A Post Like This Doesn't Happen That Often

You know, on a leap-day ...




Currently happening  - but ... but ... that UN seat!:

Thirteen Canadians who work with an Alberta-based humanitarian organization are among 15 people detained in Ethiopia, the charity said Saturday.

Canadian Humanitarian said a group of 10 Canadian volunteers, three Canadians on staff, and two Ethiopian staff members were in custody in the African country on allegations they were practicing medicine without permission and had dispensed expired medication.

The charity disputes those allegations.

 
I'm sure Justin will figure this out the way he did those two Canadian guys in Chinese prisons.

Oh, wait ...




That's okay. Richard Decarie can just run as an independent and show the useless Tories what happens when you try to lose to the village idiot:

The Conservative Party has released a “final list” of candidates approved to run in the leadership race, and Richard Décarie is not on it.

Décarie had prompted outrage last month after he went on national TV and said that in his view being gay is a choice, among other inflammatory remarks. His comments were strongly condemned by many Conservative MPs and leadership candidates including Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole, Marilyn Gladu and Rick Peterson.

The Conservative Party’s leadership nomination committee interviewed Décarie on Thursday, which indicates he had fulfilled everything else needed to enter the race, including a $25,000 fee and 1,000 signatures from party members. (To stay on until the final ballot, he would have needed to pay a further $275,000 and collect 2,000 more signatures by March 25.)

Not that this matters because Justin's Chinese bosses will never allow another election.


But, then again, they have much bigger problems at the moment.




Wow. People totally have that coronavirus thing under control:

South Korea saw the number of the novel coronavirus cases surpass 3,100 with 17 deaths on Saturday afternoon, with the coming days until early March considered a watershed for the country’s efforts to contain community spread of the deadly virus.

As of Saturday afternoon, the number of infections climbed by 813 - the biggest spike in a single day since the first case was reported in late January -- to 3,150, with most cases confirmed in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the newly identified cases, 657 cases, or 80 percent of the total cases, were reported in the country’s southeastern city of Daegu. Some 79 were from North Gyeongsang Province surrounding Daegu and 15 each from Seoul and Busan.  

Meanwhile, seventy-six countries have put South Korea on a restricted entry list.


Also - I'll just leave this right here:

In rural China pigs are valued possessions and sleep in the living room. That's why hundreds of members of a Catholic charismatic group from New York State had to go into isolation for a hitherto unknown respiratory disease in April 2003. A doctor from Sars-riddled Guangdong province went to a wedding at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, where he managed to infect 16 other guests with rooms on the same floor, including Kwan Sui Chu, an elderly lady staying there for one night. She flew home to Toronto and died, her death being attributed to a "chest infection". Her son Tse Chi Kwai went to Scarborough Grace Hospital and, as is traditional in Canada, was left on a gurney in Emergency for 12 hours exposed to hundreds of people. Lying next to him was Joe Pollack, who was being treated for an irregular heartbeat and whose wife wandered around the wards and came across an 82-year old man from a Catholic charismatic group. Mr Pollack, Mrs Pollack, the octogenarian charismatic and his wife all died, and their sons infected at least 30 other members of their religious group plus a Filipina nurse, who flew back to Manila and before her death introduced Sars to a whole new country.

The fellow with the irregular heartbeat, the Catholic charismatics, the Filipina nurse: none of these people went anywhere near rural China. They didn't have to. They were like Lincoln in that photograph: the Catholic charismatics from New York State didn't know the infected doctor from Guangdong was, metaphorically, standing next to them.

**

Italian authorities say the country now has more than 1,000 coronavirus cases and 29 people infected with the strain known as Covid-19 have died.

The head of Italy’s civil protection agency said during a news conference that the total number has reached 1,128. Officials also reported eight more deaths in the previous 24 hours of people with the virus, bring Italy’s total to 29.

Civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli said 52% of the people who tested positive for the virus in Italy are being isolated in their homes and not sent to hospital.

** 

Uh-oh:

The Vatican moved on Friday to dismiss speculation that Pope Francis was anything more than “slightly unwell” as the 83-year-old Roman Catholic leader cancelled official audiences for the second day.

The Vatican has not specified what the pope is suffering from.

**

A middle-aged patient in Washington state became the first person to die from the 2019 novel coronavirus inside the United States, officials said on Saturday as they announced additional cases and declared a state of emergency there.

**

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw military drills on Friday, state media KCNA said on Saturday, a rare public outing amid efforts to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus in the isolated country.

North Korea has not confirmed any cases of the virus, but state media said a month-long quarantine period had been imposed for people showing symptoms and "high-intensity" measures were taken including reinforcing checks in border regions and at airports and sea ports.

I suspect the problem there to be quite bad but one will never hear of it. 

**

She's not saying that you should panic but, yeah, you should probably panic:

And now, Patty Hadju is escalating the warning, telling Canadians to stockpile food and medicine, as reported by the Canadian Press:

“Health Minister Patty Hajdu is encouraging Canadians to stockpile food and medication in their homes in case they or a loved one should fall ill with the novel coronavirus, despite the relatively low risk of contracting the disease in Canada. 

It’s good advice for any potential crisis from a viral outbreak to power outages, she said Wednesday. 

“It’s good to be prepared because things can change quickly,” she said.“It’s really about, first of all, making sure that you do have enough supplies so if someone in your family becomes ill, if you yourself become ill, that you have what you need to survive for a week or so without going outside.”

So, we’ve gone from “no threat,” to “stockpile food and medicine.”

There's someone who doesn't deserve a pension.

**

It's just an economy:

With the viral outbreak spreading to more countries, the price of oil has dropped precipitously as global demand weakens even further.

That has sent shares tumbling for oil giants like Exxon and Chevron while smaller producers with idling rigs continue to slash jobs.

 

I'm sure this can easily be resolved:

With protests stalling Canada’s railways, shipping companies on the St. Lawrence seaway say they’re ready to help move vital goods, but high water levels, controlled by a major dam, are keeping them at the dock.

From the most corrupt government ever re-elected:

According to Parole Board of Canada documents obtained by Global News, four out of the five convicted terrorists released from prison in 2019 have not changed their beliefs and still pose public safety risks.

The terror convicts still believed to be radical are: Pamir Hakimzadah, who travelled to Turkey to join ISIS, Carlos Larmond who was part of an ISIS cell in Ottawa and his associate Suliman Idris Mohamed, and Kevin Omar Mohammed, who joined al-Qaeda in 2014.

Since 2016, terrorists have faced lax sentences of seven years or less according to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. These sentences are even shorter when taking into account credit for time in custody and other factors. 

For example, Hakimzadah was convicted of leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group on Feb 28, 2019, but was only sentenced to six months in prison and released on June 28, 2019. 

**

An internal government report has predicted that Canada will have to deal with surge of “climate refugees” in the near future.

For the record, Canadians aren't "colonisers" or "settlers". They are tax-paying citizens whose absence from the non-island that is Canada would mean starvation for the non-First Nations":

Yet, our ancestors came here from around the world, often with nothing at all, and built this country up into an advanced industrial nation.


Building on the legal and philosophical foundations of Western Civilization, our ancestors built Canada into a country that was able to put a tremendous effort into some of the world’s most historic conflicts, including our amazing contribution in World War Two against the Axis powers, when – despite our small population – we became a manufacturing powerhouse and sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight for freedom.

Yet, despite all the amazing contributions of our nation, those in power and in the academic elite are trying to denigrate and delegitimize it all.


Their key tool in that delegitimization is the term ‘settler.’

Apparently, we are expected to believe that every Canadian – except Indigenous People – is a ‘settler’ in Canada. Whether you were born here, whether you immigrated here, whether you were a refugee, apparently we are all nothing but ‘settlers.’


That is total bullshit.

Canadians are not settlers. We are Citizens.

For a Friday

Aaahhh, the glorious week-end ...




It's just an economy:

Fear over the economic fallout from the spreading coronavirus tightened its grip on global markets, which have lost almost US$6 trillion so far this week and sent U.S. equities to a seventh straight loss.

The S&P 500 plunged more than 3 per cent Friday and is now down over 15 per cent from its record.

The index is mired in its longest slump in over three years and careening toward its worst week since the financial crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed more than 4,000 points this week. Treasury yields sank to all-time lows, with the two-year tumbling through 1 per cent and 30-year rates under 1.7 per cent. Crude slid toward $44 a barrel, while gold lost 2 per cent. European shares headed for August lows and Asian equities fell more than 2.5 per cent.

Canadian stocks plunged Friday morning, playing catchup to the rout in global markets after a technical glitch closed the main exchange two hours early in the midst of Thursday’s meltdown.

It's a good thing, therefore, that the government, in all of its blinkered wisdom, might decide to, maybe, warn others (or not) about maybe, possibly not going to hot-zone countries.

Possibly.

(SEE: horse, barn, run out of, too late)




The country is broken, you say? You fear your loss of standard of living?

Suck it up. You voted for it:

In the wake of regional discontent from the western provinces and blockades jamming up the country’s rail network, a towering majority of Canadians agree with the statement, “Right now, Canada is broken.”

Sixty-nine per cent of Canadians agree with the statement, rising to 83% in Alberta, found a DART & Maru/Blue poll conducted for the National Post.

**

Teck pulled the plug because Canada is now an untenable political risk. It no longer matters who does or doesn’t approve resource and infrastructure projects. They simply cannot be finished.

Canada, in other words, is not worth the risk. And that means living standards will fall, capital and jobs will continue to leave, and the country’s million-strong and restive Indigenous people, among other Canadians, face diminishing opportunities. 

Put another way, even if Ottawa approved the project, Teck had no political cover. For the past five years, Trudeau and British Columbia’s NDP-Green regime have piled on obstructions, permitted endless court challenges, allowed illegal railway or road barricades, acceded to NGO and Indigenous misbehavior, and frightened away billions of dollars’ worth of investment.

Also:

Indeed. You hew closer to mob rule, or cancel culture, or whatever passes for consensus-building these days. It’s where the loudest voices — the radical environmentalists, anarchists and anti-capitalists successfully piling on to Indigenous protests — call the tune, and the prime minister dances as fast as he can. As for the silent majority, desperately trying to take the last functioning GO train home to pick up their kid from daycare, or hoping to get a job at one of the projects now on the scrap heap, they’re out of luck.

I believe that is the point:

A frustrated auditor general of Canada says a lack of government funding has created significant technological, cybersecurity and staffing issues for his office, hampering his ability to fulfil his mandate.

“Our main IT system is running on DOS. That creates all sorts of issues for us, both in a security perspective and an operational perspective because they’re not supported anymore. You can’t turn to a supplier and get updates, because they don’t exist. That’s our reality,” interim auditor general Sylvain Ricard told MPs during a meeting of the Public Accounts committee Thursday.

Also - why appeasing people is pointless. They hate you already and nothing will change that:

The Senate has voted to suspend Sen. Lynn Beyak a second time over derogatory letters about Indigenous Peoples posted on her website.

Senators have approved a report from the upper house’s ethics committee, which recommended Beyak be suspended without pay for the duration of the current parliamentary session.

The report was adopted “on division” — meaning with some opposition, though there was no recorded vote.

Shrinking spending is what people have to do when their previous governments make a total hash of the economy:

The Alberta government is expecting an economic rebound in coming years, it said in releasing its budget on Thursday, predicting that the upswing for the beleaguered province will get unemployed Albertans back to work and help stabilize the province’s finances. At the same time, the government made it clear that it does not see more government spending as a way to help boost the economy and instead will continue to shrink public expenditures.

Terrorism is the new normal in Canada.

But don't take my word for it:

Saad Akhtar, the Toronto man who allegedly beat a woman to death with a hammer in a terrorist attack last week, sparked a bomb scare and evacuation at the police station as he surrendered, Toronto police confirm.

**

Life has been disorienting for Khalid Awan since he was deported to Canada from the United States, where he served a 14-year sentence for transferring money to a Sikh extremist group in Pakistan.

Cell phones confound him. Police cars frighten him. Although pushing 60, he had to go back to college to make himself employable again. And where have all the video stores gone?

“It’s very hard,” he said.

Awan is among a handful of Canadians who’ve come home after having been imprisoned abroad for terrorism-related offences — in his case “providing money and financial services” to the Khalistan Commando Force.

Canadians actually believe that there is an abortion law in this country, that it is impossible to figure out if a pregnant woman is carrying a boy or a girl and that even a long overdue discussion on sex-selection abortions is unreasonable and will lead to Canada's becoming a Christo-fascist theocracy as opposed to haven for selfish parents-to-be or misogynist cultures that have a dim view of women.

Read the comments and prove me wrong:

Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay once called social-conservative causes a “stinking albatross” thrust onto the election agenda that hung around leader Andrew Scheer’s neck and kept the party from winning a majority last fall.

But though MacKay blamed the Liberals for forcing the issue then, a Conservative MP put them back on the agenda just as the deadline arrived Thursday to register in the party’s leadership race.

Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall put forward a private member’s bill this week that would ban sex-selective abortions, the practice of terminating a pregnancy in order to choose a child’s sex.

Wow. People totally have a handle on this coronavirus thing:

A seventh person in Ontario has tested positive for coronavirus, the province's ministry of health said Friday.

The man in his 50s recently travelled to Iran and is now at home in self-isolation, the ministry said in a statement.

**

The World Health Organization on Friday increased its coronavirus risk assessment to "very high" as cases outside of China continue to increase. But officials caution the virus can still be contained if the chain of transmission can be broken.

... says the organisation that once praised North Korea's healthcare system and said that we had nothing to worry about.

Mid-Week Post

The countdown to Easter begins ...




From the most morally and politically corrupt government ever re-elected:

The Liberal government has been forced to apologize after coming clean about concealing nearly $200,000 in contracts awarded to an environmental group.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said he was “deeply sorry” after the omission was discovered by a Conservative MP from Alberta.

In an Inquiry of Ministry, MP Earl Dreeshen (Red Deer-Mountain View, Alta.) asked for details of contracts awarded to the Calgary-based Pembina Institute from 2017 to 2019. The amount was recorded as “nil” in a statement signed by O’Regan and his department suggested it had “not granted any contracts to the Pembina Institute.”

But the government had, in fact, paid Pembina $182,958 for contracts, in addition to $1.7 million in federal grants.

This explains the blockades and the tanking of our oil industry.

 

To wit:

As of September 19th, 2018 the Criminal Code of Canada was quietly altered to allow for what’s called a ‘Deferred Prosecution Agreement’ (DPA), essentially a special plea deal for the well-connected.

Don’t remember hearing of this? That’s because the Liberals did their best to keep it quiet by burying a clause allowing DPA’s in a last-minute addition to their 582-page Omnibus Budget Bill.

The Liberals were so successful keeping the DPA clause a secret, that even Liberal MP’s on the House of Commons justice committee studying the Omnibus Budget Bill were surprised.

Liberal MP Greg Fergus said at the time he was worried the change appeared to be designed to give those implicated in white-collar crimes “a little slap on the wrist”

“It seems we’re letting those with the means have an easier time of it than those who don’t have the means,” the Liberal MP opined.

The last minute addition of DPA’s into the omnibus budget bill came to be known as the ‘SNC-Lavalin’ clause, because it was added only after intense lobbying efforts from the Montreal-based construction giant.

 

Bitter and unwilling to accept that provinces have rights, Justin pouts his way to the Supreme Court where there he may get the judgment he doesn't deserve:

After playing out in provincial appellate courts, the carbon tax fight will be heading next to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“The government looks forward to the Supreme Court of Canada’s deliberations and is confident that the price on pollution is within federal jurisdiction,” Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Monday.

You can feel the smug from here.

 


What a vain little sh-- he is:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken Canada’s campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council directly to African diplomats with a speech that tried to emphasize his boyhood connection to the continent.

Trudeau fondly recalled accompanying his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, on trips to Africa as a child and later as a young adult backpacker.

Canada is falling apart and all he cares about is his post-Canada ruining career.

 

 

Like so: 

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture called for “decisive action” from the federal government Tuesday as it warned that rail blockades across the country were causing critical supply shortages for farmers and hurting their ability to get products to market.

Canadian farmers are being “severely and harshly impacted” by the blockades despite having nothing to do with the dispute over a B.C. pipeline project, federation president Mary Robinson said during a news conference attended by dozens of representatives from the agricultural industry.

 

 

Not that the government - or Canadians - care. The government insists on dragging its feet:

 

Liberal MPs temporarily thwarted an attempt by a Bloc Quebecois MP to immediately debate the "Indigenous crisis" involving rail and road blockades across the country at a Commons committee Tuesday as the political fallout of the disruptions continues to dominate Parliament Hill.

 

 

 

It's called terrorism: 

Ontario Provincial Police say fires at a second protest encampment in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory temporarily brought freight train traffic to a halt.

Police spokesman Bill Dickson says demonstrators lit a fire next to the railway tracks immediately after a train moved through the area near Belleville, Ont., this morning.

He says demonstrators then threw a few tires on the tracks and lit them.

 

Also: 

We’ve spent years declaring that Canada is garbage, hoping that an attitude of self-abasement would somehow lead us to “reconciliation.” We forgot that when garbage talks, no one listens.

Justin is not without lap dogs of his own:

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister hinted at a potential breakthrough with the federal government on a carbon tax Tuesday, and did not rule out introducing a tax in the upcoming provincial budget.

Roll over! Play dead!

 

Why, Mr. Kenney, it seems that you have no fight in you:

The speech ended with one of the major themes of Kenney’s premiership:  a “fair deal” for Alberta within the Canadian federation, including allowing for citizen-initiated referenda — on any subject — and the replacement of the federal parole board with a provincial one.

You will have no fair deal in Canada, not unless you make Quebec pay through the nose.

 

 

Also - other provinces had better pay attention. If Alberta gets clipped, it would mean that Ottawa can rule unilaterally and against provincial and territorial interests: 

The Alberta government is demanding that the federal carbon tax no longer apply to the province after the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled the tax unconstitutional because it infringes on provincial jurisdiction.

Alberta Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer is also asking the federal government to “work out a process for the reimbursement to Albertans of taxes paid,” in a letter sent Wednesday morning to federal Justice Minister David Lametti.

Pay through the nose, Ottawa.

 

 

In the end, she loved Big Brother:

Sen. Lynn Beyak sought to stave off suspension from the upper chamber Tuesday, pledging to do more to make amends for the harm she caused by posting offensive letters online.

Had this been Canada, he would have been re-elected already:

As of Wednesday morning, over 400,000 South Koreans have signed an online petition calling for the impeachment of President Moon Jae-in over the government’s missteps in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

Koreans punish ignorance and inaction. We reward it.

That said, had Moon acted earlier, coronavirus cases in South Korea would not be topping 1,000.




It's about time:

The health ministry on Tuesday rolled out a basic set of policies on handling COVID-19 infections as the government tries desperately to curb the spread of the disease within the limited window available.

The move came amid apprehension over the growing spike in domestic cases and their deepening severity, with reports emerging Tuesday of the fourth fatality among those previously aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

The nation’s total tally of infected people has risen day by day, widening as of Tuesday to 17 prefectures.

By the evening, a host of cities had reported cases, including five in Hokkaido, three in Nagoya and one each in Kumamoto, Sapporo and Nagano — the first in Nagano Prefecture.

 
Had there been flight restrictions, I'm sure this wouldn't be happening right now:

A woman who recently travelled to Iran has been diagnosed as Ontario's fifth novel coronavirus patient, Ontario's top public health official announced Wednesday.

Dr. David Williams offered few details about the Toronto-based case, which involved a woman in her 60s. But the province's chief medical officer of health said the case came to light on Monday when she arrived at a local hospital emergency department.

While most previous patients diagnosed with the virus known as COVID-19 had recently spent time in China, the epicentre of the global outbreak that's infected an estimated 80,000 people so far, Williams said the Toronto woman's recent travel history centred on Iran where a rash of new cases have recently emerged.

"The patient was cared for at the hospital using all appropriate precautions, including being isolated as she was tested for COVID-19," Williams said in a statement.

He said the woman was ultimately released and sent home to go into self-isolation. Health officials are monitoring the situation and following up with the woman's close contacts, he added.

Because that will totally work. 

This is the same government that learned nothing from SARS but knows its priorities:

The federal health minister says charging residents for abortions is a breach of the Health Act, and is threatening penalties if New Brunswick doesn't fall in line.

This comes after New Brunswick's only private abortion clinic, Clinic 554 in Fredericton, said it can't keep operating without provincial funding.

New Brunswick does not fund out-of-hospital abortions, something Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to fix during the last election.

New Brunswick doesn't think it's acting out of place.

Hey - what about those drug shortages?  Is that a priority, Patty?

(Insert Own Title Here)

Without a doubt, Justin's economy-ruining policies and his unoriginal hatred of Alberta are the reasons why billions of dollars just disappeared within twenty-four hours:

Make no mistake, the end of Teck Resources’ Frontier oilsands mine is Justin Trudeau’s fault — plainly, clearly, unequivocally.

The project’s cancellation also means the radical fringe is in charge of Canada, not the government, the courts or the police.

Teck’s decision, announced Sunday, will also have far-reaching effects on the entire Canadian economy, not just the energy sector.

There is no doubt this is Justin Trudeau’s fault.

Oh sure, the Liberals will try to spin this as an economic decision by the company. The feds will insist the price of oil is too low to make such a huge investment viable.

That’s what the Liberals claimed in 2017 when the Energy East pipeline was cancelled. ...

Last week, Teck said that despite a temporary fall in the price of oil, Frontier still made economic sense. What doesn’t make sense, though, is investing $20 billion in the oilsands when it is clear the federal government will not back you up when protests arise, even if the courts say they should.

Would you invest a nickel in Canada right now when all anyone has to do to choke off the economy is throw a few wooden pallets across a rail line or highway and claim to be defending Indigenous rights or the environment?

(Sidebar: these malcontent acts of disruption and criminality but more on that later.)

Canadians voted not only for a sad, loopy little fruit but someone who wants to see this country fail in every possible respect.

One knows Justin to be a vile, self-appreciating narcissist with an unwillingness to accept and apologise for his many grave errors but it takes a special kind of imbecility and self-hatred to vote for someone who you know is destroying the country. Is it fear of success? Is simply commonplace idiocy? Is it the willingness to forgive anything as long as the right guy does it, not mater how immoral or illegal?

These questions will linger on as long as Canada remains unfragmented.

So, not long.




Who has "solidarity" for paid malcontents who stop people from going to work?:

(Sidebar: to the bribed press, your use of the word,"solidarity", to legitimise what are clearly criminal acts is the reason why you accepted government bail-outs. No one can be that stupid and partisan and still expect to have credibility with the reading public.)

Thousands of commuters had their morning routines disrupted Tuesday after a blockade popped up on a popular rail line near Hamilton and halted passenger train service.

GO Train service in Hamilton and all points on the route to Niagara Falls, Ont., has been stopped since Monday evening, said Metrolinx spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins.

**

Provincial police in Haldimand County are reporting that part of Highway 6 in Caledonia has been closed by a solidarity demonstration.

The OPP asked commuters to be patient if they are delayed. The affected portion of the highway was between Argyle Street South and Greens Road, near the Six Nations reserve.

Why does that sound familiar?


Also - because respect the land ... or something:

A pickup truck of tires has just arrived at second blockade...protestors adding them to the fire lit an hour ago #Tyendinaga pic.twitter.com/OIiAmtsVT3

— Heather Wright (@HeatherCTV) February 24, 2020

(Merci)




We may never know his motive:

A hammer attack that killed a 64-year-old woman in Toronto on Feb. 21 has been linked by police to terrorism, with the alleged murderer now facing a terrorism-related charge.

Saad Akhtar, 30, was already facing a first-degree murder charge over the apparently random killing of the woman, attacked by a man with a hammer on Friday evening.

But on Tuesday, prosecutors updated charge to “murder – terrorist activity.” The charge applies to a murder “if the act or omission constituting the offence also constitutes a terrorist activity.”

“As part of our investigation into the homicide, we came across evidence that lead us to believe there may be a terrorism-related offence,” said Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray.

Then you go to bed each night hungry, @$$hole:

Statistics Canada has revealed the number of Canadians living below the poverty line, according to 2018’s tax return figures.

The agency says that 3.2 million Canadians are living below the poverty line—which tops out at 8.7 percent of the population, compared to 9.5 percent in 2017.

The child poverty rate has also decreased since 2012, dropping from 15 percent to 8.2 percent in that time. Still, that totals out to 566,000 children living in poverty.

Canada’s child poverty rate of 8.2 percent has not drastically changed one way or the other since 2017.

Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen touted the numbers as a victory in his speech addressing the figures this morning in Ottawa.

“This is the largest three-year reduction in poverty in Canadian history, and poverty is at its lowest point on record in Canada.”

Trust a Liberal to make everything sound like it is working as it should.




Wow. People totally have a handle on this coronavirus:

Canada's border measures to guard the country against incoming cases of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, will likely become less effective as the virus spreads, the country's chief medical officer Dr. Theresa Tam said Monday.

(Sidebar: ... says the lady who told everyone not worry and that everything was being handled. Fire. Her.)

**

China and South Korea on Tuesday reported more cases of a new viral illness that has been concentrated in North Asia but is causing global worry as clusters grow in the Middle East and Europe.

China reported 508 new cases and another 71 deaths, 68 of them in the central city of Wuhan, where the epidemic was first detected in December. The updates bring mainland China’s totals to 77,658 cases and 2,663 deaths.

South Korea now has the second-most cases in the world with 893 and has had a near 15-fold increase in reported infections in a week, as health workers continue to find batches in the southeastern city of Daegu and nearby areas, where panic has brought towns to an eerie standstill.

Also:

A vault in the Arctic built to preserve seeds for rice, wheat and other food staples will contain one million varieties with the addition on Tuesday of specimens grown by Cherokee Indians and the estate of Britain’s Prince Charles.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built on an Arctic mountainside in 2008, was designed as a storage facility to protect vital crop seeds against the worst cataclysms of nuclear war or disease and safeguard global food supplies. The vault has the capability to store 4.5 million varieties of crops with an average of 500 seeds for each variety.

Dubbed the “doomsday vault,” the facility lies on the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and is only opened a few times a year in order to preserve the seeds inside.

For a Monday

Well, this must hurt Justin's feelings:

The Alberta Court of Appeal has ruled that the federal carbon tax is not constitutional.

In a 4-1 decision, the court says the legislation that brought in the tax erodes provincial jurisdiction.

The Alberta government had argued in its challenge of the tax that climate change isn't a national issue requiring overriding federal intervention.

The federal government countered by saying climate change is a national and global concern that can't be left to each of the provinces to take on alone.

The majority of the Appeal Court judges sided with the province. 

"The act is a constitutional Trojan horse," said the portion of the decision written by three of the four majority justices.

The court rejected federal arguments that reducing greenhouse gases met the legal test of being a national concern.

"Almost every aspect of the provinces' development and management of their natural resources ... would be subject to federal regulation."

Which is why: Kenney must either separate Alberta from the rest of Canada or start its own programs funded by repayments from Quebec and every other province needs to get on board and assert its provincial rights. 

PM Blackface, meanwhile, hasn't paused no giving a sh-- about the country's tanking economy:

Teck Resources has officially withdrawn its application to build the $20-billion Frontier oilsands mine, just days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was expected to issue a ruling on the contentious project.

(Sidebar: this Teck Resources.)

**

Shares in Teck Resources Ltd. are trading down almost five per cent after the company said it had withdrawn its application for a massive oilsands mining project citing uncertainty over climate change policies.

**

“The timing of the decision is not a coincidence. This was an economically viable project, as the company confirmed this week, for which the company was advocating earlier this week, so something clearly changed very recently.”

Earlier Sunday, Environment Minister Jason Nixon was proudly announcing crucial new agreements with Mikisew Cree First Nation and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

Technically, they related to dealings between the province and the First Nations, but they had a bearing on Teck and thus made the agreement of 14 Indigenous groups complete.

**

The Fort McKay Metis was one of the 14 Indigenous groups that had signed benefits agreements with Vancouver-based Teck for Frontier, a proposed 260,000 barrels per day oilsands mine that would have required 7,000 people to build it. 

Quintal said Teck leadership had been in meetings for four consecutive days and came to the decision Sunday afternoon. The cancellation of the project has come as a “shock” to his community.

**

The cancellation follows the West Coast tanker ban, the stalled Trans Mountain and the Coastal GasLink pipelines, the rejection of Energy East and the dense thicket of always swelling regulations, assessments, protests and court cases. Teck is the last of a dark chain of projects that have been scrapped or strangled, which has resulted in billions of dollars being chased away from the country and tens of thousands of jobs aborted, while the Trudeau government danced and chattered away with its useless crusade against carbon-dioxide emissions. Rarely, if ever, has folly been granted such total rein, and incompetence a wider playground.

Meanwhile:

The Alberta government has struck deals with two northern Alberta First Nations over a proposed open-pit oilsands mine that’s awaiting Ottawa’s approval.

The Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations had previously reached deals with Teck Resources Ltd. for the Frontier mine, but were still negotiating with the province over environmental and cultural concerns.

But ... but ... they don't want to be in the oil business!

Except for Quebec because Quebec is special:

“Our government is proud to partner with the Government of Quebec on this historic legislation to establish joint management of offshore petroleum resources. The Accord will create jobs and economic growth and prosperity for Quebecers while ensuring the safe and environmentally responsible development of petroleum resources in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Greg Rickford Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources said.

I think I know why all of this is happening:

Anti-pipeline lobbyist, Tides Canada, paid $220k to Wet’suwet’en. Sarah Goodman, former VP Tides, is now Trudeau's top climate guru. Even Heritage Minster, Guilbeault, got $100k from Tides for his foundation. Wonder why illegal blockades still up? Retweet. https://t.co/rpDGdQjzLP pic.twitter.com/Zif5sdFgyB

— Canadian Yoda (@Labrie8) February 21, 2020

 

Because priorities:

The Trudeau government has introduced legislation aimed at making it easier for intolerably ill Canadians to get medical help to end their lives.

The bill would scrap a provision in the law that allows only those already near death to receive medical assistance in dying — as ordered by a Quebec court last fall.

However, the bill would also create a two-track approach to eligibility for assisted dying, based on whether a person’s natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

For those deemed to be near death, the government is proposing to drop the requirement that a person must wait 10 days after being approved for an assisted death before receiving the procedure.

As well, it is proposing to drop the requirement that a person must be able to give consent a second time immediately prior to receiving the procedure.

(Sidebar: oh, that won't snowball into anything.)


The government drags its feet on arresting American-paid malcontents and rejuvenating the economy it clearly hates but when old people have to day, it's out of the way!




Because the government:

Money laundering has distorted British Columbia’s economy, fuelled the opioid crisis and overheated the real estate market, the province argued at the start of an inquiry into the criminal activity on Monday.

We don't have to trade with China:

Sharp-eyed readers will note that Huawei’s use of “A9” as its code for North Korea was first unearthed by the Washington Post‘s Ellen Nakashima, who reminds us that journalists who write about North Korea sanctions don’t have to be lazy or ignorant of the subject. Consequently, Nakashima did first-rate reporting as a matter of both law and fact. When she found evidence of the North Korean investments, she asked me what sanctions this conduct might have violated. I wish I could have given her a more satisfying answer. Given the years when the transactions occurred, and uncertainty about the specific dates, it wasn’t clear to me that Huawei had violated any North Korea sanctions regulations at all. The prosecutors in EDNY were obviously uncertain, too, and so they charged fraud instead–specifically, bank fraud and wire fraud. Their theory is that Huawei’s American bankers asked it if it did any business in Iran or North Korea, and Huawei lied to fraudulently obtain financial services and access to the U.S. financial system.

Anti-anti-North Korean academics and pro-North Korean apologists are fond of arguing that “years” or “decades” of tough sanctions, alternatively, had no effect on the North Korean regime, or had barbarous effects on the North Korean people (they switch between these arguments with shameless fluidity). Both arguments can’t be true, and as I’ve pointed out ad nauseam, neither argument is true.

In fact, between 2008 and 2016, almost the entire period when EDNY accuses Huawei of investing in North Korea, our North Korea sanctions were probably too weak to support criminal charges, unless the investor was particularly unlucky (hold that thought). In 2010, President Obama had signed Executive Order 13551, which authorized him to freeze the assets of persons involved in North Korean proliferation, arms trafficking, and money laundering. In 2011, he signed Executive Order 13570, which authorized him to freeze the assets of persons who imported goods, services, and technology from North Korea. In 2015, he signed Executive Order 13687, which theoretically allowed him to freeze the assets almost any North Korean person (which he didn’t). But the President hardly used these authorities to designate anyone during the duration of his presidency. By 2014, he had designated just 43 entities for sanctions violations involving North Korea. (Anthony Ruggiero arrived at slightly different figures at different times, but supported my broader contention in his testimony to several committees of Congress.)

Read  the whole thing.




Wow.

People totally have a handle on this coronavirus thing:

Iran’s government said Monday that 12 people had died nationwide from the new coronavirus, rejecting claims of a much higher death toll by a lawmaker from the city of Qom that has been at the epicenter of the virus in the country.

(Sidebar: twelve, my @$$.)

**

South Korea reported another large jump in new virus cases Monday a day after the the president called for “unprecedented, powerful” steps to combat the outbreak that is increasingly confounding attempts to stop the spread.

The 161 new cases bring South Korea’s total to 763 cases, and two more deaths raise its toll to seven.

**

News emerged Saturday that a Japanese woman who was allowed to leave the cruise ship last week was confirmed to have been infected after returning to her home in Tochigi Prefecture despite an initial negative test result, according to local officials.

The central government is separately under fire for failing to test 23 passengers — 19 Japanese and four foreign nationals — during the two-week quarantine period.

**

A preschooler in Saitama and two brothers in Hokkaido have been confirmed infected with the new coronavirus, prefectural officials announced Friday.

The preschooler was confirmed to have the virus Friday by the Saitama Prefectural Government. The boy returned with his father from Wuhan, China, on a Japan-chartered flight on Jan. 30. His infection is said to be light and not life-threatening. His dad tested positive on Feb. 10.

The two in Hokkaido are students at an elementary school in the town of Nakafurano, according to prefectural officials. One is under 10 years old.

It is the first time someone under 10 has caught COVID-19 in Japan.

**

The coronavirus death toll climbed to seven in Italy on Monday and several Middle East countries were dealing with their first infections, sending markets into a tailspin over fears of a global pandemic even as China eased curbs with no new cases reported in Beijing and other cities. 

**

The total number of cases in Canada is now 11, with Ontario announcing its fourth case on Sunday. A Toronto woman in her 20s contracted a mild case while travelling in China. The woman had travelled to Wuhan — the centre of the outbreak — before it was quarantined, then went elsewhere in the country before returning to Canada on Feb. 21. Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said given the limited contact with others and the woman’s mild illness, she likely presents a low risk.

WHO executive director Dr. Michael J. Ryan said it’s impossible to tell if COVID-19 will eventually be contained, develop into a full-blown global pandemic, or settle down into a seasonal pattern of transmission, much like the flu. But now is the time for countries to prepare for the worst.

“We believe that all countries are vulnerable,” Ryan said. “It is time to do everything you would do in preparing for a pandemic.”

Nothing at all to worry about, I see.

And the Rest of It

Oh, my:

 

Anti-pipeline lobbyist, Tides Canada, paid $220k to Wet’suwet’en. Sarah Goodman, former VP Tides, is now Trudeau's top climate guru. Even Heritage Minster, Guilbeault, got $100k from Tides for his foundation. Wonder why illegal blockades still up? Retweet. https://t.co/rpDGdQjzLP pic.twitter.com/Zif5sdFgyB

— Canadian Yoda (@Labrie8) February 21, 2020

Well, that explains some things.


(Merci)




We don't have to trade with China:

As Canada nears its long-awaited decision on whether to allow Huawei a role in the coming 5G wireless networks, one part of the story particularly vexes the late-lamented Nortel’s many fans.

For at least 10 years, it was revealed in 2012, the company was invaded by hackers based in China who stole hundreds of sensitive internal documents from under the noses of its top executives.

Before that, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) warned Nortel of Beijing-led human spies in its midst. Later reports suggested that actual listening devices had been planted in Nortel’s Ottawa research and development complex, now Canada’s National Defence headquarters.

And never previously reported are allegations by former Nortel security personnel that a customer tied to Huawei returned a piece of equipment that had been pulled apart and “reverse engineered” to divine its secrets.

She will get blamed and leave PM Blackface in the clear. Calling it now:

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says she wants to make Canada’s trade negotiations more “transparent,” by agreeing to proposals from the New Democrats to provide more details of future deals.

Freeland offers that view in a Wednesday letter to the New Democrats, a promise that secured the party’s support for a speedier ratification of the new North American Free Trade Deal (NAFTA), which is still before Parliament.

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press, Freeland makes clear she is agreeing to the NDP proposals to get support for ratifying the new continental trade agreement among Canada, the United States and Mexico.

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea is revamping the Tongchang-ri missile site it ostensibly shut down in 2018 after recently testing a missile engine there.

"It seems that the North is repairing and refurbishing various facilities there," a military spokesman here said Thursday, "We're watching whether it intends to operate the site on a long-term basis."

Google Earth satellite imagery from Nov. 28 last year shows some changes at a building there. A huge propaganda billboard has been put up at the building, and the road and facilities nearby are being kept in good condition. 

The regime has also recently set up a monument in celebration of a series of successful missile launches from Tongchang-ri.

 

Well, it's not like you're doing them any favours just letting them in:

The British government announced Wednesday its plan for a complete overhaul of its immigration system — closing its borders to unskilled migrants and instead allowing easier entry for “the brightest and the best from around the world.”

Satire? Barely:

"The economy is good, and there's lots of leftover bread crumbs and stuff for us pigeons," Beaker told reporters. "Trump has some personal moral failings, but the economy is doing well, and that's what matters for the fowl members of society."

But sadly, just a few hours later, Beaker was brutally attacked in broad daylight by the dreaded domestic terrorist group Pigeon Antifa.

God bless Babylon Bee.




Underwater dives reveal some fascinating things from the doomed Franklin expedition:

“The results from the 2019 Franklin research missions were truly remarkable. It was the most productive and successful one to date,” said Parks Canada underwater archaeologist Marc-André Bernier during a press conference Thursday. “It is the largest, most complex underwater archeological undertakings in Canadian history.”

He and his team were proudly displaying some of over 350 artifacts recovered mainly from three officers’ rooms in the HMS Erebus thanks to 93 dives and a total of 110 hours underwater during the fall. ...

“The theory that some people returned to the ships makes a lot of sense. One of the possibilities is that the crew returned to the vessels, but there weren’t enough men to operate both of them. So they left the HMS Terror behind and continued exploring south on the HMS Erebus,” said Charles Dagneau, another underwater archaeologist for Parks Canada.

Another theory that might explain why items from officers on the Terror were discovered on the Erebus: crewmembers had kept them in the hopes of commemorating their fallen officers if ever they got home.

“It’s possible that objects that belonged to officers were transported by their sailors in the hopes of bringing them back to their families in London. They obviously couldn’t bring back the bodies, but one person seemed to have a sextant that didn’t belong to him for that reason”, theorized Dagneau.