Michael Taube: Canadian politics is not immune to George Santos-like behaviour

Many Canadians, like others around the world, have had a good laugh about George Santos. He’s the freshman New York Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives whose résumé is chock-full of lies about his academic credentials, work skills and life.

Yet, should we really be guffawing at his disgraceful behaviour? While we’ve never had anyone quite like Santos in Canadian politics, we’ve definitely had some politicians who have displayed George Santos-like memory problems.

Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College and New York University, but only has a high school equivalency diploma. He claimed to have worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but was actually employed at the Dish Network in customer service along with Harbor City Capital Corp., which was closed down in April 2021 (just after he left) for having run what the SEC called a “classic Ponzi scheme.”

The newbie House Representative, who is Brazilian and Catholic, claimed to have biracial roots through an African father, and Ukrainian Jewish heritage through his maternal grandparents. Neither claim is accurate, although we found out in an interview he never said “Jewish,” but rather “Jew-ish.”

Santos, who claims to be openly gay, never mentioned he was once married to a woman in either his successful 2022 campaign or unsuccessful 2020 campaign in that district. He apparently had an operation for a brain tumour that no hospital has any record of. His residential claims remain a mystery, with a trail of evictions, unpaid rent and property damage. He was charged with cheque fraud while living in Brazil, where local authorities are seeking to reopen the case.

He was charged with cheque fraud in Brazil

Is Santos the first U.S. politician to have ever lied about a résumé or background? Of course not.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal falsely claimed about serving in Vietnam, and Elizabeth Warren exaggerated about having Native American heritage. Both Democratic senators were forced to apologize.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone worse than Santos, however.

As for Canada, we’ve had a few Santos-lite experiences.

Remember Jag Bhdauria? The Liberals would probably like to forget about him.

Bhaduria ran under the federal Liberal party banner against Progressive Conservative Bill Attewell in the old Toronto-area riding of Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville in 1988, and lost decisively. He tried again in 1993, and beat Attewell during the Liberals’ near-sweep of every Ontario riding.

His political downfall began shortly thereafter.

The Liberals would probably like to forget about him

First, he apologized to Parliament on Jan. 24, 1994, after the Toronto Sun unearthed two threatening letters he had sent out in his former role as a teacher. In 1989, after being rejected for the position of vice-principal 39 times, Bhaduria had written to Toronto Board of Education directors to say that Marc Lépine, who had murdered 14 women at École Polytechnique de Montréal a few days prior, “should have lined up you and your crony superintendents and shot all of you.”

Within days of this revelation, discrepancies in his résumé were revealed. He claimed to hold an LL.B. (Int) from the University of London. While some believed “Int” meant “intermediate,” no such distinction apparently existed at this university and he had dropped out of its law program.

Bhaduria claimed he never said he was a lawyer, and never acknowledged any wrong-doing in this matter. Due to this controversy and questions surrounding his University of Toronto degree, he was forced to resign from the Liberal caucus. He refused to leave his seat, which caused a mini-uproar and led to the Reform Party’s support for recall legislation. Bhaduria sat as an Independent Liberal for the rest of the parliamentary session, and was crushed in his 1997 re-election bid.

There’s also Kevin Vuong. The Liberals would probably like to forget about him, too.

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Vuong was acclaimed as the Liberal candidate for Spadina-Fort York on Aug. 13, 2021. The son of Vietnamese refugees, he held an LL.M. from University of Toronto, was an entrepreneur and political commentator on Toronto’s Newstalk 1010, and served in the Naval Reserve with a rank of acting sub-lieutenant.

He seemed like a safe choice. That is, until the Toronto Star revealed he’d been charged with sexual assault in 2019. Those charges were later dropped, but Vuong never disclosed this legal matter during the candidate vetting process — which is what you’re supposed to do. The Liberals asked him to “pause” his campaign on Sept. 16, and dropped him as a candidate two days later. It was too late to remove his name and party affiliation from the ballot, and he ended up winning the riding.

Vuong was fined $500 by the Royal Canadian Navy last July for not disclosing the sexual assault charge. Many residents, along with his predecessor, former Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, urged him to resign. He refused, and currently sits as an Independent MP.

Bhaduria and Vuong obviously aren’t carbon copies of Santos. Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s controversy about his actual job title in the insurance industry, and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s multiple ethics violations, aren’t of the same flavour, either.

But if you really think that Canada is somehow immune from this Pinocchio-like political disease, think again. We’re not, and that’s no lie.

National Post

Michael Taube, a columnist for Troy Media and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.