For a Sunday

Winter is coming:

While cold weather hasn’t locked in yet, much of Canada is in for a harsh winter.

That must be great news for these parts of Canada:

The CN Rail workers strike is steering Ontario’s propane supply in the same direction as Quebec’s, industry experts say.

More than 3,000 conductors, yard workers and trainpersons walked off the job Tuesday after the union and railway failed to reach an agreement on a new contract.

(Sidebar: trainpersons?)

**

Some 85 per cent of the propane used in Quebec is supplied by rail. So when the rail workers go on strike, the propane isn’t moving. Which means Quebec’s reserves are dwindling, even a few days into the strike. On Thursday, Premier François Legault called it an “emergency” for the province. He said Quebec keeps 12 million litres of propane in reserve, and uses about six million litres per day. Which means two days of propane, in theory. But rationing has begun, media reports said, bringing daily usage down to 2.5 million litres per day.

Perhaps Quebec should spend the money Alberta sends it on pipelines.




Liberal drunk fools Alberta energy minister:

Alberta’s energy minister said she has an optimistic outlook on the future after meeting with Canada’s newly-appointed natural resources minister in Calgary.

“He listened, he heard he understood. I was very encouraged with the tone and the direction and the relationship ahead,” Sonya Savage said after her Friday morning meeting with Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan.

(Sidebar: this Seamus O'Regan.)




Chrystia Freeland promises to cry in front of Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe:

A spokesperson for the deputy prime minister confirmed to Global News that Chrystia Freeland will meet with the Saskatchewan premier on Tuesday.

Premier Scott Moe‘s office, in a statement, said “the Premier has had a positive working relationship with Minister Freeland, and he looks forward to discussing issues that are facing our province.”

In a previous meeting between Moe and the prime minister, Scott Moe said he told Justin Trudeau he was tired of hearing “more of the same,” and that he asked Trudeau to cancel the carbon tax, commit to renegotiating equalization and work on more efficiently getting Saskatchewan products to market.

I'll just leave this right here:

People labour under the mistaken impression that anything like democracy will go on existing in this country (as it barely has):

Numbers from Angus Reid polls show that in January 2016, 53 per cent of Canadians supported electoral reform. This November, 68 per cent of Canadians felt the same way.

Shachi Kurl, the executive director of Angus Reid, told Global News the increase in support was most pronounced with those who align with the Conservative party.

I'm sure this is nothing at all to be concerned about:

Insolvencies have risen amid a slowing economy and the lagging effect of higher interest rates that make it more difficult for borrowers to keep up with payments.

‘”There is a strong correlation between interest rate changes and consumer filings but we see a two to three year lag between rate increases and a growth in the number of insolvencies,” stated Andre Bolduc, an association board member. 

“Sustained increases in living costs and debt servicing costs have created an environment in which more people are struggling to stick to their repayment terms.”

What is Canada's new foreign minister going to do about China?

Whatever he is told:

China’s new ambassador to Canada said the Trudeau government should avoid weighing in on the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

This China:

Donald Trump’s national security adviser has issued a dire warning to Canada about Chinese telecom giant Huawei, saying Ottawa should reject the company’s plan to deploy its 5G network because the technology would be used as a “Trojan horse” to undermine national security.

**

The U.S. national security adviser urged Canada on Saturday not to use Huawei 5G technology, saying that doing so would put in jeopardy intelligence sharing with the United States and expose Canadians to being profiled by the Chinese government.

**

A Chinese spy has risked his life to defect to Australia and is now offering a trove of unprecedented inside intelligence on how China conducts its interference operations abroad.

Wang “William” Liqiang is the first Chinese operative to ever blow his cover. He has revealed the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, as well as providing details of how they fund and conduct political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.

Mr Wang has taken his material to Australia's counter-espionage agency, ASIO, and is seeking political asylum – potentially opening another front in Australia’s challenging bilateral relationship with China.

A sworn statement Mr Wang provided ASIO in October states: “I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities”. He faces certain detention and possible execution if he returns to China.

And this Hong Kong:

An uneasy calm settled over Hong Kong on Saturday as the city prepared to go to the polls for local elections seen as a referendum on months of anti-government protests, after weeks of especially violent clashes between police and demonstrators. ...

Both Chinese and Hong Kong leaders have repeatedly said that Hong Kong police can handle the situation but Beijing has more than doubled the number of troops in the city since late August, with up to 12,000 on bases scattered across the territory.

Now, any leader worth his salt would tell this crony to cram it with walnuts but Justin adores his Chinese masters and their money so much that he doesn't need the Bronfmanns anymore.

Certainly not them.




Why didn't he fire himself?:

Federal Conservative party Leader Andrew Scheer dismissed two of his top aides on Saturday as he and his party grapple with the fallout of what many see as a disappointing performance in last month’s election.

Scheer announced the changes in a morning letter to caucus, saying chief of staff Marc-Andre Leclerc and communications director Brock Harrison have been relieved of their duties effective immediately.

Martin Belanger and Simon Jefferies will fill the respective posts on an interim basis until full-time replacements can be found.

Scheer did not spell out reasons for the dismissals in his letter, saying only that personnel changes were being made as the party prepares to assume an active role in the liberal-led minority parliament.

You lost the election. Not them, Andy.




There is simply no reason for any of these fees as people scarcely use them and the rest goes to anti-Israel idiots who are drunk with power:

An Ontario Divisional Court ruling Thursday struck down a directive making some post-secondary student fees optional, saying it is inconsistent with the schools’ autonomy. The government has said the goal of the Student Choice Initiative was to give students more control over how they spend their money. But the Canadian Federation of Students has called it an attempt to silence voices that hold the government accountable, such as student unions and campus media. Kayla Weiler, the federation’s Ontario representative, says she is unsure if the fee schedule and full funding for those groups can resume for next semester or next year. A spokeswoman for the attorney general says the government is reviewing the court ruling.

That's a brilliant idea. With an increasing and an increasingly older and sicker population with no doctors or engineers wandering in to speak of (read: at all) and very few training to be medical professionals, putting the kibosh on those training to be medical professionals entirely for political reasons makes as much sense as not vaccinating your kids and using Chinese metal to build bridges.

Really:

A bioethicist is calling for medical schools to eliminate applicants who would oppose providing medical services over objections to them based on their personal beliefs.

The call from Udo Schuklenk, a Queen’s University professor and the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics, comes as the Alberta government grappled with a controversial bill that would have allowed health-care providers to refuse to provide medical care if they object to it on religious or moral grounds.

I have yet to hear how many of these conscientious objectors have refused legitimate medical care or how euthanasia is an emergency procedure but I guess this Ivory Tower moron knows what he is talking about.




Once again - you can never, ever trust a communist:

The United States will be held responsible if the opportunity for diplomacy over the Korean peninsula issue is lost, North Korea's vice foreign minister was quoted as saying by the South's Yonhap news agency on Friday.

The comments by Vice Minister Choe Son Hui, who is a close aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a one of the North's key nuclear negotiators, were the latest effort by Pyongyang to press Washington for a change in attitude amid stalled nuclear negotiations.

"The United States would have to take full responsibility if the opportunity for diplomacy disappears in Korean peninsula for (the U.S.) not taking corresponding measures," Choe told reporters in Moscow after meeting Russian officials, according to the Yonhap report.

She did not elaborate on the corresponding measures she referred to were.

Also - who helped North Korea go nuclear? Why, Jeffrey Epstein's friend did:

In this case the power gap between the “strong” United States and “weak” North Korea was immense. The U.S. economy was roughly 100 times the size of North Korea’s, and the U.S. also boasted the world’s most capable conventional military forces plus a nuclear arsenal that could have incinerated every North Korean city. Yet this comparatively small country managed, despite the superpower’s awareness and opposition, to acquire a capability that made itself exponentially more potentially dangerous to the superpower.

This article overlooks the fact that Bill Clinton was also instrumental in putting North Korea in the position it is in today.




Pope Francis could have emphasised the enduring faith of the kakure kirishitan but elected not to do so:

In a long-awaited speech in Nagasaki, Pope Francis on Sunday strongly criticized the concept of nuclear deterrence and warned of arms races while calling on world leaders to instead use money and resources to cope with environmental issues and poverty that affect millions of people worldwide who are “living in inhumane conditions.”

Compare that to this:

The 82-year-old pontiff is set to start a four-day tour Saturday, visiting Nagasaki and Hiroshima on Sunday, followed by Mass at Tokyo Dome on Monday. He will be the first pontiff to visit in 38 years, following St. John Paul II in 1981.

Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, was 21 when he contracted pneumonia. He was in critical condition for three days, barely surviving surgery to remove part of his right lung.

This painful experience apparently deepened his faith in God. The disease, however, also forced him to give up on his aspiration as a young Jesuit in Argentina to be dispatched as a missionary to Japan.

Bergoglio’s request was rejected because of health concerns caused by his considerable loss of lung function after the operation. ...

Christianity was introduced to Japan in 1549 by missionary Francis Xavier, one of the society’s seven founding members. His achievements are widely taught in Japanese history classes. Pope Francis is the first non-European pope in about 1,600 years and the first Jesuit ever given the role.

Baptisms began rising drastically after Xavier’s arrival, and Japan had an estimated 300,000 Christians by the early 17th century.

At first, the Tokugawa shogunate allowed the Jesuit missionaries to continue trading with the Portuguese merchants who frequented its ports. But in 1614 it banned Christianity and began a massive persecution of Christians throughout Japan.

Many survivors, especially in Kyushu, hid their religious beliefs but secretly continued practicing their faith until the late 19th century, when Japan finally ended more than 210 years of seclusion. ...

Nagasaki, one of the main bases for missionaries in the 17th century, was also the place where a group of Japanese “hidden Christians” revealed themselves to a French priest in 1865. Their “rediscovery” over 250 years later is widely considered a miracle by Catholics worldwide.

Objections to nuclear weapons mean nothing if North Korea gets around to delivering Japan its third nuclear payload.

But enduring faith over the centuries means so much.

Servant of God Nagai Takashi and Saint Francis Xavier,  pray for us.

And now, a nice deed before Christmas:

As the holiday season approaches, the Canadian Armed Forces are asking residents to write personnel who are going to be away from family in the coming weeks.

The friendly request was shared on the Canadian Armed Forces in the United States Twitter account earlier this week.

“Many of us will spend the holidays with our families. Many of us will not,” the message said before sharing the Canadian Armed Forces mailing address.

“It would mean a lot if you did.”