And the Rest of It

Budgets, like, balance themselves and stuff:

The federal deficit under Finance Minister Bill Morneau will balloon over the next fiscal year, leaving the minority Liberal government in a worse fiscal position than expected early in its second mandate.

In its fall economic update on Monday, Finance Canada said the deficit would rise to $26.6 billion in 2019-20, up from an earlier projection of $19.8 billion. Between 2019 and 2024, deficits are expected to outpace projections by roughly $35 billion.

Ottawa also saw a slight rise in its federal debt-to-GDP ratio, often cited as a crucial fiscal anchor by Morneau, from 30.8 per cent in 2018 up to 31 per cent.

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Morneau boasted about economic growth that will likely see Canada come second in the G7 next year; about historically low unemployment numbers, and wage growth that is outpacing inflation.

The finance minister wants Canadians to know that he and his colleagues are good fiscal managers who will continue to reduce the net debt to GDP ratio to make sure the economy is “strong and resilient” in the event of a downturn.

It was only after he had finished his epistle that reporters burst his bubble. Apart from the campaign promise to raise the basic personal exemption (accounting for $18 billion of the $57 billion in new spending over the next four years), there was no mention of the commitments made to Canadians during the election.

Rising deficits are putting pressure on the only fiscal anchor to which the government pays lip-service – the debt-to-GDP ratio – even before the risk of slowing growth in the economy impacts the denominator (in fact, the ratio will increase marginally in the current year, illustrating how little room for manoeuvre Morneau has).

People vote for governments that are most like them. The fact that forty-eight percent of Canadians are $200 away from insolvency tells one how they ended up with a government like this.




That pipeline will never get built:

A lawyer for a British Columbia First Nation is accusing the federal government of withholding key information about oil spills until after the latest consultation on the Trans Mountain pipeline was over.

All Alberta has to do is withdraw from chief national schemes. It's gradual bleeding and it will work:

Allowing Ottawa’s carbon tax law to stand would give the federal government a tool it could use to repeatedly chip away at provincial powers, lawyers for the Alberta government argued Monday.

If Justin spends money on Arctic rescue vehicles, how will he waste it on other things?:

The Viking Sky lost power in gale-force winds off the Norwegian coast last March. As the cruise ship drifted toward the rocks, five search and rescue helicopters winched 479 passengers to safety. 

No rescue of that magnitude could be pulled off in the Canadian Arctic. The Royal Canadian Air Force’s Cormorant maritime search and rescue helicopters are based in southern Canada and cannot reach the Northwest Passage without stopping to refuel. And like the Canadian Coast Guard’s icebreakers, the Cormorants are growing old.

The Liberals are once again painting Canada's oil and agriculture woes as something the Americans and the Chinese are doing. Who tried to shut down the oil industry? Who told China to f--- itself when it refused Canadian canola oil and then moved on to other markets? Who imposed a carbon tax on everyone and everything?

When we don't give our politicians the White Island volcano treatment, we fail ourselves and future generations:

Canada’s Agriculture Ministry should move more quickly to help farmers harmed by protectionist measures imposed by other nations, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.

There is simply no reason to keep these people in this country. None:

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the Montreal woman who was convicted of murdering her three daughters in so-called honour killings, says she is finally experiencing freedom now that she is serving time in a federal penitentiary and no longer under the thumb of her controlling husband.

No one forced you to kill anyone, b!#ch.

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Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 32, was handed 18 years for striking Const. Mike Chernyk with a car before stabbing him multiple times outside a football game in September 2017.

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea said it had successfully conducted another test at a satellite launch site, the latest in a string of developments aimed at “restraining and overpowering the nuclear threat of the U.S.,” state news agency KCNA reported on Saturday.

For the refreshing honesty of it all, I wish these guys would just come clean and admit that anything preventing them from making money is something they will actively campaign against:

Researchers had planned to enrol 40 women in the first double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of whether the effects of the “abortion pill” can be reversed. They stopped after 12 women over safety concerns.

Only forty?

I'll leave these right here:

Potential risks of medical abortion include:

• Incomplete abortion, which may need to be followed by surgical abortion
• An ongoing unwanted pregnancy if the procedure doesn't work
• Heavy and prolonged bleeding
• Infection
• Fever
• Digestive system discomfort

**

The most common complication, hemorrhage, was reported after 231 abortions.  Infection occurred in 107 cases, and there were 89 reported cases of retained products of conception. 

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In 2017, there were 143 reports of complications from abortions that were submitted by physicians, representing 7.7 percent less than the 155 reported in 2016. More than 71 percent of the complications were related to retained products of conception, 15 percent to bleeding and 7 percent to infection.

**
 

“Seven abortion facilities recorded a total of 106 complications to medication abortion in 2017 — a 44% increase over 2016 and a whopping 87% increase over complications reported in 2014.”

The most common side effect was “incomplete abortions,” (those can happen in surgical abortions, too) although “severe bleeding, failed abortions, and infection” were also common.

A number of women in the study suffered more than one complication from medically induced abortions.