Bob Mackin
The end is here for Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who relied heavily on the West Coast to win his only majority government in 2015.
The Liberal Party chooses his successor March 9 — 3,412 days since Trudeau’s swearing-in.
The son of Pierre Trudeau promised “sunny ways” in 2015. Yet, he leaves in 2025, under a cloud after a series of conflict of interest scandals, the worst pandemic in a century and threats to Canada’s sovereignty from China’s Xi Jinping and the United States’ Donald Trump.
When he came to West Vancouver on Sept. 10, 2015 to announce an ocean protection strategy, I went to ask about his promise to spend billions of dollars on rapid transit infrastructure. Montreal’s corruption-plagued SNC-Lavalin wanted contracts to expand Vancouver’s SkyTrain and Canada Line network.
Candidates behind Trudeau on John Lawson Pier included Vancouver-Granville’s Jody Wilson-Raybould. Three years later, she was the Attorney General who upheld the rule of law, while he was the Prime Minister who got caught trying to let SNC-Lavalin off the hook.
CLICK and WATCH: Justin Trudeau on Sept. 10, 2015.
Justin Trudeau’s election eve rally was Oct. 18, 2015 inside the jam-packed Pipe Shop in North Vancouver’s Shipyards District.
As I left, I noticed a familiar face: Liberal Party fundraiser and former Richmond MP Raymond Chan.
I had been trying for several months to ask Chan questions about his solicitation of political donations from real estate developer Michael Mo Yeung Ching.
Ching, the son of Hebei’s former Chinese Communist Party secretary Cheng Weigao, was wanted in China on charges of corruption.
In 2015, Ching was in a marathon legal battle to clear his name and seek Canadian citizenship (he finally got it in 2020). It had emerged that Ching donated more than $11,000 to Trudeau’s campaign. His daughter, Linda Ching, had been the president of the federal Young Liberals in B.C. and a director of the Trudeau supporters’ group called Tru-Youths.
Moments after turning on my iPad camera, a group of people suddenly surrounded me and blocked my lens. They refused to tell me their names.
A North Vancouver RCMP officer later told them that reporters in Canada are free to shoot video in public. The Mounties refused to investigate my assault complaint. YouTube rejected Chan’s attempt to censor the video.
CLICK and WATCH: Inside and outside Justin Trudeau’s 2015 campaign finale.
