s expanding quest for the study – and potential military use – of those virus bad boys.
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