(Insert Title Here)

Damn your black heart, global warming!

Sure, Justin. Sure:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday took his firmest stance yet in support of the Trans Mountain pipeline, saying after an emergency meeting with the B.C. and Alberta premiers that his government would introduce financial and legislative backing to ensure the project goes ahead.

“We are going to get the pipeline built. It is a project in the national interest,” Trudeau said. “We will not have the discussions in public, but this project will go ahead.”

These discussions:

Prior to the 2015 federal election, when the National Energy Board (NEB) was subjected to unremitting pressures from local and international activists, many polls indicated that Canadians viewed NEB decisions as reflecting the national interest. That was until Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader then running for prime minister, asserted that the NEB was “broken” and in need of “modernization,” a view held by many in the vocal NGO community. After he won, several individuals from prominent NGOs assumed senior positions in his new government. Fast forward to 2018, and we now have Bills C-68 and C-69 to “enact the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) and the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER) Act.” ...

Contrary to government assertions, the proposed legislation introduces regulatory uncertainties and may exacerbate regulatory delays. The legislation introduces untested assessment processes while deferring final project decisions to cabinet.

These delays:

"The prime minister is saying they are in negotiations with Kinder Morgan to ensure an end to uncertainty. What he is ignoring is that we are the uncertainty," said Will George, an organizer with Protect the Inlet from Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, in a press release Sunday. "We will not be bought and we will block this pipeline."

This potentially election-blowing pipeline (not the Energy East one, for some reason) has put Justin on the melodrama defensive.

I guarantee one that this pipeline will not be built under Hair-Boy.


It may cost him a few votes but he'll make up for it this way:

Internal data prepared by the Immigration Department for a committee of deputy ministers suggests a majority of Canadians supports current immigration levels, but this support drops when they are informed of how many immigrants actually arrive every year.

(Sidebar: did it never occur to the Canadian voter to ask how migrants will be housed, fed and provided jobs before letting them in to the country? No?)


Further:

I wonder how the public would feel if they knew the real total intake for 2016 was 848,000 people and not 260,000 as the poll claims.

Even the number of permanent residents was off as a perusal of the latest report to Parliament by The Honourable Ahmed D. Hussen, PC., M.P. Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship will attest to.

In 2016, Canada welcomed more than 296,000 permanent residents, which is close to our new, ongoing target of 300,000 that we aim to achieve in 2017.

In 2018 the government hopes to reach between 290,00 and 310,000 and in 2019 as many as 350,000 permanent residents.

But even that doesn’t tell the full story, which we can find in the report to Parliament on the 2016 numbers.

296,000 permanent residents, this includes 62,000 refugees
286,000 temporary foreign workers
266,000 international students
TOTAL: 848,000

That is a far cry from the 260,000 that the immigration officials put in the poll. Now some might say they are temporary and some of the workers, especially agricultural workers, only stay here part of the year. Others though stay for years at a time. As for students, they are encouraged to get Canadian experience and stay here with preferential treatment.

Oh, it gets better:

After four decades, the federal government is getting rid of rules that turned away would-be immigrants with intellectual or physical disabilities, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said Monday.

The government will no longer be allowed to reject permanent resident applications from those with serious health conditions or disabilities.

To wit:

A group of parents with children on the autism spectrum is preparing to take legal action against the Quebec government and its school boards. As Gloria Henriquez reports, the parents say their children are being discriminated against.

It isn't just craven vote-stacking; it's contempt for the average Canadian who pays into a system and regards himself as a Canadian.

Any Canadian who tolerates this deserves every moment of misery he or she has coming to him or her and it will come.

Vote the b@$#@rds out of office.


And:

The Quebec government says it is facing the prospect of even more asylum seekers entering the province from the United States this year and wants the federal government to come up with a plan to deal with the influx.

The number so far this year has tripled to 6,074 from about 2,000 during the same period in 2017 and is forecast to increase significantly this summer, Immigration Minister David Heurtel said Monday.

"Even the numbers we're getting from the federal government show us that the situation is different, there's going to be more asylum seekers, so we need a new plan," he said.

Heurtel said projections suggest there will be up to 400 crossings a day this summer, compared to 250 in 2017.

He noted that the ball is in Ottawa's court and that he will meet with federal officials Wednesday to discuss the matter.

 
This must be embarrassing:

During that latest foreign trip (this time to Peru for the Summit of the Americas), Justin Trudeau took a moment to wave to the adoring crowds as he boarded his airplane.

Trudeau often waves as he boards his airplane, and this time seemed no different.

Except, there was nobody there, as can be seen in photos recently shared on Twitter.

This might have something to do with it:

After all, the last time he intervened in an impasse it didn’t to so well for him. Remember ‘Elbowgate’, when Trudeau decided to help out the Conservative whip who was being delayed to a vote by three NDP members? Trudeau jumped into his phone booth and came out in his superhero costume, but instead of leaping tall buildings, he allegedly murmured obscenities while manhandling members of Parliament in his rush to solve what he perceived as an affront. He ended up apologizing in the House a number of times.

Now here he is again attempting to solve something else by trying to force somebody with his will and his government’s brawn. But like that incident, he doesn’t seem to realize he can step back. Sometimes diplomacy and compromise work better than threats and bluster, especially in complex matters that require a full understanding of options and facts — something that seems to be lacking on all sides in this debate.

He’s wading into a situation where a land locked province with a new refinery lining out is threatening to block the movement of their own product out of the province. Meanwhile B.C. sits on the water and often brings in almost twice as much product from outside the country as Alberta sends out. Notley’s threat sounds very Trumpian, threatening to shoot herself in the foot. Stand back and assess the reality of where we are, please.

But Trudeau seems to have that same, singular focus as in the boxing ring: that focus to make a thing happen, to be a winner without thinking through what his non-pugilistic options are or even if the problem is what he thinks it is.

He has his father's arrogance.

It's the Canadian chaebol way.




A reminder - Justin thought it was "disgusting" to prioritise Yazidis and Christians as refugees:

At one point during the peak of the conflict, there were nearly 7,000 non-Muslim females captured by ISIS. Currently, there are an estimated 1,500 Christian and Yazidi girls and women still in captivity in Iraq and Syria, while 1,000 others are missing. After their defeat in Raqqa, ISIS jihadists reportedly moved most of the captive females to other areas under their control in eastern Homs and southern Damascus. Others are believed to have been sold to sex traffickers in Turkey.

With the anti-ISIS campaign gradually dwindling, many Christian and Yazidi groups fear that discovering the fate of those girls and women still in ISIS captivity is becoming even more difficult. It is an issue that the international community cannot ignore.

Moscow denies that it will or that it has tampered with evidence relating to a gas attack that killed many in Syria:

The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.

This sounds terribly familiar:

Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled Monday against the parents of a terminally ill toddler who sought permission to take him to Italy for medical treatment that lower U.K. courts blocked in favour of suspending life support.

The parents of 23-month-old Alfie Evans have been engaged in a protracted legal fight with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital over his care. They asked the Court of Appeal to overturn earlier rulings that blocked further medical treatment for their son.

Instead, justices upheld a lower court’s conclusion that flying Alfie to a hospital in Rome would be wrong and pointless.

Oh, dear. The Narrative:

The Canadian Association of University Teachers wants you to believe that racialized professors are “Underrepresented and Underpaid” on campus. That’s the title they gave their new report, which delves into 2016 Census data.

“The data is revealing but comes as no surprise,” laments York University professor Pat Armstrong in the press release. “We can and must do better to address discrimination in employment at Canada’s universities and colleges.”

The data are revealing alright. But rather than showing widespread discrimination against non-whites, it actually shows the opposite: not only is the racial makeup of Canada’s professoriate now almost perfectly matched to the national labour force, but the data suggest universities have discriminated heavily against white academics to get there.

Consider what ought to be the headline number, which is glossed over in the report. The Census showed that 21.1 per cent of university instructors in 2016 were non-white. That’s exactly the same percentage (21.1) of the Canadian labour force aged 25 to 74 who were non-white that year. White people are no longer overrepresented overall in academia.

But it's the truth! :

The complaint filed with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal alleges that Neufeld negatively affected teachers' work environments by calling those who support transgender students "child abusers."

It claims Neufeld has referred to trans people as part of a "biologically absurd theory," and that his statements paint trans people as "ill, delusional and suggests that there is a transgender agenda that will harm children."

Gerald Stanley pleads guilty to unsafe storage of a firearm:

A Saskatchewan farmer acquitted in the fatal shooting of a young Indigenous man is giving up his guns and has been ordered to pay a $3,000 fine after pleading guilty to unsafe storage of an unrestricted firearm.

Gerald Stanley pleaded guilty Monday in North Battleford provincial court to the charge that involved six rifles and shotguns. The Crown said none of them had trigger locks.

The Crown dropped a second count of unsafe storage of a restricted handgun.

Stanley was acquitted in the death of 22-year-old Colten Boushie, who was shot and killed on Stanley’s farm in August 2016.

Bad dog!:

This pup may look like a perp, but the Ontario Provincial Police say Finn’s criminal record remains clean despite his brief run-in with cops in Kenora, Ont., over the weekend.

A tweeted image of Finn in the back of an OPP cruiser shows the stern-faced dog peering through bars after he was accused of chasing deer near Lake of the Woods.

How could anyone stay mad at that face?




(Merci beaucoup)