And the Rest of It

Well, this is something of a surprise:

President Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came to an abrupt and early end without a deal between the two countries on Thursday. During a press conference after talks concluded in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, Trump described them as a “very productive time.” 

However, the president also said that he “felt that it wasn’t a good thing to be signing” an agreement.

“It was … a very interesting two days, and I think, actually, it was a very productive two days,” Trump said. “But sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times.”

The entire thing was not productive but Trump was right - the time to walk was then. 

There is no reason to believe that Kim would ever surrender his nuclear or other military ambitions, as is evidenced by the sites still producing weapons. A communist dictator does not surrender his power so willingly.

The only way for North Korea to thrive, as Trump puts it, is to be a nation free from the Kim regime and allowed to use its own resources:

For sure, North Korea could have a brighter future.

“Using the words ‘great economic power’ is a Trumpian exaggeration, but a useful one,” said William Brown, a North Korea economy expert and former CIA analyst. “The truth is North Korea quite easily could become a prosperous country, growing faster than any of its neighbors and catching up with them in terms of income per capita. It has what it takes.”

Brown cited North Korea’s strong human capital, low wages and high levels of verbal and math literacy. He also noted it has a potential bonanza of natural resources such as lead, zinc, rare earths, coal, iron ore and hydropower. He agreed with Trump about location — saying North Korea sits “between four big economies that are far richer but increasingly moribund.”

But girding against a foreign threat is a time-tested justification for giving a leader extraordinary powers and limiting individual freedoms, like travel and expression. Opening up to foreign capital and bringing his country in line with international financial standards means giving up a great deal of control.

Control, for Kim, is the most important commodity of all.

South Korea does  not seem too distressed by this failed summit, as though it almost expected it:

South Korea described the breakdown of nuclear talks between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday as unfortunate, but expressed hope that the two countries can continue an active dialogue.

The collapse of the Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam is a setback for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose desire for closer relations between the Koreas hinges on a nuclear breakthrough between the U.S. and North Korea. Moon had planned to announce new proposals for inter-Korean engagement, possibly including economic co-operation, in a ceremony Friday marking the 100th anniversary of a 1919 uprising by Koreans against Japanese colonial rule.

Moon has been held back in his drive for inter-Korean engagement by tough U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea which prohibit many kinds of economic ties.

Trump told reporters in Hanoi that his summit with Kim collapsed after North Korea demanded a full removal of the sanctions in return for limited disarmament steps. Washington sees economic pressure as its main leverage with the North.

No Kaesong Village, I guess.


(Kamsahamnida)




Years ago, people claimed that opening up China as a market would democratise it.

Does it look democratised to you?:

Detectives have begun investigating whether some of the thousands of angry online texts Chemi Lhamo received after being elected as a University of Toronto student-union president constitute criminal threats, Toronto police confirmed Wednesday.

The Internet barrage — and a petition signed by 11,000 people demanding Lhamo be removed from the position — was one of two incidents at Ontario universities this month that have raised the spectre of Chinese government interference on Canadian campuses.

Muslim and Tibetan student groups have called on the federal government to investigate whether such incursions did occur. China’s embassy in Ottawa has denied playing a part in either episode.

Meanwhile, Lhamo said university police have asked her to develop a safety plan in the wake of the online deluge, which would include letting them know where she is on campus hour by hour.

Russia tells its Syrian migrants to take a hike:

In pre-war Syria, Safaa Al-Kurdi sold wedding dresses. Fed up with the conflict, the mother-of-three fled Damascus four years ago and sought asylum in Moscow. Now, Russia is saying she must go home.

Safaa is one of thousands of Syrian refugees that Russia, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, is urging to return. Large parts of Syria are safe, Russian officials say, and there is no reason for asylum seekers like Safaa, 55, to remain.

A mass grave, long forgotten, has been unearthed in Belarus:

Soldiers in Belarus have unearthed the bones of hundreds of people shot during the Second World War from a mass grave discovered at the site of a ghetto where Jews lived under the Nazis.

The grave was uncovered by chance last month on a construction site in a residential area in the centre of Brest, near the Polish border. The remains were discovered when builders began to lay the foundations for an apartment block.

Soldiers wearing white masks on Tuesday sifted through the site with spades, trowels and their gloved hands to collect the bones. They also found items such as leather shoes that had not rotted.

Dmitry Kaminsky, a soldier leading the unit, said they had exhumed 730 bodies so far, but could not be sure how many more would be found.

It's just money:

The purchase of used Australian jets to boost Canada’s current fleet of fighter planes could cost taxpayers more than $1 billion, a figure 22-per-cent higher than the Department of National Defence is claiming, according to a new report from parliament’s financial watchdog.

Also:

The U.S. Department of Commerce says it is looking into allegations that some fabricated structural steel products from Canada, China and Mexico are sold in the U.S. at prices well below their fair value.

In addition to the so-called dumping allegations, the department says it will also investigate whether producers in the three countries are receiving unfair government subsidies in the form of tax credits, grants and loans, and export insurance.

The Commerce Department says the investigations into fabricated structural steel products were initiated based on petitions from the American Institute of Steel Construction.

The AISC alleges that Canada and Mexico are dumping some steel products into the U.S. at a discount of as much as 30 per cent, while China's dumping margin is alleged to be as much as 222 per cent.

If the investigation finds the allegations are valid, it could result in duties and tariffs of that size being put on those products from those countries.

Now schools will have to teach subjects kids can use:

An Ontario court dismissed a challenge Thursday from elementary teachers and a civil liberties group over the Progressive Conservative government's repeal of a modernized sex-ed curriculum.

The challenge from the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association argued that changes made by the government infringed teachers' freedom of expression and put students at risk by failing to be inclusive.

The Tories repealed a 2015 curriculum from the previous Liberal government that included lessons warning about online bullying and sexting, as well as parts addressing same-sex relationships and gender identity.

A Divisional Court ruling released Thursday said that it is the role of elected officials, not the courts, to make legislation and policy decisions.

Pushed Is Pushed, Part Deux

You can say that again.


Jody Wilson-Raybould, having been burned one too many times, had let not only Justin have it but the rest of the PMO, too:

Sitting alone at a table in a packed basement room in Parliament’s West Block, Wilson-Raybould told the committee’s MPs that over a four-month period in late 2018 she was pressured by finance minister Bill Morneau and his staff, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, senior aides in the Prime Minister’s Office including former principal secretary Gerald Butts and chief of staff Katie Telford, and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself — all of whom were eager for her to direct federal prosecutors to defer the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on corruption and fraud charges and negotiate a remediation agreement instead.

“For a period of approximately four months between September and December of 2018 I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people in the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Wilson-Raybould said.

Wilson-Raybould said partisan concerns were repeatedly raised in connection with the SNC-Lavalin case, including by Trudeau, who she claims pointed out to her in a September conversation that he was himself a Quebec MP and raised the political consequences of prosecuting a large Montreal-based company during the then-ongoing Quebec election.

**

Telford alleged to have said that if JWR changed her mind in favour of SNC, Telford could "line up people who could write all kinds of op-eds to say what Jody was doing is proper.” #JUST

— David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) February 27, 2019

Further.

**

The PM told JWR that if SNC didn’t get a deferred prosecution there would be jobs lost and SNC would move from Montreal. JWR said she would not interfere with the decision to go to trial. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/HDcF36dp8q

— Mackenzie Gray (@Gray_Mackenzie) February 27, 2019

**

.@Puglaas says on December 5th she met with the PM's former Principle Secretary and he told her he didn't like the law she was citing and that it was passed by Harper. JWR says she told him well that IS the law #cdnpoli #SNCLavalin

— Mercedes Stephenson (@MercedesGlobal) February 27, 2019

**

Now #LPC MP @iamIqraKhalid essentially says @PUglaas did something wrong, that she did not act appropriately, that she did not speak up. JWR in response categorically rejects premise of Khalid’s question.

— David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) February 27, 2019

(Insert fat toad expression of humiliation and disappointment here)

**

Asked why she didn't go to Trudeau to complain about the pressure being put on her re SNC-Lavalin, #Puglaas asked why she would go to the PM when, according to what she was told by the Privy Council Clerk, he was one of the sources of that pressure. #cdnpoli

— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) February 27, 2019

**

The speaking notes for what can only be described as an explosive hearing.



Justin, incapable of responding to this or anything that points to his incompetence and stunning wrong-doing, did what he normally does in situations like these - he bolted:

 

Does say it all. @JustinTrudeau leaving for March break..wont be back till March 15th..run you rat..but you can't hide. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/A8b6UXk5a6

— MonsieurRondeau (@MonsieurRondeau) February 27, 2019

Then, when sufficiently far away, he responded to his former justice minister's testimony. He was so afraid, in fact, that he didn't even read it.


It didn't take long for calls for his resignation which he will never do because he is too proud, too immoral and too confident that the Chinese and their money are not through with him yet.


But some in Quebec are reacting to Justin like the stinky kid in class:

In the hours after Wilson-Raybould’s scathing testimony at a Commons justice committee Wednesday evening, commentary emanating from the home province of the embattled engineering firm, which is being prosecuted for corruption, took on a harsher tone. Chantal Hébert, a Montreal-based columnist for the Toronto Star and L’actualité, put it this way on a Radio-Canada morning radio show Thursday: After a review of the newspapers, she said in French, “nobody is a friend of Trudeau this morning.”

I'll believe that when la belle province votes Justin out of his seat in the Papineau riding and slaps the cuffs on SNC-Lavalin for its part in corrupt dealings in Libya, including treating Qaddafi's son to hookers.


To which Justin robotically answers:

Did he even hear or understand the question?


I'm guessing not.


In the mean time, Justin is considering how long Jody should remain in the Liberal Party. She is so not coming to his birthday party.


No longer wanting a public inquiry (and certainly not a police investigation) to decide matters, Justin now wants to leave this entire debacle in the hands of a guy he hired to make things like this go away:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it will be up to the country’s ethics watchdog to decide who is telling the truth in the SNC-Lavalin affair — himself, or former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Imagine the spectacle if this does not go away.



(Paws up)

Pushed Is Pushed

This isn't looking good:

Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says she came under "consistent and sustained" pressure — including veiled threats — from the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office and the finance minister's office to halt a criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.

Testifying to the House of Commons justice committee, Wilson-Raybould says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others repeatedly brought up the risks to the company if it were convicted of corruption and fraud in relation to work it sought in Libya.

She says a provincial election in Quebec was a major concern for the Liberal government.

Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of the justice portfolio in January and resigned from cabinet earlier this month, after a story broke that she had been pressured inappropriately to arrange a "remediation agreement" that would have headed off the prosecution.

In her testimony, Wilson-Raybould says the decision not to pursue such an agreement was made in September, but she and her staff heard repeatedly from Trudeau's office and Finance Minister Bill Morneau's office after that, trying to find ways to help SNC-Lavalin.

She says she was told repeatedly the decision was up to her, but attempts to talk her into a remediation agreement were relentless.

More to come.

Mid-Week Post

 
Your work-week ball of random fun ...



The story so far.


 
Tell all the truth but tell it slant:

Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote to the chair of the justice committee Tuesday evening to say that while she will agree to give testimony before MPs on Wednesday, she will not be able to speak freely because of constraints that still exist around what she can and can’t talk about.

 
Consider that with everything that Justin and his worthless band of crooks have done to this country, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back:

A new Angus Reid poll shows a clear majority of 66% of Canadians saying “there is a deeper scandal within the Prime Minister’s Office and more information will emerge.”

Not his love for China, not his irrational aversion of Yazidis, not his pay-for-play scandals, not Aga Khan, not India, not his groping, not his destroying the oil sector, not his screwing up trade deals, not his demand for ideological conformity, not his tantrums, not his idiocy, not his bribing the press, not his taxes, not his undeserved sense of entitlement. This - a scandal surrounding one Quebec-based company, remediation laws that were rushed in under cover and the demotion of a lackey who may well be angling for something.

Canadians truly reflect the government they vote for.


Also - Canadians aren't tired enough of Liberal corruption:

With the ongoing PMO Scandal, the number of Canadians who disapprove of Justin Trudeau has risen once again, according to an Angus Reid poll:

60% of Canadians view Trudeau unfavourably, while 40% view him favourably.

That gives Trudeau a net -20 rating.

Scheer’s numbers are better, with 46% viewing him favourably and 54% viewing him unfavourably.

That gives Scheer a net -8 rating.


And while Jagmeet Singh’s recent by-election win gives him the chance to reset his image, he’s starting from a brutally low point.

Just 36% view him favourably, while 64% view him unfavourably.


Singh’s net -28 rating is by far the worst.

 
Why would anyone allow back in people who not only raped children but never believed that they were Canadian, anyway?:

The RCMP is preparing for the return of at least a dozen Canadians detained in Syria amidst the collapse of the so-called Islamic State, a senior law enforcement official has told Global News.

(Sidebar: what? Not sixty?)

The capture of suspected Canadian ISIS members, and uncertainty over their fate due to a planned U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, has prompted the RCMP to ramp up preparations for their possible arrival.

As part of a national strategy now being put in place, police are working with prosecutors to prepare charges and peace bonds against the detainees, and speaking with allies to manage their return to Canada.

“We need to get ready in case they come back sooner than what we had expected,” Deputy Commissioner Gilles Michaud, who heads the RCMP’s federal policing branch, said in an interview Wednesday.

Also - a judge will decide in March whether to declare convicted and unrepentant terrorist Omar Khadr's sentence expired or not:

An Alberta judge is to rule next month whether former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr should have his eight-year sentence for war crimes declared expired.

 
This is odd:

A group of unidentified assailants bound and gagged workers inside the gated embassy compound on Feb. 22 for four hours, according to Spain’s El Confidencial news site, which first reported the incident on Wednesday.

The site said that a woman escaped from the assailants and that her screams prompted residents in the affluent Madrid neighbourhood where the embassy is located to call police.

A National Police spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that its officers assisted a North Korean woman with unspecified injuries. The spokesman, who wasn’t authorized to be named in media reports, declined to comment further.

An Interior Ministry official who was also bound by customary rules of anonymity said the incident was “under investigation” and noted that North Korean authorities hadn’t filed any official complaint.

The embassy couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Alejandro Cao de Benos, an aide to the North Korean government who takes media, business and other visitors to the secluded country and organizes cultural exchange programs with Pyongyang, told the AP that he had spoken to embassy staff who had told him that the assailants had taken computers and cellphones before escaping.

 
If Trump's making Kim Jong-Un feel at ease is part of a larger strategy to coax him out of building a nuclear arsenal, why hasn't it worked (the token measure of dismantling the Yongbyon facility might be good enough for Moon's pro-North Korea administration until Kim rattles his sabre again):

Making Kim feel respected and secure, they say, offers a possible way to persuade him to give up – or at least scale back – his nuclear arsenal in return for economic and diplomatic rewards.

“I am not a Trump supporter on 99 percent of what he does. But, strangely enough, his instincts have been right about North Korea,” Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington who was involved in past negotiations with the North Koreans while at the State Department.

**

North Korea has a clandestine base that houses intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Okinawa Prefecture, a U.S. think tank said Friday.

The Sangnam-ni missile operating base, located 250 km north of the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas, is one of an estimated 20 undeclared ballistic missile bases in North Korea, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report.

And remember:

Whoever claims that North Korea will denuclearize once the United States makes security assurances in the form of declaring an end to the Korean War needs to explain why these security assurances will succeed while those made in 1994, 2000, and 2005 failed.

— Abraham M. Denmark (@AbeDenmark) February 25, 2019

 

Are human rights on the table?:

Human rights have often been raised in major diplomatic negotiations. President Ronald Reagan kept a firm line on Soviet human rights abuses even as he sought major nuclear weapons reduction treaties with the USSR. President Bill Clinton’s envoy for the Balkans peace talks, Richard Holbrooke, did not shy away from raising human rights concerns with leaders like Slobodan Milošević during negotiations. The Dayton Peace Accords directly addressed the topic.

Indeed, in many cases diplomatic negotiations are more likely to succeed when they are comprehensive—focusing not merely on a narrow issue but putting multiple topics on the table, especially if they are interlinked. In North Korea, human rights issues are inextricably linked with the weapons proliferation program, since the military widely uses forced labor to build infrastructure and support its operations, as U.S. officials have previously noted.

Many North Korea experts, including some who have participated in previous talks, acknowledge that raising human rights in negotiations is a practical necessity. It is widely understood that successful and durable verification of any counter-proliferation process will require North Korea to not only restore access to the International Atomic Energy Agency but also improve its cooperation with the UN system in general. Verifying counter-proliferation agreements is hard enough in authoritarian countries. It is much harder yet in totalitarian ones.

Negotiators should ask North Korea, as a start, to begin broader cooperation with the UN system, as a trust building exercise and path toward other international visits. Similarly, the United States should press North Korea to join the International Labour Organization and end its endemic use of forced labor. Cooperation with these requests can serve as an initial benchmark of a willingness to reform.

In the end, however, the simplest reason why human rights need to be part of the conversations in a negotiation intended to result in broad relief from U.S. sanctions is that there is no other choice: under a key law passed in 2016, a significant part of the broader-based sanctions imposed on North Korea’s government are specifically related to human rights issues. Under U.S. law, these broader sanctions cannot be lifted, or even waived, unless North Korea takes steps to improve its human rights record.

(Sidebar: it should be reiterated that the UN is one of the reasons why North Korea is a crap-hole today, but I digress ..)


Also - lying is what communists do naturally:

Harunori Kojima still remembers the hot tears of joy that warmed his face against the sleet as two Soviet ships set sail in December 1959 from Niigata port.

Destination: North Korea, which lured nearly 100,000 Koreans from Japan with fantastical propaganda promising returnees a “Paradise on Earth.”

Now 88, Kojima recalls how a brass band piped out patriotic tunes lauding North Korean leader Kim Il Sung as some 1,000 people boarded the ships for a new life.

They were part of a grand repatriation program that continued on and off until 1984, carried out by the Red Cross Societies in Japan and North Korea and paid for by Pyongyang.

In all, 93,340 people — mainly Koreans but also Japanese spouses — enthusiastically moved to North Korea, blissfully unaware it was a land of no return.

Initially reluctant, the Japanese government also backed the scheme, with media touting it as a humanitarian campaign for Koreans struggling to build a life in Japan.

But Kojima, who was a communist at the time and helped oversee the repatriation, never went to North Korea himself and now looks back on the scheme with bitterness.

“I was actively involved in the project, believing it was something positive. But as a result, I led people into hell,” he said.

 
(Kamsahamnida)



Things heat up as India and Pakistan do battle over the disputed Kashmir region:

India and Pakistan both said they shot down each other's fighter jets on Wednesday, with Pakistan capturing an Indian pilot a day after Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan for the first time since a 1971 war, prompting world powers to urge restraint.

Both countries have ordered air strikes over the last two days, the first time in history that two nuclear-armed powers have done so, while ground forces have exchanged fire in more than a dozen locations.

Tensions have been running high since at least 40 Indian paramilitary police died in a Feb. 14 suicide car bombing by Pakistan-based militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, but the risk of conflict rose dramatically on Tuesday when India launched an air strike on what it said was a militant training base.

A senior Indian government source said that 300 militants were killed in Tuesday's strike. Pakistan says no one was killed.

A polar cub boom?:

As I reported in the 2018 State of the Polar Bear Report, the latest survey and research results suggest that polar bears probably number about 29,500 across the Arctic, with a wide margin of potential error. That’s up since 2005, when the count was about 24,500, despite low summer sea ice since 2007. Polar bears have proven to be more flexible in their habits and more capable in open water than scientists assumed. Long-term trends in sea ice cannot be used to explain individual events, like the mauling deaths this summer in Nunavut or the invasion of fat bears on Novaya Zemlya.

Furthermore, scientists who support the use of polar-bear tragedy porn by media and conservation activists to promote climate-change hysteria don’t do themselves any favours. Two years ago, biologist Steven Amstrup from Polar Bears International condoned the use of a now infamous starving polar bear video to spread climate alarmism: National Geographic later had to apologize for the misrepresentation. But University of Alberta biologist Andrew Derocher’s recent online comment about the Belushaya Guba bears (“it may not be climate change but it’s consistent with the predicted impacts of climate change”) suggests that some scientists still think it’s OK to mislead the public about polar bears when promoting climate change alarm.

For God's sake, don't tell the Democrats about this kid:

Keio University in Tokyo said Tuesday that a baby with a birth weight of 268 grams had been released from care at its hospital after growing to a weight of 3,238 grams, becoming the smallest boy in the world to be sent home healthy.

The previous record holder was born weighing 274 grams in Germany in 2009, the university said, citing the University of Iowa’s registry for the world’s tiniest babies. The smallest girl was born weighing 252 grams, also in Germany, in 2015.

There had been 23 babies worldwide who survived after having been born prematurely and weighing under 300 grams, out of whom only four were boys, according to the Tiniest Babies Registry website.

The boy from Tokyo was born through an emergency cesarean section in August as his weight did not increase at 24 weeks gestation and doctors determined his life was in danger, the university said.

The baby was so small at birth that he could fit in a pair of hands. But after doctors treated him at a neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital, by managing his breathing and nutrition, he grew steadily and was able to be breastfed. He left the hospital last Wednesday, two months after the initial due date.

(Insert Title Here)

The story so far ...




Jagmeet Singh is elected in a province where most people would vote for any lunatic:

Jagmeet Singh tightened his shaky grip on the reins of the NDP Monday by winning a do-or-die federal byelection in British Columbia.

But the challenge he now faces in reviving the party’s flagging fortunes in time for this fall’s national election was underscored by the NDP’s simultaneous loss to the Liberals in Outremont, the Montreal riding that served as a launching pad for the orange wave that swept Quebec in 2011.

With most polls reporting, Singh captured Burnaby South with more than 38 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Liberal contender with 26 per cent and the Conservative with 22 per cent.

Had he lost, Singh would almost certainly have faced demands to resign as leader. Going into Monday’s byelection, many New Democrats — including Singh’s predecessor, Tom Mulcair — had questioned how Singh could lead the party in the October federal election if he couldn’t win a seat for himself.

Now Justin will just find a way to buy his way back into his dad's office.




From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

The PM has said that his former attorney general can speak but he will limit what she can say.

Despite negotiations throughout Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided it is better to silence his former attorney general than allow her to speak.

These negotiations:

Turpel-Lafond, who currently practises law and teaches in Victoria, expressed serious doubts about the government’s claim — articulated by Wilson-Raybould’s successor, David Lametti, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick and Liberal MPs — that officials are permitted to hold robust discussions with an attorney general under the so-called Shawcross Doctrine.

“I think that’s a fairly flimsy foundation as a lawful authority,” Turpel-Lafond said.

She said if the talks went beyond a “more passive and respectful approach,” and the purpose “was to persuade the attorney general as prosecutor to take a different position on a prosecution, it triggers a serious rule-of-law concern.”

Once a decision is made to pursue a prosecution, there is “limited authority for anyone to intervene at that decision point and going forward,” Turpel-Lafond said.

And she cast doubt on Lametti’s and Wernick’s assertions that the decision to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin is one that still remains open to the attorney general, even with the preliminary inquiry underway.

She said there should be a “full” airing of what was said to Wilson-Raybould, adding it would be something she’d expect the RCMP’s sensitive investigations or “integrity” section would already be looking into.

**

 “The internal briefing note, released under the Access to Information Act, says the PMO directed Public Service and Procurement Canada to consult the public in 2017 on both the overall integrity regime and the possibility of introducing formal alternatives to prosecuting financial crimes.

Early last year, following the consultation, the government passed legislation to create what is known as a remediation agreement — a means of having a corporation accused of wrongdoing make amends without facing the potentially devastating consequences of a criminal conviction. 

As a result of a second thread of the consultation, the government is also proposing to soften the penalty scheme for companies involved in wrongdoing by changing the process for determining how long an offending firm should be barred from getting federal contracts.”

 
Also - stop digging a hole for yourself, Buttsy:

Funny thing: While Butts readily accepted responsibility for his role in the SNC-Lavalin affair, and sought to remedy the situation by resigning, he has appeared determined to dodge any personal responsibility for past screw-ups that have left Canadians with far bigger and longer-lasting concerns.

Convicted and unrepentant terrorist wants the legal system to terminate his eight year sentence for war crimes: 

Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is asking an Alberta court to declare his eight-year sentence for war crimes to have expired.

The sentence, which was imposed in 2010 by a military commission in the United States, would have ended last October had Khadr remained in custody.

But the clock stopped ticking when an Alberta judge freed him on bail in May 2015 pending Khadr’s appeal of his military conviction — a years-long process that has no end in sight.

His lawyer, Nate Whitling, has told a judge in Edmonton that Khadr had served three years and five months of his eight-year sentence when he was granted bail.

Whitling noted his client has since been on bail for three years and nine months.

The lawyer said the appeal, in the meantime, hasn’t advanced “even an inch” in the U.S.

Maybe because Omar has you stymy things for him.




In 2015, Justin declared that Yazidi children running from rape gangs needed parkas:

Marwa Khedr was only 10 years old.

She was pregnant. The victim of countless rapes by fanatical Islamic State jihadis.

Her whereabouts are unknown.

“There are a lot of girls like her,” Ziad Avdal, a former teacher who runs safe houses for Yazidis escaping ISIS, told the Daily Mail.

“It is not just terrible that she is pregnant — these young girls may have been raped by 100 men before they become pregnant.”

More government just doesn't work:

Ontario is consolidating its local and provincial health networks to create a central agency as part of a system overhaul, the health minister announced Tuesday, though she wouldn’t say if the move will save money or lead to job losses.

**

Under the previous Liberal government, the base budget for autism funding sat at $256 million a year; under the current PC government, it is $321 million a year but distributed differently.

That is what has some people outraged.

The previous regime saw most of the money go to one small group of families, the rest had to wait.
Some waited for years with no chance of getting services.

In question period at Queen’s Park on Monday, MacLeod quoted a parent named Alastair who reached out to her.

“I don’t think people understand how bad the autism wait-list currently is. Our son is eight, he’s 853 on the waiting list. The wait-list is moving at about 80 kids a year. Meaning he would age out at 18 and never get service,” Alastair wrote.

Parents that I have spoken with tell me of their frustrations with the current system, the one MacLeod wants to change.

Often they were limited in the therapies they could choose for their children. While advocates opposed to the changes say that each child is different, MacLeod’s changes will give parents greater choice in picking the therapies or assistance that is best for their children.

Of course, even that has gotten the minister in hot water.

After saying that parents could choose a technological aid, like an iPad, the story became that MacLeod wanted to just give kids iPads, which is not what she said.

Let them fight:

A pre-dawn airstrike inside Pakistan that India said targeted a terrorist training camp and killed a “very large number” of militants ratcheted up tensions on Tuesday between the two nuclear-armed rivals at odds over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

US President Donald Trump will meet with North Korean tyrant, Kim Jong-Un, in what is sure to be another fruitless summit that will result in Kim keeping his weapons and his people under his rule. While Kim is romanticised by not only by the press but even the American diplomats sent to deal with him (and whose own policies seem to change with whatever narrative is running that day), the other side does not feel so blissful:

North Korea’s state media criticized U.S. Democrats and American intelligence officials on Sunday for “chilling the atmosphere” ahead of leader Kim Jong Un’s second summit with President Donald Trump this week. ...

KCNA later issued a commentary arguing that if Trump listened to skeptics at home, he could face a “shattered dream” and “miss the rare historic opportunity” to improve relations with North Korea. 

**

Once the war is declared over, of course the doors are open to all sorts of other changes. North Korea could quite rightly demand the dismantling of the UN Command that still keeps peace at the border, or the scrapping of the Northern Limit Line, which has served as a buffer against more potential invasions by the North. In such a situation, the last thing South Korea can afford is to stand aside deliberately while the U.S. and North Korea discuss its fate. And what will happen when an actual peace treaty is discussed? Where will Seoul be then? 

Even until recently Cheong Wa Dae was singing quite a different tune. The presidential office kept Moon's itinerary flexible so he could rush to join the signing of any declaration ending the war. It was China's participation that was a point of debate. What on earth has happened?

It would be a national shame for Seoul to be absent from the signing of the declaration. Yet on the same day the president thundered, "We are the masters of the Korean Peninsula's destiny," his spokesman said Seoul really does not need to play any part. How can Moon possibly contemplate giving more money to the North without even being part of the declaration? The government urgently needs to get its act together.

(Sidebar: because he is pro-North Korea?)

**

 

Only North Koreans can dismantle nuclear and missile facilities in North Korea, not international experts, according to President Moon Jae-in's security adviser, Moon Chung-in.
Moon said Washington should offer some substantial concessions beyond opening a liaison office in Pyongyang to make the upcoming second Washington-Pyongyang summit successful.
He made the remarks in an interview with Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun.

That sounds like one is setting the summit up for failure. Kim will never willingly give up anything. No wonder Moon wants to be a no-show at the proposed end of the Korean War. It simply won't happen.

 

 

And let's not forget:

 

Fun true fact: North Korea previously pledged denuclearization in 1985, 1992, 1994, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2017. Each pledge was a lie. If you believe any new promise Kim makes this week, I have five failed casinos in Atlantic City to sell you.

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) February 25, 2019

 

 

(Paws up and kamsahamnida)

Monday Post

From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould will be permitted to speak publicly about some of the details of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Trudeau is telling the House of Commons that the government will waive some of the solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidences that have so far kept Wilson-Raybould silent.

(Sidebar: oh, just some details? And yourself, Justin? Will you testify now that Gerald Butts is gone and Katie Telford is being sued? What will you do without a fresh script?)

(Merci)

**

Canada's top civil servant insists there was no inappropriate pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould to override a decision to prosecute SNC-Lavalin, but says he warned her about the dire economic "consequences" of criminal proceedings.

(Sidebar: this top civil servant and his ridiculous and inflammatory paranoid comments.)

**

Democracy Watch, a Canadian advocacy group, believes Trudeau broke two sections of the Conflict of Interest Act by failing to abstain from a vote held last week in the House of Commons over whether or not to hold a public inquiry into the growing scandal. The Liberals defeated the motion with 159 against and 133 in favour.

**

More than eight months after the investigation into MP Kent Hehr’s improper conduct in the Alberta legislature concluded, neither of Hehr’s accusers nor Hehr himself have seen the entirety of the resulting report.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which commissioned law firm Rubin Thomlinson LLP to conduct the third-party investigation, told Global News on Friday the report isn’t being released to either party because of privacy concerns.

“The findings of the investigation are not made public due to privacy considerations and to protect the integrity of the process,” the PMO said in a statement.

Also:

Lawyers for Vice-Admiral Mark Norman are zeroing in on five top government officials — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his former top aide Gerald Butts — as they prepare a motion to have the criminal case tossed out of court next month.

The cancellation of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project cost 8,000 jobs in one day alone. From the beginning of 2018, 63,500 jobs were lost.  The unemployment rate for the resource sector in Canada was 6.8 %.  The cancellation of pipeline projects has cost Canada $15.6 billion this year. SNC-Lavalin has a total of 10,000 workers, most of whom are in Quebec:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose office is under fire for allegedly pressuring his former justice minister to try to ensure a major construction company avoided a corruption trial, on Friday said he had been concerned about possible job losses. 

Priorities.




In 2015, Justin Trudeau called the prioritisation of Yazidis and Iraqi Christians as refugees disgusting:

Elite SAS troops found the severed heads of 50 sex slaves murdered by merciless Islamic State fighters as they led the assault on the terror group's last stronghold, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The barbaric jihadis had beheaded dozens of Yazidi women before dumping their heads in dustbins.

British Special Forces made the grisly discovery when they entered Baghuz, the besieged town on the banks of the Euphrates in eastern Syria where IS is making its last desperate stand.

Also - why bother?:

The commander of Canada’s special forces says officials are watching closely to see what impact U.S. plans to withdraw hundreds of soldiers from Syria could have on Canada’s mission in neighbouring Iraq.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Maj.-Gen. Peter Dawe said the planned U.S. withdrawal from Syria has not yet had any material impact on his soldiers’ mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is up for renewal at the end of March.

“We are tracking it all very closely, the entire coalition is waiting to see ultimately how that plays out and what the timelines are and what subsequent plans might look like,” said Dawe. “Because from a coalition perspective, there are sort of broader implications.”

Was it something they said or did?:

Education Minister Dominic Cardy is getting rid of a Chinese culture and language program operating in schools because of concerns that teachers are blacklisting topics that cast China in a bad light and only teach what the Chinese Communist Party approves.

The non-profit Confucius Institute has been operating in 28 New Brunswick schools, with more than 5,441 students taking part in 2016, according to the organization's website.

It is largely funded by the Chinese government and was introduced to New Brunswick in 2008, when Shawn Graham was the Liberal premier.

At the time, the New Brunswick government said the mandate was to teach and promote Chinese language and culture.

But Cardy said it's clear to him the program's real mandate is to present a "one-dimensional" view of China and to influence students to only perceive the country in a positive light.   "Their job is to create a friendly, cheerful, face for a government that is responsible for more deaths than nearly any other in the history of our species," Cardy said Thursday.

** 

The chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei had barely been arrested last December — triggering a diplomatic scrap of historic scale between China and Canada — when an obscure B.C.-based group called an unusual Vancouver press conference.

With most Canadians still digesting the news of Meng Wanzhou’s detention, and the U.S. extradition request behind it, the United Association of Women and Children of Canada appeared before the cameras to demand the executive’s immediate release.

“Canada should stay out of it,” a spokeswoman declared in Mandarin, her translated comments generating a number of stories in local media. “This is supposed to be a serious matter but looks like a joke between the two countries.”

Leaders of the United Association insisted they had no connection to the Chinese government, which had been making similar pronouncements.

But a closer look reveals a more complicated story, one that seems to point to Beijing’s long reach into Canadian affairs.

Behind the event were two women with clear ties to China, generous donations to political parties here and, in one case, a colourful history in Canadian law and municipal politics.

**

Some 5.5 million people were barred from buying train tickets, according to the National Public Credit Information Centre. In an annual report, it said 128 people were blocked from leaving China because they were behind on their taxes.

The ruling party says penalties and rewards under “social credit” will improve order in a fast-changing society. Three decades of economic reform have shaken up social structures. Markets are rife with counterfeit goods and fraud.

The system is part of efforts by President Xi Jinping’s government to use technology from data processing to genetic sequencing and facial recognition to tighten control.

And - what? No one wants to be arrested in China while attending school?:

Sarah Taylor, the director-general of the north-Asia bureau at Global Affairs Canada, made the pitch for the 45-year-old Canada-China Scholarship Exchange Program during a Dec. 18 event at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa.

“My department is proud to support the CCSEP and is eager to see a broader representation of Canadians from across the country, at the university and college level,” Taylor said in prepared remarks released under Canada’s access-to-information law.

The government continues to promote the lucrative exchange program, which has a final application deadline of next Friday, even though it has elevated its travel advisory to China with a warning that Canadians are at “risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”

Also - if your father was a communist, I am sure he is not in heaven:

The daughter of a Chinese Communist Party veteran boycotted his funeral Wednesday, calling it an improper tribute to a man who once worked for Mao Zedong but later became a fierce critic of the regime.

Li Rui's memorial was held at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, where many high-ranking former officials are buried. His daughter Li Nanyang said the ceremony was against her father's wishes, which according to her were: to not have a memorial, to not be brought to Babaoshan, and to not be draped with the party flag.

Li was 101 years old when he died of organ failure in Beijing last Saturday.

He was "completely disappointed" by the party, his daughter said in a phone interview from her home in the U.S. He felt that China was devoid of freedom of speech and that corruption was rampant in a system which allowed Communist officials to get rich while ordinary people's lives stagnated, she said.

"I believe that if my father's soul is in heaven, he will be crying at the sight" of his body covered by a party flag, Li Nanyang wrote in a statement to supporters. She said she chose not to attend the funeral in order to make her father's stance clear.

Veterans are asking for far too much, quoth Justin:

The federal government now faces four proposed class-action lawsuits over a $165 million accounting error at Veterans Affairs that shortchanged more than 250,000 former soldiers, sailors and aircrew, CBC News has learned.

The latest claim was filed this week by the Ottawa law firm headed by retired colonel Michel Drapeau. It joins similar cases launched by lawyers with Koskie-Minsky of Toronto, McInnis-Cooper of Halifax and the Kelowna office of Murphy-Battista.

The court actions, which have not yet been certified, relate to a bungled calculation of disability awards and pensions at Veterans Affairs — an oversight that started in 2002 and ran undetected for almost eight years.

It happened because of an ideology. You would be just as crippled or dead with a van:

Speaking at a news conference at the Danforth Music Hall, Samiei read an open letter to Justin Trudeau that urges the prime minister and his government to emulate “like-minded” countries such as Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom in moving to restrict individual possession of these weapons.

“We think we could have had better odds had attitudes toward handgun ownership been different before that night,” Samiei said as she read the letter aloud.

“In our case, a handgun that was imported through legal channels made its way into the hands of the perpetrator of our trauma and loss,” she added later. “Why did this need to happen?”

It's an election year!: 

Several relatives of Kawthar Barho have obtained visitor visas and are arriving in Nova Scotia today to support her and her husband after their seven children died in a Halifax house fire last week. 

Also - what? Another one?:

A fire has pushed a Syrian family of eight from their home on Fredericton's north side.

No one was hurt, according to Platoon Captain Mike Mizner with the Fredericton Fire Department. 

It comes just days after tragedy struck a Syrian family in Halifax, where a fire claimed the lives of all seven children from the Barho family. The funeral for the children was Saturday afternoon.

The Fredericton family is now in the care of the Fredericton Multicultural Association, which is setting up one the association's reception homes for the family.

 

How interesting:

A series of footprints found in May in P.E.I. National Park near Cavendish have been confirmed as those of the sail-backed Bathygnathus borealis, more commonly known as dimetrodon.