For a Monday

 

It's just money:

For two decades, concerns have been circulating in government over the usefulness and transparency of a program that allows former governors general to make expense claims on the public dime for the rest of their lives, according to a briefing note prepared last fall for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Documents obtained through an access-to-information request to the Privy Council Office also disclose for the first time the internal guidelines for the program — guidelines which were only established in 2012, despite the program existing since 1979. The documents confirm that each former governor general is allowed to claim up to $206,000 per year, an amount not publicly released but reported by the National Post last year based on confidential sources.

The expenses are on top of the $143,000 annual pension (rising over time) that goes to every former governor general, and on top of the multi-million dollar start-up grant each one gets to create a charitable organization. ...

“The fact (Rideau Hall) is not subject to the Access to Information Act and that there has not been systematic reporting on program expenditures has contributed to the perception that the program lacks basic transparency,” the note continues.

Much of the briefing note is redacted on the justification it describes deliberations among government staff.

It's probably none of the taxpayer's business, anyway.




"Guests" leave at the end of the day:

As reported by the Vancouver Sun, since 2015 the Trudeau Liberal Government has implemented a massive surge in the number of ‘guest workers,’ and foreign students. They have increased the number of ‘international mobility program’ workers (aka cheap foreign labour guest workers) by a shocking 400% in just 3 years.

Now, the government is bringing in 400,000 foreign students, and 250,000 ‘international mobility workers’ PER YEAR. By contrast, 70,000 ‘guest workers’ were brought in under the Conservatives in 2015, and 200,000 foreign students were brought in in 2015.



It's mostly the latter:

It’s a perfect storm — and “fact-checking” could well be at the eye of it. Done carefully and dispassionately fact checking is a chance for journalists and their outlets to showcase an unbiased perspicacity. Done lazily or gratuitously or selectively, it’s a fearsomely efficient way to embarrass themselves and reveal serious institutional flaws.

Why would a bribed press of journalistic hacks expend five minutes worth of intellectual effort ascertaining something when they are convinced that they are the ones who have the right to shape a narrative?




Another problem with unelected judges:

Labelling a wine from the West Bank as a “Product of Israel” is misleading and deceptive, a Federal Court judge declared Monday in a ruling that tosses the politically charged file back to federal officials for a decision.

The decision — the latest twist in a three-year-old dispute over whether bottles from the Psagot Winery and Shiloh Winery in the West Bank can be characterized as coming from Israel — means the Canada Food Inspection Agency must decide anew how the wines should be labelled.

The agency initially stripped the wines of the label in July 2017 after a formal complaint, but then reversed course shortly afterward following an outcry from some Jewish groups.

None of the parties and interveners in the case considered the West Bank to be territory of the state of Israel, which means the labels are fundamentally inaccurate, the Federal Court ruling noted.

Had he been smuggling people in his former country, he would be an organ donor by now:

A Vancouver man accused of being involved in an elaborate operation that may have helped smuggle hundreds of Chinese migrants across the Canada-U.S. border by exploiting lax oversight at an international park pleaded guilty to several offences Monday, just before his trial was set to begin.

Michael Kong, 62, wore a red jumpsuit and leg shackles and when B.C. provincial court Judge Patrick Doherty asked whether he was pleading guilty to four of the seven counts of human smuggling of which he’d been accused, he answered, “Yes.”

In a twist, however, court heard one of the outstanding counts was still in dispute and may yet proceed to trial. Federal Crown prosecutor Ryan Carrier said that the Canada Border Services Agency was working to arrange travel for a key witness who lives in China.

A sentencing hearing for Kong won’t happen until that outstanding count is resolved, perhaps in a few weeks.

If they did not plan to infiltrate or even to defect, perhaps they only wanted to eat:

South Korea returned three North Koreans who crossed the maritime border aboard a fishing vessel at the weekend, an official at Seoul's defence ministry said on Monday.

North Korean fishing boats often breach the inter-Korean maritime frontier or go adrift towards the South.

South Korean authorities intercepted the ship that crossed the border on Saturday because a white towel was tied to its mast in a potential sign that those on board might want to defect, the official said.

The sailors said during questioning they used the towel to prevent any clash with other ships and had gone off course by mistake and wanted to return home.

"We've concluded that there was no indication any of the three sailors had intended to infiltrate," the official said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The South Korean military handed over the sailors and the ship to North Korean authorities at the sea border on Monday afternoon, the official said.

There has never been a case for communism, Catholic or otherwise, ever:

Had Communists restricted themselves to propaganda, they would have failed before taking power rather than 70 years afterward. The Bolsheviks murdered 2,691 Russian Orthodox priests, 1,962 monks, and 3,447 nuns in 1922 alone. Dettloff obliquely admits Communists persecuted religious people “at different moments in history” - apparently the Marxist equivalent of “some people did something.” In reality, Communist persecution of the Church was near-universal. The same cycle unwound in Spain, Hungary, Albania, North Korea, and Xi Jinping's China. Its boot has fallen on the necks of such luminaries as Cardinal Mindszenty, Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, and an obscure Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla.

Before taking Christian lives, the Communists took their property. Lenin wrote secretly in 1922 that the Politburo must use the Bolshevik-inspired famine as cover to “confiscate all church property with all the ruthless energy we can still muster.” He understood, better than Christians, that without property the Church has no earthly self-defense. Wealth gives its holder agency – which is to say, liberty.

Dettloff attempts to reassure his readers that Communists will only despoil “the rich,” not common people. Abolishing private property does not mean the Red Guard will confiscate “the kinds of things an artisan or farmer might own” but only “the kind of private property that most of us do not have”: businesses, capital goods, etc. This assumes that universal human rights depend on one's class. It overlooks the sacking of Church property, the only opulence most peasants ever saw – property that was truly preserved in common for scores of generations.

More importantly, it again ignores the blood-soaked pages of Communist history. Stalin sent soldiers door-to-door to confiscate all food, utensils – even pets – before starving six million Ukrainians to death in the Holodomor. Had Dettloff been writing 100 years ago, he may be deemed gullible. But with a century of history to draw on, it is hard for Dettloff – a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Christian Studies – to plead ignorance.

Yet in his telling, “Catholics and communists have found natural reasons to offer one another a sign of peace.” Dettloff's cites as proof the fact that numerous Communist organizations (all of which he helpfully links for America readers) allow Christian fellow travelers to work toward Marxist ends,“Christians have been passionately represented in communist and socialist movements around the world,” and some Marxist leaders were former seminarians. (Was Josef Stalin less murderous because he was once an Orthodox seminarian, or Khrushchev because he memorized virtually all four Gospels?)

This is rather like the seductress who estranges a man from his family, then boasts about her connection to his ex-wife. Marxism lured Catholics away from the Christian faith into a false religion.

The Roman Catholic Church's unbroken teaching condemns all forms of Marxism and Communism. Pope Pius XI wrote in Quadragesimo Anno that “no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

“See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived!” he wrote. “Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.”