Mid-Week Post

In the bleak mid-autumn ... 



 
It's just money:

Darren Peers of Capital Group Companies – a large investor in the energy sector including in Canadian energy – is warning that investors are looking outside of Canada as the energy industry in this country continues to struggle.

In a letter, Peers said “Capital Group’s energy investments are increasingly shifting to other jurisdictions and that is likely to continue without strong government action. I hope that your government will be even more proactive in securing market access which will assure the competitiveness of Canadian energy companies.” 

He added, “Market access is critical to an investment in a Canadian energy company and if that continues to be under threat, global investors will seek opportunities elsewhere and Canadian companies will be further impaired. Increasingly, investors are questioning the merits of investing in Canadian energy and with that, Canadian companies will struggle to access capital, create jobs, develop resources and provide a significant revenue stream for the country.”

**

According to the CP, “He pointed to the fact the national shipbuilding strategy only includes plans to build one new heavy icebreaker as proof. Canada’s 15 existing ships, of various sizes, are on average more than 35 years old and nearing the ends of their life expectancies. Coast guard officials admitted last month that they expect to use the Davie-supplied ships for the next 15 to 20 years. 

“There’s just a lack of planning and it’s all ad hoc,” Huebert said of replacing the coast guard’s existing fleet. “We haven’t built a bloody coast guard icebreaker since the 1980s and government keeps giving it industry’s castoffs.”

**

The Ontario government is exploring a suite of measures aimed at revealing the cost of the federal carbon tax on the province’s gas prices and home heating bills, as part of Premier Doug Ford’s continued pushback against Ottawa’s plan.

(Sidebar: oh, do tell!)

**

The federal government is planning to award another $38 million into the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, bringing its total budget to $92 million.

The new money, included in the fall supplementary estimates, comes after Ottawa granted the inquiry a six-month extension in June. The inquiry’s commissioners had originally asked for a two-year extension and $50 million beyond their original $53-million budget.

The inquiry says the money will cover operating costs for the additional six months as well as unforeseen expenses, including translation, IT requirements and aftercare for those who have spoken at the hearings.

“The (systemic) causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are rooted in 500 years of colonization,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Time and investment are required for a thoughtful and thorough examination into the underlying reasons for this national tragedy.”

(Sidebar: what the fudge is 2SLGBTQQIA? Never mind. I don't want to know.)

**

Canada wants to walk down the path toward a free-trade agreement with a bloc of 10 Asian nations as early as next spring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday in his only opportunity to directly address the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

(Sidebar: that's nice but our biggest trading partner will always be the US and Justin screwed that up by talking.)

**

Canada’s largest aerospace company surprised investors Nov. 8 by saying it would need to tap proceeds from the sale of its Downsview facility in Toronto to meet a goal of breaking even on a cash-flow basis this year, plus or minus $150 million. Next year’s goal of break-even cash flow, plus or minus $250 million, fell short of analyst estimates.

When you have nothing to your credit but a series of failures, then one might as well lie and lie often:

The Liberals attempt to deceive was called out by Conservative MP Erin O’Toole:

“Cool graphics, but what is missing is the recognition that all of these major trade agreements were negotiated by Conservative governments. In fact, the Liberals have weakened each of these deals especially the poor terms in USMCA.”

Also:

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?

"Say what?"

As long as Canadians are not vocal or demonstrative, the lying plutocracy that is the Liberal Party will carry on violating the privacy of every citizen for its own gain:

 A new Nanos Research poll shows the vast majority of Canadians oppose the effort by the Trudeau government-controlled Statistics Canada to take our financial information without permission.

55% oppose the data grab, and 19% somewhat oppose it.

By contrast, just 9% say they support it, while 14% somewhat oppose it.

Combined, that’s 74% against the theft of our info, and just 23% supporting it.

Additionally, the majority of Canadians in all provinces and among all age groups oppose it.

It must be that transparency I've heard so much about:

Just a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke out in Paris in support of a free press — an institution he said needs to be "free-thinking, independent, rigorous, robust, respected" — Canada's finance minister gave a key speech in Beijing behind closed doors.

Journalists were barred from listening to Finance Minister Bill Morneau's speech Monday because "the Chinese officials speaking at the dinner have asked that it not be open to media," said Sarah Kutulakos, executive director of the Canada China Business Council (CCBC), the host organization for the event.

I'll bet this gets some people angry:

On Twitter, Maxime Bernier rightfully called it ‘barbarism.’

“Radical multiculturalism is the misguided belief that all values and cultures can coexist in one society.

They cannot. 

We must protect our society against this kind of barbarism.”

Also:

All 460 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, a self-governing Palestinian territory in Israel’s southwest. Since Gaza came under the control of the terrorist group Hamas in 2007, it has been subject to strict Israel border blockades in an effort to curb Hamas’ ability to conduct terrorist operations.

And - because Jews:

The right to remain silent was likely never intended to apply to the prime minister after an alleged anti-Semitic hate attack in the heart of a Jewish neighbourhood in Toronto.

This silence from the very top is difficult to not notice.

But I thought that these spas were inescapable:

More than 20 child murderers have been transferred to Indigenous healing lodges since 2011, according to numbers from Public Safety Canada.

Pollution is alright when some people do it:

Turns out while the Wynne-McGuinty Liberals were ostensibly fighting man-made climate change by driving hundreds of thousands of Ontarians into energy poverty as they sent electricity prices into the stratosphere, they did nothing as raw sewage flowed into Ontario’s lakes and rivers 1,327 times last year alone.

Seven hundred and sixty-six of these incidents were caused by 57 outdated municipal sewer systems that combine raw sewage with stormwater — flowing directly into Ontario’s waterways — along with industrial toxic wastes, the regulations governing their discharge not having been updated for a quarter century.

 Also - but ... but ... global warming!:

Scientists behind a major study that claimed the Earth’s oceans are warming faster than previously thought now say their work contained inadvertent errors that made their conclusions seem more certain than they actually are.

Two weeks after the high-profile study was published in the journal Nature, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, home to several of the researchers involved, also noted the problems in the scientists’ work and corrected a news release on its website, which previously had asserted that the study detailed how the Earth’s oceans “have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought.”

And now, animals on the run - literally:

A Newfoundland farmer is on the lookout for an escaped cow that hopped his farm’s fence last Thursday.

Coco was last spotted on Saturday, two days after she leapt over the fence and escaped the farm in Conception Bay South, 30 kilometres west of St. John’s.

“I’ve had cows for my lifetime and I’ve never had one do that,” said farmer Barry Scott.

**

Liam Boland, currently on his honeymoon with his wife, was driving along Highway 1A between Morant’s Curve and Castle Junction at around 4 p.m. last Thursday when they “saw a figure cross the road in the distance.”

“As a photographer, I was curious,” Boland said in an email to Postmedia. “I’m a lover of wildlife but even more of a lover of bears.

“Everything in my mind was saying it was a bear from distance, but I knew it was late in the year. I’ve waited my whole life to see a grizzly in either the wild or captivity.”

Boland said he and his wife drove closer and stopped on the side of the road. He said they never got out of their vehicle during the encounter for their safety and for the bear’s.

“He was massive. I couldn’t believe my eyes as he was strolling through the trees with not a care in the world,” said Boland.

Luckily, he had his camera at the ready.

“He then made eye contact with me and I managed to capture that, and he came a little closer, he never changed the pace he was walking at unless he stopped to sniff something in the air, probably me,” said Boland.