Remembrance Week: For a Saturday

A lot going on ...




Give him what he wants or Justin will give him a $10.5 million cheque:

Newly released footage of a hostage-taking at an Edmonton border services office shows a man holding a knife to a three-year-old boy’s throat after talking about accessing his “UN lawyer.”

Edmonton police have charged a man in relation to the incident, though have not named him.

Oh, really? Why not?




Proof that the Canadian government abhors self-defense:

Alberta is making changes to prevent homeowners from being sued if they injure people committing crimes on their property.

Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer says the government will be introducing the amendments to existing legislation and making them retroactive to the start of 2018.

No one who walked into Canada uninvited and unhindered is a refugee.

So there's that:

The Canadian government on Friday denied that the rights of any refugees are threatened by a U.S.-Canada agreement that compels asylum seekers trying to cross the border into Canada to first apply for sanctuary in the United States.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement between the two neighbours, asylum seekers at a formal border crossing traveling in either direction are turned back and told to apply for asylum in the country they first arrived in.

Lawyers for unnamed refugees who had been turned away at the Canadian border are challenging the agreement, saying the United States does not qualify as a “safe” country under U.S. President Donald Trump.

This is what happens when one awards law degrees to emotionally retarded people.




We have a legal system, not a justice system:

A former Manitoba Deputy Attorney General says the reason for a second-degree murder charge in the horrific stabbing death of three-year-old Hunter Haze Straight Smith is likely due to a very narrow definition of what constitutes first-degree murder.

Local lawyer Bruce MacFarlane told 680 CJOB that there are only a limited number of circumstances that can support a first-degree charge, citing the killing of a police officer and killing in the midst of a kidnapping or sexual assault.

A judge revokes bail for Cameron Ortis:

A judge has revoked bail for a senior RCMP official awaiting trial on charges of breaking Canada’s secrets law.

Under the terms of bail set last month, Cameron Ortis was living with his parents in Abbotsford, B.C., had to report to the RCMP once a week and was forbidden from using any device that connects to the internet.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Marc Labrosse said Friday that Ortis would be returned to custody as a result of a review requested by the Crown.

The reasons for Labrosse’s decision and details of the Crown’s review application, heard last week, are covered by a publication ban.

I'm sure they are.




People surrendered their security to people like these:

Canada has long been a nation with a lot of guns. In fact, gun ownership rates in Canada are relatively high compared to much of the rest of the world. It’s only the immense amount of guns in the United States that makes Canada’s gun ownership rate appear low.

Canada also has (or generally had) a low rate of gun violence. Many countries that have far fewer guns per capita have much higher levels of gun crime than we do.

All of this shows that the issue isn’t actually the amount of guns, it’s who has those guns, and how those guns are used.

Guns in the hands of law-abiding Canadian firearms owners, hunters, sport shooters, and gun enthusiasts are NOT the source of gun crime.


Guns in the hands of Gangs are the source of gun crime.

**

Winnipeg Police are reorganizing their deployment of officers, removing officers from projects with the RCMP, closing some police stations, reducing school-education programs, and cutting back on the drunk-driving checkstop program, in order to reassign those officers to patrols in cars and patrols on foot.

Alberta could squeeze out of this by simply abolishing the carbon tax that is based on junk science anyway:

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is currently reviewing a proposal by Alberta to adjust its so-called “Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction,” or TIER, a carbon tax applied solely to heavy emitters. Alberta posted the proposed changes late October.

If Ottawa determines that the proposal falls short of its environmental thresholds it could enforce its own regulatory regime in the province, similar to the highly controversial consumption-based carbon tax that will come into force there in January 2020.

Such a move would further inflame tensions between Ottawa and the West, where resentment toward the federal government has been running high since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a narrow minority government and failed to win a single seat in Alberta or Saskatchewan. Observers said it is unlikely Ottawa would do so in the current political climate, despite criticism that the proposed changes will provide more cushion to the most emissions-intensive facilities in the province.

Start bleeding the east.




It's just an economy:

The Canadian job market stagnated unexpectedly in October, losing 1,800 net positions, while the unemployment rate remained at 5.5%, Statistics Canada said on Friday, as employment declined in the manufacturing and construction sectors.

Oh, this should be fun to watch:

Green Party interim leader Jo-Ann Roberts has started to outline ideas for the party's post-Elizabeth May future — and she's mulling over the idea of former Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould taking the helm.

"I'd like to have a conversation with her [to] see what her vision is, what does she see going forward," Roberts told host Chris Hall in an interview on CBC Radio's The House airing Saturday.

When asked whether Wilson-Raybould, now an Independent MP, might be willing to replace May as party leader, Roberts said it's "possible."

"Elizabeth asked her once before, and I think because they'll be working together quite closely in the House, I'd be very surprised if Elizabeth is not doing the recruiting," Roberts told Hall.

May announced Monday that she would be stepping down as leader of the Greens after more than 13 years on the job.

Roberts — who was appointed as interim leader earlier this week — said the Greens have yet to approach Wilson-Raybould about running for the leadership, but added there are other potential candidates to whom she's already reached out.

"I've spoken to a few other people in the country who aren't currently on the radar and I'm going to let them stay that way for a short period of time," she said. "I may pull back that curtain soon."

The same province that can get away with values tests, an independent pension plan and even denying permission to immigrate to a continental French woman has had to do an about-face:

Emilie Dubois says she is relieved after receiving the news late Friday from an Immigration Department official.

Dubois, a native of France whose mother tongue is French, had been denied a Quebec selection certificate after bureaucrats ruled her level of French wasn’t adequate under the Quebec experience program.

Read that sentence a few times.




Taking a page out of China's ghastly playbook:

A bill that could bring presumed consent for organ donation to Alberta is intended to save the lives of Albertans who die while waiting for an organ donation.

“This isn’t some daylight savings time issue. This is literally people living or dying, or living not very well,” said Calgary-South East UCP MLA Matt Jones, who introduced the private member’s bill, Friday.

The bill proposes a presumed consent or “opt-out” organ donation system to replace the existing opt-in system. Alberta would be the second province in Canada after Nova Scotia to adopt the opt-out system.

A total of 223 patients across the country died while waiting for an organ transplant in 2018, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Research. Of them, 23 died in Alberta. ...

The bill has a two-year delay in effect, giving government service providers a runway to educate the public and set up other systems and processes that will help to increase organ donation, Jones said.

Or get used to the idea of killing off relatives to get fresh organs.




My dear Dr. Park, Kim Jong-Un simply does not care for medical necessities when he can string along the American president with lies about disarmament:

As a doctor, my responsibility is to treat patients regardless of nationality, race, ideology or circumstance. This obligation stems from a belief in the value of human life superior to any other judgment. And as a Korean American, I have felt a particular sense of duty to help people on the Korean Peninsula — specifically in North Korea — where circumstances have created some of the most pressing humanitarian conditions in the world.

As one of the few American physicians who has worked to deliver humanitarian aid and improve health care in North Korea, I have seen how the North Korean doctors have adapted to scarcity. For example, they reuse intravenous catheters, scalpels, gauze and gloves by meticulously cleaning and resterilizing them — until they become unusable. The current sanctions are making matters worse. Critical parts for vital medical equipment are no longer able to be quickly and effectively imported.

During my most recent trip, an intra-operative X-ray machine, a piece of equipment which I depended upon for spine fracture repairs during my more than 20 visits to North Korea, was broken, making the operation much more treacherous. I fear the worsening of access to basic medicines and medical equipment in this isolated country will lead to increased deaths and disabilities.

Pope Francis will be in Japan on November 23rd. This will be the second visit of a pontiff to Japan and four hundred and seventy years after Saint Francis Xavier (the original X-man) arrived in Japan.

Also - as has been said over the centuries (public resurgence of the Jack Chick/leftist phobia of "papistry" and possible cooties it brings with it notwithstanding. More on that later.):

A sweeping theory published Thursday in the journal “Science” posits a new explanation for the divergent course of Western civilization from the rest of the world: The early Catholic Church reshaped family structures, and by doing so, changed human psychology forever after. 

The researchers claim that they can trace all sorts of modern-day differences between cultures – from donating blood to strangers to paying your parking tickets – to the influence of medieval Catholicism.

“The longer the duration under the church will predict greater individualism, less conformity and obedience, and more cooperation and trust with strangers. Our findings have big implications,” said Joseph Henrich, one of the researchers. ...

That story begins with kinship networks – the tribes and clans of densely connected, insular groups of relatives who formed most human societies before medieval times. Catholic Church teachings disrupted those networks, in large part by vehemently prohibiting marriage between relatives (which had been de rigeur), and eventually provoked a wholesale transformation of communities, changing the norm from large clans into small, monogamous nuclear families.

That cultural overhaul, the researchers argue, prompted tremendous changes to human psychology.

The team analyzed Vatican records to document the extent of a country or region’s exposure to Catholicism before the year 1500, and found that longer exposure to Catholicism correlated with low measures of kinship intensity in the modern era, including low rates of cousins marrying each other. 

Both measures correlated with psychology, the researchers found by looking at 24 different psychological traits of people in different cultures: Countries exposed to Catholicism early have citizens today who exhibit qualities such as being more individualistic and independent, and being more trusting of strangers.

The only people who are making a huge issue out of the Catholic faith Andrew Scheer refused to defend are people too unimaginative to veer from the old-stock Canadian WASP paranoia of Catholicism leading to dancing and its smelly hippy book-end, leftism's hatred of the de facto face of Christianity and its aversion to immorality and idiocy.

But don't take my word for it:

To be clear, even the dogs in the street, the very mutts of the alleyways, knew and know that Andrew Scheer was not running for PM to establish a new Catholic Dominion, that he was not some version of a Christian ayatollah plotting to bring Margaret Atwood’s grim fantasy upon Canadian politics.

So why bait him with that faux-concerned question? For good or ill we have for a long time now left the religion of our politicians out of their public performance. We question them on their ethics and integrity without reference to their moments in the Confessional or their private meditations and prayers.

When Justin Trudeau was rightly being tested by the press on his conduct during the SNC-Lavalin affair, did any in the press gallery ask: Mr. Trudeau, as a Catholic do you think your interference with the Justice Department is a sin? As a Catholic do you think your treatment of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman violates the commandment about “bearing false witness?” Even more to the point — As a Catholic how do you justify barring all MPs who oppose abortion (which in your faith really is a sin) from your caucus?

Well, if we’re going to have religious questions put to one leader, let’s put them to them all. What are Mr. Singhs’ private religious views on homosexuality and abortion? This latter is highly unlikely though. For as unspeakable as it may be to mention the obvious here, to question the religion of a person who is not Christian is, under the current progressive ethos, beyond the courage or depravity (take your pick) of any journalist who wishes to remain a journalist.

Is it both, Mr. Murphy?


 

What has the Treaty of Versailles taught subsequent generations? How not to stop a war:

By the time Germany stopped paying reparations, after its economy collapsed and the Allied powers agreed to a suspension in the summer of 1932, Germany was well on the road to Nazi fascism. Adolf Hitler would be chancellor a few months later.

To remind one:

A recently released survey reveals nearly half of Canadian respondents can’t name a single concentration camp from the Holocaust.

(Merci beaucoup and kamsahamnida)