For a Tuesday

A merry Seollal to all y'all.

Canada doesn't need help protecting and defending its terrorists, thank you very much, Donald!:

The Canadian government will not be prioritizing the return of foreign fighters from Syria despite a call from the U.S. State Department on Monday to do so.

Instead, the focus will remain on searching for ways to lay charges against those fighters and considering whether it is feasible to retrieve children born to Canadians who went overseas to fight with ISIS and are now being held in Kurdish or Syrian prisons.

“We’ve heard the request or suggestion from the United States but at this point, the fact of the matter remains that is a dangerous and dysfunctional part of the world in which we have no diplomatic presence and we are not going to put our diplomatic officers or our consular officials at risk,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters on Tuesday.

Gee, Ralph, you didn't mention that before: 

On Monday, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel accused PM Justin Trudeau of hiding the number of fighters who have returned, asking for an exact count. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stood up to offer the response: “in the order of 60.”

That was the number that hit the headlines and got Canadians talking. But it’s far from accurate. The first clue comes from reading Goodale’s full remark: “As the director of CSIS indicated before a parliamentary committee some months ago, the number of returns known to the Government of Canada is in the order of 60, and they are under very careful investigation.”

Some months ago? Try more than a year and a half ago. Goodale appears to be referring to CSIS director Michel Coulombe’s March, 2016, testimony before the standing Senate committee on national security and defence. It was there that Coulombe offered the 60 count.

However, when Postmedia asked Goodale’s office where it got that number from, it cited a government report compiled as of year-end 2015. This tells us two things: 1) That Coulombe offered Senators a figure that was four months stale; 2) That Goodale answered Rempel’s question with a figure that’s a full two years old.

And:

Turning radicalized individuals away from extreme ideologies and helping them rejoin Canadian society is a key goal of the federal government, but it has little data on how well that fight is going.

The new Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence is supposed to be on the front line of this fight. It funds research and programs that "aim to prevent and counter radicalization to violence at the individual level." 

But the government doesn't know how many radicalized people are actually being spoken to, or who they are. Public Safety Canada says it can't provide statistics because the centre does not directly intervene with radicalized individuals.

And:

For starters, many of the academics and experts who appear in the media to argue why prosecution is hard and rehabilitation is easier are actually being paid by the government to pursue this narrative. The Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence is a division of Public Safety Canada that doles out grants to academics, not-for-profits, community groups and other levels of government to experiment with the new de-radicalization trend.

Secondly, and more importantly, it appears that there are cases when the RCMP and prosecutors make the discretionary choice to not lay charges even when they could. Back in 2016, then RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson told media that in the case of some radicals they don’t arrest them because “we assessed that they’re back, they’re sorry, they’re working to try to get their heads straight and we’re relying on family members or other professionals.”

You read that right: Some jihadists get off free if they say sorry.

So, how will these people be prosecuted (if at all)? 


Also: 

Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is asking Alberta youth court to order his release and declare his eight-year sentence — imposed by a widely maligned military commission in the United States — to have expired.

In a separate application before Federal Court, Khadr is attempting to force national parole authorities to grant him a hearing at which he would argue for release.

And: 

In fact, while Canada has done little to prosecute returning ISIS fighters, the government continues to try and strip citizenship from men in their 90s and send them out of the country for their role in the Nazi regime more than 70 years ago.

Given the government’s track record, I’m not sure I want us to bring back more ISIS fighters than we already have. Not unless we change the laws on the books so that we can prosecute them.

Former CSIS analyst turned security consultant Phil Gurski spent 15 years tracking jihadis like the ones currently held by the Syrian Defence Forces and others. He says let them rot where they are and face local justice.

“We leave them there to face the justice system in the jurisdictions where their crimes were committed,” Gurski said.

“In any other area of criminal law, if you commit an offence in a foreign country, you stand trial in the country where that offence was committed.”

 
They admire Venezuela's "basic dictatorship":

Four Canadian unions helped fund a private delegation to observe the Venezuelan presidential election last year, even as Canada, the United States and President Nicolas Maduro’s opponents decried the results as illegitimate.

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

According to the CP, “Trudeau also announced $53 million worth of humanitarian assistance Monday for the “most-pressing needs” of Venezuelans, including the almost 3 million refugees. The funds will go to “trusted partners” and neighbouring countries, he said.”

(Sidebar: who are these "trusted partners" getting my money, Justin?)

**

An unusually lucrative fundraiser for a former Liberal politician beset with gambling debts generated just under $300,000, according to a new statement from the now independent MP.

But the comments Raj Grewal made on Twitter Friday about the fundraising dinner last April also raise more questions, as he suggested that fewer than half of the 1,200 guests at the event actually paid for tickets, and that the money was needed for the kind of long campaign no longer possible under new election laws.

The fundraiser — with its exceptionally large turnout and attendant large potential revenue — has come under close scrutiny since Grewal’s gambling problems led to him being thrown out of the Liberal caucus.

It's just an economy:

Ottawa dismissed a call from Ontario's economic development minister Monday to drop retaliatory tariffs against the United States, saying doing so would mean "unilateral surrender" to the Americans.

(Sidebar: yes, Ottawa. You stick it to a country that handed you your @$$ during the NAFTA talks. Screw Ontario and its old-stock voters. You'll get newer, fresher ones that vote early and vote often.)

**

The Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources begins its study of C-69 on Tuesday. The bill will be among the most closely watched pieces of legislation this Parliamentary session, and has already become a rallying cry in resource-rich Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Tensions have run extremely high in those provinces in recent months, largely as a result of the industry’s failure over the past 15 years to build major pipelines, leading to a severe price crunch for Canadian crude oil late last year. Some politicians have framed the crisis as a result of policy overreach by Ottawa, and point to C-69 as Exhibit A.

**

On Thursday, January 31, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning Canadian goods and services from hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. government contracts.

It doesn’t actually mention Canada by name. But of course Canada is by far the country that will be the most impacted — given the size of our trading relationship with the U.S., and the integration of our economies, and the nature of the products and services being banned.

**

The federal small business tax rate applies to business income up to $500,000 dropped from 10.5 per cent to 10 per cent in 2018 and came down another notch, to nine per cent, as of Jan. 1, 2019. On the other hand, Ottawa also tightened the rules on so-called passive income. This is the income businesses earn when they invest surplus profits in things like mutual funds and real estate. As long as the extra cash stays inside the company, it is taxed at the corporate tax rate, which is lower than the rates that apply to individuals.

The last time Justin defended one of his underlings, he threw him under a bus:

“The member in question has apologized for his tweet,” Trudeau said. “It is important that we have civil debate in this house and elsewhere when we have disagreement over public policy.”

This from the man that has called one opponent a piece of “excrement” not the word used in the House.

If Adam Vaughan called Justin a douchebag who is incapable of dressing himself, would an apology tweet suffice?




Proponents of a laissez-faire immigration policy, one in which anyone could cross the border with or without documents or sound reason for not seeking asylum in the US, assured everyone that these people will not only acclimatise but be a ready workforce to do what Canadians cannot.

I give you:

Fatum Ibrahim is pointing to her nose and smiling ear-to-ear.

"Nose," she proudly pronounces, eager to demonstrate her expanding English vocabulary.

Three years ago, a day shy of Valentine's Day, 36-year old Ibrahim and seven family members landed in Surrey, B.C., as part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's signature Syrian Refugee Initiative. 

She didn't know a word of English, nor could she read or write in her native Arabic.

Despite taking language classes four days a week, she has a long way to go to meet the English-language requirement for Canadian citizenship. While her mom, dad, grandmother and two school-age brothers are eligible to become citizens this year, she and two other adult siblings, who also never learned to read or write, will not be. Without a passport, they are stuck in Canada, unable to visit the six siblings they left behind in Turkey.

"I want to be a Canadian. I love it because our country has been destroyed and is gone. Now Canada is our only country. ... But I don't think I will learn to pass the English test until the end of my life," Ibrahim says through an interpreter.

Ibrahim and her two siblings, both of whom live with intellectual disabilities, are not anomalies.

Government-assisted Syrian refugees came to Canada with less education than the refugees who came before them. Eighty-one per cent of the first 15,000 government-assisted refugees reported an education level of secondary school or less.

While Syria's average literacy rate — eight in 10 before the war took a toll — is relatively high for the region, there is a sizeable disparity between rates for men and women. Only 77 per cent of Syrian women are literate, compared with 90 per cent of men, with rural women such as Ibrahim faring the worst. It was these women and their families whom the Canadian government prioritized for resettlement.

"I went to school only for one year, in the first grade. But I didn't like it. I wasn't smart," Ibrahim says. "None of my sisters finished school; our brothers did. We spent our days cooking, cleaning the house, laughing, playing. We were so happy. ... Only here in Canada did I start school again. I was terrified."

**

Lubomyr Luciuk — who once said he “had no choice but to become ‘Dr. No’” because he denied so many refugee claims — gained notoriety for his views on Canada’s asylum system, including when he said Canada had become a haven for “assorted terrorists, drug peddlers and war criminals.”

“If the IRB continues to operate as it has, then just about anyone and everyone who wants to get into Canada will,” Luciuk said in a 2001 opinion piece published in at least four major Canadian newspapers and an online blog.

But for two weeks at the end of December, Luciuk was back at the IRB, deciding the fate of those seeking protection in Canada.

(Sidebar: not being refugees in any legal or political sense, they don't need Canada's protection.)   

Luciuk, who claimed he denied more than 90 per cent of all cases he heard while at the IRB between 1996 and 1998, also wrote that he “rarely encountered a real refugee” while working at the board.

He also criticized the IRB for the way it handled certain types of claims — such as those from young Tamil men from Sri Lanka who he said received “only the most perfunctory of examinations.” 

Legal experts say Luciuk’s rehiring is problematic and raises concerns about the competence of judges being brought back to decide legacy asylum claims. They also question whether the IRB — eager to clear a large backlog of cases — is “taking a shortcut” in its hiring process.

Now, is the government doing to this so that it can later claim that their official was unfair and then allow the rejected to re-enter without any scrutiny? 

Time will tell.



Meanwhile, the government is glad to fund nearly-dead languages because they are not using their pensions to do it:

The Liberals are poised to introduce a new law to protect and promote Indigenous languages.

Just before the weekend, the government put the House of Commons on notice that it planned to introduce a new bill, titled “An Act respecting Indigenous languages,” for MPs to debate.

What? Communist North Korea lied? It cannot be so!:

North Korea is working to ensure its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities cannot be destroyed by military strikes, UN monitors said ahead of a meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials to prepare a second denuclearization summit.

(Sidebar: at this point, one should remind everyone that the UN prop ups the North Korean dictatorship in numerous ways.)


Also - South Koreans don't need a TV show to tell them how to grill their kids:

“SKY Castle” follows several ambitious families as their drive to send their children to the country’s best universities and secure lucrative jobs leads to identity fraud, suicide and murder. 

The show’s name comes from a fictionalized version of luxury residential community in Seoul’s suburbs, but is also a nod to the acronym “SKY,” which refers to South Korea’s top three universities: Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University. 

It’s the most-watched drama ever to air on South Korean cable networks, according to Nielsen Korea, and has found a wide following in China. 

As the series came to an end this week, however, there were signs the show has led some South Koreans adopt some of the more intense educational measures the creators intended to criticize. 

Sales of the “studycube”, a 2.5 million won ($2,235) wooden closet less than one square meter in size where students can hide themselves away to focus on their homework, for example, have soared eight-fold after it was featured in the show, according to the company which makes it. 

“I saw the studycube on ‘SKY Castle’ and bought it of my own will to create a suitable studying environment for me,” said 16-year-old Lee Do-gyeong, who is hoping to be accepted to one of Seoul’s top veterinary medicine programs. 

Demand for specialized university entrance coaches has also increased, after the show depicted a university admissions coordinator going beyond school records to guide everything from sleeping patterns to friendships.

Bad-@$$:

A man who was attacked by a mountain lion while running on a northern Colorado trail fought back and killed the animal by choking it, wildlife officials said Tuesday.