Christmas Week: "Arise, shine, for your light has come ..."

To all y'all, Hanukkah Sameach - חנוכה שמח

Budgets, like, balance themselves and stuff:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau won’t put a dollar limit on how far he’s willing to push the federal deficit.

In an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Morneau was asked about the ballooning deficit outlined last week in a fiscal update provided by him about the state of the economy amid concerns about a potential downturn.

That fiscal update showed the deficit is on track to deepen by billions of dollars, with the deficit for this fiscal year projected to be $7 billion higher than Morneau had promised in the budget earlier this past spring: $26.6 billion compared to $19.8 billion.

All the while, the Liberals are promising to keep spending more money.

Canadians voted for this.

Aside from Canadians, who votes to waste more money they don't have?


They also voted for this:

The Department of Environment in a confidential 2017 briefing note planned future increases in the carbon tax, but withheld the fact from voters. Then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna publicly denied any tax hike was considered: “This is not some sort of election trickery.”

Because it's not like small businesses can't afford it or anything:

A federal panel yesterday recommended Parliament enact a minimum wage of up to sixteen dollars an hour, the highest in the country. The increase, the first in twenty-three years, would “provide decency” for low-wage workers in the federally-regulated private sector, wrote advisers: “There would be some upward pressure for provincially-regulated private sector employees.”

Canadian drug distributors do not like Trump's drug plan at all:

Many of Canada’s drug suppliers cannot, or will not, agree to ship cheaper prescription medicines into the United States, a new challenge to the Trump administration’s push to reduce drug prices, companies and industry officials told Reuters.   ...

“We have not been contacted and we are not planning to participate,” said Loblaw Companies Ltd (L.TO), ...

(Sidebar: this Loblaw.)

... which owns Canada’s largest pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart. “Canadian patients currently face product and drug shortages and we are concerned this initiative may exacerbate what is already a critical issue.”

I wonder why:

No parent wants to outlive their children, but an Edmonton woman fears she might because her kids can't access the drug that would help treat their rare medical condition.

Two of Sharon Stepaniuk's three children have cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that causes severe damage to the respiratory and digestive systems.

"I really want my children to have the same potential that any other child has," Stepaniuk told CBC News.

There are drugs available that can slow or stop the progress of cystic fibrosis, but getting coverage for them in Canada is rare.

Justin is too busy to fight Trump on this. He is in Costa Rica right now. 

While Justin is on yet another vacation, other people are making themselves useful:

Senator Patrick Brazeau says he is pushing for a study into male and Indigenous suicide in the Senate as part of what he sees as “a new calling” for himself.

The senator, who pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman in 2015 and received an unconditional discharge later that year, said he doesn’t care about people who question whether he is credible and serious in addressing the issue in light of his past.

He told The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson his suicide attempt the following year gave him a new appreciation for the underlying issues that need to be tackled to help men and Indigenous Canadians battling mental health challenges.

No, your crappy profession puts you in danger:

But Mari, who asked Global News to identify her by first name only, says not all sex workers have the "privilege" of screening clients in this way.

Those who work on the street may not have the ability to screen at all, or have to negotiate services in unsafe environments since aspects of communicating about sex work are criminalized.

"It makes our work less safe," Mari says.

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea said Sunday leader Kim Jong Un has convened a key ruling party meeting to decide on steps to bolster the country’s military capability.

The meeting came amid speculation that the North could abandon diplomacy with the U.S. and launch either a long-range missile or a satellite-carrying rocket if Washington doesn’t accept its demand for new incentives to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations by year’s end.

**

The specter of new confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington hangs over meetings between China, Japan and South Korea this week, with growing risks North Korean actions could end an uneasy detente and upend recent diplomatic efforts.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping separately on Monday. They will then travel to the southwestern city of Chengdu for a trilateral meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. Though they are expected to discuss various economic matters, North Korea appears likely to dominate the agenda.

Japan, Korea - China is trying to kill you.




A nearly-forgotten past:

In recent decades, the struggle for Soviet Jewry has for the most part been forgotten, rarely making it into the curriculums of Jewish day and synagogue schools, camps and youth groups. The movement to free Soviet Jewry was itself more one of activism than education. Therefore, once the battle had been won, the topic fell off the radar of Jewish educational institutions.

“It needs to be put back on the educational agenda,” said David Waksberg, who was active in the struggle from 1981 to 1995 as executive director of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews and vice president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. 

While restoring murals in Saint Mary's Cathedral, an art conservator finds glass from the Halifax explosion:

Perched on a scaffold high above the altar in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Halifax, art conservator Jennifer Fotheringham was using a scalpel to chip away a thick layer of white paint when she heard something odd.

“As I was working, my blade would click on little pieces,” she said in a recent interview inside the ornate basilica, which is undergoing renovations in preparation for the 200th anniversary of its founding next year.

“As the outer layers of paint came off, I could see it was pieces of glass — quite a lot of glass, coloured and clear … big patches of it.”

At that moment, the most devastating event in the city’s history — the Halifax Explosion of Dec. 6, 1917 — suddenly came into sharp focus for Fotheringham, who has been working since June to restore five, century-old murals that depict several angels and Mary ascending into heaven.

The catastrophic explosion — caused by the collision of two wartime ships, one of which was laden with explosives — killed or injured more than 11,000 people and blew out windows more than 100 kilometres away.

Every stained glass window in the church was shattered that day, with the force of the blast embedding tiny shards into the walls and the murals. On the night of the blast, as the search for survivors became desperate, a blizzard enveloped the stricken city.

“You can see the drips where the water came in and was left to freeze on the murals,” says Fotheringham, who is originally from Halifax but taught in Europe after training as a conservator at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

“It all goes back to the explosion and the snowstorm that night.”