Sunday Post

A lot going on today ...




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

Canada’s spy service destroyed a Cold War dossier on Pierre Trudeau in 1989 instead of turning it over to the national archives, The Canadian Press has learned.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the secret file on the former prime minister was scrapped because it fell short of the legal threshold for retention by either the service or the archives. ...

Bull. Sh--. 

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has long worked closely with the Mounties, kept watch on Trudeau for more than 30 years, charting his path from globetrotting public intellectual who visited the Soviet Union in the early 1950s through his time as a Liberal prime minister.

The bureau’s heavily censored, 151-page dossier was released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act just months after Trudeau’s death in September 2000, in keeping with American disclosure practices.

The Canadian Press recently requested the former prime minister’s RCMP file under the access law from Library and Archives Canada and CSIS prior to the 20th anniversary of his passing next year, given that it can take many months to process such applications.

That doesn't meet the legal threshold for retention? Why did CSIS even ask for it then?



Also:

The House of Commons’ Justice Committee took bold, decisive action this week. At the committee’s May 28 meeting, Conservative MP Michael Cooper had assailed witness Faisal Khan Suri, president of the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council, for what he saw as blaming “conservative commentators” for atrocities like the Quebec City mosque massacre. Cooper’s disastrously conceived rebuttal involved naming the Christchurch mosque attacker and reading passages of his manifesto into the committee record.

It was bad. So the committee will now pretend it didn’t happen — or rather, it will pretend to pretend. By a 6-0 vote on Wednesday, with the two Conservative members abstaining, members expunged Cooper’s statements from both the audio recording and its transcript. Their reasons are as varied as they are baffling:

1. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer relieved Cooper of his committee duties. That constituted a recognition “that this should not have happened,” NDP member Tracey Ramsey argued, and that bestowed upon members an “obligation to remove (his testimony).”

“Cooper is no longer sitting at this committee,” she admonished Conservative members Dave MacKenzie and Michael Barrett, who called the move a “stunt.” “So to sit here and say that we shouldn’t strike this from the record, this is extremely serious.”

First of all, Cooper did not "assail" anyone but pointed out - and rather calmly, too - that Suri's statement on conservative commentators and the New Zealand shooter was inflammatory and incorrect.

Secondly, even if Cooper was mistaken or outright lying, the genie, being out of the bottle, cannot be returned it. Cooper said it publicly and it is an act of lunacy to pretend that he never did.

Were we always at war with Eastasia?

Thirdly, Scheer's willingness to throw his colleague under the proverbial bus proves his lack of intestinal fortitude.


And:

A recent example can be seen in how the Conservatives were attacked by the press for saying Elections Canada is biased.


There were articles published in multiple outlets question ‘why are the Conservatives going after Elections Canada.’

Why?

How about because former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro went to jail for allegedly overspending his own campaign money, but nobody got in trouble when SNC-Lavalin ran what seems to have been an illegal donation scheme – with most of the illegal funds going to the Liberals. Elections Canada didn’t send anyone to jail for that, and didn’t even reveal it to the public. It was hidden for years.

The double standard is clear: One set of rules for regular Canadians like Dean Del Mastro, and another set of rules for well-connected Liberal elites.

Clearly, the system is totally corrupt, yet instead of focusing on that corruption, the establishment press is attacking the Conservatives for bringing up the corruption in the first place.

We have certainly taken a page out China's playbook, the "basic dictatorship" of which Justin finds most appealing:

Hong Kong’s leader suspended efforts to pass a bill allowing extraditions to China, in a dramatic reversal that she said was necessary to restore order in the Asian financial hub and avoid further violence and mass protests.

Suspended, not stopped.


Somewhat related - seeing as North Koreans end up there at some point:

Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Sunday sought cooperation from Mongolia over efforts to settle the issue of past abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korea, as Ulaanbaatar maintains friendly ties with Pyongyang.

During talks between Kono and his Mongolian counterpart, Damdin Tsogtbaatar, in the Mongolian capital, the two agreed on the importance of fully implementing U.N. sanctions against North Korea to push the country toward denuclearization, according to Japanese officials.

Kono said the two countries are strategic partners sharing universal values and that he hopes to further develop their relationship. Tsogtbaatar agreed to deepen ties.

Tokyo, which has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, has often looked to Mongolia to act as a mediator. It is the first time in about nine years that a Japanese foreign minister has visited the country.

"Help us, Genghis Khan! You're our only hope!"

Not included in the plan - protection of the money-growing orchard needed to pay for everything:

Signalling its determination not to be outflanked on the left this time around, the federal NDP has unveiled its platform months ahead of the fall election, including commitments to dramatically expand health care and to impose a wealth tax on the super-rich and a plan to run deficits for the foreseeable future.

The party released a 109-page platform during an Ontario NDP policy convention in Hamilton on Sunday, titled “A New Deal for People” (note the acronym), bucking the standard practice of federal parties releasing their platforms only once the writ has dropped. The commitments aren’t fully costed, nor are there firm timelines on many of the more ambitious promises, but the party plans to use revenue from increasing taxes on the wealthy and closing tax loopholes to pay for massive commitments in health care, affordable housing and to fight climate change.

On the heels of a new report prepared for the Liberal government that recommends Ottawa implement a universal, single-payer pharmacare plan to cover the costs of prescription drugs for all Canadians, the NDP is promising to enact universal pharmacare in 2020 and to go several steps further. The party aims to publicly fund dental care, vision care, mental health care and fertility treatments within 10 years, according to officials who briefed reporters on Sunday, though it has no estimates of how much that might cost.

Is there any money for the children, Jagmeet?:

The U.K. is rolling out a program in which all seriously ill children without a diagnosis will be able to get a full genetic work-up for themselves and their parents, for free. The blood test, called whole-genome sequencing, yields a Human Genome Project’s worth of information about an individual person.

It’s especially useful for children born with mysterious — but likely genetic — abnormalities that severely affect their development and quality of life.

Whole-genome sequencing is not available in Canada yet under any provincial health plan. But Ontario’s health-care quality agency is currently reviewing a proposal to cover it for children with unexplained developmental delay, said Wendy Ungar, director of technology assessment at Toronto’s SickKids hospital, a major Canadian centre for this area of research.

 Also in "God, this country is filled with stupid people" news:

Most Canadians agree that the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls amount to genocide, a new poll suggests.

But the Leger poll also suggests there’s disagreement about when it occurred and who is responsible.

Fifty-three per cent of respondents agreed with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, which last week concluded that the tragedy is part of an “ongoing genocide” that has been centuries in the making. Another 34 per cent disagreed.

Let's take this in stages.

The legal definition of genocide:

The crime of destroying or conspiring to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

Genocide can be committed in a number of ways, including killing members of a group or causing them serious mental or bodily harm, deliberately inflicting conditions that will bring about a group's physical destruction, imposing measures on a group to prevent births, and forcefully transferring children from one group to another.

One could argue that initially European settlers did war with aboriginal nomads, just as they themselves nearly wiped out other tribes.

The introduction of diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox - which killed or deformed people in equal measure - was a lamentable but not deliberate. If anything, victims of smallpox were isolated and helped in whatever ways they could be.

One could also argue that sterilisation programs, like the ones championed by Tommy Douglas, were used against aboriginal people just as they were used against non-aboriginal people (with the support of Emily Murphy).

These things did happen.

However, how many genocides result in population explosions?:

A high fertility rate and a growing sense of self are fuelling an explosion in the ranks of Indigenous Peoples, according to fresh census numbers that lay bare the demographic challenges facing one of the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken segments in Canada.

Nearly 1.7 million people identified as Aboriginal in the 2016 census, Statistics Canada says – a 4.9 per cent share of the total population and a breathtaking 42.5 per cent increase since 2006, a growth rate more than four times that of their non-Indigenous counterparts.

How many genocides result in the publicly-funded support of aboriginal language and culture?:

Making all 60 Indigenous languages in Canada official, along with English and French, is entirely doable, according to a University of Victoria expert.

(Sidebar: there is a reason why India chose two official languages with more than a million speakers but I digress ...)


The survey above also omits these pertinent facts here:

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has confirmed assertions by Canada's Minister of Aboriginal Affairs that 70 per cent of the aboriginal women who are murdered in Canada meet their fate at the hands of someone of their own race.

**

June 11, 2005. Phoenix dies after a final violent beating on the basement’s concrete floor. McKay and Kematch bury her near the reserve’s landfill. They continue to pretend she is alive and collect welfare benefits with her listed as a dependent.

How many genocides result in people killing each other off?


Genocides such as the Holocaust and the Killing Fields do not resemble what the poll above states.

In 1933, the year the Nazis began their murderous campaign against Jews, the disabled and other Europeans, the Jewish population in Europe was listed as 9.5 million. Six million Jews had been killed in extermination camps, their communities displaced or destroyed and their culture nearly obliterated in deliberate attacks and suppression.

After the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia on April 17th, 1975, they frog-marched two million people out of capital city of Phnom Penh. Twenty thousand people were killed in the journey into the countryside. From then until 1979, two million people were killed through acts of brutality, starvation and disease. All religions - Theravada Buddhism, Christianity and Cham Islam - were nearly expunged during this time.

So, how does the "genocide" of aboriginals measure up to the verified genocides of the Holocaust and the Killing Fields?

It doesn't.

It's very clear that neither the parents nor the schools in Canada actually teach critical thinking skills or what constitutes genocide.




When the majority of people celebrate Christmas, you make the best with the time you have for your holidays:

It’s a problem many immigrants, newcomers, and Canadians from religious and cultural minorities face in the country. How do they fit their holidays into hectic schedules, when the country’s statutory calendar — which is largely focused on Christian celebrations — often doesn’t leave room?

The answers range among communities, families, and individuals.

Also:

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says he is concerned by numbers in a new poll that suggest a majority of Canadians believe the federal government should limit the number of immigrants it accepts.

Sixty-three per cent of respondents to a recent Leger poll said the government should prioritize limiting immigration levels, while just 37 per cent said the priority should be on increasing the number of immigrants to meet economic demands.

Hussen says the result is concerning because he has heard directly from employers who are in desperate need of workers, and immigration is key to meeting those needs.

Shut up, Mr. Un-Canadian.




Pope Francis calls for carbon taxes:

Pope Francis said on Friday that carbon pricing is “essential” to stem global warming — his clearest statement yet in support of penalizing polluters — and appealed to climate change deniers to listen to science.

In an address to energy executives at the end of a two-day meeting, he also called for “open, transparent, science-based and standardized” reporting of climate risk and a “radical energy transition” away from carbon to save the planet.

Yes, about that, Your Holiness:

The strategy of buying and selling ‘carbon credits’ can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors (171).

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Franco Zeffirelli:

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who delighted audiences around the world with his romantic vision and often extravagant productions, most famously captured in his cinematic “Romeo and Juliet,” has died in Rome at 96.