For a Tuesday

I'm sure this will just resolve itself:

The CEOs of three of Canada's major grocery chains doubled down on their expectation that food prices will soon rise at their stores.

Recent cost pressures on the industry, including rising minimum wages in some provinces, increased fuel and transportation costs and an ongoing trade war with the U.S., will soon result in some price inflation, said the chief executives of Metro Inc., Loblaw Companies Ltd. and Empire Co. Tuesday at Scotiabank's back-to-school conference in Toronto.

Metro CEO Eric La Fleche said consumers should eventually see a return to more normal inflation levels.

"Exactly when and how — it's all about competitive dynamics. Everybody is competitive. Nobody wants to lose any share. So, let's see how things play out," he said.

Just like NAFTA will fix itself:

Mexico “did what was possible and not what was desirable,” Luz Ma de la Mora, the country’s incoming undersecretary of state for trade, said last week. “Seems to me that it is better to have a NAFTA 0.8 … than not to have a NAFTA.”

**

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, who has been spinning her wheels while getting nowhere with NAFTA, showed up at the Liberals’ love-in-cum-retreat in Saskatoon last week to be lavished by Justin Trudeau for being “formidable” and “tireless” in her determination to get a deal that is good for Canada — all while asserting that no deal is better than a bad deal.

That’s one way of looking at it.

It would have been better, however, if Freeland was less “tireless” and had retired for some bed rest instead of making time to attend a summit in Toronto where the topic of Taking on the Tyrant had U.S. President Donald Trump likened to such murderous despots as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

This represents the height of stupidity when, in the midst of the most important trade negotiations our country has faced in recent history, our lead negotiator sees some kind of wisdom in rattling the “tyrant’s” cage.

**

The United States has a deadline of Oct. 1 to get the text of any trade deal to Congress so legislators in Washington can study the deal. They want it passed so it can be signed before Dec. 1.

Why then?

That’s the day Mexico’s new president takes over. Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants to be able to blame any unpopular parts of the deal on the current president. If the deal is signed before he takes over, Obrador won’t nix it but if the deal isn’t signed he may push for changes or scrap it.

So with two weeks left to go what is Canada doing?

Ragging the puck.

Citing “a senior source” CBC is reporting Trudeau and company are willing to let the deadline pass.

They quote the source as saying the political pressure to get a deal done “is not a good enough reason.”

Well what about the hundreds of thousands of jobs, perhaps millions of jobs at risk if we lose prefered access to the American market?

We still send about 76% of our exports to the United States while they send us just 18%. Let’s face it, Canada needs the American market more than they need the Canadian market.

What are the hang ups?

The dispute resolution system, which is a real concern. Then there are two issues that Trudeau has so far not given ground on to placate mostly Quebec interests.

Cultural exemptions and supply management.

It's just money ... and national industries and domestic security ... :

While Justin Trudeau was talking about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion being blocked, he said the following:

“That’s almost a really good thing.”

** 

Learning that the government is handing out $50K per year in cash aid alone to migrant families is shocking though not really surprising but the true proof of lack of ethics in the Trudeau government is how they tried to hide what they were doing.

Governance is just too hard!:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears frustrated with the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations’ “time management” in a leaked video clip that was taken during his meeting with several chiefs in Saskatoon last week.

Trudeau, who was in the city for the Liberal Party of Canada’s annual caucus retreat earlier, and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale were scheduled to meet with the 74-member FSIN at 8 a.m. last Wednesday, according to his itinerary.

In the video clip, which runs for three minutes and 38 seconds and surfaced on YouTube Sunday with the title “PMJT berates FSIN Chiefs,” the prime minister appears to express frustration that the first portion of the meeting went long, leaving little time to hear other concerns.

You pandered to Big Aboriginal, you can suck it up, you sociopathic son-of-a-b!#ch:

Maclean's readers wrote in to ask @JustinTrudeau about the arrest of Ibrahim Ali in the murder of 13-year-old Marrisa Shen. The Prime Minister responds: https://t.co/o7kNdAoTpN #MacleansLive pic.twitter.com/Jo9P5g3cpp

— Maclean's Magazine (@macleans) September 17, 2018

Also:

One of Trudeau’s Syrians is accused of murdering a Chinese Canadian girl. People of all backgrounds were at the court to protest the crime.

Then a Muslim in a hijab threw hot coffee on them.

Every journalist saw it. And ignored it.

Send them back. pic.twitter.com/0a4TuiTLWV

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) September 15, 2018

And:

The former terrorist leader Zakaria Amara is locked away at Millhaven maximum-security prison, serving a life sentence for plotting Al Qaeda-inspired truck bombings in downtown Toronto.

But for the past six months, a Facebook page in his name has been posting his prison photos as well as what purported to be his jailhouse prose, including a telling of what made him a terrorist.

Facebook deleted the account on Wednesday, an hour after Global News asked about it. The social media company said the Amara page was taken down “for violating our community standards.”

“We don’t allow mass murderers to maintain a presence on Facebook,” the company said, adding it also did not let impersonators maintain accounts.

(Sidebar: but you did for so many months.)




Gee, how did that work out for Roh Moo-Hyun?:

(Sidebar: hint - it didn't.)

In pursuing engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to defuse a nuclear crisis, Moon is also looking to bolster the legacy of his late friend and political mentor, former President Roh Moo-hyun, whose ambitious efforts to build trust with North Korea crumbled as it began building its nuclear arsenal a decade ago.

A dovish liberal, Moon said he will use the meetings with Kim in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, which began Tuesday and are to end Thursday, to help revive stalled talks between the U.S. and North Korea and push for “irreversible, permanent peace” between the rivals. Depending on the results, Moon will either be remembered as a skilful statesman who helped fix decades of failed diplomacy or a stubborn idealist who repeated the mistakes of past liberal leaders at a time of much higher military and political stakes.

This North Korea:

There just weren’t enough potatoes. My family was starving and the only way to survive was to escape. So—like thousands of others—my mother and I crossed the frozen river to China in the middle of the night. I was 13 years old. When I left North Korea, I didn’t even know what it meant to be free. All I wanted was a bowl of rice.

A church built by black Americans escaping Jim Crow laws is now receiving a heritage designation:

For a small group of American black families escaping racist Jim Crow laws a century ago, building a church in their new home in Saskatchewan was a priority.

Completed in 1912, Shiloh Baptist Church, about 30 kilometres northwest of Maidstone, provided a place of worship and communal space for the homesteaders who had arrived only two years before.

The little building is made from poplar logs on a foundation of field stones. The pews are just benches, many also hewn from logs.

“The first time I walked in there it’s almost like I got hit in the gut with a fist. And I’m not a spiritual or a religious person by any means,” says Leander Lane, whose great-grandfather Julius Caesar Lane was among the community’s original families.

The church and its cemetery have just been awarded heritage property designation by the Saskatchewan’s Culture Ministry who say it is the only remaining building from the first African-American farming community in the province.