Mid-Week Post

Your mid-week intermission ...


 
Inventing bogey-men - like blaming Donald Trump or Doug Ford  - can only work if every single person living in Canada doesn't remember failed companies being bailed out with taxpayer money, failure to innovate, loan write-offs, fat, selfish, greedy unions swaying elections, slave labour, high corporate tax rates, a crushed resources sector, "green" energy laws that chased businesses away and a corrupt plutocracy favouring failed businesses:

Quebec Premier Francois Legault said Tuesday "it makes no sense" for the federal government to let Via Rail award a major contract without ensuring any jobs are created in Canada.

Reacting to a report that the German firm Siemens AG has beaten out Bombardier Transportation for a $1-billion contract to build new Via Rail trains, Legault said Ottawa should have included a 25 per cent local content requirement — at a minimum.

"I can't get over seeing (Marc) Garneau throw in the towel," Legault told reporters in Quebec City, referring to the federal transport minister.

Garneau told reporters earlier Tuesday that free trade agreements with Europe and the United States prevent the federal Crown corporation from favouring Bombardier in the awarding of contracts.

"We are competing around the world," Garneau said. "At the federal level, we don't have the right to impose rules that favour Canadian companies when we believe in free trade deals."

But the federal government doesn't believe in free trade: 

With roughly three hours to go before boarding a flight to Argentina for a meeting of G20 leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this afternoon Canada is "still in discussions with the Americans" about signing the revised North American trade agreement at the summit.

He simply will not accept that he was outclassed by Trump in a matter that normally wouldn't bother him (after all, he still gets his pension no matter how incompetent he is). His ego just won't allow it. 

Justin has done his level best to tank this economy, from preventing pipelines from being built (meaning more oil on trains) to aiding people against the Canadian oil sector to implementing a tax that could be disastrous all around (oops). Canadians who are more than willing to let this decline continue deserve to freeze in the dark.

Also:

Unifor head Jerry Dias (AKA Biased Dias) wants to shut down all GM plants in North America in an effort to stop the closure of the Oshawa plant.

(Sidebar: as I said, selfish and greedy.) 

**

Big Canadian oil and gas companies face downgrades in their credit scores if current steep price discounts for their products continue, warns credit rating agency DBRS Ltd. in a report released Wednesday.

Such rating cuts could affect the companies' ability to access credit to fund future growth and potentially increase what they pay to service their debt.

**

A federal trade tribunal has ordered the government to put a $60-billion program to buy a new fleet of warships on hold while it investigates claims the vessel selected doesn’t meet the military’s needs.

Justin's favourite trading partner is a communist. But don't take my word for it:

Jack Ma, co-founder of China’s most valuable company, was officially confirmed as a member of the Communist Party in a state-backed newspaper recognizing business leaders for their contributions to the country’s development.

(Insert own expression of non-shock here):

The Trudeau Liberals seem to be once again ignoring their ‘most open and transparent government of all time’ promise.

And the resignation of Liberal MP Raj Grewal is still leaving lots of unanswered questions.

Remember, the Liberals first said Grewal was leaving because of ‘health’ and ‘personal’ issues.

Then – after muzzling their MPs – they said it was because of a ‘gambling problem’ and lots of debt – presumably from the gambling.


And now, it turns out that when he was on the House of Commons Finance Committee, Grewal was very interested in how the RCMP investigated money laundering and large financial transactions.

According to the Globe & Mail, “Transcripts of the committee’s hearings show that he was particularly interested in the testimony of members of law-enforcement agencies such as the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency or the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), which collects data on financial transactions of more than $10,000 at financial institutions and casinos.”

Additionally, “Mr. Grewal was interested in the ability of federal agencies to investigate and prosecute money-laundering activities, asking how many convictions were obtained in a given year.”

How could this go wrong?:

Prison needle-exchange programs that guards say will endanger their health and safety could get another look with an eye to changes, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale signalled Tuesday.

This sounds like a poor attempt to silence free debate:

Alberta’s top court will hear a case on Wednesday that could help determine the power of the “heckler’s veto” on Canadian campuses after a university handed a $17,500 security bill to students who wanted to hold an anti-abortion rally.

If the bill is such a concern, let's have no more publicly funded universities.

For some reason, no one found this guy plausible (or so they say):

A Federal Court judge has sided with government officials who argued a B.C. man who posted pro-Islamic State propaganda online had faked a conversion to Christianity when he came to Canada as a refugee.

While Othman Ayed Hamdan was accepted as a refugee based on his claim that his abandonment of Islam had put him at risk at home in Jordan, the government argued his “conversion to Christianity was bogus.”

Also:

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the accused pair — Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri, 27 — carried out an international hacking and extortion scheme that targeted more than 200 organizations, including municipalities (Newark, N.J., and Atlanta, Ga.), public institutions (Port of San Diego, Calif., and Colorado Department of Transportation), health-care facilities (Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles and Kansas Heart Hospital in Wichita) and schools (University of Calgary).

Wow. It's bad when one's own university thinks that one has crossed the line:

He Jiankui, a researcher in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said Monday that he altered the genes of a pair of twin girls while they were embryos to try to make the babies resistant to infection by the virus that causes AIDS.

He, a virtual unknown in the world of gene-editing who crossed the boundaries of the scientific community’s self-imposed ethical lines, will make the project’s data public Wednesday at an international genetics conference in Hong Kong, according to a representative. Before even publishing proof of the results, he faces condemnation from his university, other scientists, and even a government official, who said that any gene editing for fertility purposes was unlawful.”I understand my work will be controversial, but I believe families need this technology, and I’m willing to take the criticism for them,” He said in a video posted Nov. 25 on YouTube.