I’m not sure what’s more outrageous: that these organizations shelled out very big bucks to have an MP address them – and if I were involved in any of them I’d want heads to roll – or that this MP didn’t have the good sense or ethical sensibility to decline.
On the contrary, since becoming a Member in 2008, Mr. Trudeau has raked in $277,000 in speaking fees from 17 speeches.
[…]
That handsome MP’s reward includes a $157,731 annual salary plus $25,850 in accommodation expenses plus 64 round-trip plane trips. At a time when fewer and fewer Canadians make a secure, livable wage or get any benefits and pension at all, this must seem like winning the lottery. But for MPs outside the cabinet, it’s just the beginning. Yet speaking to a school board, university or hospital means being paid a second time from the public purse, a clear case of double-dipping by any standard.
Silly rabbit, rules are for other people, not ‘the son of my father’ Justin.
I always thought that when you speak for charity; you go to the organization to help them out, rather than feather your own nest.
Is this some sort of inverted LIEberal moral metric?
It’s not like he actually ‘needs’ the money to feed his family, or send his kids to school, gas up his car and pay a mortgage.
I gather this falls under the ‘misplaced values’ category…
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
just-in-time fame from day one
the system, it corrupts all, prone to abuse
A good story yes but a bit dated no?
Hans,
Why would Liberal NGOs (non-non governmental organizations) not pay a big fee. Most NGOs only have to raise a pittance of charity dollars and most use highly paid fundraisers to do that and then their pittance gets mulitplied by the municipal tax money and then the provincial tax money and finally the Feds. Mulitipliers vary but a an actual donation of 10 bucks could easily have 250 of taxpayer multiplier added to it even though 9 of the 10 went to pay the fundraiser.
“At a time when fewer and fewer Canadians make a secure, livable wage or get any benefits and pension at all…”
What would a caplan column be without a socialist, redistributionist comment?
A vacuous socialist political hack if there ever was one.
Hmm. Shortly after be appointed to the Lib leadership, he had a speaking engagement at a local high school.
I wonder if he got paid for that, too.
Just a thought.
I wonder what the feeling about this would be if the pony ever refused to come speak at a public event if the org refused to pay the fee?
That, would sink in to the low info folks that are being fed a constant diet of “he’s soo charming”.
Just a suggestion….
Whaddaya expect from a right wing fanatic like Gerald Caplan? er…
But I wouldn’t toot that horn too loudly. Justin can afford to deliver a swift kick in the nuts to his opponents by donating $277K to some tear jerker charity.
And it pisses me off to no living end how Justin, CBC hacks and various other crypto-commies are paid from the public purse to speak at campuses across the country. It’s never a private event because the douchebags are always paid with a school budget or university student union fees that are extracted involuntarily. I bet less than 1% of that $277K came from voluntarily paid after-tax dollars.
I don’t really see what’s so unethical about this.
Liberal media buried this story, Justin has been awol in parliament via 230 plus missed sessions whilst out earning more money whilst not doing the job he was elected to do. In the real world Justin would lose his job.
It’s like selling access to the politician.
“Is this some sort of inverted LIEberal moral metric?”
Since you asked,Hans,short answer,NO.How can you invert something you do not have to start with.
“At a time when fewer and fewer Canadians make a secure, livable wage or get any benefits and pension at all…”
What would a caplan column be without a socialist, redistributionist comment?”
Not sure Gord. I took it to mean,why should the hoi poi be allowed to double-dip
when most Canucks are struggling just to feed and keep a roof over their heads?
(full disclosure…this is the first time I’ve ever heard of/read caplan,I don’t have list of his stuff to decide.Although I do have all the Welcome Back,Kotter series.)
What is the point? E lesson from recent history 101?
Just remember where to keep the files for future reference.
With those big pay-outs, young Mr Trudeau could afford buy a table for Senator Duffy’s pay-back fund-raiser.
Now is as good a time as any to let Justin know what you think, perhaps he can ask the Prime Minister in Question Period, “When will you table a law making it illegal for sitting MPs to receive speaking fees from taxpayer-funded public institutions?”
Sorry, forgot to add in the link so you can all ask that question.
http://www.liberal.ca/be-heard/?utm_source=may_crowdsourced_qp&utm_medium=email
Many years ago I was a director of a business association. My job was to book the weekly speaker. Over the year, I booked provincial cabinet ministers, business leaders and lots of well known folks. The only time some one asked for a fee was from a journalist. I told his fee was a free breakfast. He came anyway.
For those who snivel, no big deal, oh really? Would your boss allow you to leave work and go moon lightening on his payroll dime??? Justin was making more for one speaking engagement than most people make a year. Nothing says Lordshite quite like liberal elites.
I don’t really see what’s so unethical about this.
So what would it take for you to say”you see something” unethical??
I don’t really see what’s so unethical about this.
Posted by: LAS on May 16, 2013 3:29 PM
Of course you wouldn’t…you are from Quebec, right?
“Would your boss…? I suppose it depends on the various bosses in various jobs. In most cases I expect the answer would be no. (I’m self-employed so I’m allowed to do anything, and I know I can’t afford to.) The “boss” of MPs is a collective, the voters of Canada, and apparently we allow them to set their own hours of attendance at work and then not actually attend, anyway.
I don’t think at all well of Justin Trudeau doing this, but if he wants to walk on thin ice I wish there may always be some for him.
The “klepto” gene is strong in Librano royalty.
Perhaps if you had read and or heard more of mr caplan s rhetoric you would see where I’m coming from. He is unfailing in takng every issue and shooting it through the same left-wing prism. He’s been doing it for over forty years.
Occam…but they have a drug for that know….naltrexone. Appears to work great,as long as the right personal disorder is identified first.
Gord Tulk…thanks for the info. Over 40 years! Guess that explains it.I was doing better things back then. 😉
LAS on May 16, 2013 3:29 PM
“I don’t really see what’s so unethical about this.”
Why does this not surprise me?
Please, feel free to make a case. Otherwise this just looks like more hen-pecking.
I’m curious to hear your take on the Mike Duffy business.
Poor LAS.
No one has asked the obvious, why would anyone in their right mind pay to listen to Junior. Harper needs to worry about someone who can attract this much attention with never having accomplished anything.
He inappropriately billed the taxpayer for housing and stuff and the PMO tried to cover for him. Now he’s been jetissoned and SDA is oddly quiet on the issue while hen-pecking Trudeau.
“..I don’t really see what’s so unethical about this.”
Oh yes you do, LAS. The ‘really’ word gave it away.
Nice deflection to Duffy. LAS. But since you ask, this true blue conservative would take away his senate seat (if constitutionally possible) and turn him into a social pariah who couldn’t enter a restaurant without people moving away from him.
The problem with people like Duffy and Trudeau is that it gives public servants of every stripe carte blanche to work the system to a fair thee well without a moral qualm.
I rarely agree with Gerald Caplan. I might this time.
Just don’t let Kim Justin-il get away with it the next time he complains about “greed”.
As to SDA’s “odd” quietude, I would have thought, given the boss lady’s well-known and finely-honed sense of juxtapositional irony, that it was fairly obvious that this post concerns the Duffy business directly. In light of previous coverage on this site of Mr. Trudeau, Jr.’s, er, ethical waywardness on this subject, why else would she reference a 2.5 month old column, which was written by one of the most barnicle-encrusted and inveterate old socialists of our age and which happens to contain an equal-opportunity slap-down of both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Duffy? I’d be pretty certain that she didn’t have a whack-on-the-forehead “I should have had a V-8” moment.
I am surprised by your response: I had expected no worse than equal treatment for Mr. Duffy, which would have been fair. Justin Trudeau pulls an Al Gore “there is no controlling legal authority” stunt, and I have to listen to Michael Bliss (who is normally pretty good) on Power Play this afternoon comparing the Duffy business to Watergate? Are you kidding me?
Other comparisons could be made:
– Let’s call it $257,000 (not including the OPSEU fee, OPSEU likely being the only non-government-transfer-partner on the list; I could be wrong) vs. $90,000 (no taxpayer money missing, assuming Mr. Wright doesn’t try to make up the difference through nefarious means; oh, did I mention the still-missing $40 million or so from the Sponsorship Scandal?)
– Mr. Trudeau, Jr. runs the gauntlet of the ethics commissioner and gets annointed Liberal leader, whereas Mr. Duffy is just entering that process and has to sit as an independent permanently-damaged demon somewhere, on account of media hounding.
As for Mr. Kaplan’s column, he had me at “London Health Sciences Centre”, an institution near and dear to my heart for unrelated reasons. Probably the best thing he’s ever written, and I agree with every word of it.
The sad thing about this, is that nobody in The House is exploiting this ethical deficit that Pierre’s Pup has served them up on a silver platter.
Every time this snot-drip raises a question about ethics, honesty, use of tax-payers money, etc, he could and should be continually dismissed by throwing this back in his face.
” I find it strange that the honourable member could have any real concern about this government’s expenditure of tax-payer’s dollars, when he shamelessly and unapologetically routinely absented himself from his duties in This House so that he could collect a quarter of a million more taxpayer dollars at speaking venues. This, at a time when the average Canadian …..”
Over, and over, and over….
Mr. Southern:
The fact that the LHSC has in the past plead poverty, only to later have it revealed that they gave a retiring CEO a huge retirement payout after laying off nurses, and then finding out that they paid out for justin to speak….decided I wouldn’t be contributing to this years fund raising drive.
As for Duffy, if he broke the rules, he deserves to be given the boot. Matter of fact, I hear little from the opposition that they have any suggestions on what to do to fix this.
Did Justin pay his expenses himself or did he charge them to his Parliamentary Travel- especially after becoming the Hair Apparent
Don’t get me wrong: I was annoyed before, but LHSC is anger-making. I had not been previously aware, until I just read it in Mr. Kaplan’s column, that LHSC was on the, you know, “donor” list.
Some years ago, LHSC provided my late father with a life-restarting procedure, which took about 45 minutes to perform and literally allowed him to walk away from otherwise certain death. I am very well aware of the million dollar payout to Mr. Nordal, who, along with others of his ilk, were — and are — quite willing to invest themselves with all the accutrements of private-sector executive compensation without, quite frankly, having to worry about the revenue side of things. I could seriously go on about how Mr. Nordal’s former (because he left) staff (including my wife) feel about the situation, but I won’t.
Folks like Mr. Nordal have no care or clue, apparently, of how they cheapen the brand by engaging in this sort of self-service. Mr. Trudeau, Jr., channeling his father, obviously feels the same way; otherwise, he would not have accepted the money: Mr. Trudeau, Sr.’s main claim to fame, IMO, was that he cheapened Canada’s brand, for whatever fantastical end he was seeking.
Statements to the effect that there is no ethical problem in any of this say quite a bit about those making those kind of statements. All of which applies equally to Mr. Duffy, if he did, indeed, break the rules — a matter yet to be conclusively determined.
Gerald Caplan zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Caplan is a broken down old fool whose agenda belong in the 1960s along with bell bottoms and love beads
Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin were obviously in the self-aggrandizing MSM for too long to be able to change their ways once they were made Senators. They grew accustomed to first-class all the way on someone else’s dime.
I’m glad Duffy’s become an independent and that Wallin’s been forced out of the Conservative caucus. They don’t represent Conservative values.
Re my recent post, I guess it was in reply to a comment made by David Southam!