For a Sunday

Winter is coming ...



As of 2016, the amount of people who spoke French in and outside of the home was 29.8%. The English language, despite severe restrictions, was becoming more widely spoke in Quebec (which is not an officially bilingual province):

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he's disconcerted by Ontario's decision to slash French services in the province.

"I was deeply disappointed by the decision of the Ontario government to cut services and protections for the francophone minorities in Ontario," he said at a press conference at the tail end of his trip to Papua New Guinea.

He said his reaction should come as no surprise, since protecting language is "extremely important" to him and his government.

(Sidebar: yes, Justin, we know.) 

The francophone oligarchy is artificially propped up at the expense of everyone else in Canada. The sooner this is dismantled and replaced with a realistic alternative to the diminishing handful who do speak French, the better off this country will be.

It's as though Doug Ford wants to win the next election and is on course for it:

Ontario's way out of a deep "fiscal hole" won't be easy, the Progressive Conservative government warned Thursday as it announced plans to eliminate three independent legislative watchdogs, end subsidies to political parties and halt the development of a French-language university, among other measures.

The cuts laid out in the government's Fall Economic Statement for 2018-2019 — its first major fiscal update since taking power in June — helped the Tories shave $500 million off the province's $15-billion deficit.

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The Ontario government announced in its fall economic statement Thursday afternoon that it would be closing the child advocate office, moving its responsibilities to an expanded Ombudsman's office, one of several cuts announced by a government that has said Ontario faces a $14.5-billion deficit.

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You will be able to buy alcohol in Ontario as late as 11 p.m. under the Ontario government’s newly-revamped sales policy, and maybe one day at your local corner store too.

The Liberals always leave the country in worse shape than when they found it, were strangely silent on Ben Levin and are strangely puritan over private businesses selling alcohol but are more than willing to make the taxpayer fund heroine users.

This entire country is a walking gong show.



Ignore social conservatives at one's peril. That sort of alienation splits the vote. Don't the Tories care about that?:

Prominent social conservatives within Ontario's Progressive Conservative party say their voices are being ignored at this weekend's policy convention, once again exposing cracks in a coalition that helped propel the party to a massive election win earlier this year.

Jack Fonseca of the social conservative group Campaign Life Coalition and Tanya Granic Allen, a parental rights advocate and former Tory leadership candidate, have both expressed frustration that dozens of policy resolutions with a social conservative bent were blocked from being debated by party members at the event in Etobicoke, Ont.

The exclusion of the proposals has rekindled fears amongst some social conservatives that their voices will once again be marginalized, as they said the party had done under former Tory leader Patrick Brown.

The same country that, for some reason, cannot produce its own experts or one that will remain after graduation and cannot import them needs them the most:

We know the co-op pipeline is crucial to employee recruitment. To take just a small example, a 2017 class profile of University of Waterloo systems design engineers showed that 65 per cent secured full-time jobs with the same companies they’d worked at as students. But Canadian firms typically only get student placements early on in their education, and this radically drops off as they get closer to graduation — when they aim for co-ops, and ultimately employment, in the United States.

This means taxpayers are supporting STEM education, but lose the talent necessary to stimulate economic growth in these sectors (and thus a return on our investment). Yet as the CEO of a 20-year-old tech company, I’ve often felt universities have been reluctant to make students aware of opportunities with Canadian companies. We need to be thinking on a bigger scale — collaboratively.

As usual, Canada is experiencing a brain-drain. Whatever skilled workers are produced will leave for greener pastures in the US or overseas and despite the insistence of the current government, the Canadian job market has yet to see illegal migrants with valid STEM degrees assume positions where the government says they are needed.


Also:

Canada is on track to receive its highest number of refugee claims since record-keeping began nearly three decades ago, the latest data shows, as the government's handling of immigration comes under scrutiny ahead of next year's federal election.

Despite cooler weather, the number of refugee claimants jumped past 6,000 in October, the highest monthly tally this year, the data released on Thursday showed.

That takes total claims in the first 10 months of 2018 to 46,245, putting the country on track to surpass last year's record even as the quasi-judicial body that adjudicates claims struggles to work through a 64,000-person backlog.

Where were these poverty-rights activists when Justin threatened to make things more expensive for low-income families with an unnecessary and expensive carbon tax?:

Protesters including OCAP protested outside Deco Labels, owned by Premier Doug Ford, after the recent repeal of the The Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act (Bill 148) that brought minimum wage up to $14, vacation entitlements, & two paid sick days annually.

Raising the spectre of the American elections because this one could go pear-shaped:

With a federal election less than a year away, Canada's defence minister is warning voters they will be targeted by online cyber-attacks and fake news as Russia steps up its efforts to undermine western democracies.

Yes, Harjit, about that:

According to Elections Canada, about 207,000 voter information cards were sent out in the last election to people that were already dead. Another 57,500 went to people that were not citizens.

With the Trudeau government set to allow voter information cards to be used as identification in the next election we should all be worried.

 

Are dead people going to vote? Did they vote in the last election?

What about non-citizens?

The scary thing is that Elections Canada recently admitted that they have no way of tracking whether a someone is a citizen before voting, describing the process as an honour system.

It's just an economy:

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says the low price of western Canadian crude has become a serious problem for the country's economy, adding her government is "furiously" seeking solutions.

But while the province and the oilpatch explore their options, Notley said there's a lack of agreement around the sector on the controversial call for her government to mandate temporary production cuts.

Anything for a laugh:

Justin Trudeau promised to restore Canadian leadership in the world. He pledged that the “proud tradition” that saw Canada help create the United Nations and champion the international treaty to ban land-mines would be revived on his watch.

The reality has been underwhelming.

Trudeau’s crusade to change the world has been more symbolic than substantive. Canada’s progressive trade agenda has been rebuffed by its trading partners; its peacekeeping mission to Mali — eight helicopters and 250 military members — has been welcomed by the United Nations but comes to an end next July.

Yet there is one area where Canada could become the “essential country” that foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland said it would be in her major 2017 foreign policy speech — as an interlocutor on trade relations between the United States and China.

This trade war:

Leaders from the world’s two biggest economies exchanged tough language at this summit of Pacific Rim countries as their trade war showed no signs of abating amidst a larger struggle for influence in the region.

United States Vice-President Mike Pence told a gathering of business leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit that there would be no backing down from tariffs until China changed its ways.

“China has taken advantage of the United States for many, many years and those days are over,” Pence said.

The China that backs this guy:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a newly developed “ultramodern tactical weapon,” state media said Friday without specifying what kind of weapon was tested.

Normally Canadian lawyers are helping terrorists and war criminals:

A Vancouver lawyer who helped prosecute two of the Khmer Rouge’s most senior surviving leaders is breathing a little easier after a tribunal this week found the two elderly Cambodian men guilty of genocide and other crimes.

Dale Lysak says he has been waiting more than a year for the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal’s ruling against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, and that the verdict ensures some accountability for one of recent history’s worst atrocities.

“I’m very satisfied,” Lysak said in an interview. “I’ve been waiting for over a year to get the judgment on this trial and it feels great.”

An estimated two million Cambodians were killed during a bloody four-year period after the Communist-inspired movement known as the Khmer Rouge took over the poor Southeast Asian country in 1975.

Lysak was one of several prosecutors during the nearly decade-long tribunal hearings, and he told The Canadian Press he felt the weight of responsibility for all those affected by the murderous regime during his eight years working on the tribunal.

That included when he led the prosecution’s cross-examination of Nuon Chea, who served as second in command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998. There were also daily reminders as survivors sat in the courtroom to listen to the trial.

Oh, good Lord:

Millions of children around the world live in orphanages, but child rights experts say most are not orphans.

Orphanages have become a lucrative business in developing countries, attracting generous funding. This has led to the trafficking of children to fill them, according to charities Forget Me Not and Lumos.

Oops:

Scot Peterson, the disgraced Florida cop who failed to act when a gunman shot and killed multiple people the February shooting in Parkland, is likely disappointed if he expected generous donors to flock to his GoFundMe page.

The fundraiser, created to collect funds so Peterson can “hire counsel to defend him against any spurious claims of criminal liability,” has a $150,000 goal. The page, however, appeared to be deactivated Friday night.