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June 27, 2013
In Toronto, the mayor of Canada’s biggest city, Rob Ford, is surrounded by allegations he was caught on camera taking cocaine. In Ottawa, a controversy over Senate expenses is the first scandal to touch Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s inner circle, costing him his chief of staff last month.
And now in Montreal, Applebaum faces 14 criminal charges linked to two real estate transactions that involved “tens of thousands of dollars” in illegal payments between 2006 and 2011.
While “not any one of these stories would have been a big deal,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, “all of a sudden, when you get three piled on in a couple of weeks, people start saying, ‘Hey what’s going on in Canada?’ ”
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Winnipeg Free Press
Fifty years ago, a talented athlete named “Red” Kelly played professional hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs – while holding down a job as a member of Parliament for the riding of York West. An MP from 1962 to 1965, he also helped the Leafs win Stanley Cups.
In Kelly’s era, the job of an MP was considered a part-time activity, paying $12,000 a year – a generous $92,025 in 2013 dollars.
Today, a talented public speaker named Justin Trudeau is the target of some political slapshots for making paid speeches while serving as an MP. His critics have pointed out the $20,000 speaking fees he collected while drawing a full-time MP’s salary.
Nelson Wiseman, professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, said it’s not the ethical rulebook that needs to be changed. In Trudeau’s case, he blames the charities that hired him. They should know better, he said, than to “pay a politician to find out what he thinks.”
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www.canada.com
To learn more about Professor Wiseman click here: