Sunday Post

 

The scandal that just won't die:

In an extraordinary 17-minute phone call on Dec. 19, 2018, Wernick can be heard telling Wilson-Raybould that Trudeau was “determined” to find a way for Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin to get a deferred prosecution, despite Wilson-Raybould’s insistence that it was wrong to overrule the prosecution service’s decision to proceed with a trial.

“This is not a great place for me to be in,” Wilson-Raybould tells Wernick near the end of the phone call. “But what I am confident of is that I have given the Prime Minister my best advice to protect him and to protect the constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence.”

“Alright, but … I am worried about a collision then because he is pretty firm about this,” Wernick replies, referring to Trudeau. “I just saw him a few hours ago and this is really important to him.”

I'll bet Wernick wished he recorded the conversation now. Jody had no compunction doing so.


(Read the text here and listen to the audio here.)


This recording does the following: confirms what Jody said about being pressured (Wernick: "Um...I am not calling you about litigation directive. I am calling about the other important one - the Deferred Prosecution thing / SNC and so one - I wanted to pass on where the PM is at... So it seems to be real and not a bluff. Um, there is another rising anxiety as you can imagine about a signature firm and job loss and all that coming after the Oshawa thing and what is going on in Calgary and what not."), that the possible loss of jobs was used to convince Jody about the deferred prosecution agreement even though it interfered with prosecutorial independence (Raybould: "Does he understand the gravity of what this potentially could mean - this is not about saving jobs - this is about interfering with one of our fundamental institutions – this is like breaching a constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence."), that Justin wanted her to agree to the deferred prosecution agreement (Wernick: "Well...it is not a good idea for the Prime Minister and his Attorney General to be at loggerheads.") and that the claim that Justin was never briefed is a total fabrication (“The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said the clerk of the Privy Council Office (PCO) never briefed Justin Trudeau on his talk with ex-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould, that was captured on a recording released on Friday. In a statement to Global News, the PMO also said it was “unaware of the full contents of this recording before today.” ... “I find this claim very hard to believe. After failing to persuade JWR in that phone call, Wernick states “Well I’m going to have to report back before he leaves.””)


And, really, do clerks of the privy council just step down for the sake of stepping down?:

Michael Wernick will officially step down as the country's top bureaucrat in April, one month after he announced plans to step down in the wake of being drawn into the explosive SNC-Lavalin affair.

The federal government announced Friday that Ian Shugart will take over as clerk of the Privy Council on April 19, which also marks the last day of Wernick's nearly 38-year career in the public service.

Wernick's political career is finished after this whirlwind amateur attempt at deception, though I am sure he has wealthy friends in high places in the private sector where he may peddle his total bullsh--.



Moving on ...



Why does this sound somewhat familiar?:

A nurse in Moncton was fired after allegations that labour was induced without consent, Horizon Health Network confirmed Saturday.

A press release from Horizon Health said it fired the labour and delivery nurse after an internal investigation revealed "strong evidence" the nurse administered Oxytocin, which caused two patients to require an urgent caesarean section. Horizon said it took immediate action to launch an investigation.

Oxytocin is a drug that causes contractions and is used to induce labour, speed up labour and stop bleeding following labour. If it's not administered properly, contractions can become too strong.

Seeing as this nurse (allegedly) could have killed patients who are not regarded as people, anyway, has been doing this for a while and will probably be defended by some crackerjack lawyer who will either have the charges lessened or dismissed, one wonders why people bother. Someone who (allegedly) should never have been a nurse in the first place (allegedly) committed a crime against people no one really cares about and in a broken institution no one will fix.



What would we do without arbitrators?:

A family law arbitrator has upheld an Ontario mother’s refusal to have her children vaccinated, citing a leading advocate in the U.S. anti-vaccination movement who claims vaccines do more harm than good.

Also:

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ordered Christian activist William Whatcott to pay $55,000 to trans activist Morgane Oger.

Mr. Oger must be pleased with the legalised vendetta system.



Oh, I'm quite sure:

For the first time since that high-profile arrest in June 2006, Abdelhaleem is hoping to slip from behind bars on an escorted temporary leave; just for a few hours, accompanied by a guard, to attend a meeting on de-radicalization.

This was his first appearance before the Parole Board of Canada, despite being eligible for parole on his life sentence since 2016.

Abdelhaleem answered that awkward question as plainly as it was asked by parole board member Veronique Buisson.

“Not any more,” he said.

After a pause, he elaborated.

“I’ve adjusted my way of thinking,” he said. “It was — not to use foul language, but — it was a shitty thing to do… It was the wrong thing to do, I realize that.”

He was dangerous back then, he admitted, but no longer.

“I would rather die than re-offend,” he said empathically, before realizing that — with his distinct past — he must be careful with words. A board member asked if he was referencing martyrdom or suicide attacks.

Also - Justin has some rather freaky friends:

Former hostage Joshua Boyle wrote up a list of rules his now-estranged spouse Caitlan Coleman had to live by, including that she please him sexually twice a day, every day, and that she refer to their children as sir and madame to remind her of her lowest place in the family.

Why, that sounds like a challenge to hold an outdoor Mass/free speech/tank block jamboree right across from the closest Chinese consulate:

A Chinese diplomat in Montreal tried to shut down an event at Concordia University featuring an exiled Muslim minority leader this week, says an organizer, marking China’s third recent attempt to influence activities on Canadian campuses.

But Wait! There's More!

That's often the case ...




Under the glossy exterior of a white liberal is a douchebag yearning to be free:

Trudeau said he’s sorry for how he responded to the protester, who unfurled a banner at the foot of the stage in an effort to draw attention to the impact of mercury poisoning in the northern Ontario community of Grassy Narrows First Nation.

“Thank you for your donation,” Trudeau told the woman as she was escorted out by security. “I really appreciate your donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.”

Others in the audience, who paid $1,500 each in order to attend the event, cheered the prime minister’s dismissive remark, which was captured by cellphone cameras and circulated on social media.

People are shocked by the callousness of white liberals and their latent indifference to one of their causes-du-jour because ...?

There is no reason to and it's not as though this sort of thing has not happened before. Pierre's idiot son says something wrong, apologises when his script-writers tell him to and the process repeats itself.

This is why I don't believe the average Canadian, led to believe that the Liberals are the better party, that the US, crammed to the rafters with Americans, is a wasteland of racism and plainness, that the world loves the politically small country of Canada because of its multiculturalism that many global citizens cannot possibly have experienced first-hand, will look at this event (one of many) and change his or her mind. Only something extreme like poverty or mass unemployment might do that and even then will the Canadian voter begrudgingly turn to another party without ever wonder why the system is broken or how it got to be that way.




The scandal that will never die:

A SNC-Lavalin contract with the Department of National Defence (DND) worth half a billion dollars comes up for renewal next year — when the Montreal-based engineering giant is expected to be on trial over corruption charges.

By the way:

The next battle in the criminal case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman will be over redactions to memos written by senior government bureaucrats — and especially a 60-page memo from Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that has been entirely blacked out.

Norman’s lawyer Marie Henein said the government redacted the memo claiming solicitor-client privilege, prompting the judge to point out that Wernick is not a lawyer.

Henein said there is a list of documents they’ll be challenging the solicitor-client privilege redactions on, but mentioned two other key documents: a 64-page memo from Privy Council Office lawyer Paul Shuttle to Wernick written on Oct 19, 2018, and a 13-page memo from Shuttle to Wernick written on Dec. 22, 2017. Henein did not give the date of the memo from Wernick to Trudeau.

“The issue is whether there is a viable claim of privilege on this at all, and then, if there is a viable claim of privilege, whether or not an exception should apply,” Henein said.

Court will hear the defence’s application to lift the redactions on April 16 and 17.

**

Glen Assoun's lawyer says the wrongfully convicted Halifax man suffered "every single day" as he waited to be exonerated for a murder he didn't commit — a wait that was prolonged for months as his case sat on former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould's desk.

David Lametti issued an order for a new trial on Feb. 28, just seven weeks after taking over as justice minister. The following day — after a five-minute new trial in which the prosecution presented no evidence — Assoun was a free man.

(Sidebar: ahem ...)

He had spent almost 17 years in prison and another four and a half years under strict parole conditions after being convicted of the brutal 1998 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Way.

Sean MacDonald — one of the lawyers for Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted and which spent years trying to prove Assoun's innocence — declined to specifically discuss Wilson-Raybould's handling of the case.

(Sidebar: how convenient that this pops up now.)

** 

Already they have attempted to cover up potential investigation into the SNC-scandal by using their majority on the justice committee to shut down the discussion in that arena. Now it seems insiders are willing to leak sensitive information which could harm the basis to our judicial system.

The entire world needs to re-think trade with China:

Canada needs a “reality check” in its approach to free trade with China, particularly amid a dispute over canola exports that points to deeper-lying contradictions in Chinese trade policy, a new report warns.

In a report Thursday, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute lays out a comprehensive argument against Canada seeking a trade agreement with China, saying it would be a “non-starter” because of the fundamental disagreement between the two countries over basic market principles and international trade law.

Also:

China has made proposals in talks with the United States on a range of issues that go further than it has before, including on forced technology transfer, as the two sides work to overcome obstacles to a deal to end their protracted trade war, U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Until the ideology is destroyed, these groups will always pop up:

Votel said the end of the battle – announced Saturday by the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the village of Baghouz – was not a surprise to the Islamic State. Experts say the group is already morphing back into an underground insurgent organization.
 
“We shouldn’t look at this as a surrender,” he said, but rather a “deliberate effort to evacuate people, to take their chances in internally displaced persons camps and in SDF prisons, and try to export out their capabilities as much as they can.”

Up to 20,000 fighters are believed to have dispersed across Iraq and Syria. Already, the group, which was declared defeated in Iraq in late 2017, has mounted assassinations and explosive attacks.

While it’s unclear what role the group’s fugitive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, retains in commanding the group, Votel said the militants “still have leaders, still have resources . . . they still have ideology.”

If you can't afford a carbon tax, you should never vote Liberal:

The Trudeau Carbon Tax is set to take effect on April 1st.

And already, the backlash is growing.

In an official statement on Twitter, the New Brunswick Government has made it clear that people can’t afford the tax:

“Starting April 1, a family that has an oil furnace and fills that tank up three times a year will spend $150 more per year. Why should New Brunswickers pay more?”

Because f--- you. That's why.

Anyone who is stupid enough to believe that carbon is a pollutant and that a carbon tax is not a form of theft or that using available resources is somehow bad deserves to freeze in the dark.

(SEE: Liberals, donation, thanks, not caring, douchebag)

Also: 

The Conservatives are using a new tactic to reach voters with an attack on the federal government's carbon tax just days before it comes into effect.

The Official Opposition party is deploying the usual political outreach tools — ad buys and doorstep campaigning — but it's also planning to send messages directly to voters' phones in the four provinces where the federal carbon pricing policy is being introduced.

Starting Thursday, the Conservative Party will be mass-texting voters with a message from federal leader Andrew Scheer insisting the Trudeau government's carbon tax has to go.

One of the planned texts reads: "Andrew Scheer here. Trudeau's carbon tax will raise gas prices 5 cents on Monday, so fill your tank!"

Whatever. Your province is done:

The Canadian province of Quebec will ban public sector employees from wearing religious symbols during work hours, in legislation introduced on Thursday, a controversial move that critics say targets Muslim women who wear hijabs or other head coverings.

They're all greedy b@$#@rds:

The CEO of Ontario Power Generation was the highest paid public sector employee in the province last year, topping a growing list of those earning $100,000 or more. 

The so-called “Sunshine List” released Wednesday — which now includes more than 151,000 people — shows Jeff Lyash made more than $1.7 million in 2018. ...

Premier Doug Ford made $112,770.47 while his chief of staff, Dean French, earned more than his boss, making $153,155. ...

Former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne made $162,248 while her former chief of staff Andrew Bevan was paid $552,667. Bevan’s salary in 2017 was $313,921. ...

Wynne’s chief investment officer Allan O’Dette — who was dismissed by the Ford government after it was elected — made $561,872.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who was paid $171,0737 last year, said next year’s disclosure will shine a light on this government’s patronage hires.

Wait times would decrease dramatically if the entire healthcare system was reformed. Start privatising it:

While many Canadians had to wait beyond the recommended times for certain types of surgeries last year, Toronto and the rest of Ontario fared better than the country as a whole, according to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). ...

Some provinces fared far worse. In Manitoba, Nova Scotia and P.E.I., for example, only 49% of patients got a hip replacement within the recommended time frame. For knee replacements in P.E.I., only 26% of patients hit the benchmark.

 
She has an apostrophe in her name, so, you know - she's different:

A woman who pleaded guilty to pushing her 16-year-old friend from a bridge at a popular swimming area near Vancouver has been sentenced to two days in jail and 38 days on a county work crew.

Clark County District Court Judge Darvin Zimmerman sentenced 19-year-old Tay’lor Smith on Wednesday, saying she should do some jail time in light of Jordan Holgerson’s serious injuries.

Also - okay, where are the parents?:

When Athéna Gervais, a well-liked, active 14-year-old with no history of heavy drinking, popped into the dépanneur near her Laval high school during lunch last year in late February, she had a choice of at least seven different varieties of alcoholic beverages.

Wine, beer, wine spritzers and sugary alcoholic drinks lined the shelves. Athéna went right for the 568-mL can labelled “FCKD UP,” printed in bright pastel colours. Nearly the size of two beers, it had an alcohol content of 11.9 per cent. The French advertising for the brand said “Rend F–KUP,” which translates loosely to “It’ll get you f–ked up.”

Athéna was 5-foot-2 and weighed 110 pounds.

She snuck the can out of the store, chugged most of it and shared a bit with her friends, then got two more, and chugged them, too. The three cans contained the alcohol equivalent of drinking two bottles of wine. Gervais finished them in 23 minutes.

She was found three days later, face down in two feet of water in a stream running behind her school.

It’s believed she was taking a shortcut through the woods to a Tim Hortons, became disoriented because her blood-alcohol level was more than two times the legal limit for drivers, and fell down a steep ravine into the brook.

“It is unlikely that a person in control of themselves and familiar with a certain path would have decided to take such an inaccessible route and not be able to get up out of that small amount of water,” coroner Martin Larocque wrote.

In his report issued Wednesday,  Larocque listed her cause of death as drowning, “in the context of the excessive consumption of a sugary drink with a high alcohol content.”

Drinking that amount in a short time period, the taste of the alcohol masked by high levels of sugar, had a “devastating effect,” he said, contributing directly to her death. Larocque said the marketing of the product was linked to Gervais’s choice of drink that afternoon: its bright colours, large size and promise of inebriation, placed in a high-visibility display case and targeted to an age group ranging from 12 to 24.

“Every tactic is used to attract the consumer that is targeted,” Larocque said.

No, the parents are to blame. Who doesn't warn their children about the dangers of alcohol abuse or punishes them when they shop-lift?





And now, possibly the world's longest salt cave:

Israeli researchers said Thursday they have surveyed what they now believe to be the world’s longest salt cave, a network of twisting passageways at the southern tip of the Dead Sea.

A recently completed survey of the Malham Cave determined the labyrinthine cavern stretches more than 10 kilometres in length. That puts it well ahead of Iran’s Namakdan Cave, previously thought to be the longest salt cave.

Mid-Week Post

 Your mid-week interlude ...




The scandal that just won't die:

Jody Wilson-Raybould has submitted a written statement, emails and text messages related to the SNC-Lavalin matter to the Commons justice committee, but the material is not expected to be made public until late Friday.

The documents must be translated and scrubbed of personal information, such as email addresses and phone numbers, before they can be released.

The former justice minister and attorney general testified before the committee for nearly four hours on Feb. 27 about her allegation that senior government figures inappropriately pressured her to intervene in SNC-Lavalin's bribery case. Last week, the Liberal MPs who hold the majority on the committee voted to close down the inquiry without recalling Wilson-Raybould to testify a second time in response to other witnesses.

In a letter to the justice committee chair, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, Wilson-Raybould said she would offer the committee "relevant facts and evidence in my possession that further clarify statements I made and elucidate the accuracy and nature of statements by witnesses in testimony that came after my committee appearance."

Meanwhile, Conservative Deputy Leader Lisa Raitt asked the federal judicial affairs commissioner today to investigate leaks of information about the most recent Supreme Court appointment. Media reports this week said tensions between Wilson-Raybould and Trudeau began to flare when the two were at odds over the appointment.

This appointment: 

Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould is condemning leaks to media outlets this week about deliberations in 2017 to appoint a new Supreme Court of Canada justice, and she says the government should consider an investigation into who leaked the information.

“I strongly condemn anyone who would speak about or provide information on such sensitive matters,” she said. “This has to stop and given the seriousness of this matter I feel that there should be consideration of having some sort of investigation as to the source of this information.”

Justin is hoping that Canadians' irrational fear of social conservatism (oh no! personal responsibility!) will be an adequate deflection from the SNC-Lavalin scandal from which he cannot escape.

How did confidential documents magically become fodder in the public domain?




The Canadian lawyer system is using Trump's comments on Huawei as a part of its deliberations on whether to extradite Meng Wanzhou or not:

U.S. President Donald Trump's comment about his willingness to intervene in the court case against a Huawei executive was part of the Canadian Justice Department's legal analysis of the extradition case against Meng Wanzhou. 

The analysis, under the heading 'President Trump's statement to Reuters that he may intervene in the extradition,' is part of a legal synopsis for the Department of Justice obtained by CBC News through an access to information request.

If the lawyer system does not extradite Meng to the US, it will mean retaliation from the Americans (and who needs that now?). China has made it abundantly clear that it believes that it owns Canada and has certain expectations.

It is time to cut off trade with China:

China continues to attack Canada’s Canola sector, in what is an obviously transparent move based on the Meng Wanzhou detainment.

The latest attack from China has been cancelling Glencore’s canola export permit.

And this is why Canada must start to decouple ourselves economically from China, and shift towards other countries, along with strengthening inter-provincial trade.

Trade with China is still a small part of our overall global trade, so we can decouple from them without doing significant economic damage.



It could also be done slowly, by ramping up tariffs on products from China, while seeking trade deals with nations that are more aligned with our values, such as India, where a young population, large democracy, and strong long-term growth prospects creates tremendous opportunity.

Also:

The former head of Interpol, a Chinese bureaucrat at the missing persons’ bureau who himself went missing in China, has been stripped of all his positions and expelled from the Communist Party, the party watchdog said Wednesday.

Meng Hongwei, who is 65, had committed serious violations of law and discipline, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said, accusing him of taking bribes and abusing his power to “willfully squander national assets to give his family a luxurious life.”

He had “disregarded the principles of being a party member” and had “seriously tarnished the image of the party and seriously harmed the interests of the state,” the commission continued. It said it had referred Meng’s case for prosecution.

Meng was a member of the party’s powerful central committee and a vice-minister for public security who had become the first Chinese president of Interpol in 2016, part of Beijing’s efforts to garner greater influence in international bodies.

But when he returned to China on a visit in September last year, he vanished. He apparently anticipated trouble, sending his wife a message to “wait for my call,” accompanied by a knife emoji.

I'm surprised he hasn't been taken out back and shot.





This case gets curiouser and curiouser:

A revolutionary group that infiltrated North Korea’s Embassy in Madrid last month, tied up staffers and escaped with computers and other items claimed responsibility for the raid Tuesday in a statement on its website.

The group, Free Joseon, which calls for the overthrow of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said it shared information it obtained with the FBI and characterized it as having “enormous potential value.”

“This information was shared voluntarily and on their request, not our own,” said the group, referring to its meeting with the FBI.

**

A Spanish judge has issued international arrest warrants for two of the intruders accused of forcing their way into North Korea’s embassy in Madrid last month and are currently believed to be in the United States, a judicial source said on Wednesday. 

Also:

North Korea's embassy in the UK was alleged to have stolen a computer with a key cryptographic program when North Korea was an invasion of the consulate in Spain last month. In recent years, North Korea has analyzed that it was not possible to direct a secret telegram by the ㆍ of its domestic ambassador, such as Russia. 

(Kamsahamnida)





Joshua Boyle is batsh-- crazy.

But don't take my word for it:

Coleman described a tumultuous relationship marked by fights and reconciliations before the couple went on a trip to Central Asia. About a week after they entered Afghanistan, they were captured by a Taliban-linked network and held for five years.

Coleman testified Wednesday that Boyle beat, choked and threatened to kill her in the later years of their captivity. The couple had three children before they were freed and returned to Canada.

Coleman testified that Boyle started “treating me better” when they returned to Canada, but that changed after they left his parents’ place in Smiths Falls, Ont.  She described an incident in November 2017 where Boyle allegedly forced her to take sleeping pills. 

On Tuesday, court heard a recording of a 911 call Boyle made in December 2017 to say that his wife was threatening to kill herself.

Ottawa police Sgt. Shane Henderson, who responded to the 911 call, testified about his interactions with the couple on that night. When he eventually found Coleman at a hotel where her mother was staying, she told him she was not suicidal, he told the court on Tuesday.

**

It led to a meeting in August 2009 in Toronto with Boyle and his new wife. After that lunch, Boyle walked with her back to her hotel, Coleman said, and spilled out his feelings.

He said his marriage to Khadr was a sham: that it had been staged for the media, Coleman said, to improve the family’s image.

“Essentially, he wanted to marry me. I was the love of his life. He wasn’t going to have a family with Zaynab.”

(Sidebar: it always goes back to those guys.)






It's just money that is not going to tax-paying citizens or those damn greedy veterans:

Canada's refugee health program is getting a $283 million boost over the next two years.

Immigration officials say the funding increase — contained in last week's federal budget —  is needed because more people are making refugee claims.

"Ensuring that the most vulnerable people in our society have access to basic health care is part of Canada's valued humanitarian tradition, and helps protect public health for all Canadians," Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said in a statement.

(Sidebar: Ahmed Hussen is a sack of sh-- who has zero problems with FGM.)

**

Donald Trump had repeatedly cited Canada as one of the deadbeat members of NATO that refuses to fund its military at two per cent of its GDP — despite having promised to do so and notwithstanding that we have done so in the past. With Budget 2019, Canada is no closer to meeting that pledge, spending 1.23 per cent of its GDP on national defence.

Because f--- you. No one should be this:

City councillors in Richmond Hill, Ont., rejected a motion to begin their meetings with an acknowledgment of the area's Indigenous community and history.

The decision was made after a lengthy Monday night council meeting that featured dozens of impassioned speeches and letters from citizens in favour of the proposal.

"It was a blatant, strategic, political quashing of a legitimate motion," said resident Joel Clements, who spoke at the meeting.

Following the decision, some attendees shouted "shame" at councillors who did not support the proposal.

Marj Andre, who implored council to adopt the land acknowledgement, said she left the meeting in anger and disbelief.

"Richmond Hill has been shamed," she told CBC News. "The message it sends to the community — I'm embarrassed."

The message it sends is that grovelling is a total pantload and a waste of time.

Deal with your white liberal shame in your own way. 




This is why people home-school:

Grade 8 students in classrooms across Nova Scotia are being taught about transgender issues using a school book that is littered with unscientific propaganda.

Listening to Quebec Premier Francois Legault argue for a dying province against sectarian balkanisation is like watching a man argue with a crocodile. He believes he can win without any means to defend himself:

Premier Francois Legault invoked Quebecers' values, language and distinctiveness Tuesday to justify shielding from court challenge upcoming legislation that will restrict the wearing of religious symbols .

Legault said the notwithstanding clause — Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — has been used "dozens of times by many Quebec premiers" with the purpose of protecting collective rights against individual freedoms.

It is "important," he said, to use Section 33 "when we are talking about protecting our values, our language, protecting what makes us different here in Quebec."

And now, the Saskatchewanus Rex:

No big deal or anything, but Canada, the world’s largest T. rex was discovered in Saskatchewan. Yep, you read that right: Saskatchewan!

The behemoth weighed a whopping 19,500 pounds, according to National Geographic, and was found near Eastend, about 380 km southwest from Regina.

Nicknamed “Scotty,” the dinosaur is much bigger and older than what paleontologists previously believed the species could grow. Of all recovered T. rex skeletons, Scotty is the most mature.

Until Scotty’s discovery, Sue was the largest T. rex. Researchers estimated Sue weighed about 800 pounds less than Scotty.

Sue still is the most complete fossil, with around 90 per cent of her bones unearthed in 1990 in South Dakota. Researchers could only recover about 65 per cent of Scotty’s skeleton, but that’s still a substantial amount, the study’s lead researcher said.

Title Goes Here

Witty opening line goes here ...




The scandal that will never die:

Opposition parties have failed to convince the Liberals to let the House of Commons ethics committee probe further into allegations of political interference in the criminal prosecution of Quebec engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin.

The Liberal majority on the committee voted down a motion backed by Conservatives and New Democrats that would have seen former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board president Jane Philpott testify about the controversy.

Quelle surprise.

The Liberals own the committee and will never allow any inquiry to go forward.

This is country is run by a crime syndicate.

Prove me wrong.

**

With Jody Wilson-Raybould planning to submit emails and text messages that will provide further evidence of potential political interference by the Trudeau PMO, the Liberal government is now indicating that they plan to redact that evidence, blocking the public from seeing it.

The Conservatives have responded, issuing a letter calling for the evidence to be made public:

“The #JUST Committee Chair @AHousefather has indicated that he will redact evidence submitted by JWR. See my letter to him calling for ALL of the evidence to be made public #LavScam #cdnpoli”

**

The Prime Minister’s Office will neither confirm nor deny the assertion by former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould that senior advisers to Justin Trudeau had inside knowledge of discussions within the independent Public Prosecution Service about the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould has alleged that the Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] told her chief of staff about an apparent internal dispute between director of public prosecutions Kathleen Roussel and one of the federal prosecutors handling the SNC-Lavalin bribery and fraud prosecution.

 

In testimony before the Commons justice committee last month, Ms. Wilson-Raybould described a Sept. 16, 2018, conversation between her then-chief of staff, Jessica Prince, and the Prime Minister’s Quebec adviser, Mathieu Bouchard, and senior adviser Elder Marques about negotiating an out-of-court settlement with SNC-Lavalin.

**

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. is walking back a statement by its CEO, who said last week he never cited the protection of 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.

Neil Bruce told The Canadian Press last Wednesday that if SNC-Lavalin is convicted of criminal charges and barred from bidding on federal contracts its workers would end up working for the Montreal-based company’s foreign rivals.

“We have never put forward anything that is purely an economic argument about jobs and why we think we qualify for a DPA (deferred prosecution agreement),” he said in an interview. “We put forward an argument in terms of the public interest.”

The charges stem from allegations the engineering firm paid millions of dollars in bribes to win government business in Libya between 2001 and 2011.

In a statement posted to its website Monday afternoon, SNC-Lavalin says it never threatened the federal government.

If one is going to create a fiction, it helps to keep one's story straight.

**

The ultimate "squirrel!" tactic in Canadian politics:

Relations between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould first began to fray in 2017 over concerns about her choice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada.

A year before cabinet discussions about a plea deal for Quebec engineering company SNC-Lavalin, Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould disagreed about her recommendation of Manitoba Justice Glenn D. Joyal, sources familiar with the matter tell CTV News.

Trudeau was concerned that Joyal wasn’t committed to protecting rights that have flown out of interpretation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly LGBTQ2 rights and even abortion access, neither of which are specifically enshrined in the Charter.

Wilson-Raybould not only wanted Joyal named to the court to fill the vacancy left by Justice Beverley McLachlin’s resignation, she believed Joyal should replace McLachlin as the top court’s chief justice, a position that caused Trudeau to question his justice minister’s judgment, the sources said.

According to the Canadian Press, Wilson-Raybould wrote a 60-page memo to Trudeau advocating for Joyal.

Joyal issued a statement this afternoon confirming he applied for the seat on the court but said he later withdrew his name from consideration.

“Ultimately, I had to withdraw my application for personal reasons, due to my wife's metastatic breast cancer,” he wrote.

“I fear that someone is using my previous candidacy to the Supreme Court of Canada to further an agenda unrelated to the appointment process. This is wrong.”

It is unclear when Joyal withdrew his application.

Oh noes! Jody is a closet social conservative and is just a big, mean kid picking on poor Justin!

Justin is a bag of sh-- who used the flimsy excuse of social conservatism (which is a crime in Canada, apparently) and a judge's critically ill wife to hide from his and his party's wrong-doing.

He (read: Katie Telford) is not even doing a good job of it:

If this was such a big problem, why is Trudeau still claiming that Wilson-Raybould was only moved because Scott Brison resigned?

And why wasn’t this brought up a month ago?

Why just now?

Why haven’t Trudeau’s cronies even once mentioned anything along these lines at any point throughout the whole scandal?

And if this was the reason, why did Jane Philpott resign?

**

I'm sure this is merely coincidence:

Emma Griffin and Neil Bruce, the CEO of SNC Lavalin, sold their Montreal home on March 14th for more than $3.3 million.  They have not purchased a new home, and Journal de Quebec is reporting that the deed of sale for their Westmount home states that “she will soon become a non-resident of Canada”.

But  ... but ... a seat in the UN!:

Canadian peacekeepers were called upon to evacuate several wounded French soldiers in Mali earlier this month after their patrol was ambushed while hunting for militants along the border with Niger.

Justin's friend, Joshua Boyle, was made to listen to the 911 call he made in December 2017 when his clearly brain-washed wife threatened to kill herself:

At 11:47 p.m. ET on Dec. 30, 2017, Joshua Boyle picked up the phone and dialled 911, prompting Ottawa police to show up at the apartment he shared with his then-spouse and their children.

It was the day Caitlan Coleman was "finally able to walk away from Mr. Boyle" after months of alleged domestic abuse, Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham told court as Boyle's trial began Monday.

On Tuesday, Boyle's 911 call was played in Ontario Court.

"My wife is threatening to kill herself," he's heard telling the dispatcher in five minutes of the 911 audio. He says she has an "extreme mental instability" called borderline personality disorder, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) "and a few other things."

But the call was a ruse, the Crown intends to prove — an attempt by Boyle to divert suspicion away from himself and onto someone else. 

Hours later, Boyle was arrested and charged with a raft of offences, including public mischief (misleading police with the 911 call and ensuing investigation), assault with a weapon, sexual assault and forcible confinement.

Boyle has pleaded not guilty to all 19 charges, laid a few months after the couple returned to Canada in October 2017 with three children they had while in captivity for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Perhaps Mr. Schreiner can explain how much costs will go up for the average Canadian household once the carbon tax comes into effect:

Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the public should be opposed to the Progressive Conservative’s plan which he called a waste of their tax dollars to sabotage climate change solutions.

“The fact that they’re spending millions of dollars on lawyers to fight the federal climate plan makes absolutely no sense,” Schreiner said. “I understand people’s concerns around trusting the Liberals with their money, but the Green Party’s going to continue to advocate what is the most business friendly and economic efficient solution to climate change – put a price on pollution, return all the money to the people.”

But it doesn't go to the people, does it?




That's what I'd like to know:

A Tory MPP says he meant no offence when he called out to former premier Kathleen Wynne in the Ontario Legislature.

“Why are you still here?” shouted York Centre MPP Roman Baber, who says he was just joking around.

“I didn’t mean any disrespect, for sure,” Baber said Monday.

“I was a little surprised that given the Liberal lack of success in the last election that the premier is just staying here.”

I guess anyone can be Hitler:

And so the student responded that to the question of “Is a knowledge of trigonometric functions and probability necessary?” with “No, not in everyday life.” The teacher, however, disagreed, and while it’s unclear if it was his immediate reaction or not, his eventual rebuttal to the student was:

“You’re like Hitler.”

The teacher went on to tell his student “You’re not cut out to become an educator. I’d feel sorry for the kids who’d be taught by you.”
Equal parts baffling and demoralizing, the teacher’s tirade startled the student, and on March 19, Matsue Minami High School, which is administered by the prefectural government, lodged a complaint against the teacher with the Shimane Prefectural Board of Education, calling his comments inappropriate.

So how did the teacher make the jump from triangles to swastikas? Apparently because he drew a parallel between the student’s dismissal of the importance of other academic disciplines and the Nazi dictator’s denial of certain ethnic groups’ right to exist. “The student did not recognize and appreciate diversity,” the teacher explained, “and I felt that his simplistic way of thinking was Hitler-like and dangerous.”

An American and Canadian team have successfully relocated six starving wolves:

A Canadian-U.S. team has successfully moved six wolves off a northern Ontario island to one on the U.S. side of Lake Superior.

Isle Royale National Park superintendent Phyllis Green says the wolves were moved over the weekend from Michipicoten Island, where the pack was at risk of starvation, to Isle Royale in Michigan.

The wolves first got over to Michipicoten Island in the winter of 2014 when ice allowed them to cross over from the Ontario mainland.

After gradually killing off the caribou they preyed on, the wolves on the island were in danger of dying of starvation without intervention.

Green says many of the wolves on the island were in poor condition when they were caught.

She says the six wolves will be reunited on Isle Royale with two other wolves that had been previously moved off the island a month earlier.

It turns out that the human brain can make new cells:

Humans continue creating new brain cells throughout their life, scientists have proved for the first time.

Analysis of the anatomy of 58 people who died between the ages of 43 and 97 found evidence of “neurogenesis” in even the oldest.

The findings are significant because for decades many experts believed that humans are born with all the brain cells they ever have.

However, the scientists behind the new study believe the necessity to keep learning new things even into old age creates a demand for new neurons.

The study may also prove a crucial fresh starting point in the so-far fruitless hunt for an Alzheimer’s cure.

The team found that the number of new brain cells tailed off with age across all the brains they studied — between the ages of 40 and 70, the number of fresh neurons spotted in the part of the brain studied fell from about 40,000 to 30,000 per cubic millimetre. However, in participants in the early stages of Alzheimer’s they fell dramatically, the number of new neurons forming falling from 30,000 to 20,000.

This occurred earlier than the accumulation of amyloid beta, which has been one of a major focus of drug development. Only last week a major trial which aimed to remove amyloid from the brain was abandoned.

Dr Maria Llorens-Martin, senior author on the study at the Autonomous University of Madrid, said: “This is very important for the Alzheimer’s disease field because the number of cells you detect in healthy subjects is always higher than the number detected in Alzheimer’s disease patients, regardless of their age.

“It suggests that some independent mechanism, different from physiological ageing, might drive this decreasing number of new neurons.”

She added: “I believe we would be generating new neurons as long as we need to learn new things. And that occurs during every single second of our life.”

For a Monday

A lot going on ...





Oh, dear:

In a serious blow to the Democratic Party, and a large-scale vindication for the Trump Administration and Donald Trump in particular, the summary of the Mueller Report shows that his campaign did not collude with Russia.

Mueller’s investigation issued nearly 3,000 subpoeanas, in addition to executing about 500 search warrants. Yet, there was no collusion found.

(Sidebar: or perhaps this is the result of super-secret Russians planting seeds of discord and conspiracy wherever they go? Is there no one who can be trusted?)


The Russians have been infiltrating governments for decades. Why would they choose the election in 2016 to get sloppy especially when they didn't need to?:

If the Russians were keen on disrupting or changing the outcome of the election, why get in the way of someone who would do that work for them?

Not that anyone will Occam's Razor this.

I know you're behind this, Fyodor Dostoevsky!

Moving on ...




An unelected judge has decided that convicted terrorist Omar Khadr has served his sentence:

An Alberta judge has ruled that a war crimes sentence for former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr has expired.

An eight-year sentence imposed in 2010 would have ended last October had Khadr remained in custody.

But the clock stopped ticking when a judge freed him on bail in 2015 pending Khadr's appeal of his military conviction in the United States.

Chief Justice Mary Moreau says the Youth Criminal Justice Act gives judges flexibility to consider bail conditions as part of a sentence.

She told an Edmonton court Monday that, with that in mind, she ruled Khadr has served his time.

Now, when will Omar give his money to Christopher Speers' widow and orphans?:

Relatives looking to collect on an American lawsuit against Omar Khadr are asking a Canadian court to force the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner to answer questions about his confession to purported war crimes.

As part of the pre-trial process, Khadr has refused to discuss the agreed statement of facts he signed on which his 2010 conviction before a U.S. military commission was based. He argues the information was derived from torture.

Khadr has also refused to answer other questions on the basis of solicitor-client privilege, or because the military commission rules prohibit his divulging certain information.

The American plaintiffs have now filed a motion in Ontario Superior Court — a hearing date has yet to be set — to compel Khadr to answer.

At stake is the US$134 million a Utah judge awarded the family of a U.S. special forces soldier Khadr is accused of killing in battle in Afghanistan in 2002 and another soldier blinded by shrapnel in one eye.

Or is Omar going to use his ill-gotten money that Justin gave him to renounce Islam and his rotten, inbred family that Chretien supported? 

Also:

Former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle is slated to be in Ontario court today to face trial on several assault charges.

Boyle and his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, were taken hostage in 2012 by a Taliban-linked group while on a backpacking trip.

The couple were freed by Pakistani forces in October 2017, along with the three children they had in captivity.

Boyle was arrested by Ottawa police in December that year and charged with offences including assault, sexual assault, unlawful confinement and causing someone to take a noxious substance.

The charges against Boyle relate to two alleged victims, but a court order prohibits the publication of any details that might identify them or any witnesses.

And - when Yazidi children ran from ISIS rape gangs, Justin offered parkas:

Haji Ali Hameka, another Yazidi activist and interpreter, expressed dismay at a recent case of a Yazidi genocide survivor who was horrified to encounter her ISIS captor and rapist in Canada.

"It is very disappointing to hear that Western governments are enabling criminals who have raped and beheaded innocent people to return with impunity," Hameka told Gatestone. He stressed:

"A criminal is a criminal, whether he or she is Western or Middle Eastern. The rule of law must prevail everywhere. I don't think there is an ISIS fighter who has not raped or killed. Punishment for their actions should be severe. How can Canada allow these terrorists to roam free?"

Because it's Canada. That's how.




The scandal that just won't die:

Opposition members of the House of Commons ethics committee will be pushing this week to bring renewed attention to the SNC-Lavalin affair, with the hope of hearing from the two Liberal MPs who quit cabinet over the government's handling of the issue.

**

How much longer will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allow Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott to remain in the federal Liberal caucus? ...

It’s almost as though the two women are daring Trudeau to expel them, daring him to repudiate his status as a champion of feminism, Indigenous rights and doing politics differently. It’s as if they’re daring him to act like any other leader — Stephen Harper, Jean Chretien or his own father, the late Pierre Trudeau — would have done and assert his authority over wayward MPs. ...

So why hesitate now? What is it that Trudeau fears? What do Wilson-Raybould and Philpott know — or could they say — if he cast them out of caucus? Speculation runs rampant, but some scenarios appear more plausible than others. The main one is that SNC-Lavalin wasn’t the starting point for the women’s discontent but only a convenient tipping point. The theory is that other issues — the government’s failure to settle Indigenous land claims, the lack of material advancement on First Nations issues — are really what made them mad. They may have concluded that Trudeau’s embrace of these causes was a fraud, mere virtue-signalling for votes, and they weren’t going to take it anymore.

(Sidebar: the sanguine tone of this commentary aside, kicking the women out might allow them to reveal the super-duper illegal stuff the Liberal Party is hiding.)

**

A CBC report is alleging that the City of Ottawa gave SNC-Lavalin the $1.6 Billion contract “to extend and maintain Ottawa’s north-south LRT line” despite the fact that SNC-Lavalin didn’t even meet the minimum technical qualifications for the project.

Because not New Zealand:

A Notre Dame de Grâce man has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a weapon after Father Claude Grou was attacked while saying mass at St. Joseph’s Oratory Friday morning.

Vlad Cristian Eremia, 26, was arraigned by videoconference from a detention centre on Saturday afternoon.

 


Because not Omar Khadr:

Global Affairs Canada says consular officials in China visited today with detained former diplomat Michael Kovrig today.

It is the fifth time Kovrig has received a consular visit since he was detained by Chinese authorities in early December, but the first since he and fellow detainee Michael Spavor were charged with stealing state secrets two weeks ago.

Spavor has received four consular visits thus far.

And now, a newly-discovered Viking ship:

Using geo-radar, archeologists in Norway have discovered a viking ship buried in the ground near the largest burial mound site in Northern Europe.

Archaeologists say they have no immediate plan to unearth the ship — which is located about 100 km west of Oslo — but they will be using non-invasive methods to find out more about it.

Vestfold county spokesman Terje Gansum said Monday the ship burial — where a vessel is used as a container for the dead — was found in the Borre burial mounds. The area considered one of Norway’s most important cultural heritage sites, contains the largest number of graves from the Viking Age.

The 20-metre-long ship compares to the famous discoveries of the Oseberg and Tune ships, which gave researchers a clearer image of Viking culture and the importance of ships both in life and death for Vikings.