Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week power-walk ...




Imagine an internal e-mail at your workplace going external. The blame unfairly falls on you. Now imagine your bosses suspending you from work without pay, exacting false testimony from your co-workers and then, after an outside party finds that your bosses have no grounds on which to accuse or suspend you, stay the action but will not have you return to your job with full pay. Then imagine they drag you into their boardroom and mumble some sort of apology at their lawyers' behest without even looking you in the eye.

Welcome to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman's world:

The House of Commons voted unanimously today to apologize to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for his legal ordeal, just days before opposition MPs are expected to push for a full-blown House of Commons committee investigation into the handling of the controversial criminal case.

(Sidebar: an apology does nothing. If a government can conspire to ruin a man and never be held to account, it can do it again but next time cover its tracks a little better.)

**

The House of Commons unanimously passed a Conservative Motion – introduced by Deputy Conservative Leader Lisa Raitt – to apologize to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for the ordeal he’s been through.

Yet, Justin Trudeau couldn’t even bring himself to stay for the motion to be read and passed.

Why does this sound familiar?

Oh, yes:

**

Barely 24 hours after criticizing “the politics of personal attacks” and vowing to run a positive and inclusive Liberal Party campaign in 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Conservatives questioning the transfer of convicted child-murderer Terri-Lynne McClintic from prison to a healing lodge of being “ambulance-chasing politicians.” ...

Trudeau left the House of Commons and did not take part in that vote, instead heading directly to reporters waiting outside to criticize Conservatives for dwelling on the matter.

**  

Despite negotiations throughout Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided it is better to silence his former attorney general than allow her to speak.

**

As another round of SNC-Lavalin revelations broke over the weekend, Justin Trudeau was spotted taking a breather in a remote corner of Southwest Florida.

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Does say it all. @JustinTrudeau leaving for March break..wont be back till March 15th..run you rat..but you can't hide. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/A8b6UXk5a6

— MonsieurRondeau🇨🇦🇬🇧🇫🇷🇺🇸👍☘ (@MonsieurRondeau) February 27, 2019

**

Trudeau is skipping Question Period again, after avoiding it ever since the case against Norman was brought to a close.

Justin isn't the only one being a total coward about this:

Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti appeared before MPs tonight to answer questions about SNC-Lavalin, the prosecution of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and the independence of the Canadian justice system.

**

Both Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance and Jody Thomas, the deputy minister of national defence, could be seen walking into the meeting on Tuesday morning on Parliament Hill, where questions from the opposition about alleged political interference in the case have dogged the government.

Neither Vance nor Thomas stopped to take reporter questions when asked about the Norman matter.

Topics discussed in cabinet meetings are confidential and several officials contacted by Global News said they were not able to indicate whether the Norman matter was on the agenda for discussion or if it came up at all, even if it wasn’t on the agenda.

However, one official from Sajjan’s office said “the reason they were there had nothing to do with the Norman issue.”

There are no mechanisms in place to hold any of these people to account and they know it.

Even Quebec gets to choose the unelected judiciary of this country.

Had Canada been any other nation, there would be tea leaves floating in the harbour or masses standing in front of a winter palace.

No such luck.




Is it because Canada is a "post-national state" with "no core identity"?:

Premier François Legault said on Wednesday he has nothing against provincial funds being used to finance celebrations of Canada, he just doesn’t want them used to promote federalism.

“What we’re talking about is the promotion of federalism,” Legault told reporters. “I don’t think it’s up to the government of Quebec to finance activities promoting federalism. We can give grants to neighbourhood parties during Canada Day. What we want to avoid is getting into the promotion of federalism and Canada."

Imagine no Alberta to catch your fall, Monsieur Legault.




Let's be candid - this is a wedge to ban things the government does not want to hear and we all know it:

World leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and tech bosses met Wednesday in Paris to find ways to stop all this. They’re working all day on the “Christchurch Appeal,” named after the New Zealand city where 51 people were killed in a March attack on mosques.

One can only imagine what kind of person gets off seeing people shot to death but one can also imagine why media companies don't just pull these videos off the Internet and then forward them to authorities who can punish the perpetrators.

But, in truth, this has little to do with glorification of terrorist violence and more to do with offering a pretense than any visual or opinion can be construed as extremism, especially from a government that promised to monitor and restrict social media.

After all, if Justin was really worried about extremism, he would be freaking out over these guys.




More in "governmental corruption and incompetence" news:

Paula Simons, a former journalist who is now an independent senator representing Alberta, suggested to Garneau that Bill C-69 (the government’s environmental assessment reform that is also bogged down in the Senate) is a robust piece of legislation that would subject any plans for a new port on the west coast to the same rigorous scrutiny as any new pipeline. “Isn’t C-48 superfluous and redundant?” she asked.

Garneau brushed off the suggestion by saying C-48 is specific to a region — namely, it prohibits tankers carrying “persistent” oil (a defined list that includes crude but does not include propane or liquified natural gas) from unloading at ports on the west coast, from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border.

But he slipped up by acknowledging the real reason the Liberals are intent on driving the bill through parliament, in the teeth of fierce opposition: “It follows from an election promise that was made.”

Voters should generally commend governments for fulfilling the promises on which they were elected. But not if they were made in haste and don’t make sense in a shifting geopolitical landscape.

**

In order to avoid the embarrassing outcome where an F-35 would be selected in a competition, the Liberals focused on the purchase of interim Super Hornets to plug a fictitious “capability gap,” only to reverse themselves 10 months later when the purchase became a convenient political sacrifice in the Boeing-Bombardier trade dispute. They instead purchased equally unnecessary and obsolete Hornets cast off by the Australians (who had replaced them with F-35s). Indeed, the total cost of this purchase, over $1 billion, serves no purpose except as a political fig leaf attempting to cover up a fiasco.

The government has also been quick to silence any dissenting views when it comes to its mishandling of this file. Subject matter experts, who spent careers dedicated to military or industrial operations, spelled out in detail the consequences of the government’s policies, to no avail. In one case, memos to cabinet were rewritten to hide the reasons why the interim Super Hornet acquisition should not go ahead.

Axe the damn thing:

The Alberta Carbon Tax will be eliminated by May 30th says Premier Jason Kenney.

The new government is introducing a bill to get rid of the tax as soon as the legislature begins the new session.

Kenney had promised during the campaign that his first move would be to get rid of the deeply unpopular carbon tax.

It's just money:

There were over 32,000 bankruptcies in the first quarter of 2019 alone, the worst Q1 figure since 2010 when the Canadian economy was still recovering from the aftermath of the worldwide economic meltdown.

Household debt also hit another record.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here.)




This is why there should be a death penalty:

Terri-Lynne McClintic, serving a life sentence in the rape and murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford, sought compensation for her “unfair” treatment when intense public outrage forced her transfer from a healing lodge back into prison.

What a b!#ch.




China is still a hermit kingdom but it does enjoy lop-sided trade deals:

China will only be more open to the world, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday, as he denounced as “stupid” those who believe in cultural superiority, in his first public address since trade tension with the United States spiked last week.

(Sidebar: says the guy not bigger than Jesus.)

China and the United States are locked in an escalating trade war, with both levying tariffs on each other’s imports. Just before Xi spoke, the government reported surprisingly weaker growth in retail sales and industrial output for April. ...

Chinese civilization was an “open system” that had continuously had exchanges and learned from other cultures, including Buddhism, Marxism and Islam, Xi told the forum.

(Sidebar: this Buddhism? This Islam?) 




Poland demands an apology for an assault on one of its diplomats: 

Poland’s prime minister on Wednesday condemned what he described as a “xenophobic act of aggression” on the country’s ambassador to Israel, who was spat at and verbally abused on a Tel Aviv street at a time of rising tensions between the two nations.

Israeli officials expressed shock at the assault on Marek Magierowski on Tuesday afternoon and were investigating the incident. Israeli police said they had detained and released a 65-year-old man suspected of approaching the ambassador, who was sitting in his car in front of the Polish Embassy, and spitting at him.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the suspect remained under house arrest until Thursday and is “not permitted to be in the area of the Polish Embassy for 30 days.”

The incident comes amid a bitter standoff between Poland and Israel over how to remember the Holocaust and over demands that Poland pay reparations for former Jewish properties that were seized by Nazi Germany during World War II and later nationalized by Poland’s communist regime.

Israeli Ambassador Anna Azari was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw on Wednesday over the incident. Michal Dworczyk, the head of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s office, said the Polish government expects the perpetrator to be punished.

Spitting at someone is not going to get him to admit to disgusting behaviour on the part of some of his country-men.




Oh, dear. This seems problematic: 

An American explorer thinks he spotted man-made waste lying at the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean floor, but we may never know for sure what the object but since he was unable to retrieve it, we can never know what it was. 

If an aging country with an increasingly sicker population and fewer medical professionals being produced or imported wants to die on the hill of sanctimonious extinction, be my guest:

Ontario's highest court says doctors in the province must give referrals for medical services that clash with their moral or religious beliefs.

In a unanimous ruling released today, a three-judge panel dismissed an appeal seeking to overturn a divisional court decision that upheld the referral requirement.

The referral requirement is part of a policy issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to address issues surrounding, among other things, assisted dying and abortion.

Not one of these medical staff has ever refused urgent care for any patient. They simply refused to take part in things that are not only morally objectionable but medically questionable.

I mean - will a disease be stopped in its tracks if we pull the plug on grandmother?

But if the deluded masses who think that socialised medicine gives them the right to choose anything and the powers that be think they can withstand the wave of older and sicker people crammed into under-staffed and over-worked hospitals, who is anyone to argue? They must know what they are doing.   

Also - Alabama is poised to pass the most anti-abortion law in the US to date and certain people are predictably freaking out.

Is it the Canadian flag? No? Then no one cares:

Town council in Alberton, P.E.I., has unanimously rejected a request that it raise a Pride Flag at the town hall to mark International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

Mayor David Gordon said there were complaints when the flag was raised last year, and it was taken down. Gordon said he and the town councillors have nothing against gay pride and suggested the flag be raised somewhere else in the town.