Re: “Autocracy sums up Kenney’s governing style”, page 22, April 26 Albertan
The writer says Kenney is autocratic for keeping campaign promises. I’m guessing since Trudeau didn’t keep 63 of his campaign promises, including all of his big ones like electoral reform, balanced budget, infrastructure spending, transparent government, merit based non partisan senators, never buying F35 fighters, lower CO2, etc, that he doesn’t think Trudeau is an autocrat.
When Kenney institutes the Alberta recall act, the Citizens initiative act, and the Financial innovation act, all things he promised to do, the writer says he is autocratic.
He asks how will you recall someone, I suggest he reads the Recall Fact sheet. I personally hope Kenney loses the UCP leadership, he has messed up far too often.
But to call someone an autocrat for fulfilling campaign promises is wrong. It’s what you should call a PM who invokes the Emergency Act, repealing civil rights, to get tow trucks to move the Freedom Convoy.
The writer seems to have a double standard. In previous letters, he’s said Kenney is an autocrat for ousting someone who might have talked to white supremacists, and an autocrat for not ousting people for the same thing.
He has said that the Freedom Convoy is bad, because it is funded by Americans, and threatens our democracy, but then says it is bad when Kenney says we will not allow “foreign funded interests to interfere in our democracy”
The writer asks, how did they interfere in our democracy “Where is the threat?” Leadnow organized an anti-Harper campaign and claims they defeated 25 incumbent Conservatives, and that without this, Harper would have won the election. Leadnow had 18 per cent foreign funding that year.
Go Fund Me has testified that the Freedom Convoy received 12 per cent foreign funding. Why should we allow any foreign funding at all?
One of Trudeau's first acts, was to retroactively let PACs have charitable status, after the CRA found that five of the first 15 they investigated weren’t charities at all.
At the same time, Trudeau allowed charities to stop showing the public their books. Gerald Butts was CEO of WWF, a PAC masking as a charity, he resigned in 2012, but the WWF kept paying him, about $440,000, but in US dollars, until 2014. Just in time for Butts to become an unpaid advisor to Trudeau, to first win the Liberal leadership, then the federal election, at which time he became an official paid member of Trudeaus team.
He ended up resigning in a corruption scandal. During those same years, Tides USA donated a similar amount of money to WWF. We can only know this, because part happened before Trudeau retroactively changed the law, and because the US still requires US charities and PACS to give the public access to their books. But of course none of this is connected, it is just a coincidence.
Bob Wilson,
Calgary
