Mid-Week Post

The intermission of the work-week ...




They are not forgotten.




These veterans are not forgotten:

“Seventeen years ago today, the world was paralyzed after the brutal terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Almost three thousand people, including at least 24 Canadians, lost their lives in those attacks or onboard the plane brought down in Pennsylvania.

In the aftermath of that brutal attack, Canadians rallied to fight for freedom and democracy. This includes the brave women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces who fought the terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan.

Indeed, every single time Canadians fought terrorists — terrorists died. The men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces were among the true heroes of Afghanistan and today the world is a safer place thanks to their service and sacrifice.

Today we honour the heroes of the war in Afghanistan, including the 159 Canadians who made the ultimate sacrifice. All Canadians will be forever indebted to their bravery.

Some people are terribly perturbed by this notwithstanding clause business - still:

For so long, the elites were able to strike down common-sense Conservative policies even when they lost elections, because they have control over the courts.

Now, Ford has pushed back and fought back, making clear that he will use every tool at his disposal to protect the democratic decisions of the elected Ontario government.

He will do so against governments like these: 

Justin Trudeau made it clear Tuesday he would not block the Ontario government’s use of the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to forge ahead with plans to cut the size of Toronto city council, even though he was disappointed with the province’s decision.

(Sidebar: he won't after he didn't use the clause for that pipeline he tanked.) 

And appointed judges like these:

Lost in the discussion of Ontario Premier Doug Ford invoking the notwithstanding clause to push through passage of Bill 5 is the fact that judges have their own notwithstanding clause.

And they use it all the time. ...

For all the talk of Ford trampling rights, I simply don’t hear any complaints, and never have, of judges using Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I know all the journalists and pundits squawking about Ford know all about Section 1, they’ve covered in the past.

It’s also right at the top of the Charter, it reads:

“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Courts find on a regular basis that the Charter rights of Canadians have been violated by laws, regulations or the actions of government.

And often those same courts set aside the Charter violations and find them justified. Meaning, sorry your Charter rights were violated but the government had a good reason.

This is what amounts to a notwithstanding clause for the courts.

This is interesting:

Shortly after the First Ministers' Conference, then prime minister Trudeau expressed his less-than-enthusiastic acceptance of the notwithstanding clause when he said:

I must be honest and say that I don't fear the notwithstanding clause very much. It can be abused as anything can, but the history of the Canadian Bill of Rights Diefenbaker had adopted in 1960, it has a notwithstanding clause and it hasn't caused any great scandal (sic). So I don't think the notwithstanding clause deters very significantly from the excellence of the Charter.20

He went on to say later in the same interview:

[I]t is a way that the legislatures, federal and provincial, have of ensuring that the last word is held by the elected representatives of the people rather than by the courts.21

The author of the crappy Charter inadvertently boosted Ford's decision years after his timely demise.

Hhhmmm ...




Today in the most corrupt, incompetent and "transparent" government in the country's history:

LeBlanc awarded a $24 million fishing license to a company that was going to be controlled by his wife’s cousin.

**   

According to a recent report, “The wait time for a refugee claim hearing in Canada increased more than a third over the past two years, to 19 months, as more than 30,000 asylum seekers arriving via unauthorized border crossings placed significant pressure on the system. Overwhelmed by the number of migrants, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) has only managed to finalize 15 per cent of the 27,674 asylum claims made by people who illegally entered Quebec – where the majority of the crossings took place, mostly at a single location near St. Bernard-de-Lacolle – between February, 2017, and this June.” 

Additionally, “The resulting backlog has created a growing queue for any and all asylum seekers.”

**

“Our analysis suggests that the U.S. tax reform has eliminated one of Canada’s main competitive advantages. We are of the view that this loss will have a significant negative impact on capital-intensive sectors in Canada. All else being equal, these sectors as a whole would likely face a significant shift in investments from Canada to the U.S. over the next 10 years.”

** 

Canada could make some use of itself taking the lead in backing UN human rights investigators’ efforts to gain access to Xinjiang, and and Ottawa’s own Magnitsky law would serve perfectly well in a collaboration with Australia and the United States to sanction the tormentors of Xinjiang’s Uighurs.

Canada has neither reason nor excuse not to do so.

(Sidebar: this is the same government whose chief puppet praised communist China's tyranny openly, that refused point-blank to rescue Yazidis and Middle Eastern Christians from certain death, that turns away North Koreans,  that voted to allow back into Canada ISIS rapists and whose anti-semitic MP then tried juxtaposing the Liberal government's failure to secure endangered Jews to the current immigration crisis it is now dreadfully mishandling.)


**

With NAFTA talks on the brink, and with our auto sector potentially on the line, Trudeau’s foreign affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland headlined an event that insinuated Donald Trump (who was democratically elected) was a “threat” and “tyrant” comparable to unelected dictators in China, Syria, and other countries.

Aaahhh ... the Hillary Clinton approach.

Setting herself up to fail, Chrystia can then blame someone else for her incompetence.




Ibn Warraq said:

An obsession with conspiracies leads to fatalism, a refusal to take charge of one's own destiny or to take responsibility for the manifest backwardness of one's own culture.

To wit:

A letter posted online by representatives of the Syrian community in Canada called the murder despicable. “At this moment of deep sadness, we earnestly join all Canadians in mourning and hope that this terrible incident won’t result in a backlash against refugees.”

Also:

“Our message to the government is, like me there are so many Rohingya brothers and sisters in Canada who are traumatized for their parents, for their brothers and sisters in Bangladesh and Burma [Myanmar]. They want to bring family here,” he said.

But ... but ... reconciliation!:

This is between an Ontario Superior Court judge who is one of two senior judges who supervise and administer the massive Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class action suit in Canadian history, and the lawyer who is the “Chief Adjudicator” of the independent assessment process, or IAP.

And the chief adjudicator is now, according to Gus Van Harten, an Osgoode Hall law professor with a specialty in administrative law, “engaging in a bare knuckles litigation fight” with the very judges who are his bosses.

“It’s not something you see often in the sleepy world of agencies and tribunals,” a wry Van Harten told the National Post Tuesday.

As of June, the IAP had resolved 37,792 claims of abuse by survivors of Indian residential schools and paid out $3.1 billion, an average payment of $11,435.

The judge is Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court. One of the nine judges across the country whose courts approved the residential schools settlement agreement in 2006 and 2007 and who are now in charge of administering the agreement, Perell is also the “Eastern Administrative Judge.”

The chief adjudicator is Saskatoon lawyer Dan Shapiro, who runs the so-called adjudication secretariat, which has a staff of 243 and three offices, in Regina, Gatineau, Que. and Vancouver.

At its heart, about a week ago Perell issued a “direction” to Shapiro, telling him to flat out stop his involvement in four cases, one at the Supreme Court of Canada and three at the British Columbia Court of Appeal, have the registries of those courts remove the documents he has filed, and provide written confirmation that he has done so.

If, by Thursday, Shapiro hasn’t complied, Perell said, his legal fees won’t be paid. Perell ordered Shapiro to appear before him on Sept. 20.

Also:

The fervent debate over academic freedom involving Jordan Peterson is rekindled for a new school year with Peterson saying in court documents that Wilfrid Laurier University’s contention he benefited from the controversy is like saying “those who survived the Holocaust should be grateful to their oppressors for teaching them survival skills.”

Peterson filed fresh legal documents Tuesday, including another lawsuit against the Ontario university — his second in three months — claiming Laurier further defamed him in its public defence against his June claim.

Where was Obama when his "friend" Chris was killed in Libya?:

Barack Obama knew about the Benghazi Consulate terror attacks 90 minutes after they began on 9-11.

The attack in Benghazi took place in two waves at the consulate and lasted several hours.

Libyan “looters” (terrorists) found the body of Ambassador Chris Stevens hours after the attack began.

FOX News Special Report said the president knew about the attacks three hours after they began.

Obama went to bed.

US military contractors battled Islamist extremists for 13 hours while Obama slept. …

Obama-Hillary fired them and they had to find their own way back to America.

And then the Obama admin took away their security clearances so they could no longer get work inside the government.

Jason Chaffetz: You know what happened when they actually got home? Those people saved dozens of American lives. When they got home you know what the State Department, Hillary’s State Department did? They took away their security clearance so they couldn’t get a job. It’s unbelievable. 

That’s how they treated these guys. When they were there in Germany. When they were there in Germany. They didn’t send them home. They didn’t offer them plane tickets. They just told them they were released. They had to pay for their own plane tickets to get home.

This tourist trend is so bad that the Japanese made up a name for it:

Japan’s traditional sense of “omotenashi”, meaning wholeheartedly looking after guests, is wearing thin.

Residents of many of the nation’s must-see tourist spots are increasingly expressing their frustration at loud and disrespectful foreigners, crowded public transport and poor etiquette among visitors.

Tourism has surged, and ahead of the Rugby World Cup next year, followed by the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, there is a growing worry that the pretty cobbled streets and ornate temples tourists flock to — as well as the train and bus networks — will be unable to take the numbers.

The problem has become so bad in some cities, such as the ancient capitals of Kyoto and Kamakura, that local people are complaining to the authorities about “tourism pollution”.

(Merci beaucoup)