Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week lemonade break ... 




Two men accused of killing an American and Australian tourist as well as a Canadian professor have been found dead:

Two male bodies, suspected to be those of Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, have been found near the shores of the Nelson River in Manitoba.

Provincial RCMP have confirmed that at 10:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday morning, officials located the bodies believed to be Schmegelsky and McLeod during a foot search of the area, approximately 8 km away from where the burnt vehicle was located last month, near Fox Lake Cree Nation.

RCMP Manitoba assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy said items directly linked to the men were found on Friday Aug. 2.

An autopsy for both bodies is being scheduled in Winnipeg.

“I am confident that it is them but to identify them officially...we have to go to autopsy,” MacLatchy said.

The two men from B.C. were suspects in the killings of Australian tourist Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend, Chynna Deese, and were charged with second-degree murder in the death of University of British Columbia lecturer Leonard Dyck.

A strong, capable leader doesn't need to resort to mud-slinging and division. He would refer to his many positive accomplishments and bolster any failing spirits with inspiring truths.

Not that Justin Trudeau was ever a strong, capable leader or that he can even speak independently or coherently. I wasn't saying that AT ALL. I was just saying an actual leader, not a puppet laughing-stock for the Chinese, would do that:

But, um, no. Justin didn’t. He said he’d balance the budget – he didn’t. He said he’d have super-duper bestie relations with the provinces – he doesn’t. He said the last election would be the last one contested under first-past-the-post rules – but that was a fib. He said he’d reconcile with indigenous people – he hasn’t (ask Jody Wilson-Raybould about that). He said Canada would have a vastly improved international relations – but the aforementioned China and America would likely disagree.

And so on, and so on. The notion that Trudeau has “actually made Canada great again” just ain’t so.

You scan your shiny downtown Ottawa office. You look for an escape route. The ad the smiling Liberals are holding up, the one they are showing you, isn’t just bad – it’s a load of malarkey, as Joe Biden might say. It’s hooey.

Then you remember who your guests are. They’re Trudeau Party folks: They see disagreement as treason. They see criticism of them as attacks on Canada.

Also - it's like Justin rubbed people the wrong way:

While working the crowd, one man pointed to the prime minister and kept saying “You suck!” and calling him a “traitor”. The same person could also be heard booing Trudeau as he shook hands with eventgoers.

“Hey, democracy would be boring if it was unanimous,” said Trudeau in response.

Despite the negative encounter, most of the crowd warmly received the prime minister before he acted as an official guest starter for the race.

The event was the 201st of its kind. The earliest recorded instance of the St. John’s competition is reported to have taken place over 200 years ago in the year 1816.

While there Trudeau largely evaded reporters and took no questions from the media.

Naturally.

 

 

 

 

The Liberals didn't think that anyone wouldn't be watching their pet company, did they?:

 

SNC-Lavalin says it is moving ahead with a planned sale of a minority stake in Ontario’s Highway 407 toll road to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board after a judge ruled on a dispute between CPPIB and another 407 shareholder.

Shares in SNC-Lavalin shot up 6 per cent to $17.35 in morning trading on Wednesday, reversing a four-day slide. The company has lost two-thirds of its market value over the past year amid legal and operational issues and investors have been seeking certainty on the 407 sale.

The Ontario Superior Court ruled that Canada Pension Plan has the right to buy the engineering firm’s 10-per-cent share and dismissed a legal challenge by Cintra Global, a subsidiary of Spanish multinational Ferrovial SA, SNC-Lavalin said in a statement early Wednesday. The sale should close within the month, SNC said.

 

 

 

Any country that can't create and maintain an intelligentsia, workforce or healthcare system is doomed to fail.

 

I'm sure with this government, it was by design. What does it care? Everyone in it will get a pension no matter how corrupt and/or incompetent they are: 

 

Bringing in 250,000 guest workers (AKA cheap foreign labour) is a huge distortion of Canada’s labour market.

It has the impact of driving down the bargaining power and wages of individual Canadian workers, as guest workers are often far more desperate, and far more willing to work for low (even illegally low) wages, and put up with horrendous mistreatment due to their fear of tenuous status.

You’ll notice how, whenever this topic is discussed, the entire conversation is centred around how big businesses view the labour market.

We constantly hear about “labour shortages,” or “being unable to find workers” for certain jobs.

However, the flip side of those things is never discussed.

A “labour shortage” is also a “good environment for workers.” “Being unable to find workers” also means “you have to increase wages or improve working conditions.”

Notice how the same politicians on the left that always talk about raising the minimum wage never talk about reducing the flow of cheap labour into the country, which would cause market forces to increase wages without government action.

**

The federal health minister's office says it is keeping a close watch on the supply of three generic cancer drugs as doctors raise serious concerns about the risk of critical shortages across Canada.

But ... but ... mentioning this will only make the Americans' sob stories and unwillingness to tackle their own healthcare problems seem less trenchant. It might even cause Canadians to question the myth of their already-crumbled healthcare system that is neither universal nor free.




Some people are special:

Equal Voice, a Canadian non-profit organization, has reportedly failed to file a tax return for the past eight years.

The group is a multi-partisan group and has since 2001 committed to getting more women involved in all levels of government. They receive millions of dollars in government funding to run programs aimed at getting more women involved in politics.

In 2018 alone Equal Voice was given $3.8 million to last until 2021 for the Daughters of the Vote program which brings women together from all 338 ridings to the House of Commons for a day of political advocacy. The group has received $5.17 million from the federal government since 2015.

From 2010 to 2018 the group whose non-profit status has allowed it to not pay income tax has only recently been called out for its failure to submit tax returns.

**

The town of Oka is asking the federal and provincial governments to slap a moratorium on a proposed land grant to the local Mohawk community in Kanesatake and to establish an RCMP detachment on the First Nations territory to deal with illegal cannabis sales outlets.

 

How is that Singapore thing going?:

North Korea stole $2bn (£1.64bn) from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges to fund its nuclear weapons programme.

 

According to a new leaked United Nations report, seen and cited by a range of prestigious media outlets, including Bloomberg, North Korea has about “30 overseas representatives controlling bank accounts and facilitating transactions, including for illicit transfers of coal and petroleum.”

The UN’s Security Council also said in that report: “Ongoing deficiencies in Member States implementation of financial sanctions combined with DPRK’s [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] deceptive practices enabled the country to continue to access the international financial system.

“Large scale attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges allow the DPRK to generate income in ways that are harder to trace and subject to less government oversight and regulation than the traditional banking sector.”

First of all, the UN is part of the problem. There is a reason why China and Russia, among other restive states and entities, have taken part in it and eschewed other organisations, agreements and treaties.

So there's that.

Also, other countries are not as fastidious as perhaps Japan might be. It's time to penalise them and big time. 

How could this go wrong?:

On April 26, 1986, nuclear reactor no. 4 exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine during a botched safety test. The explosion — and the resulting fire that engulfed part of the plant — caused a massive amount of radioactive contamination to spread in the surrounding areas. Nearby communities, especially the city of Pripyat, had to be evacuated due to the contamination.

In an attempt to contain as much of the radioactive materials as possible, 600,000 workers from the USSR quickly began to build a large structure around the destroyed reactor, often without the necessary protective gear. Workers rushed to fill in open spaces with thousands of cubic metres of concrete, helicopters dropped debris directly into the reactor, and miners dug to prevent searing nuclear runoff from melting through the foundation of the base and into the ground below.

The entire section of the facility was covered by massive concrete walls — its ominous appearance gave it the nickname the “sarcophagus”.

In the end, the structure was able to prevent hundreds of tonnes of radioactive contaminants from getting out. Thirty-one people died of radiation poisoning during or after construction was completed.

The sarcophagus had to be set up as fast as possible — construction only took about five months — and was never built to last. LiveScience reports that the building lacks bolted joints, and openings in the roof have allowed water to seep in and corrode the structure. Now, more than 30 years after its construction, its collapse is imminent.