So, I see, in an article by Christopher Nardi in the National Post, that Screen Shot 2020-08-08 at 08.15.04The prime minister’s office and the finance minister’s both office refuse to say if Chief of Staff Katie Telford’s husband ever communicated with them since he became senior vice-president at a major private mortgage company that is now running the government’s commercial rent subsidy program.

It begs a simple question: Why?

It seems pretty clear that Ms Telford is smart enough (and is certainly conscious of the potential for an appearance of a conflict of interest) to have set up a bureaucratic/procedural screen between herself and her husband’s business interests. But it would be amazing, to me, if there had not been many, many perfectly innocent chats between Mr Sliver and Ms Telford: “I’m tied up in a meeting, sorry, we’ll have to skip dinner.” Why not just admit that, “Yes, Mr Silver called Ms Telford many times on many personal matters but there never was any discussion related to his company doing business with the government.“? I, for one, would believe that. As I said, Ms Telford is way too smart to get caught in a conflict of interest.

Screen Shot 2020-08-11 at 08.57.13But what about the Finance Minister’s office? What about, say, Elder Marques, who is Chief-of-Staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau? Remember Mr Marques? He was, until late last year, a senior policy advisor in the PMO and his fingerprints were all over the SNC-Lavalin/Jody Wilson-Raybould affair. Did Mr Silver and Mr Marques have any conversations?

Mr Marques, as the Chief-of-Staff to one of the most senior and important ministers in the Trudeau government, certainly has someone who keeps a detailed telephone log for him. Who called him, who he called, is on record and it ought to be readily available to the public when there is some concern about open, honest, transparent government. Why have those logs not been consulted? Why has no one said that, “Mr Silver did not call officials (or political staff) in the Finance Minister’s office to discuss any business deals“?

Why can’t the Trudeau regime put this behind them? Are they covering something up?

Published by Ted Campbell


One thought on “Why?

  1. They could be screwing up the courage to say something like “we know this looks bad but we did not break the law.”

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