The Gatekeepers of Knowledge and Disinformation

When the state decides what one cannot see, hear or say, we have clearly not learned from the history we are trying to erase.


Cases in point:

The unification ministry held a hearing Monday to give two North Korean defector groups a final chance to explain themselves before going ahead with a decision to revoke their operation permits for sending propaganda leaflets into the North.

The hearing came weeks after the ministry decided to file a criminal complaint with police against Fighters for a Free North Korea and Kuensaem and revoke their business permits for their sending of leaflets into the North.

"The hearing to be held on Monday is intended to hear their explanations," a ministry official said. "It is a procedure that should be carried out before taking any measure of revoking permits granted to such civic groups."

If their permits are revoked, donors for the activist groups will not be eligible for various tax benefits. Observers see the hearing as a perfunctory step before revoking their operations permits.

**

Canada, the United States and democracies around the world have lessons to share and plenty more to learn in what federal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc said Monday must be a collective, global effort to fight the scourge of online disinformation.

(Sidebar: like Justin was directly responsible for handing out $900 million to the WE charity and that Toronto mayor John Tory used an old photo of his city to hide the damage done by rioters? Like that disinformation?)

Wow, People Really Have A Handle On This Coronavirus

Yep:

The death toll from COVID-19 surpassed half a million people on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, a grim milestone for the global pandemic that seems to be resurgent in some countries even as other regions are still grappling with the first wave. 

**

Regarding what his government would have done differently, given the opportunity to re-do the pandemic roll-out, Trudeau said that there was a number of things he wish was done differently, ...

(Sidebar: oh, really?)

... but that his government is still focused on getting Canada through a potential second wave, also noting that Canada would be prepared fiscally if that scenario were to manifest. 

(Sidebar: liar.)

**

Gilead Sciences Inc has priced its COVID-19 drug candidate remdesivir at US$2,340 for a five-day treatment in the United States and some other developed countries, it said on Monday, as it set the price for a single vial at US$390.

The price for U.S. private insurance companies will be US$520 per vial, the drugmaker said, which equates to US$3,120 per patient for a treatment course using 6 vials of remdesivir.

This is below the US$5,080 per course recommendation by U.S. drug pricing research group, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, last week.

But everyone made sure that the liquor stores were open:

People with intellectual disabilities and autism are dying of COVID-19 at higher rates than other people in at least two states in the U.S., according to new data collected by NPR.

In Pennsylvania, people with intellectual disabilities and autism are dying at a rate twice as high as other people who contract the virus. In New York, they’re dying at 2.5 times the rate of others.

One in four Canadians — about 25 per cent of the population — has a disability, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada, and experts worry the numbers are similar when it comes to COVID-19 deaths in Canada.

There Is Chess With a Master

... and then there is chess with a snowboard instructor:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that increasing the price of aluminum for the United States is a bad idea for both economies.

Trudeau said his government has heard the “musings and proposals” from the U.S. about the possibility of more tariffs on aluminum, but did not confirm their validity. He said any “punitive actions” by the U.S. will simply “end up hurting Americans the same way they end up hurting Canadians.”

“What we’ve simply highlighted is: the United States needs Canadian aluminum. They do not produce enough, nowhere near enough aluminum in the States to fulfill their domestic manufacturing needs,” Trudeau said at his daily COVID-19 briefing in Ottawa on Monday.

“Therefore, if they put tariffs on Canadian aluminum, they are simply increasing the costs of inputs, necessary inputs, to their manufacturing base, which will hurt the American economy.”

Yes, about that:

The US is the primary export destination for Canada’s $13-billion aluminum industry, accounting for 83% of its trade in 2018.

**

Asked about the issue during a press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland noted that under NAFTA, Canada is the only significant producer of aluminum with tariff-free access to the U.S. market. The new changes retain that access, she added.

But where is confidence now?

Trump will get his aluminum, either from Canada (for whom the US is the primary importer) or from Mexico (where it will be undoubtedly cheaper).

Consider how quickly Justin and his deputy dupe were quick to sign NAFTA 2.0.

I suspect some bowing will occur.




I wouldn't worry about the Americans. I would worry about the still-incoming flights from Beijing:

Despite the bleak developments, the crisis seems “different than what we saw two months ago,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, leader of the Whitehouse coronavirus task force, said on Friday. In Florida and Texas, half of confirmed new cases are in  under-35s, which Pence said was, at some level, “encouraging news,” because younger people appear less susceptible to serious outcomes.

Pence said fatalities and hospitalization rates are declining and that more testing is generating more cases. “We’re in a much better place” than the worst moments of the pandemic two months ago, he said.

It’s true that more testing reveals more cases, Colijn said. But even in younger adults COVID-19 can be severe. They can also spread the virus to the elderly and other vulnerable groups.

(Sidebar: younger groups, eh?)

Besides, it's not like we can trust our "chief public health officer".

There Is Always Corruption to Fall Back On

And how!:

WE Charity, which has close ties to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family — and which will receive millions of dollars to administer a federal student volunteer grant program — has received a series of exclusively sole-source contracts from the federal government over the last three years, government records show. Sole-source contracts are government contracts that are handed directly to a chosen supplier, without the opportunity for others to provide competing bids for the government business.

The federal Liberal government announced last week that it had outsourced a student-grant program worth over $900 million to WE Charity, which will receive at least $19.5 million in fees for the work. Trudeau, whose family has worked closely with the WE organization for many years, defended the contract, saying the WE Charity was the “only one… capable of networking and organizing and delivering this program on the scale that we needed it…” But records show this was not the first time the charity received an exclusive contract from the Trudeau government, although it is by far the largest.

According to the government’s online database of government contracts, WE Charity has received five federal contracts worth a total of $120,000 since March 2017. Four of the five contracts have been in the last 15 months, with the most recent — and largest, until now, at $40,000 — dated January 2020. ...

“We know the Prime Minister is not afraid of influencing decisions to benefit his friends. At this point, the Prime Minister is beyond the benefit of the doubt and must come clean about his involvement in awarding this $900 million contract to WE,” said Michael Barrett, the Conservative ethics critic, in an email to the Post on Monday. “The Liberals must immediately release the contract for this partnership and tell Canadians why their own government officials are unable to administer this program.”

Conacher said he plans on filing a complaint to the federal Ethics Commissioner, arguing that Trudeau put himself in conflict of interest simply by announcing that WE Charity would administer the CSSG.

This conflict of interest:

A co-founder of WE Charity claimed in a June 12 conference call that the Prime Minister’s Office contacted the organization directly in April to help implement a federal student volunteer grant program worth over $900 million. WE Charity is set to collect at least $19.5 million in fees to administer the program, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced questions over his and his family’s close links to WE Charity and how the contract was awarded.

That's all very well and good but this isn't the first time that Justin has broken the rules and voters let him get away with it.

You know, because beer and Netflix.


Also:

In the words of Winston Churchill, or someone who sounds a lot like him: Never has so much loot been thrown out the window by so few to so many.

Bill Morneau, nominally the minister of finance, didn’t even show up under the Tent of Commons while Mr. Trudeau shovelled out the billions. 

Canada’s auditor general, definitely the most overworked, under-resourced human being in all of Canada, cannot even begin to keep up with the spending, never mind do a proper accounting of it. ...

Some might see Trudeau’s past patronage and attendance at WE Days as perhaps showing too close an alignment for him, might see his passing over of such a fat and vague program to the WE boys as unseemly. When it is noted that his wife is very close to WE, and that Margaret Trudeau has also graced their platforms, this impression grows even stronger.

There is also the uncomfortable consideration that, once again, the auditor general — the most overworked human being in all of Canada — will not have the capacity, now or later, to look into, scrutinize and assess the distribution of $900 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money.

And:

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is granting municipalities a twenty-year waiver to keep dumping raw sewage in fish habitat. The regulatory notice follows a 2019 promise to “keep our waters safe, clean and well-managed”.

But ... but ... carbon taxes!

But We're Nearly Able to Produce All of Our Personal Protective Equipment, Right?

How reassuring:

The day after her co-worker died of the new coronavirus in April, Toronto long-term care home worker Karen Ellington says she and her colleagues finally got what they had been asking for: N95 respirator masks.

But, she said, there was a catch.

“We got one N95 and the statement (from the home) that was made was, ‘Don’t throw it away because we don’t know when you’ll be getting another one,’” Ellington told Global News.

“I think that’s maybe why everything spread as fast as it did, when it did. Because we didn’t have what we needed.”

I'll just leave this right here:

Health Minister Patty Hajdu said on Friday that responsibility for the depletion of pandemic supplies falls on provincial governments, telling senate that the Public Health Agency "isn't really in the business" of maintaining the stockpile.

According to Blacklock's Reporter, the national stockpile is the responsibility of the Public Health Agency and has been since the agency was created in 2004.

“The federal government isn’t really in the business of providing personal protective equipment for provinces and territories,” said Hajdu. “The Public Health Agency of Canada is a very small Agency. 

Successive rounds of governments have not made substantial investments in the Public Health Agency,” she continued. 

While Hajdu claims that the agency is "small," it had a budget of $675 million last year.

Disgraced Chief Public Health Officer Offers a Prediction

Does anyone even listen to her anymore?:

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam yesterday said fewer than one in ten Canadians will contract Covid-19 but would not release modeling data used to justify the forecast. One epidemiologist described the claim as “unscientific rubbish”.

No one listens to this guy so what will have changed?

I'm Sure This Is Nothing To Worry About

Nope:

Statistics Canada says the economy saw its largest monthly drop on record in April as it came to a near standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic, but early indications point to a rebound in May as businesses began to reopen.

The agency says gross domestic product fell 11.6 per cent in April with non-essential businesses shut for the full month following a 7.5 per cent decline in March.

Oh, the economy was limping even before that.
 

Tax Cuts

Kenney gets it:

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney unveiled his provincial economic recovery plan on Monday, pledging billions in new investments and a significant corporate tax cut. 

The Kenney government announced that it would reduce the provincial corporate tax rate to 8% from 10%, making it the lowest in the country. 

The tax cut is expected to go into effect on July 1, a year and a half before planned. The government expects the measure to introduce 55,000 new jobs into Alberta and attract $4 billion in investment.

The current corporate net tax rate for small businesses in Canada is 8%. Things will only get worse due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Justin has gone out of his way to make Canada investment-repellent.

Because snowboard instructor.

If the Canadian Flag Is So "Triggering" ...

... then do not move to a country that flies it:

The Chronicle Herald out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, has actually run a trigger warning for printing the Canadian flag in its Saturday edition. 

They write: "To our readers: inside today's edition, on page A9, you'll find a Canadian flag to clip and post to help celebrate July 1. We understand the flag doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, however, we hope our readers recognize their ability to play a role in shaping Canada's future is a freedom worth acknowledging."

What future would it be when a symbol becomes offensive but not the succour the country that offers it doesn't?


Triggering: when your pants get soiled because of words.

India Is Looking for the Mastermind of the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

If he was living freely in Pakistan, you might want to consider the Mossad-Munich route:

India is seeking the extradition of a top Pakistan militant suspected to have planned the 2008 Mumbai attacks after the United States said last week he was living freely in Pakistan, government officials said on Sunday.  

India and the United States have both indicted Sajid Mir of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group for the three-day attacks on hotels, a train station and a Jewish centre in which 166 people were killed including six Americans.

While Pakistan took action against the Lashkar founder Hafiz Saeed last year, it continued to provide safe harbour to other top militant leaders, the U.S. State Department's 2019 country report on terrorism said. 

One of them was Sajid, the "project manager" of the Mumbai attack, believed to remain free in Pakistan, the U.S. report said. 

What Do We Need China For, Anyway?

It's not only our national industry and resources. It's our sovereignty, as well:

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last month that Canada would soon be holding human trials of a new COVID-19 vaccine, there was a lot of excitement, and some confusion.
The developer of the would-be vaccine was a Chinese company called CanSino Biologics, hardly a household name in the pharmaceutical industry.

But not only is CanSino a leader in the international race to find a preventive solution to the pandemic — working alonside the Chinese military’s medical-science division — it has surprisingly deep roots in this country.

The vaccine is based on a cell line developed by the National Research Council. The company has worked with the NRC previously on an Ebola vaccine, and with scientists at the council and McMaster University on a tuberculosis shot. More recently, it partnered with a Vancouver-based bio technology company that came up with its own COVID-19 vaccine candidate. ...

The government refuses to reveal how much it’s spending on the studies, to be overseen by Dalhousie University’s Canadian Centre for Vaccinology. Particulars of the CanSino deal are shielded by “commercial confidentiality,” said Hans Parmar, an Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada spokesman. But Ottawa has committed $1 billion to COVID-19 research generally.

The National Research Council would produce the vaccine for the Canadian market at a manufacturing facility in Montreal if the trials prove successful. It says it should be able to make 70,000 to 100,000 doses a month by the end of the year. ...

But if Canada wanted an international partnership, other projects seem to have more potential, insists Attaran. He points, for instance, to one led by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which is in phase 2 trials and has been setting up manufacturing arrangements worldwide. Canada has yet to join.

Ottawa has invested in a small Boston-area company, VBI Vaccines, developing a vaccine against COVID-19 and two other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. And the government is seeking to partner with major international vaccine-makers and the UK’s Vaccine Task Force, said Parmar.

Attaran also questions what benefit, if any, Canada received from CanSino in exchange for the NRC’s cell lines and, now, an unknown amount of funding for clinical trials. ...

Similar to the new COVID-19 vaccine, CanSino worked on the Ebola product with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences’ bioengineering institute.

What can go wrong here?:

A former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. A former Conservative foreign minister. Two former Liberal foreign ministers. Four former Canadian ambassadors to the United Nations, under Liberal and Tory governments. Two former Canadian ambassadors to the United States, under Liberal and Tory governments. A former Supreme Court justice. A former Liberal justice minister. A former Conservative senator. A flock of name-brand diplomats. Former CBC host Don Newman, for some reason.

This is the panoply of 19 elite opinion-makers that gathered in the Laurentian Boardroom at an online hotel and drafted a letter, released Wednesday, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene in the extradition process, set Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou free, and thereby secure the release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

This China:

China lashed out at Canada on Saturday over criticism about Chinese prosecution of two Canadians, saying the matter is based on evidence and urging Ottawa to cease “megaphone diplomacy.”

It's Called Censorship

Who would be these "experts" who filter or remove the information, Julie?:

The Governor General yesterday said Canadians must be wary of “self-appointed experts” on the internet. The remarks by Julie Payette came as cabinet ponders mandatory registration of all digital media: “It’s difficult to decide what is real.”

Anyone Who Believes That Canada Has Handled the Coronavirus Pandemic Better Than Anyone Else Has Been Living Under a Rock

Does anyone need reminding of how badly this country screwed up?:

Jan. 19: A Health Canada briefing note prepared for Health Minister Patty Hajdu states: “Based on the latest information that we have, there is no clear evidence that the virus is easily transmitted between people,” as the CBC’s John Paul Tasker would later reveal in April.

**

Health Committee documents reveal the Public Health Agency of Canada led by Dr. Theresa Tam knew explicitly that there was person to person spread of the coronavirus in China as early as January 15, 2020.

**

Here’s what Theresa Tam recently said about masks:

“Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, maintained in a press conference Monday that while face masks can cut down on the spread of the coronavirus when worn by someone already infected, it does little for healthy individuals.”

Here’s what she says now:

“Canada’s top public-health doctor says wearing masks is a way for people who might have COVID-19 without realizing it to keep from spreading the illness to others.
That’s a change from previous advice.

** 

Implementing public health screenings at airports for travellers coming from Wuhan:

 
January 17 – (US) The CDC implements public health screening at 3 major U.S. airports 

January 22 – (Canada) Major airports are directed to implement health screenings in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver

**

Experts say there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about whether China is concealing the full impact of COVID-19 and that federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu is wrong to dismiss this question as conspiracy theory, particularly since U.S. intelligence is reportedly warning the American government of this.

**

Health Minister Patty Hajdu told senators Friday that Canada’s less fractured political culture has been an asset in the fight against COVID-19, especially compared to  America.

(Sidebar: unless they told you the truth about China and the WHO, right, Patty?)

**

Canadian companies are producing personal protective equipment (PPE) for COVID-19 on such a large scale that Prime Minster Trudeau said the nation is soon to be self-sufficient, according to CTV News.

During a pre-taped interview at the Collision tech conference on Thursday, Trudeau spoke highly of the numerous financial programs that his administration has implemented to keep the economy stimulated and to encourage innovation against fighting the virus.

Yes, about that:

Calling himself a "wartime president," President Donald Trump today signed the Defense Protection Act, a significant step that would allow the military to produce, among other things, personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks as part of an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

** 

The U.S. International Development Finance Corp is talking to companies about reshoring the manufacturing of personal protective equipment, generic drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients, DFC Chief Executive Adam Boehler said in an interview on Monday. 

Boehler said letters of understanding for some initial projects could be signed within the next month. The Trump administration has been pushing here for U.S. companies and importers to move manufacturing out of China. 

**

3M Company MMM has been in focus since the coronavirus outbreak. Although the company was somewhat slow in its initial response to the growing demand for respirators in the United States, it ramped up manufacturing of N-95 masks. The company has been constantly working to meet domestic demand for N-95 masks since President Donald Trump urged the company to increase its production capacity.

Last month, the company said that it would triple its monthly production of N-95 masks after winning a pair of contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense worth more than $200 million. Globally, 3M expects to double its annual output of N95 masks to 2 billion.

The company’s expected earnings growth rate for next year is 10.2%. Its shares have gained 25.5% in the past three months.

How is a country like Canada "nearly" able to produce all the personal protective equipment the country needs yet the US is ready to export its surplus?




Remember - getting your hair cut will kill your grandmother:

The Public Health Agency of Canada went ahead with plans to host a convention just as the global pandemic due to COVID-19 was declared.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the agency paid a total of $319,167 on March 12 to host delegates at an Ottawa convention, a day after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.

“The meeting in question was the biannual Canadian Immunization Conference,” said Natalie Mohamed, spokesman for the agency. “A deposit was to be paid by March 31. The process to award the contract and pay the deposit was already underway when the pandemic was declared.”

Mohamed said the deposit was non-refundable.

“We are in discussions with the vendor to renegotiate dates,” she said.

People have had to re-schedule weddings, holidays and surgeries but hey! Convention!




Are you really going to be cheap with your globalist friends?:

Canada’s contribution includes $180 million to address the immediate humanitarian and development impacts of the pandemic and $120 million towards a new initiative called the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.

The ACT Accelerator was created in April by the World Health Organization, the French government, the European Commission and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ensure equitable access to medical treatments. It supports organizations, health professionals and businesses in their efforts to develop a vaccine, as well as drug therapies and diagnostic tools to battle the pandemic.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here.)



Yet people still trust these idiots with their lives.

In other news, New Brunswick has reported no more cases.

It's Just Money

It's only money that someone else generates and the government wastes.

That's all:

The Senate today will pass into law the last of a flurry of spending bills that drive the federal debt to a trillion dollars. One Senator noted bills received scant scrutiny: “A $44 billion supply bill whipped through here in forty-six seconds.”

And just like the veterans, people are asking for far too much money than what the wasteful government is prepared to give out:

The President of the organization Markus Haerle told the agriculture committee earlier this week that a collapse in prices caused by the coronavirus means that many grain farmers have no chance of making money this year.

Haerle, himself a farmer, told MPs that the pandemic has created “risks that are bigger and more current than I have ever experienced in my farming career.” 

“We are at a point that we cannot even break even,” he said.

**

Arbitrary rules under the $71.3 billion Canada Emergency Response Benefit program discourage people from working, Opposition leader Andrew Scheer said yesterday. Conservatives proposed a descending scale of benefits instead of an all-or-nothing regulation that disqualifies applicants who earn more than $1,000 a month: “Workers are penalized for picking up shifts.”

**

The former clerk of the Privy Council is anticipating the federal public service will shrink in the post-COVID-19 era.

(Sidebar: I can't see how that is a bad thing.)

Nepotism Is Alright When SOME People Do It

Like launching a do-nothing son of a former prime minister to a leadership position of a federal party just so that Canada could relive the glories of high unemployment and high inflation:

Cabinet yesterday appointed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s favourite charity to manage a pandemic grant relief program. The Prime Minister’s wife has appeared as an “official ambassador” and public speaker at We Charity events in New York: “I’m curious how that’s not a conflict of interest?”

Needless to say, the usual suspects are not at all pleased:

The federal Conservatives are calling for an investigation into the Liberal government’s decision to have an international charity administer a $900-million program designed to help students during the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

Trudeau defended employing WE Charity to administer the program last week despite the group’s ties to the prime minister and his wife, who hosts one of the organization’s podcasts.

Trudeau said the decision to use WE was made by the non-partisan public service, not by him.

Oh, the federal grant? That one?

And the Rest of It

Coronaviruses bring out the hypocrites in all of us and by "all of us", I mean people we should fire:

The Public Health Agency of Canada paid more than $300,000 to host a convention including meetings at a ski hill at the same time it ordered cancellation of hockey games, church services and other public events, records show. The Agency yesterday confirmed it cannot get a refund: “We take that extremely seriously.”  

Also - oh, dear:

The Canadian Medical Association is petitioning Parliament for $300,000 grants to families of front line health care workers who die of Covid-19. Dr. Sandy Buchman, association president, blamed the Public Health Agency for failing to stock up on masks, goggles, face shields and other pandemic supplies: “We would never permit a firefighter to go into a burning building without adequate protection.”

 
And:

For more than three years the Trudeau Liberals said they could do little to stem the tide of asylum-seekers crossing into Canada at Roxham Road. The unofficial border crossing went from being a little-known footpath at the end of a now closed road that once connected Quebec and New York State to a bustling crossing fitted out with permanent RCMP and CBSA facilities.

At its height, more than 150 people per day were coming across at Roxham Road. Last month, just 17 people were intercepted by the RCMP at Roxham Road and four others were intercepted in British Columbia. ...

The number of people dropped from 930 in March to 1 in April and 17 in May.
Turns out something could be done; it only took a pandemic.

If anyone had an iota of conscience, they would be appalled at how the elderly were shunned and treated.

But I wouldn't suggest that this country is capable of such self-reflection:

The province was determined to ensure that hospital capacity was not overwhelmed in Ontario as images out of northern Italy showed medical facilities unable to cope with the deluge of patients needing ventilators and other intensive-care treatments.

In the end, the surge at Ontario’s hospitals never materialized and the province was able to escape the worst of COVID-19 except within the province’s nursing homes. Extra funding for infection control and staffing was added to the long-term care portfolio at a later time, but by then the virus had taken hold in many homes.

It is doubtful that even if Fullerton’s original request for extra funding had been approved for the budget that the money would have been delivered in time to have an impact on the homes before COVID-19 ravaged them.

Still, the two rejections show that not everyone in cabinet shared Ford’s desire to spare no expense and to put an iron ring around the province’s nursing homes.

It's easy to cry out for more money but the problem runs much deeper than that.

If warehousing the elderly into homes with poorly paid staff and "death doulas" is the best we can do, we are not fit to call ourselves human any longer.




It's just an economy:

Study authors Jake Fuss and Tegan Hill say economic research in both Canada and the U.S. indicates stimulus programs to recover from recessions built around such initiatives as subsidizing the construction of new infrastructure projects generate less than $1 of new economic growth for every $1 spent by governments.

By contrast, giving broad-based, long-term tax relief to individuals and businesses generates up to $5 of economic growth for every $1 spent. ...

The Fraser Institute study does not classify the $169 billion the Trudeau government is spending on programs like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which provides $2,000 a month in income support to people who have lost their employment because of COVID-19, as stimulus spending.

“The federal government’s spending up to this point is largely an emergency response to COVID-19, including income stabilization measures, in an effort to help Canadians who lost jobs or work hours due to the lockdown,” said Hill.

The Fraser Institute’s concern, she said, is that as federal and provincial governments shift their focus from emergency funding to economic recovery, they will turn to inefficient and costly stimulus initiatives.

Oh, Buttsy! Your snobbery is showing!




I guess the commissars didn't find her contrite enough:

Legislators will extend until September a suspension without pay for Senator Lynn Beyak (Ont.). The Senate deferred a vote on reinstating Beyak after she was compelled to attend hours of Indigenous sensitivity training: “She has learned.”

You lucky fellow!:

A Tanzanian small-scale miner has just become a millionaire after unearthing some of the largest rare gemstones ever recorded.

Fifty-two-year-old Sainiu Laizer was working in a mine in northern Tanzania when he came across two massive tanzanite gemstones. Tanzanite is an extremely rare mineral — in fact the only place in the world where it can be found is within a few kilometres of the mine. ...

And on June 24, the Tanzanian government paid him 7.74 billion Tanzanian shillings — roughly $4.5 million in Canadian dollars — for the gemstones.

“This is the benefit of small-scale miners and this proves that Tanzania is rich,” Tanzania’s president John Magufilu said in a phone call, according to the BBC.

Laizer has four wives and more than 30 children, it has been reported. He said he would slaughter one of his cows in celebration of the find.

Interesting:

A 66-million-year-old fossil found in Antarctica almost ten years ago was recently found to be one of the biggest eggs ever recorded, scientists say.

In 2011, a group of Chilean researchers were exploring the southern frozen continent looking for fossils of marine reptiles, when they came across a weird looking fossil. It was almost a foot wide and looked like a deflated football.

Not knowing what it was, the researchers brought it back to Chile’s National Museum of Natural History, where it remained unstudied for years. But in 2018, Julia Clarke, a professor visiting from the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, saw the specimen and immediately thought it could potentially be a giant fossilized egg. With permission, she took a few fragments back with her to UT Austin.

On June 17, researchers from UT Austin and the Chilean National Museum of Natural History released a study that indicates that the mysterious fossil is actually an 11-inch soft-shell egg — the largest ever recorded — that was likely laid by an ancient marine reptile.

What Can Go Wrong Here?

Don't take sides. Let them fight:

A senior Liberal staffer who serves as the communications advisor for Trudeau Minister Navdeep Bains has called for the RCMP to be abolished on social media. 

Mollie Anderson also said that the RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki should be fired for failing to say that the institution is systemically racist. 

"Brenda Lucki should be dismissed immediately, and the RCMP should be abolished," wrote Anderson in an Instagram comment.

Also:

Police unions have “frequently been a huge problem” in protecting bad officers, says the Liberal chair of the Commons public safety committee. The RCMP Commissioner told a hearing on police abuses she “won’t appreciate getting thrown under the bus” by union members.

Again, let them fight.


And:

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says the Liberal government will work on a law to ensure First Nations have the policing services they need and deserve — but questions are being raised about why this work has seemingly just started.

Blair told the House of Commons public safety committee Tuesday night he has recently begun contacting Indigenous leaders across the country to figure out how to best transform policing in their communities.

The Liberals promised to take action on First Nations policing over six months ago, first in the mandate letter Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued to Blair in December and again in response to Indigenous protests against the Coastal GasLink project in northern B.C.

Being rewarded for breaking the law.

What can go wrong here?

It's Just An Economy

"Oh, no!" he said.

"We won't get downgraded," he said.

Well .. :

 

May 14: Over a month ago, I asked Mr. Morneau 3 times if Canada would be downgraded.

No answer then. Today, we got an answer. pic.twitter.com/qtuEg4LPIq

— pierrepoilievre (@PierrePoilievre) June 24, 2020

**

The ex-chief of the federal public service predicts job cuts in the aftermath of the pandemic. “The federal service will be smaller,” said Michael Wernick, former $326,000-a year clerk of the Privy Council: “We saw that before.”

(Sidebar: this Michael Wernick. The elites in Canada don't lose their jobs. They simply are put aside for a while.)


Tough times ahead.

 

Seventy Years On

And still no resolution:

The defense chiefs of South Korea and the U.S. issued a joint statement on Thursday marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. 

Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said the alliance between the two allies "forged through years of combat and shared sacrifice" is "ironclad and remains the linchpin of security, stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula."

The two officials reaffirmed their "commitment to maintain a robust defense posture and strengthen... coordination toward [the two allies’] common objective of the complete denuclearization of North Korea in a final, fully verified manner."

 

Remains of the South Korean fallen have returned home:

The remains of 147 South Korean soldiers who died in North Korea during the Korean War returned home on Wednesday.

They had been found by American excavators in North Korea and transported to the U.S. for identification.

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Also:

International human rights activists have slammed the South Korean government for not supporting a North Korea resolution of the UN Human Rights Council for a second year running, according to Voice of America on Wednesday.

Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said, "Seoul used to be one of the key members of an informal coalition of like-minded UN member states that produced very significant and very effective measures addressing the human rights situation in North Korea. [But now] Seoul has given up the high ground it once held." 

Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, added, "President Moon Jae-in's approach to North Korea can be best characterized as abandoning any human rights principles he ever stood for. His shameful appeasement of [North Korea] and its leaders betrays the UN Human Rights Council's earnest efforts to hold North Korea accountable for its horrific record of rights abuses." 

And Robert King, a former special envoy for North Korea human rights issues at the U.S. State Department, said, "The series of temper tantrums by [Kim Jong-un's sister] Yo-jong rejecting valid human rights criticism should be acknowledged. When a child throws a tantrum, ignoring it only encourages such behavior to continue. I regret that Seoul did not speak out."

**

"Kim Il-sung's Children," a documentary shedding light on the fate of North Korean orphans sent to Eastern Europe after the Korean War, hits theaters on Thursday. 

The film by Kim Deog-young delves into the fate of around 5,000 North Korean orphans sent to five Eastern European countries from 1952 to 1960. Kim scoured archives in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic as well as the schools and dormitories where the children studied and lived. ...

Around 2,500 North Korean orphans were sent to Romania from 1952 to be educated. Eastern bloc countries accepted the orphans to gain boasting rights about Socialist solidarity during the Cold War.

It was a North Korean appointed to supervise the orphans, Cho Jung-ho, with whom Mircioiu, an art teacher, fell in love, and the two got married in 1957. Cho was ordered back to the North in 1962 and Mircioiu went to Pyongyang with him.

But Cho was hauled off to do hard labor in a notorious coal mine as soon as the couple set foot on North Korean soil. Mircioiu gave birth to their daughter in Pyongyang and returned to Romania. She still has no idea what happened to her husband. 

"I firmly believe that my husband is alive and will come back and I've been working on a Romanian-Korean dictionary for the last 30 years to remember the Korean language," she told Kim.

"North Korea is a reclusive and abnormal state and it is virtually impossible to go there and report," Kim said. "That has regrettably caused people to rely on distorted information provided by some North Korea sources, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to delve into all the revealing materials that were suddenly available in Eastern Europe."

One More Time - What Do We Need China For?

It's out in the open:

China has explicitly tied the fate of two detained Canadians to the release of Meng Wanzhou, joining the growing calls for Ottawa to intervene in the Huawei executive’s extradition.

In a media briefing Wednesday, Zhao Lijian, the spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, cited comments made by Michael Kovrig’s wife to the CBC and Reuters saying Canada’s justice minister has the power to end Meng’s extradition to the United States “at any point.”

“Such options are within the rule of law and could open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians,” Zhao said, referring to Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have now been detained for over 550 days.

Yes, in my part of the world that is called kidnapping and extortion.


The Liberals' ties (and undying love) to China are well-known. It is, therefore, no surprise that its members would offer the utterly suicidal suggestion of freeing Meng Wanzhou long after other attempts failed.

Any sane and competent leader would have dealt with this issue over five hundred and fifty days ago. By now (how long the wait!), it is obvious that China can never trusted, that it is a danger even to itself and that all major industry should be moved back to Canada or at least a trustworthy nation that isn't China.


Justin's choices here are not to do the moral thing by Canada and its nationals but who to anger: the Chinese or the Americans.

Mid-Week Post

 

Your mid-week splash in the pool ...




It's just an economy:

As debt continues to surge, Canada has lost our AAA credit rating.

The rating has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings to AA+.

According to Fitch, Canada’s debt is projected to rise from 88.3% of GDP to 115.1% of GDP.

**

The Canadian government could be edging toward a revived trade spat with the U.S., after America’s top trade advisor accused Canada of “shading” its dairy obligations and breaking agreements over aluminum exports.

**

The recession could knock an average $100,000 off home prices in the largest Western cities, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation warned yesterday. Average prices in Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal will rebound sooner, said analysts: “There is a lot of uncertainty out there.”

Not bloody likely:

A group of senators is calling on the Liberal government to impose sanctions on Chinese officials over China’s treatment of its Muslim minority, its increasing restriction of freedoms in Hong Kong, and its arrests of two Canadians.

Also - what he meant to say is that after having been caught, he will try white-washing his arguably treasonous actions:

(Sidebar: yes, treasonous.)

Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says he has repaid two mortgages with a Chinese state bank and refinanced them with a Canadian financial institution.

Champagne disclosed the development during testimony Tuesday before the House of Commons health committee, saying he decided to refinance the mortgages to avoid a distraction.

Justin remained hidden in a taxpayer-funded cottage while Doug showed up for work. Why wasn't that mentioned in this article?:

Do people not think politicians are actually in charge? Do they think COVID-19 is an entirely unknowable enemy, picking its target jurisdictions at random? (The news has been full of stories about countries that got it right, and neighbouring countries that got it wrong.) No non-partisan believes this disaster is down solely to the government of the day: It takes much longer than Ford or Legault have been in office for a long-term care home system to become as decrepit and vulnerable as Ontario’s and Quebec’s demonstrably were. But a halfway curious health minister would have known that early on. The National Post’s Richard Warnica reported on Tuesday that some of Public Health Ontario’s top minds in very important positions had recently left the organization, and had not been replaced in a cost-cutting environment. Voters have fired first ministers for so much less, and refused to reward them for far better performances.

 Because little people:

“Rules are for little people.” Alex Pierson’s irritated Tuesday tweet about Elections Canada not investigating a Trudeau minister’s fundraiser came right before I read that SNC-Lavalin is “the only Canadian company to be exempt from a 2015 Government-Wide Integrity Regime, which says to refrain from using corrupt federal contractors.” Did someone replace the maple leaf on our flag with a banana?

When a Liberal MP was arrested for stalking, nobody told anybody. Or if they did, nobody listened. You or me: front page mug shot, disgrace, punishment. But not Trudeau’s buddies.

People voted for this.

There is comfort in knowing that someone, even an incompetent frat-boy, appears to be sending cheques. That's all that matters in this country.

Panem et circenses.





No one is vetted and there are unemployed people in this country:

Public health officials have failed to ensure all migrant workers are tested for COVID-19, the mayor of Windsor, Ont., said Tuesday, calling on farmers to step in so the region can soon join the rest of the province in Stage 2 of reopening.

Drew Dilkens said the high number of COVID-19 cases on farms in Essex County was holding back the entire region and the local economy could not face another week of delay.

“While the local health unit has thus far refused to test the full temporary foreign worker population, this next week presents an opportunity for our local agricultural community to step in where public health officials have failed,” he said in a statement.

Windsor-Essex is the only area of the province which remains in the first stage of reopening in the province as it continues to grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks on area farms.

Hundreds of migrant workers in the region have tested positive for the virus and three have died.

 
Learn to code. No, really:

Starting this September, students in Ontario public schools will begin learning mathematics with more emphasis on a “back to basics” approach, with certain concepts introduced in earlier grades and other concepts pushed into higher ones.

Throughout grades one to eight, children will learn concepts related to coding for the first time.

They will also learn about personal finance in each grade, and they will learn about measurements of data storage, such as a byte, kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte, alongside the other units of measurement they learned previously.

Ministry of Education officials said teachers will be given professional development time through the summer as well as during the new school year to adapt lesson plans to the changes.

“This is the first new elementary school math curriculum in 15 years – it’s clear that has a lot has changed since 2005, and our math schooling needs to change with it,” Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday.

At this point, I would not believe a single thing the RCMP said:

The RCMP did not rely on any information from confidential informants when seeking judicial approval to search properties owned by the Nova Scotia mass shooter, court was told.

A prosecutor representing the RCMP made the declaration when defending the heavy censorship of information about the investigation into the worst mass killing in Canada’s history.

Because some people are "special":

A northern Alberta First Nation says charges have been dropped against its chief, who was the subject of a violent arrest earlier this year.

The case of Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation was in front of a Fort McMurray provincial court judge Wednesday and court records showed charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer were to be withdrawn by the Crown. 

The First Nation confirmed that is what happened in the hearing Wednesday morning. The Crown's office did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

The move comes after the RCMP dash-cam footage of Adam's arrest was made public earlier this month as part of a court application to stay the charges.

The Soviets believed in "science", too:

Twitter seems to exist primarily for the purpose of generating mobs — composed primarily of individuals who are hungry for blood and desiring to bask in the joys of reasonably risk-free reputation destruction, revenge and self-righteousness. Furthermore, as far as Twitter mobs go, those who complained about the Angewandte Chemie publication were by no means numerous, constituting perhaps less than a dozen.

No matter: once the complaints emerged, the editor of the journal in charge of Hudlicky’s work — Dr. Neville Compton — removed the paper from the journal’s website, and offered an abject apology for daring to have published it. Furthermore, he reported the “suspension” of two of the journal’s editors and cast aspersions on Hudlicky’s ethics, stating that his essay did not properly reflect fairness, trustworthiness and social awareness, while implying that the now-pilloried author and his peer reviewers and editors were discriminatory, unjust and inequitable in practice.

What were Hudlicky’s sins? His 12-page document (about 4,000 words) dealt with issues affecting organic synthesis research and communication, covering topics such as the range of research options available, integrity and trustworthiness of the relevant literature, transference of skills from mentor to trainee, impact of information technology, the corporatization of the university environment, the effect of new technology, the diversity of the available work force, and the competition for resources among researchers. However, Hudlicky voiced a smattering of opinions deemed unacceptable by that small number of people who both read his submission and were somewhat active on Twitter.

Why does this sound familiar?:

Death doulas differ from palliative care in that they’re not medical. They help patients on a more human level, like how they would like to leave their legacy, or if they have a choice in the matter, how they want to die. It’s about having someone to make sure your wishes are respected. Sometimes, it’s simply about having companionship in your final days.

(Sidebar: isn't that what families are for?)


Ah, yes:

It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and con-taining twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying in company–in company and with all the modern conveniences. The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. At the foot of every bed, con-fronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed. "We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here–some-thing between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning. ...

The Savage's voice was trembling with indignation. "What are these filthy little brats doing here at all? It's disgraceful!" 

"Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're being death-conditioned. 

June 23rd, 1985

 

Thirty-five years after the deadliest mass killing in Canadian history, many don’t know about the tragedy, despite its magnitude.

On June 23, 1985, 280 Canadians, including 86 children, lost their lives in the bombing of Air India Flight 182, which has never really sunk into the national consciousness.

As Chandrima Chakraborty, professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, tells the Big Story Podcast, right away the federal government framed the bombing as a foreign tragedy, even though the majority of the victims were Canadian.

“It immediately thwarted any attempt to publicly mourn, collectively mourn, come together as a community,” she says of the event, which has been called Canada’s 9/11.

(Sidebar: there's political multiculturalism for you.)

However, it was later confirmed the bombing plot was hatched on Canadian soil.

Chakraborty adds the victims were also seen as immigrants rather than citizens at the time.

“It was the terrorist act that was incorporated into the public’s memory and not the grief of those who lost loved ones,” she says.

The flight was heading from Toronto to London when the bomb detonated and crashed near Ireland, killing all 329 people

Wexit

If Alberta doesn't bleed the east by not paying provincial welfare equalisation and removing itself from national schemes, it will have to consider separation from Canada or Quebec will gut what is left of it. The Laurentian elite has, since the beginning of the twentieth century, fortified its position as an untouchable class of obscene wealth lifted from a gradually weakened population. Money is all it understands. It's time to remove the parasite from the host:

But it’s also fair to note that many of the recommendations in the Fair Deal Panel report, which was released earlier in the week, do little to address Alberta’s current plight. The main recommendation, hold a referendum on equalization, seems especially pointless.

Yes, about that:

Alberta contributed more money to the federal purse than any other province in Canada from 2007 to 2015, and has received fewer dollars in return, according to a study released Thursday.

The study by the Fraser Institute — a conservative, free market policy think tank — found the province contributed $221.4 billion more in revenue than it received in federal transfer payments and other services in those years.

And no province can withdraw from those payment scheme.

The US Could Impose More Tariffs On Aluminium

Canadian cabinet ministers are staying mum on a new report that U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to impose yet another round of aluminum tariffs against Canada in apparent response to shrinking domestic demand amid the coronavirus economic slump.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday morning that the U.S. plans to re-impose a tariff of 10 per cent on Canadian aluminum coming into the U.S. by the end of the week unless the Canadian government agrees to limit aluminum exports.

The report says those tariffs on Canadian aluminum would go into effect on Canada Day.

Happy Canada Day!

There Is Always Corruption to Fall Back On

Losing a non-permanent seat on the UN isn't the end of the world:

SNC-Lavalin Group may have paid $1.9 million in fines for nine years of bid-rigging in Quebec, but it is still eligible for federal contracts, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

The Public Prosecution Service wouldn’t share its agreement with the company, which the Federal Competition Bureau had been investigating after suspicious bids on Montreal and Quebec City municipal public works.

**

Canada’s new auditor general says many audits have been cancelled or delayed “indefinitely” as her office faces budgetary constraints, as well as an increased workload due to COVID-19 and infrastructure spending.

“We have some audits that are ongoing that were expected to be tabled in the House in the fall of 2020. We have delayed those into 2021,” Auditor General Karen Hogan told members of the federal finance committee on Monday. “All other audits unfortunately at this time other than one audit, under the commissioner of the environment, have been put on hold, cancelled or delayed indefinitely so that we can focus on Investing in Canada and COVID-19.”

**

The taxpayer-owned Canada Infrastructure Bank yesterday rejected demands from the Commons finance committee for details of bonuses paid to its former CEO. Pierre Lavallée abruptly resigned April 3 with three years remaining in his contract: “Well, that’s unacceptable.”

**

Cabinet could have “picked better words” to discourage cheats under a $60 billion pandemic relief program, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said yesterday. A draft bill to jail scofflaws would not be retroactive, she said: “I hear you.” 

**

Despite a House of Commons rule requiring notification if an MP is arrested, Trudeau and his public safety minister, Bill Blair, claimed they had no knowledge of the charges until two months later. “I think there’s perhaps a reflection that that is something that we can look into,” Trudeau mused. The CBC reported on Friday, however, that the party investigated allegations of inappropriate touching and unwelcome sexual comments directed at a female staffer dating back to the 2015 election campaign, but approved Tabbara to run under the Liberal banner in last year’s election anyway.

Rather than cite his “zero-tolerance” policy when questioned about Tabbara, Trudeau refused to discuss the matter on the basis that it’s confidential. Instead he talked around the issue, maintaining the party takes such matters “extremely seriously” and operates “a rigorous process that has been established to ensure that every single allegation or complaint around misconduct is appropriately dealt with, that there are conclusions and next steps and recommendations that are fulfilled.”

See- everything will be peachy.