Formal complaint submitted to Auditor General over Trudeau India trip

https://www.rebelnews.com/formal_complaint_submitted_to_auditor_general_over_trudeau_india_trip

Lawyers for Rebel News have sent an official legal letter to the Auditor General asking for a full audit of Justin Trudeau’s February 2018 state visit to India.

Thanks to our viewers, we are one step closer to having a full and forensic examination of the expense and accounting irregularities uncovered by Rebel News in 1,700 pages of exclusive access to information documents obtained from Global Affairs Canada.

In a series of internal emails, bureaucrats seemed to be pressuring an Indian hotel to overcharge for an executive level suite they did not plan to use, so that the planners of the trip could artificially drive down the cost of their own club level suites to meet their own expense budget.

The cost of the phantom executive level suite would be hidden in another budget.

The whole trip needs an audit, as these were not the only expense hijinks that took place during the same trip. The bureaucrats also wanted to use a room meant for the Minister of Foreign Affairs that would be paid for in full by the Indian government for another minister — the Minister of Foreign Affairs was not on the India trip.

The following excerpt is from the letter that was sent to the AG on Friday by Rebel lawyers:

Based on an initial review of these newly-obtained documents, it is our client’s view that they appear to show federal staff attempts to mischaracterize expenses, in an attempt to obscure travel spending and circumvent maximum allowable accommodation expenses.

Our client states that the following emails among government staffers show an attempt to obscure and/or lower hotel room rates by having a hotel undercharge on certain rooms and charge for otherwise complementary rooms (please refer to pages 940, 989, and 995 of the document package). Our client suspects that these attempts to manipulate budgeting/accounting were intended to spread the trip’s high accommodation costs amongst multiple distinct government budgets, avoid detection of lavish stays by staffers, and/or have the appearance of complying with federal spending limits.

In these emails, it appears that federal staffers are proposing that a hotel charge approximately 1,000.00 CAD (60,000.00 INR) for a free, luxury suite and discount a series of lower-tier rooms proportionate to the increased cost of the otherwise free luxury room. In this case, the lower-tier rooms would likely cost less than the maximum allowable accommodation expenses as approved by the Treasury Board (as per above).

Our client views these attempts at creative accounting as troubling, and suspect that the federal government may have made other efforts to mischaracterize spending, evade federal spending limits, exploit taxpayer funds, and otherwise mislead Canadians on the cost of this foreign mission.

Accordingly, our client is requesting that the Office of the Auditor General undertake a full investigation of these concerns for compliance with federal laws and guidelines and take appropriate corrective measures.

Thank you to everyone who donated to offset our costs in formally requesting this audit. You can still donate and sign our petition to the AG at www.AuditTrudeau.com.

Will Trudeau’s trip get the audit it so richly deserves? Stay tuned.

Read our letter in full below: Continue…

Can we discuss those unmarked graves?: Expert panel counters the uncritical media narrative about residential schools

https://tnc.news/2021/07/13/can-we-discuss-those-unmarked-graves-expert-panel-counters-the-uncritical-media-narrative-about-residential-schools/

Can we discuss those unmarked graves?

“At your peril,” said Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson as she launched a Saturday panel discussion titled “Residential Schools and Unmarked Graves: Is open inquiry possible?”

Because the journalist and activist class is pushing a narrative about “mass graves” and leading the public to believe that Aboriginal children were the victims of genocide at residential schools between 1883 and 1996, anyone who questions this narrative is labelled a “genocide apologist” and compared to a Holocaust denier.

This makes it more difficult to have an open, critical discussion about residential schools – but the panel event hosted by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy allowed that dissenting conversation to go forward.

In the early years of the residential school system – around the 1890s – approximately one-third of children died before their fifth birthday, retired Manitoba provincial court judge Brian Giesbrecht pointed out.

“Death in that time – the death of a child – was not an unusual thing,” he noted.

Child mortality at residential schools was not due to mass murder and genocidal intent, he contends, but rather the sad reality that children were susceptible to infectious diseases that were rampant across society during this time.

Tuberculosis was named as the cause of death in 48.7% of reported residential school fatalities, with influenza, pneumonia, and other diseases also present in the schools.

Rates of disease were also higher among indigenous populations: residential schools were introduced in the first 50 years of Confederation, a time when indigenous people were increasingly coming into contact with newly arrived immigrants. Alas, they were exposed to illnesses from which they did not yet have resistance to.

University of Manitoba professor emeritus Rod Clifton pointed out that the journalists and academics acting shocked at the “discovery” of the unmarked graves must not be aware of – or may have conveniently forgotten – Volume 4 of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) report, which is an entire volume about unmarked graves at residential schools.

Indeed, a skim through this report contains passages such as an account of the 1918 influenza pandemic at the school in Fort St. James, BC, where all of the staff members and all but two of the students came down with the flu. In total, 78 people died from that outbreak.

The principal, Father Joseph Allard, wrote in his diary at the time: “… I could not go to the graveyard with all of them. In fact, several bodies were piled up in an empty cabin because there was no grave ready. A large common grave was dug for them.”

Clifton noted that “burying people in cemeteries with headstones is a very recent addition to the indigenous cultures of Canada.”

“If you go to the Anglican cemetery on the Siksika reserve… between 80 and 90% of the graves are unmarked.”

Giesbrecht spoke about how historically, it was the wealthier classes that were buried with headstones in graveyards. These markers were actively maintained by a company or community members. Poorer people did not have this – rather, they would be buried with a simple cross, and unless their burial site was maintained, it would deteriorate.

In addition, gravesites adjacent to residential schools likely included not only the bodies of students, but also teachers, members of the Catholic church, other local community members, and, in at least one case in Brandon, Manitoba, the bodies of nearby mental hospital patients.

“I won’t say that these graves have been ‘discovered…’ because most of them were not lost, and they were just forgotten, at best,” said Clifton. “Only with proper forensic analysis by well-qualified professionals will we get at the truth.”

“The sensational comments by journalists, academics and some indigenous people are not helping get to the truth.”

So why does the media and activist class keep pushing the “mass grave” narrative, even though chiefs from the Tk’emlups and Cowessess nations said themselves that the burial sites are not mass graves?

According to Widdowson, in order for a genocide to have happened, you need mass graves.

“That’s kind of the smoking gun for genocide,” explained Widdowson. “That’s why the ‘mass grave’ was being emphasized… there’s all this innuendo going on about that.” Continue…

Seneca College makes COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for students, staff

https://tnc.news/2021/07/13/seneca-college-makes-covid-19-vaccine-mandatory-for-students-staff/

Toronto-area Seneca College is the first postsecondary institution in Canada to announce that all students and staff coming to campus in September 2021 must have the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Seneca will be making vaccinations a condition for students and employees to come on campus for the fall term, starting Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021,” college president David Agnew said in a statement.

A handful of Ontario universities such as Ryerson, Ontario Tech, and Western are requiring students living in residence to have the first dose of the vaccine, but not the campus community at-large.

Manitoba’s universities, on the other hand, have all said they will not implement a mandatory vaccine policy.

“We can’t demand anybody to get the vaccine. That’s not within our power or the province’s power,” Brandon University president David Docherty told CBC News.

As for Seneca College, Seneca Student Federation president Ritik Sharma contends that students are in favour of the policy.

“They are very much liking this policy,” Sharma told the National Post.

The college has not yet provided any details about how the mandatory vaccination policy will be enforced, whether exemptions will be accepted, or if lawyers were consulted during the policymaking process.

Although Ontario premier Doug Ford has rejected the idea of vaccine passports – as Alberta premier Jason Kenney has – organizations such as the Toronto Region Board of Trade are pushing for a vaccine passport system.

In Canada, the COVID-19 vaccine does not have full approval, only emergency use authorization.

Seneca College did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Is your college or university requiring you to take the COVID-19 vaccine? Talk to reporter Lindsay Shepherd about it: lindsay@truenorthcanada.com