From Macdonald to Trudeau and Carney: 158 Years of Scandal Without Consequence

 December 22, 2025

Canadians are frequently told that they live in one of the world’s most ethical, stable, and well-governed democracies. Compared with many countries, that reputation is not entirely undeserved. And yet, when one steps back from individual controversies and examines Canada’s political history as a whole, a far less comforting picture emerges.

Canada does not suffer from occasional political scandals. It suffers from a persistent culture of unaccountability that spans parties, eras, and institutions. What changes are the names, the rationalizations, and the media cycles. What remains unchanged is the absence of meaningful consequences at the highest levels of power.

This is not a partisan claim. The historical record simply does not support partisanship as an explanation.

A Pattern Older Than Confederation’s First Generation

Canada’s first major federal scandal arrived early. In 1873, Sir John A. Macdonald’s government collapsed under the Pacific Scandal, involving bribes exchanged for the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Macdonald resigned, only to return to office five years later and govern for another thirteen. The message was unmistakable from the start: resignation was temporary; consequence was negotiable.

That template has been repeated ever since.

The Liberal Party’s Beauharnois scandal of the 1930s involved corporate donations in exchange for favourable hydroelectric approvals. The King–Byng Affair of 1926 exposed the fragility of constitutional norms when political survival was at stake. In the 1960s, the Munsinger Affair revealed national security failures mixed with personal misconduct, while in the 1970s and 1980s, scandals ranging from Harbourgate to Tunagate highlighted procurement abuse and ethical laxity.

Each was treated as an exception. Collectively, they form a lineage.

Scandal as a Feature, Not a Bug

What stands out over 158 years is not merely the number of scandals, but their remarkable similarity.

They tend to fall into five recurring categories:

1. Election and campaign finance manipulation From the Sponsorship Scandal to the “In and Out” scheme, robocalls, illegal donations, and overspending convictions, election rules have repeatedly been treated as obstacles rather than guardrails.
2. Procurement and spending abuse, Airbus, F-35 cost misrepresentations, Phoenix pay, and ArriveCAN reveal a consistent inability or unwillingness to manage public money with competence or transparency.
3. Conflicts of interest at the executive level: Cash-for-access fundraisers, sole-source contracts, the Aga Khan vacation, SNC-Lavalin, and WE Charity all share the same core problem: proximity between power and private benefit.
4. Institutional failures and cover-ups Somalia, APEC, Afghan detainees, Senate expense abuses, and CFIA breakdowns, demonstrate that accountability often stops where embarrassment begins.
5. Ethics rulings without enforcement, Ethics commissioners may reprimand, but they do not remove. Findings are issued, apologies follow, and political life continues largely uninterrupted.

This continuity across Liberal and Conservative governments should end the fiction that “clean governance” is a partisan achievement. It is not.

The Modern Era: More Rules, Fewer Consequences

Ironically, as Canada has added ethics offices, commissioners, and oversight mechanisms, actual accountability has diminished.

The SNC-Lavalin affair is emblematic. A sitting prime minister was found to have violated conflict-of-interest rules by attempting to influence prosecutorial decisions. Cabinet ministers resigned in protest. Senior staff departed. And yet, the prime minister remained in office, suffered no legal consequence, and faced no binding sanction.

Similarly, the Aga Khan ruling established a historic first: a prime minister formally found to have breached federal ethics law. The outcome was an apology.

More recently, the ArriveCAN affair has exposed staggering procurement dysfunction—tens of millions of dollars, layers of subcontractors, missing documentation, and resistance to parliamentary disclosure. As of now, responsibility remains diffuse, and accountability elusive.

These are not isolated failures. They are the predictable result of a system where political authority is insulated from proportionate consequence. So much for Honourable politicians!

Institutions That Protect Power, Not the Public

Much of this endurance is explained by institutional design.

• Ethics commissioners can investigate and report, but not compel meaningful penalties.
• Parliamentary committees are easily stalled, filibustered, or rendered toothless by partisanship.
• Prorogation has been repeatedly used to suspend scrutiny when inquiries grow inconvenient.
• The Senate, insulated from electoral accountability, has itself become a source of scandal rather than oversight.

Even when wrongdoing is established, responsibility is often displaced downward to staffers, contractors, volunteers, or “process failures.” Authority remains intact, while accountability dissipates.

The Cost Is Not Abstract

The consequences of this culture are not merely reputational.

They are measurable:

• Billions in wasted public funds
• Eroded trust in democratic institutions
• Lower expectations of political conduct
• Cynicism replacing civic engagement

When citizens see leaders violate rules with impunity, compliance becomes moral theatre rather than civic duty. Standards collapse not because people are immoral, but because hypocrisy is corrosive.

This is particularly damaging when governments speak constantly about values, ethics, and democratic norms while failing to uphold them internally.

Authority Is Conditional, Not Sacred

Democratic authority is not an entitlement. It is temporary, conditional, and revocable. Citizens do not grant honour; they grant permission to govern, contingent upon trust, competence, and restraint.

When leaders repeatedly abuse that permission, legitimacy erodes even if elections continue on schedule.

Canada’s problem is not that scandals exist. No democracy is immune. The problem is that they rarely end careers at the top, rarely trigger structural reform, and rarely result in proportional consequences.

The system absorbs them. The public is expected to forget them.

Conclusion: A Culture That Must Be Named

From Macdonald to Trudeau, from railway contracts to digital apps, Canada’s political scandals tell a consistent story: power protects itself more reliably than it protects the public interest.

Until consequences match misconduct, until authority is paired with enforceable accountability, scandals will continue to be treated as episodic embarrassments rather than systemic warnings.

Canadians deserve better than apologies without reform, resignations without consequence, and ethics rulings without enforcement.

Democracy does not fail only when ballots are stolen. It also fails when rules exist, violations are proven, and nothing meaningful happens next.

PS

Trudeau Decade vs Prior Liberal Governments

This is an important distinction.

• Chrétien/Martin era scandals (Sponsorship, Shawinigate):
• Trudeau era scandals:

In other words:

The Trudeau Liberal decade normalized scandal survival as a governing skill.

That is new.