Today Trudeau is saying “For almost a year, Canada’s borders have been closed to foreign travelers.” That is pretty rich, he either believes his own manufactured Liberal spin or he is a blatant liar. Take your pick, neither shows well on a Prime Minister in a G-7 country.
On the day Australia closed its borders to China (1 February 2020), Canada had four confirmed COVID-19 cases, all linked to travel from China. The USA closed its borders to China on February 3rd.
“At the time, the Trudeau government was still committed to the idea that travel bans don’t work and even suggested that those proposing them might be racist. (CBC 22 June 2020)
Australia would expand their border closure again in March.
“Asked in the Commons why Canada was not doing the same, (Health Minister) Hajdu denounced “the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society” and called on the opposition to “not sensationalize the risk to Canadians.” (CBC 22 June 2020)
It was on March 16, 2020 that Canada closed its borders, but exempted US travelers and our PM told snowbirds to come home, which they did through the hotbeds of Covid-19 of New York, Newark, Chicago and Detroit.
Basically, what the PM said today is definitely not accurate.
Unfortunately, Trudeau is becoming another Trump in that what he says cannot be taken seriously and every comment needs to be fact checked and rebutted publicly. But who can do that?
Unfortunately, in Canada we have to rely on the CTV and CBC national news networks to set up something like what done to Trump. Fat chance that will happen in any consistent manner with either of those two networks.
Canada does have some excellent political columnists, but for a lot of Canadians their news comes from those two networks, most Canadians don’t follow or have time for Twitter or other social media sites where politics are discussed.
Back in our Opposition days in 2003-2006, my research team would send out a “Just the Facts” note to every reporter on the Hill and many elsewhere. It essentially was fact checking Paul Martin’s many exaggerated comments. Over time we saw more and more reporters using our material. I have no idea how the CPC does things today or if they even do something similar. If they are not, they should because we have a Prime Minister who it seems does not hesitate to bend the truth and sadly it looks like he believes himself.
Hey CBC and CTV, you like to fact check during an election- it is time to smarten up and start doing it now.
Keith Beardsley is a former Deputy Chief Of Staff for Issues Management and Question Period coordinator for the Conservative Party.
