And the Rest of It

A lot going on ...




The scandal that will never die:

The federal government has blown its own timeline to unveil an update to Canada’s corporate-misconduct provisions, including changes that could help SNC-Lavalin avoid being barred from lucrative federal contracts.

An internal federal document obtained by The Canadian Press shows the Liberal government was planning to announce a long-studied revision to its so-called “integrity regime” in early February.

“The integrity regime’s updated ineligibility and suspension policy will be published in early February 2019, and will come into effect at the end of February 2019,” said information contained in a Feb. 4 email to an associate deputy minister. The email was released under access-to-information law.
Three months later, the government has yet to publish the integrity-regime update, nor has it responded to requests to explain the reason for the delay.

The integrity regime has been under scrutiny ever since SNC-Lavalin, the huge Montreal-based engineering and construction firm facing Canadian criminal charges over dealings in Libya, found itself at the centre of a political controversy in Ottawa.

**

Mainstreet Research surveyed 418 people in the riding between May 29th and May 30th, following the announcement by Wilson-Raybould that she would seek another term as an MP as an independent candidate.

Here are the results:

Wilson-Raybould – 30%

Liberal – 27%

Conservative – 18%

Green – 9%

NDP – 8%

Undecided – 8%

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

If you are a reporter in Ottawa and ask questions about Irving shipbuilding, the government will turn your name and question over to Irving who have then threatened reporters with lawsuits  https://t.co/V1op2kDUVb

— Mercedes Stephenson (@MercedesGlobal) May 30, 2019

Yes, but you're not entitled to have taxpayers bankroll your crusades:

The head of a union that bills itself the Conservatives’ “worst nightmare” rejects the claim his rhetoric is hurting the journalists his union represents and says he is entitled to say whatever he wants.

In an interview with the West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Unifor national president Jerry Dias argued he is “absolutely not” putting the roughly 12,000 media workers in Unifor in a difficult position by billing his organization as “the resistance” to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer. He also defended its inclusion on a controversial federal panel providing recommendations which will help guide the provision of half a billion dollars worth of federal tax credits to media.

Unifor represents many Global News journalists.

“The whole argument is about journalistic integrity. It’s about free speech. I’m entitled to my free speech just like everyone else,” he said.

“The group, I would argue, that are putting them in conflict are the editors and publishers who are openly saying, we are supporting the Conservative Party of Canada. If their owners are quite open in saying that, are you trying to tell me that Canada’s largest private sector union can’t express their point of view?”

Do so on your own dime, Mr. Dias, not the Canadian taxpayers nor your union schlubs.


Also - go home, Barbie. You're drunk:

“Across Canada, people agree that climate change is a threat to our country. I don’t understand why the Conservatives are hesitant to join Canadians in the fight against climate change. We’ll keep working with Canadians as we move forward with our practical and affordable plan.”

And - Michael Cooper doesn't have to apologise for a g-d- thing:

Cooper had every right to refute an unfair suggestion conservative commentary in and of itself prompts people to become terrorists.

Or is all anti-Israel commentary by the left responsible for terrorist attacks on Israelis and Jews?

The motives of terrorists are complex, the result of many factors, that may include extreme rhetoric on the right and left.

It’s fine for Scheer to keep denying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s false allegation he’s a white supremacist supporter.

But he should be hitting back hard when Conservatives are falsely accused of racism, and conservative commentary of inspiring terrorism.

It's not like Justin wants this country to work or anything:

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister says the federal government is standing in the way of a hydroelectric project that would help move states in the U.S. Midwest off of coal.

He argues that it will be residents in his province who are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars because of the delay.

In an interview with the West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Pallister said the federal move to delay approval of the Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project after it was supposed to decide last week is “historic” and puts the project at risk.

“We’re in the red zone,” he said, noting the cost of more delays, to Manitobans, will be $200 million per year.

“This is going to be very, very costly and dangerous, and you know, it’s fine for Ottawa to talk green — good — but don’t block green.”

Hydroelectricity is the "greener" of all energy sources. If Justin's mandate is to move provinces and states from polluting sources of energy, why is he not jumping onto this, a thing that could prove him an environmental centrist in time for the election?

I imagine for the same ideological reasons he cowers to a country whose "basic dictatorship" his father loved:

If we give in to China this time, then the price will be higher next time.

In the fight between Beijing and Washington, we need to stand tall with the Americans.

 With no (positive) achievements at all, it's time to ramp up the paranoia:

The answer is obvious, of course. Trudeau is down in the polls and finds himself having alienated many of the key voter groups that helped propel him to his victory in 2015. After an awful few months where his pro-feminist reputation has been shredded, the laws coming out of state legislatures in America are manna from heaven for the Liberals. It gives them a pretext, no matter how flimsy, to begin positioning the Liberal Party of Canada as the last line of defence between theocratic hordes and the rights of women.

It’s nonsense, of course. The Liberals are importing a conveniently timed U.S. political narrative into Canada for entirely political reasons, not because it applies here. Polls in America routinely track public views on abortion, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, the states that are proceeding with laws to restrict abortion are ones where there is broad public support for greater restrictions. In Canada, the opposite is true. More than three-quarters of Canadians support access to abortion. Many of them are undoubtedly uncomfortable with absolutely no legal framework around abortion at all, but the reality is that opinion polls show that more than half of Canadians support access to abortion without any restrictions at all (as per a 2017 Ipsos survey). Only five per cent of Canadians oppose it in any circumstance.

And - give no public money to any special-interest group and don't let them violate their charitable status with such bunk as "pregnancy kills". Okay?:

Arthur and other advocates lead ongoing letter-writing campaigns and other advocacy efforts to try to urge provinces and cities from providing any funding for pregnancy centres. 

Her efforts got some traction in recent years by fuelling the federal government’s 2018 clampdown on funding for anti-abortion groups who applied for grants under the Canada Summer Jobs program.

But many provinces and municipalities are continuing to fund crisis pregnancy centres.

“It’s a bit of a whack-a-mole trying to stop government funding,” Arthur said.

How much do you get, Joyce? What is a censorial crusade for the pathetically child-hating worth?




I don't understand. If the Yazidis weren't victims of genocide by ISIS, whose gleeful murder of homosexuals has been well-documented, why prioritise homosexuals? Is Ahmed Hussen saying that Islam kills gays?:

The federal government is expanding a program offering support to privately sponsored refugees in the LGBTQ community.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says the Rainbow Refugee Assistance Partnership will build on a pilot project launched in 2011.

The program provides start-up costs and three months of support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning and two-spirited refugees who are privately sponsored by Canadians.

The initial pilot project offered support to 15 refugees per year, but the government says that number will be raised to 50 starting next year.

Do you want the deal or don't you, Mexico?:

Mexico on Monday said it would reject a U.S. idea to take in all Central American asylum seekers if it is raised at talks this week with Trump administration, which has threatened to impose tariffs if Mexico does not crack down on illegal immigration. 

Oh, the burn!




I don't like the idea of people driving wedges between parents and children any more than I like the idea of idiots refusing to vaccinate their offspring against childhood diseases:

If the legal standards of competence are met, then the adolescent’s consent is both necessary and sufficient. A parent or guardian need not be involved. Indeed, third parties, including parents, should only be involved after obtaining permission from the mature minor ...

And how fluid that competence could be!




What the heck is going on in North Korea?:

North Korea’s former top nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol accompanied leader Kim Jong Un to an art performance, state news agency KCNA said on Monday, signalling that the former spymaster is alive and remains a force in the power structure.

Sunday’s appearance followed conflicting reports of shakeups in the team that led engagement with the United States last year, only for nuclear talks to collapse after Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump failed to strike a pact at a February summit.

Also:

President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will not sit down together on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka in June.

Abe's schedule has already been whittled down to minutes, a source in Tokyo said on Thursday, and there is no slot in it for Moon. The two countries are divided by a welter of spats over historical and other issues.

According to Kyodo News, participants in a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday urged Abe not to meet with Moon.

And all this time one thought that Moon wanted resolution.




Oh my! How awkward!:

One person in 10 is mistaken about the identity of their father, genetic tests for hereditary illnesses are revealing, according to an NHS chief.

The era of genomic medicine is allowing doctors to screen rising numbers for preventative action against diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. About 220,000 such tests are carried out by the NHS in England and Scotland each year.

But Ian Cumming, head of Health Education England, the NHS training body, said hospitals were being left in an ethical quandary as they were uncovering some awkward family secrets.

It is currently estimated that around 4 per cent of the population are unaware the man they call their father is not their true biological relative. Mr Cumming told the Hay Festival that within a decade everyone who wanted to be genome tested could be. “But it is not without controversy,” he warned.

“If you look at people who have had genetic tests within families for reasons other than trying to work out paternity, for one in 10 people your dad isn’t who you think it is.”

He said this was the dilemma: “Are we going to tell people, ‘that’s not your dad’ – or are we going to keep that information to ourselves? I don’t think that would be acceptable ethically.”

I'll just leave this here:

Separated, cohabiting fathers are more likely to withdraw from their kids’ lives than previously married and divorced dads, who are already more unreliable than married dads still in the house. One study of low-income cohabiting parents found that, within three years, half the fathers had moved out; a considerable number would vanish from their kids’ lives entirely.

It's only "oppression" if the ball hits you in the face:

When the Canadian Society for the Study of Education meets in Vancouver at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, a trio of education theorists will argue that dodgeball is not only problematic, in the modern sense of displaying hierarchies of privilege based on athletic skill, but that it is outright “miseducative.”

Dodgeball is not just unhelpful to the development of kind and gentle children who will become decent citizens of a liberal democracy. It is actively harmful to this process, they say.

Dodgeball is a tool of “oppression.”

 

What an @$$hole:

It was a humiliating video that fuelled outrage on social media. A YouTube prankster filmed himself offering a homeless man in Barcelona an Oreo cookie filled with toothpaste rather than cream.

Now the prankster, known as ReSet to his followers on YouTube but whose real name is Kanghua Ren, has been handed a 15-month prison sentence and must pay 20,000 euros (about $18,100) in compensation to his victim.

Ren was found guilty of violating the moral integrity of the homeless man. He is unlikely to serve any time behind bars, however, as Spanish law normally allows sentences of less than two years for first-time offenders in nonviolent crimes to be suspended.

The Barcelona court, in a verdict published Friday in the Spanish news media, also ordered Ren’s YouTube and other social media channels to be shut down for five years.