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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.