For a Tuesday

Yep...




Once more, the Ontario government finds ways to ruin small businesses:

Businesses in Ontario are spooked by the wide scope of possible changes to the province's labour and employment laws. 

The Liberal government is about to receive recommendations that could lead to the most significant reforms to Ontario's employment laws since the 1990s.

Mandatory sick pay, shifting the threshold for overtime, boosting the minimum paid vacation, advance scheduling, and making it easier to join a union are all under consideration. 

"We're challenging whether or not such sweeping reforms are necessary," said Karl Baldauf, vice-president of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Its 60,000 members employ some two million people in the province.

"We have to make sure that you're not putting businesses in a position where they will actually be less inclined to hire or less inclined to expand as a result of new, onerous regulations," Baldauf said in an interview with CBC News. 

Baldauf met with Ontario's Labour Minister Kevin Flynn on Monday to urge the government not to make changes without solid evidence about the costs and benefits. 

 
Is it contempt for businessmen? Is it incompetence?

I say a mixture of both.

The manufacturing sector has all but disappeared from Ontario due to its horrendous energy policies. That the government sees fit to drain what little money small businesses can make has to be a cross between malice and stupidity. De-fanging unions, competitive salaries and fewer things like paid sick leave would actually make the private sector grow and - you know- re-build this province.

Crazy ideas, I know.

This chart shows how prices will change if wages are hiked to $15 an hour. There should be a similar chart showing who loses jobs because of that wage hike.

Also:

Will the carbon tax reduce the amount of Alberta’s emissions? Perhaps. In principle yes — put a tax on something and people will buy less of it, all else being equal. Part of the reason that energy demand in Ontario has gone down is because the price of energy has risen rapidly, though not due to a tax, but rather massive mismanagement of energy policy.

One could argue that carbon taxes are part and parcel of that mismanagement. One runs out of money, one invents a crisis, one demands money to deal with that crisis, a new crisis emerges.

Rinse, repeat.




And:

Irving Shipbuilding officials were recently in Ottawa making a pitch to the Liberal government to provide the company with more work to deal with the “gap” that will emerge between major projects such as the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships and the upcoming Canadian Surface Combatants. Without that extra work, Irving officials suggested they might have to lay off employees. “Significant layoffs” was the term being used.

Then came Andrea Gunn of the Chronicle Herald newspaper in Halifax, who broke several stories about how Irving Shipbuilding was hiring outside of Canada for various positions. There was recruitment in Poland, reported Gunn.

She followed that up with an article about a subcontract Irving has with the Spanish firm Gabadi LC – that involves Spanish carpenters brought in to work on the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships in Halifax.

Irving has now issued a statement that the suggestion by the Chronicle Herald that Irving is hiring outside of Canada for positions that could be filled by Canadians is “false.”

It’s a strange response from Irving.

Actually, it isn't.

It's always about money.




Oh, I'll bet they are:

A high-level North Korean delegation arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday seeking the body of leader Kim Jong Un’s half brother, the victim of a nerve-agent attack that many suspect the North itself of orchestrating.

The body of Kim Jong Nam, killed Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpur’s airport, is at the centre of a heated diplomatic battle between North Korea and Malaysia. North Korea opposed Malaysian officials even conducting an autopsy, while Malaysia has resisted giving up the body without getting DNA samples and confirmation from next of kin.

The delegation includes Ri Tong Il, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations, who told reporters Tuesday outside the North Korean Embassy that the diplomats were in Malaysia to retrieve the body and seek the release of a North Korean arrested in the case. He said the delegation also wants “development of the friendly relationship” between North Korea and Malaysia.

 
Muhammad Parvez, the man who murdered his sixteen year old daughter, Aqsa, is dead:

Parvez was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in the death of his daughter, Aqsa, in Mississauga. He began serving his sentence in June 2010.

His son, Waqas, 26, was also sentenced to life for second-degree murder. Both the father and the son pleaded guilty.

But did they feel guilty?

Smart money says no.




It is Islamophobic to decry anti-semitism from prominent imams:

A Montreal mosque where an imam had prayed for Jews to be killed “one by one” is facing fresh calls for an investigation after more videos surfaced online showing anti-Semitic preaching.

The Middle East Media Research Institute released a video on Tuesday of sermons in which an imam at the Al Andalous Islamic Centre conveyed conspiracy theories about Jews, their history and their origins.

Sheikh Wael Al-Ghitawi is shown in the video clips claiming that Jews were “people who slayed the prophets, shed their blood and cursed the Lord,” reported MEMRI, which translated the Friday sermons.

That must be embarrassing to people who insist that guys like these are as gentle as basketfuls of kittens.


There is a reason why motions like Motion 37 and Motion 103 exist.





Deporting troublesome individuals would save the courts dilemmas like these:

Five separate decisions by the Immigration and Refugee Board to release an imprisoned refugee — who is considered a danger for sexual assault and randomly attacking people on the street — have been overturned by the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, revealing growing conflict over how to handle violent refugees who cannot be deported.

In overruling release decisions for a man who has been in prison for more than three years because he won’t co-operate with his deportation, Chief Justice Paul S. Crampton issued a call to reconcile “the tensions in this court’s jurisprudence” on the thorny issue.

He landed soundly on the side of detention.

To do otherwise, he wrote, “would have the perverse effect of rewarding the detainee for his failure to co-operate with his removal.”

Such immigration conundrums are emerging with increasing frequency, with each individual case appearing as a bizarre oddity where a refugee is ordered out of Canada but cannot be deported.

As the cases accumulate, however, the IRB and the Federal Court are grappling with how long an unremovable non-citizen can be incarcerated before the government throws in the towel and lets him out.

Is one an environmentalist if one abandons puppies to the elements?

As officers moved in, and protesters moved out, garbage wasn’t the only thing abandoned.

Two dogs and six puppies were found and rescued at the main Dakota Access Pipeline Camp by furry Friends Rockin Rescue.

The rescue has been working hard to catch ALL the animals that were left behind at the camp, but Furry Friends Rockin Rescue isn’t giving up on these abandoned pets.

Puppy-hating b@$#@rds.





An Inuit veteran's memoirs are finally published:

Eddy Weealtuk was born on Strutton Island in James Bay in 1932. As was the practice at the time, the government of Canada issued him what was called an Eskimo disc number. His was E9-422. It was engraved on a small, metal disc and was to be worn at all times.

He grew up thinking Inuit weren’t allowed to leave the north. This wasn’t quite true, but an understandable assumption based on way his people were treated by the government: why would he have to wear a number if not as a means of restricting movement? But Weetaltuk wanted adventure, so he snuck out, changed his name to Eddy Vital to throw off pursuit that wasn’t coming, and eventually joined the army.

They gave him a new number – SC-17515 – as well as all the adventure a young man could want: shipping him to fight in the Korean War, Japan and occupied Germany, where he ended up with another number – Detainee 24 – after running afoul of the military police. After returning home, Weetaltuk decided his was a story worth telling, which began the four-decades long process of getting this book into print.

In 1975, Weetaltuk submitted the manuscript, as well as a handful of drawings, to the National Museum of Man. They were interested in it, but wanted him to add scenes of traditional Inuit life (presumably because, at the time, you couldn’t have a book by an Inuit author without dog sleds and whaling). Weetlaltuk complied, the Museum dithered, lost the drawings for a time, and eventually archived the manuscript.

(Sidebar: I'm sure there are any number of multicultural fetishists who would feel the same way.)





Archaeologists in Iraq are rushing to preserve what remains of ancient ruins and artefacts ISIS partially destroyed:

Archeologists documenting ISIL’s destruction of the ruins of the tomb of the prophet Jonah say they have made an unexpected discovery that could help our understanding of the world’s first empire.

The Nebi Yunus shrine — containing what Muslims and Christians believe to be the tomb of Jonah, as he was known in the Bible, or Yunus in the Qur’an — was blown up by ISIL militants soon after they seized swaths of northern Iraq in 2014.

The shrine is on top of a hill in eastern Mosul called Nebi Yunus — one of two mounds that form part of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. The Iraqi army retook the area from ISIL last month, revealing the extensive damage wrought by the jihadists.

Local archeologists say ISIL also dug tunnels deep under the demolished shrine and into a previously undiscovered and untouched 600 BC palace.

Inside one of the tunnels, Layla Salih, an Iraqi archeologist, discovered a marble cuneiform inscription of King Esarhaddon thought to date back to the Assyrian empire in 672 BC.