{"id":62698,"date":"2017-01-10T17:25:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T17:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/ethics-watchdog-considering-investigation-into-trudeaus-vacation-with-the-aga-khan.html"},"modified":"2017-01-10T17:25:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T17:25:55","slug":"ethics-watchdog-considering-investigation-into-trudeaus-vacation-with-the-aga-khan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/ethics-watchdog-considering-investigation-into-trudeaus-vacation-with-the-aga-khan.html","title":{"rendered":"Ethics watchdog &#8216;considering&#8217; investigation into Trudeau&#8217;s vacation with the Aga Khan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The federal ethics commissioner is considering an investigation into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s\u00a0recent vacation in the Bahamas after receiving a complaint from Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer.<\/p>\n<p>The Saskatchewan MP wrote a letter to Mary Dawson\u00a0Monday asking her to rule on whether Trudeau&#8217;s stay on the Aga Khan&#8217;s private island is a gift that violates the Conflict of Interest Act.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As a former speaker of the House of\u00a0Commons, I take the rules that MPs must follow very seriously. We need to know if it is\u00a0appropriate for\u00a0Trudeau\u00a0to accept gifts from someone whose foundation receives funds\u00a0from the government of Canada.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prince\u00a0Karim\u00a0Aga Khan IV is the hereditary spiritual leader of the world&#8217;s 15 million\u00a0Shia\u00a0Ismaili\u00a0Muslims and a multimillionaire philanthropist.<\/p>\n<p>The federal government has contributed millions to the Aga Khan Foundation to help fund its international development projects. The most recent grant was a five-year, $55-million project to improve health services in Afghanistan that was announced in December 2015\u00a0under the Trudeau government.<\/p>\n<p>Scheer pointed to Section 14.1 of the act which stipulates an MP should not accept &#8220;directly or indirectly, any gift or other benefit &#8230; that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the [MP] in the exercise of a duty or function of his or her office.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Conservative Party had considered filing a complaint of its own\u00a0but decided not to after Scheer\u00a0submitted his letter, which raises many of\u00a0the party&#8217;s same concerns.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose said the parliamentary caucus could revisit that decision.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cbc.ca\/1.3924568\">Trudeau spent vacation on private island of the Aga Khan<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/cbc.ca\/1.3907353\">Trudeau pays back taxpayers about $38K for personal expenses<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;I can confirm that the commissioner this morning received a request from Mr. Scheer for an investigation in connection with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s vacation stay &#8230; and is considering the request,&#8221; a spokesperson for the commissioner said in an e-mail to CBC News.\u00a0&#8220;That is all we can say on the matter at this time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u200bThe Prime Minister&#8217;s Office had been tight-lipped about Trudeau&#8217;s vacation until the\u00a0<em>National Post\u00a0<\/em>reported last week that he was in the Bahamas and staying with the Aga Khan.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/49a79_the-aga-khan-s-private-island-bell-island.jpg\" alt=\"The Aga Khan's private island Bell Island\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">The Aga Khan&#8217;s privately owned Bell Island is located in the Bahamas. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n<p>The PMO confirmed\u00a0Friday that Trudeau, his family and a few friends were invited to join the Aga Khan on\u00a0Bell Island for the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As you are aware, his Highness and the Prime Minister have been close family friends for many years,&#8221; a statement sent to media said, while noting Trudeau would\u00a0repay the cost of flights to and from\u00a0Nassau for himself and his family.<\/p>\n<p>The prime minister travels on a government-owned Challenger jet for security purposes, and, as per a longstanding policy, repays the cost of an economy class ticket when travelling on personal business.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/49a79_trudeau-aga-khan-20160517.jpg\" alt=\"Trudeau Aga Khan 20160517\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with the Aga Khan on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 17, 2016. (Sean Kilpatricl\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n<h2>Trudeau family has close ties to Aga Khan<\/h2>\n<p>He has had close ties to the Trudeau family since former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau\u00a0spearheaded the resettlement of thousands of Ugandan Asians\u00a0displaced by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/radio\/rewind\/1972-ugandan-refugees-an-honourable-place-in-canada-1.3860296\">Idi Amin&#8217;s expulsion<\/a>. Some 7,000 refugees, many of them Ismaili, were resettled throughout Canada, one of the first major waves of non-European immigration to Canada.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/flight-manifest-trudeau-st-kitts-1.3732608\">Flight manifest for\u00a0Trudeaus&#8217; Caribbean vacation redacted to exclude nanny, in-laws<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;Pierre and I were friends and there was an informal understanding that if there was a racial crisis, Canada would intervene. So when Uganda&#8217;s Idi Amin decided in 1972 to expel Asians, I picked up the phone, and Trudeau affirmed then and there that Canada would wish to help. His response was magnificent,&#8221; the Aga Khan told the\u00a0<em>Toronto Star\u00a0<\/em>in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>The Aga Khan also served as honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau&#8217;s funeral in 2000, alongside former Cuban president Fidel Castro, who died in November.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/trudeau-travel-reimbursement-caregivers-nannies-children-1.3685341\"><strong>Prime minister&#8217;s private travels still draw public money: document<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal ethics commissioner is considering an investigation into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s\u00a0recent vacation in the Bahamas after receiving a complaint from Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer. The Saskatchewan MP wrote a letter to Mary Dawson\u00a0Monday asking her to rule on whether Trudeau&#8217;s stay on the Aga Khan&#8217;s private island is a gift that violates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-62698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}