Mansfield Post

Have you read Mansfield Park? You must ...




Some good news:

One of the problems in restoring the building to the exact specifications prior to April 15 is the lack of materials.

Bertrand de Feydeau, vice president of preservation group Fondation du Patrimoine, told France Info radio that the wooden roof that went up in flames was built with beams more than 800 years ago from primal forests.

He said the cathedral's roof cannot be rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire because "we don't, at the moment, have trees on our territory of the size that were cut in the 13th century".

He said the restoration work will have to use new technologies in order to rebuild the roof.

Well, that's something.




Justin's other albatross (the non-carbon tax one):

Federal lawyers have signalled a partial surrender in their fight with Vice-Admiral Mark Norman's lawyers to keep the contents of some federal documents and memos secret during his trial.

Marie Henein, who represents the former vice-chief of the defence staff, told court at the opening of a two-day pretrial hearing on Tuesday that she's been informed the federal government will no longer contest the release of information in some of the documents.

Robert MacKinnon, a Department of Justice lawyer, acknowledged the department is giving up on a handful of documents because some of the records — which the government claimed were protected — already had been disclosed unwittingly to the defence.

 
The scandal that just won't die:

Towards the end of his opening statement on SNC-Lavalin, Michael Wernick suggested the committee might want to look into an obscure directive on civil litigation involving Indigenous peoples, a set of guidelines that government lawyers must follow in cases such as Aboriginal title claims. Jody Wilson-Raybould had issued the directive in January — her last major act before being shuffled out of her role as justice minister and attorney general, and seven weeks before she would publicly accuse Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior officials in his office of waging a campaign of political interference to pressure her into negotiating a deal that would allow Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin to avoid criminal prosecution.

“This directive to all Government of Canada litigators could mark a profound change in Canada’s legal landscape,” Wernick said. “However, it could be repealed or gutted at the stroke of a pen and all that work turned to ashes, so I think now that all political parties need to be clear with Canadians on the future of that directive.”

Petty much, Wernick?

Did you or did you not pressure her?

Yes, you did.




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

A Liberal-connected law firm that submitted a proposal to revamp how the federal Department of Justice evaluates legal risk was initially told it would be awarded a contract without having to compete.

After informal discussions, law firm McCarthy Tétrault had sent a proposal in the summer of 2017 to advise the department on ways to modernize its delivery of legal services, records show.

The top bureaucrat at Justice, Nathalie Drouin, at first agreed to hire the firm and asked her officials to award a contract for advisory services without going to tenders.

(Sidebar: this Nathalie Drouin.)

The department backtracked in the following weeks, however, deciding to invite rival law firms to submit bids through a confidential process.

No company submitted a proposal except McCarthy Tétrault, which went on to sign the contract worth up to $75,000 to revamp the criteria by which the department evaluates the legal risks facing various federal agencies.

The process that led to the awarding of the contract is detailed in documents obtained by The Globe and Mail and Montreal-based La Presse that lift the veil over the way the federal government hires outside legal services.

The lawyers who worked on the project included Awanish Sinha and Adam Goldenberg, according to the documents. Mr. Sinha was a Liberal Party lawyer in the 2015 general election, and Mr. Goldenberg was chief speechwriter for the Liberal Party when Michael Ignatieff was leader. The approved rate was $711 per hour for Mr. Sinha, and $527 for Mr. Goldenberg.

It's just a military:

According to a Postmedia report, “There have been problems getting enough parts for the C-130J Hercules transport aircraft fleet, forcing the Royal Canadian Air Force to use wheels and tire assemblies from older Hercules on the new planes.”

When bogey-men don't work:

"We're told the word Sikh was removed because 'entire religions should never be equated with terrorism.' And yet, (Trudeau) has been warning us for weeks about the dangers of 'white supremacy,' equating an entire ethnicity with terrorism," Bernier wrote on Twitter and Facebook.

"Hypocrite! It's all about pandering for votes," he wrote.

This has been going on since Justin's failed trip to India.

Justin is gambling on who he can afford to irk during an election in which he stands to lose a lot. He has chosen (again) to ignore the grave threats of terrorism and extremism (due to political multiculturalism) while alienating the post-modern West favourite whipping boy (Caucasian voters) and East Indian voters.

Could he be any more repellent?




It's not "alarmist" to question a living tax based on faulty science:

The federal government says Ontario is being “alarmist” in its fight against Ottawa’s carbon pricing law.

It says there is no merit to the province’s claim that Ottawa will gain vast new powers.
A provincial lawyer on Monday told Ontario’s top court the law is unconstitutional because it strays far into provincial powers.

To wit: provinces are sovereign areas within the Dominion. If the federal government can impose a tax or perimeters of a tax, it means that there is only one centralised power that can act arbitrarily without any input or criticism. That is called communism.


Also:

The federal government will end up with the power to regulate almost every facet of life — such as when you can drive or where you can live — if its law aimed at curbing harmful greenhouse gas emissions is allowed to stand, Ontario's top court heard Monday.

The law is so broad, a lawyer for the province said on Day 1 of a four-day Appeal Court hearing, that it would give the Ottawa powers that would destabilize Canada in the name of curbing the cumulative effects of global-warming emissions.

"They could regulate where you live, how often you drive your car," Josh Hunter told the five-justice panel. "It would unbalance the federation."

Russia not only helped separate Korea into two, it has used its privilege on the UN security council to block any move against North Korea:

Russia is preparing for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first summit with President Vladimir Putin, setting the stage for consultations between the long-time allies after Kim’s nuclear talks with the U.S. broke down.

Russian officials told a South Korean diplomatic delegation visiting Moscow this week that plans were being made for a summit but offered no details on a time or place, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper reported Tuesday that Putin and Kim’s summit will likely take place April 24 in Vladivostok, before Putin’s April 26-27 visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Maeil didn’t say where it got its information.