Monday Post

This just in:

Police have confirmed nine people are dead and 16 are injured after a van rammed into a crowd of people walking on Yonge Street in north Toronto. ...

The suspect attempted to flee and then pointed at what is believed to be a weapon at the police:

A van struck and killed nine pedestrians Monday afternoon in north Toronto and fled the scene, Canadian police said. Sixteen others were injured in the incident. Authorities said the van has been found and the driver was in custody. Police Constable Jenifferjit Sidhu said authorities do not yet know the cause or reason for the collision.

CBS News sources identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25.

U.S. law enforcement sources told CBS News that the incident appears to be a deliberate act. 

Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale said it was too soon to say whether the crash was a case of international terrorism. He said Canada has not changed its terrorism alert level and he has no information that would suggest a need to do so.

This Ralph Goodale:

On Monday, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel accused PM Justin Trudeau of hiding the number of fighters who have returned, asking for an exact count. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stood up to offer the response: “in the order of 60.”

That was the number that hit the headlines and got Canadians talking. But it’s far from accurate. The first clue comes from reading Goodale’s full remark: “As the director of CSIS indicated before a parliamentary committee some months ago, the number of returns known to the Government of Canada is in the order of 60, and they are under very careful investigation.”

Some months ago? Try more than a year and a half ago.

 
Video of the aftermath, including the suspect.

 
More to come.




The Liberals are so arrogant that they don't feel they need to explain to Canadians how much carbon taxes will cost them:

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre will ask the House of Commons this week to force the government to show Canadians how much more they can expect to pay for gas, heat and groceries once every Canadian will be charged a $50 per tonne carbon tax.

Poilievre says he knows the government has the information because access to information requests he filed produced a finance department memo that says there is an analysis of the potential impact of a carbon price, based on household consumption data across different income levels.

However, he says the actual data from the analysis is blacked out.

From the most "transparent" government in the country's history.




Nova Scotia gave the federal Liberals valuable seats in the 2015 election. That is why it can drill for oil and Alberta and Saskatchewan can't build pipelines or refuse to pay carbon taxes:

Federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna is defending BP Canada’s plans to drill a deep-water exploration well roughly 330 kilometres off the coast of Halifax.

This comes one day after the oil and gas company was granted approval by the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB).

Also:

The federal cabinet gave the green light to both Trans Mountain and Line 3 — the largest project in the history of Enbridge — on the same day in November 2016. And while work on Line 3 has already started on the Canadian side of the border, the regulatory agency tasked with approving construction through Minnesota has so far held off granting necessary permissions amid intense local opposition.

If Enbridge fails to secure a state permit and route approval, Line 3 could join the list of other major natural resources projects approved by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that have failed to launch.

Today in "the Liberals are a bunch of disgusting creeps" news:

Liberal MP Francis Drouin says an allegation has been made against him following an incident at the party’s convention in Halifax this weekend.

Drouin, a 34-year-old MP from eastern Ontario, was described earlier this year as a rising star in the Liberal Party, with a firm grip on the agriculture file and standing as the most-lobbied backbencher on Parliament Hill.

In a statement released to the media and sent to Liberal MPs and staff Sunday, Drouin said he wanted to address “reports of an incident” in Halifax.

“I can confirm that an allegation has been made,” said Drouin. “I believe it is important for individuals to have a safe environment to come forward, share their stories, and be supported. While no charges have been laid against me, I am co-operating fully with the investigation.”

**

The United Nations has launched an investigation after a former senior official with links to a British charity was arrested over serious child sex offences.

Police allege they found 60-year-old Peter Dalglish with two boys aged 12 and 14 in the same room when they launched a dawn raid at his idyllic mountainside home in Nagarkot, near Kathmandu, Nepal, earlier this month. …

Dalglish, whose net worth has been estimated at more than £5 million, has met Canadian premier Justin Trudeau and Princess Anne through his humanitarian work.

(Sidebar: yes, about that ...)

**

Justin Trudeau and Kent Hehr — a former minister who resigned from the prime minister’s cabinet over allegations of inappropriate conduct with women — were among the Liberals who attended a sexual harassment training session Saturday.

The hour-long session, which was closed to the media, marked the first time the ruling party has broached the issue of harassment at one of its national conventions.

Also - knowing full well that he cannot win due to competent and principled leadership, Justin resurrects some tired, old bogey-men tropes all the while forgetting about the pervies in his midst:

In a partisan speech to supporters, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau depicted Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer as a replica of former prime minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party as a movement fanning the flames of divisive populism.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Andrew Scheer embarrassed the country while in India, Justin, or fast-tracked illegal migrants to a province that isn't Quebec.

So there's that.


And:

Laughably, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of pushing the “politics of fear and division,” and called Scheer “Stephen Harper with a smile,” adding, “And if there’s one thing — and there may be only one thing — we’ve learned about the Conservative party under Mr. Scheer’s leadership, it’s this: It may be Andrew Scheer’s smile. But it’s still Stephen Harper’s party. The same policies. The same politics of fear and division.”

Trudeau seems to be ignoring the fact that his approval ratings are actually lower than Stephen Harper’s were at a similar time in the previous government.

Then, showing even less self-awareness, Trudeau said he was practicing “sunny ways,” and said “Positive politics means you fight for your ideas – you don’t demonize your opponents.”

They're just voters blocks:

Last year, RCMP intercepted a total of 20,493 people who crossed the border illegally. That means they did not present at an official port-of-entry and instead came across the border through unofficial paths to make a refugee claim in Canada. So far this year, 6,373 irregular migrants have arrived in Canada this way. That’s an increase of 128 per cent over the number who arrived in Canada between January and April 2017, which was 2,784.

It's just money:

But charging Ontarians less for electricity than it cost to produce meant the province would have to borrow billions of dollars to cover the shortfall.

“In order for that to not show up on the bottom line, they created creative accounting to take it off the government’s statements,” Ms. Lysyk said.

Using that new accounting, the government declared it had balanced the province’s books for the fiscal year ended Mar. 31, 2018, just months before a general election. But Ms. Lysyk said that was not true. And the Financial Accountability Office, the body responsible for providing the legislative assembly with independent analysis and advice on Ontario’s finances, agreed: In December, it forecast that the province would actually rack up a deficit of $4-billion – a discrepancy that will grow markedly as the government’s off-balance-sheet borrowing continues. 

Ms. Lysyk said she’s worried that the Wynne government’s success in concealing its borrowing will encourage more aggressive bookkeeping, both in Ontario and in other provinces.

“If you get away with doing something that’s inappropriate accounting, the next time you’ll do it again and you’ll do it again,” she said. “Pretty soon they won’t have any numbers that will have any integrity behind them.”

The gauntlet, it has been thrown:

Lawyers representing former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown on Monday filed a statement of claim in Superior Court against CTV, which first reported accusations of sexual misconduct levied by two women.

Brown is seeking more than $8 million in damages from CTV, a division of Bell Media. The statement of claim also names several reporters and producers with the media organization.

On Jan. 24, CTV published an online article with allegations from two women that pertained to Brown's time as a Tory MP in Barrie. One of the women alleged that she was still in high school when Brown plied her with alcohol and attempted to coerce her to perform oral sex, details that would later change in subsequent CTV reports.

South Korea has halted its propaganda broadcasts. By this time, I think most North Koreans have seen at least one episode of  "Longing Heart" and are pretty convinced that they have been screwed over.




Trump rejects the idea that he is pushing a potential peace deal in North Korea too quickly. I argue that given that North Korea has lied so many times before, this deal will not materialise:

As negotiations over a summit meeting with the ruler of North Korea accelerate, President Donald Trump on Sunday disputed any suggestion that he had made too many concessions at the outset of an unpredictable and potentially volatile diplomatic exercise.

From his Florida estate, Trump took to Twitter to criticize Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, who had questioned on his program whether the president had gotten anything in return for the “huge gift” he had given the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, by agreeing to meet with him.

On the show, Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, had an answer teed up – that the North Koreans had given the United States “an agreement to stop testing” nuclear weapons.

But from his Twitter account, the president chose to answer Todd directly.

“Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing,” Trump wrote. “Wow, we haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!”

North Korea has not in fact agreed to denuclearization. It has told the South Koreans that it is willing to discuss the issue, but Kim has made no such statement to his own people, as he did with his declaration that his country did not need to conduct further nuclear testing.

Experts inside and outside the U.S. government believe that Kim’s ultimate goal is to have his country recognized as a nuclear power even as he offers enough concessions – some potentially largely symbolic – to press the United States into easing crippling economic sanctions.

And now, to commemorate (this past) Earf Day, here are some of Earf Day's greatest apocalyptic hits:

Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

(Merci beaucoup)