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.