Monday Post

A pleasant start to the work-week ...




Not New Zealand:

Gunmen killed six people including a priest outside a Catholic church in Burkina Faso on Sunday, the government said, the second attack on Christians in two weeks in a nation increasingly overrun by jihadists.

Congregants were leaving church around 9 a.m. in the town of Dablo in the Central North region when about 20 men encircled them and shot six dead, according to a government statement and local sources.

The attackers then burned the church, looted a pharmacy and some others stores, and left, Dablo mayor Ousmane Zongo told Reuters. The government statement only mentioned the burning of a shop and two vehicles.

The other scandal that just won't die:

Peter MacKay said it was surprising that key members of the Stephen Harper government were not interviewed by the police force during its probe of an alleged leak of sensitive information about a naval shipbuilding contract worth close to $700 million.

MacKay said the RCMP did speak with him on a “very narrow issue” of a single email exchange while he was still in government.

“They didn’t probe any further than that particular narrow issue and it is surprising that they didn’t speak to other members of the Conservative government,” he told The Roy Green Show on Saturday.

“It may have led them to perhaps conclude that there wasn’t sufficient grounds in the first place although it’s a different threshold, a lower threshold, but the Crown obviously came to that conclusion that they were not going to be able to secure a conviction.”

** 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the proceedings in Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s breach-of-trust case unfolded independent of government, despite criticism from the senior naval officer’s defence team.

Mr. Trudeau avoided questions from reporters on Friday about whether he will call an inquiry into Vice-Adm. Norman’s case and why his government withheld documents the defence had requested.

“Canadians understand that judicial processes, police investigations and court proceedings are all entirely independent of the government of the day, certainly of the Prime Minister’s Office. That is the way it should be,” Mr. Trudeau said in Edmonton.

Yes, about that:

That’s not the issue. Henein didn’t accuse the prosecutors of wrongdoing. She said senior officials within Trudeau’s government withheld relevant information to the defence and the prosecution regarding her client.

Further:

That brings to mind Trudeau’s repeated claim no one in his office “directed” then attorney general Wilson-Raybould to grant a deferred prosecution agreement to SNC-Lavalin on the day (Feb. 7) the Globe and Mail broke the story.

Except the Globe hadn’t said she was “directed,” an allegation Trudeau gratuitously described as “false.” It said she was improperly pressured to do so by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Which leads to the question of what this government will do next, if it wins on Oct. 21?

I shudder to think.

To top it off, Justin won't give Vice-Admiral Norman his job back and I doubt he will be given a $10.5 million dollar cheque.




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

With the Trudeau government trying to boost their political fortunes by hyping up the April jobs report, highly-respected Chief Economist David Rosenberg is casting some serious doubt on it.

The Statistics Canada report claimed that 106,500 jobs were created in April, which followed a loss of 7,200 jobs in March.

Speaking to BNN Bloomberg, here’s what Rosenberg said regarding that report:

“Did you really believe that the Canadian labour market is so volatile that we could have a [7,200] decline in the labour force in one month, followed by an 100,000-increase in the next month? Is our labour market more volatile than the stock market is? It’s hard to believe. Somehow we’re creating record jobs and in the same survey in the United States, they’re losing jobs in a significant way. So what I’m trying to say is, calm down a little bit. There’s no way that the Canadian economy is nearly as strong as this number would lead you to suggest.”

He also compared it to a dumb student handing in an ‘A’ report:

“I thought we were battling a housing bubble in this country. Meanwhile, we know that consumers are going on the debt treadmill and doing more to repair their balance sheets than head out to the shopping malls. It’s like you’re a teacher in high school and your dumbest student just handed in an ‘A’ report and you just don’t really know what to do with it. I don’t give it an ‘A’ by the way.”

What Rosenberg is saying matches with what many people have noticed about the economy over recent years. The information reported by Statistics Canada seems increasingly disconnected with what’s actually happening on the ground.

**

A total of $47 billion was laundered in Canada last year alone.

Our weak money-laundering laws are hurting Canadian Citizens, making housing less affordable and turning our country into a playground and piggy bank for foreign criminals.

Also - it's like other countries sense Canada's weakness and the incompetence of its leaders:

Politicians are increasingly concerned that social media giants have become so big, powerful and rich that they are effectively above the law in a small country like Canada.

** 

The relationship between Canada and China is at its worst point since the Tiananmen Square massacre — and there’s no sign of improvement, one expert says.

Just get the Americans to do the fighting for Canada. Isn't that what "Canada is back" means? 


 


It's just money:

Instead, Trudeau is appointing Senators who will do his bidding, while hiding it under the guise of ‘independent’ appointments.

The latest example is Senator Donna Dasko.


She was appointed by Trudeau as an ‘independent’ Senator.

Yet, it turns out she charged Canadian taxpayers $15K for a poll on what people thought about Trudeau’s supposedly ‘independent’ senate appointments.

The poll was to be used to help the Liberals justify their Senate ‘changes,’ ahead of an upcoming election.

Who runs this country, anyway?:

The government says Canada will need U.S. permission to make a final fighter jet selection.

According to Patrick Finn of the Defence Department, our Norad obligations require Canada to purchase a jet that meets U.S. ‘security standards’ for integration into the Norad defence network.

This means that the U.S. will have to sign off on whatever fighter jet Canada finally picks to replace the rapidly deteriorating CF-18’s.

Yes, Canada is back ... back to being a weak nation that depends on the Americans for everything.

Thanks, Justin.




Well, you voted for it:

Gasoline prices are expected to remain near record highs all across Canada this summer except in Vancouver, where a perfect storm of factors will likely ensure motorists continue to set new all-time records at the pumps.

Fuel market analysts say average retail prices in Canada are within a penny or two of their year-ago levels, which were some of the highest on record for many markets.

Don't worry, Canadians - you'll still have your precious abortions for your irresponsible hook-ups:

This tells us two somewhat conflicting but equally true things: 1) No conservative government is going to legislate on an issue with this low level of support. 2) It only makes sense that a few of the thousands of MPs, MPPs and MLAs across the country are going to share the views of the pro-life movement and in turn show up at their well-attended rallies.

How exactly is that news? How is that a scandal? Yet the news cycle in Ontario, which bled over into national coverage, somehow quickly turned into fear-mongering about social conservatism.

It’s all a bit of a yawn. But expect it to continue. The truth is this style of fear-mongering has been something of a cottage industry in Canada for years.

And no one is more skittish and fear-mongering than a Canadian.




The Igor Gouzenko affair illustrated how easily people could be corrupted by a totalitarian government or ideology:

Gouzenko’s testimony — and his 109 smuggled documents  — shed light on Soviet nuclear espionage in the west, and by many observers the definitive trigger of the Cold War.

“He has undoubtedly been a most informative witness and has revealed to us the existence of a conspiratorial organization operating in Canada and other countries,” read the report of the Taschereau-Kellock Royal Commission on the affair.

“There can be no doubt in our minds that these attempts, very often successful, to obtain here secret and confidential information cannot be qualified as casual or isolated … the set-up of this organization in Canada is the result of a long preparation by trained and experienced men, who have come here for the express purpose of carrying on spying activities.”

The commission determined both Red Army intelligence and Soviet secret police had operated in Canada as early as 1924, operating rings in both Ottawa and Toronto.

Canadians implicated by Gouzenko include McGill chemist Dr. Raymond Boyer (codename “The Professor”,) Queens mathematics prof Israel Halperin (“Bacon”,) NRC engineers Durnford Smith and Edward Mazerall, RCAF intelligence officer Fred Poland, RCAF Squadron Leader Matt Nightingale, and MP Fred Rose (“Debouz”) — the only card-carrying Communist ever elected to the House of Commons.

(Sidebar: the only one? Did you ever question Pierre and his son?)