Remembrance Week: For a Monday

(source)

Whenever falsehoods are allowed to fester, this kind of bullsh--  poisons the environment:

Lawyers for a group challenging a refugee agreement between Canada and the United States called the idea that the U.S is a safe country for refugees an “increasingly obvious fiction” Monday, the first day of a landmark hearing that could topple a core pillar of Canadian asylum law.

(Sidebar: which is precisely why people attempt to sneak into the US illegally.)

The lawyers, for Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches, are asking the Federal Court of Canada to strike down the Canada/U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, arguing that the pact violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Every day women, men and children … come knocking at Canada’s door seeking safe haven,” Andrew Brouwer one of the lawyers for the applicants told the court. And every day “we push them back to the U.S.”

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this and this right here.)

The advocacy groups, along with three individual applicants, first sued the federal government in 2017. The hearing this week is scheduled for five days in downtown Toronto, before Justice Ann Marie McDonald of the federal court.

Advocacy groups that conveniently forgot these things:

On Monday, the Federal Court in Toronto will begin hearing weeklong arguments in a constitutional challenge to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the United States.

Those challenging the deal include the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International and several would-be refugees — including a woman who says she was raped by an MS-13 gang member in El Salvador.

**

Two teenage boys were allegedly treated as “subhuman” by their stepmom and father.

It’s alleged by the Crown that they were abused in unspeakable ways, burned with “hot knives,” almost starved, deprived of sleep and had their genitals clasped by pliers.

The new immigrants, sponsored by their stepmom in 2016 to come to Canada, were isolated from all family members.

According to allegations, the victims were hung upside down by their ankles for hours with nylon rope, multiple times over years. They were beaten with cables, barbecue tongs and hammers and one teen had his feet submerged in scalding hot water, causing the skin to peel off once he removed them from the bucket.

Perhaps Canada and the US are not safe from people like these.


Also - another failure of political multiculturalism and the refusal to make immigrants assimilate especially when doing so will aid them enormously:

Interpreters trained in medical terminology are more often provided for patients in Canada's larger centres, but a researcher from the University of Toronto said lack of access to interpretation could potentially result in unsafe health care through missed diagnoses and medical errors, suggesting language services should be a priority.

Dr. Shail Rawal, lead author of a study that includes data from Toronto General and Toronto Western hospitals, said patients with a chronic disease and limited English are more likely to return to the emergency room or be readmitted to hospital because of poorer understanding of discharge instructions and not taking medication as required compared with those who are proficient in the language and were discharged with similar health concerns.

It's just an economy:

Saskatchewan has gotten the green light to intervene on the side of the federal government and defend the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from another attempt to block it in court. 
 
Six Indigenous groups and nations are set to go before the Federal Court of Appeal to seek a judicial review of the federal cabinet’s second approval of the project, which will triple the capacity of an existing pipeline that sends Alberta oil to the west coast. 

They allege that Ottawa did not adequately consult them in a meaningful two-way dialogue, as required by a 2018 court ruling that struck down cabinet’s previous approval of the project for precisely that reason. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeated his commitment to build the expansion after an election result that saw his party wiped out in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The federal government owns the pipeline after spending $4.5 billion to buy it, and the expansion has been a symbol of his pledge to combine environmental stewardship with continued support for the resource economy. 

The Saskatchewan government confirmed Monday that it will be at Ottawa’s side as it challenges the judicial review, saying in a news release that the province had been granted leave to intervene in support of the project. 

“Saskatchewan will make submissions to the Federal Court of Appeal on the need to fairly balance the duty to consult with other matters of public interest, such as transportation infrastructure,” Justice Minister and Attorney General Don Morgan said in the release.

(Sidebar: it won't get built.)

**

The formation of a new Senate bloc could further complicate efforts by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pass legislation this winter, adding a new layer of unpredictability to the upper chamber.

A group of 11 senators on Monday announced they would be forming the Canadian Senators Group (CSG), part of an effort to ensure that various “regional interests” are properly represented in the Senate.

 **

Well, actually, if your province is getting equalization it’s because its tax base is lower than the national average tax base (albeit with both “national” and “average” defined in ways specific to whatever the latest version of the equalization formula is). But “having a lower tax base” is just another way of saying “poorer.” Some Quebec politicians understand this and say their aim is to get Quebec’s economy to a point where it no longer receives equalization. In the meantime, though, while they go about that, they don’t volunteer to give up the payments. ...

If Alberta does crash, so long as it doesn’t crash all the way down to the economic level of PEI, say, that reduces equalization. When provincial incomes are all closer to each other, the formula generates less equalization, as it should. If provinces all have pretty much the same tax capacity, it doesn’t take much federal spending to equalize their tax capacities.

So, yes, everybody should be aware of how worse times in high-income Alberta will reduce equalization. But I suspect most pipeline-blockers would say even if killing pipelines kills equalization, it’s a price we’re willing to pay.

Don't get in the way of stupidity. Let it shoot its infected morons in the feet.




Good. Go. Don't let the door hit you on the way out:

Elizabeth May, the head of Canada's minority Greens, said on Monday she was quitting to spend more time with her family just two weeks after an election in which the party won fewer seats than it had targeted.

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

Though few Canadians seem to be aware of this, the recent federal election campaign was fought under a new law that imposes severe penalties for publishing misleading statements on the internet during the writ period.

The new, amended Section 91 of the Canada Elections Act, which came into effect on September 11, threatens prison terms of up to five years and fines up to $50,000 for disseminating false information about "a candidate, a prospective candidate, the leader of a political party or a public figure associated with a political party."

Though an earlier version of the law required that the person charged be aware that the statement is false, the final version removed the word "knowingly" — and allows a charge to be laid even in a case of someone sharing a statement they believe to be true.

Even a cursory search of Twitter quickly turns up countless examples of Canadians who have posted statements that appear to violate the law.

Moreover, one of Canada's most mainstream political advocacy groups says it has pulled back some of the messaging it normally sends out every election cycle — out of a fear of potential punishment.

In English, we call that censorship. 

Why didn't she tell the government that she needs to throw some abortion on her breast cancer and she would have been flown to the US for treatment?:

Lokash is one of about 400 people in Newfoundland and Labrador who takes Tamoxifen, a pill that treats and prevents a certain type of breast cancer. 

In October, Eastern Health notified patients of a shortage. Health Canada is working with companies to increase production by January.

Lokash, who had a double mastectomy in 2018 and has been taking Tamoxifen since, finally found a five-month supply of the drug. Her mother lives in Toronto and managed to find a pharmacy there that had it in stock. 

"I'm feeling somewhat reassured for myself for the next few months, anyway, but I can't say that I'm feeling confident this is resolved."

Lokash spoke to CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show in hopes of providing support to other people in the same situation, she said. 

Since securing her own prescription, she's continued to call drugstores in Newfoundland so she can pass on any useful information to others. She said she's been told by Costco staff that Tamoxifen is available there.

Last month, Eastern Health said officials are working on developing a contingency plan. Patients who can't find Tamoxifen can call the Cancer Care Centre at 1-844-923-1336.

Didn't we steal Greta Thunberg's childhood?:

In New Delhi, 40 million people are choking on the worst smog in years.

Air pollution is so bad in India's capital that the Washington Post's India correspondent Niha Masih compared the "dystopian" site to Mordor, the fictional volcanic waste-land in "The Lord of the Rings."

Taiwan is right to be cautious:

China unveiled measures on Monday to further open its markets to firms from self-ruled Taiwan, including capital raising, as Taiwan warned its people not to be taken in by moves at "enticement" ahead of a January presidential election.

Jesus - who was Jewish, by the way - died for the sins of all. You, sir, are not Him:

On the 40th anniversary of the start of the 1979 siege of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, one of the leaders of the takeover, a former hardline student named Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, says he’s sorry for his actions and would take those days back if he could.

“Like Jesus Christ, I bear all the sins on my shoulders,” Asgharzadeh told the Associated Press. “Our plan was one of students, unprofessional and temporary.”

A Holocaust survivor is reunited with a baby he saved decades ago:

They had lived together for perhaps six months in the woods when they heard the gunshots and commotion of a mass execution happening nearby. Emerging later from their bunker into the silent woods, they found seven dead bodies in the snow, fresh blood all around. Then, in a memory that forms the dramatic heart of the documentary, Smart recalled seeing movement from the other side of a river. There was another body, someone for the boys to help.

Yanek was reluctant to get wet. Already weak from malnutrition, a midwinter soaking in a river could be fatal. But Maxwell urged him, grabbed his hand, and took him along through the water.

There they found a woman who had been shot in the back, and still wriggling in her arms was a baby girl, uninjured and warm.

They took the child to their bunker, but knew they could not care for it. A Christian farmer who had been secretly helping them said he could not take a baby, but told them there was another group of Jews in hiding several kilometres away through the woods. So leaving the baby with Yanek, Maxwell ran for it.

By some astonishing fortune, the group he met included the baby’s aunt, who reclaimed the child. They returned to their own hiding place, telling Maxwell they would return for him, but never did. Yanek, meanwhile, had started shivering with an infection he could not kick.

Smart’s guilt enters the story at this moment, because although he convinced the Christian farmer to go find some medicine, Smart left Yanek in their bunker as he accepted a few days shelter at the farm, helping with the animals and sleeping in a warm barn. By the time he returned to the bunker with a package of food, it was empty. Yanek was dead on the ground a few metres away. He and the farmer entombed him in the bunker, as the ground was too hard to dig a grave. ...

With just the details of Smart’s story, an Israeli Holocaust researcher, Natasza Niedzielska, found the memoirs of a woman whose story matched up. This woman had written a book of her time hiding in the woods near a riverbank outside Buchach. It recalled her escaping across a river from the posse that killed her mother, who stayed in the river with her baby sister in her arms.

Presented on camera with the news that the baby girl is alive, Smart flushed red as tears came.

“If this baby is alive, it would just clear my conscience that (Yanek) didn’t die for nothing,” Smart said.

Soon after, in Haifa, he reunited with Tova Barkai, the baby girl, who is now elderly and non-communicative because of a disability, but has grown children of her own.

Looking her in the eye, and holding her hand, Smart said: “I feel better, and I don’t feel as guilty. It’s true. Yanek died. He’s a hero. He saved you and you have children.”