Ethics ruling seems right to me.

The review into the WE Charity scandal interestingly ended exactly as predicted; Trudeau cleared and Morneau... not so.

A lot of people are crying foul. But, they are admittedly opposition party members and their "definition" of "ethics" and conception of a violation thereof are driven by more by who is being blamed than the substance of the allegations.

To put it simply, Trudeau played no direct role in the contract. So, while he may not have explicitly recused himself, this fact alone makes a ruling of an ethics violation all the more difficult. But, the other problems are that his relationships with the WE charity were not pertinent to the allegations.

Firstly, he received no gifts. And, neither did his family. His wife, mother and brother were paid in exchange for services. And also, none of these incidents occurred while the contract was being discussed.

So, the existence of an ethics violation is unlikely and the ability to have pinned one of the PM, even had one existed would have been exceedingly unlikely. 

Morneau on the other hand has 2 MASSIVE conflicts of interest. He had received what gifts from the organization and his daughter worked for them.

Honestly, the biggest mistake Trudeau made was not firing him.

Should Trudeau have recused himself? Honestly, it is difficult to say. I suppose I would say yes, simply because he seemed aware that his previous relationships had the potential to look bad and his level of involvement on the case would have already been quite low. In short, he didn't need to be a part of the process to begin with.

But, not really for any other reason. 

Morneau on the other hand was in the exact opposite situation. Large sums of money were involved and he was the Finance Minister. He certainly would have played a legitimate role in things. None of that excuses anything. His ties were too glaring to overlook and it is hard to believe that he was unaware of this. And, even if he were indispensable to certain aspects of the proceedings I think it would have been possible to recuse himself at least from the majority of the process.

And, it is specifically because his violations were so egregious and obvious that it makes Trudeau's refusal to fire him all the more perplexing. A lot of times political leaders are purely scapegoating ministers. But, this time it was actually merited.

But then, I'm not surprised. The Trudeau government seems completely inept at managing themselves. Every single scandal thus far had rather clear paths to much cleaner outcomes. Honestly, they don't need the opposition slinging mud during elections, I think they hurt themselves more. And while I'm certainly glad that the Convservatives didn't win the last election... I'm shocked. I think Trudeau managed to walk away from the prior term looking more than crap enough to be replaced.