Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is being investigated for a possible conflict of interest during his family’s vacation over Christmas. Trudeau and his family stayed on a private island in the Bahamas owned by a wealthy religious leader, The Aga Khan. They also flew on his private helicopter to the secluded island.
Khan is the leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. In 2011, his wealth was estimated to be $800 million. Trudeau claims him to be a long-time family friend. Though Khan is a family friend, he is very wealthy, and he is an influential religious leader, so it’s only right to make sure nothing fishy is going on. Is it even possible that Trudeau could be bribed?
My guess is no, but an investigation like this is important. If we don’t investigate things like this, for any leader of a country, they would begin to feel like they can get away with anything. Which brings me to the subject of our next president, Donald Trump, who seems to do something wrong every day.
At a press conference on Jan. 11, Trump announced that he would remove ties with his businesses. Two days later, he met with real-estate developer Steven Roth who co-owns two Trump properties. It is unclear what they spoke about, but it is likely that Roth will be the head of his infrastructure council of engineers and builders. How’s that for removing business ties?
Yet, not much has been said about this. There are too many other crazy things he’s doing for the news to focus solely on that.
Trump also recently stated that he had met with a Dubai-based developer who had offered him a $2 billion deal, which he turned down. Again, not much questioning over this either. In fact, there are so many conflicts of interest, it took The Atlantic’s Jeremy Venook 10,000-plus words in a feature story to cover just to summarize the most prominent ones.
While Trudeau has done some unfavorable things Canadians might argue against, like approving two oil pipelines, and in regards to several policies, he is still an honest guy with good intentions.
When you look at Trump’s rap sheet compared to Trudeau’s, it might seem silly that his family vacation is being investigated, but in fact, it is totally necessary in order to keep a leader in check.
If Trudeau is being probed for a family vacation, then Trump should be treated as equally for all of the million conflict-of-interest scenarios he is involved in.
