Halloween Week: Mid-Week Post

Happy Halloween!




A truly frightening experience:

Justin Trudeau has a message for you if you don’t like the idea of Statistics Canada seizing all of your banking information.

You aren’t very Canadian and you don’t like data.

That was effectively his reaction when pressed on the shocking move from StatsCan by the opposition Conservatives in the House of Commons.

“What we are seeing is the Conservative Party of Canada learned nothing from Canadians in the 2015 election,” Trudeau said.

“When we restored the long-form census as the very first thing we did, Canadians from coast to coast to coast cheered!” Trudeau gleefully boasted.

It’s an odd defence but one Trudeau has used two days in a row, invoke the long-form census and accuse those that don’t like the government seizing all of your banking records as being against science and data.

How much money did Chinese businessmen give to your dad's foundation and how much of it is went into offshore accounts, Justin?




Andy needs Ford in his corner:

Scheer faced pointed questions about Doug Ford’s political influence after meeting with the Progressive Conservative premier at Ontario’s legislature, where the pair discussed issues including their opposition to the federal Liberal carbon pricing plan.

Ford has been a strong critic of the tax, launching a court challenge against it and raising his opposition to it during recent trips to meet with Conservative political leaders in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

(Sidebar: this carbon tax plan. The one where some are more equal than others.)

Scheer, when asked whose brand was stronger, said he and Ford were both working toward improving life for Canadians.

“The issue here is who’s on the right side of the people of Ontario and the right side of Canadians,” Scheer said. “The brand I’m closely associated with is the brand of lowering costs for Canadians, making life more affordable and standing up to new taxes.”

Also:

Canadians would be better off taking advice from a Nobel Prize winner who supports carbon taxation than listening to “ideologues and politicians who deny there’s a problem in the first place,” Trudeau told high school students in Ottawa on Monday. ...

Aside from the twisted problems embedded in the Trudeau-Butts carbon-price scheme, there’s another niggling issue. Any reading of Nordhaus’s work on carbon taxation cannot avoid the conclusion that Canada’s half-baked, go-it-alone deployment of such a regime is doomed.

As I mentioned in a recent column on Nordhaus, the Nobel economist reached a “bottom line” conclusion in a 2014 paper that a carbon tax would require “clubs” of participating nations that would impose “penalties and sanctions on non-participants” to enforce international climate agreements. Unless most or at least a large number of major countries adopted a similar carbon tax and imposed direct tariffs of up to 10 per cent on all imports from non-carbon-tax countries (so-called free riders) then the carbon tax idea will fail — just like the Kyoto protocol, which set out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions back in 1997.

In other words, based on Nordhaus’s own writing on the subject, the Nobel Laureate would have to assess Canada’s carbon tax plan as dysfunctional and ineffectual.

Oops.




(SEE: WINNING):

The deficit-plagued Ontario government still plans to go ahead with a tax credit for minimum wage workers, Premier Doug Ford says.

“So anyone earning minimum wages will be paying zero tax,” Ford said Monday.

The Premier confirmed the plan had been to make it effective January 1, but then said he would need to confirm the details with his Finance Minister Vic Fedeli.

Iqra Khalid would consider Asia Bibi Islamophobic:

Pakistan’s highest court has spared the life of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy in a long-awaited ruling Wednesday, prompting celebration among human rights activists and protest among far-right Islamists. She had spent eight years seeking mercy from appeals courts while imprisoned on death row.

Asia Bibi was acquitted of making “derogatory remarks” about the Muslim prophet Muhammad after the judges ruled the evidence against appeared fabricated.

Had the judges not ruled in her favor, and without presidential clemency, Bibi would have become the first woman and first non-Muslim hanged under Pakistan’s strict anti-blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory penalty of death.

It's stuff like this that ruins things for everyone else:

A small truck was overturned and five people were arrested for alleged groping or similar offenses over the weekend, police said, as scores of people clad in Halloween costumes gathered in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo — a hub for the celebrations.

History is quite frightening at times:

The small party of Inuit camped at the southern end of King William Island around 1850 could count themselves as one of the most isolated people on earth: They had never met white people, they had never met Dene and they barely encountered other Inuit. So it was a uniquely terrifying experience for them to hear the sound of footsteps outside their igloo and find themselves facing a crowd of lurching figures with eyes vacant, skin blue, unable to talk and barely alive. These were the last remnants of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, the 1845 British voyage of Arctic exploration that ended with the death of all aboard. As ragged bands of expedition survivors split up and trudged south in a desperate bid to flee the Arctic on foot, Inuit throughout the region faced a real-life invasion of the walking dead. They saw men raving wildly, they saw camps strewn with emaciated corpses and they saw the Europeans begin to eat their dead. “They’re not Inuit; they’re not human,” was how one witness described their arrival, according to Inuit oral history.

Oh, the humanity!:

Murray Morrison noticed chewed holes in some pumpkins at the edge of his two-and-half-hectare pumpkin patch. Maybe chipmunks. Definitely not deer. Likely, it is the squirrels, sneaky as they are with their sharp little teeth.

Halloween Week: The Muddling

 

From the most 'transparent" government in the country's history:

After revelations that the Trudeau government-controlled agency was seeking to take the private banking info of 500,000 Canadians, Global News is reporting that under the Trudeau government, Stats Canada has already taken 15 years worth of our credit card info:

“As Statistics Canada plans to build a massive new personal information bank with the real-time financial transaction data of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, Global News has learned the agency has scooped up 15 years’ worth of credit rating information from a major international credit bureau which could include millions of Canadians.” 

“The data harvest was done without the consent or knowledge of those Canadians whose credit history was passed on Statistics Canada.”  

Stats Canada took the info in October 2017, and January 2018. The info was from Trans Union – who was ordered to “provide social insurance numbers, names, addresses, dates-of-birth and detailed credit information, including balances owed, balances overdue, and more than 30 other fields or categories of data.”

** 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending a decision by Statistics Canada to compel banks and financial institutions to release the personal transaction data of 500,000 people without their consent.

It's time for Justin to reveal every single expense he and his family have ever passed on to the Canadian taxpayer and it should be in every single publication in the country.

What's in your wallet, Justin, aside from my money?


Also:

Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson is still billing Canadian taxpayers more than $100,000 a year in office expenses, and has now claimed more than $1.1 million in such expenses since she left Rideau Hall in 2005.

If someone joins ISIS, then, yes - HE IS A TERRORIST:

The father of Jack Letts, a young British-Canadian man dubbed "Jihadi Jack" by British media, said information exists that proves his son was not a supporter of the Islamic State — but that information is sealed as part of a court case against himself and his wife.

The extraordinary claim was made by John Letts during a news conference on Parliament Hill Tuesday, prior to a meeting between Letts and senior officials at Global Affairs Canada.

Yes, about that: 

THE 20-year-old son of a leading figure in the organic food movement has become the first white British male known to be identified as having joined Isis. 

Jack Letts travelled to Syria when he was 18 after converting to Islam and telling his parents he was going to study Arabic in Kuwait. 

Letts, a keen footballer and highly regarded student, admitted to his parents that he was with Isis in Syria in September 2014.

This must be embarrassing ... for the federal government:

Global Affairs Canada discussed possible exit routes for the former resident of ISIL-controlled Raqqa. They asked the joint British-Canadian citizen’s jailers to provide him medical help, and said they were “extremely concerned” by reports he had been tortured.

“We are working diligently on your son’s file,” consular officials insisted to Letts’ U.K.-based parents.

Then earlier this year, the diplomats’ tone changed abruptly, the same officials saying their hands were tied by a lack of Canadian presence in Syria. Their ability to help the Muslim convert dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by British media was “extremely limited,” they now said.

Leave. Them. There:

Canadian infants and children being held in Syria deserve the federal government’s help to get them out before winter comes, says a group representing them here.

(Sidebar: NOT Canadian.)

The Canadians detained by Kurdish authorities in Syrian territory include nine families and more than 10 children, including some who were taken to Syria at young ages and others who were born there, said Alexandra Bain, the director of Families Against Violent Extremism.

Bain said the children are facing the outbreak of disease and a harsh winter and the Canadian government has a duty to protect its citizens. She said they live on a diet of rice and pasta and there are no diapers or milk for the infants.

Yazidi children faced harsh conditions and all Justin offered was parkas.




Not at all "random folks":

Peduto said he believed Trump should wait until all the funerals were held before coming to Pittsburgh. He suggested Trump's visit and the additional security measures entailed would distract from the "priority" of burying the dead.

Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, said, however, on ABC on Monday that the president of the United States was always welcome to visit.

And now, your Halloween playlist:

Halloween Week: the Maddening

What Obama said after four people were murdered in a French kosher deli:

President Obama has sparked some widespread fury over his recent comments to Vox about the Jewish individuals who were brutally killed by terrorists in Paris — specifically, he labeled them “a bunch of folks” who were randomly shot.

His comments: “It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” Vox reported.

Mr. Obama went on, seeming to place the blame for terrorist attacks at the feet of the United States.

 
Trump's comments after eleven elderly Jewish people were gunned down in cold blood by a mindless bigot:

Carry on.


Vaguely related - first of all, anyone who is even remotely familiar with Shakespeare should know about this play and should not have been shocked by it. Secondly, find something else to be offended by, like the fact that your government is riddled with anti-semites who can do far more damage than Shakespeare ever could:

An exclusive Toronto private school for girls has fired its principal for hosting an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice without warning students about its anti-Semitic content.

From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

Here is how Global News described the project.

The personal banking and financial transactions being requested include bill payments, cash withdrawals from ATMs, credit card payments, electronic money transfers and even account balances of Canadians across the country.
James Tebrake, director general of macroeconomics at Statistics Canada, told Global News that beginning in January, the agency will ask nine banks for the financial transaction information from a representative sample of 500,000 randomly chosen Canadians or a 1 in 20 chance of being selected.

Here’s the crazy thing, StatsCan claims that this is all allowed under their reading of the federal privacy act and the statistics act.

Also worrying, apparently the minister in charge, Navdeep Bains has not been fully briefed on this project that is set to start in January. He hasn’t signed off but he also hasn’t raised any red flags about the proposal.

Now why would StatsCan want all this info on you?

They want to be able to monitor spending, consumer trends and more.

While StatsCan says that at a certain point they will remove personal data to make it anonymous, it won’t be collected and stored that way at first.

That means if you are selected, without your knowledge or consent, then your name, address, SIN and all your banking data will be collected and stored on a government computer.

So much for privacy.

This database of highly sensitive personal information will eventually grow to millions of Canadians as StatsCan requests information on an additional 500,000 Canadians each year.

Canada’s banks have yet to agree with this request and they don’t seem impressed.

“Banks believed this proposed data acquisition project was still in the exploratory stages and were not aware that Statistics Canada was moving to compel disclosure of this information,” Canadian Bankers Association spokesman Aaron Boles told Global in a statement.

So far no information has been shared but if StatCan asks for it, the law says they have to hand it over.

Don't bring them into Canada. Shoot them where they stand:

Some Canadians left our country to fight for ISIS to fight for what they thought was their cause. They fought alongside a ragtag bunch of maniacs and sent pictures of their grizzly beheadings home. Now the tide of war has shifted, Syria seems to have the upper hand, and some of these Canadian ISIS allies find themselves in jail. The fighters want to pack up their wives and children and hop a flight to Canada.

**

Yet in an interview with Global’s West Block, Liberal MP Karen McCrimmon said that Canada has a responsibility to deal with terrorists in other countries.

Now if McCrimmon were simply a backbench MP then her comments wouldn’t matter much. Instead, she is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety.

Here’s what she told Global.

“We don’t believe in two-tier citizenship and if someone’s a Canadian citizen, we’re responsible for them whether we like it or not,” she said.
“When there’s Canadians abroad who have broken the law, it’s our responsibility to deal with it. We can’t just hand it off to some other nation to deal with.”

Now to a degree, McCrimmon is right, we don’t have two tier citizenship. So if we won’t go out of our way to bring home low level drug dealers caught and prosecuted in other countries, why do so for terrorists?

Once again, carbon is not a pollutant:

Again, it comes down to a matter of trust. If voters don’t believe the Liberals will do much to solve the emissions problem, that they’ll gobble up the tax money while still falling far short of their own targets, voters may decide that doing nothing is bad, but doing something that doesn’t work — while costing jobs and raising taxes — is worse.

Bill Morneau is an @$$hole who expects to sell the idea that a recession isn't so bad:

If Canada needs to weather another recession, it can.

That was what Finance Minister Bill Morneau told the West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson when pressed about whether the government has an end in sight for the deficit. There have been warnings coming from economists over the last year that a recession could hit within the next 18 to 24 months and pose a challenge to federal policymakers with a deficit still on the books.

 

But Wait! There's More!

 It's just money:

According to the Hill Times, cabinet minister offices increased their spending by 15% in 2017-2018:

“Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains’ office spent the most out of 33 cabinet offices in 2017-18, while the Prime Minister’s Office spent 10 per cent more compared to the previous fiscal year, according to newly released public accounts figures. In total, ministerial offices spent $56,880,614 in the 2017-18 fiscal year, which stretched from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018. It accounts for a roughly 15 per cent, or $7.5-million, increase compared to the previous fiscal year, in which cabinet offices spent $49,367,397.”

Among the biggest spenders were the offices of innovation minister Navdeep Bains ($2.26 million), and Bill ‘Moneybags’ Morneau ($2.1 million).

Melanie Joly’s office spent a bunch as well, racking up $1.9 million in bills to the taxpayer.

Additionally, “Spending also went up 10.5 per cent at the PMO, totalling $9,329,478 in 2017-18. It marks an increase of $883,168 compared to 2016-17, when the office spent $8,440,310. Almost $8.2-million was spent on personnel and nearly $1-million was for expenses labelled as transportation and communications.”

**

On October 23rd, Ralph Goodale said the following about the carbon tax:

“Canada’s price on pollution puts $609 a year tax-free back in the pockets of Saskatchewan families and fights climate change.”

On October 24th, Ralph Goodale said the following about the carbon tax:

“Here’s the text of an announcement I made yesterday in Regina – confirming that the typical Sk family will be getting a net benefit of $200 next year from a new federal Incentive to combat Climate Change. And that amount will keep growing every year!”

Huh?

In less than 24 hours, the carbon tax ‘benefit’ dropped over $400?

(Sidebar: why does anyone keep this doddering old fool around? Why?)

**

The Unification Ministry spent a whopping W10 billion from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund on setting up a cross-border liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong without consulting the National Assembly (US$1=W1,133). 

Lawmakers were left out of the whole process and merely informed after the money had been spent. Instead, the government got the expenses rubber-stamped by a body called the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Promotion Council.

The Unification Ministry met with the council on July 16 and obtained permission to draw W86 million from the fund for renovations on an existing building in the shuttered Kaesong Industrial Complex. The ministry decided to settle the remaining amount later. 

The liaison office had its grand opening on Sept. 14. The renovation work took less than two months, but the ministry set aside less than one percent of the cost in advance and then drew a blank check to finance the remainder of the work. 

(Sidebar: I suspect that, unlike Canadians who are happy when their government wastes money and to waste money themselves, Koreans shall be most displeased with this.)

 

While Canadians are overjoyed to pay more fuel and related taxes, the South Korean government is slashing fuel taxes by fifteen percent:

The government has decided to slash fuel taxes to boost the economy for the first time since the global financial crisis in 2008. Fuel taxes will be cut 15 percent for six months from Nov. 6 until May 6 next year, compared to 10 percent a decade ago.

Also:

The PM and his cabinet could have made this announcement in the foyer of the House of Commons. They could have walked across the street to the National Press Theatre.

Instead Trudeau took Catherine McKenna and Bill Morneau, plus their respective gaggle of staffers, on a flight to Toronto from Ottawa. After the announcement Trudeau hopped on the government jet and took off for Montreal for a fundraiser.

After his “fireside chat” with donors paying as much as $1,500 to listen to him talk, Trudeau hopped back on the government jet and came home.

It was just days ago the National Airlines Council of Canada was warning that the carbon tax would hurt their industry by driving up prices.

“It’s a mess; there’s no other way to describe it,” council president Massimo Bergamini told the Globe and Mail.

And - it takes all of you to be this stupid:

Praising the murderous Assad regime in Syria which has used chemical weapons on its own people is beyond tone deaf. And yet 31 staff members on the political and bureaucratic side looked at this tweet and approved it.

Before the tweet was ridiculed for praising a brutal dictator for agreeing to meet climate targets, only two red flags were raised by bureaucrats and it had to do with grammar.

One was on whether the term ratifying should be used or ratified. Another was worried about the French translation.

Seems an executive assistant to the Director General at Environment Canada was worried that the incorrect verb tense was being used in the French version of the tweet.

Let that sink in.

A ministerial tweet was seen and signed off on by 31 bureaucrats and political staffers and the only questions raised were about the the tense used for certain words and not the very idea of praising a murderous and dictatorial regime.

These people don’t live in the real world.

As the negative response mounted on Twitter the minister’s office realized their mistake and deleted the tweet. Then they started monitoring and documenting the responses.

Of particular concern were tweets that insulted McKenna including those referring to her as “Climate Barbie.”

Too bad they didn’t put in as much thought to the original tweet as they did to the post-mortem and concern about insults.

Despite 31 different people being on emails about this tweet, when it was deleted, some officials seem oblivious as to where it originated.

Turns out it was requested as part of a social media plan.

That’s right, not some spur of the moment tweet originating from a bad idea. This was carefully planned. Scheduled alongside other tweets promoting the department’s agenda.

Yet the minister claimed at the time that this was an accident, it was portrayed that way in much of the media.

Proposed legislation would have new teachers pass a basic math test:

The Ontario government says all aspiring teachers in the province will be required to pass a math test before receiving their licence to teach.

The Progressive Conservatives have introduced legislation that will make the testing mandatory, although current teachers will not be subjected to it.

Earlier this year, the agency that administers standardized assessments in the province said math test scores among public elementary students in Ontario have been decreasing over the last five years and suggested that efforts by the previous Liberal government to reverse the trend haven't worked.

Education Minister Lisa Thompson says the new math test for teachers will help improve the education system.

But opposition critics say the government should be bolstering curriculum supports and teacher training instead of imposing a test on teachers.

Watch as unions fight this.


Also:

A British student union president wants to paint over a mural honouring First World War casualties because … they’re “white men”.

Think of the millions of pounds it takes to put this brain-trust through university.




Killing three children wasn't enough:

Killer drunk driver Marco Muzzo could be getting full parole on Nov. 7.

Muzzo, 30, will be seeking day parole at this hearing, but because his two parole eligibility dates — Nov. 9 and May 9 — are only six months apart, this parole board could decide to release him on full parole next month. ...

Muzzo, the grandson of his late namesake billionaire developer, pleaded guilty in 2016 to four counts of impaired driving causing the deaths of Daniel Neville-Lake, 9, Harrison, 5, and Millie, 2, and their grandfather, Gary Neville, 65, and other counts of causing bodily harm on Sept. 27, 2015.

China refuses to believe that Taiwan is a separate country:

China's military will take action "at any cost" to foil any attempt to separate the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, the country's defense minister said on Thursday.

China has been infuriated by recent U.S. sanctions on its military, one of a growing number of flashpoints in Sino-U.S. ties that include a bitter trade war, the issue of Taiwan, and China's increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea.

What North Korea really means is that it wants South Korea to foot the bill for this:

South and North Korean officials on Monday agreed to cooperate in fighting tree diseases and modernizing 10 tree nurseries in the North. But North Korea expressed discontent at the results of the talks. 

Kim Song-jun, a senior forestry official who led the North Korean delegation, said, "I have become confident that we must remain as firm as pine trees against external and adverse forces in order to achieve the results we want." 

Expressing what he said was his personal views, Kim said, "If talks continue in this manner, we can't expect much from forestry cooperation talks the South proposes."  

 

Who the hell does Moon think he is? Trudeau?:

President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday signed into law a joint declaration drawn up by the leaders of the two Koreas at their third summit in September and a supplementary military agreement without submitting them for ratification to the National Assembly. But the declaration is largely a follow-up accord to the joint declaration announced at the first summit between Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April, which the National Assembly has yet to ratify. Moon is blithely jumping the gun.

The government decided to forego National Assembly ratification because it felt that there is nothing in the agreements that could "impose a significant fiscal burden on the public." A cursory look indeed suggests that there may be no significant causes for fiscal expenditures. They merely call for a ground-breaking ceremony for the re-linking of inter-Korean railways and roads, talks to re-open the shuttered Kaesong Industrial Complex and cooperation on forestry. But actual construction to reconnect severed cross-border railways could cost up to W40 trillion, and the government is rushing into breaking ground before producing an exact cost estimate (US$1=W1,137). This suggests it wants to push the cross-border projects so far that the next government will find it difficult to halt them.

Opposition parties also pointed out that the military agreement falls into the category of an "agreement concerning national security," which requires National Assembly ratification under the Constitution. That is because expanding the no-fly zone around the military demarcation line and ending naval drills near the Northern Limit Line could have profound implications for South Korea's national security.

 

 

 

And now, a feel-good story:

 

A team of surgeons has successfully repaired the spinal cords of two babies while they were still in their mothers’ wombs, the first surgery of its kind in Britain.

 

The operations were carried out over the summer at University College Hospital in London by 30 surgeons to treat spina bifida, a condition in which the spinal column and spinal cord do not develop properly in the womb, causing a gap in the spine.

“This results in changes to the brain, as well as severe permanent damage to the nerves on the lower half of the body,” Dominic Thompson, a neurosurgeon at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London who was involved in the surgery, said Thursday in a statement.

The surgery is usually performed after birth, but research has shown that the earlier the condition is treated, the greater the chances of healthy mobility. Those born with spina bifida are often unable to walk and have to undergo a series of operations to drain fluid from their brain.
 

The prenatal surgery involved opening the uterus, exposing the spina bifida and closing the defect without delivering the baby. Previously, mothers-to-be in Britain had to travel to the United States, Belgium or Switzerland to receive the prenatal surgery or to wait for the baby to born.

The babies who had the surgery this summer, and their mothers, were doing well, according to a spokeswoman for University College London Hospitals.

Mid-Week Post

Seven more shopping days until Halloween ...




The best way to deal with ISIS thugs is to turn them into a fine mist and never, ever give them an opportunity to re-enter Canada:

Murad’s dream, if a near-unanimous motion of the House of Commons this week is to be taken seriously, is now shared by the Canadian Parliament. Nadia’s words were written verbatim into the motion brought before the House this week by Murad’s comrade Michelle Rempel, the Conservative critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, herself a fierce campaigner for Yazidi refugees, and Pierre Paul-Hus, Opposition critic for Public Safety.

Every ISIL rapist, génocidaire, propagandist and collaborator must be brought to justice, then. Further, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government must table a plan, within 45 days, “to immediately bring to justice anyone who has fought as an ISIS terrorist or participated in any terrorist activity, including those who are in Canada or have Canadian citizenship.”

This will never happen as long as Justin occupies his dad's office.

(See here.)




All manner of misogynistic head-coverings solely for women are banned in Quebec:

Quebec's new Coalition Avenir Quebec government says it will go a step further in restricting religious symbols, prohibiting all public servants from wearing the chador, niqab or burka.

The ban on the garments is expected to be part of legislation that will also forbid state employees in positions of authority, including teachers, from wearing visible religious symbols.

The chador, which is worn primarily by Muslim women from Iran, is a cloak that covers the head and upper body but leaves the face visible. The burka covers the entire face with mesh over the eyes, while the niqab leaves a slit for the eyes.

Justice Minister Sonia LeBel said the government will move forward with the measure despite questions about its legality.

"There are always (legal) opinions that can lead in every direction, but what is important is for the government to give direction," she said.

Premier Francois Legault has said in the past that he is prepared to invoke the Constitution's notwithstanding clause to ensure his religious-symbol legislation does not fall to a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

No word on whether Justin will warn them from very, very far away or wear a head-covering in solidarity with women who would otherwise have acid thrown in their faces for not wearing these coverings.




It's just money:

It is after all a stretch at this point to keep referring to it as “pan-Canadian,” the Liberals’ preferred original term intended to signal that it was an agreement between the provinces, territories and Ottawa. Now nearly half the provinces part of the original negotiations two years ago are rebelling against the plan to varying degrees and still others are threatening to.

And pretending this any longer has anything to do with “fighting climate change,” as the government continued to insist Tuesday, takes yet more gall. It was just a couple of weeks ago that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shredded that pretext, having declared that for a carbon tax to be effective in saving the climate from apocalyptical warming it would have to start at least at US$135 a tonne and maybe even rise to US$5,500 a tonne by 2030. The Liberals’ tax starts at $20 and rises to $50. Projections currently show they won’t even meet their commitments to 2016’s Paris climate agreement unless its at least $200 a tonne, although that reality was also inverted Tuesday as the federal government publicly pretended that meeting its Paris promise was well underway without challenges. ...

Instead, Trudeau is layering a carbon tax atop an existing web work of myriad green initiatives and regulations, both federal and provincial, that vary wildly from coast to coast. And he wants to rebate money back through his Climate Action Incentives using a rough formula applied to personal tax returns and based entirely on the number of people who live in a household and where they live, not how much they emit. In some provinces people get more, in others less, regardless of each one’s carbon footprint. Rural people get bigger rebates than urbanites, never mind if a country cousin and his city cousin drive the exact same distances each year. And workers in snowy Sault Ste. Marie evidently qualify for no greater rebate than retirees in the warmer Ontario climes of Niagara. (As for those suckers stuck in provinces who already have a carbon tax — B.C., Alberta and Quebec — they’ll continue to see their climate taxes padding out regular old government spending).

And the businesses that employ those families and provide them the income on those tax forms? The vast majority will pay the tax, and get nothing back.

With his promise that the majority of people in the provinces he’ll be taxing will get back more than what they pay, Trudeau neglects to mention that in order for that to happen, other groups must pay far more. Under the Trudeau government, that means high earners and businesses, as usual, but unfortunately it also means consumers.

Then you don't have my vote, Andy:

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer made clear Wednesday he would not re-criminalize cannabis, after headlines last week suggested he hadn’t ruled the idea out.

You are a Canadian. You don't fight back. You smash windows until you are stopped:

The premier of Ontario received death threats and his labour minister had her constituency office vandalized hours after a sweeping labour reform bill was introduced in the legislature, the Progressive Conservative government said Wednesday.

Government House Leader Todd Smith said the incidents were an attempt to bully and intimidate the government and would not be tolerated.

“What we want is to see…some of these other radical groups acknowledge the fact that a line has been crossed here,” Smith said.

Wiener.




If "words matter", shouldn't they matter when people accuse a sitting president for precipitating an attack or when people threaten to kill said sitting president or when they accuse of him of colluding with Russian agents?:

“There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” CNN president Jeff Zucker said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that.”

And now,  historic things that happened on Halloween:

MONSTER MASH" BY BOBBY PICKETT AND THE CRYPT-KICKERS IS AT THE TOP OF THE BILLBOARD 100 // HALLOWEEN 1962

(Insert Title Here)

If western Canada really doesn't want to pay the carbon taxes Justin is forcing it to pay, it should cut off the oil and the natural gas it ships out to eastern Canada. It should do so now.

Winter is coming:

Ontario
Average cost per household in 2019: $244
Average rebate in 2019: $300
Average cost in 2022: $564
Average rebate in 2022: $697
Support for small businesses and affected sectors over next five years: $1.45 billion

Yes, about that:

If you live in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or New Brunswick then Justin Trudeau wants you to know that despite the cost of everything going up, you will get more money back than you will pay.

Directly.

That was a key word Trudeau emphasized as he made the announcement.

“Eight in 10 Ontario families will get back more than they pay, directly,” Trudeau said.

That is key.

The feds won’t be giving citizens a rebate based on the price of pretty much everything getting more expensive, just on what you pay directly.

Higher gas prices, home heating, etc.

Higher grocery or food prices? You are on your own.

** 

Do you believe him when he says 70% of the people living in those provinces, which account for almost half the Canadian population, will be financially better off when he imposes his carbon tax on them starting next year? 

(Meaning 30% will be worse off.)

Because that’s what Trudeau claimed Tuesday.

He said the average Ontario family of four will pay $244 more under his carbon tax in 2019, while receiving a rebate from the federal government of $307.

In Saskatchewan, he says, the average family will pay $403 in carbon taxes with a $609 rebate.

In Manitoba, $232 more with a $339 rebate and in New Brunswick, $202 more with a $256 rebate.

Do you also believe Trudeau when he says that every year after 2019, the average family will receive more in increasing rebates than in increasing carbon taxes?

While you’re thinking of your answer, consider this.

During the 2015 election, Trudeau predicted Canada would have three years of “modest” deficits under his leadership followed by a $1 billion surplus in 2019-20.

So far, Trudeau’s deficits have been double his predictions, with his government now predicting a $17.5 billion deficit in 2019-20, not a $1 billion surplus.

AND running the carbon tax fraud is free-of-charge, apparently.

Everything looks great when you don't look at the numbers.


 

Also - it's just money:

The federal government is writing off more than $6.3 billion in loans to businesses and students as the Trudeau government marks a new annual high in money it never expects to get back.

The Liberals have already written off some $3 billion in loans in each of the past two years, but they jumped past that mark in the fiscal year 2017-2018 with help from one loan.

Today in "Justin is a scumbag" news:

It really shouldn’t be that hard for a politician marking the fourth anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill.

Keep it short. Keep it simple and sincere. Honour Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who died in the attack. Honour the Canadian Armed Forces in general. And then, maybe, put in a little something about keeping Canadians safe.

That’s it. Absolutely do not include anything that has the whiff of partisanship in it. But this shouldn’t even have to be spelled out, right? It’s that obvious, any novice political staffer should understand.

Yet take a look at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement issued on Monday morning. It begins properly, denouncing the “tragic and senseless attack”. It goes on to recognize both Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, killed in a separate attack in Quebec two days earlier. Then it discusses paying tribute to CAF members and first responders. That should be it. End it there.

Instead, the PM and his staff couldn’t resist. They drop in these tone-deaf lines, the fourth of five paragraphs: “As Canadians, we will not surrender to hatred, and let attacks like these divide us. In the face of cowardly violence and fear-mongering, we will not compromise our most cherished values – freedom, democracy, diversity and inclusion.”

Like the inclusion of child rapists and murderers back into Canada:

Bill C-75, currently before the House of Commons, calls for a whole raft of crimes to be treated under summary conviction.

That includes terrorism offences.

• Participation in activity of terrorist group
• Leaving Canada to participate in activity of terrorist group
• Advocating or promoting commission of terrorism offences
• Concealing person who carried out terrorist activity
• Concealing person who is likely to carry out terrorist activity

These offences currently have sentences ranging from a maximum of five years to 14 years in prison.

Under Trudeau’s Bill C-75, that could be reduced to a maximum of six months in prison.

The changes being brought in by the Liberals allow for each of those offences to proceed via summary conviction. Under the criminal code, the rules are clear, maximum six months in jail.

787 (1) Unless otherwise provided by law, everyone who is convicted of an offence punishable on summary conviction is liable to a fine of not more than five thousand dollars or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months or to both.

Are these the actions of a government that takes terrorism seriously?

Hardly.

The thugs who do these sorts of things:

“An explosive charge believed to be planted by Islamic State militants went off while four children were playing outside a medical complex at the Christian-majority Bartella town in eastern Mosul,” said a local source.  “The explosion left the four children injured.”  The report adds that “Bartella, largely inhibited by Christians, was emptied from inhabitants when the IS group seized the town in August 2014. After controlling the town, IS ordered the Christians to pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword, prompting the residents to flee the town.”  Documentarian Gwendolen Cates, who spent year in the Arab nation, also said, “The Christians of Iraq, along with other religious minorities, live in constant fear and face potential genocide. … The minorities are being increasingly ‘ghettoized,’ with their land being taken.”

... will get six months for the lot, if that.


Also:

The bill meant to exclude returning terrorists from provincial services passed first reading in Ontario’s legislature Monday.

As reported first in the Toronto Sun, the Terrorist Activity Sanctions Act strips returning participants in overseas terror groups of privileges like holding an Ontario driver’s licence or accessing provincial health coverage.

“Individuals in foreign prisons are set to return to this province after fighting for ISIS and other terrorist organizations,” said Tory MPP Dave Smith, the bill’s sponsor, during question period on Monday.

But ... but ... "core identity" and stuff!:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he doesn't want to leave Canadians "holding a billion-dollar bill" by cancelling the controversial contract to sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

(Sidebar: passing off debts to Canadians has never bothered Justin before.)




While the government of Ontario dismantles Wynne's disastrous labour policies, it has decided to keep everyone on the hook for their poor life choices:

A review of Ontario’s overdose-prevention sites has found that they help reduce drug-related deaths and lower the rate of public drug use, Health Minister Christine Elliott said Monday as she announced plans to enhance the program previously criticized by Premier Doug Ford.

Elliott said the Progressive Conservative government will spend just over $31 million a year to fund a maximum of 21 sites, which in addition to overdose prevention will offer drug users treatment and rehabilitation services.

“The evidence clearly demonstrated that these sites were necessary,” she told a news conference.

Yes, about that:

Despite a rescue attempt with naloxone and intervention by paramedics, a drug user who overdosed at a supervised injection site on Murray Street last week later died in hospital.

That the public knows of ...




But there is no country called Gayistan:

A New Brunswick village has taken down a “straight flag” after a single day, following a public backlash locally and beyond.

The flag was raised Sunday afternoon in Chipman, N.B., with Mayor Carson Atkinson saying it met the village council’s criteria because it “recognizes, accepts and respects the rights of individuals under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Atkinson said it was important to celebrate everyone in Chipman, and said the council previously voted to raise the rainbow flag representing the LGBTQ community.

Terri-Lynne McClintic lured an eight year old child to her death:

Nestled among the rolling hills of southwestern Saskatchewan, several wooden cabins surrounded by autumn barren trees make up what is known as the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge.

It may sound like a wilderness retreat, but this is a federal penitentiary.

It's operated by the Corrections Canada to house incarcerated women, including 28-year-old Terri-Lynne McClintic — the convicted killer of eight-year-old Tori Stafford, whose death and disappearance captured national attention after police scoured the southwestern Ontario countryside for months in one of the largest-ever searches for a missing person in Canada.

McClintic's transfer from an Ontario medium-security prison to Okimaw Ohci not even halfway through her life sentence has sparked national outrage, but advocates for the healing lodge are defending its effectiveness to rehabilitate offenders.

"To put people behind bars is really kind of revengeful," said Mary Sanderson, a former art therapist who volunteered at Okimaw Ohci between 2007 and 2012.

"The healing lodge believes that there is something that can be drawn out of those women, who mainly have been abused and come from lives of terrible violence."

Perhaps Miss Sanderson could enlighten the public of the works of art that can come from the mind of a woman who expressed no remorse for a child beaten to death with a hammer.

Now, a feel-good story:

Swedish prosecutors have indicted a 21-year-old woman for breaking aviation laws after she blocked the deportation of an Afghan asylum-seeker earlier this year.

Prosecutors said Friday the woman failed to comply with orders from the plane’s crew to sit down as it was preparing to take off from Gothenburg airport on July 23.

But ... but... sanctions!:

North Korea imported at least $640 million worth of luxury goods from China last year, in defiance of U.N. sanctions outlawing such trade over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, a South Korean lawmaker said on Monday.

The United States has urged strict implementation of sanctions as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign which Washington has credited with bringing impoverished North Korea to the negotiating table.

But there have been signs the campaign has been losing steam since North Korea suspended nuclear and missile tests and leader Kim Jong Un vowed steps towards denuclearization at a U.S.-North Korean summit in June - and as China and Russia called for relaxed sanctions.

"Kim has bought lavish items from China and other places like a seaplane for not only his own family, and also expensive musical instruments, high-quality TVs, sedans, liquor, watches and fur as gifts for the elites who prop up his regime," opposition lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun said in a statement.

"With the growing loophole, Kim would be able to near his goal of neutralizing sanctions soon without giving up the nuclear weapons."

Last year, North Korea spent at least $640 million on luxury goods from China, according to Yoon.

China does not provide breakdowns of its customs figures. Yoon compiled data based on a list of banned items crafted by Seoul in line with a 2009 U.N. resolution.

Japan is making some well-armed friends:

Japan hopes to clinch a military logistics pact with India that will allow access to each other's bases, Tokyo's envoy said on Monday, in a tightening of security ties seen as designed to balance China's growing weight in the region.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting Japan this weekend for an annual summit with his counterpart Shinzo Abe, and the proposed Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement between the two militaries is on the agenda.

Under Modi and Abe, bilateral relations have rapidly expanded and the two countries conduct three-way naval exercises involving the United States in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

Japan's ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, said it was only natural for the two militaries to have a logistics-sharing agreement because of the large number of maneuvers they were carrying out each year.

"We hope to start formal negotiations with regard to signing of the ACSA. It is high time we had mutual logistics support," he said.

Under such a pact, Japanese ships would get access to fuel and servicing at major Indian naval bases including the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which lie near the Malacca Straits through which a large amount of Japan's but also China's trade and fuel supplies is shipped.

India's navy, which is increasingly sending ships further out as a way to counter China's expanding presence in the Indian Ocean, would get access to Japanese facilities for maintenance.

Friday Post

The opposite of "winning":

A prominent Canadian steel executive told MPs this week that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland​'s "ego" is getting in the way of ending American tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

Barry Zekelman, the chairman and CEO of Zekelman Industries, delivered a scathing assessment Thursday of how the Liberal government is handling the tariff fight with the United States, accusing the government of squandering opportunities to resolve the issue months ago.

**

Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow says a White House official called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a "little punk kid running Canada." 

(Sidebar: what most people call him cannot be typed or uttered in polite company.)

**

According to the Real Clear Politics aggregation of Trump approval polls, 44.1% of Americans approve of him, while 51.7% disapprove.

What about Trudeau?

Well, according to the CBC Leader Meter, which aggregates Trudeau approval polls, 40.6% of Canadians approve of Trudeau, while 49.1% disapprove.

His arrogance and ignorance do not stop there:

Canada is not about to agree to quotas or other limits on its exports in order to get the United States to lift punishing tariffs on steel and aluminum, says a source close to the ongoing talks to resolve the lingering tit-for-tat trade standoff.

Yeah, good luck with that, Justin.



Because transparency:

The case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman keeps looking worse and worse for the Trudeau government.

The government is going after him for allegedly ‘leaking cabinet secrets’ regarding a navy lease. The government says it was an effort to influence the government and embarrass.

Norman is facing a serious accusation, and he of course deserves the chance to defend himself.

But he is unable to do so unless all documents pertaining to the issue – some of which are cabinet documents (which can only be released by the Prime Minister) are released.

However, the Trudeau government is so far refusing to release pertinent documents, and it seems like the refusal stems in part from concerns that Scott Brison may have potentially interfered in the process.

**

A report made by the Toronto Sun suggests that Trudeau has been doing worse than the Conservatives in terms of transparency. They scored very poorly in the most recent national freedom of information audit that was conducted.

The audit report claimed that the current government has to take many strides in order to fulfill its goal of a truly transparent government.

Moreover, researchers discovered that the federal system is far slower and less responsive than provincial and than “provincial and municipal freedom of information regimes” in accordance with the federal Access to Information Act.

 
It's just money:

The Economist this week warns policy makers to “start preparing for the next recession” while they still can. The release of the government of Canada’s annual financial report for the 2017-18 fiscal year, however suggests the Trudeau Liberals have no notion of foregoing that most enjoyable of all entitlements: spending other people’s money.

The annual budget is an aspirational document, revealing what the government would like to do. But the annual report is a look in the rearview mirror at what it did in the year ending March 31, 2018.

This year is complicated by a restatement of the public finances going back years to factor in an accounting change. (The Auditor General ordered the restatement, related to discounted and unfunded pension obligations, and it adds an additional $20 billion to the federal debt, which now stands at $671 billion.) But the story is relatively simple — 2017-18 was a bumper year for government revenues, which rose by $20 billion, or 6.9 per cent, from the previous year.

More on that:

The federal government ran a shortfall of $19 billion in the last fiscal year, virtually unchanged from the previous year, Ottawa’s annual financial report card shows.

The deficit for 2017-18 was slightly smaller than the federal government predicted in February’s budget.

However, the Finance Department’s fiscal monitor estimated in May the federal books would post a deficit of just $16.2 billion for last year.

To confuse matters, the government says it has changed the way it calculates its pension liability — a fix officials say has been at the top of the list for auditors for years. And that led to revisions of 10 years’ worth of budget numbers.

**

Federal spending continued to rise over the last fiscal year, ballooning to over $300 billion for the first time and helping push up Ottawa’s net debt-to-GDP ratio, long touted by the Liberals as evidence of their controlled spending habits.

Spending in the fiscal year reached $332 billion, largely due to a recent accounting change that categorizes certain debt liabilities as program expenses. That compares to $287 billion in spending in 2016-17, which Finance estimates would have equalled roughly $312 billion under the current accounting rules.

**

Catherine McKenna makes huge and hilarious mistakes on Twitter almost daily, and the latest is a classic.

McKenna was reacting to the following Tweet:

“Cancelling the cap and trade program will worsen the ON’s budget balance by a total of $3 billion over the next four years.”

(Sidebar: yes, Climate Barbie, about that ...)


This budget:

It does sound bad, until one considers what the province’s Financial Accountability Office is actually saying. Accountability officer Peter Weltman rightly focuses on the news that cancelling the Liberal cap-and-trade plan is not quite the neat equation that we had been led to believe. That’s only part of the story, though.

The big picture number is still that ending cap-and-trade will save Ontarians about $7.2 billion over four years. What’s new is that the Ford government will retain a significant amount of the program spending that the Liberals were paying for with their cap-and-trade revenue.

**

A new report on young workers, released by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), is evidence that Friedman’s observations on the American economy in the 1970s also apply to Canada today. Despite labour shortages in many sectors, youth unemployment in Canada remains high. Why? In large part because of minimum wage hikes and schooling that does not adequately prepare youth for the workplace.

Out of 6,398 responses to the CFIB’s survey, only 32% of small businesses were satisfied with how high schools prepared youth for employment, 53% were dissatisfied, and 15% were unsure. 

Minimum wage hikes were identified by 57% of small businesses (and another government failure, high payroll taxes, by 51%) as a barrier to hiring more youth.

But these is some good news:

More than a decade after it was first proposed by TransCanada Corp., the Keystone XL project is moving closer to the construction phase in Canada and the U.S., despite legal obstacles facing the company.

Preliminary work has begun on the pipeline route in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana and South Dakota — except for the state of Nebraska, where it faces a legal challenge, a TransCanada spokesperson told the Financial Post.

Trump really knows how to get things going.



Andrea Horvath is a fat, raving psychotic:

PC MPP Donna Skelly says Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath pushed her in the Ontario Legislative building.

Skelly says Horwath was “red-faced” and “screaming,” adding that she thinks Horwath needs “anger management.”

Skelly referred to Horwath as an “angry woman.”

** 

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath did not impede a PC MPP from carrying out her parliamentary duties during an exchange in the legislature, Speaker Ted Arnott has ruled.

(Sidebar: I've heard that angering a hippopotamus could be deadly.)


 
Censorship and failure to support a teacher doing his or her job are reasons to abolish teachers' unions:

English literature teachers in a large Ontario school board have been urged not to teach the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird because it is harmful, violent and oppressive to black students, and its trope of a “white saviour” makes its black characters seem “less than human.” ...

One Peel District School Board English teacher of long standing, however, called the memo “intimidating,” and a “de facto book ban” that tells teachers who dare to assign the book that they will not be supported by the school board if anyone complains.

The very same book that fueled the civil rights movement in the US is now fodder for teh perpetually-aggrieved and censorial.



If Jihadi Jack were to step on a landmine, would his father campaign to bring the fine powder that was once his heartless murderer son to Canada?:

The father of a suspected ISIS jihadist is begging Canada to take his son in, insisting that he’s not a terrorist.

And he deserves Canada’s protection.

People who warned that euthanasia would be used against children against their parents wishes were laughed at:

“In a flowchart that outlines how a medically induced death would occur at Sick Kids, authors Carey DeMichelis, Randi Zlotnik Shaul and Adam Rapoport do not mention conversation with family or parents about how the child dies until after the death occurs in the ‘reflection period.’

“Patient confidentiality governs the decision about whether or not to include parents in a decision about an assisted death, the authors said. If capable minors under the age of 18 stipulate they don’t want their parents involved, doctors and nurses must respect the patients’ wishes.

Oops:

Journalist: What were you telling me last night about Planned Parenthood?

Starost: How they never- How they don't donate to Claire because they don't want to ostracize pro-life voters in Missouri.

Journalist: But they still somehow get us money?

Starost: They put it through, like, different organizations.

Journalist: Keep the Planned Parenthood name off the thing, but we still get the dough?

Starost: Yup. I love that stuff, man. It's f-ing beautiful.

Apparently making Canada a working democracy is somehow a faux pas:

Hudson's Bay Company is no longer selling a baseball cap featuring the phrase "Make Canada Great Again" following online backlash.

The retailer wouldn't comment on their rationale for selling the hat, which featured a Canadian version of U.S. President Donald Trump's politically loaded "Make America Great Again" slogan, but a company representative confirmed to HuffPost Canada that they are no longer selling it.

Just another reason to boycott the Hudson's Bay, the trading company that helped make Canada in the first place.



And now, a happy story:

Three adult St. Bernards who couldn't be separated because they're best buddies have found a home.

The Edmonton Humane Society says Goliath, Gunther and Gasket are settling in with their new family in Calgary.

The society put out a call last week for someone up to the challenge of handling the three adult dogs, their $300-a-month food bill and an excessive amount of doggy drool.

The animal agency said the bulky Bernards — who collectively top out at 160 kilograms — were incredibly bonded and would get highly anxious when separated.

The society says it received more than 200 inquiries from around the world the first day.

The adoptive family has asked to remain anonymous for now, but in an interview with the humane society admitted to being "totally crazy" — but in a good way.