Tag: Prime Minister of Canada

Justin Tang/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press OTTAWA — The top political adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada resigned on Monday, deepening a political crisis over allegations the government tried to interfere in a criminal court case. “Any accusation that I or the staff put pressure on the attorney general is simply not true,” Mr. Butts wrote. “But the fact is that this accusation exists. Mr. Butts was a key player in the successful election campaign in 2015 that defied expectations by raising the Liberals from third place in polls to victory, making Mr. Trudeau prime minister. Since then, Mr. Butts has acted as Mr. Trudeau’s principal secretary and was widely viewed as the most powerful player within the prime minister’s office. “The last year before an election, you don’t leave your boss behind,” Mr. Gossage said. A criminal conviction would bar the company, which has about 52,000 employees worldwide, from working for the government of Canada for 10 years. Mr. Trudeau’s office confirmed last week that Ms. Wilson-Raybould brought the case up in a conversation with Mr. Butts, but declined to offer any details about what was said. Last week, the episode went from involving only anonymous allegations to a major political challenge when the federal ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, said he would investigate the prime minister’s actions. In his resignation letter, Mr. Butts noted that he had encouraged Ms. Wilson-Raybould, a former prosecutor and Indigenous leader from British Columbia, to enter politics.

The prime minister’s challenge is how to manage both the most important Canadian ally and his own domestic politics. “The charm offensive has produced little of what the prime minister hoped.” Even before Mr. Trump came to power, Mr. Trudeau, and his closest aides and cabinet members rushed to connect with the new president and his advisers. Now Mr. Trump is challenging Canada’s longtime dairy system, which uses high tariffs to largely exclude imports. The prospect of a full-on trade war is an alarming proposition; trade with the United States is the economic lifeblood of Canada. “We cannot win a trade war with 75 percent of our trade going to the U.S. We’re highly vulnerable to American actions. He has to deal with the survival of the Canadian economy.” In recent days, Mr. Trump has focused mainly on Canada’s dairy system, known as “supply management,” which is a longstanding irritant between Canada and several other countries, including the United States. Still, the United States sells about five times more dairy products to Canada than Canada exports south. Nonetheless, the supply management system riles up Mr. Trump, who says the Canadian market should be fully opened to American dairy farmers. “The U.S. position on supply management hasn’t changed since President Obama,” said Meredith Lilly, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and the former international trade adviser to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Politicians of all political stripes have avoided pushing back, and Canada has won exemptions for the system in several trade agreements, including Nafta and, most recently, a free-trade pact with Europe.

"Citizens are not fools. Citizens can tell whether someone is genuine in their approach or just trying to live up to some lofty familial expectation. For me, all my life I focused on how I could best make a difference. " The question was asked because Trudeau is the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The Canadian PM did not deny that he had an advantage when he entered politics. He said people had seen the values he had been raised with and decided whether to vote for him or not, according to the report. Trudeau also said that politics was not always his first choice. "I decided early on much to my father's pleasure that I wouldn't go anywhere near politics, because for one thing, I knew more than anyone else what kind of a difficult impact it has on one's kids, so it wasn't an automatic choice for me," said Trudeau. Trudeau is in India for a week, along with his wife Sophie and their children. He received a lacklustre welcome and has not met Narendra Modi so far.