Friday Post

Puppies adjust to autumn better than we do.

A policeman in New York has been killed in a robbery:

A New York City police sergeant was fatally shot and a second officer was wounded in the Bronx on Friday by a heavily armed robbery suspect who was killed in the exchange of gunfire, according to authorities and local media.

The sergeant died after being rushed to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, according to media reports. He was the first city police officer killed while on duty since October 2015. The second officer, who local media said was also a sergeant, was also taken to Jacobi.

Are Canadians worse off now than a year ago?

Yes.

The economy gained 44,000 net new jobs in October but the gains were entirely in part-time employment, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The overall increase was driven by 67,000 additional part-time jobs for the month, while the number of full-time jobs fell by 23,000.

The unemployment rate held steady at 7.0 per cent as more people entered the labour market.

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Let them eat under-employment:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says Canadians should get used to so-called “job churn” — short-term employment and a number of career changes in a person’s life.

Morneau made the comment on Saturday at a meeting of the federal Liberal Party’s Ontario wing, days before he’s scheduled to deliver a fall economic update.

The remark also comes just three days after the Bank of Canada delivered bad news for the economy, downgrading the country’s growth outlook yet again.

And when asked about precarious employment the finance minister told delegates that high employee turnover and short-term contract work will continue in young people’s lives, and the government has to focus on preparing for it.

“We also need to think about, ‘How do we train and retrain people as they move from job to job to job?’ Because it’s going to happen. We have to accept that,” Morneau said during a question-and-answer session.

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Quebec has the highest debt per person at $22,769, Newfoundland & Labrador has the second highest at $21,843 per person, followed closely by Ontario at $21,629 per person. 

The combined federal and provincial debt is $35,827 for every man, woman, and child living in Canada. This represents a 41.3% increase (in nominal terms) from the combined government debt per person of $25,353 in 2007/08. 

The eight-year growth in government debt in Canada is considerable but, according to the latest government budget projections, it is far from over. Debt is poised to continue growing for the foreseeable future as several governments continue to project budgetary deficits and finance capital projects with debt.

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We are now in our seventh year of the Green Energy Act, and our province has some of the highest hydro rates in North America, with no sign of slowing down. A recent study found that the highest North American rates are now paid by low density (i.e. rural) Hydro One consumers, and the second highest rates are paid by medium density Hydro One consumers. The tragedy of this is that these are rural consumers, with lower average incomes than urban consumers, and are therefore less able to bear the costs of these high rates and dramatic increases.

These are the same people who will pay the most under the province’s new carbon tax. People in rural areas need to drive longer distances and rely on their vehicle, because there is no public transit. And lower average incomes mean there is less available cash to upgrade older homes. The government’s goal is for homeowners to upgrade their homes to make them more efficient, so the government imposed cost increases to home heating is less dramatic. But those with lower incomes with less disposable income for big upgrades are the least likely to be able to afford these big one-time purchases, and therefore bear an even bigger burden.

 

 Also:

During that election, Trudeau told Canadians that in order to fulfill his election promises, a Liberal administration would record projected deficits of $9.9 billion in 2016-17, $9.5 billion in 2017-18, $5.7 billion in 2018-2019, and a surplus of $1 billion in 2019-2020.

When Trudeau released those numbers, Harper mocked them as nonsense.

He told a rally in Hamilton, while pinching his figures together: "(Trudeau) says a modest deficit, a tiny deficit, so small you can barely see the deficit. Three modest little deficits ... We’ve gone through this before — look at the mess in Ontario with the modest deficits of the Liberal government. I guess it turns out the budget doesn’t balance itself after all.”

No, it does not.

Following the election, when the Liberals presented their first budget in March, 2016, Trudeau almost tripled his projected 2016-17 deficit to $29.4 billion, followed by $29 billion in 2017-18, $22.8 billion in 2018-19, $17.7 billion in 2019-20 and $14.3 billion in 2020-21.

Contrary to Trudeau’s pre-election prediction the budget would record a surplus of $1 billion in 2019-20, his post-election budget projected a deficit of $17.7 billion in that year and added an additional projected deficit of $14.3 billion in 2020-21.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau in his economic update added, once you crunch all the numbers, $31.7 billion more to the deficits Trudeau unveiled in the first Liberal budget less than eight months ago.

He also added yet another projected deficit of $14.6 billion in 2021-22, two years after Trudeau promised during the election his government would have a $1 billion surplus in 2019-20.

 
When does Harper's "I Was Super-Right" tour begin?





Today in civil rights-under-the-boot news:

A previously unknown unit of Canada’s intelligence service has been illegally keeping data unrelated to national security threats, the Federal Court disclosed Thursday.

In a hard-hitting ruling that was partly blacked out, Justice Simon Noel rebuked the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for not telling the court about a secret metadata program launched in 2006.

(Sidebar: not that I trust unelected judges but I digress.)


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The cornerstone of the Liberals’ promised national security reforms — parliamentary “oversight” of federal spy activities – would not allow lawmakers to scrutinize the most potentially troubling of those actions until after they’re completed, if at all.

The criticism is one of several expected to be voiced this week over Bill C-22, which will set up a committee of MPs and senators to monitor the country’s spooks.

Today in your corrupt government news:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally addressed the controversy surrounding the birthplace and citizenship of his Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef.

Not surprisingly, Trudeau defended Monsef and claimed on Thursday her critics were “spreading misinformation.”

Monsef was caught in a lie and admitted it openly knowing that she would never face punishment for it.


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Hillary Clinton’s entourage expressed annoyance that Canada’s Liberal party used an Ottawa event she appeared at as a fundraising opportunity, according to an exchange from a purportedly stolen email published by Wikileaks.

Vain people really don't like it when they are not in the spotlight.





Today in schools are baby-minding centres with imbeciles in charge news:

With any luck, someone will bring up the gender unicorn beloved by the Alberta Teachers Association as part of its “Prism Toolkit for Safe and Caring Discussions” that aim to help teachers create more gender-inclusive classrooms in high school.

That toolkit, by the way, also suggests that teachers address students in gender-neutral terms such as friends, folks or “comrades.”

True stuff, as Peterson might say, and beyond absurd. But something wackier will come down the pipe today: We are firmly in that sort of world now.

**

Queenie Yu, who ran as an independent candidate in the recent Scarborough-Rouge River byelection on a platform opposing the Liberal government’s updated sex-ed curriculum, is behind the new party.

She is running as the Stop the New Sex Ed Agenda candidate in Niagara West-Glanbrook, while Elizabeth de Viel Castel is running as the party’s candidate in Ottawa-Vanier. Those votes are set for Nov. 17.

The goal is not necessarily to win a seat, which is highly unlikely, but to send a message that opposition to the Liberal sex-ed curriculum is still alive, Yu said.

I say go big or go home.

But that's just what I think.


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Education Minister Mitzie Hunter will meet with the leadership of the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) after one of its principals shared links on Facebook that some parents and students say are offensive to Muslims. ...

The original complaints were sparked by several links shared on Sadaka's page, including one that suggested that burkas should be banned in Europe since bikinis were banned in Muslim countries and a post that promised to tell "the truth about refugees."

In another post, Sadaka shared a CNN video about Islam in Britain, adding her own comment: "This has to go viral. Share and post! Oh Lord." 

Will a stoning be imminent?





And now, don't ask why but why not:

It helps to know how the June date originated: During World War I, volunteers who wanted to support troops were charged with preparing food to deliver to soldiers on the front lines in France. The Salvation Army dispatched over 250 women there, who found that battle-tested helmets were perfect for frying up to seven doughnuts at a time.

In 1938, the Salvation Army decided to honor these proclaimed “doughnut lassies” by recognizing an annual pastry holiday that could also raise awareness (and money) for their charitable efforts. National Doughnut Day was born.

Its calendar doppelgänger is harder to trace. According to food holiday historian John Bryan Hopkins, who cataloged several fringe holidays for his site Foodimentary beginning in 2006, mentions of the November Doughnut Day could be found as early as the 1930s in copies of Ladies' Home Journal. Hopkins speculated that the November 5 date is close enough to Veterans Day on November 11 that a retail outlet likely introduced the date to acknowledge their service.