Trudeau and the Liberals being Let Off the Hook for Mishandling General Vance Scandal

Today in Parliament a motion from the Conservative Party to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired his Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, over the blatant mishandling of sexual misconduct complaints against Canada’s top general Jonathan Vance. 

The CPC’s motion was in response to it being revealed in an oversight committee from a former advisor to Trudeau that Telford knew about the misconduct complaints all the way back in 2018, and only now in 2021 did a public report come out detailing the various allegations against him by subordinates.

Liberal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, after it was revealed Telford knew about the allegations, denied answering whether or not he also knew about the allegations back in 2018. Sajjan as Defence Minister has an oversight role over General Vance and Canada’s armed forces as a whole making it difficult to believe he would have never heard anything about misconduct allegations.

The NDP criticized the Conservatives before the vote on the motion to have Trudeau fire Telford claiming that it was somehow unfair to single out a staffer and not Sajjan and Trudeau. The Bloc Québécois along with the NDP also refused to support the Conservatives’ motion easing the pressure off of the Liberals.

Conservative MP Candice Bergen called it ‘sexist’ to hold Telford to such a low standard as to not call for Telford to be held to account for her deliberate silence when Bergen believes any male staffer in Telford’s position would have been held to a higher standard. 

Telford herself is not a stranger to being caught acting improperly in her position as she previously had been forced, alongside Gerald Butts to pay back “unreasonable” moving expenses she charged to Canadian taxpayers.

It is rather frustrating watching the majority of the mainstream media coverage that is taking a very hands-off approach to the story, not putting more pressure on Trudeau, Telford, and Sajjan for answers when they claim they had no idea of the allegations against general Vance.

Trudeau’s only defence so far on not taking action back in 2018 is that he supposedly didn’t know the allegations were a  “MeToo complaint,” proving at the least Trudeau had known there were concerns floating around about Vance.

The Liberal government even gave general Vance an extension in his contract and a pay raise without any look into his personal behaviour, still the media seems to be slow-walking the coverage of the scandal, allowing opposition parties to push for answers themselves.

A story like this can and potentially should destroy Justin Trudeau’s manufactured image as a strong feminist, but outside of a few opinion columns, the liberal MSM has covered this scandal as something happening adjacent to Trudeau and not actually involving him and the Liberal Party despite this story being a clear example of Trudeau’s lack of ethics as a leader.