Halloween Week: The Day of the Candies

It was never about the frights and we all know it.

From the most "transparent" and corrupt government ever re-elected:

 

A journalist asks the Department of Finance for a copy of a ministerial briefing note. The topic: recommendations made by the panel of experts that looked at how to implement new federal money for journalists.

The response: sorry, it's all redacted. All 27 pages. #cdnfoi pic.twitter.com/9kiMslQQn0

— Nick Taylor-Vaisey (@TaylorVaisey) October 28, 2019

**

The head of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. says he is not expecting a plea deal on criminal charges against the engineering firm in the wake of the Liberal election victory.

“We kind of remain focused on defending ourselves through a court process,” said Ian Edwards, regarding an upcoming trial on bribery and corruption charges linked to SNC-Lavalin’s alleged dealings in Libya between 2001 and 2011.

“Obviously if there were opportunities for settling this in another way, we’d be open to that. But we don’t expect it,” he said on a conference call with investors Thursday.

 A sitting prime minister stopped a criminal investigation in which he was heavily involved. There was no transparency or co-operation beforehand and people were forced to resign or were removed from office over this.  That the head of the SNC-Lavalin Group is not worried indicates that this is a show trial and nothing more.

**

Initial filings from Elections Canada submitted one week before the election show that unions spent close to $2.5 million — and counting — to either ensure a Trudeau victory or a Conservative defeat.

Break. Them. Up.




Peter McKay verbally thrashes Andrew Scheer and then insists that he does not want his job:

“I’ve repeatedly said I support @AndrewScheer + I worked v hard to help him in the campaign. Reports of me organizing r false. Recent comments r about our Party’s shortcomings & making the necessary improvements w modern policies + better coms so we can win the next election.”

Nice unified front there.

Scheer wasn't going to defend his own beliefs. Why should anyone expect that he would defend theirs?




It's just an economy:

Canada’s beleaguered energy sector suffered another morale blow as Encana Corp. — one of its marquee companies that was born out of the 19th-century railway boom — announced plans to move its headquarters to the U.S. and drop the link to Canada from its name.

The Calgary-based company said Thursday that it will establish a corporate domicile in the U.S. early next year, pending various approvals, and rebrand under the name Ovintiv Inc. The shares fell as much as 9.3 per cent in Toronto, the biggest intraday drop in a year.

The move is likely to intensify the gloom already hanging over the Canadian energy industry, which has suffered from a lack of pipeline space that has choked off prospects for growth, prompting foreign companies to ditch more than US$30 billion of assets in the past three years. Encana joins pipeline owner TransCanada Corp., which changed its name to TC Energy Corp. earlier this year.

This is what happens when people don't hold their legal system to account:

The tribunal responsible for disciplining lawyers in Ontario has asked the courts whether Canada’s refugee board is in contempt for failing to produce certain documents.

The request comes in the case of Toronto immigration lawyer, Richard Odeleye, accused by three former clients of sexual harassment. They allege he made unwelcome sexual advances and comments, or touched them inappropriately, prompting professional misconduct allegations and a disciplinary hearing.

As part of his defence, Odeleye asked the federal Immigration and Refugee Board for records related to his accusers’ refugee claims. The Law Society Tribunal agreed it should be given the records for review and possible disclosure to the lawyer, but the board has balked.

Disgrace? That's a Canadian value!:

Obviously, the Trudeau government should have boycotted the event, considering China’s kidnapping of Canadian Citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

But instead, Trudeau sent a Canadian delegation anyway.


And now, as reported by the Globe & Mail, China is using Canada’s participation as a propaganda win:

“Beijing’s embassy in Canada says the fact the Canadian military just sent a “big delegation” to a sporting competition in China is more evidence the Asian power is not losing friends.”

China attacked a Globe & Mail column that had pointed out how China is losing support around the world, and used Canada’s participation as part of the push-back:

“In the future, we will have more and more friends in various fields.”It highlighted the presence of Canada and other nations in the World Military Games, held in China from Oct. 18 to 27. International participation in the games, which attracted “9,308 military athletes from 109 countries, including a big delegation from Canada, speaks volumes in this regard,” the embassy said.”

So, not only has Justin Trudeau failed to stand up to Communist China, and not only has he failed to show strength in defense of Canada’s interests, he’s now giving China propaganda wins that make it easier for the brutal authoritarian state to mistreat Canadian Citizens and mistreat their own citizens.

That's been the plan since 2015.




If you want to reduce wait times, start privatising the system:

The Saskatchewan government says it will spend $10 million to help reduce wait times for some surgeries.

The province says the cash will go toward 1,700 additional surgeries that will be performed before the end of March 2020.

The procedures affected include cataracts, hip and knee replacements, gynecological, dental, and ear, nose and throat surgeries.

Health Minister Jim Reiter says the additional money will also help increase the number of some cardiac procedures.

Reiter says the government is listening to people who have been waiting for surgery.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority says it will increase surgical hours in hospitals and increase the number of procedures done in third-party facilities.

"I assure you that reducing the length of time people wait for their procedures is a priority for our government," Reiter said Wednesday in a release.

I'll just leave this here:

Similar conversions were ordered as the Muslim conquests expanded across Africa and Europe. The Grand Mosque of Damascus, also known as the Umayyad Mosque, was converted from a church dedicated to John the Baptist in 705. The world-renown Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was a thousand year-old Christian church before being transformed into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was only converted into a museum in 1935 by ultra-secularist and Turkish founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Over the long history of Muslim territorial advance, thousands of mosques, from Spain to India, were built on sites of important religious or political value to their defeated foes.

**

When residents north of Montreal learned of a plan to transform a local church into a mosque and Islamic cultural centre, the reaction was so strong that parish leaders invoked the 2017 mass shooting of Muslims in Quebec City to justify putting the project on hold.

Members of the diocese of Trois-Rivières, Que., located along the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, sent a litany of angry and threatening emails to the parish. Others spoke out during public consultations held earlier in October.

René Beaudoin, a parish member leading a committee on the future of the region’s churches, said the outcry made diocesan Bishop Luc Bouchard think of the six Muslim men shot dead in a Quebec City mosque in 2017. The Bishop decided to stop the sale.

“He absolutely didn’t want something like that happening in Trois-Rivières,” Beaudoin said in a recent interview. While no one threatened outright violence, he said, the parish wanted to be prudent.

“We got emails saying: ‘The sale is not going to happen’ and other things like that,” Beaudoin said. “So the Bishop stopped the sale. He said he wanted to put out the fire.”

The saga highlights the simmering tension in Quebec as the province confronts social and demographic upheaval.

Quebec’s aging population and the fiercely secular identity among the francophone majority are driving churches across the province into bankruptcy. At the same time, ongoing immigration brings waves of newcomers whose diverse beliefs and perspectives assert an increasing influence over the province’s identity.

When Quebeckers bucked the Church for socialism and childlessness, what did they expect when something pernicious filled the void?




For men who honour-kill girls and women to protect their precious egos, they're really quite traitorous:

U.S. commandos zeroed in on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s final hideout with the help of an extraordinarily well-placed informant, an ISIL operative who facilitated the terrorist leader’s movements around Syria and even helped oversee construction work on his Syrian safe house, according to U.S. and Middle East-based officials knowledgeable about the operation.

The mole’s detailed knowledge of Baghdadi’s whereabouts as well as the room-by-room layout of his sanctuary proved to be critical in the Oct. 26 raid that ended with the death of the world’s most-wanted terrorist, the officials said.

I'm sorry, Miss Murad, but the American left doesn't care about your years of rape and torture at the hands of ISIS:

The fight for justice for victims of Islamic State militants does not end with the death of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Nobel laureate Nadia Murad said on Wednesday, asking: "How about those that raped us?"

Murad, who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, is an Iraqi Yazidi woman who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State (ISIS)fighters in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014. Several of her brothers were killed by Islamic State and their wives also held captive.

Since 2010, Baghdadi led the jihadist group. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Baghdadi killed himself by detonating a suicide vest after fleeing into a dead-end tunnel during a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria.

"At first I talked to my sisters-in-law," Murad told reporters at the United Nations. "Everyone was saying: 'OK, but this is just Baghdadi, how about all these ISIS?'"

"How about those that raped us? They sold us, they still have our girls, they still have our children - about 300,000 Yazidis still missing, we don't know anything about them," she said.

As it stands, ISIS (in whatever form it is in now) has a new leader.

Destroy the ideology, destroy the movement.




And now, a frightening lullaby for a rainy Halloween:

Halloween Week: the Mid-Weekening

(source)

Your mid-week fright ...




Canadians vote with their stomachs. Prove me wrong:

More than one-third of Canadians voted strategically in last week’s federal election to stop another party from winning, a new poll suggests.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents to the Leger poll said their decision about who to support took into account the chances that their vote would prevent another party’s candidate from being victorious.

And almost as many waited until the final week of the campaign to make their choice.

Thirteen per cent made a decision during the last week, six per cent during the final weekend before the Monday vote, and another 10 per cent literally didn’t decide until the last minute on voting day.

 
Granted, none of the political choices were appealing. Some were only less nauseating than others. However, this has been the case since the Sixties. There have been no true fiscally or socially conservative candidates worth considering. The electorate was happy to back someone who vaguely fit the bill and was voted back even when he did not accomplish what he promised to in the first place.

Then there is that whole Marxist/Trudeaumania/Ad-Scam nonsense that dominated the political landscape for forty years.

Because no one has demanded even the most basic scruples or competence (all traded for "free stuff") from their leaders, the skittish electorate, realising that there was nowhere to run, sabotaged the entire litter and still hopes that it will get its "free stuff".




China is Justin's favourite country:

Dressed in the uniform of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the 40 or so singers stood proudly in neat rows and belted out an old favourite.

I am a Soldier talks of defeating the Japanese, vanquishing Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek in the Communist revolution and being tested by the revolutionary war. The performance “brought forth a whirlwind of Chinese military spirit in a foreign land,” said a report on the concert.

The recital earlier this month at the Centre for the Performing Arts in Richmond Hill, Ont., was not offered by a visiting martial choir from Beijing.

It was the work of a surprising new Canadian association, dedicated to retired troops of the China’s People’s Liberation Army or PLA — China’s armed forces — who are now settled in this country.

Also:

Authorities on Tuesday barred Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong from contesting local elections, citing concerns that he does not respect China’s sovereignty over the territory, a step that threatens to inflame tensions after months of civil unrest.

Engendering good will wherever they go:

A Manitoba Indigenous community is taking the province to court over a $453-million power transmission project it says it wasn't properly consulted on before construction started last summer.

The Sagkeeng First Nation is to argue in Winnipeg Court of Queen's Bench on Wednesday for a judicial review of the province's decision to give Manitoba Hydro a licence to build a 213-kilometre, 500-kilovolt line to Minnesota.

"When our ancestors signed the treaties, they agreed to share their land, not give it away," Chief Derrick Henderson said in a news release. "Manitoba and Hydro need to learn that they have to treat our people with respect. It is not respectful for Manitoba to treat First Nations as a nuisance to be disposed of in a sham consultation process."

(Sidebar: are you getting paid?)

**

Prairie First Nation leaders say Alberta and Saskatchewan can't separate without their consent because the legal underpinnings allowing Canada to settle the region are based on the signing of the numbered treaties. 

The election of a minority Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau and the dominance of the Conservative party in Saskatchewan and Alberta — winning every riding except one — has again sparked talk of Western separation. 

"This is our land, we are staying here," said Marlene Poitras, Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Alberta and a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation that is part of Treaty 8. 

Don't stop the gravy train.

Quebec is special:

The Coalition Avenir Québec government will proceed with its plan to impose a values test on new arrivals seeking employment, but unlike its original vision, it won’t be a condition of their permanent residency in Canada.

Canadians will get good and hard the government they voted for:

That $25 billion ballooned to $70 billion. And Trudeau’s promise of a balanced budget has been replaced by a $93-billion deficit over the next four years. The NDP and Green election platforms proposed even higher spending. Yet, despite campaigns featuring such a staggering accretion of our national debt, pollsters found that deficit spending didn’t rank as a major election concern for most Canadians. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, striving to balance political reality against the dangers of driving the country ever deeper into debt, proposed a $25-billion deficit in the first year moving to a balanced budget in five years. The election results confirm that most Canadians have lost all fear of deficit spending, no matter how large. ...

Canada has seen that cliff before in the disastrous legacy of Justin Trudeau’s father. During the 15 years Pierre Trudeau was prime minister, federal spending rose from 30 to 53 per cent of GDP. Immense public spending overheated the economy, resulting in runaway inflation. By 1981, Canada’s prime lending rate reached an incredible 22 per cent. The inability to meet skyrocketing interest costs induced widespread corporate and personal bankruptcies. Escalating mortgage rates caused many Canadians to lose their homes. With government bonds yielding 19 per cent, accessing business risk capital was virtually impossible. By the time Trudeau-the-elder retired in 1984, Canada’s national debt had grown by 700 per cent and the country’s international debt ratings had collapsed. We were transformed from one of the financially strongest countries in the world into an economic basket case. It would be two decades before tough fiscal discipline overcame compounding interest payments and began to reduce the country’s real-dollar debt. ...

Just as the generation of taxpayers that came after Pierre’s reign ended had to pay for his profligacy, the next generation of taxpayers will bear the burden of paying down Justin’s debt. So why do most young Canadians vote for parties promising increased deficits? As Mark Milke has argued, “every generation has to learn about the consequences of excessive borrowing for themselves.” Building an immense national debt is like taking out a huge mortgage, then leaving it for your children to pay back. But not only will today’s young voters have to pay down Canada’s massive mortgage, they will also foot the mounting cost of caring for the aging people who allowed it to happen. Most young voters are oblivious to this reality.

But there is a group working to educate them. They call themselves “Generation Screwed.” Kris Rondolo, 29, the group’s executive director, warns: “over-spending equals debt, and debt is an unfair tax on Canada’s younger generations and those not yet born.” The Generation Screwed website includes a debt clock that shows Canada’s national debt amounts to $18,700 for every man, woman and child and is growing by more than $54 million a day. A “How screwed are you?” link lets you add your share of provincial debt to the national debt. Ontarians are the most screwed, owing $43,200 each. Quebecers come next at $40,700, followed closely by Manitobans. Albertans owe $34,400, just a little more than British Columbians. And now the debt clock will be going into hyperdrive for the next four years.

Own it, kids.




Justin insulted Indian and black people and Canadians gladly re-elected him:

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is being called out over a social media post that was meant to mark a Sikh celebration — but used an image of another festival instead.

Was it this one?

Pandering is a proud Canadian tradition and even if it is done wrong, the effort is still praiseworthy. By flattering people who won't assimilate, the Canadian politician can ensure a long and fruitless career and collect a pension at the end of it. It doesn't matter if a country is balkanised and old prejudices cause ethnic and political conflict that could turn bloody or even that sycophancy turns one into a oleaginous husk of a man. Pensions are all that matter.




We can no longer argue that free expression of ideas and congress are Canadian values but merely American reflections of what some would like but never see materialised.

Case in point:

“Feminists built and funded transition houses for women escaping male violence,” she told the capacity crowd of roughly 120, who had come at the invitation of a group calling itself Radical Feminist Unite — Toronto, which rented the venue. “And now we’re being told … that having spaces for women to protect them from male violence is bigoted.”

She was referring to Vancouver city council’s decision in March to strip funding for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter because it only serves women who are born female. It’s just one example of what people like Murphy warn is the danger of “self-identification” as the standard for gender-based human rights protection.

“On what basis do women’s rights exist,” she asked, “if the word ‘woman’ is meaningless?” ...

For free speech purists, it might be comforting to think the protesters — perhaps 500 strong — represented a fringe group (who were themselves, after all, exercising their right to free speech). But if that’s true, it’s a well-connected fringe. Two arch-progressive city councillors, Mike Layton and Kristyn Wong-Tam, have a motion before Toronto city council on Tuesday asking staff to recommend “strengthening” the library’s room rental policies. Toronto Pride has threatened “consequences to our relationship” — presumably excommunication, which was the Vancouver Public Library’s fate after allowing Murphy to speak on its premises.

No, that must have missed the news cycle:

Did anyone hear about the knife wielding Muslim at the Vatican on Saturday because I sure didn't?🙄pic.twitter.com/AZsYGONGDL

— MICHELLE❤KAG🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@Winning45KAG) October 29, 2019

 

(Merci)




And now, the greatest love song in the world:

Halloween Week: The Barkening

 

What is more horrifying than a sitting president ordering the death of an Islamic terrorist?

That a dog was instrumental in his demise:

Trump tweeted a photo of a Belgian Malinois that he said worked with a team of special forces in the capture of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a tunnel beneath a compound in northeastern Syria.

Unconfirmed reports state that Trump will offer the dog in question the Congressional Medal of Good Boy in a private ceremony.


Vaguely related - this girl also needs some kind medal:

• Rebecca Munkombwe, 11, rescued her 9-year-old friend Latoya Muwani from the grips of a crocodile after the reptile attacked her while swimming in a stream in Zimbabwe last week, The Sunday Times reported.
• Rebecca jumped on top of the croc and gouged its eyes out, which caused it to lose its grip on Latoya, who escaped with just minor injuries.

When Justin resumes his political dilettantism, the following will happen: ANYONE who points out his moral and political corruption will be silenced forever and soon-to-be bankrupt Canadians will get good and hard the government they voted for.

Cases in point:

Online extremists are increasingly disappearing into closed Facebook groups that are hard to monitor, experts say. They’re frustrated by what they see as a failure by the platform to confront the problem, and say they are wary of the danger of violent words spilling over into violent acts.

Oh, be honest. Any criticism of Justin et al is going to be couched with the oddball. It makes it easier to kick down doors, remove computers and set up a firewall for the entire country.

**

According to a new survey conducted by Ipsos Reid for MNP, Canadians said they are left with an average of $557 dollars at the end of the month after the bills have been taken care of and debt paid down. That’s $142 less than in June, and the least since tracking began in 2016.

Nearly half (48 per cent) said they have $200 leftover, 29 per cent of whom said they don’t have enough to cover their bills and debt. Each measure is up 4 percentage points since June.

(Sidebar: you're not going to like the rising carbon taxes.)

** 

There’s more bad news for Canada’s auto sector, with the Ford Motor Company announcing the elimination of 450 jobs at the Oakville assembly plant.

Both the Lincoln MKT and the Ford Flex will be discontinued, according to an announcement by the company reported by Reuters:

‘“We will stop building the Ford Flex at the end of November. Lincoln MKT production ended earlier this month,” said Kelli Felker, manufacturing & labor communications manager at Ford.”

Canada’s auto sector has been struggling, with production continuing to shift towards Mexico in many cases. Clearly, the new NAFTA deal signed by the Trudeau government has done nothing to mitigate the damage.

Justin has resurrected the fossil, Anne MacClellan, in a poor attempt to assuage the fuming masses out West:

The Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday confirmed that Trudeau has brought on Anne McLellan and Isabelle Hudon to serve as his transition advisers as the Liberals adjust to governing in a minority situation following an election campaign that rubbed raw fresh tensions between the West and the rest of the country.

McLellan served as the Liberal member of Parliament for Edmonton Northwest from 1993 to 2006 and held the posts of minister of natural resources and minister of justice during her time in office.

She most recently made headlines when Trudeau brought her on to conduct a review of whether the roles of minister of justice and attorney general should be separated in the wake of findings of improper political interference by his office in the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Hudon is currently Canada's ambassador to France and the first woman to hold that position.

She is a prominent figure in Quebec business and political circles, having held senior leadership roles as CEO of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal along with others at Bombardier, the Canadian Space Agency and Sun Life Financial.

Justin funnelled Chinese money through his dad's foundation and used it for his campaign: 

In a statement, Global Affairs Canada said “The Canadian government remains deeply concerned by the arbitrary detention by Chinese authorities of these two Canadians since December 2018 and continues to call for their immediate release.”

Few details were released by the government, and Kovrig & Spavor remain imprisoned in China.

Notably, the Trudeau government has refused to take any strong retaliatory measures for the horrendous treatment of Kovrig & Spavor, sending a message that Canadian Citizens can be mistreated without any response, which thus puts more Canadians in danger.

First of all, Canadians are the Pharisees of North America. Rude, tactless and boorish, they hide their undesirable traits behind a front of smugness and a sneer of contemptible self-righteousness which they lord over the less Canadian of their North American brethren. Their penchant for political multiculturalism extends no further than an exotic dish at a lunch-time price.

Having said that, the refusal to insist and aid when and where possible non-English speakers in speaking the de facto language of business, English (which other countries trip over their own legs to learn because speaking the language is a marketable asset) creates not only a serf-like state in which immigrants are trapped with little hope of personal and professional advancement but distrust and confusion.

And it's just rude:

The woman who went on the attack, with a young boy next to her, is then approached by a third Shoppers Drug Mart employee who seems to request that she talk to the store manager.

“If you want to talk to me you bring your manager here you idiot. Or go speak Chinese with your other staff and shit talk me somewhere else,” the unidentified woman says in the video.

It is still not known how the altercation started but she continues to use profanity and demand that it is “rude” for the store staff to “speak Chinese” in front of her and requests that they “shut up” and “go somewhere else.”

“Saw this happen today at the Shoppers Drug Mart on Kingsway/McMurray,” the original caption on the video posted by Allen Tseng on Facebook reads.

“I just want to put this lady on blast for being extremely rude and racist. And hopefully show her there's consequences to this type of behaviour. It's sad to see this sort of racism still in 2019 and in Greater Vancouver, BC, and Canada.”

(Sidebar: did you film the entire incident and ask why the staff, who are required to speak English while on duty, weren't speaking X flavour of Chinese during off-hours but in front of the irate woman? No?) 

To remind one:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision after he chose to answer questions only in French during a town hall in Sherbrooke, Que., Tuesday night.

Rudeness: it's a Canadian value!

The Japanese hope that by showcasing Ainu culture it can smooth some rather difficult social wrinkles:

On a wooded lake shore in northern Japan, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate.

At a cost so far of $220 million, Japan’s “Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony” is on track to open in time for the 2020 Olympics, part of a drive by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to draw millions of foreign visitors to Japan and to the northern city of Sapporo, where the Olympic marathon will be run.  

Also known as “Upopoy” or “singing together” in the Ainu language, the complex will include a museum, a replica of an Ainu village, many of which Japan destroyed in its 19th Century colonization of Hokkaido, and a memorial housing the bones of hundreds of Ainu whose remains were sent to universities in the 20th Century.

Good:

A Catholic priest in South Carolina reportedly enforced the church’s code of canon law by denying former Vice President Joe Biden the sacrament of Holy Communion due to his stance on abortion.

And now, more terrifying music for your Halloween listening pleasure:

Halloween Week: The Startling

 

The left is shocked - SHOCKED! - that a sitting president would have a terrorist leader taken out in a covert operation:

The Washington Post changed the headline of its obituary of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from "terrorist-in-chief" to describe him as an “austere religious scholar.”

U.S. forces killed Baghdadi Saturday after a successful raid on a compound in northern Syria.

While many celebrated the death of the serial rapist and murderer, the Washington Post left many confused by giving him the title of “austere religious scholar at the helm of the Islamic State.”

The Post acknowledged Baghdadi led ISIS with “shocking brutality” but focused much of its obituary on his academic career. “The man who would become the founding leader of the world’s most brutal terrorist group spent his early adult years as an obscure academic, aiming for a quiet life as a professor of Islamic law,” the Post wrote.

Al-Baghdadi's victims do not feel as the Washington Post does:

Al-Baghdadi was responsible for directing and inspiring terror attacks across continents and in the heart of Europe. His killing by U.S. forces, which was announced Sunday, leaves the Islamic State without an obvious leader, a major setback for an organization that in March was forced by American troops and Kurdish forces out of the last part of its self-declared “caliphate,” which once spanned a swath of Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks on Paris cafes, the national stadium and the Bataclan concert hall that left 130 people dead.

Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola died at the Bataclan, told The Associated Press he welcomed the announcement of the IS leader’s death with a “sense of satisfaction.”

I guess people just experience things differently.


A reminder:

The 1st thing you did after you were elected in 2015, before you were even sworn in, was withdraw our CF-18s from the war on ISIS. The 2nd thing you did was reinstate terrorists’ citizenship. The 3rd thing you did was pay $10.5 million to an Al Qaida terrorist named Omar Khadr. https://t.co/VtFzrjLsh4

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) October 28, 2019

Don't think about it. Do it:

Peter Navarro, a top Trump adviser who has spent much of his career calling for an aggressive crackdown on trade with China, has looked at blacklisting Chinese companies that steal American IP from doing business in the United States, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

We can conclude the following: the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is fundamentally flawed because it was written by a communist and does not serve the greater interests of the Canadian people, that judges are merely extensions of an unaccountable plutocracy and that Canadians don't care one way or another but are happy to complain about it when it personally affects them:

A group of lawyers opposed to consecutive life sentences has been granted intervener status in an appeal of the sentence handed down to Quebec City mosque killer Alexandre Bissonnette.

The Montreal Defence Lawyers Association is arguing that the Criminal Code contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by allowing judges to stack life sentences for multiple murders instead imposing them concurrently.

Bissonnette, 29, pleaded guilty last year to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder after he walked into the mosque at the Islamic Cultural Centre during evening prayers on Jan. 29, 2017, and opened fire.

The Crown had requested a sentence of six consecutive 25-year terms with no chance of parole — 150 years in total — but Quebec Superior Court Justice Francois Huot opted for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 40 years, saying that a sentence beyond life expectancy would have been “absurd” and a charter violation.

The law, however, would have allowed the judge to impose a 150-year jail sentence, which is what the association is now challenging.

The lawyers argue that “a sentence exceeding life expectancy without review mechanism” would be “inconsistent with human dignity” and a violation of Section 12 of the charter, which grants protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

If Scheer had any scruples, he would resign because bribed press or not, he should be prime minister right now. His opponent was, after all, a very stupid man:

In an interview with the West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Scheer confirmed he has heard from his former mentor and party leader following his return to Official Opposition status in Monday’s election, and said he is focused on figuring out what went wrong with the Conservative campaign.

“I’ve reached out to many different Conservatives. I won’t go into all who I have and haven’t been speaking with. My priority is to talk to candidates and members who ran in the last campaign because I really do want to hear from them,” Scheer said when asked if he had spoken with Harper.

“We had great people running for us in every part of this country and many of them were not elected. That’s disappointing to me and I want to make sure going forward we have a stronger campaign that connects with voters all across the country.”

All you had to do was not be Trudeau, Andy, and you messed up.

Just walk away.


Also - if you still think Canada can survive with public policies based on junk science and giving Quebec welfare, you aren't just mistaken; you are mad:

Is such a deal possible?

If its elements do not require constitutional changes, at least in the short term, and if the feds are earnest in a desire for reconciliation and re-engagement, then yes, it is.

It could look something like this.

• Federal equivalency granted for the current climate-change plans of Alberta and Saskatchewan, both of which include a price on carbon … for heavy emitters. (Imagine that.) And a corresponding commitment by all three partners to strengthen the focus in each of the plans and in Canada’s approach on technologies that can help our country truly contribute to the global climate fight.
• Equalization rebates to provinces whose taxpayers continue to pay into the federal program even while they face the fifth consecutive year of low commodity prices. Such a rebate can be sunsetted, tied to commodity price recovery and roughly on the per capita contribution to the program from each province’s tax base. It could be a payment separate from the program itself keeping all current recipient provinces whole. Such a payment could take the form of a large-scale abandoned oil well cleanup program. That would put a lot of front line oil workers back to work and have an obvious attendant environmental upside.
• TMX completion and then privatization with a significant portion going to First Nations-controlled interests on commercial terms.
• Amendments to Bills C-69 and C-48 that remove uncertainty for pipeline construction and oil exports from the West Coast.

The deal might also include a longer-term commitment to put Senate reform and equalization on the table in terms of constitutional discussions but shouldn’t be predicated on the pursuit of unachievable constitutional change.

But ... but ... they're our future!:

More than two dozen young Canadians are facing a month-long ban from Parliament Hill after staging a climate-change protest inside the House of Commons this morning.

The group Our Time wants to deliver 338 mandate letters to MPs elected last week asking them to prioritize a “green new deal” when Parliament resumes. ...

When the tour took them into the House of Commons, they sat down on the floor, unfurled protest signs printed on yellow cloths and refused to move.

Security removed them within 15 minutes, issued each a trespassing ticket along with a 30-day ban.

And now, for your scary listening pleasure:

Halloween Week: The Bloodening

How the US (sometimes) handles terrorists:

As U.S. forces bore down on al-Baghdadi, he fled into a “dead-end” tunnel with three of his children, Trump said, and detonated a suicide vest. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward.” Al-Baghdadi’s identity was positively confirmed by a DNA test conducted onsite, Trump said.

How Canada always handles terrorists:

Edmonton van attacker and ISIS supporter Abdulahi Sharif was found guilty by a jury on 11 charges on Friday for attempting to kill pedestrians and a police officer. 

Among the charges, Sharif was convicted of five counts of attempted murder, and counts of fleeing from police causing bodily harm and aggravated assault.

On September 30, 2017, Sharif attacked Constable Michael Chernyk by purposefully striking him with his car and proceeded to stab him in the head and chest. Afterwards, Sharif got into a rented U-Haul and intentionally ran over four innocent pedestrians. 

When investigators searched Sharif’s vehicle after the attacks they discovered an ISIS flag. Prosecutors, however, did not file any terrorism-related charges.

Airplanes on which passengers are largely of East Indian extraction don't explode because Sikh extremists plant bombs on them. They just do that and the Canadian government wants you to share that understanding.

Nope because Quebec:

In an interview with the West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Qualtrough was asked about what options the Liberals could explore as they plan out how to make their minority government work, and whether equalization changes — something often demanded by Alberta and Saskatchewan — could be considered.

**

In the case of Quebec, the people of the province do not have to bear the full cost of their decisions to suppress the economic activities of mining or fossil fuel production, because the rest of Canada will make up foregone revenues through equalization payments. Some people might think that sounds like a good deal: after all, Quebec gets to have a high quality of life without having to dirty its hands with things like energy and natural resource production.

**

Quebec will receive $13.1-billion in equalization payments next year – a $1.4-billion increase – while Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador continue to be left out even though Canada’s oil-producing provinces are facing deficits and hard times.

Also:

"Equalization isn't tied to any particular revenue source. It's certainly not tied to any particular pipeline," Tombe said.  "I think the connection is made really just because Quebec is a large recipient of equalization dollars and it's one of the more prominent provinces opposing pipelines through that province in particular."

What is Canada's (read: Alberta's) chief export worth billions of dollars? Oil. What does Quebec benefit from? Money Alberta sends it.

If that isn't a big deal, then Quebec won't miss those petro-dollars.




Getting a house won't be harder. It will be impossible:

The other major election announcement is a one-per-cent vacant home tax applied to non-Canadians, not living in Canada. There are few details on how this tax will administered, so we will have to wait and see how it plays out. ...

(Sidebar: if you could afford to buy a house in that region, a one-percent tax is nothing. This is done to not scare off Chinese property-buyers.)

The City of Vancouver has plans to charge a development fee along the Broadway corridor equal to $330-$425 per square foot of habitable space.

Wow! It's like they're giving the houses away!




How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea said on Sunday there has been no progress in the North Korea-United States relations, and hostilities that could lead to an exchange of fire have continued, according to North Korea's state news agency KCNA.

In a statement under the name of Chairman of the Korea-Asia Pacific Peace Committee Kim Yong Chol, KCNA said that it would be mistaken for the United States to ignore a year-end deadline on U.S. President Donald Trump's and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's "close personal relations."

No, because the Bible:

Catholic bishops from across the Amazon called Saturday for the ordination of married men as priests to address the clergy shortage in the region, an historic proposal that would upend centuries of Roman Catholic tradition.

The Pope cannot change doctrine. No one can.

Furthermore, the Church is growing in Africa and Asia and is sending priests to Europe and North America.




And now, Halloween-like traditions from other countries:

People from all around the world flock to celebrate Halloween at Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes’s purported home at Bran Castle in Transylvania, Romania (although it was never actually his castle, and there’s been a long-running debate over whether he ever even visited the site). There are a number of guides and inclusive travel packages in Romania that offer tours and parties at Count Dracula’s castle for Halloween.

Halloween Week: The Revenge

... or something ...




What will the Liberals do with taxes? Raise them:

The Liberals ran on a promise to increased the basic personal amount that you can earn without having to pay taxes by $2,000 to $15,000 for those making less than $147,000. H&R Block tax expert Lisa Gittens said in an interview that the increase – which will be spread out over the next four years – will have an impact on taxpayers, leaving them with slightly more money in their pockets.

They had four years to do that and haven't delivered:

The report defines middle class as 75-to-200 per cent of the median income in each nation. For Canada, that means a person living alone would have an income of about $29,432 to $78,485, it says.

Across the organization’s 36 member countries, the portion of citizens considered middle class fell to 61 per cent from 64 per cent between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s, says the report.

Middle-class shrinkage was sharper in Canada than the OECD average.

Scratch a Liberal, find a Jew-hater every time:

A voting guide for Canadian Muslims rated federal political leaders on their views on a boycott campaign against Israel and was partly funded by a federal grant, a Jewish advocacy group said Friday.

B’nai Brith Canada urged an end to any government funding that could encourage what it called the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Jew-hating: it's the new Canadian value!




Fear not, Canadians! You'll have lots of abortions for your children and your children's children!

Oh, wait ... :

The medical director at Clinic 554 in Fredericton welcomes the support of Horizon’s Health board of directors but remains doubtful the New Brunswick government will change its regulations around abortion funding.

“I’m a bit guarded with my hope if I’m being honest. We have been trying for a half a decade as Clinic 554 to garner support from any corner for the clinic, and generations of women before me, have been trying with this government,” said Dr. Adrian Edgar.

Eliminating gene pools: another Canadian value.




Good:

Recent government-mandated changes to tuition fees in Ontario have resulted in some campus newspapers losing a significant portion of their funding.

The "Student Choice Initiative" — announced by the Progressive Conservative government in January — allows post-secondary students to opt out of services deemed "non-essential," including campus newspapers and unions.

Students don't need them.

Let student unions sing the praises of the NDP with their mum and dad's money only.

Why are children depressed and anxious?

It doesn't help that parents indulge their snowflakes and never prepare them for the real world but they also tell them that the world is coming to an end because of Trump and what some stupid Swedish girl says:

Parents who spend a lot of time connected to their electronic devices may be contributing to their children's anxiety and other mental health problems, said the president of Quebec's association of psychiatrists.

"Do we text our kids to come down for dinner?" Dr.Karine Igartua asked, in an interview on CBC Montreal's Daybreak Friday. "Or could we actually make the three extra steps, go to their bedroom, look them in the eye and say, 'Sweetie, dinner's ready.'"

Igartua said children and teens born after 2010 — known as Generation Alpha — are seeing an exponential increase in stress levels.

"In the last six years, anxiety disorders have doubled," she said, appealing to both parents and government for a "culture shift."

"Kids no longer have any sort of free playtime," Igartua said. "We're constantly overscheduling, overprotecting them, overstimulating them."

And now, another dire selection for one's listening pleasure: