Mid-Week Post

In medias res ...




One hundred years ago, Nicholas Romanov, formerly Tsar Nicholas II of the Romanov dynasty, was ushered into the cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg where, along with his family, a few servants and the family dog, was shot to death and his body was unceremoniously disposed of down a mine-shaft in a manner akin to hiding a crime:

The family was roused early in the morning and told to dress in preparation for an immediate change of location. They were brought to a dingy basement room and ordered to wait, while their killers fortified themselves with liquid courage. One hundred years ago, in the early hours of July 17, 1918, the abdicated Czar Nicholas II and his immediate family, along with four retainers, were murdered, and buried in haste under cover of night. ...

Despite Nicholas’s failure as a leader to rein in the revolutionary energies that rocked Russia throughout his two-decade rule, and the excesses in repression that attended it, there was no justice in how he and his family were killed. Consider the two other major regicides in modern European history: those of Charles I of England and Louis XVI of France. Each was deposed and tried by radical regimes that, like the Bolsheviks, sought to reboot world history. But Charles and Louis were tried in open court and given the chance to defend themselves, and their executions were public, too. Both men went to their deaths with dignity. Charles wore two shirts so that he wouldn’t shiver from the cold and give the impression that he was afraid; Louis pardoned his executioner, and proclaimed his own innocence. Their executions were conducted under the umbrella of legality. Their children survived them.

The killing of the Romanovs, on the other hand, was as bloody and ghastly as any mass murder of women and children. The killers fired some 70 bullets point-blank at their 11 victims, who screamed and clasped one another. The room soon filled with smoke and pulverized plaster and the groans of the wounded. In order to finish their work, the Bolsheviks beat the family to death with their rifle butts and stabbed them with their bayonets. The bodies were then dumped into a pit.

The murder of the Romanovs—by all accounts, a happy, loving family that had adjusted to its abdication, reduced circumstances, and imprisonment with good cheer—was a fitting curtain-raiser to what would follow. The 70 years of Soviet oppression, which fed millions into a maw of death in the name of “history,” were prefigured in the events of that July night, 100 years ago.

In typical fashion, Justin (still the Minister of Groping) inflates his cabinet with equally useless cohorts, still keeping the feckless Ahmed Hussen as immigration minister and not at all retiring Ralph Goodale.

To wit:

Trudeau confidant and long-time MP Dominic LeBlanc moves from fisheries to take on intergovernmental affairs, placing a veteran in charge of unpredictable federal-provincial relations.

Montreal’s Melanie Joly, who has wrestled with the heritage portfolio, moves to tourism, official languages and la Francophonie as the prime minister readies his Quebec team at a volatile time for politics in the seat-rich province.

Trudeau aims to bolster Canada’s bid to diversify its trade interests beyond the United States by moving natural resources minister Jim Carr into the international trade portfolio. That means a new role for Francois-Philippe Champagne, who becomes minister of infrastructure.

Carr’s job will be to kickstart Canada’s stalled efforts towards a trade agreement with China, promoting the Canada-EU free trade agreement among European countries that have yet to ratify it and continuing to push for deeper economic integration into Latin America. ...

Ministers overseeing some of cabinet’s key portfolios are staying put, including McKenna, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

Instead of increasing the cast of nearly thousands, perhaps Justin should worry about the plethora of unkept promises and ignored platitudes that threaten to balloon out of control: 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election promise to welcome ­25,000 refugees from Syria was aimed at showing voters his compassion. The followup photo opportunities he arranged in 2015 with smiling Syrian refugees, such as doctors, drew international headlines.

Once in power, Trudeau’s Liberals switched the name of the Immigration Department to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, to highlight their concern for those forced to leave chaotic home countries, especially Syria.

Given the grand gestures, you would be forgiven for believing the federal Liberals and the department responsible for refugees would be tracking the fate of the tens of the thousands of struggling Syrians that Canada has recently taken in.

But, after more than two weeks of inquiries by Postmedia, a media relations officer acknowledged the department has not produced any report in almost two years on the about 50,000 Syrian refugees now in Canada.

Canada’s auditor general is among the unamused. The Liberals had a plan to monitor whether the mostly Arabic-speaking refugees were learning English or French, working, receiving social assistance and going to school, but the government has failed to follow through, said auditor general Michael Ferguson. It is Ottawa’s responsibility, he said, to make sure Syrians refugees “integrate into Canadian society.”  ...

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did, to be fair, release a one-year-after report on Syrian refugees in December, 2016. It was moderately helpful, since it showed half the privately sponsored refugees had jobs in Canada. But employment fell to 10 per cent among the larger cohort of “government-assisted” refugees, who are typically less educated and often illiterate. ...

Unlike the highly educated refugees who Trudeau mingles with for photo opportunities, most Syrian refugees have jobs that require few skills, such as cleaners or jobs in shops where they don’t have to speak English. ...

“The Canada Child Benefit has been a godsend for most families,” Hosgood said, echoing a study suggesting most Syrian parents come with three to four children, sometimes eight or 10. “Big families would be doing very well.”

Syrian mothers and fathers with four children can get about $50,000 a year in various taxpayer-funded social-service benefits. The Canada Child Benefit provides $6,400 a year for each child under six and $5,400 for children between six and 17, while provincial welfare programs can provide $7,000 to $12,000 a year to each adult.

Hosgood said many of the grateful Syrian refugees, who know how to stretch their money,  are now starting to sponsor relatives to come to Canada.

The entire "disgusting" thing has been a steady stream of smoke and mirrors that would ultimately end up with a permanent voters block for the Liberals. It is no wonder that the progress of these migrants has been ignored. They were only here for the photos anyway.

**

Back in the real world, what’s un-Canadian is for Trudeau’s government to admit almost 30,000 asylum seekers into Canada through unmanned border crossings and then dump the responsibility for looking after them onto provinces and cities, which had no say in the process and lack the resources to cope.

(Sidebar: no, Mr. Goldstein, they are not asylum-seekers. They are illegal migrants looking for a hand-out. Only some in the seats of power are looking to do anything about this problem.)




More smoke and mirrors:

What the Liberals are touting is that for the second month in a row the number of people crossing the border illegally and being intercepted by the RCMP fell. Media outlets have been dutifully reporting that the numbers fell by half from April to June.

What they don’t tell you is that the numbers are still up year over year.

In June of 2017 a total of 884 people were intercepted by the Mounties. This June it was 1,263, an increase of 43% over last year.

Another reason not to roll out the “mission accomplished” banner just yet is that last July the numbers spiked to over 3,000 and in August to over 5,000.

Oh, Buttsy!:

On Twitter, Canadian Bettina Pierre-Gilles – who came to Canada legally from Haiti – ripped Butt’s comment:

“It is absurd to portray Canadians, like me, who believe in secure borders as alt-right. I was originally born in Haiti and became a citizen of Canada by following all the proper steps and procedures.”

There are people who wait years to finally be Canadian (as opposed to being in Canada unmonitored but I digress ...). It is an indignity to all those who obey the law and prove their worth as citizens to let unvetted persons squat in the country just so that someone like Gerald Butts can advance politically.


Also - cowards:

The Conservative party pulled an attack ad from its Twitter feed Tuesday that depicted a black man carrying a suitcase walking over a tweet from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The tweet is rolled out as a carpet entering a broken fence and the words “faith” and “diversity” are visible.

The full photo shows the man with a group of people carrying suitcases in Quebec, while the edited image used by the Conservative party singled out one man.

A quote from a column in the Financial Post is superimposed on the image which says, “Trudeau’s holier-than-thou tweet causes migrant crisis — now he needs to fix what he started.”

The Tories have argued that a Trudeau tweet from January 2017 is partly to blame for the influx of asylum seekers crossing into Canada from the United States.

Well, that must be embarrassing:

The annexation of Crimea was in 2014, Justin. You even made a joke about it. Bringing it up behind Putin's back is like insulting Trump behind his back - cowardly and lame:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau avoided calling out U.S. President Donald Trump by name over his behaviour during Monday's controversial news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But, in stark contrast to Trump, Trudeau had harsh words for the Russian president when asked by reporters about the Helsinki summit during a media availability in Nova Scotia Tuesday. 

"Canada has been unequivocal in our condemnation of Vladimir Putin and Russia," said Trudeau in Sutherlands River, N.S.

"Whether it's their illegal annexation of Crimea, their incursion into the Donbass in Ukraine and the fact that we're glad to have 200 Canadian soldiers there helping to train Ukrainian armies. Whether it's their interference in Syria and the support for the murderous Assad regime, whether it's what they were responsible for in the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury on U.K. soil against British nationals. Canada has always been clear."

As keen as Justin is to rescue the morally repugnant, he might do well to leave this one alone:

A civil liberties group is urging the Canadian government to end the “unjust and immoral” imprisonment of Monika Schaefer, a German-Canadian woman on trial in Germany for publishing videos denying the Holocaust.

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association says it’s concerned about Canada’s apparent unwillingness to come to the aid of Schaefer, who it describes as a Canadian “political prisoner” who was charged with a German criminal law that does not exist in Canada and is contrary to international law.

Miss Shaefer can deny the Holocaust until she is purple in the face but she is not our problem now.




Why do Americans have to point out our economic flaws?:

Despite recent suggestions to the contrary, U.S officials negotiating a new NAFTA trade deal have demanded that Canada end its supply-management system for dairy and egg products, Ottawa’s deputy ambassador to the United States said Tuesday.

And that request is a non-starter for Canada, Kirsten Hillman stressed to a conference here.
The dairy sector has been a surprisingly hot-button issue in wrangling over a new North American Free Trade Agreement, with President Donald Trump repeatedly complaining about protection of the Canadian industry.

Yet just last month, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the U.S. is not trying to get Canada to “ditch its supply management system,” only to manage it better so over-supply doesn’t flood the world market.

That is right. The Americans shouldn't get us to change our system. We should do it ourselves.




So-called universal healthcare in all of its competent glory:

Thousands of people who underwent minor surgery at a west Ottawa medical clinic were at a higher risk of infection due to improperly cleaned medical equipment over the last 15 years, health officials say.

One doesn't need one hundred and twenty-four ridings to tell one what junk science is, Doug:

People across Ontario will be consulted before a new sex-education curriculum is drafted, Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday in an attempt to quell concerns over his government’s controversial decision to scrap the updated lesson plan.

The newly elected Progressive Conservatives were accused of flip-flopping on the issue Monday after the education minister said in the legislature that concepts like gender identity, consent and cyber safety would still be taught in the fall only to backtrack on her comments hours later.

Ford had pledged to repeal and replace the curriculum, which the Liberals updated in 2015, and his government said last week that when students return to class this fall they will be taught a version of the curriculum introduced in 1998, sparking anger from some teachers and parents who say that document is outdated.

“We’re going to hit 124 ridings,” he said, calling it “the largest consultation ever in Ontario’s history when it comes to education.”

When not walking back on what he promised everyone, Ford is riling various panty-waists:

Ontario will fight any attempt to impose a Justin Trudeau carbon tax on the province’s residents and businesses, Environment Minister Rod Phillips warned his federal counterpart Wednesday in a face-to-face meeting.

“We have made it really clear that we will take this to the Supreme Court if that’s what’s necessary,” Phillips said.

(Sidebar: those unelected judges might not be doing you a favour. Just saying.)

**

Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government has appointed a former British Columbia premier to lead an independent inquiry into the previous Liberal government’s spending.

Premier Doug Ford says Gordon Campbell will head the Commission of Inquiry, which will issue a public report on its findings by Aug. 30.

“What we are witnessing is a betrayal of the public trust,” Ford had said of the Liberal government’s books in April, when he first promised the inquiry.

“We go in there, we’re going to find additional waste, we’re going to find areas that we can drive efficiencies.”

**

During Question Period, Horwath attacked the PC government on carding, sex-ed, and other issues.

Ford didn’t hold back in his response:

“We support our police, unlike the Leader of the Opposition and unlike their party that are police-haters, military-haters, veteran-haters, poppy-haters and—,” at which point the speaker cut him off for using ‘unparliamentary language.’

BURN!
 


 
This just needs no comment:

Sara Khan, the liberation and access officer at Manchester’s students’ union (SU), blamed a “failure to consult students” during the renovation of the SU building for the Kipling poem being painted on the wall in the first place.

(Paws up)