Liberal Party of Canada Leadership

[Altair]

So we share voting for Martin.  Had Manley followed Martin (although it wasn't a «tête carée's» turn yet), we would have likely voted similarly again.  My base reasoning would likely be different (Blue Grit or Red Tory is my preference) than your's (you seems more aligned to party than the leader himself), but the end result would have been the same.  Once Dion showed up, my choice was easy...Red Tory it was and Harper was still playing nice(-ish) with MacKay (and the re-named PC clan).

You seem to mistakenly assume that military members will overwhelmingly (and mindlessly) vote Conservative for rather simple, dogmatic reasons. Perhaps some do, but others do so for pragmatic reasons based on worth of the leadership, warts and all, vice ethereal, genetic/branding reasoning. Many see Trudeau Jr. as a front offic piece being driven by the back room, like GW was by the Old Man and Dick Cheney.  Gerald Butts and Kathleen Wynne's = Canadian George Bush Sr. and Kathleen Wynne.

Hopefully you find time to vote and don't repeat 2011.

G2G

I plan to advance next weekend. LPC won't win in my riding but at least my vote will show up in the nation numbers.

 

[Good2Golf]

And that is a good thing, Altair! Have no doubt. :nod:

 

[Altair]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-ndp-can-kiss-its-chances-goodbye/article26571622/?service=mobile

No guts, no glory, the old saying goes. You gotta takes risks. Sit on a lead in the third period, watch the lead disappear.

Same thing in politics, as Thomas Mulcair and the NDP are learning now.

They’ve been serving up Pablum. Almost 70 per cent of voters say they want change. But on economic policy, the Orange Wave has come at them waving white handkerchiefs, surrendering to the mushy middle.

With victory in sight, they got cold feet. The party that once promised an overhaul of the capitalist system brought in an economic playbook that might well be titled, “Let’s Scale The Smallest Mountains.”

Reading it is like watching toenails grow. Stay the course on Conservative budgeting; no big stimulus package; raise the minimum wage for only a minimal portion of the population; no new taxes on the sumptuously rich.

They’re bolder in other areas, like climate change and war and peace, but these positions are overshadowed by fiscal faint-heartedness.

At the start of the campaign, they topped the polls. Now, they are in third. To have any chance of winning, they have to hold their 55 seats in Quebec, but support in the province is plummeting. There and elsewhere, their yielding to the soft centre is viewed as a cause. With their left flank too exposed, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau pounced and now wears the mantle of the change candidate.

Not that Mr. Trudeau has become a renaissance man himself. He supports Keystone XL, he supports C-51, he’s quiet on climate change. But he took the big leap on the one change that resonated. That was his decision to run deficits to spur the economy. It’s an economy, as Mr. Trudeau repeatedly points out, that over the past 10 years has seen the lowest growth rate since the 1930s. Why not some stimulus?

The public seems to have taken to the idea, one which the workers’ party would have normally pursued. But fear grabbed the Dippers by the throat. They reasoned such a move would play to their stereotype as big spenders; they reasoned Conservative Leader Stephen Harper would thrash them on it – even though Mr. Harper ran seven straight deficits himself.

Mr. Mulcair, it needs to be remembered, is not an old-stock NDPer. He served in the cabinet of Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest. His tame-Tom economic approach is, therefore, not so surprising. And maybe he would indeed have been pilloried if he had advocated deficits. It could be a case that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

He’s a leader not normally afraid to stand on principle or take risks. Take his position, supported by the courts, of allowing women to wear niqab headgear at citizenship ceremonies. He knew this is highly unpopular in Quebec, but endorsed it anyway.

As for Mr. Trudeau, he learned from mistakes. Remember last fall, when his party had a handsome lead in all the polls. He became overcautious, reactive instead of proactive. The lead evaporated and when Alberta voted NDP in May, the Liberals tumbled to the back of the pack.

The NDP has a base which, like the Harper party, needs red meat from time to time. Mr. Harper has been unrelenting in delivering it to his flock, his anti-niqab position being a fine example, and it is paying off. Reactionary Canada, about one-third of the population, at the moment appears ready to give him another victory.

Mr. Mulcair has neither secured his base vote, nor the change vote, nor the Quebec vote. On the latter, his strategy of agreeing to two French-language debates – there’s another one Friday – when being so far in front in that province made no sense.

When late campaign tides set in, they are hard to reverse. While it’s possible the NDP can reboot enough to catch the Liberals, the big dream of winning it all, a dream that looked so achievable at the campaign’s outset, is gone.

Just one man's opinion, but it echoes what I was saying. Trudeau and the LPC was stuck between the CPC on their right and NDP on their left. The squeeze was on and I think both the CPC and NDP thought that the liberals would be pushed further and further into third place with a ever shrinking pool of voters to draw from.

Problem was , mulcair shifted so far center with no concessions to the NDP traditional base that it left him vulnerable on his left and that's where the LPC struck. For all of those who think Trudeau is a empty suit, remember he probably needs to ok this shift. He's the one who has to sell it.

Now after a few decent debate performances for trudeau where he preformed above expectations thanks to CPC advertising, and a left leaning platform on which to run on, which includes things the NDP would normally run on, it looks increasing like the NDP is stuck in that shrinking middle. With the quebec vote looking like it's about to collapse on them and another french debate where you know the bloc and CPC are going to nail them on the niqab issue just making things worst, I think it's safe to say LPC war room>NDP war room.

Three more weeks to go, but the longer trudeau looks like the agent of change the harder it will be for the NDP and Mulcair to turn things around.

 

[Edward Campbell]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-ndp-can-kiss-its-chances-goodbye/article26571622/?service=mobile

Just one man's opinion, but it echoes what I was saying. Trudeau and the LPC was stuck between the CPC on their right and NDP on their left. The squeeze was on and I think both the CPC and NDP thought that the liberals would be pushed further and further into third place with a ever shrinking pool of voters to draw from.

Problem was , mMulcair shifted so far center with no concessions to the NDP traditional base that it left him vulnerable on his left and that's where the LPC struck. For all of those who think Trudeau is a empty suit, remember he probably needs to ok this shift. He's the one who has to sell it.

Now after a few decent debate performances for trudeau where he preformed above expectations thanks to CPC advertising, and a left leaning platform on which to run on, which includes things the NDP would normally run on, it looks increasing like the NDP is stuck in that shrinking middle. With the quebec vote looking like it's about to collapse on them and another french debate where you know the bloc and CPC are going to nail them on the niqab issue just making things worst, I think it's safe to say LPC war room>NDP war room.

Three more weeks to go, but the longer trudeau looks like the agent of change the harder it will be for the NDP and Mulcair to turn things around.

Agreed on Point 1.

Don't (fully) agree the second point. I suspect that the "shift" was packaged, by Gerald Butts and the Wynne team, and sold to the whole party apparatus, including M Trudeau, as the ONLY way to beat the NDP.

But, outflanking the NDP on the left, while a good campaign tactic, might not be any indication, at all, of how the Liberals might govern. History says that the Liberals often campaign on the left and then govern from the right: look at St Laurent, Pearson, Chrétien and Martin. Pierre Trudeau was the only authentic left of centre prime minister Canada ever had, the rest, mostly Liberals in the 20th century, were social and fiscal moderates. The civil service is, in some measure, Liberal in its inclinations, but the civil service Liberalism is of the social and fiscal moderate sort; they fought, hard, against Pierre Trudeau and, as often as not, won; and they will be a very strong voice in the next PM's ear ... if the PM is anyone other than Stephen Harper.

 

[Altair]

Agreed on Point 1.

Don't (fully) agree the second point. I suspect that the "shift" was packaged, by Gerald Butts and the Wynne team, and sold to the whole party apparatus, including M Trudeau, as the ONLY way to beat the NDP.

But, outflanking the NDP on the left, while a good campaign tactic, might not be any indication, at all, of how the Liberals might govern. History says that the Liberals often campaign on the left and then govern from the right: look at St Laurent, Pearson, Chrétien and Martin. Pierre Trudeau was the only authentic left of centre prime minister Canada ever had, the rest, mostly Liberals in the 20th century, were social and fiscal moderates. The civil service is, in some measure, Liberal in its inclinations, but the civil service Liberalism is of the social and fiscal moderate sort; they fought, hard, against Pierre Trudeau and, as often as not, won; and they will be a very strong voice in the next PM's ear ... if the PM is anyone other than Stephen Harper.

I think Trudeau would need to govern from the left this time around, if he won. He would probably have a slim minority goverment if he won, and I don't see the CPC supporting him. The ndp would be who he needs to woo in order to govern.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Despite the title, "The fall and rise of the Liberal Party," this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is not god news for Liberals:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-fall-and-rise-of-the-liberal-party/article26710825/

The fall and rise of the Liberal Party

KONRAD YAKABUSKI
The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Oct. 08, 2015

The Liberal Party was left for dead in 2011. The political formation that dominated 20th-century federal politics looked like a spent force. The country seemed to have finally outgrown the brokerage politics that had underwritten the Liberals’ astonishingly long run as Canada’s natural governing party.

No one would call the Liberals a spent force now. Under Leader Justin Trudeau, the party has defied the political polarization of the Harper era that had sought to make it irrelevant. That it has remained solidly in the mix – even supplanting the NDP as the main alternative to the Conservatives – shows Mr. Trudeau’s personal appeal and the resilience of the Liberal brand.

Even if Mr. Trudeau achieves a minor miracle and finishes first on Oct. 19, however, it will hardly assure a Liberal revival. Unlike the Conservatives or New Democrats, Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals have no natural base or constituency. That leaves them struggling to articulate the raison d’être and set of principles that comes naturally to parties of the right and left.

For more than a century, the Liberals managed to bridge Canada’s “natural” divisions to win far more elections than any other party. Early 20th-century Conservatives and Liberals both employed “big tent” strategies, out of a recognition that Canada was too young and fragile to survive parties that exploited linguistic, regional, class or ethnic divisions. The Liberals were far better at this than the Tories, becoming the default choice of Quebeckers for eight decades.

But as University of British Columbia emeritus professor Ken Carty notes in Big Tent Politics, a new book about the rise and fall of the Liberals, this strategy of “shapeless, heterogeneous coalitions based on continual and shifting compromise” reached its limits as the century wore on. After big defeats in 1917, 1958 and 1984, the Liberal Party could never restore the status quo ante, each time becoming “smaller and narrower, its parliamentary wing less representative of the country.”

By the time Jean Chrétien became Liberal leader, the big-tent era was effectively over. The Liberals had lost their Quebec bedrock and had been nearly shut out of the West. A fragmented opposition allowed Mr. Chrétien to win three consecutive majority governments, but with an overreliance on seats in Ontario and only around 40 per cent of the popular vote. The Liberals, Prof. Carty explains, looked “increasingly like an ordinary regionally defined party.”

It acted like one, too. Mr. Chrétien’s 1993 election promises of abolishing the goods and services tax, renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, boosting immigration levels and running modest deficits (as opposed to the Tory promise of balanced budgets) were aimed at Ontario voters. It worked, as the province delivered more than half of all Liberal seats.

Mr. Chrétien reneged on all of these promises – with impunity, as ongoing divisions on the right and the bitter aftertaste of Bob Rae’s provincial NDP administration left Ontarians with no viable option to the Liberals. But the Liberals’ luck ran out once the Conservatives regrouped, emerging under Stephen Harper as, what Prof. Carty calls, “a permanent electoral machine” and “garrison party, both in mentality and in organizational practice.”

The Liberal Party that Mr. Trudeau rebuilt out the ashes of its 2011 defeat may yet end up being the main beneficiary of Harper fatigue. And it’s far from clear that the next Conservative leader could replicate Mr. Harper’s success in nurturing the Tory base. These factors alone might sustain a Trudeau government. But for how long?

For more than a century, the Liberal Party thrived precisely because it stood for nothing other than sublimating the centrifugal forces that threatened to tear the country apart. But it became progressively less good at it. By the time Mr. Trudeau’s father resigned in 1984, it needed a new shtick.

Under Mr. Chrétien, the Liberals became the party of protectionism and populism – on the campaign trail. (In office, Mr. Chrétien embraced free trade and balanced budgets.) The central conceit of Mr. Trudeau’s campaign involves a similar lurch to the left with a nod to bigger government and higher taxes on the rich, which, as history suggests, is not to say those promises will be kept.

The bigger question, however, is whether a party as “unnatural” as the Liberal Party can survive for long without becoming more like its “natural” counterparts, the Tories and NDP, and effectively replacing one of them. There may be more riding on Mr. Trudeau’s shoulders than he thinks.

I haven't got into Big Tent Politics, yet, but I will.

I need to reiterate that I wish the Liberal Party of Canada well. I do not want a UK style (or modern US style) two part Left of Centre* <> Right of Centre split. I want a multiparty system in which there is a left wing party and a large centre left party opposing an equally  large centre right party which has a right wing party on its flank.

My reading of Canadian history is that Laurier built the recently deceased Big Tent Liberal party on a solid base of: Quebec support (after the execution of Riel); free trade capitalism (which earned the party the loyalty of the Big banks, Big Business and, later, Big Labour); immigration; and moderate socio-economic pork barrelling. Laurier was an Anglophile imperialist, a Canadian nationalist and a capitalist. That model worked well for him, for Mackenzie-King and for Louis St Laurent and (albeit less well) for Lester Pearson, too). Two "events" caused the collapse of Laurier Liberalism:: the Kingston Conference in 1960s, in which journalist, silk stocking socialist and "public intellectual" Tom Kent proposed ~ and almost everyone, including Mike Pearson, agreed ~ that the party should take a sudden "lurch to the left" and co-opt much of the CCF's positions on social and domestic economic issues; and (and as a consequence of the first event) the arrival of Pierre Trudeau, a young, bright, charismatic (made for TV) NDP stalwart from Quebec. Trudeau embraced Kent's ideas, and more and the Party began a massive shift away from Laurier, King and St Laurent. (In some very large measure Pierre Trudeau "gave birth" to modern, Stephen Harper style Conservatism because he moved the Liberals away from the "Middle Ground" over which the traditional Big Tent could be pitched. The Conservatives of Trudeau's day (Stanfield and Mulroney, even MacKay) were, in many respect, just Blue Liberals: yes, there were some differences between Grit and Tory policies, but not too much (it is, in a way, the model of the system towards which I would like to see Canada evolve, albeit with some real differences in opinion).) When the Liberals' century year long hold on power collapsed (1984) the political centre was wide open. Both Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien were unprincipled, personality politics practitioners who cherry picked whatever policies they believed they could sell. Both were, to be fair, fiscal conservatives, but Mulroney was frightened off his plan to balance the budget** while Chrétien was frightened into it.

Stephen Harper knew in his head and in his heart that Preston Manning's style of right wing prairie populism could never work in Canada. He staged a double coup and seized control of both the Reform/Canadian Alliance Party and the Progressive Conservatives ... et voila.

We now have a centre right party: the CPC. We almost had a centre left party in M Mulcair's NDP. M Trudeau has been campaigning to the left of the NDP but Liberals have often done that (think Chrétien in 1993) but they then govern from the centre or even centre right (Big Banks, Big Business and Big Labour influence).

I believe that the LPC needs to rethink itself again, as Laurier did circa 1895 and as Tom Kent did in 1960. (It's been 55 years, it's time for a review.) But I do not believe that Justin Trudeau can or will lead that rethink. I'm not sure who will play the Laurier and Kent role and, of course, I cannot be sure what the outcome will be: perhaps the LPC will, once again, after 55 years, want to reclaim a share of the ideological centre or, perhaps, it will want to move even farther to the left (I hope it is the former, but  :dunno: ) In any event I think that M Trudeau cannot lead it in any useful direction ...

_____
* Left of Centre parties can swing sharply left, as the selection of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK shows, and as Ms Clinton's campaign in the US suggests the Democrat's base is shifting.
** Remember Solange Denis

 

[Altair]

Hey, the patient is barely out of deaths door,  give it time to recover before asking it to start doing strenuous exercise.

In all seriousness, trudeau has one job. Keep the party alive. I will repeat this over and over again, the party was one more bad leader and one bad election result away from death.

In reality canada is a two party country, then question in this election was which two parties would be the dominant ones. The CPC was set but the race was between the new democrats and Liberals. If the liberals finished third or god forbid did worst than they did in 2011 I imagine it would take a full generation before they could come back. If the ndp didn't swallow them up first.

 

[a_majoor]

I will bring up an idea which I have flogged before: political parties can die and die quickly if they no longer have relevant answers to the issues of the day. The collapse of parties like the US Whigs or the UK Unionist parties are fairly striking examples, and the sudden dissolution of the USSR shows this on a society wide basis in a one party state.

The particular problem for the LPC is that they have transformed from a Transformative party into a Transactive party. They can be extremely good at making deals with the electorate to gain and maintain power, but since they really don't stand for anything, it is a slim reed to be holding on to. Social, demographic and technological changes are remaking virtually every aspect of our society, and many of the governmental institutions that have existed for years, if not generations are becoming highly stressed as they are less and less relevant to the conditions in society or the expectations of voters and taxpayers. In many ways, this is a transitional election between the "Laurentian Consensus" and the New Canada. As Edward says, the Young Dauphin is not the man to lead change, and the Laurentian Elites in the back room of the LPC is prepared to fight to the last taxpayer to maintain the system that gives them power and perques (do you see the Ontario Liberals changing the course despite the ruins they have made of the province?).

How the Liberals should transform is an interesting question, but it looks like they have managed to kick the can down the road for another election cycle or two.

 

[CougarKing]

O'Leary merely being pragmatic by choosing the party in power?

CBC via Yahoo News

Kevin O'Leary hints at possible run for Liberal Party leadership

CBC
February 27, 2016
Forget about the colour of #TheDress — is former Dragon's Den personality and businessman Kevin O'Leary red or blue?

In a television interview with Reshmi Nair on CBC News, O'Leary, who earlier talked about running for the federal Conservative Party leadership, said he does not rule out running for the Liberals.

- Kevin O'Leary vows to be a 'nightmare for politicians' on economic policy

"I don't think the old political brands will matter in the next election," O'Leary said, adding he is a member of the "Canadian tax payer party" and will speak on behalf of all Canadians.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[The Bread Guy]

O'Leary merely being pragmatic by choosing the party in power?

CBC via Yahoo News

So, is that called "Pulling a Charest" or "Pulling a Bouchard"? ;D

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Neither. If he does this, he will be coining his own manouevre- the O'leary!

 

[Altair]

O'Leary merely being pragmatic by choosing the party in power?

CBC via Yahoo News

Maybe he only wants to run 8 years from now [

 

[Edward Campbell]

Kevin O'Leary is not a serious candidate for anything. He just wants to influence one, small, slice of the national policy debate.

What he does is bring "celebrity attention" to one issue ~ and that scares the Liberals, both on Parliament Hill and in Queen's Park because they know the "value" of celebrity, even when it is of the intellectually vacuous sort. It should, also, scare Conservatives because it's not clear, not to me, at any rate, that O'Leary's idea are sound ... they may be designed to protect his interests but it's not clear that they are good for the country. Worse, for Conservatives, O'Leary allows the Laurentian Elites, like Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail, to compare Conservatives to the US GOP and then O'Leary to Donald Trump, and, presto! Rona Ambrose = Donald Trump. That is dangerous to the CPC and it's what the LPC and its fellow travellers are doing, right now.

 

[Brad Sallows]

They do that anyways.  Whatever Republicans are currently active south of the border, the NDP and LPC will insist they are templates for contemporary Conservatives.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Which is funny as your typical US Democrat is likely in line with our Conservatives, possibly even to the right at times.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I haven't bought that "US Democrats are Canadian Conservatives" myth since Democrats started regaining power in 2006.

Obama and Harper were not in the same building, let alone on the same page.

 

[a_majoor]

Dems are now so far left they hardly resemble the Clinton era Administration (Hillary is often running against the very policies that Bill put in place). JFK is probably closer to Ronald Reagan than Obama, and certainly the idea the Bernie Sanders is an even semi serious candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination would have been totally alien even 10 years ago...

 

[George Wallace]

It should be interesting to see how this Cabinet Minister's case develops:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

A file’s been opened on Monsef, sources say
Candice Malcolm
Yesterday at 6:27 PM

A government file has been opened to investigate Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef for possible citizenship fraud, the Sun has learned. An investigation of this type could lead to a number of outcomes, including possible citizenship revocation.

The Sun has confirmed with multiple sources that complaints have been made to the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), as well as to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), a division of the Department of Public Safety.

CBSA is responsible for enforcing the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. CBSA officials report to the Minister of Public Safety, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, while IRCC officials report to the Minister of Immigration, Liberal MP John McCallum.

In 2011, in the aftermath of RCMP investigations discovering wide-spread citizenship fraud, the government established a tip line.

Much like Crime Stoppers, the line allows private citizens to anonymously contact the government and relay information relating to citizenship cases involving false representation, fraud or knowingly concealing material.

Three separate sources have told the Sun that the government has received such tips relating to the case of Maryam Monsef, leading to the opening of a file investigating possible citizenship fraud.

One source was told by a government official with direct knowledge of the case that “at least six different people had called with complaints on Ms. Monsef.”

When asked if IRCC was investigating Monsef, the government would not comment.

“IRCC does not confirm or deny the receipt of tips or investigations,” said an IRCC spokesperson.

The spokesperson did however provide broad information about this type of investigation.

“Generally, when Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship Canada becomes aware of issues around the facts provided in an application, it will determine if further action is required.”

“Decisions to pursue further action are made on a case by case basis. IRCC prioritizes the most serious cases such as those involving serious criminality or organized fraud.”

It is unknown if the department has determined how to prioritize the complaints against Monsef.

Monsef and her family arrived in Canada in 1996 and claimed asylum. They were granted refugee status and eventually become citizens.

Following an investigation by the Globe and Mail, it was discovered that Monsef was born in Iran, not Afghanistan as she claimed to have believed.

Monsef’s office confirmed that she listed false information in her passport, which presumably matched the records of her official citizenship application.

“Until recent days, Maryam Monsef believed that she was born in Afghanistan,” wrote Monsef’s press secretary in a statement exclusive to the Sun. “As a result, when she applied for a Canadian passport, she listed Herat, Afghanistan as her place of birth. Now that she has learned that this is incorrect, she is taking steps to see how she can rectify this unintentional error.”

Providing false representation to Canadian immigration officials is a form of citizenship fraud, even if the error was unintentional.

Monsef’s case may mirror that of a 19-year-old Concordia University student who was recently stripped of her Canadian citizenship because her mother allegedly lied on her citizenship application.

Citizenship fraud investigations can take years to complete and involve cooperation between the RCMP, CBSA and various officials within IRCC.

Because both CBSA and IRCC officials report to partisan Liberal ministers and political staff appointed by Justin Trudeau, this case may give rise to a conflict of interest.

Can these Liberal ministers be counted on to remain neutral and unbiased as officials within their departments investigate a caucus colleague? Can the non-partisan civil servants independently assess Monsef without any interference or intimidation from their political bosses?

How can the public trust this investigation will be truly independent?

________________

Maryam Monsef Timeline:

November 7, 1984 – Maryam Monsef was born in the Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad, Iran. She claims that as an Afghan refugee she has no legal status in Iran.
November 7, 1985 – Date Monsef originally claimed she was born in Herat, Afghanistan 1996 – The Monsef family flee Afghanistan, travel back to Mashhad, Iran, then on to Pakistan and Jordan before landing in Montreal and asking for asylum in Canada.
June 4, 2010 – One day after graduating from Trent, University, Monsef travelled to Iran and Afghanistan.
December 2013 – early 2014 – Monsef returns to Iran once again, on a religious pilgrimage visa. Canadian passport holders can no longer travel to Iran without a special permit, so Monsef uses her Afghan passport instead.
October 2015 – Maryam Monsef is elected as the Liberal MP from Peterborough—Kawartha in Ontario.
November 2015 – Monsef is appointed into Justin Trudeau cabinet. She is heralded as the first Afghan-born cabinet minister.
January 2016 – Monsef is praised by U.S. President Barack Obama as the ultimate refugee success story.
September 2016 – A Globe and Mail investigation reveals that Monsef was born in Iran and not Afghanistan. Monsef claims her mother misled her, and that she was taking steps to rectify the error.
September 2016 – BC Civil Liberties Association file a law suit against the Trudeau Liberals for revoking citizenship without a hearing. Activists claim Monsef could have her citizenship revoked under the current law.
October 2016 – A CBC investigation finds that the Trudeau Liberals have revoked citizenship at a much higher rate than the Harper Conservatives.
October 2016 – The Sun learns that a file has been opened inside the Government of Canada to investigate Monsef for citizenship fraud.

More on LINK.

 

[jollyjacktar]

That would be delicious if it went pear shaped.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This should be looked into, big time, with said Minister off the bench for optics' sake alone.

And since it appears that "the Minister" takes away citizenship if found to be obtained fraudulently, the only way I can see getting around any potential or perceived conflict of interest is to ensure that the person being investigated is NOT a Minister while being investigated - or at least when the decision is rendered.