From the Most Corrupt and Opaque Government Ever Re-Elected

Flights are still coming in from Beijing, China's "newest" hot-spot for the coronavirus, but you can't go to Yankee-Land:

The Commons health committee yesterday ordered public release of records regarding ongoing restrictions on Canada-U.S. border traffic. Closure to all but “essential” travelers has seen traffic cut by ninety percent or more at the busiest land crossings: “There has been no issue which comes up more frequently than border issues.”

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Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau closed the border in the early days of the pandemic, all cross-border traffic has declined by 90 percent, according to Blacklock's Reporter.  

Explaining why the health committee was requesting this information, a Conservative MP said that "the upshot is to shed as much light on the closure of the border, the reopening of the border, why it’s taking so long to reopen the border." ...

This motion passed with surprising force, with ten MPs supporting it, while only one, lonely Bloc Quebecois MP did not. ...

"The government can chew gum and walk at the same time ... I haven’t heard any member say transparency and accountability are not possible right now because they’re too busy dealing with the pandemic." 

Indeed. 

Throwing borrowed money around:

A $3 billion business subsidy program created by the Trudeau government is so difficult to qualify for that 90% of Canadian businesses cannot apply.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program has only given out $39 million so far, with new estimates suggesting that only $483 million will be given out in total – only 16% of what was originally budgeted.

The rent subsidy gives commercial landlords a 50% rent grant if they agree to cut rent to tenants facing insolvency.

The tenant has to show a decline in revenue of at least 75% to qualify, but the landlord must also apply for the subsidy in order to receive the payout.

In April the restaurant industry told MPs that the program was not going to work.

Restaurant owner Andrew Oliver told the finance committee that many restaurants in Canada have not had any revenue during the pandemic, making a program that only pays part of their rent useless.

“If you don’t have a catastrophic category for those whose sales are down 99% plus, where they don’t pay any rent but instead are asked to pay let’s say 25 percent rent, you might actually have a wave of restaurants say, ‘I’m out; the government doesn’t understand my business and I cannot hold on any longer,’” said Oliver.

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Reitzes suggested that the LEEFF program may have been designed to calm markets, rather than actually provide liquidity.

Hence, the government created a program with so many poison pills, it knew it would seldom be used.

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A Commons committee yesterday voted to conduct a riding by riding review of lucrative grants under the Canada Summer Jobs program. MPs gained new powers to award 100 percent wage subsidies to local employers regardless of whether they’d applied: “We want to get on this right away.”

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Canada will extend the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) income support that was brought in to help people get through temporary job losses caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday.  

Farms feed cities unless you are used to caviar, I suppose:

Chair of the Grain Farmers of Ontario Markus Haerle says that without support from the federal government, many farmers will not survive the downturn in grain markets caused by the coronavirus.

“We are at a real breaking point. The federal government continues to ask farmers to bear all of the risk associated with securing Canada’s food system and takes no action to partner with us in this risk,” he said.

“Our farmer-members will lose money on every acre of corn, with no way to regain those losses, while our U.S. counterparts will be able to survive these losses thanks to support from their government.”

Haerle fears that if Canadian farmers do not survive the pandemic, Canadians will have no choice but to depend on other countries to supply their food.

Like aid packages for Third World countries, which Canada is becoming.


Speaking of Third World:

Canada’s push for a temporary United Nations Security Council seat now includes a promise to deliver pandemic supplies around the world through airlift support and a bizarre letter telling other countries not to consider Canada too close to Israel.

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Conservative MP Leona Alleslev agrees a UN Security Council seat can be valuable, but only for a country with a clear vision, which she said the Liberal government hasn’t shown.

“Them looking at the UN Security Council seat without looking at Canada’s foreign policy, and understanding where we are in the world, and what our relationship with our allies and our adversaries alike should be, means that they didn’t know what they were going after.”

She said Trudeau has failed repeatedly on the world stage and aggravated our allies, with items like the India trip or the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks where he was accused of stalling negotiations and missing meetings. She worries the government is making deals with countries that aren’t our usual allies.

“Justin Trudeau has made some really damaging actions to our relationships and eroded our reputation on the world stage,” she said. “We don’t know what they’re willing to trade away to get the seat.”

Because priorities.




What could you be hiding?:

The Senate will vote on a proposal to appoint a secretive super-committee of three members to oversee its $116 million yearly budget and control all audits. Suggested changes to Rules Of The Senate follow complaints of concealed spending and breach of contracting rules: “I am struck at how secret an institution the Senate is.”