For a Tuesday

Quite a bit going on ...




As I said before, there is no national security in this country:

A Canadian businessman and his company have pleaded guilty to charges related to the transfer to China of technical details about a U.S. Navy undersea submarine rescue vehicle in an effort to sell versions to the Chinese navy, U.S. court records show.

Glen Omer Viau, a Canadian citizen, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanour in federal court in Washington, admitting to transferring without authorization a thing of value to the United States. In a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors, Viau and the government valued the data as worth less than $1,000.

Viau attorney Preston Burton and a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

The charge could carry a recommended sentencing range of six to 12 months, but prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence of the brief time served by Viau in a District of Columbia jail after his January indictment, and a $25,000 fine.

Also Tuesday, Viau’s company, OceanWorks International of Vancouver, British Columbia, pleaded guilty to a felony count of making false statements to U.S. authorities by omitting that the company worked on a proposal with its Chinese parent company to sell a version to China’s navy, formally called the People’s Liberation Army Navy. In a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to recommend a fine of $84,000 at sentencing.

Also - why bother having transparency at all?:

One of Canada’s largest pension funds “inadvertently omitted” all of its Canadian holdings from a recent disclosure it made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, failing to include about US$2.46 billion in investments.

British Columbia Investment Management Corporation made the omission in February, when it submitted its disclosures for the three months ending on Dec. 31, 2018. The pension fund, which has $145.6 billion in assets under management, failed to disclose holdings in 98 companies, primarily across Canada’s energy, banking and mining sectors. The Canadian holdings accounted for more than 20 per cent of its total disclosed investments.

BCI, which manages the pensions of B.C.’s public sector workers, said it only discovered that it had omitted these investments following inquiries from the Financial Post about its disclosed holdings in Canadian energy companies, which appeared to decline to zero in the final quarter of 2018.

It's an election year and Justin is "energised":

Many people are commenting on a video of Justin Trudeau, shared by Trudeau’s own Twitter account, showing the PM looking ‘energized’ before heading into a rally in Windsor.

Most of the joking around is in good fun, but Trudeau does appear to many people to be a tad ‘off’ in the video, with the energy seeming insincere, or perhaps aided by external boosts.

I'll just play some Johnny Cash music here:

Maybe Justin needed a boost to avoid these topics:

The federal government ran a $14-billion deficit in 2018-19, according to its latest annual financial report, the third year in a row with a shortfall bigger than $10 billion.

The deficit for the fiscal year that ended March 31 was $900 million smaller than the government projected in last spring’s federal budget, however.

Revenues in 2018-19 expanded by $21 billion — or 6.7 per cent — compared to the previous year, said the report released Tuesday.

The government’s revenue ratio, which is total revenues as a percentage of the size of the economy, increased last year by 15 per cent to reach its highest level since before the financial crisis in 2007-08. The growth in the ratio, which was 14.5 per cent in 2017-18, was mostly due to growth in personal and corporate income tax revenues and other taxes, the report said.

**

A Canadian civil liberties group has launched an urgent application against the Trudeau government in the name of free speech, the Sun has learned.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a non-partisan charity, states in documents prepared for the Ontario Superior Court that the government’s new election laws violates the Charter rights of Canadians who wish to voice their opinions in the current election campaign.

(Sidebar: who better to tell you what to think and how to vote then the government?)


Any distraction to avoid his dismal record over the past four years:

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was confident of winning the Oct. 21 election based on his political record over the past four years, the Liberals wouldn’t feel the need to portray their political opponents as not only wrong, but evil.

But this is what Liberals always do when they feel their self-declared status as Canada’s natural governing party is in danger of being usurped by the Conservatives in a federal election. ...

On Monday, for example, after the Liberals over the weekend linked a Conservative candidate to controversial alt-right former broadcaster Faith Goldy, Scheer alleged Trudeau had once had drinks with her, which the Liberals denied.

(Sidebar: this Faith Goldy.)

**

At every turn, Trudeau warns about the dangers of going back to the “Harper years.” At his news conference on Monday, Trudeau mentioned Stephen Harper by name nine times. He mentioned Doug Ford at least four times, the same number of times he mentioned the guy he’s actually running against, Andrew Scheer.

There's an economic record to run on, right?

Of course not:

High-precision attacks on critical Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure would compel major consumers of the commodity to diversify their energy sources to places like Canada, but the oilsands are suffering from their own geopolitical risks, according to analysts. ...

“Canada could, in theory, have been the first responder,” Tran said of the country’s ability to supply the global market.

Instead, Canadian companies are likely to enjoy the spike in oil prices through higher returns on their existing production levels but won’t be able to pump more oil to capture more of the upside because export pipelines are full.

“The Canadian energy industry remains hamstrung with other types of geopolitical risk,” Tran said, referring to the oil curtailment order in Alberta, delays on major export pipelines to the West Coast and U.S. Gulf Coast and restrictive regulations on new energy infrastructure.

To think that if Justin didn't allow American anti-oil companies to thwart Canadian oil, Canada could step up to the global plate.

But ... but ... Scheer!




Speaking of Scheer:

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says he would help parents save up to send their children to college or university by increasing the amount of money the federal government contributes to the pot.

The Conservatives are proposing to increase Ottawa’s contribution to registered education savings plans (RESPs) from 20 per cent to 30 per cent for every dollar families add to the savings program, up to $2,500 per year.

The Conservatives say this would increase the maximum grant that families receive from the federal government from $500 to $750 per year.

The real issue is that someone dared to openly criticise the institution of "universal healthcare" which is neither universal nor adequate healthcare:

It's been a tough four years for Carolyn Strom.

In 2016, the Prince Albert, Sask., nurse was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association after a 2015 post she made on Facebook, criticizing the health care her grandfather received.

She was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and $25,000 to cover the cost of the tribunal.

"It's been a roller-coaster," said Strom. "It's been really stressful. I didn't ever imagine that it would go on this long."

On Tuesday morning, Strom will be at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in Regina to fight the association's decision as well as a provincial Court of Queen's Bench decision that ruled against her last year. 

The professional charges stemmed from a February 2015 Facebook post in which Strom criticized the care her grandfather received while in palliative care at St. Joseph's Integrated Health Centre in the town of Macklin, about 225 kilometres west of Saskatoon.

"It is evident that not everyone is 'up to speed' on how to approach end of life care ... or how to help maintain an aging senior's dignity (among other things!)," read part of the Facebook post.

"To those who made Grandpa's last year's less than desirable, please do better next time!" 

Some of the nurses in the hospital felt Strom's post was a personal attack and complained. The SRNA ruled the post brought the nursing profession into disrepute and violated its social media policy.

Strom refused to drop the case and held to it as a matter of principle. She was ordered to write an essay explaining what she did wrong, and refused to do so.

She believes her case has had a chilling effect on other nurses speaking out across the province.

"My fear is that things aren't getting reported. Things aren't changing," she said.

You don't say:

He’s prepared to lean on family and friends for guidance during the next year, but is scared to be on his own as an adult.

“I know how to solve a derivative, but I have no idea how to do tax returns or set up an account at the bank or anything like that,” Shah said. 

Entire generations have been infantilised by coddling at home, lower standards at schools and governments who depend on people with no critical thinking skills. When the bottom finally falls out, people who can't do basic addition without parental supervision will be in charge of re-building a society.

Let that sink in.




Canada isn't the only country in the midst of an election:

Weary voters across Israel headed to the polls for the second time in five months Tuesday in a do-over election that has largely become a referendum on the future of embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader and a masterful political survivalist.

The back-to-back elections cap a season of political deadlock in an increasingly polarized society, with voters migrating to evermore distant right and left, religious and secular camps and politicians struggling to build coalitions that can govern.

At the centre is Netanyahu, a campaign magician who managed to conjure the unprecedented second vote after falling one Knesset seat short of forming a government after April’s election.

Amid the dizzying kaleidoscope of small parties and shifting alliances that make up Israel’s political universe, voters are essentially choosing between a right-wing religious coalition led by Netanyahu or a secular-centrist government led by his chief rival, former military chief, Benny Gantz.

The final polls before voting began showed the race in nearly a dead heat, or slightly favoring Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party. Neither candidate is likely to get an outright majority of the 120 Knesset seats up for grabs, meaning that Tuesday’s vote will be followed by a period of deal making with other parties. A final outcome may not be clear for weeks.

What could go wrong?:

A gas explosion set fire Monday to a Russian biological research facility — one of only two known centres in the world that keeps samples of the fatal smallpox virus.

The blast happened after a gas canister exploded during repairs on the fifth floor of a six-storey laboratory at the Russian State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology, also known as Vector, in the city of Koltsovo, about 20 km from Novosibirsk.

Some windows were blown out but there was no structural damage.

One person suffered severe burns and was sent to intensive care.

No biohazard materials were stored in the room where the explosion occurred, a statement said, and the city’s mayor assured there is no biological threat to the local population, CNN reported.

Didn't they say similar things about Chernobyl?