For a Tuesday

Much happening ...




The scandal that will never die. Ever:

A confidential document sent to the Liberal Party of Canada in 2016, and obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada, reveals how top officials at the embattled engineering firm SNC-Lavalin were named in a scheme to illegally influence Canadian elections.

The list of names, compiled in 2016 by federal investigators probing political party donations and leaked to CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête, raises new questions about an agreement by the Commissioner of Canada Elections not to prosecute the company.

The federal Liberals were sent the list in a letter marked "confidential" from the Commissioner of Canada Elections — the independent office tasked with investigating election law violations — on Aug. 5, 2016. But for nearly three years, neither Elections Canada nor the Liberal Party shared that information publicly.

The investigation reveals that over a period of more than five years between 2004 and 2009, 18 former SNC-Lavalin employees, directors and some spouses contributed nearly $110,000 to the federal Liberals, including to four party leadership campaigns and four riding associations in Quebec.

According to the letter, the investigation found that SNC-Lavalin reimbursed all of those individual donations — a practice forbidden under the Canada Elections Act.

Is this what Jody Wilson-Raybould was canned for or is the rabbit-hole much deeper?

Oh! It appears it is:

"Despite the evidence collected by investigators, the Commissioner of Canada Elections decided not to bring charges against the company" https://t.co/pR3vHmwnDL

— Rachel Curran (@reicurran) April 30, 2019

 

 But Justin won't take that dirty SNC-Lavalin money now that he's been caught:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says today's federal Liberal party wouldn't accept political donations like those that got SNC-Lavalin in trouble in the late 2000s.

Trudeau says the party has improved its standards and, in his words, "that is not what happens any more."

The Quebec-based engineering firm reached a "compliance agreement" with Canada's elections commissioner in 2016, admitting that executives who'd left the company by then had convinced employees to give money to both the Liberal and Conservative parties.

The agreement was public at the time but a CBC report today reveals the names of the SNC-Lavalin employees the elections commissioner believed were involved.

Reimbursing the donors with company bonuses was a way around an election law that forbids corporations to make political donations.

Also in moral and political corruption news:

About 108,000 millionaires migrated across borders last year, a 14 percent increase from the prior year, and more than double the level in 2013, according to Johannesburg-based New World Wealth. Australia, U.S. and Canada are the top destinations, according to the research firm, while China and Russia are the biggest losers. The U.K. saw around 3,000 millionaires depart last year with Brexit and taxation cited as possible reasons. 

**

The AIIB, launched in 2015, is a global development bank designed to fund infrastructure throughout Asia. Think the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. But instead of being dominated by the United States, this one’s headed up by China.

The U.S. and Japan have never joined the bank for fear that its purpose is to elbow the Americans out of this line of work and have China slowly replace them as the dominant player. While Canada initially refused to join under Stephen Harper’s leadership, Justin Trudeau has since signed us up for it. ...

The money Scheer wants us to put on hold — $256 million — is actually the cash we’ve ponied up to own our shares in the bank. We own 1% of the bank, while China is far in front with 30% ownership. The second place shareholder is India, with a much smaller 8%.

“By doing nothing, this policy of appeasement that Justin Trudeau has pursued with the government in China has clearly not worked,” Scheer said during his news conference in Ottawa.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here - "In the 1960s, a 41-year-old Pierre Trudeau visited Communist China during the great famine and co-wrote a book hailing Maoism and denying the existence of a national food policy that killed 38 million people. He never retracted his China views.")


This China:

Speaking Monday on Parliament Hill, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the Canadian’s sentence was “inhumane.”

“We’re very concerned by this sentence,” she told gathered reporters. “Canada stands firmly opposed to the use of the death penalty everywhere around the world. We think that this is a cruel and inhumane punishment which should not be used in any country. We are obviously particularly concerned when it is applied to Canadians.”

Get off of your cellulite-riddled @$$ and do something about it then, Chrystia.


Also - this is socialism. This is how it works. It is not kind nor gentle nor fair. This has been demonstrated time and time and time again. Anyone who asks for it should be slapped upside the head for their good and the good of all humanity:

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro, and violence broke out at anti-government protests as the country hit a new crisis point after years of political and economic chaos. ...

Protests broke out on Tuesday. A National Guard armored car slammed into anti-Maduro protesters who were throwing stones and hitting the vehicle in Caracas.

It's just money:

Canada’s lack of oil pipeline capacity cost our national economy $20.6 billion last year, or 1% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.

Even worse, the fiscally-conservative think tank says, a unique set of circumstances in 2018 meant losses in that year alone almost matched total losses for the previous five years combined, from 2013 to 2017, at $20.7 billion.

Out with the old and in with the new:

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney swore in 22 new cabinet members Tuesday morning at Government House in Edmonton.

It was a low-key affair compared with the public celebrations of the previous NDP government in 2015 when thousands of people showed up to the steps of the legislature for that swearing-in.

(Sidebar: and he has quite the mess to clean up.)

**

On the last day of his 30-year reign, Emperor Akihito on Tuesday said he “sincerely thanks” the Japanese people for their support of him as the symbol of the state, paving the way for the nation’s first abdication in around 200 years and Crown Prince Naruhito’s accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne at midnight.

“Today, I am concluding my duties as the emperor,” he told a nationally televised ceremony marking his abdication.

“Since ascending the throne 30 years ago, I have performed my duties as the emperor with a deep sense of trust in and respect for the people, and I consider myself most fortunate to have been able to do so.

“I sincerely thank the people who accepted and supported me in my role as the symbol of the state,” he said, before closing his final remark as the emperor with a prayer for peace in times ahead.

“I pray, with all my heart, for peace and happiness for all the people in Japan and around the world.”

At no point did the emperor emeritus (not to be confused with pope emeritus), this grandfather of the nation, confuse the people he once led with people he did not.


The thing that now dogs Kenney and his new government is the resignation of Ed Whittingham:

A former Pembina Institute executive whose appointment to the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator drew criticism from the United Conservative Party has resigned after what he calls a "smear campaign" orchestrated by members of the incoming government.

In his letter of resignation, which he released to the media on Monday, Ed Whittingham says he realizes his decision to step down might be symbolic, "given the new government's well-publicized campaign to misrepresent my record and fire me from the AER's board for being a 'cat among the pigeons.'"

Yes, about that:

Ed Whittingham — the former executive director of the Pembina Institute from 2011 to 2017 — was appointed to a five-year, part-time, $76,500 per year directorship at Alberta’s Energy Regulator (AER), with an additional $750 for each day he participates in meetings with the organization, which is tasked with ensuring “the safe, efficient, orderly, and environmentally responsible development of oil, oilsands, natural gas, and coal resources over their entire life cycle.”

Whittingham’s appointment is TzeporahBerman 2.0 — only worse.

According to Vivian Krause, the Vancouver-based researcher who has followed the money trail and uncovered the concerted foreign Tar Sands Campaign to keep Alberta’s oil from reaching tide-water, Pembina has accepted almost $8 million of foreign funding from U.S. foundations — groups such as the Tides Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and other U.S. organizations under the auspices of the Tar Sands Campaign, which had the stated aim of “landlocking” Alberta’s oilsands by preventing any pipelines from being built.

He's right. Kenney was being too harsh.


Also:

“We’re looking at a between $8-million and $9-million hit last year with our lost revenue,” said Matt Keliher, general manager of solid waste management services for the City of Toronto. 

The sharp drop in profits has put municipalities at a crossroads: raise taxes or cut programs.

If "traditional knowledge" is so wonderful, why hasn't it worked before?:

Saugeen First Nation Chief Lester Anoquot said during a break in the hearing that the opening days of the hearings at Cape Croker would feature testimony from some of the band members who hold traditional knowledge.

“It gives more of a perspective from the natives’ creation story, for example, or how we walk through life or maybe some of the philosophies that go with living the Anishinaabe way of life,” Anoquot said.

If one recognises that actions before birth can affect someone after he or she is born, then why not go the whole nine yards and enshrine it in law? Otherwise, don't bother:

“Public policy and clinical care for people with FASD needs to change to respond to such predictable outcomes.”

Popova and her team estimated more than 400 disease conditions might be associated with fetal alcohol exposure, including impaired vision and hearing, heart problems, urinary and respiratory defects and joints problems. She estimates the annual cost of FASD in Canada is $1.8 billion.

Also:

For the first time in the history of Noonan syndrome, a genetic condition that prevents various parts of the body from developing normally and that afflicts one baby in every 2,500 born, Montreal doctors have reversed the most lethal symptom: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an excessive thickening of the heart that, in its most severe form, kills 70 per cent of babies before they turn a year old.

The doctors used a repurposed cancer drug to keep Lyana’s heart from essentially suffocating itself, and they’re now preparing to stop treatment in the hope the disease has essentially burned itself out. There is no guarantee, however, that it won’t come roaring back.

Well, it's a start.




Sri Lankan Catholics are livid that the government that failed to protect them before will not do so again:

Sri Lankan security officials have warned that Islamist militants behind Easter Sunday's suicide bombings are planning attacks and could be dressed in uniform, as the archbishop of Colombo complained about insufficient security around churches.

The militants were targeting five locations for attacks on Sunday just passed or on Monday, security sources said.

"There could be another wave of attacks," the head of the police ministerial security division (MSD) said in a letter to lawmakers and other officials seen by Reuters on Monday.

"The relevant information further notes that persons dressed in military uniforms and using a van could be involved in the attacks."

There were no attacks on Sunday and security across Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka has been ramped up, with scores of suspected Islamists arrested since the April 21 attacks on hotels and churches that killed more than 250 people, including 40 foreign nationals.

The government has also banned women from wearing face veils under an emergency law that was put in place after the attacks.

There were concerns within the Muslim community that the ban could fuel tensions in the multi-ethnic nation. But government officials said it would help security forces identify people as a hunt for any remaining attackers and their support network continues across the Indian Ocean island, which was gripped by civil war for decades until 2009.

(Sidebar: oh, yes, it's all about you, isn't it?)

 

The Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, said that security had not been sufficiently stepped up around churches.

“We are not satisfied with the security arrangements and urge authorities to ensure our safety," he told reporters.

Burma and Cambodia are leaning closer to China and that can be very, very bad:

Myanmar and Cambodia have both grown closer to China in reaction to pressure from Western nations over human rights issues. Concerns about Myanmar focused on the military's abuses of the Muslim Rohingya minority, which drove more than 700,000 across the border to Bangladesh, while Cambodia was criticized mainly for choking off political dissent, especially by having the only credible opposition party dissolved before last year's election.

(Sidebar: Year Zero.)

The Indian Army claims to have found footprints belonging to the Yeti:

The Indian army made an abominable claim on Tuesday, saying an expedition team in Nepal discovered large footprints in the snow belonging to the mythical Yeti, a.k.a. the Abominable Snowman.

Monday Post

A staggering amount of activity in the world ...




No, Justin - Asians don't all look alike:

“What a real pleasure it is to welcome Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Ottawa,” Trudeau said, “On the occasion of 90 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and China.”

That was when he was introducing Abe, unfortunately he did it again later on.

“I am very, very glad that you were able to make such time for the tremendous friendship that we celebrate every day between Canada and China. Thank you, Shinzo,” Trudeau said later during a joint press conference.

 
Justin should really make an effort to distinguish his most admired nation from the country he treated rudely two years ago.

He isn't even getting much out of this deal (quelle surprise).


Also - speaking of rude: 

To get just the perfect photo op in a disaster zone, Trudeau’s entourage blocked real volunteers for half an hour. When a man complained, Trudeau called him un-neighborly. Trudeau actually called him names. pic.twitter.com/VsWoy6qX7Q

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) April 27, 2019

**

I was there. This is a lie. He and his entourage made an hour long wait for people desperately trying to save homes so he could pose for the cameras. McKenna carries the same two bags back and forth to get the perfect scene. It was awful and the whole place was appalled

— Tracey Wilson (@TWilsonOttawa) April 28, 2019

 

"Unneighbourly"? Grabbing people? Taking his obviously bored kid to a photo-op?

What an @$$hole.

At least Andy tried being a classy lassy about this. Justin is just an attention-seeking jerk.




The scandal that will never die:

So, does SNC-Lavalin belong in the OECD’s 91-per-cent club, alongside Rolls-Royce? That all depends on the facts, and the weight that is given to each. For example, did SNC-Lavalin — as it asserts in its recent court filing — self-report much of the alleged wrongdoing to the RCMP, co-operate fully during the investigation, and put a robust ethics and compliance program in place? That will be Mr. Lametti’s call, and it may well come down to a coin flip. Whether it’s heads or tails, it is difficult to see any winner emerging from this debacle.

Also in Canadian governmental corruption news:

The vote to send a new country to the Security Council table at the United Nations is creeping up, and so is Canada's spending to secure a seat around that table.

Canada has been campaigning for one of the rotating slots on the UN Security Council for three years. There's one year left until that 2021 spot is decided, and the spending isn't slowing down. 

Documents obtained by CBC News under Access to Information law show the government has ramped up spending as the clock ticks down. Since 2016, $1.5 million has been spent on the campaign — $1 million in the last 10 months alone.

**

Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion will be resuming his professional duties after announcing a “prolonged” medical leave early in March.

(Sidebar: yes, Mario, you've had a long time to think about what you must do. Oh! This envelope? It's nothing.)

**

Ottawa is challenging a judge’s ruling that directed the lobbying commissioner to take another look at whether the Aga Khan broke rules by giving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a vacation in the Bahamas.

**

No one is denying Trudeau time with his family, and no one except me is saying business class is acceptable for our PM. I’m not offended by the West Coast weekend. But I’m not the guy trying to finagle a carbon tax past skeptical Canadians while insisting the fate of the world hangs in the balance of the upcoming October election. It sure doesn’t help for him to appear unserious about that message, or to appear to believe it doesn’t apply to him and his family.

It also doesn’t help that these carbon-intensive trips tend to call attention to the Trudeaus’ wealth and connections — Florida’s North Captiva Island is no Bell’s Cay, where the Trudeaus were famously guests of the Aga Khan, but it’s very fancy indeed — and that three of them have resulted in very bad press: Trudeau’s mid-vacation 21-hour round trip from Florida to Ottawa for no good reason earlier this year; the Aga Khan debacle, which Ottawa’s lobbyist watchdog is about to reinvestigate; and his bewildering India junket-cum-Bollywood revue.

**

On Monday, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pressure China by pulling hundreds of millions of dollars Ottawa has committed to Beijing’s multilateral development bank.

The Liberal government has committed $256 million over five years to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in the hopes that Canada can help guide its decisions and that Canadian companies will get business from the development projects it promotes. Dozens of countries outside Asia are participants in the bank, from Madagascar to Ireland to Norway.

Scheer also demanded Trudeau take several more-immediate steps, including appointing a new ambassador to China, launching a complaint about the canola dispute with the World Trade Organization and increasing financial support for farmers caught in the crossfire of what has become a broader diplomatic spat between the two countries.

“By doing nothing, this policy of appeasement that Justin Trudeau has pursued with the government in China has clearly not worked,” Scheer said.

(Sidebar: hey, Andy! Don't tell Justin what to do about Japan China!)




I'm sure consumer-rights activists will be all over this toute suite:

Now, the PBO does endorse Trudeau’s broad claim that the tax will leave some people better off. “The net benefits are broadly by income group,” the report notes. “That is, lower income households will receive larger net transfers than high income households.”

Although they do not address the issue of how this can be proven on a specific, individual level – because it can’t.

**

Under pressure over sky-high gasoline prices, B.C.'s Premier said he will ask his top civil servant to find solutions for consumers concerned about the cost at the pump.

John Horgan said Thursday he wants his deputy minister to “look at the range of options” available to B.C. that could bring prices down. He didn’t elaborate on whether that means his government would consider cutting the provincial taxes, which are levied on every litre of gasoline. That includes the 8.89 cents a litre imposed by the province’s carbon tax, a figure that rose by a cent this month.

“Certainly the challenges the public is seeing right now with the highest gas prices in North America are the result of a whole bunch of variables. It’s not a simple question. It’s not lending itself to a simple answer,” Mr. Horgan said.

Oh, I think that there is, John. 

The sad state of "universal healthcare":

The Community Care Walk-in Clinic, located in the Lawtons Drugs store on Cobequid Road, will shut down on Tuesday.

A note posted on the door of the clinic reads: "Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to recruit new physicians to work at this clinic, we have been unsuccessful, leaving an untenable work schedule on those of us remaining at the clinic."

Dr. Cindy Marshall, one of the physicians who works there, said the clinic had about 20,000 visits last year.

She said 80 per cent of the patients who come to the clinic either don't have a family doctor or can't get in to see their family doctor.

"There's a huge subsection of our population that uses this as a way to refill medications and for their health care because they don't have family doctors," Marshall said.

"And that's going to mean extra pressure on the walk-in clinics that exist in Sackville as well as the emergency department, none of which is good for the system."

 

Why the well-bribed popular press can't be trusted for anything:

This is not accurate. This is a photo of people posing outside the manager's house at the Fort Langley National Historic Site in Langley, BC. Here is a photo of what the Globe simply refers to as "a large, white house." pic.twitter.com/Ihmyexlz0L

— J.J. McCullough (@JJ_McCullough) April 27, 2019

(Merci)




The terrorists in Sri Lanka who killed nearly three hundred people (how many revisions?) were not only known by the authorities but are also planning on carrying out more attacks:

Sri Lankan security officials have warned that Islamist militants behind Easter Sunday’s suicide bombings are planning attacks and could be dressed in uniform, as the archbishop of Colombo complained about insufficient security around churches.

**

The effects of Sri Lanka's Easter suicide bombings reverberated across two faiths Sunday, with Catholics shut out of their churches for fear of new attacks, left with only a televised Mass, and Muslim women ordered to stop wearing veils in public.

Aww, poor victims who can't wear their misogynist head-coverings. Those people are targeted for their Christian faith really have it easy.


Also - oh, gee - that's nice of them:

Leaders of the Yazidi faith have announced they will accept into their community the children of Yazidi women raped by Islamic State fighters, in what has been called an “historic” decision.

Russia and China own North Korea and no one will confront either country about it:

Russia's presidential spokesman says Russia is building relations with North Korea in its home region, an implication that it has more influence on the country than the United States.

Dmitry Peskov commented on the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a state-run TV program aired Sunday. The summit took place in Vladivostok last week.

Peskov pointed out that Russia and North Korea share a border. He said that his country's dealings with North Korea are a regional matter, and that the US is "beyond its home region" when interacting with the North.

(Sidebar: so, North Korea is Russian territory?)

** 

Russian President Vladimir Putin called Thursday for the resumption of six-way talks on North Korea’s denuclearization to move stalled negotiations forward.  

(Sidebar: oh, yes - those worked before.)


Also - why is Moon's government silencing discussions on human rights in North Korea?

(Sidebar: a translation below.)

"The Silence of the eye closed to North Korea's abuses is an obvious act of crime," said the ROK government's North Korea policy, "the liberty of Freedom and Hwang Kyo-ahn.

President Hwang attended the first step screening for a film held at the Congress Hall conference Room and said, "We cannot deplorable the current regime's passive response to North Korea's human rights." The movie "First step" is a work that was released in 2018 by Kim Kyu-min, a filmmaker from North Korean defectors. A documentary from 27 April to 2 May 2015, including a free North Korean broadcasting official who participated in the 12th North Korean Freedom Week event in the United States.

Hwang said, "North Korean compatriots 24 million are our constitutional people," and "the national viewpoint is not right if we turn away from their suffering and devastation. They must listen to and act aggressively on the North Korean residents ' scream. " In particular, "The logic of peace, which speaks North Korea's human rights, is only a lame and naïve self-excuse for the left wing."

(Merci beaucoup and kamsahamnida.)

But Wait! There's More!

Often, there is ...




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

According to recent reports, the Prime Minister’s Office is using a partisan tool to seek Liberal party diehards for judicial appointment candidates.

The tool, called Liberalist, is described as a “voter identification and relationship management system” for the Liberal Party of Canada. It’s intended purpose is to track and catalogue Liberal supporters and potential voters.

Documents obtained by the Globe and Mail show that members of the PMO were querying candidates for judicial appointments in the database to check if they were listed as recent Liberal party “supporters”.

Also:

When Trudeau went on a 10-day world tour last November, the food bill was $143,000.

The entourage ran up a booze bill of $1,000, with 53 bottles of wine sipped and another 53 cans of beer chugged!

When Trudeau went to Buenos Aires to the G20 meetings, he rang up and in-flight food bill of $103,000. Liquor cost for that trip totaled $923, with 57 bottles of wine and 38 cans of beer.

Over 200 bottles of wine and 250 cans of beer were consumed on just five Airbus flights between July and December totaling $4,039.36

The taxpayer also covered $381,814.05 for gourmet food for the Prime Minister and associates.

And:

Following a Globe & Mail report that Ian Jenkins – the CEO of a U.S. cannabis company – somehow got a ticket to a $1600 per person Trudeau fundraiser – the party has refunded the ticket price.

What? Canadian pot-sellers aren't good enough? Only Americans will do?

Oh, I guess so.




Manitoba has filed a separate challenge against the federally-mandated carbon tax:

The Manitoba government has filed its own court challenge of the federal government's carbon tax, following similar moves by Ontario and Saskatchewan.

In documents filed in Federal Court on Wednesday, the Manitoba government seeks a judicial review to quash the federal tax on the grounds it exceeds Ottawa's constitutional authority.

"The (federal carbon-tax law) falls outside of Parliament's jurisdiction," says the notice of application.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick — all provinces led by conservative governments — have refused federal Liberal demands to enact their own carbon levies. That prompted Ottawa to impose its own tax in those provinces, which started April 1 at $20 per tonne and will rise to $50 per tonne by 2022.

"The conduct by the federal government is unfair to Manitobans. It threatens jobs and economic growth throughout our province," Manitoba Justice Minister Cliff Cullen said in a statement Wednesday.

A date has not been set for the hearing.

Also:

And:

While British Columbians mutter profanities as they watch gas prices soaring as high as $1.79 a litre, carbon-tax advocates who should be popping champagne are instead quietly avoiding eye contact.

Anyone who wonders if gas prices matter to ordinary people should spend an afternoon watching a busy border crossing. British Columbians are flocking to Washington State to fill up, where, even after the exchange rate, they’re saving about 50 cents per litre.

For a vehicle with a 70-litre fuel tank, that works out to saving $35 per fill up. Multiply that by two fill ups a weeks for the average commuter family in Langley (not a lot of people can afford to live downtown with outrageously high housing costs) and suddenly you’re looking at either spending in Canada or saving in the States $70 extra per week — or $3,600 per year. ...

Some carbon-tax backers immediately pounced on the argument, noting that B.C. has had a carbon tax for over a decade and that B.C.’s high prices didn’t have anything to do with the new federal tax. They’re actually missing the point.

It’s true that taxes are not the only factor that determines gas prices, but they are among the biggest. In B.C., different types of taxes accounted for about a third of the entire price, including the provincial carbon tax that works out to 9.8 cents per litre with GST.

Carbon-tax advocates should be very happy about this state of affairs. Based on the logic of carbon taxes, The causes of higher fuel prices are irrelevant; it only matters that prices are high enough to discourage consumption. Carbon taxes are just meant to ensure that prices stay higher, even when the market price is lower. So you’d think such high gas prices would deliver the punishment carbon-tax advocates keep saying is necessary to reduce emissions. They should be cheering themselves hoarse.

Instead, carbon tax disciples don’t seem too keen to boast about high gas prices. It’s almost as if they’re afraid it will make carbon taxes even more unpopular.

 
Vaguely-related:

As swathes of the country face yet another year of spring flooding, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the extreme weather is the “new reality” of climate change. ...

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante says the city is looking at how it can become more resilient to floods but added that she and others worry encouraging people to leave their homes on floodplains will isolate residents who choose to stay the next time a disaster strikes.

This comes after Quebec Premier François Legault said on Monday the province will cap compensation for flood damage at $100,000 per home but will give residents up to $200,000 if they leave their homes on floodplains to move somewhere else.

I'm going to suggest something radical.

Do bear with me.

The reason why homeowners find themselves hip-deep in flood water is because they live on flood-plains and that this is spring, a season in which warmer air and more exposure to the sun causes ice-choked major rivers to flood over their banks.

What I suggest is insane, I know, but I might just be onto something.





A triumph for the working and middle-classes!:

New data from Zoocasa show you need to be among the country’s top 10 per cent of earners to afford Toronto’s $873,100 benchmark price. Only 2.5 per cent can swing Vancouver’s $1,441,000 price tag.

The study looked at the minimum income required to qualify for a 30 year, 3.75 per cent mortgage with a 20 per cent down payment in 13 pockets across the country. The findings were cross-referenced with income tax filings from Statistics Canada.

Even an entry-level home is unattainable for the bottom 75 per cent in the largest markets.

“While it may not come as a surprise that affording a single-family house is limited to the highest-income percentiles in the biggest cities, the numbers show even entry-level housing is out of reach for many in those markets,” said Penelope Graham, managing editor at Zoocasa, in the report.

A mouldy-oldie:

The Liberals have also promised to deliver a tax break to the middle class at the expense of the wealthy who will see their taxes hiked.

Cultural genocide suggests an actual effort to extinguish the Inuit culture from existence. Unless one is willing call the Indian Act a method of genocide and stamp out the francophone oligarchy (an equal-opportunity body of people who screw everybody over), this term is nothing but inflammatory. It would be better to address the real issues - the majority culture and language surrounds a minority culture and language (something not unheard of in human history), the failure of the minority culture to adapt and preserve something it holds dear and indifference - than sling around words just for attention:

Seated in the United Nations assembly hall, Nunavut's Aluki Kotierk told Indigenous leaders from around the world about the "devastating" loss of traditional languages that continues to plague Canada's Inuit people.

If Inuit languages, collectively known as Inuktut, disappear so too does traditional knowledge and teachings, said Kotierk, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., an organization that lobbies government to keep promises made to Indigenous people.

This linguicide, a form of cultural genocide, is the result of the federal government's continued investment and promotion of English and French in Nunavut at the expense of Inuktut, especially in schools, Kotierk said Monday at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The UN has declared 2019 the year of Indigenous languages.

"The current education system is failing our Indigenous Arctic children," she said. "Due to the interrelated, interdependent and invisible nature of our rights, such conditions can be devastating."

Education in mother tongues such as Inuktut is more important than students' socioeconomic conditions when it comes to them succeeding in school, Kotierk said.

(Sidebar: have you ever tried learning a language in poverty? In many places learning another language is tied to advancing financially and socially.)

In 2019, Canadian Heritage invested 39 times more money in French services than Inuktut services, despite close to 60 per cent of residents citing Inuit languages as their mother tongue, according to data from Nunavut's Office of The Languages Commissioner.

Canadian Heritage dedicated $4.5 million to French language services for 595 French speakers, more than $8,800 per person, and $5.1 million to Indigenous language services. With 22,565 Inuktut speakers, that's about $226 per person.

The Ministry of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism recognized Indigenous languages are endangered and disappearing as "a direct consequence of the government's past actions meant to destroy Indigenous cultures," said spokesperson Simon Ross.

(Sidebar: in all fairness ...) 

If white nationalism is an enormous thing in Canada, so prevalent, in fact, that it permeates society nearly everywhere, why are white nationalist groups so few in number and not at all as dangerous as Islamists?:

North Americans were horrified last year when a white nationalist killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. There have also been lasting reverberations after a far-right activist drove his car into a crowd of protestors in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

Hard-right terrorism has expanded in the West in the past decade, with the Global Terrorism Database reporting it was responsible for 92 domestic terrorism incidents between 2010 and 2017 in the U.S., compared with 38 in the U.S. by Muslim jihadists.

Still, white nationalist terrorism accounts for far fewer attacks than the jihadist variety in Europe. And far-right extremists make up just a tiny fraction of the terrorist threat on the global scale.

Why didn't brief biographies of the members of the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (or the OVP) not appear (as of this writing) on the website so that people may review and further understand who is conducting the studies and why?


Are these minuscule numbers of white supremacists responsible for murdering hundreds in Sri Lanka?:

With Sri Lanka already reeling from a series of coordinated bombings, the horror continued Sunday afternoon as police raided the home of Inshaf Ahmed Ibrahim and Ilham Ibrahim, two of the suspected leaders of the plot that killed 359 people.

As police entered the residence, the wife of one of the brothers, Fatima Ibrahim, detonated yet another bomb, killing herself, the child she was pregnant with, three other young children and three Sri Lankan police officers.

Police had established that the two brothers had taken part in the attacks, leading them to raid their family home in Dematagoda, a suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.

Inshaf and Ilham Ibrahim are the sons of Mohammed Yusuf Ibrahim, one of Sri Lanka’s most successful spice traders and a frequent political candidate for the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a leftist party in Sri Lanka.

 Justin admires China's "basic dictatorship":

As a member of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government and a Toronto city councillor looked on, the new head of the Tibetan Association of Canada explained how China had improved Tibetans’ lives and bolstered their religious freedoms during “60 years of democratic reform.”

Those six decades date from when the People’s Liberation Army put down a Tibetan rebellion in 1959, beginning decades of what human-rights groups have called widespread oppression.

Established Tibetan organizations and activists — who consistently decry China’s actions in Tibet — charge that the new group is a front for the People’s Republic government, though they have no direct evidence of Beijing’s involvement. Regardless, it has already managed to attract politicians from three levels of Canadian government.

Letters of congratulations the group has touted from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen are not authentic, officials in the prime minister’s office and Hussen’s office told the National Post.

Why is it that I don't believe that?

Oh, you b@$#@rds ... :

The North Korean government presented the United States with a bill for $2 million for the hospital care of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who was held as a prisoner by Pyongyang, and insisted the US sign a pledge to pay the bill before releasing him from their custody in 2017, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

There isn't even two million dollars worth of healthcare for anyone in North Korea let alone an errant American.

B@$#@rds.

Also:

Putin and Kim held a day of talks on an island off the Russian Pacific city of Vladivostok two months after Kim’s summit with U.S. President Donald Trump ended in disagreement, cooling hopes of a breakthrough in the decades-old nuclear row. 

The talks between Putin and Kim did not appear to have yielded any major breakthrough. 

But Putin, keen to use the summit to burnish Russia’s diplomatic credentials as a global player, said he believed any U.S. guarantees might need to be supported by the other nations involved in previous six-way talks on the nuclear issue. 

Is that so?:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is likely to seek Moscow’s help in easing those sanctions Thursday as he holds his first summit with President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Pacific port city of Vladivostok.

Pyongyang is growing more bold in its sanctions evasion, in part because many countries — and their banks, insurers and commodities traders — have long failed to properly enforce the measures, North Korea experts said. And some sanctions specialists worry that mixed signals from the Trump administration may further undermine global enforcement.

“It’s anarchy,” Hugh Griffiths, the outgoing coordinator of the UN monitors, said in an interview. “These massive gaps in maritime and financial governance will provide Chairman Kim with an economic lifeline for months, if not years, to come.”

(Paws up)

Mid-Week Post

Your Easter season frivolity ...




Oh, this must hurt:

Voters in P.E.I. have shed their century-old embrace of the Island’s two-party system, electing a Tory minority government and handing the upstart Green party official Opposition status for the first time.

With all polls reporting Tuesday, the Tories had won 12 seats, the Greens held eight, and the incumbent Liberals, led by Premier Wade MacLauchlan, had won six.

The tally so far: of all the territories and provinces, only the Yukon, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador (for now, any way) are headed by Liberal premiers. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut have consensus-led governments, British Columbia is led by an NDP premier, Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party is the premier-designate of Alberta, Saskatchewan has its own eponymous party in power and Quebec is led by a Coalition Avenir Quebec premier. Everyone else is Tory.

Things are looking rather tight for Justin right now.

Whether this means fundamental change in how Canada is run anyone's guess.

This might explain why people do the stupid things that they do.




The scandal that just won't die:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Wednesday that deferred prosecution agreements (DPA) have been used “successfully” in countries around the world, calling it an “appropriate legislative approach.

Oh, so getting your company friends off the hook justified booting Jody? Is that it, Bill?




This must be embarrassing:

A study by Noah S. Diffengaugh and Marshall Burke of Stanford University claims that global warming is increasing global economic inequality.


They claim that for some countries like India, Brazil, and Nigeria, climate change has reduced their GDP per capita by 31%, 25%, and 29% respectively compared to what it would have been in a baseline scenario.

However, they had an interesting finding when it came to Canada.


Compared to the baseline, climate change has boosted Canada’s GDP by 32%.

That is quite interesting, because McKenna always claims that ‘the scientists’ back up her fear-mongering.

Carbon taxes are a money grab by wealthy white liberals who use fabricated disasters to frighten a population and are ultimately the cause of poverty and inequality.

But don't take my word for it.




Corruption in Quebec?:

Quebec’s ethics commissioner has announced she is opening an investigation into Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon regarding assets he allegedly holds in private companies.

The investigation is to look into whether the minister broke conflict of interest rules and whether he properly declared those assets, commissioner Ariane Mignolet said Tuesday in a release.

Mignolet said she is opening the probe on her own initiative.

Two crazy people are fighting over garbage one party actually brings into his country:

The president of the Philippines says if Canada doesn’t take back tonnes of trash within the next week he will “declare war” and ship the containers back himself.

Filipino media outlets report that Rodrigo Duterte made threats Tuesday about dozens of shipping containers filled with Canadian household and electronic garbage that has been rotting in a port near Manila for nearly six years.

For some reason the popular press still refers to Joshua Boyle as a former hostage just as it refuses to be blunt about who killed three hundred and twenty people in Sri Lanka:

The trial of former hostage Joshua Boyle has been adjourned until Friday morning, by which time his estranged wife's lawyer is expected to have filed an application that could suspend the Ottawa case for years and open up the possibility of a Jordan application. 

Boyle, 35, has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges, including assault with a weapon, sexual assault and forcible confinement, and is being tried by a judge alone. Most of the charges involve his estranged wife, Caitlan Coleman.

Boyle was charged a few months after the couple returned to Canada in October 2017 with the children they had while being held captive for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On April 17, Judge Peter Doody ruled that Boyle's defence can introduce evidence that he and Coleman engaged in "prior acts of consensual anal intercourse, consensual vaginal intercourse from the rear, sexual acts involving ropes and consensual biting as acts of sexual play." Doody added the evidence would be general in nature and not include significant details about any one act.

(Sidebar: this is Justin's friend, by the way.)




Somebody did something and now an honourable man is dead:

The family of one victim who died in Sunday's bomb blasts in Sri Lanka say his actions helped save lives. Ramesh Raju stopped a man with a backpack from entering the Zion church full of worshippers. If the attacker had entered there would have been many more casualties.

A large white poster hangs outside Chrishanthini Ramesh's house in the town of Batticaloa on Sri Lanka's east coast. 

On the left is a photo of a man smiling into the camera. He's wearing a grey shirt and has a moustache. 

His name is Ramesh Raju. He was a father, a husband, a building contractor, and he was just 40 years old.

If Trump had the wontons, he would withdraw from the UN that has allowed sexual violence to go on in Rwanda and other places in Africa, the Middle East and North Korea:

The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning sexual violence in warfare, but only after language on a woman’s right to “reproductive health” was removed to avert a veto by the anti-abortion Trump administration.

The resolution, put forward by Germany, aims to improve access to services for women and girls who are victims of sexual violence during conflicts and calls for commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of international human rights law.

It passed Tuesday with 13 votes in favour and abstentions by Russia and China.

(Sidebar: of course they did.)

Killing off rape babies won't change the fact that you did not stop rape in the first place, UN!




Speaking of North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister Yo-jong arrived in Vladivostok, Russia on Monday ahead of her brother's arrival for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week. ...

Kim will likely ask for help from Putin after a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in February collapsed without easing international sanctions.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Kim is being awfully chummy with Putin. The talks between the US and North Korea didn't fail because Trump was obstinate (though he, like many Americans, refused to see that communists are g-d- liars). Kim had his hand out and the US did not want to give in.

 

 

Also:

The government removed a reference to applying “maximum pressure” on North Korea and stopped short of explicitly claiming ownership of the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido in an annual foreign policy report released Tuesday.

The concessions are apparently aimed at easing diplomatic tensions as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attempts to resolve long-standing issues with both countries while he is in office.

In its Diplomatic Bluebook 2019, the Foreign Ministry said North Korea has not taken any substantive steps to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles despite repeated calls to do so from the international community.

But the ministry used less condemnatory language than it did in last year’s report, which said Japan was working closely with countries including the United States to “maximize pressure on North Korea by all available means,” as its growing arsenal posed an “unprecedented, grave and imminent threat.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the language used in the report was chosen after taking into consideration “significant developments” on North Korean nuclear issues, such as the two summits between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.