Ever heard the line “My mom was out of town when I was born” — its a funny one-liner, but it seems one Liberal cabinet minister wants us to believe it about her.

Mariam Monsef’s mother was, apparently, “out of town when she was born.” Or rather, out of the country. Monsef has publicly claimed that she was born in Afghanistan, but the Globe and Mail did some investigation and found that she was born in Iran. Well, one can only be told where they are born, no one remembers, so what’s the big deal? If her mother lied to her and she had no idea, that is only a problem with her mother’s character, and there may be reasons why she told her daughter this story. The problem is that others in Peterborough-Kawartha (her Electoral District) are saying that they heard that she was actually born in Iran second-hand for over a year. This story seems a bit wrong on a few levels, not the least of which is that this information was not caught by the government when Monsef was sworn into cabinet, or it was but was glossed over. Either way, this story smells fishy, so keep your nose tuned.

Trudeau staffers are out of their old towns too. They did not lie about where they moved from to Ottawa, and they did not lie about the expenses either, but they did hand over the moving expenses to taxpayers—and what a lot of expenses there were! According to the Globe and Mail two staffers charged more than $200,000 for moving from Toronto to Ottawa. Gerald Butts, the senior political advisor and principle secretary to Justin Trudeau, charged $127,000 and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff, charged over $80,000. Our PM responded by saying that these expenses fall within the rules, and that it was the former Conservative government that updated these rules. Well then, that takes care of that! If it’s done by the rules, it can’t be wrong, right? The staffers were smart enough to realize that stories like this get bigger if they are not addressed right away, so they apologized and said that they would give some of the money back. Now the moves will only cost taxpayers about $142,050. What a happy ending!

The head of Statistics Canada is not out of town, but he is out of a job: Wayne R. Smith quit his job as Canada’s chief statistician on principle. “The former head of Statistics Canada says he knew sending a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatening to quit his job was a gamble, but he’s not sorry he rolled the dice.” He said, “I believe it is the professional duty of a national statistician to resign if the independence of the national statistical office […] is compromised.” His choice of an analogy was particularly interesting: “If Statistics Canada is developing a new program around abortion statistics, and somebody decides that they really don’t want that, the informatics infrastructure necessary to actually carry out the program might not be available to me,” he said. Indeed! Would our Liberal government want an independent agency to look into that issue without any way of hiding these facts? No. Is Mr. Smith a pro-lifer? I don’t know, but it is good to see that someone in Ottawa’s civil service was principled enough to take a stand, and use a very realistic scenario to give rationale.

These stories illustrate the need for integrity in politics. Many people, not just politicians, will do whatever they think they can get away with, and will only change if they get caught. This is why we need good journalists to dig deeper into the stories we have been told, and transparency laws so that we know how money--the money we are being taxed--is really being spent. People with principles must not be sent out of town!

Genuinely out of town is CHP Canada’s leader; he’s running in a by-election! While Rod Taylor leaves his hometown of Telkwa, BC quite often to criss-cross the country for the CHP, he will be spending the next month on the road in rural Alberta bringing CHP’s principled, pro-life, pro-family message to Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner. It is a large riding comprising the south-east corner of the province that traditionally votes Conservative. Their previous MP, Jim Hillyer was strongly pro-life, and we want to give them another strongly pro-life MP! Please stay tuned as this campaign develops; Rod will need your financial support to run a good campaign. As with most opportunities, this one will require some hard work and many miles to make our voice heard. But our message of principled government, fiscal responsibility, and honesty must be heard in Canadian politics.

If you are heading out of town, don’t forget to support CHP and talk to others about our party. We are growing and need to keep up the momentum. You can also keep up with us on Facebook; we post articles of interest almost every day, and members of the group often have interesting comments on how these issues affect our country.

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