For a Friday

A start of a long week-end ...




Newfoundland stays in the pocket of the Liberals for now:

Voters in Newfoundland and Labrador registered their frustration with traditional politics Thursday by reducing the incumbent Liberals to minority status — a rare event in the province’s history.

The last time a sitting government won less than a majority was in 1971 when the province’s first premier, Joey Smallwood, failed to win his seventh consecutive majority government.

With all polls reporting, Premier Dwight Ball’s Liberals had won 20 of the legislature’s 40 seats, the Tories — led by political rookie Ches Crosbie — took 15, the New Democrats won three and two Independents were elected. ...

In 2015, when his party was elected, Ball promised no public service layoffs and no tax increases. But the province’s bleak economic outlook led him to break both of those promises, causing a public backlash.

With a population of 525,000, Newfoundland and Labrador’s debt is more than $13 billion — the heaviest per capita burden in the country. And its debt-to-GDP ratio — considered a good benchmark of economic health — stands at 47 per cent, by far the worst in Canada.

Well, the Newfoundlanders know what they're doing.


The tally so far: Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island - not Liberal.

Yukon, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland - Liberal (but barely).

That's what Justin gets to walk into the election with.




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

The Liberals used their majority on a House of Commons committee Thursday to block an opposition attempt to launch an inquiry into the failed prosecution of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

Conservative and NDP members of the Commons defence committee forced a special meeting to debate a Tory motion that would have initiated an investigation into how the military's former second-in-command came to be prosecuted on breach-of-trust charges.

The case fell apart last week, when Crown prosecutors told the judge that new evidence they'd received from Norman's defence team had led them to conclude there was no reasonable chance of convicting him.

The admiral had been accused of leaking government secrets to Quebec's Davie shipyard, supposedly to help it nail down a $700-million contract for a navy supply ship that had been approved by the previous Conservative government and which the new Liberal government decided to review in 2015  before eventually finalizing it.

Conservatives on the committee charged that the case was politically motivated and an inquiry is needed to get to the bottom of it.

"There is more growing and growing evidence that Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau and the Liberal government politically interfered in this case and tried to destroy Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. They besmirched his reputation and good character," Conservative defence critic James Bezan told the committee.

"This whole case has been politically motivated since Day One."

But Liberal committee members countered that both the RCMP and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada have publicly affirmed that they operated completely independent of the government in conducting the investigation, deciding to prosecute Norman and then ultimately to stay the charges.

And who do the RCMP and the Public Prosecution Service work for?

Not the people of Canada:

“Sources said Mr. Trudeau indicated he felt betrayed that bureaucrats would leak cabinet confidences, especially when the newly elected Liberal government had made efforts to highlight the importance of the public service after a decade of rule by the Harper Conservatives.

However, once it became known that Vice-Adm. Norman was the key RCMP suspect, Mr. Trudeau predicted in 2017 that the naval commander would end up in court even as he denied politically interfering in the matter.”

So, any claims by the Trudeau Liberals that they didn’t ‘interfere’ are obviously false. If Trudeau set in motion what happened to Norman, and if he was claiming that Norman would face charges before he even faced any charges, then there was obviously power being asserted from the top in a way that interfered with the course of justice.

This needs to remain an issue until October and even after that.


Also - Justin's other albatross:

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.’s attempt to sell a stake in a Toronto toll road is bumping into legal headaches, though the embattled construction firm says the transaction is still on track to proceed.

Can't they get Justin to grease a few palms?

They did it before.




Were the veterans asking for too much this time?:

The Canadian Forces confirmed Thursday evening on Facebook that it had held a dedication service at the new Afghanistan Memorial Hall at the National Defence Headquarters (Carling) in the west end of Ottawa. But that happened three days earlier on May 13. “The event was attended by senior Canadian military leadership and Department management,” according to the Facebook posting.

No press release was issued. The decision was made by officials to keep the event quiet and only to release the news via Twitter and Facebook at a later date. Families of the fallen were not invited to the dedication ceremony.

No explanation has been provided for the decision to delay the announcement or limit the publicity, other than it was an official decision.

The devil in the details:

U.S. officials have agreed to remove tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Canada and Mexico in 48 hours, paving the way for the three North American counties to enact a new trade pact ...

Yes, about that:

The administration is expected to lift tariffs as early as Friday afternoon in exchange for new provisions that would block Chinese steel from entering the U.S. from Mexico and Canada, according to several reports.

Justin blinked and had to offend his Chinese bosses for a pittance from the Americans.

There is an election in October, after all. 


Also - people get the government they deserve:

Nova Scotia's premier says he told a senior Communist Party official during trade talks that Canadians need to feel "safe" and protected by the rule of law as he boosts tourism ties between his province and China. 

Scratch a Liberal and find a communist-supporting dope every time.




People can complain about oil all they want but it is an economic life's blood and no one wants to pay the earth for it:

After a thorough clause-by-clause review of hundreds of amendments to Bill C-69, a Senate committee has accepted a majority of the amendments to the Liberal bill that seeks to overhaul the environmental review process for new energy and transportation projects.

“Our energy and environment committee, which has been quite divided, came up with a compromise and we passed pretty much all the amendments,” Senator Paula Simons told Rob Breakenridge Thursday.

**

When it comes to the provincial breakdown, nearly half of Canadians in most provinces say the gas prices are making necessities less affordable:

BC – 50%

Alberta – 49%

Saskatchewan – 59%

Manitoba – 51%

Ontario – 46%

Quebec – 30%

Atlantic Canada – 52%

**

Carbon taxes have been applied unequally in different provinces, a new report from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is pointing out, with some Canadians paying as little as half a cent more per litre of gas than they were before carbon pricing came into effect.

The federal carbon tax, which was rolled out in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick on April 1, has added about 4.4 cents to the price of a litre of gasoline. The tax was applied to those four provinces because they refused to develop their own carbon prices, and is supposed to increase to 11 cents per litre by 2022.

But in other provinces whose carbon pricing plans have the federal government’s approval, the actual increase in gas prices is substantially smaller than that. Both Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island have offset their carbon taxes by cutting existing provincial gas taxes, such that Newfoundlanders are now paying just 0.42 cents more per litre than they were before the carbon tax was levied, and Islanders are paying just one cent more. P.E.I. also plans to increase its carbon tax by just one cent per litre in 2020 — less than the federal backstop, which is expected to increase by 2.2 cents per litre next year — and it’s not clear whether it will continue to increase past 2020.

One cannot spell "petty" without J-U-S-T-I-N T-R-U-D-E-A-U.

**

In Question Period, McKenna became unhinged, yelling and shouting at the Conservatives.

As she jabbed her finger in the air over and over again, her face turned red and even some of her own colleagues seemed a bit off-put by McKenna’s unhinged outburst.

Was it something somebody said?




A stark reminder why the Liberals should never head any government anywhere:

It’s fair to say that after 15 years of governments that ratcheted up spending and debt, Ontarians are not familiar with the concept of government doing less, and many of them don’t like it. That’s not unexpected. Most people will not welcome cuts to services that sound useful, changes that affect their children or moves that could take away their own jobs.

Unfortunately, there is no popular way to eliminate a deficit that still stands at $11.7 billion. There are not billions of dollars of useless and unpopular government programs waiting to be cancelled.

Ontarians can’t let that reality make them lose sight of why eliminating the deficit matters. Ontario’s accumulated debt is strangling the province’s ability to deliver services and delay in balancing the books will make the problem worse.

Ontario anticipates $154.2 billion in revenue this year, while it will spend $150.1 billion on programs. That would mean a tidy surplus were it not for the $13.3 billion in interest on the accumulated debt. Eliminating the deficit over five years will keep pushing up the debt and increase annual interest payments by $2.2 billion by the time the books are balanced in 2023-24.

Getting between a Canadian and his undeserved sense of entitlement is like getting between a Canadian and his booze: it's not a good place to be.




Can't the government just say that he was peddling "fake news"?:

A Saskatchewan man who was the victim of a notorious pedophile says it’s disgusting and a risk to the public that his abuser has a profile on a pen-pal website for inmates.

If people are truly horrified by this, they should be just as horrified when it is supported by paranoid and violent cranks:

A pregnant woman who had gone to a Chicago home in response to a Facebook offer of free baby clothes was strangled and her baby cut from her womb, police and family members said.

The newborn was in grave condition and not expected to survive, and three people were taken into custody, with charges including murder expected to be filed Thursday afternoon, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

Ladies and gentlemen, Grumpy Cat:

Grumpy Cat, the famous feline known for her permanent scowl, has died at age seven, according to her owners.

We will never forget your scowl, grumpy creature!