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.)