Friday Post

Aahh, glorious fall...

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander is throwing his hat into the ring:

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander is adding his name to those considering a run for leadership of the federal Conservative party.

"I'm actively considering a bid to lead the Conservative Party of Canada and excited by the exchanges I'm having about how to renew and reinvigorate our party," he told The Canadian Press late Thursday.

The 48-year-old former ambassador to Afghanistan was seen as a rising star when he ran for the Conservatives in the Toronto-area riding of Ajax-Pickering in 2011. Two years later, Stephen Harper brought him into the cabinet as immigration minister.

But Alexander became embroiled in controversy during last year's election campaign amid questions about the government's handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.

He was also criticized for promising, along with then-labour minister Kellie Leitch, to create a telephone tip line for "barbaric cultural practices."

Alexander ended up losing to Liberal Mark Holland in the newly created riding of Ajax. Leitch was re-elected, and is one of five registered leadership candidates.

Despite his election loss, Alexander had intended to run again for the Conservatives in 2019, believing the party could do far better than it did last October if it developed a bolder and more inclusive agenda.

Mr. Alexander was an ambassador to Afghanistan (something his dad never handed him) and though he suggested a hotline to report barbaric practices, at least he called them as such unlike some pansy China-appeasers one could mention.




John McCallum doesn't listen to Canadians:

The federal government’s own internal polling contradicts the Immigration Minister’s claim that Canadians are clamouring for increased immigration.

John McCallum told reporters last week that “almost all” of the Canadians he met with during consultations this summer told him to boost Canada’s immigration targets.

However internal polling conducted by Mr. McCallum’s department found Canadians are just fine with the current targets, even though most people had no idea how many immigrants currently come to Canada each year.

Actually, people found the target number of migrants flooding into Canada was too high.

That Canadians did not know how many immigrants come into the country each year shows how McCallum et al can pull the wool over their eyes with very little effort.


Related:

The Ontario Liberals might have a better shot at retaining their majority government if they get a new leader, a new poll suggests, even as Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to stay to fight the 2018 election.

 
The problem is that someone would still vote Liberal.




But... but... they did it, too!

After days of dogging the Liberal government over $200,000 in moving expenses approved for two top staff members in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, the Conservatives are being called onto the carpet for their own staff spending.

The Privy Council Office released figures Friday that show former prime minister Stephen Harper’s office spent almost $325,000 on moving expenses from 2006 to 2015, including $93,000 for one senior staff member. That figure was spread over three years.

It was a reprieve of sorts for the Liberals, who have been on the defensive over $207,000 in moving expenses approved for Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and his principal secretary, Gerald Butts. Overall, the Trudeau government has spent $1.1 million on relocation expenses for political staff since taking office.

That's nice.

Let's break down the entitlements so far:

The two nannies who take care of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s three young children are on track to cost Canadian taxpayers nearly $100,000 a year.

**

The flight manifest for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Christmas vacation to the Caribbean, released to the Conservatives through an access to information request, was redacted to leave off the names of family members and a nanny who travelled on the government-owned Challenger jet. ...

Canadian prime ministers are not permitted to fly on commercial flights for security reasons. The round-trip to the Caribbean destination cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars because the Challenger jet's rate is roughly $12,500 for an hour in the air.

**

Justin Trudeau took a small army of 44 people with him for a three-day visit to Washington last March, at a cost of more than $25,000.

**

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau could get additional staff to help her deal with a flood of requests, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed Thursday.

Grégoire Trudeau has one staffer now, but told Quebec City's Le Soleil earlier this week that she needs a team to help her serve people.

"I want to be everywhere, but I can't," she told the newspaper, adding she has three children and a husband who is prime minister. "I need help. I need a team to help me serve people."

**

More than $17,000 has been spent photographing Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna and her staff since the Liberals took office less than 10 months ago.

McKenna’s office points out that Conservative environment ministers who preceded her hired photographers too. They spent at least $99,000, but it was spread over eight years.

Then there is that pesky $220,000 (possibly a larger amount) for PM Gerald Butts and Katie Telford  that the Liberals think is no big deal.

But when one considers who works for a party of liars (oh, hi, Maryam Monsef), this is strictly small potatoes.

Like Justin is:

It’s a pity that, even in that forlorn venue, Trudeau was unwilling to let go of that rhetorical Linus blanket and say a few things about what is really going on in the world. He could have offered some meaningful analysis on the situation in Syria. He could have uttered some truths to those who rarely hear them. Instead, it was the usual mush about “modest Canada” and how we’re back and ready to help.

It really is time to stop bragging about how modest we are, as one cannot honestly brag about being modest. And besides, it’s unseemly. Let other countries pay testimony to our worth if they are so moved to do so. And as for diversity, yes it is a fine virtue as far as virtues go, but so are unity, coherence, national identity, fiscal competence and the rule of law. Saying the word “diversity” is not like waving a magic wand that somehow rids us of all tribulation and want. Nor is it, by any test, the only metric for a healthy and admirable society.

But it was a UN session, and perhaps it is understood that to scatter anything but clichés and self-congratulations before that august convocation would be a breach of its worthless protocols.

I want Rex Murphy to run for prime minister. Now.




The government could make things a million times easier by scrapping the taxable CPP and lowering other taxes but oh no!

So what if a new report by Morneau Shepell, the human resources firm once chaired by our current federal finance minister, finds that the new enhanced CPP doesn’t significantly tackle all that much — and, in some ways, makes our retirement system even worse. Finance Minister Bill Morneau had come to champion the enhanced CPP, too, as one that would make a “real difference in future Canadians’ situations.” But few Canadians will see more secure retirements, as calculated by Morneau Shepell’s chief actuary Fred Vettese and co-author Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald. Wynne’s own finance minister, Charles Sousa, praised the federal Liberals for delivering pension reform that showed “great leadership and great desire to do something of great benefit for our young people.”

That’s a lot of “greats,” and all of them seemingly undeserved, given that the number of middle-income workers who will no longer have “inadequate” savings after this landmark CPP change, according to Vettese and MacDonald, amounts to a modest 8.7 per cent: Previously 36.4 per cent, we will now have 27.7 per cent of middle-class Canadians inadequately prepared. But that 8.7 per cent, notice, falls within a specific “middle-income” subcategory, which itself comprises only 60 per cent of Canadians. So, in total, we have five per cent of all Canadians who might see a more secure retirement from an enhanced CPP, even though the other 95 per cent of us will have no choice but to participate.

 

Thank you:

After almost 20 years as a lawyer, including eight as a Crown prosecutor, Johnson, a Cree from northern Saskatchewan, estimates a staggering 95 per cent of his criminal cases involve people who were intoxicated.

From his base in La Ronge, Johnson says he’s amazed how many people he’s met who have suffered a brain injury as a result of getting hit with a bat, board or rock during a drunken brawl. He’s grown tired of hearing domestic violence victims utter the phrase: “When he’s sober, he’s a good guy.”

And he’s become fed up standing next to graves of people who died from alcohol; he lost two brothers to drunk drivers.

It’s time, he says, for people to stop being afraid to talk about the issue.

“If a white person uses ‘Indian’ and ‘alcohol’ in the same sentence, they’re afraid of being called racist. If an Indian says ‘Indian’ and ‘alcohol’ in the same sentence, they’re afraid people are going to point at them and say, ‘Look it’s true, they are lazy, drunken Indians,’” he told the National Post.

“I’m taking a subject and opening it up and saying we have to talk about this.”

In Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours), set for release this week by University of Regina Press, Johnson writes that while colonization and trauma from residential schools may help to explain the reasons for alcohol abuse, they don’t offer any solutions.

“If we allow ourselves to believe the victim story and we live by it, we become victims, and victims can never fix their own situations,” writes Johnson, who once worked as a logger and miner.

Perhaps it would be better to ignore wags who pose as ethicists because their expectations are not only savagely immoral but impractical and unrealistic, as well:

Authorities should bar doctors from refusing to provide such services as abortion and assisted death on moral grounds, and screen out potential medical students who might impose their values on patients, leading Canadian and British bioethicists argue in a provocative new commentary.

Mengele also operated without a moral compass ... on children.




The people of London got the mayor they voted for:

At an event in New York City called “Building Progressive, Inclusive Cities,” Sadiq Khan, London’s London mayor, met with his counterpart in the Big Apple, far-left Mayor Bill de Blasio, and explained that urban dwellers should simply get used to jihadist rampages.

Terror attacks are “part and parcel of life in a big city,” Khan told the Evening Standard just hours after police foiled multiple terror attacks in New Jersey and New York.

Imagine the mayor of London saying that when the IRA was blowing stuff up.




And now, catch the bears before they hibernate: