Mid-Week Post

Thirteen more shopping days until spring ...




Oh, dear. This India family vacation business just isn't going away:

The atmosphere at the reception at the residence of Nadir Patel, the Canadian High Commissioner to India, was more like “spring break” than a formal diplomatic party, according to one attendee, who said there was so much heavy drinking that the bar ran out of Crown Royal within the first hour.

Two eyewitnesses invited to the reception, both of whom requested their names not be used, say there was also a brouhaha at the gates of the residence, when a group of young Sikh men poured out of a couple of cars and charged past those in the lineup.

One eyewitness says greeting the party-crashers, was Brampton, Ont., MP Raj Grewal and at least one of his assistants.

The eyewitness, who was near the front of the line and knows Grewal by sight, said the MP was arguing with an RCMP officer, who grew visibly upset as Grewal apparently insisted the men be let in.

In an email, Grewal flatly denied being embroiled in a commotion at the gate, and said he’d not helped anyone enter the party without an invitation. “Guests at the reception had invitations and were processed at registration,” he said last week.

The eyewitness account was supported by a second eyewitness, who was also in the line, though this man didn’t know the person who appeared to be helping the group.

The most "transparent" government in the country's history has, once again, been caught in a lie in who and what influences its policies and behaviour. If it isn't Chinese businessmen who donate thousands of dollars to the Trudeau Foundation or good, old "Uncle K.", it's now Sikh gentlemen of some dubious bent: 

Until Feb. 27, Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole and Manitoba MP Candice Bergen were expected to move a motion in the Commons asking the House to “value the contributions of Canadian Sikhs and Canadians of Indian origin in our national life,” but also to condemn all forms of terrorism “including Khalistani extremism and the glorification of any individuals who have committed acts of violence to advance the cause of an independent Khalistani state in India.” 

Then on Wednesday evening, I received (as part of a WhatsApp message) the following message: “Tomorrow, the Conservative Party of Canada is planning to use precious time in the House of Commons to force a debate on condemning ‘Khalistani Terrorism.’ Instead of using House of Commons time for things that will actually help people’s lives, they are targeting the Sikh community and tarnishing us as extremists.” 

Of course, the Conservative motion was doing no such thing. On the contrary the motion called on the house to “value the contributions of Canadian Sikhs and Canadians of Indian origin in our national life.”

Over the night hundreds of members of these Sikh groups bombarded Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer with phone calls and emails, threatening to bar Conservative politicians from entering Sikh temples if the motion was introduced.

Early Thursday, the Conservative resolve had dissolved. They decided not to proceed with the motion. 

It seems that though the Liberals are willing to be bought, the Tories are willing to bend.


Also:

Back in the 1980s, Jaspal Atwal was one of the nastier characters in the Sikh separatist Khalistan movement, which at the time was bullying and intimidating the Sikhs at their gurdwaras in Surrey, Vancouver and New Westminster. Atwal first came to my attention from conversations during visits with my friend Tara Singh Hayer. He was the editor of the Indo-Canadian Times in Surrey, and he’d developed a habit of bravely talking back to the Khalistanis.

In 1986, Atwal was arrested with three accomplices on a Vancouver Island backroad after firing two bullets into Punjab cabinet minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu, who was visiting family in Tahsis. Atwal had shadowed the car Sidhu was travelling in, all the way from the Sikh Temple Sukh Sagar in New Westminster, where Sidhu had been celebrating the wedding of a nephew.

It’s not just that the Sikh Temple Sukh Sagar happened to be right out my kitchen window, or that I ended up covering Atwal’s trial for the Vancouver Sun. Atwal was a member of the terrorist-listed International Sikh Youth Federation, and it just so happened that its leader, Amrik Singh, had insisted on acting as my interpreter two years before the Sidhu ambush, while I was interviewing various Khalistani holy warriors in Amritsar, Punjab. At the time, Khalistani militias, most notably Babbar Khalsa, had transformed Amritsar’s Golden Temple Complex, the Sikh Vatican, into a heavily fortified barracks, arms depot and terrorist command centre. But that’s not the half of it.

On June 21, 1985, I said goodbye to my Uncle Phil and my cousins in the town of Midleton, County Cork, after paying them a visit. Two days later, in London, the television news was suddenly awash with the horror of the Kanishka, a Boeing 747 passenger plane, Air India Flight 182 out of Toronto, bound for New Delhi. It had fallen into the sea in pieces off the Irish coast, west of Cork Harbour, out towards the Sheep’s Head Peninsula. There had been 329 people on board, almost all of them Canadians, mostly from the Toronto area. More than 80 were children. Six were babies.

 
There is no reason to believe that leftists are irrational, narcissistic fascists prone to violence.

Oh, no:

Police say a 38-year-old woman was arrested near Queen’s University in Kingston Monday evening.

She’s charged with mischief, assaulting police, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and for carrying a concealed weapon. ...

Police say the woman, who isn’t a student at Queen’s, stood on one of the building’s window ledges during the protest and started to bang on the window, causing it to break and cutting her hand.

They say she fled the scene but was stopped nearby by plain-clothes officers, who had to bring in extra officers when the woman became violent during her arrest.

Police add that the woman also tried to kick out the cruiser’s window while she was being transported to police headquarters.

Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.

Also:

Right now, University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson is the world’s most-read Canadian author. Given that he also narrates his own audiobooks, it’s possible he may currently be buzzing through more earbuds than any other Canadian voice.

Although he first rose to international prominence as an opponent of gender-neutral pronouns, Peterson’s new book, 12 Rules for Life, is largely his take on what is most “valuable” in life. And it is tearing up the charts, with Penguin Random House already deeming it one of their top performers.

Good:

The not guilty verdict in the trial of Gerald Stanley will stand, after the Crown announced it will not appeal his acquittal in the shooting death of Colten Boushie.

Prosecutors had 30 days following the Feb. 9 verdict to file an appeal in the case. On Wednesday in Regina, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Anthony Gerein announced the public prosecutions office saw “no basis” for doing so.

“The Crown cannot appeal because some people have questions about how the investigation was done or what the lawyers did,” Gerein told reporters.

“I know there is much sadness over the decision not to appeal,” he continued. “That is unfortunate, but there can be no appeal because the law does not allow it.”

Also - do aboriginal children need an advocate because so many of them end up like Phoenix Sinclair? :

First Nations in Saskatchewan want their own advocate for Indigenous children in care — a move supported by the province's appointee. 

"I myself am First Nations and I believe our First Nation people have the ability, have the knowledge, have the experience, have the inherent right to take care of our own children," said Saskatchewan Advocate for Children and Youth Corey O'Soup.

The children's advocate is an independent office that deals with issues related to children in the care of a provincial ministry or agency. It performs a mix of public education, research, advocacy and investigations. 

"Right now our First Nations are transitioning to taking over their own child and family services and their child welfare system. I think this would be just the next step," O'Soup said.

As of last December, there were 5,248 children in the province's care — 3,785 of whom were Indigenous.

It's just money:

The Department of National Defence needs an extra $54 million just so it can examine the bids from companies hoping to build it a new fleet of warships — an indication of the growing expense of a program that has more than tripled in cost over the years.

The funds are not earmarked for anything to do with the actual construction of the ships, but instead to fund DND’s evaluation of the the bids this year — and they would be in addition to the $39 million the department has already received to review the bids, according to defence sources.

Also:

The Ontario government’s budget will not be balanced when it is delivered on March 28, the finance minister said Wednesday, reversing a key Liberal promise as the province prepares for a spring election.

This is why Tanya Granic Allen, Doug Ford and others seem incredibly attractive to the jaded voter.

Wynne will have to fork over some serious cash to the teachers for this one.



 
Justin embellishes everything about him and his cohorts because, if the plain truth were known, it would make one an enormous loser to vote for them:

For the second time in two days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touted the credentials of Science Minister Kirsty Duncan by saying she is a “Nobel Prize-winning scientist.”

There’s just one problem — she is not. ...

During her time as science minister, Duncan has been a vocal advocate for getting more women and girls into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and has led a portfolio largely free of the controversies and critiques that have plagued some other members of the Trudeau cabinet.

According to her official biography on the Government of Canada website, she also “served on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

That is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says individuals who worked on its prize-winning research should be attributed.

Just like pretending to teach law when one hasn't.

But what are a few lies among voters?


(Merci beaucoup)




Taking the prize in tasteless:

A Montreal woman who sparked outrage after she and other citizens wore yellow badges on their clothing at a borough council meeting to protest the Jewish community's use of school buses in her neighbourhood says she's the real victim.

Despite being told by residents the yellow square on her shirt evoked the Holocaust — when European Jews were forced to wear yellow stars under the Nazi regime — Ginette Chartre said in an interview Tuesday she wouldn't stop wearing it.

"(The Jews) always bring up their painful past," she said. "They do it to muzzle us. We're wearing the yellow square because the school buses are yellow.

No, you're just being terrible.

 

A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with nerve agent:

A nerve agent was used to deliberately poison a former Russian double agent and his daughter, Britain's top counter-terrorism officer said on Wednesday, in a case that threatens to further damage London's ties with Moscow.

Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English city of Salisbury on Sunday afternoon.

Both remain critically ill and a police officer who attended the scene is also in a serious condition in hospital.

Just in time for International Women's Day, a holiday as rooted in fact as Kwanzaa:

A Tehran prosecutor says a woman who removed her obligatory Islamic headscarf in public in late December has been sentenced to 24 months in prison.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency on Wednesday quoted prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying the unidentified woman took off her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Street to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public.”

In February, police detained 29 women who removed their headscarves as part of an anti-hijab campaign known as “White Wednesdays."

Western white feminists will be over this.

Any day now.

Soon.

(source)

This may come as a total shock to most people but the Easter Bunny is - how can one say? - a tad fictitious:

An Ontario child welfare agency placed promoting belief in the Easter Bunny above preventing possible trauma when it removed two girls from a foster home because the Christian couple refused to lie about the bunny’s existence, an Ontario judge ruled.

In a stinging indictment of the actions of the Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, a court judgment declared the CAS violated the foster parent’s right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression when the children were taken from their home and their fostering agreement terminated over the Easter Bunny dilemma.

Derek and Frances Baars, who lived in Hamilton at the time but have since moved to Edmonton, sued the Children’s Aid Society last year, saying a CAS worker insisted they proactively tell two girls in their care, aged three and four, the Easter Bunny was genuine, despite the couple’s belief that all lying is wrong.

The Baars sought no money, only a court declaration their rights were violated and that they not be blackballed from future fostering.

This is what happens when you let idiots be in charge of important institutions.

Many people choose to let their children believe in fictions because they are children. Some elect not to. That is in the purview of parents.

I can think of far worse things to tell children than a gigantic lagomorph that leaves Easter eggs is not real.