Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino is back in the limelight for misleading the public — this time for backdating government documents in an apparent effort to mislead the court, Access To Information records reveal.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, this instance dates back to Mendicino’s time as the federal Immigration minister when Parliament passed the College Of Immigration And Citizenship Consultants Act in 2019.
The government ran into issues because the name “College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants” was already trademarked by a private Vancouver company.
On Nov. 20, 2020, Crown lawyers attended a federal court injunction hearing in a Trademarks Act dispute while Immigration staff stressed the importance of proclaiming the act, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
“The hearing on November 20 was premised on the College Act properly being proclaimed,” said Justice Janet Fuhrer. Crown lawyers were “duty bound to bring to the court’s attention the development of the proclamation of the act,” the judge said.
On the day of the hearing, the Privy Council Office published an Order In Council implying the act was in force. The notice included a “date modified” entry of April 31, 2017. There are only 30 days in April.
Meanwhile, the act was not in force. An email between Department of Immigration lawyers acknowledged the act would not be in force until December 9, Blacklocks Reporter found.
Mendicino has a pattern of misleading the public. Most notable is his web of disinformation about why the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act against the peaceful Freedom Convoy protests in February.
The minister insisted for months that law enforcement requested that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoke the law. The RCMP and Ottawa police eventually said they did not ask for the act to be used.
To cover up his tracks, Mendicino’s office had his underling Deputy Minister Rob Stewart say that Mendicino was “misunderstood” when he said about two dozen times that police requested the emergency powers.
During a press conference in Ottawa in February, the minister alleged that protesters at the Coutts border — which was shut down after firearms were found — had ties to far-right groups protesting in Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy. He walked back those comments after journalists questioned his remarks.
Read about all the times Medicino engaged in disinformation about the Freedom Convoy here.
