Today in "The Government Is Corrupt and Awful" News

It's an ongoing thing, really ...




It's just another airplane trip:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is reviving his practice of holding periodic cabinet retreats outside the nation’s capital — an exercise in regional outreach that his office maintains is worth the added cost of ferrying ministers around the country.

Beginning Sunday, he and his 36 ministers will be holed up in Winnipeg for three days to discuss priorities and plot how to bring them to fruition in a House of Commons where the Liberals hold only a minority of seats.

That is to be followed by a three-day caucus retreat with Liberal MPs in Ottawa, in preparation for the resumption of Parliament on Jan. 27 — its first extended sitting since the Liberals were reduced to a minority in the October election.

The choice of Winnipeg is a nod to the East-West divide exposed in the election. The Liberals shut out entirely in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where voters were irate over environmental policies they believe have gutted the energy industry.

Why not Alberta?

Manitoba, where the Liberals lost three of six seats, is somewhat friendlier territory. The province’s premier, Brian Pallister, has signalled a willingness to try to bridge the divide between the federal government and his fellow conservative Prairie premiers.

There we go!

It is the usual lip service this rotten government engages in to appear it is serious about keeping this country together.

This is why Kenney must start severing ties or the country will truly be finished, far too finished for even China to unite it and exploit it until there is not a drop or oil or a tree left.


This China:

Consider the damage caused already:

Exhibit 1 — This week’s announced Phase One trade deal between the U.S. and China outlines a special trading relationship, leaving behind the world’s multilateral equal treatment template. This redefines the global economy as mostly two trading blocs and the “rest.”

Their bilateral deal demands that China dramatically hike agricultural imports from the United States in exchange for an end to tariffs. In essence, the deal will re-route Chinese market share away from other countries such as Canada, Australia and others.

Exhibit 2 — The new trade settlement is completely silent on Canada’s trading issues with China, namely the fact that Canada has paid a huge price for its loyalty to the Americans. Next week, Canada begins its controversial extradition hearing in Vancouver involving Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the United States who asked for her arrest in 2018.

Canada is meeting its legal obligations under the Extradition Treaty to do this, but China retaliated viciously by cancelling billions in canola and other agricultural imports, and imprisoning Canadian businessman Michael Spavor and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig. The two men have been in cells for a year without access to lawyers or family.

Canada complained about China to the WTO but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also asked President Donald Trump to help negotiate getting the two “hostages” released. In a recent Quebec TV interview, Trudeau asserted that the U.S. would “not sign a final and complete (trade) agreement with China that does not settle the question of Meng Wanzhou” and the fact that China jailed two Canadians in retaliation.

But this week’s Phase One deal not only harms Canada’s agricultural export ambitions but doesn’t address China’s “hostage taking.”

So, the brave new world is about navigating between two superpowers which is why Prime Minister Trudeau’s indirect swipe at the United States for creating the conditions that led to the murder of 176 passengers on a jetliner leaving Tehran was inappropriate and damaging.

Instead, Canada must carve a new path forward between China’s predation and America’s self-interest.

This is why Canada should fight back in tandem with the Americans. It must ban Huawei from the market and from financing universities to do its “research” here. It must pull its weight in NORAD and NATO in terms of military spending, something the Liberals have not done. It must out China for its human rights abuses. It must retaliate against Beijing’s bullying by halting all future student visas, immigration and work permits to residents of China until the two Canadian businessmen are returned safely to Canada. Officials must never bad-mouth American officials.

But Justin gets his money from China and he certainly has no interest in reviving the Albertan oil sector he has been tanking, not unless China can benefit from it.




The corrupt province of Newfoundland and Labrador gave the Liberals their victory in last year's election:

The federal government is working on mobilizing the Armed Forces to help Newfoundland and Labrador dig out from the monster blizzard that paralyzed eastern regions of the province with record breaking amounts of snow as forecasts call for more snow tonight.

But I thought that we were in the middle of a warming spell.


Also - because Rex Murphy:

I see the day (skeptics be damned) when Vancouver in May will look like Bonavista in January, icebergs in the harbour, and seals clustered around a space heater (powered by bicycle generators) warming their little flippers. We’ll know then that the fight against global warming has been won.

Although if you want present-day proof, just check out St. John’s, if it can still be seen under the snow.

Francophones care only about propping up their artificially-maintained oligarchy:

A former Progressive Conservative lawmaker who quit the government caucus to protest cuts to francophone services is joining the Ontario Liberal Party.

Amanda Simard made the announcement today at the Ontario legislature with the party’s interim leader John Fraser.

Simard was elected in 2018 at the age of 29 to represent the largely French-speaking eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.

She left the Tory caucus in the wake of the government’s decision to eliminate the independent office of the French-language services commissioner and scrap a planned French-language university.

Simard has been sitting as an independent since leaving the government caucus in November 2018.

With Simard joining their ranks, the Liberals will have six seats in the legislature — still short of the 12 needed to achieve official party status.

There will never be a pipeline built under this government, just as there will never be an address of minimum sentences or mass arrests of organised criminal gangs in British Columbia:

The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously rejected British Columbia’s move to regulate the flow of heavy oil across its borders, resolving one of the last court challenges to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

(Sidebar: Premier Horgan, it must be said, is a hypocritical trough-eater, but I digress ...)

**

A businessman “connected to Asian organized crime” was allowed by a British Columbia government employee to buy part of a B.C. Lottery Corp. casino, according to a confidential RCMP report obtained by Global News.

And the government employee was later hired in a B.C. casino.

The explosive accusation is just one example of organized crime’s alleged infiltration and corruption of B.C. government casinos, according to a January 2009 RCMP anti-illegal gaming unit report. ...

The report argued the RCMP anti-illegal gaming unit (IIGET) should target the drug cartels using B.C. Lottery Corp. casinos in combination with illegal casinos, to launder money.

At the time the IIGET was funded by B.C. Lottery Corp., and was only permitted to target illegal casinos.

But three months later, instead of following the report’s recommendations, B.C.’s government defunded and disbanded the illegal gaming unit.

Social conservatives are a part of the Canadian electorate. Calling their values "outdated" or "irrelevant" while accepting droves of illegal migrants whose own values include beating or killing girls and hating Jews and watching one's government drive away domestic and foreign investment is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face:

The point is, it’s far from clear that abandoning social conservatives would be the electoral boon that many anticipate. It could just as easily set the Conservative party further back from winning elections — especially when one considers the disproportionate contribution that social conservatives make in the form of donations, volunteer hours and votes. That as many as one-third of current Conservatives MPs are said to be pro-life may be a good proxy for where Conservative voters stand.