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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has greatly angered PM Harvey Weinstein Justin Trudeau and his cohort:

The federal government is interpreting Ontario's cancellation of its cap-and-trade program as equivalent to withdrawing from Ottawa's national climate change framework — and is reconsidering more than $400 million in funding as a result.

A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says the $420 million earmarked for Ontario under the Low Carbon Economy Leadership Fund is under review, since funding is contingent on agreeing to the framework, which includes imposing a carbon price.

Newly elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford has rescinded the previous Liberal government's regulation that established the cap-and-trade program in 2017, withdrawing from an arrangement with Quebec and California that established a joint carbon market to buy and sell pollution credits.

As a result, Canada has hit the brakes on Ontario's portion of the $1.4-billion climate change fund.

This scam cap-and-trade scheme:

“Cap-and-trade and carbon tax schemes are no more than government cash grabs that do nothing for the environment while hitting people in the wallet in order to fund big government programs,” Ford said in a statement Tuesday. “I promised that the party with taxpayers’ dollars was over and that this would include scrapping the cap-and-trade, carbon tax slush fund.”

Cap and trade added 4.3 cents to the cost of a litre of gasoline, 5 cents a litre to diesel and 3.3 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

The Ontario-Quebec-California joint program auctioned greenhouse gas emission allowances, raising about $1.9 billion for the Ontario government annually.

Former premier Kathleen Wynne made numerous commitments for at cash, including a pledge to pump $657 million into social housing repairs and retrofits — with about half slated for Toronto.

Wynne also promised that she would use those funds to help pay for $3 GO Transit fares within the City of Toronto and for short GO Train distances of less than 10 kilometres. The idea  was to make GO competitive with TTC fares, relieving pressure on the city’s packed transit system.

About $129 million of the cap-and-trade proceeds meant for social housing repairs has been secured, but the rest of the funds are in grave doubt, Mayor John Tory said.

That is not all that Ford has done:

As noted by the CP, A spokesman for Premier Doug Ford said Thursday the federal government has encouraged people to cross into Canada illegally and continues to usher people across the U.S.-Quebec border into Ontario. “This has resulted in a housing crisis and threats to the services that Ontario families depend on,” Simon Jefferies said in a statement. “This mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government, and the federal government should foot 100 per cent of the bills.”

Justin, whose mouth never met a foot it did not like, stated outright that Mr. Ford was woefully ignorant of how the immigration system worked in Canada:

Preening for the press, Trudeau claimed that Ford wasn’t “quite aware” of how the “asylum seeking” system works, and that he had to spend time “explaining it” to Ford.

Of course, Trudeau is the one who doesn’t understand how borders work, and his reckless invite of everybody to enter Canada was a huge cause of the crisis at the border which is having a seriously damaging impact on our social programs.

But instead of acknowledging his own role or taking responsibility for his mistakes, Trudeau arrogantly and condescendingly tried to one-up Ford, acting as if he was still a part-time drama teacher explaining something to a student.

Trudeau even started talking about “International obligations” and “UN Conventions,” ignoring the fact that protecting the integrity of Canada’s laws and Canada’s borders always takes precedence over what elitist international groups want.

Indeed.

Do Canadians run Canada or is its carcass evenly divided by others?


Why should Ontario pick up the slack that Quebec will not and because the Liberals want a voters block by 2019?


Also:

A number of laws passed by Ontario's previous Liberal government have been put on hold by the newly elected Progressive Conservative regime, including measures to tighten rules around vaping and to cap resale values for sports and concert tickets.

A spokesman for the Progressive Conservatives said Wednesday the new government, which was sworn in Friday, wants more time to consult and examine the laws before they come into effect.

While some advocacy groups welcomed the move, critics questioned the government's reasons for revisiting the laws.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath accused Premier Doug Ford of making changes without any explanation or public notice.

"No one voted for business to be conducted in secret, behind closed doors," Horwath said in a statement.

(Sidebar: what country do you live in, Andrea?)

Because Justin is a l/Liberal and the son of the one of the worst prime ministers Canada has ever seen, he prevaricates:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave his most detailed response yet Thursday to an 18-year-old allegation he groped a female reporter, confirming he had apologized to the woman at the time but saying he didn’t feel he had acted “in any way untoward.”

Facing reporters at Queen’s Park after his first meeting with new Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trudeau offered a more elaborate reflection on the allegation for the first time since it resurfaced in the past months.

“I’ve been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago,” he said. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.”

Yes, women tend to react badly when the trust-funded son of a former prime minister grope them or elbow them in the chest. The only faux pas (in his view) was that, had the reporter in question worked for the Globe and Mail, he would not have man-handled her so, as if to remind her that her humble status worked against her and being believed and recompensed.

His arrogance and inability to reflect and imagine what he might have done wrong are signs of a serious sociopathy.

And people voted for it.




I don't care if one was "here first". You cannot overturn a verdict:

Chief Ava Hill is asking the province's Attorney General to appeal the not guilty verdict for Peter Khill, with chiefs across Ontario joining the call for "immediate action."

The elected chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River says she'll be speaking with newly appointed Attorney General Caroline Mulroney on Monday and is hopeful she will challenge the verdict in the death of Jon Styres and begin an effort to correct systemic discrimination in the justice system.

Also:

A class action lawsuit has been filed by Merchant Law Group against the federal government for the RCMPs handling of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIW).

The suit, filed by Tony Merchant in Regina’s Court of Queen’s Bench, seeks $500 million in damages for the alleged mishandling of MMIW investigations, and an additional $100 million in punitive damages. 

Merchant stated the Crown breached the charter rights of family members to security and to be free from discrimination.

He said plaintiffs experienced depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of income, loss of enjoyment of life and suicidal thoughts as a result of the alleged mishandled investigations.

His Indian name is "Ambulance-Chaser".




Where did she get the money for that?:

A Salvadoran woman and her two daughters who fled their home country after allegedly suffering extortion and rape at the hands of members of the notorious MS-13 gang are among several parties challenging the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country agreement in court.

The case has been snaking its way through Federal Court for the last year, but this week saw a flurry of new filings by three additional applicants in the case: Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches, all of them longtime critics of the agreement.

How are those sanctions working out?:

When Pompeo returns, the world should know whether the Trump administration’s fundamental assumption—that Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his nuclear arsenal—is correct. 

If that assumption is not correct—and at this moment it does not appear to be so—then Trump will have to do something he jokingly said in Singapore that he would not do: admit he was wrong about the North Korean leader. 

Unfortunately, it appears the president will make no such admission. Instead, it looks like he has chosen to retreat, backing away from demands that the North give up its most destructive weapons.  ...

The deal with North Korea, Pompeo said, is that Kim will “fully denuclearize” and permit verification in return for “security assurances.” 

In response to Kim’s perceived good will, Trump and Pompeo have made several gestures of their own. First, Trump indefinitely suspended large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea. 

Second, the administration since the end of May has been holding off designating almost three dozen entities , significantly, some of them Russian and others Chinese, for violations of North Korea sanctions. 

The American concessions are especially significant. Take the suspension of the military exercises, what Trump called “war games.” Trump made that move without getting a reciprocal promise from Kim to suspend his military’s drills. As a result, the Korean People’s Army will go ahead with its summer training cycle and the U.S. and South Korean forces will forego the crucial Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercise in August. 

If the suspension of the American-South Korean exercises lasts, say, a year, there will be a substantial erosion in readiness and the alliance will start to become hollow. The United States and the South will still be able to repel an attack from the North, but casualties, both military and civilian, will be far higher. 

The decision to hold off the naming of new sanctioned entities will also have adverse consequences. Pyongyang changes front companies all the time, so not designating new ones undermines the sanctions effort quickly. Once Kim believes he has gotten around the American and international prohibitions, Washington’s leverage in “denuclearization” negotiations rapidly declines. 

While Trump is permitting Pyongyang to avoid sanctions, he is allowing Beijing to blatantly violate them. The forecast, therefore, is for even more brazen Chinese conduct. 

These two Trump concessions—suspension of exercises and nonenforcement of sanctions—mean time is now on Kim’s side. 

And time is on the North Korean’s side for another reason. Instead of stopping production of weapons—what we’d expect if Trump were right about Kim’s intentions—the regime in recent days has continued making improvements to its plutonium-producing reactor and other facilities at Yongbyon; it has at various undisclosed sites increased production of nuclear fuel ; and it has been finishing construction at the Chemical Material Institute , which makes parts for solid-fuel ballistic missiles. Furthermore, U.S. officials say the North is attempting to hide warheads and whole facilities producing fissile material. 

And there is one thing Chairman Kim has not done. Despite what Trump said at his post–summit press conference in Singapore, the boy dictator has not destroyed “a major missile engine testing site.” U.S. officials have subsequently identified that site as the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. 

**

I suspect many observers who professed to be appalled by Trump’s performance were really only lamenting the lack of that sheen. Their criticism of him for not getting more from Kim in writing makes little sense. Either the regime has changed fundamentally or it hasn’t. If it has, it would indeed be counter-productive to impose a series of hurdles that must be jumped over within a certain time. If it hasn’t, no concessions it might commit to paper are going to have any more value than the last ones.

(Kamsahamnida)