Mid-Week Post

The molten core of the work-week ...




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

In a disturbing and brutally ironic moment, the video feed of free speech advocates Lindsay Shepherd, Mark Steyn, and John Robson was shut down.

And the people who shut it down are the people who are supposed to be defending our freedom and rights – MPs.

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During his testimony, Steyn argued against the potential reinstatement of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which governed online hate speech and was repealed through a Conservative MP’s private member’s bill in 2013. He contended that the issues of online hate should be discussed in a space where people regulate themselves, rather than one restricted by laws.

“Free speech is hate speech, and hate speech is free speech,” Steyn said, calling the alternative to free speech “approved speech.”

Steyn sat alongside the other witnesses, including Shepherd, who rose to prominence after she ran afoul of faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University for, as a teaching assistant, showing clips of professor Jordan Peterson’s TV appearances to students in her class. A university investigation ultimately concluded that nobody had complained through any formal channel about Shepherd’s teaching and that her treatment as an employee was wrong.

Ehsassi asked Shepherd whether instances of racism, sexism and other bigotry create a responsibility on the part of public figures to speak out against those beliefs.

“I don’t think people have a responsibility to condemn,” Shepherd said. She worried that people will be considered accomplices if they don’t sufficiently speak out in every instance.

John Robson, a documentary filmmaker and National Post columnist, argued that the answer to hate speech online is more and better speech — not censorship.

“The way we get at truth is to speak out against error, denounce it and refute it,” Robson said. “The trouble with censoring hateful speech is that you drive it underground where it isn’t exposed to sunlight.”

NDP MP Randall Garrison accused the witnesses of being out of touch with the reality and implications of hate speech, citing his personal experience with harassment as a gay man in Canadian politics.

“When I was elected to Parliament I received death threats, multiple death threats,” Garrison said. He noted the witnesses’ focus on Section 13, but argued the committee was not about criminalizing speech.

“We all know the cliche, that there are limits on speech, that you can’t shout fire in a crowded theatre,” Garrison said. “So the problem is defining where that crowded theatre is these days.”

(Sidebar: for you, everything. If someone were to point out that homosexuals were and are publicly executed in the Muslim world, would it be acceptable to silence that fact, Mr. Garrison?)

What is hateful speech? Is it speech that is genuinely expressing hatred or is simply unpalatable to some? That is what must be defined first. Secondly, as Mr. Robson pointed, anything quashed will not be challenged with fact and reason,; it cannot be silenced by an iron fist or Mr. Garrison's wimpy anecdotes.

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Also:

A journalist’s question about a potential problem with the Royal Canadian Navy’s new Arctic patrol ships prompted federal bureaucrats to generate more than 200 pages of documents as they warned Irving Shipbuilding about the news outlet’s interest in the multibillion dollar program.

But Public Services and Procurement Canada has ignored its requirement under the Access to Information Act to release those records within the stipulated 30 days, and is now in violation of the law.

The department told Postmedia it doesn’t know when it will release the documents or how much of their contents will be censored.

The access law allows any individual to file a request for federal records in exchange for a $5 fee. The Liberal government campaigned on making government open and transparent.

This request, which the department received in early April, was sent after Procurement Canada acknowledged it had alerted Irving that a Postmedia journalist had asked the department questions about potential issues with welds on the new Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships being built by the firm. 

Procurement Canada bureaucrats also provided the journalist’s private information to Irving officials. They never did answer the questions.

Instead, shortly after, Irving threatened to sue Postmedia if it published any article indicating that there were significant problems with the welds.

Justin is douchebag who steals oxygen from ordinary citizens:

The European Union and United States both agreed that ISIS was committing genocide.

But Trudeau refused. Even some Liberal MPs voted with the Conservative motion, along with NDP MPs and Bloc MPs.


Yet, Trudeau and the majority of Liberals voted against it, and it was struck down.

At the time, Trudeau said “We don’t feel that politicians should be weighing in on this first and foremost. Determinations of genocide need to be made in an objective, responsible way.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“We don’t feel that politicians should be weighing in on this first and foremost,” he said. “Determinations of genocide need to be made in an objective, responsible way.”

Ambrose called that position a “low-point” for the Liberal party and a “dark spot” on Canada’s human rights record.

When he was pressed again on the case of thousands of Yazidi girls being murdered or turned into sex slaves, the prime minister was resolute that determinations of genocide must be done objectively on the international stage.

“We will not trivialize the importance of the word genocide by not respecting formal engagements around that word,” he said.

Wait a minute, Trudeau thinks determinations of genocide should be done ‘objectively on the international stage?’

Then why the hell is he quoting from the MMIWG report that wasn’t international at all?

And:

As noted by the CP, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal carbon tax will help deal with extreme weather events such as fires in northern Alberta. Trudeau says Canadians are seeing the impact of climate change with an increase in wildfires in Western Canada, recent tornadoes in Ottawa and flooding across the country this spring.”

Why are we trading with this country?:

  

“China’s Ambassador to Canada Lu Shaye says national security concerns about Chinese tech giant Huawei are “unfounded” and “baseless,” pushing for Canada to decide for itself whether to go ahead with including Huawei in its core advanced 5G network.

“Canada is independent country, and you have institutions very competent to evaluate this problem,” Lu told Glen McGregor in a broadcast exclusive interview with CTV Power Play. 

He added that several “important, major countries” in the world have taken the “right, correct position” on this problem.”

 

Lu was also asked about the Tiananmen Square Massacre:

“June 4 marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. In 1989, the Chinese government deployed troops against pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing, killing hundreds. China has since suppressed knowledge of the massacre. 

In response to questions on Power Play about the anniversary, Lu said China’s achievements over the past 70 years prove the country “chose the right developmental path” and will “continue to advance along the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

“That’s our position,” Lu said.”

This Tienanmen Square:

“We continue to call on China to respect human rights, to respect the right to protest, to respect freedom of expression, to cease its actions against minorities like the Uighurs in western China,” Trudeau said when asked about the anniversary during an event in Vancouver.

But Uigurs weren't killed in Tienanmen Square, Justin. People didn't like communism were. Stop getting your frilly wet panties in a bunge over your favourite special-interest group.


Also - how does one meet a dictatorship half way?:

China’s ambassador to Canada says his government wants to end the countries’ impasse but won’t give way on two of Canada’s major complaints.

“Indeed, the bilateral relations between China and Canada are facing serious difficulties right now,” Lu Shaye said Tuesday at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, in an interview through an interpreter. 

“The Chinese side is not responsible for this issue. But the Chinese government is waiting to make a joint effort with the Canadian side and meet each other halfway.”

When asked about the possibility of freeing two Canadians detained in China on espionage charges, however, Lu offered little wiggle room. And on China’s blocking Canadian canola imports, he considers the matter closed.

If Scheer wants to be taken seriously, he needs to start defending his people and principles any normal person would espouse. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what he says:

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today of turning his back on Western Canada and vowed that a Scheer government would unite the country by creating a national energy corridor, freeing provincial trade and empowering local governments.

Scheer made the comments today before the Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton, while delivering the latest in a series of pre-election speeches setting out his policy objectives ahead of the October federal election.

"It's clear that every time there's a Trudeau in the Prime Minister's Office, our union begins to crack," Scheer said. 

"We've been hearing it here in the West, both in my home province of Saskatchewan and here in Alberta. And I'm here to tell you unequivocally that Canada has not turned its back on the West. Justin Trudeau has."

Scheer said that Trudeau's "careless mismanagement" of the federation is among the most damaging things he has done since coming to office.

He singled out the federal government's carbon pricing scheme — which imposes a carbon tax on provinces that do not have plans of their own to price carbon — as particularly divisive.

"Trudeau's carbon tax is a betrayal of Confederation's early promise," Scheer said. "The discord he has sown has prompted an unprecedented number of legal actions against his government coming from provinces frustrated at his overreaching."

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Andrew Scheer is promising that a Conservative government would negotiate a deal to eliminate trade barriers among Canada’s provinces.

The Conservative leader made the commitment Tuesday as he outlined his vision for “a stronger and freer federation” — one that is more decentralized and respectful of provincial jurisdiction in contrast to what he labelled as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s divisive, arrogant, top-down, “my-way-or-the-highway federalism.”

If the Conservatives win the Oct. 21 federal election, Scheer said he’ll appoint an interprovincial-trade minister whose sole mandate would be negotiating a comprehensive, formal free-trade deal with the provinces. And he said he’d convene a first-ministers’ meeting within 100 days devoted to that subject.

“I am not talking about a simple memorandum of understanding,” Scheer said during a speech in Edmonton.

“The interprovincial free trade agreement will be a real free trade deal, like NAFTA, like CETA, like the TPP … It will be a huge step forward, well beyond the current agreement.”

That's nice. Stop being wishy-washy.