This is a new land—a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently estimated that the federal government’s order of 15 warships could now cost taxpayers as much as $70 billion, up from an original estimate of $26 billion just four years ago. The eye-watering figure makes the order of 15 combatant ships — a “Type 26” frigate to be built by Irving Shipbuilding — potentially the largest single government expenditure in Canadian history. The costs will be spread over roughly 25 years, with the first ship slated for completion in the mid-2020s. ...
Project: Halifax-class warships
Cost: $20.2 Billion
The contract to build a fleet of 12 frigates over 15 years eventually cost federal coffers $9.3 billion, according to estimates in the mid-1980s (or roughly $20 billion in today’s dollars). The now-defunct company MIL-Davie Shipbuilding, whose facility is now operated by Chantier Davie Canada, was awarded part of the overall contract. It blamed widespread cost overruns on government indecision, saying the feds proposed “50,000 design changes” to the frigates. In 2007 the government announced a roughly $4-billion retrofit program to modernize the fleet. The Halifax-class ships have been in operation since 1992.
Project Trans Mountain pipeline
Cost: $4.4 billion
Finance Minister Bill Morneau signed off on an agreement last summer to purchase the 1950s-era pipeline, effectively nationalizing the project. The decision came after the pipeline’s Houston-based owner, Kinder Morgan, froze all capital spending on the project and threatened to scrap it completely amid a host of legal challenges. Ottawa is now tasked with an expansion project that would nearly triple Trans Mountain’s capacity, expected to cost between $7.4 billion and $9.3 billion. However, more than a year of delays, new legal challenges, and worker shortages could cause costs to inflate, according to observers.
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It's a homecoming unlike any other: 69 shipping containers of garbage — ripened over six years — arrived at Tsawwassen terminal on B.C.'s West Coast Saturday morning.The Anna Maersk, carrying the containers of Canadian garbage and e-waste, docked just after 7 a.m. Authorities say the containers will be unloaded and held there before being moved to an incineration facility in Burnaby. ...A Canadian export company Chronic Inc. — now defunct — originally sent the shipment to the Philippines for recycling in 2013, but eventually it became the centre of a diplomatic dispute after concerns were raised that the containers of plastics had been contaminated with ordinary garbage.The 1,500-tonne shipment generated protests by environmentalists, and eventually a diplomatic incident. President Rodrigo Duterte called on Canada to take back its garbage by May 15.When that deadline was missed, he recalled the Philippine ambassador and consuls general last month.The garbage left June 1 and was transferred onto the Anna Maersk on June 8 in Taiwan for the voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
The settlement between Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and the Defence Department was undertaken independently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday.
Speaking at a closing press conference at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trudeau said the government appreciates the process is "now concluded" but he didn't say why the settlement was reached."That is a conversation between the vice-admiral and the ministry of national defence," Trudeau told reporters.Earlier this week, the department issued a surprise statement saying it had reached a "mutually acceptable agreement" with Norman and he would be retiring from the military after consulting with his family, chain of command and his legal counsel.The details of the settlement would remain confidential, the statement added.
The federal NDP has ejected its candidate in a Halifax-area riding over comments she made last year on social media comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
Rana Zaman, a social activist and Muslim who has spoken publicly about fighting Islamophobia, won the NDP nomination in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour in early May.
She was ousted last week after several tweets surfaced from last spring in which she condemned the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces during protests in Gaza.
“Unfortunately, due to language in social posts that was unacceptable, the candidate for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour has been removed as the NDP candidate,” said NDP national director Melissa Bruno in a statement. “We expect our candidates to engage on important issues respectfully.”
Mere days before this Canada Day – a holiday made possible by Macdonald’s Confederation determination – the Trudeau Liberals announced they would be re-casting Macdonald’s narrative as part of an ongoing renovation of Bellevue House in Kingston.
(Macdonald and his family only lived at Bellevue for about a year, but it’s now a national historic site and focal point for tourists.)
Trudeau’s MP for the area, Mark Gerretsen, proudly re-announced money to fix up the place.
Buried deep in a background document, though, we find that the government will also “renew” and “update” the “visitor experience” at Bellevue.
That’s Trudeau-speak for casting 21st Century judgment on 19th Century leaders’ actions. ...
As PM, Trudeau has sacrificed his predecessor’s image and memory in the name of ‘reconciliation.’
He removed Macdonald from the $10 bills that are common currency for Canadians who still carry paper money.
He was conspicuously quiet when Macdonald statues across the country were vandalized or taken down.
He was silent when the Canadian Historical Association removed his Macdonald’s name from a prestigious book prize they’d handed out annually for decades.
And when Ontario teachers pushed for Macdonald’s name to be removed from schools across the province? Again, crickets from the Prime Minister’s Office (which, incidentally, is in a building that used to be named after Macdonald’s public works minister, but that too has been changed.)
Poor Sir John A… Yesterday’s father of a nation. Today’s whipping boy.
Justin Trudeau kept his cards close to the vest Saturday as he wrapped up this weekend’s high-stakes G20 meetings in Japan, acknowledging Canada’s protracted impasse with China but offering few details about the ongoing effort to liberate the two Canadians caught in the crossfire.
The arrest in China of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — victims, from Canada’s perspective, of a three-way diplomatic standoff rooted primarily in a dispute between the United States and Beijing — came up in sideline talks with President Xi Jinping, the prime minister said before jetting back to Ottawa.
But Trudeau would say little else about what he called a “challenging moment” for Canada, and it remained agonizingly unclear whether U.S. President Donald Trump had made good on his promise to raise the issue in his own bilateral meeting with Xi.
“I think it was important that I have an opportunity to have face-to-face discussions with President Xi on this issue,” Trudeau said. The two did not formally meet, but were spotted having discussions on the margins of the gathering — “constructive interactions,” in the words of the Prime Minister’s Office.
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It was widely accepted around cabinet that courting China was Canada’s future, not the United States.
But then NAFTA had to be renegotiated and soon after Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou was arrested.
Suddenly the Trudeau government was caught in a rift between Canada’s traditional and natural ally led by a man it despised and “the next big thing” asking for a serious request. ...
Since the China crisis erupted, Trudeau has been cornered into, trying to play with Canada’s middle power role, caught between two growling beasts.
The Chinese refuse to meet with Canadian officials and the United States just smiles and nods at Trudeau’s team. ...
Trump is playing Trudeau for a patsy.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland keeps telling the public that they have lined up this grand, global coalition to free the two detained Canadians. Freeland might be able to fool Trudeau with this message, but she is not fooling the Chinese.
Trump is refusing to withdraw the extradition request or to take steps to help the two detained Canadians.
Perhaps this is because Trump does not actually want Meng Wanzhou on trial in the United State because he does not want to replicate the breakdown in American-Chinese relations that Canada is bearing.
Trump still “wants a deal” with the Chinese because he sees himself as a dealmaker for his country, not Canada. So Trump is likely quite happy for Meng to stay stuck in Canada, and for Canada to endure retaliation and punishment, and for the US to avoid it by keeping her there.
By now, it is clear that Trudeau has no plan, save for awkward social interactions and games with Xi and Trump.
While Meng awaits her extradition hearing in one of her Vancouver mansions, in the rooms where Kovrig and Spavor are held the lights are reportedly never turned off. They are interrogated daily, without lawyers present; consular visits are restricted to once a month.
They had better get used to it, for all anyone in this country is prepared to do about it, or even seems to care. Were this the United States, Britain or any other country, their fates would be the subject of blanket media coverage and round-the-clock vigils, reflecting their fellow citizens’ concern for their well-being.
But this is Canada, where the response is to shrug and ask what else is on? Fellow citizens? What’s that?
I don’t doubt that behind the scenes government officials are doing everything they can, or think they are. But the pressure to bring the Canadians home is surely less for the conspicuous failure of other Canadians to give a damn.
Indeed, what is striking throughout this standoff is that most of the pressure has come from the other side. It is China, not Canada, that has used trade as a weapon, blocking imports of Canadian meat and canola. It was the Chinese air force that buzzed a Canadian warship in the East China Sea.
U.S. President Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met its leader, Kim Jong Un, in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume stalled nuclear talks.
The meeting, initiated by a spur-of-the-moment tweet by Trump that Kim said took him by surprise, once again displayed the rapport between the two. But they are no closer to narrowing the gap between their positions since they walked away from their summit in February in Vietnam.The two men shook hands warmly and expressed hopes for peace when they met for the third time in just over a year on the old Cold War frontier that for decades has symbolized the hostility between their countries, which are technically still at war.
The U.S. and China declared a truce in their trade war on Saturday, as Donald Trump said he would hold off imposing an additional $394 billion (US$300 billion) in tariffs and the world’s two largest economies agreed to resume negotiations.
After a high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump told reporters on Saturday that he also would delay restrictions against Huawei Technologies Co., letting U.S. companies resume sales to China’s largest telecommunications equipment maker.
Trump outlined the deal following the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, but the White House released no details about the arrangement worked out by the two leaders. The president’s comments may remove an immediate threat from a trade war looming over the global economy even as a lasting peace remains elusive.
Stripping terror suspects of citizenship does not increase national security and may even make it worse, legal experts told a conference on ending statelessness. ...
“Stripping nationality is a completely ineffective measure – and an arbitrary measure,” said Amal de Chickera, co-founder of the Institute on Statelessness, which is hosting the conference in The Hague.
He said countries should retain responsibility for nationals accused of supporting ISIS and ensure they are prosecuted.
“Stripping nationality when people are abroad merely exports the problem to other countries,” he said, adding such measures were also likely to have a serious impact on families back home.
The national state broadcaster has claimed that we blur ethical lines. While we appreciate the attention of the CBC, partisanship is an interesting charge coming from them, a major outlet that continues to take hundreds of millions of your tax dollars while spreading woke social justice messages and left-leaning content on an hourly basis.
The argument is that we exist in a “grey area” between journalism and “pamphleteering.” In their attempt to establish this argument, they dust off Alan Conter, a professor of journalism from Concordia University. Conter claims that transparency is key, and that what we do is “less journalism and more pamphleteering.” What CBC and Conter fail to disclose is that Conter is a former CBC executive producer. Conter is right about one thing: Transparency is key. We wonder why CBC wasn’t transparent about this connection.
This all comes at a time when public confidence in the state-funded broadcaster is at an all-time low. The public sees the slow dance between legacy media like the CBC and the Trudeau government. It’s right there in plain view, under a spotlight. It’s almost romantic.
In November of 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he would be handing out 600 million dollars to media organizations. Instead of focusing on innovative, independent, new media outlets that would reflect ideological diversity, the Trudeau government had a pre-approved list of “acceptable” organizations.
Recently, MP Tom Kmiec asked the Finance Committee whether or not our organization was eligible for these funds to support journalism in Canada. Of course, there was no clear answer to this question. Would we qualify? We doubt it because the plan seems to have been to shore up support to the old guard of information. This is why the panel tasked with deciding who gets the funds was stacked with left-wing organizations like UNIFOR.
Even if we did qualify, we would reject the funding. Why? Just as we are not beholden to the whims of the Conservative party, we refuse to be duty-bound to the Trudeau government as well. Despite the CBC’s flaccid attempt to paint TPM as conservative activism, we are actually remarkably ideologically diverse, boasting contributors from across the world and all over the political spectrum.
Ontario’s top court has ruled the federal government’s carbon charge is constitutionally sound.
In a split decision, the five-judge panel rejected a challenge from Premier Doug Ford‘s government to the validity of the carbon-pricing law.
Ottawa maintains it had to act to deal with the urgent threat of climate change as an issue of national concern.
The federal government said its approach — imposing a levy on gasoline and fossil fuels — respected provincial jurisdiction.
Ontario and three other provinces argued the Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau overstepped its authority in imposing the charge.
Last month in a split decision, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal sided with Ottawa in a similar challenge.
And even among first-mover countries, any shift to a new energy source must inevitably rely on traditional energy sources for implementation. Wind turbines and solar cells require plenty of CO2-powered energy to produce and transport. The same goes for all the cement, iron, plastic and chemicals our modern world still depends upon. This deeply embedded demand for traditional and reliable power is why Germany’s much-touted Energiewende, the sweeping government policy meant to wean the country off fossil-fuels entirely, was recently declared a “failure” by Der Spiegel magazine. So much for a Green New World.
As noted Canadian energy scholar Vaclav Smil (Bill Gates is a huge fan) points out in his recent book Energy and Civilization: A History, “the ubiquity and magnitude of our dependence on fossil fuels, and the need for further increases in global energy use, mean that even the most vigorously pursued transition could be accomplished only in the course of several generations.”
Smil’s work — he’s the source of the data in our attached chart — offers a blast of real-world evidence refuting claims that bold government declarations of ever-higher carbon taxes or clean energy subsidies or coal plant bans are all that’s necessary to rapidly transition to new forms of energy. “It takes two or three generations, or 50-75 years, for a new resource to capture a large share of the global energy market,” Smil writes bracingly.
More Canadians take pride in the things that affect them today than they do in their country’s history, a survey from the Association for Canadian Studies suggests.
The online poll found that 73 per cent of respondents see universal health care as a very important source of personal or collective Canadian pride, while 70 per cent are proud of their Canadian passport.
“We’re putting the greatest value on the things that are connecting with us in a contemporary sense – things that are more current, we tend to value,” said Jack Jedwab, the non-profit organization’s president and CEO. “We’re not looking too far back. We’re trying to look at today and ahead.”
The Canadian flag takes the number three spot on the list of symbols of pride, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom comes fourth.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping was possible this weekend, but that he is prepared to impose U.S. tariffs on virtually all remaining Chinese imports if the two countries continue to disagree.
Trump, who departed for the G20 leaders summit in Osaka the same day, also raised the possibility that he may impose a lower, 10 percent duty on a $300 billion list of Chinese imports, instead of the currently proposed 25 percent rate.
Trump is expected to meet with Xi on Saturday, to hold a conversation that could revive stalled negotiations between the world’s two biggest economies or launch a much deeper, costlier trade war that would drag down global growth and roil financial markets.
“It’s absolutely possible. … We have to get a good deal,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network. “It’s possible that we’ll make a deal, but I’m also very happy where we are now.”
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pushed backed on Thursday against Canadian concerns that gas pipeline contracts awarded under his predecessor might not be honored, saying the terms of the agreements were “abusive” toward the state.
Mexican state power utility CFE said this week it would negotiate a more fair resolution to contractual disputes over several pipelines being built by companies including Mexico’s IEnova (IENOVA.MX) and Canada’s TC Energy (TRP.TO).
The Canadian ambassador to Mexico, Pierre Alarie, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the Mexican government appears “not to wish to respect natural gas pipeline contracts,” and said he was deeply concerned about the signal being sent.
The message that Ford and Scheer are soulmates will resonate even more strongly in the event of a teacher strike.
A contract for the province’s teachers and education workers expires on August 31. While not yet in a strike position over larger class-sizes, a compensation cap and job losses, union leaders say the provincial government needs to display a “significant change of heart” or face labour action.
That would be a disaster for Scheer’s Conservatives. Voters angry at having to arrange care for kids still home after Labour Day could ruin any prospect of him making major gains in Canada’s largest province.
Canadian-born Letts says the chilling nightmares have prevented him from sleeping more than a few hours a night for the last four years, as he and his wife faced the prospect of prison time after being charged under a U.K. terrorism funding law — for sending money to their son in ISIL-held Syria.
Letts’ great fear was landing in jail and being unable to help Jack, who is accused of being part of ISIL and is now being held in a Kurdish-run prison in northern Syria.
Their closely watched trial in a London court ended last week with a conviction on just one of three charges — over a $386 cash transfer to a friend of Jack’s in Lebanon. The couple were spared jail but say the unusual prosecution has laid waste to their lives, forcing Letts to sell his organic-farming business, all but ending wife Sally Lane’s career and leaving them destitute.
Members of the public who contributed to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s defence through a GoFundMe page will receive refunds once the federal government comes through with its offer to cover the naval officer legal costs.
Norman has asked Lee Hammond, a retired army officer who started the fundraising initiative, to refund as much of the $442,800 as possible and give any donations that can’t be refunded to charity.
“Admiral Norman has always been clear that he saw the purpose of the GoFundMe account as a way to help pay for his legal fees,” said Hammond, who started the fund in January 2018. “He never really had access to the funds personally as it was set up for his lawyers.”
Norman, the former second-in-command of the Canadian Forces, was suspended from his job in January 2017 by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance after the RCMP presented Vance with allegations Norman was responsible for the leak of confidential information about the Liberal government’s plans to pause a project that would see Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding convert a commercial ship into a refuelling vessel for the Royal Canadian Navy.
Norman was later charged with one count of breach of trust, but on May 8 the charge was stayed after Norman’s defence team brought new evidence to prosecutors’ attention. Prosecutors told the court that based on the new evidence there was no likelihood of a conviction. It is not known what that evidence was, but sources have told Postmedia at least some of it was related to the former Conservative government’s push to keep the Davie deal on track, and suggested the communication Norman had with Davie that formed the basis for the charge simply showed Norman following orders. Norman, who had entered a plea of not guilty, always maintained he had done nothing wrong.
On Wednesday Norman and the Department of National Defence released a joint statement that the naval officer will retire from the Canadian Forces after reaching a “mutually acceptable agreement, the details of which will remain confidential.”
Making the rich pay higher taxes is, according to politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, a tried, true and easy way of making life better for average Canadians.
Trudeau, for example, hiked the top federal income tax rate in 2016 for those earning more than $210,000 annually by four percentage points, raising it to 33%, from 29%.
That, we were told, would help pay for his signature 2015 election promise of a “middle-class tax cut” of 1.5 percentage points — dropping it from 22% to 20.5% — for those earning $45,000 to $90,000 annually.
In his 2019 election platform, Singh said he’d raise the top federal income tax rate two more percentage points to 35%, plus impose an additional 1% tax on the “super rich” — those earning $20 million a year or more — to help pay for a national pharmacare program.
This because taxing the rich, as he put it, “makes a lot of sense.”
Except in many cases it doesn’t, because governments chronically overestimate the amount of revenue they will generate from increasing taxes on the rich.
One reason is that imposing higher taxes on high-income earners decreases their productivity.
Why work harder if the government is going to take away most of their increased earnings in combined federal and provincial income tax hikes?
Indeed, in many provinces today, the highest federal/provincial marginal income tax rate is now over 50%.
In addition, high-income earners use more aggressive tax planning measures in the face of tax hikes to lower their taxable income and thus avoid paying higher taxes.
That’s what happened in 2016 when Trudeau’s income tax hike for high-income earners generated billions of dollars less in government revenues than predicted.
The federal Liberal government signed self-government agreements with the Métis Nation of Ontario, Métis Nation of Alberta and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan on Thursday — the first-ever such agreements with Métis governments.After decades of legal wrangling and failed negotiations, these agreements are a major breakthrough for at least some Métis communities who have long demanded that their Indigenous rights — including hunting and fishing rights, and the right to occupy their traditional territories — be respected by Ottawa."It's a very exciting day," Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said. "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgment of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward — government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."The agreements give the Métis jurisdiction in core governance areas — citizenship, leadership selection and government operations. The agreements also hand these Métis nations the chance to develop their own laws and draft constitutions to govern their communities.
