For a Friday

It's voting season and the smell of desperation is in the air:

A recently repealed law that barred Canadians living abroad for more than five years from voting in federal elections was an unjustified violation of the Constitution, Canada's top court ruled on Friday.

In a long-awaited decision that solidifies voting rights, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected government arguments that the law, enacted in 1993, promoted electoral fairness.

Writing for the 5-2 majority, Chief Justice Richard Wagner called the right to vote a "core tenet" of Canadian democracy. Any limit, he said, would have to have "compelling" justification — something the government had failed to offer.

(Sidebar: and this wasn't repealed before because ...?)

Because the votes of people who haven't been back to Canada, paid taxes in it or even thought about it in ten years matter, too.


Also - Max, when Canadians show up at Parliament Hill in May en masse, they are not silent nor the minority:

Maxime Bernier’s rejection of “political correctness” earns him plenty of criticism, but the first person chosen to officially represent his party in an election thinks that’s precisely what could attract “droves” of support.

Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, the People’s Party of Canada candidate in the upcoming byelection in Burnaby South, is a self-described social conservative who has hosted Christian television shows and is an activist opposed to teaching sexual orientation and gender identity in B.C.’s sex education curriculum. But in an interview Thursday with the National Post, she argued that Bernier giving her a platform to express controversial views with which he doesn’t necessarily agree makes him more “democratic” than other political leaders.

She spoke effusively about a “silent majority” of Canadians she believes are worried that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal policies could constrain their freedoms. As examples, she recalled the “values attestation” for Canada Summer Jobs grants, which Liberals backed down from last year, and Bill C-16, the law that added “gender identity or expression” to a list of possible grounds for discrimination in the Criminal Code and Human Rights Act.

Alienate at your own peril, Max.



The popular press is truly a toadying wonder to behold. Because it dares not - cannot - record and report facts, it sets out to juxtapose one government with another in order to denigrate the former without ever evaluating the latter.

Case in point:

As President Donald Trump threatens to declare a national emergency over immigration in the U.S., the country's northern neighbor, Canada, is preparing to welcome more than one million new permanent residents over the next three years.

The Canadian Parliament detailed its plans to add hundreds of thousands of permanent residents each year from 2019 to 2021 in its 2018 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration. 

What the report does not say (because it would then make Justin appear like a cowardly imbecile and Donald Trump overly cautious by comparison) is that Canada has done nothing to stop the illegal migration across its border, it has no jobs or permanent housing for illegal migrants, that the costs for processing these illegal migrants is sky-rocketing and not often reported and that some of these unvetted persons tend to kill those already here.

Par exemple:

One audience member asked him about the killing of Marrisa Shen, a 13-year-old girl who was found dead in Burnaby, B.C.’s Central Park in July 2017.

Ibrahim Ali, a 28-year-old Syrian refugee who arrived in Canada in March 2017, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with her death.

The audience member asked Trudeau, “can you guarantee that Marrisa Shen was not killed by a Syrian refugee who came to Canada after you were elected, and if not, what in your opinion is the acceptable number of Canadian lives lost as a result of your policies on refugees?” ...

“But the generalizations and the danger that we get in, in tying in things like immigration policies to incidents like this, is something that I don’t entirely know is helpful or useful in a diverse, pluralistic, inclusive society like ours,” he said.

This Marissa Shen:

A man accused of murdering 13-year-old Marrisa Shen appeared briefly in court on Friday.

Ibrahim Ali is charged with first-degree murder in connection with Shen’s death. ...
Shen was found dead in Burnaby’s Central Park in July of last year, just hours after she was reported missing. ...
Police say Ali is a Syrian national who moved to Burnaby as a refugee 17 months ago and is an employed, permanent resident of Canada with no prior criminal history.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside of Vancouver Provincial Court. Some told Global News that Ali, who came to Canada as a Syrian refugee, wasn’t properly vetted.

Others could be heard chanting, “Where’s Trudeau?”

Indeed.


Perhaps he is at town-halls where audiences staffed with like-minded seals will listen intently as he repeats well-worn and empty platitudes that he never has to explain or defend:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced more questions about immigration policy at the University of Regina on Thursday, in the second town hall he hosted in two nights.

This time, the question covered Canada’s borders — and suggested that Christianity and Islam “don’t mix.” ...

“Which cultures?” Trudeau asked.

“Islam and Christianity,” the man responded to some boos and heckles.

Trudeau then tried to calm the crowd, saying, “democracy only works in a country like Canada if people are free to express their fears, their concerns, their opinions, and we get an opportunity to respond to them.”

The questioner then said, “They’ve openly stated they want to kill us. And you’re letting them in.”

The prime minister then launched into a lengthy explanation of how immigrants have helped to build Canada.

(Sidebar: were any of those immigrants Muslims who hate Jews? Did they ever force aboriginals at sword-point to adopt their religion? Did they ban Christmas celebrations in New France because saying "Merry Christmas" is like committing murder? Did they, Justin?)




When Justin called Harper's plan to prioritise Iraqi Christians and Yazidis disgusting, did it not occur to Pierre's little frat-boy that Christians were running for their lives?



Quebec has the highest taxes in the land:

Quebec was Canada’s most taxed province in 2017, while Saskatchewan residents enjoy the country’s lowest tax burden when compared to its GDP, according to a new Université de Sherbrooke report. 

Quebec’s tax rate as a percentage of its GDP came in at 37.3 per cent, more than the rest of the country as well as the federal rate. Nova Scotia’s tax rate was the second highest in Canada, at 36.2 per cent, followed by Ontario’s, at 34.1 per cent.

Saskatchewan boasted the country’s lowest tax rate as a percentage of GDP, at 27.1 per cent. Alberta had the second lowest rate at 28.6 per cent, while Newfoundland and Labrador had the third lowest at 29.8 per cent.

Canada’s tax rate of 33 per cent was slightly below both the average of OECD countries (34.2 per cent) and the average of G7 nations (35.7 per cent.) But, the tax rate was above its North American neighbours, with the United States tax burden as a percentage of GDP coming in at 27.1 per cent.

People don't care what other causes Lindsay Shepherd supports. They support her because she exposed ideological bullies:

Metro Vancouver-raised Lindsay Shepherd, 24, has been accused of many unseemly things in the past year.

But a sit-down with the former Sir Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant, who was thrust into the news in late 2017 when she exposed the way her Ontario professors accused her of creating a “toxic environment” in her class after raising the issue of gender pronouns, quickly reveals there is no substance to the demonized portrait.

Read the whole thing.



Teachers' unions care not for facts!:

One of the points of contention is a statement last year from Premier Doug Ford, who said that if teachers didn’t teach the PC curriculum there would be consequences. Some would interpret that as expecting teachers to do their jobs. The union lawyer was unable to provide any examples of teachers who had been disciplined for interpreting the curriculum in their own way.

One of the problems the union faces is that the government is being infuriatingly reasonable in its own court filing. It says teachers should deliver the curriculum “in an inclusive way” and “in a way that reflects diversity.” ...

The teachers and the civil liberties group are using the courts in an attempt to resolve an issue that is political, not legal. The situation illustrates what a minefield government walks into when it attempts to define values that will be acceptable to all. It can’t be done.

The previous Liberal government had this modern curriculum ready to go in 2010, but withdrew it because of parental protests. The Liberals then sat on it for five years, allowing what some call a damaging, homophobic curriculum to remain in place.

How interesting:

Scientists believe they may have solved one of the many mysteries of Easter Island’s enigmatic statues: why they are there.

A new study says the stone monoliths dotting the remote Pacific island might have been placed to point the way to drinkable water. Many of them were built on ancient platforms located near freshwater resources, according to the study published in the journal Plos One on Thursday. The discovery could give scientists further insight into the little-known civilization that inhabited the island, including how they survived in an under-resourced environment.

“What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place,” but were “integrated into the lives of the community,” said Carl Lipo, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University and a co-author on the research, according to the Guardian.