EDITORIAL: Trudeau spreads false information

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While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s going to fight the spread of false information through government legislation, the inconvenient truth is he’s a spreader of false information himself.

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Starting in 2016, he repeatedly said he would meet his 2020 target to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. He didn’t.

In 2015, Trudeau said his government would have modest deficits in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with a surplus in 2019 — the year before the pandemic hit. He didn’t. He delivered four big deficits in a row.

Trudeau said he was a close friend of the Aga Khan, allowing him and his family to accept free vacations on his private island in the Bahamas, without violating the Conflict of Interest Act.

The ethics commissioner found the Aga Khan was a close friend of his father, not him, and that Trudeau violated the act.

Trudeau described the Globe and Mail story that broke his Lavscam scandal as false. The ethics commissioner found it was true and that Trudeau had broken the conflict law again.

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Before the 2019 election, Trudeau’s environment minister said the Liberals would freeze their carbon tax at $50 per tonne of emissions after 2022. Following the election, Trudeau said he would raise it to $170 per tonne by 2030.

Brian Lilley in the Toronto Sun and Tristin Hopper in the National Post on Thursday recounted some of the things Trudeau, his ministers and Liberal MPs said during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa that turned out not to be true.

The Liberals said they invoked the Emergencies Act on the recommendation of the police. The police said they didn’t ask for the EA to be invoked.

The Liberals said convoy protesters tried to start a fire in an apartment building. They didn’t.

The Liberals said Ottawa protesters committed gun offences. No charges have been laid.

They said most donations to the protest came from foreign sources. Most came from Canada.

In 2019, then Trudeau cabinet minister Catherine McKenna said the Liberals had learned in government that, “if you actually say it louder … in the House of Commons, if you repeat it, if you say it louder, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it.”

At the time, we thought she was joking.