Saturday, March 07, 2020

Saturday Post

It's just an economy:
The Liberals have backed themselves into a corner where it’s going to be nearly impossible to balance all of these priorities. And it didn’t have to be that way.

In 2015, the Liberals promised a couple of years of modest deficits (in the neighborhood of $10 billion) before returning to balance well before the 2019 election. Instead, those deficits turned out to be much larger than promised, and we were nowhere near a balanced budget last year. The December fiscal update showed that the forecast $19.8-billion deficit had grown to $26.6 billion. The following year’s deficit is expected to be even higher.

(Sidebar: it's important to remember that people voted for this twice.)

**

Warren Buffett may have backed out of investing in Canada but he knows when to buy cheap stakes:
Billionaire Warren Buffett's company has taken a new stake in Canadian firm Suncor Energy and trimmed its huge Apple stake.

Also - I doubt it. Sometimes, in the efforts to screw over Alberta, Quebec has to take one for the team.

They'll forgive him:
Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s inaction on dealing with the attempted shut down of Canada is hurting Quebec, I have to wonder if he will change his tune on the pipeline and resource project. The pipeline and LNG port had already received special treatment from the federal government.

When TransCanada wanted to build their Energy East pipeline and bring Western Canadian oil to Eastern Canada — both for export and to replace foreign imports in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada — the Trudeau government brought in new rules. Energy East was going to be required to account not only for the greenhouse gas emissions created in getting the oil out of the ground and into the pipeline but all the greenhouse gases when the oil was used, wherever that was in the world.

It was shortly after that announcement that TransCanada pulled the plug.

As Quebec media first reported and I later confirmed in March 2018, that test never applied to the GNL Énergie Saguenay project.



No one cares about your "support":
British Columbians mostly support construction of the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline and do not believe roadblocks, rail blockades and other disruptions are acceptable ways to show opposition to it, according to a poll. 

The online poll by Leger, conducted for Postmedia, suggests that 57 per cent of British Columbians strongly or somewhat support construction of the 670 km natural gas pipeline between Dawson Creek and LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas plant at Kitimat.


If they did, they would find whoever derailed trains:
The RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police will not investigate recent major accidents at Canadian Pacific and CN Railways, leaving federal railway police run by CP and CN to investigate themselves.

According to a CBC News investigation, some of the train derailments included crude oil train crashes, some of which took the lives of employees.

Families impacted by the crashes, who have lost loved ones, are calling the decision negligent and frustrating, calling out the “double standard” where police routinely clear blockades and inspect Canada railways, but do not investigate corporate railways, even in the event of a disaster.

“It makes me angry,” said Tara Jijian, the widow of a Regina man who was killed in a CP railyard.

“Because the blockades and protests affect the economy somewhat, everybody rushes to make sure that, you know, ‘We have to clear this off, this has to be dealt with,’ ” said Jijian.

“But when it’s a person that is killed on those same railway tracks, the police just absolutely refuse to get involved.”



I am convinced he wants an entire country to hate him:

Nathan Whitling, who served as a lawyer for Omar Khadr, has been appointed as a Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta.

The move is the latest in a long-line of disturbing moves by the Trudeau government relating to Khadr, including giving him $10.5 million in taxpayers dollars, refusing to help the widow of the American medic he killed get a chance to sue him for the money, and even having Trudeau meet with Joshua Boyle, who had been married to Khadr’s sister for a time.



If Pallister wants parents to feed their children breakfast (as they ought to be doing because they are parents) then applying a living tax on everything they buy is a very bloody stupid thing to do:

This past week also saw the premier double down on the government's insistence that feeding children breakfast in school, as a means to combat hunger, was a bad idea, pointing the finger at "parents [who] aren't fulfilling their responsibilities."

He argued instead that children should eat breakfast with their families, and that we should be "addressing the reasons a child comes to school hungry." 

Sensible coming from a man who caved into Ottawa a few days ago.

People who demand that the government pay for everything simply refuse to accept that all the money for these welfarist programs comes from taxes. The more people pay in taxes, the less able they are to look after their own families.

The carbon tax is based on junk science and will not do what it is ostensibly supposed to do. Every good and service will have added charges to recoup the losses incurred in producing the good or enacting the service.

The people who will be harmed the most - not benefitted from scraps - are the lower-income families the above scribe claims to champion.

The math here isn't difficult. Get rid of taxes and watch families bloom.




Why don't you go over to the United States and say that?:

North Korea accused European nations of "illogical thinking" on Saturday after they called a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting to condemn missile launches by the reclusive state earlier this week.

Britain, Germany, France, Estonia and Belgium raised North Korea's latest missile firings at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, calling them a provocative action that violated U.N. resolutions.

North Korea fired two short-range missiles off the east coast into the sea on Monday after a three-month halt. The launches, which officials have said were routine military drills, were personally overseen by its leader Kim Jong Un.

"The illogical thinking and sophism of these countries are just gradually bearing a close resemblance to the United States, which is hostile to us," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement to the state-run KCNA news agency.



And people said we shouldn't worry about this coronavirus thing:
With a slowly, but steadily rising number of COVID-19 cases in Canada, health officials continue to stress that the risk posed by the novel coronavirus in this country remains low.

These cases:
  • Ontario - 28 cases
  • B.C. - 27 cases
  • Quebec - 3 cases
  • Alberta - 2 cases



China's coronavirus is just another form of euthanasia. Injections of poisons not needed!:
A leading Canadian infectious disease specialist says, despite global efforts, COVID-19 cannot be contained and authorities need to focus instead on creating a warning system to alert seniors when to go into isolation.



But China was awfully clever to put up those buildings so quickly!:

About 70 people were trapped after a hotel being used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in the Chinese city of Quanzhou collapsed.

About 40 of the 70 have been pulled from the rubble of the five-storey Xinjia Hotel, state media says.



And now, a feel-good story:

By the time Second World War veteran Fred Arsenault blows the candles out on his birthday cake, he'll have more than 90,000 birthday cards to read. 

Arsenault turns 100 years old on Friday. He spent Thursday morning enjoying an early birthday celebration at the Sunnybrook Veterans Centre in Toronto where his family tallied all the cards they received.
"Thank you for all your words and for the people that were all here for my birthday. I'll remember this for quite some time," said Arsenault with a big smile. 

It all started with a birthday wish from his son that was shared privately with friends and family but has since turned into a global event.

His son, Ron Arsenault, told CBC News the whole family is overwhelmed by the response. 

"We're getting cards and calls from everywhere in the world. It was more than dad and I could have ever imagined. His birthday wish is now complete," he said. 



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