Post-Easter Sunday Blitz: the Rest of It

A closed mouth gathers no foot, Justin:

Noting that Trudeau’s message had been picked up by the New York Times, an Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada official anticipated in an email to colleagues, the same evening as the tweet, that “there will be more pressure” to respond the following day.

Two days later, officials stickhandling media requests were worrying about overloading spokespeople. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to figure out how not to max you out,” one said in an email.

In addition to requests from media there were queries from Canada’s own officials posted abroad. 

Concerns from the embassy in Mexico appear in an email chain with the subject line “Guidance required on how to respond to increasing number of refugee enquiries in the region following change in US administration and Prime Minister’s tweet.”

The first secretary and “risk assessment officer” at the embassy, whose name is redacted, sent an initial message on Feb. 1, 2017, four days after the tweet.

“I am seeking official guidance/response from Ottawa on how to address refugee enquiries following all the publicity around the US ban on some nationalities, and our Prime Minister’s tweet on welcoming refugees,” the email began.

“We are receiving an increasing number of enquiries from the public about requesting refugee status in Canada, and a number clearly having links with our Prime Minister’s tweet this weekend. A significant number of the enquiries received since the weekend have been from nationals of the ‘US banned countries’, but we are also receiving them from all nationalities, both through emails and directly at our reception.”

I just don't even know here to begin with this:

Over the years, federal environmental assessments have measured everything from the number of endangered lynx near a proposed New Brunswick mine to the presence of dragonflies and butterflies at a British Columbia hydro site.

But under new federal legislation tabled in February, the scope of impact assessments is being broadened well beyond fauna, requiring project proponents to take into account “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”

Part of the Liberal government’s embrace of gender-based analysis, the new provision has left environmental lawyers puzzled over how the provision will work if the bill becomes law.

“If you’re asking, ‘What does that mean?’ I’m going to have to say I don’t really know,” said Richard Lindgren, a staff lawyer at the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

You and me both, brother.


Also - you don't say:

Investigators said Monday they were examining "red flags" in a Washington state family's past in hopes of explaining why their SUV went off a 100-foot cliff in an apparent suicide plunge.

The wreckage was discovered last week on rocks along the coast near Mendocino, California, a few days after child welfare authorities in Washington began investigating whether the children were being abused or neglected.

The Hart family's two moms and three of the six adopted children were found dead; the three others are missing and presumed dead, possibly washed out to sea.

Police said Monday that social service authorities in Oregon contacted the West Linn Police Department about the family in 2013 while they were living in the area.

The questions were referred to the Oregon Department of Human Services, which cited privacy laws in refusing to confirm or deny the agency was involved.

Long before the crash, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota over what she said was a spanking given to one of her children. And last month, concerned neighbours in Woodland, Washington, contacted child welfare authorities, saying the children may have been going hungry.

On Sunday, authorities announced that data from the vehicle's software suggested the crash was deliberate.

Censorship, the Canadian way:

Canadians do not enjoy a universal right to freedom of speech; expressing and consuming certain ideas and opinions is regulated by law. This is rationalized by the Canadian constitution’s declaration that government has a right to restrain freedoms with “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Ottawa has thus elected to impose “reasonable limits” on speech deemed obscene, seditious, treasonous, pro-terrorist, or hateful. Since “hate speech” tends to be the most controversial category, it’s worth walking through the numerous layers of law and authority that Canada’s government invokes in order to prevent Canadians from, say, reading the wrong sort of book.

Shark attack in Hawaii:

The scream came from the ocean off the private Kukio Golf and Beach Club on Hawaii’s largest island where, moments before, a man had been stand-up paddleboarding.

There’s no lifeguard on the beach at the private community, but there is a “private safety team” that launched a four-person canoe.

In the water, they found “a male individual who had been bumped off his paddle board about 100 to 150 yards offshore,” Fire Capt. Michael Grace told Honolulu Fox-affiliate KHON. “They recovered him from the ocean. He had injuries to his right-side extremities.”