Mid-Week Post

 

Your middle-of-the-week sorbet ...




The stupid platitude-spewing snowboard instructor who has never had to make his own wealth is now puzzled as to how he will keep the beer and Netflix money flowing:

Regarding the undisclosed financial toll that the coronavirus pandemic will have, Trudeau said that it was "very difficult" to know what the total costs will be, depending on "how many businesses reopen, and to what percentage."

"There are so many things that we simply don't know, that making projections about what our economy could look like six months from now, or a year from now, would be an exercise in invention and imagination," the prime minister said.

Trudeau said that his government would remain transparent, ...

... but that a "proper fiscal update" was something "that includes, usually, projections on three to five years in the future that we simply don't know about."

Who could have seen this coming? Really?

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The Bloc Québécois has made a fiscal update a part of its conditions for supporting legislation expected to be introduced Wednesday to amend the Canada Emergency Response Benefit program and bring in fines for people who fraudulently used it.

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said a fiscal update was a necessity to understand where the country sits after billions in spending.

“We need an economic update to ascertain how broke we are and to hear the government’s plan to escape financial ruin.”

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Opposition parties are pushing back against the Liberals new legislation to change the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, leaving the government’s plans stalled until they can find more support.

Government House leader Pablo Rodriguez held a press conference Wednesday morning pleading with the opposition for support to move the bill through the House.

“I’m calling on the other parties to set politics aside,” he said. “People are counting on us. Let’s get this done together.”

Oh, f--- you!

Why are you so shocked that people don't want to back limitless spending and endless debt?


Also:

Canada is expected to face a stark economic downturn in 2020, with every single province's economy shrinking by a significant margin. 

In a new study conducted by RBC Economics and published by StatsCan, the true damage of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown is revealed through a comparison to the economic growth of 2019. 

Alberta is expected to have the toughest 2020. Not only did Alberta suffer from the pandemic, but they also saw a crash in oil prices earlier this year. As a result of this, Alberta's economy is expected to shrink by a devastating -11.2 percent. 

Newfoundland and Labrador—whose economy grew by 2 percent in 2019—is facing the second tightest squeeze, with an expected atrophy of -11 percent. 

(Sidebar: if it helps, Alberta might get a boost from a Banff - Calgary rail-line.)

 

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Pandemic relief for jobless students will go nearly $700 million over budget, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. The program intended for college and university students now pays benefits to high school graduates whether or not they’re enrolled on campus: “People have to get back to work.”

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A pandemic loan guarantee program for small business will be expanded June 15, a Crown banker yesterday told the Commons finance committee. Loans to the smallest operators may increase total costs: “Every week puts another person closer to bankruptcy.”

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The recession will knock $45,000 off average home prices this year with no recovery likely until 2023, says Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The federal insurer warned the timing of recovery is “highly uncertain”.

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Because Quebec is special:

The Canada Revenue Agency audits proportionately fewer businesses in Québec than any other province, data show. Small businesses in British Columbia, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador are twice or three times more likely to be audited: ‘It feels to the individual taxpayer like the CRA is focused on them.’

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The Commons finance committee last night by a unanimous 10-0 vote recommended full funding for audits of federal spending. “Call in the auditors,” said Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.), sponsor of the motion.

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Public Works Minister Anita Anand yesterday said she was shocked and surprised by conflict of interest on a federal Covid-19 Supply Council. Six of seventeen appointees are registered lobbyists. One member has resigned to date: “Is your government comfortable with the presence of lobbyists?” 

Seventy-six percent of Canadians want to put a stop on replacing the old people Ontario and Quebec let die:

Three quarters (76%) of Canadians polled by ONE, a research company based out of Toronto, strongly agree or moderately agree with the statement: Canada should temporarily pause immigration until a vaccine is developed for coronavirus and the unemployment rate drops down to pre-coronavirus levels. 

Are they all racist now? Is it time to pull down some statues (because that's helpful)?


Also:

“Virtual citizenship ceremonies coming for new Canadians whose dreams were crushed by COVID-19,"  ...

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

After months of telling us to stay in lockdown, to not visit family, skip funerals and stay home from work among other measures, Trudeau walked out into a mass protest on Friday. There wasn’t any social distancing around him, there wasn’t much of it at the protest.

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World Health Organization officials are walking back some statements from Monday, now saying that they are “absolutely convinced” that asymptomatic transmission of the novel coronavirus is occurring.

Disease experts on Tuesday questioned a statement by the World Health Organization that transmission of COVID-19 by people with no symptoms is “very rare,” saying this guidance could pose problems for governments as they seek to lift lockdowns.

Maria van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist and the WHO’s technical lead on the coronavirus pandemic, said on Monday that many countries undertaking contact tracing had identified asymptomatic cases, but were not finding they caused further spread of the virus. “It is very rare,” she said.

Yes, about that:

But now there's compelling evidence that even people without symptoms may be transmitting the virus.

So, which is it, WHO?

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Sweden’s prime minister was criticised on Sunday over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, with opposition MPs saying the country’s herd immunity strategy had “failed miserably” and demanding the resignation of the chief epidemiologist.

In a blistering opinion article that analysts said marked the end of a political truce during the national crisis, the leader of the populist Sweden Democrats said the state had failed to protect vulnerable citizens with its less restrictive lockdown.

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The primary type of testing for the novel coronavirus around the world, including Canada, produces “false-negative” results at least 20 per cent of the time, researchers from Johns Hopkins University found.

According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in May, the false-negative rate of RT-PCR testing used to detect the novel coronavirus changes depending on where a person is in the timeline of the infection cycle.

No, I would say that the post-modern West is uber-screwed. If aliens invaded this planet, not even Han Solo could save us, nor would he want to:

Trudeau equated the 2020 graduating class to the graduates of 1939, the “greatest generation” who went through the Great Depression and into World War II.

(Sidebar: the moron who can't answer a question without getting guidance compared the generation that defeated the Nazi war machine to absolute losers who get offended by words.)

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A University of Alberta professor has lost an administrative role in the anthropology department because of complaints that her views on gender were making people feel unsafe.

(Sidebar: yeah, this generation. Do you know what made the WWII generation feel unsafe? Bombs.)

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A Canadian professor who criticized diversity hiring in an opinion essay has prompted a prestigious German scientific journal to retract the piece, and the publisher and his university to issue a public apology.

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There is a 50 minute audio embedded in this article of a Chicago City Council meeting with Mayor Lori Lightfoot. If you want to see why Democrat cities are a catastrophe, listen to all of it. A stunning and utterly disheartening failure of leadership. https://t.co/W7bLI6tgs5

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 9, 2020

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Well, someone has to step up to the plate:

In Canada, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney stands out not only for managing the pandemic well, but also for filling the foreign policy and economic vacuum left by Canada’s hapless prime minister, who has spent far too much time and energy pursuing a useless United Nations Security Council seat, at the expense of our national interests. By contrast, Premier Kenney has been proactively doing what good foreign policy dictates: unequivocally condemning China for its misdeeds and proposing that Canada distance itself from Beijing, while pursuing deeper integration with the United States in manufacturing, medical equipment and energy. He has also been making the rounds in Washington to protect our economic interests.

That must be embarrassing:

The Canadian Forces is going to crack down on leaks of unclassified information in the wake of the unauthorized release of details about the crash of a Cyclone helicopter and problems in Ontario long-term care homes.

Details about the latest effort to hunt down and punish those who leak information was leaked to this newspaper.

One would think they wanted body cameras just to keep their stories straight:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday proposed to discuss mandatory police body-worn cameras but stopped short of issuing a directive to the RCMP. A Conservative motion and Liberal Senate proposal to have all police wear cameras lapsed in Parliament over the past decade: “Why do police not want this?”

Qassam Solemaini stopped smoking today:

An Iranian who spied for U.S. and Israeli intelligence on slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani has been sentenced to death, Iran said on Tuesday, adding the case was not linked to Soleimani’s killing earlier this year.

On Jan. 3, a U.S. drone strike in Iraq killed Soleimani, leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. Washington blamed Soleimani for masterminding attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. forces in the region.

“Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the spies for the CIA and the Mossad, has been sentenced to death … He had shared information about the whereabouts of martyr Soleimani with our enemies,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in a televised news conference.

North Korea always makes these threats:

North Korea has threatened to sever all communication with the South although in reality none has been taking place for months.

No, that's why the Chinese rape North Korean women:

But now, an economics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai has come up with another — and, unsurprisingly, controversial — solution: allow women to have multiple husbands, and they’ll have multiple babies.

Not bloody likely.