For a Friday

Still cold and still snowy ...




The national dissonance continues:

Alberta’s premier is calling on Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet to “pick a lane” after he said he wouldn’t offer advice to Western provinces looking for more independence within Canada.

This is how Quebec characterises its role in funding pipelines:

It reads: "$14 billion for the Western pipeline."

That's right. Quebec thinks that it is getting the short end of the stick here, despite this:

In just 11 years, Albertans have paid out almost $240 billion to the rest of Canada.

That number is more than one-and-a-half times as much as B.C. and Ontario combined, whose taxpayers pitched in $54.6 billion and $97.9 billion respectively, the other two largest net contributors to the federal balance sheet.

The money is sent to Ottawa as part of net federal fiscal transfers — basically the residents of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario pay more in federal taxes than they get back in federal programs and transfers — they are net positive contributors to the federal finances. And in Alberta’s case it has been doing that for a lot of years.

Other provinces are net negative contributors — they get more back in federal programs and transfers than they give in taxes. In Quebec’s case its net negative contributor was minus $171.3 billion from 2007-2018.

The numbers from Statistics Canada show that Alberta’s $240 billion comes to about $5,000 a year — for 11 years — for Alberta’s taxpayers.

(source)

If Kenney thinks that he will get any support from the chief beneficiary of this highway (or pipeline, as the case may be) robbery then he is sadly mistaken.

Bleed the east.


(Gracias)




HA! She said "NDP" and "clout" in the same sentence!:

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh insisted the Liberal minority government needs support from New Democrats if it wants to move forward on progressive national programs like pharmacare after a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday.

You're a walking Kleenex to this guy, Jag.

Just a heads-up.




It's just an economy:

The deficit under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is likely to deepen in coming years due to a slump in economic growth, further weakening the Liberal’s fiscal position as it seeks to juggle an incoming minority government.

On Thursday, the Parliamentary Budget Office said it expects budget deficits to be an average of $1.6 billion higher over the next five years, owing to growing fears over international trade disputes and lacklustre Canadian exports that are likely to shrink the Canadian economy. The increase does not include promises Trudeau made during the campaign, which will further nudge spending upward.

Higher deficits would put additional fiscal strain on the Trudeau government as it seeks to secure the support of the NDP, who has called for higher spending on pharmacare and social housing, among other programs.

Surely budgets balance themselves!




If someone couldn't pay fees, how could they support themselves?:

Fewer newcomers from disadvantaged groups became Canadian citizens during a 10-year period that coincided with the previous Conservative government's changes to the citizenship program, new Statistics Canada research shows. 

The decrease was part an overall trend in declining citizenship rates among those who have been in Canada less than 10 years, despite the fact the actual citizenship rate in Canada is among the highest in the Western world, Statistics Canada said in the study released Wednesday.  ...

Between 2011 and 2015, the Conservative government of the day overhauled the citizenship program, hiking citizenship fees from $100 to $630 and implementing stricter language, residency and knowledge requirements.

The Statistics Canada research does not provide specific reasons for the decline in citizenship rates.

(Sidebar: oh, I think I know.) 

Not that citizenship means anything in Canada. Residency and "free stuff" is where it's at.


Somewhat related:

What has changed since 1980 to cause bigger differences in how much people work? Leamer and Fuentes argue it’s the change from manufacturing to neurofacturing. In manufacturing, large teams of not necessarily very well educated workers have to gather together and work very hard for a specified number of hours. Because the work is hard and has to be done all together, continuously, during strictly controlled hours, the pay has to be good.

But these days more and more people work in neurofacturing, at jobs that, though they involve deadlines (Greetings, dear Editor!), can be done in a much more flexible way. They’re not necessarily gig-economy jobs, but in many of them how much you work and earn is more up to you than it was when you had your place on an assembly line.

A second big change is that more people are much more educated than they used to be. And they acquired their fancy educations at considerable cost, both in tuition (this is a story about the U.S.) but also in foregone earnings during the several years it took them to acquire their advanced degrees. If they weren’t going to work and earn a lot, their education would not have made investment sense — however enjoyable and fulfilling it may have been.

Why expend the effort when one can just cry: "Inequality!"?




Unless Justin has to pay legal fees, it's a rather hollow victory not many will hear about:

The court blasted the secrecy of how Trudeau’s debates commission, especially how they accredited their favourite liberal journalists, but banned conservatives journalists. The court said the debate commission’s decisions “are lacking in discernible rationality and logic, and thus are neither justified nor intelligible.”

Where can one start with this? The removal of any mention of religion in the public arena? The smugness (or smudgeness) of the secular police as they pretend to speak for others? The separation of culture and education? The use of this as springboard for an underlying political cause? The fact that aboriginal tribes have different customs and that this one practice is not representative of them all save in some multiculturalist's fevered imagination?

YOU make the call:

A mother in British Columbia is taking a school district to court for subjecting her children to smudging, a traditional Indigenous practice. She is also looking to order a ban on future religious practices, such as “cleansings” and prayers during mandatory school hours. 

The petition was filed by Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, against School District 70 in Port Alberni. 

The Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council, who is an intervener in the case, say such a ban would deprive students from learning about Indigenous culture. 

In legal submissions, Candice Servatius from Port Alberni says that in September 2015, she received a letter that was sent home from her son’s Grade 3 class, informing parents that a Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council education worker would be hosting a traditional “Nuu-chah-nulth classroom/student cleansing” in the classroom. It didn’t specify a date. 

The cleansing ritual would involve students holding onto cedar branches, while smoke from sage was fanned over them. The letter claims the custom would “cleanse” the classroom of “energy” and cleanse the students’ spirits.

Servatius states that she was concerned about the “explicit religious nature” of the practice. 

When she went to speak to the school about it the next day, she was shocked to learn the smudging ritual had already taken place in her son’s class. Servatius was further stunned to learn another cleansing demonstration had also taken place in her daughter’s Grade 5 classroom, despite there being no notice to parents. Servatius’s daughter expressed to her that she was coerced into the experience by a teacher, who told her it would be “rude” not to and that students were required to participate. It left her feeling anxious, confused and shameful.

Not in my backyard!:

Some residents of Ottawa's Chinatown and Little Italy neighbourhoods say they've noticed a spike in crime since the opening of a supervised injection site in the area.

Landlord Anthony Cava said he's seen a rise in theft since the site opened at the Somerset West Community Health Centre in May 2018.

"The concerns are not so much with the safe injection site, but what it brings," Cava said at a community meeting Thursday night. "We've seen stuff disappearing from the properties, coin-operated laundry being broken into, cars broken into. You can't leave anything in the yards, it's gone by morning."

Corruption - it's how things get done in Canada:

The Toronto Transit Commission and insurance company Manulife announced Wednesday they have settled a 2016 lawsuit related to a widespread benefits fraud.

Ten people were convicted in connection with the scheme in which employees submitted false medical claims through Healthy Fit, a business that provided orthotics, braces and other medical devices.

The owner of Healthy Fit, Adam Smith, was convicted of two counts of fraud over $5,000, with nine former TTC employees also convicted in a case that came to light as a result of a whistleblower complaint.

Hundreds of other employees were found to be involved. The TTC said 254 of its employees have either been dismissed or have resigned to avoid dismissal, while another 14 were disciplined for their actions.

Stuart Green, spokesperson for the TTC, said employees seem to have changed their behaviour as a result of this case.

"People now understand ... we're watching and they face real consequences if they're caught," he said in a phone interview.

Well, that fixes everything, doesn't it? 

Some former president acts smugly in what little limelight he has left. 

Whatever.

Wow. Had this been Canada, he would be free to rape again:

A Hungarian court on Wednesday began the trial of a Syrian man accused of terrorism and crimes against humanity as a military leader of Islamic State near the city of Homs in 2015, saying he participated in the murders of dozens of people.

The 27 year-old, identified as F. Hassan, was charged in September after an international investigation led to his capture in Budapest's main airport at the end of last year.

He denies the charges and said he was in Turkey, not Syria, at the time the atrocities took place.

Prosecutor Andras Urbanyi told the court F. Hassan deserted from the Syrian army in 2011, then joined Islamic State sometime before 2014. He became commander of an IS unit and actively recruited members.

"In May 2015 Hassan's unit was ordered to capture an area rich in artefacts near Homs," Urbanyi said. "Hassan was to draw up a death list, naming those to be executed out of revenge or to intimidate locals. The list was approved by IS leaders."

His brigade went door to door, pulling and murdering individuals on the list either with gunshots or knifing, Urbanyi said. Others were forced to gather at the town's main square.

"At the square they were forced to witness an execution. The local imam was beheaded. Hassan and an accomplice severed the imam's head with long, seesawing motions, then held up his head to the crowd."

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea said on Thursday it had turned down a U.S. offer for fresh talks, saying it was not interested in more talks merely aimed at "appeasing us" ahead of a year-end deadline Pyongyang has set for Washington to show more flexibility in negotiations.

Kim Myong Gil, North Korea's nuclear negotiator, said in a statement carried by the country's official KCNA news agency that Stephen Biegun, his U.S. counterpart who jointly led last month's failed denuclearization talks in Stockholm, had offered through a third country to meet again.

Kim and Biegun met last month in the Swedish capital for the first time since U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed in June to re-open negotiations that have been stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.

But the Stockholm meeting fell apart, with Kim Myong Gil saying the U.S. side had failed to present a new approach.

"If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the U.S. at any place and any time," Kim Myong Gil said.

However, he said Biegun's proposal had a "sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass with ease" Pyongyang's year-end deadline. "We have no willingness to have such negotiations."

North Korea has been seeking a lifting of punishing sanctions, but the United States has insisted Kim Jong Un must dismantle his nuclear weapons program first.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said Trump remained committed to making progress on agreements he reached with Kim Jong Un at a first summit in Singapore in June last year, namely "transformed relations, building lasting peace, and complete denuclearization."