I finally got to watch the whole tape of Jody Wilson-Raybould's appearance before the House of Commons Justice Committee. Or at least most of it, for it went on beyond the limits of human endurance.
And although I thought she put in an Oscar winning performance with this line being my favourite:
“I come from a long line of matriarchs and I am a truth teller in accordance with the laws and traditions of our Big House — this is who I am and who I will always be.”
I was not impressed with the content of her presentation.
And whatever the Con media says, I still think it's a ridiculously overblown fake scandal for the following reasons.
It was one of the most appalling spectacles I have ever witnessed, a deplorable assault on the very foundations of our democracy.
The sight of Andrew Scheer, the Leader of the Opposition, on Parliament Hill, addressing a rally riddled with racists and far right extremists.
Members of a grotesque yellow vested movement whose members frequently call for Justin Trudeau to be charged with treason, and executed.
And what makes it even more disgusting, is that Scheer is refusing to apologize.
They tried to make Andrew Scheer look like a winner, by posing with the Con candidate Scot Davidson who retained a safe seat in the York-Simcoe by-election.
And giving us all a big thumbs up.
But that's the only result he got to celebrate last night, for the other two by-elections were an absolute disaster.
So Jody Wilson-Raybould is finally going to get a chance to tell her story, or "her truth" as she likes to call it.
The Trudeau government tonight issued a broad waiver allowing former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to tell the Commons justice committee details of her conversations with government officials about the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Even if, strangely enough, she claims she's anxious to appear, but in no hurry to testify.
Wilson-Raybould sent a letter to the chair of the committee today saying she is anxious to appear, but wants to hold off scheduling an appearance until clarity has been reached about what she is legally allowed to share.
But then who can blame her?
It's a double blow for Andrew Scheer. The fake scandal is fading to black, but the other real scandal isn't going anywhere.
The scandal where he revealed his true colours, by addressing a gathering on Parliament Hill riddled with racists, far-right extremists, and white nationalists like Faith Goldy, Scheer's old Rebel crush.
A real scandal that now has many Canadians wondering where Scheer would take this country if he ever became prime minister.
And the problem for our would be Trump is, it's a scandal that Scheer won't be able to escape, for at least three good reasons.
Lordy. What a difference a day makes. One moment the press gallery hacks in Ottawa were in a feverish state of arousal.
They thought the fake scandal, the one they had manufactured out of a flimsy anonymous sourced story in the Globe and Mail, and blown up like a balloon until they were blue in the face, was about to destroy Justin Trudeau.
They thought the justice committee hearings would finish him off, please their corporate masters, and maybe even save their jobs.
But then, as you know, along came Michael Wernick...
I was incredibly impressed by Michael Wernick when he appeared before the Justice Committee for three big reasons.
One, he blew the fake scandal right out of the water.
Two, he said the original Robert Fife story in the Globe, upon which the whole hollow scandal was constructed, "contains errors, unfounded speculation and, in some cases, is simply defamatory."
Which was music to my ears.
And three, he issued a grim warning.
This should have been the biggest story in Canada yesterday. The sight of Andrew Scheer addressing a gathering on Parliament Hill that was riddled with racists and other far-right extremists.
Members of a movement who routinely accuse Justin Trudeau of treason and demand that he be executed.
But instead our ghastly Con media ignored that story, concentrated all its efforts on trying to pump up that fake legalistic scandal that doesn't threaten the lives of anyone.
And even ignored this deeply disturbing incitement to violence from the Con senator David Tkachuk.
It was an ugly spectacle, hundreds of trucks rolling into downtown Ottawa, heading for Parliament Hill.
Disrupting traffic, spewing foul fumes in every direction.
And deafening those unlucky enough to be caught in their path.
After the way the ghastly Con media has gone after him, you might think that by now there wouldn't be much left of Justin Trudeau.
And that the old zombies from the Parliamentary Press Gallery would by now be fighting over who gets an arm and who gets a leg.
Or proclaiming that there is no need for an election because Trudeau has already lost.
But miraculously enough Trudeau seems to be not only intact....
If you want to know how low the Con media in this country have fallen, consider this :
By most honest accounts Andrew Scheer is a religious fanatic, a racist, a misogynist, a closet homophobe, a climate change denier, and a serial liar, who likes to smear his opponents over and over again.
He's also a man who dreams of being prime Minister so he can force seniors to pay for their own retirement, allow religious extremists to invade university campuses, and dismember our medicare system.
So whatever the Schmearmonger is, or claims to be, he's definitely NOT a moral leader.
But just don't tell the Globe and Mail that...
By any known standards, the media coverage of the SNC-Lavalin affair has been a journalistic horror show.
A freakish zombie apocalypse, where the walking dead in the Ottawa Press Gallery insist it's the BIGGEST story in the world.
Give it saturation coverage, and try to force it down our throats.
It was amazing sight, thousands of children and teenagers protesting all over the U.K.
After going on strike, and walking out of their classrooms, to demand action on climate change.
The newest generation joining the war on global warming.
I knew that there was something truly evil lurking in the shadows of that fake scandal.
Even if I couldn't see it, I could smell it.
The Cons claimed they were just standing up for the rights of Jody Wilson-Raybould, because she's an indigenous woman, and hates Justin Trudeau.
Even though many of their supporters, who dance to the dirty dogwhistle of their master Andrew Scheer, are the worst misogynists and foul anti-native bigots in this country.
And this is what that fake, outrageously hyped "scandal," is really all about.
Donald Trump has always treated his country's democracy with contempt. And these days he's desperate to try to distract Americans from all his legal problems.
So while we can't know whether this is delusion or dementia, it shouldn't be surprising.
President Trump declared a national emergency at the border on Friday to access billions of dollars to build a border wall that Congress refused to give him, transforming a highly charged policy dispute into a fundamental confrontation over separation of powers.
But it is an abuse of power, and the American Caesar is going to pay a heavy price.
Andrew Scheer is still trying to blow air into the fake scandal balloon, but it's just not working.
Most Canadians just aren't interested, and with good reason.
There's no there, there.
And they know the creepy Scheer only too well.
Oh boy, will Nathan Cullen ever learn? Yesterday I tried to warn him that his toxic Trudeau hate was making him sound like a Con, and look like a maniac.
And that in Quebec, his assault on the thousands of SNC-Lavalin workers in that province, and the thousands of others all over Canada and the world, is driving the NDP to extinction.
But he just won't listen, he just can't help himself.
Ever since I was I was a boy, I have been fascinated with robots, and today I have quite a collection of battery operated ones.
Little and not so little ones that roll all over the house, amuse my friends and scare their dogs.
But there are no robots that fascinate me more than the ones exploring Mars.
So today I am in mourning.
In my last post I explained why the Con attack on SNC-Lavalin and its workers was going to cost them most of the few seats they have in Quebec.
And will almost certainly hand Justin Trudeau another majority.
Which needless to say would please me greatly, except for one thing. It would also doom the NDP, the party I have always voted for, to extinction in that province.
And now I have my NDP friends in Toronto, the ones who don't know Quebec, saying they don't understand how that could happen.
So this is what I tell them.
I don't know why Andrew Scheer was looking so desperate. He claims he's winning, and that Justin Trudeau could soon be in prison.
So why is he looking like such a loser?
He's trying to use this story against Trudeau.
And trying to turn Judy Wilson-Raybould into a martyr for the Con cause.
I'm still having a really hard time trying to make sense of that fake scandal, the one that has Andrew Scheer's Cons and their media stooges in a feverish state, and practically quivering with excitement.
Is it an attempted very Canadian coup, fronted by Andrew Scheer and his Trumpling Cons, and funded with dark money from those who want to end the war on climate change, and carve up our medicare system?
Or in the grey grimness of this frozen February, is it just a mass outbreak of senile psychosis?
But today, at last, the ugly truth hit me like a rubber bullet between the eyes, and it was horrible.
When the Globe first published its anonymously sourced report alleging PMO interference in the SNC-Lavalin case, the media made Jody Wilson-Raybould look like a martyr.
Praising her to high heaven, for daring to stand up to the Trudeau government they hate so much.
And drawing a direct line between her alleged refusal to interfere in the case, and her removal as Justice Minister.
But then to their great dismay no doubt, the picture suddenly became murkier.
Andrew Scheer likes to make people believe that he grew up poor unlike the "trust fund" kid Justin Trudeau with his "vast family fortune."
And that unlike Trudeau he still lives simply and still has the "common touch."
And that is yet another reason he should be prime minister.
But sadly for Scheer it's yet another lie.
I suppose it's the price I must pay for trying to maintain a daily blog, that yesterday I should write about how Nicholas Kristof called us the "moral leader of the free world."
And today I should be writing about this story.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office attempted to press Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was justice minister to intervene in the corruption and fraud prosecution of Montreal engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., sources say, but she refused to ask federal prosecutors to make a deal with the company that could prevent a costly trial.
If only to explain why I believe that it will probably end up being much ado about almost nothing.
For the following reasons.
It's not always easy to love our country at this time of the year.
Not when it has been so cold recently the ducks where I live have been reduced to splashing around in this small hole in the ice, in a bay frozen solid.
And we are forced to listen to the annoying sound of the Canada haters who quack and wail about how they wish they lived somewhere else.
And of course, nobody hates this country more all year round, than do our ugly Cons.
I remember wading ashore six years ago, at a place called Gibraltar Point on the Toronto Islands, and coming across an amazing sight.
Thousands of monarch butterflies clustered on a couple of trees getting ready to fly south across Lake Ontario.
What made it even more special, was that I had helped expand a milkweed patch nearby, and I thought this was my reward.
But then the next year I hardly saw a monarch anywhere.
As everybody knows Andrew Scheer and his climate change denying Cons are on a crusade to try to destroy the Liberal government's carbon tax plan.
A tax Scheer blames for everything, and I mean everything.
And he isn't the only Canadian Con leader who feels that way.
I tried to think of something to say about Donald Trump's State of the Union address, but this is all I could manage:
It was long, very long. His claim that investigating him was bad for the economy was pathetic.
The way he demonized immigrants was disgusting.
His failure to mention climate change even once was criminal.
And most painfully for him, Nancy Pelosi owned him...
Donald Trump's inauguration was supposed to be a magic moment that would mark his arrival on the word stage.
A glittering affair fuelled by millions of dollars in corporate donations.
But instead it turned into a huge embarrassment.
It was one of Andrew Scheer's most disgusting attack ads ever, one that started as a Nazi meme in Eastern Europe.
His outrageous claim that the U.N. Global Compact for Migration was a sinister plot by Justin Trudeau to erase our borders, so gazillions of refugees could invade our country.
Even though the Compact wasn't binding, and even Chris Alexander called him a liar.
While I got to call him a liar, and a kooky bigot...
He's only been in office for just over seven months, but already Doug Ford is the worst Premier Ontario has ever known.
He clearly doesn't know what he's doing, and to make matters worse he's all over the place. One moment he's threatening to privatize medicare, the next moment he's denying that.
One moment he's threatening all-day kindergarten, before suddenly changing his mind.
So I wasn't surprised to see the Liberal MP Adam Vaughan compare his brutish and incompetent regime to a game of whack-a-mole.
As the Brexit rollercoaster keeps heading for what could be the catastrophe of a no-deal, you can feel the panic building in Britain
People are hoarding food and medicine.
There are plans to invoke martial law if riots break out.
And now it seems even the Queen is threatened.
As you may have noticed, ever since Mad Max Bernier laid siege to their castle, Andrew Scheer and his Cons have been spewing out attack ads at a rate never seen before.
They are now averaging about two a day, and those ads are ever more desperate and ever more disgusting.
Like this latest one.
Like many people in this country, I couldn't believe it when I saw Andrew Scheer cheerfully proclaim that Justin Trudeau was more divisive than he was.
I was stunned that Scheer and his handlers, could seriously believe that they could get away with a whopper like that one. In what kind of parallel universe are they living?
When the creepy Con is clearly, without the shadow of a doubt, the most relentlessly negative, most divisive, most fear-mongering, and most serial lying politician in modern Canadian history.
But at least I knew that Scheer would never get away with that goody two shoes act for long. And sure enough he couldn't.
As soon as he stepped out of Air Force One at the Palm Beach International airport, Donald Trump couldn't hold back his joy.
After more than a month in freezing grey Washington, he was back at his beloved Mar-A-Lago.
Free to play golf and work on his tan.
Except that while his golf game is probably a little rusty.
His tan is already picture perfect.
In one of my last posts, I looked at how Andrew Scheer and his ugly Cons have been whipping up racism and xenophobia all over the country.
Helping to pour fuel on the flames of the same kind of bigotry that has already claimed the lives of six peaceful worshippers of a Quebec City mosque.
As well as triggering a wave of death threats aimed at Justin Trudeau.
So you can imagine how I felt when I saw this...
It's hard to believe that it has been four years already, since the Canadian actress and producer Ellen Page came out at a gay right's conference in Las Vegas. And delivered a powerful anti-bullying message.
Because for people like me who had to fight bullies before I fought Cons, it was such a great moment it seems like yesterday.
So I'm glad to see that Page hasn't lost her fighting spirit, when she appeared on the Late Show last night.
And took aim at these two anti-gay bigots.
