Sunday Post

 

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

Say hello to Paul Thoppil, assistant deputy minister for the Asia-Pacific over at Global Affairs Canada (universally shortened, in Ottawa, to “GAC,” pronounced “gack” and followed with an obligatory apologetic chuckle). He’s the guy who’s been working the phones lately, reaching out to retired Canadian diplomats and reminding them that it’s an election year.

“In this time of high tension and in an election environment, we all need to be very, very careful,” McCallum’s predecessor David Mulroney told the Globe, paraphrasing a call he received last week from Thoppil.

I want to emphasize that the specifics of Thoppil’s counsel to Mulroney were quite low on the scale of jackboot oppression. He just wanted Mulroney to call in for a briefing on Ottawa’s current China policy before mouthing off to reporters. Or rather, Thoppil may or may not have wanted Mulroney to call in, but his boss’s boss’s bosses at the Prime Minister’s Office sure did: “He said … ‘I’ve been asked by PMO: before you comment on aspects of China policy, it would be good if you called in and got the latest from us on what we’re doing,’” Mulroney told the Globe, again paraphrasing Thoppil.
Mulroney, who can be high-strung, declined the advice and promptly picked up the red glowing Fife-and-Chase-Phone from its handy cradle on the desk of his home office. The Globe’s intrepid reporters soon learned that Thoppil had made a similar call to yet another former Beijing envoy, Guy Saint-Jacques.

The PMO and Chrystia Freeland’s office were left, not really to deny any part of Mulroney’s account, but to couch it in the most anodyne terms. Nobody was forbidding Mulroney from speaking, they insisted, and I’m sure it’s true. He can say what he likes. They just hoped he’d get a second opinion. The way Michael Wernick hoped Jody Wilson-Raybould would get a second opinion—or a third, or a sixteenth, or however many it took until she finally guessed the right answer—on SNC’s eligibility for a deferred prosecution agreement.

As for the mention of “an election environment,” well, that’s familiar too, isn’t it. Wilson-Raybould testified that a majestic procession of Liberals, from Justin Trudeau on down to Ben “Be Careful When Using My Name” Chin, kept mentioning upcoming Quebec and federal elections to her when advising her on the finer points of prosecutorial style. Because if there’s one thing that comes to mind when you think of a fair trial, it’s constant reminders that the party in power must not lose.

There’s at least one more element of the Thoppil calls that rings a bell. That’s the spectacle of a normally non-partisan official picking up the old phone for a chat with key opinion-makers about government policy. You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you: That is, indeed, what Daniel Jean did when, as Justin Trudeau’s foreign-policy advisor, he telephoned reporters to speculate about an Indian government plot to embarrass Trudeau by—I’m still not sure about this part—declining to block the Trudeau government’s invitation of a convicted attempted murderer to a dinner?

My favourite comments in this whole business come from Saint-Jacques, who notes that one reason it’s hard to align his comments with the government’s policy is that he can’t tell what the government’s policy is. I had the same reaction: If there’s a number people can call to understand Justin Trudeau’s thinking on the regime in Beijing, can we please have it? Because I note that the Prime Minister hasn’t given a speech detailing his thoughts on the matter lately. And the increasingly reclusive Chrystia Freeland, whose public comments on this file and just about every other one have been more and more gnomic in recent months,  restricts herself to exquisitely tailored comments on the specifics of the Meng Wangzhou extradition and the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Wells has succinctly outlined a pattern of behaviour one has seen from this government since it started to lie to the population in an official capacity.

The Liberals do something wrong. They are not adept at covering up things so they warn people not to say anything, even resort to some emotional blackmail to achieve silence. When that doesn't work, they deny anything of the sort occurred, call the opposing party a liar and then try to deflect and bury the embarrassing item. They also remember to keep their fool yaps shut and read only what has been carefully written on cue cards lest they make the situation of their own design even worse.

Aside from utter immorality of these proceedings, is anyone tired of this juvenile incompetence?




It's just money:

The federal government is giving nearly $1 million to the Mi'kmaw Economic Benefits Office to increase employment and economic opportunities in Cape Breton's First Nations communities.

Federal Justice Minister David Lametti made the announcement in Membertou, N.S., on Saturday morning on behalf of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Minister Navdeep Bains.

Alex Paul, MEBO's executive director, said word of the $999,114 in funding over three years is "fantastic news."

"We're very, very happy and consider ourselves very fortunate to have this continued support from ACOA, and certainly having a few years of funding committed to us … allows us the luxury to plan and roll out some of the activities that we want to do."

Bernie Sanders, who went to the former Soviet Union for his honeymoon, has an amazing campaign stunt at the expense of Canadian patients:

U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he will be joining a group of diabetics to buy cheaper insulin in Ontario on Sunday.

The Vermont senator tweeted that the high cost for insulin has put the lives of American diabetics at risk and he will be joining the group in Windsor, Ont., as they purchase the vials for a fraction of the price.

Typically, a vial of insulin Type 1 diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar costs about US$340 in the United States, roughly 10 times the price in Canada.

Sanders has long targeted pharmaceutical companies for the cost of prescription drugs, and he made a similar medication trip to Canada in 1999.

Multiple trips from Americans heading to Canada for cheaper insulin has raised concerns about its supply in Canada, despite insulin tourism being relatively small scale.

A recent letter from 15 groups representing patients, health professionals, hospitals, and pharmacists urges the federal government to safeguard the Canadian drug supply.

What happens when you don't elect judges and when you rely on witch doctors:

An Eastern Ontario father who molested his 14-year-old daughter in 2016 has been found not criminally responsible because he was “suffering” from sexsomnia at the time.

His daughter had just moved back in with her father only for him to molest her in her bedroom at night.

The father, 39, was found not criminally responsible for sexual assault, touching for a sexual purpose, and touching a child for a sexual purpose after two psychiatrists concluded he had sexsomnia.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Michel Z. Charbonneau recently delivered his ruling after also hearing evidence of a sleep study that showed the father became sexually aroused while sleeping. (The electroencephalogram, or EEG, indicated he was asleep during the sexual activity, thereby eliminating any possibility that he was faking it, L’Orignal court heard.)

It’s not the first time he’s been in criminal court. He pleaded guilty for trying to have sex with a sleeping woman back in 2003.

Trump does not preside over a rat-infested major American city, moron:

The Baltimore Sun editorial board lit up President Trump Saturday night for his Twitter tirade against its city and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the powerful Democrat who represents Maryland’s Seventh District.

Cummings, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has over the last two weeks both authorized subpoenas for senior White House staffers’ communications and ripped into acting Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan over the conditions of the government camps for migrants at the southern border.

Trump responded Saturday morning shortly after a Fox News segment showed piles of trash in Baltimore, tweeting: “Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,” adding, “Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

Baltimore officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Maryland native, rebuked the president’s comments about the district, where 55 percent of residents are African-American, before the Sun criticized Trump at length.

“It’s not hard to see what’s going on here,” wrote the paper. “The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream.”

Oh, yes - do throw about those accusations of white supremacy. Those sorts of lies distract people from the fact that a politician elected numerous times represents a major American city infested with vermin that can carry disease.

This is the same country that has been caught stealing industrial secrets. One must forget that:

The lab works in a wide range of biomedical fields. Qiu is known for helping develop ZMapp, a treatment for Ebola virus that was fast-tracked through development during the 2014–16 outbreak in West Africa. She has repeatedly been honored for her work on that project, including with a Governor General’s Innovation Award last year.

“While I was there [Qiu] was always highly regarded as a scientist,” says Plummer, adding that he was “shocked and puzzled” when he heard she was being investigated. “She maintained connections with China, but as far as I knew she was a regular Canadian scientist.”

Cheng, Qiu’s husband, also worked as a biologist at NML. And both researchers held adjunct faculty positions at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. It says it has terminated their positions and reassigned their students as a result of the investigation.

Neither Qiu nor Cheng could be reached for comment.

The development comes at a sensitive time for relations between Canada and China. In December 2018, Canada arrested Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States. In retaliation, China has arrested two Canadian men on espionage charges and sentenced a third to death for drug offenses.

It also comes as the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has raised concerns that some grantees have failed to disclose ties to China and other nations, or improperly shared confidential information. 

The concerns have led several universities to oust researchers who are ethnic Chinese and return grant funds to NIH. The crackdown has raised concerns among the Chinese American community of racial profiling. In Canada, the nation’s Security Intelligence Service has long warned of state-sponsored espionage, and in 2014, the Canadian government alleged that China was behind a cyberattack on Canada’s National Research Council.

Also: 

China’s central government has intensified its crackdown on Christianity in recent months by pressuring local government officials to keep a count on the number of citizens who believe in God and to monitor them, according to a new report.

Who believes in Jesus? Raise your hands.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Russi Taylor:

(Paws up)