Mid-Week Post

Your mid-weekly slouch around the water-cooler ...




Well, duh:

The military reservist who allegedly stormed the grounds of Rideau Hall last week with multiple firearms wrote a two-page letter which sources say included personal financial issues and government grievances, including references to his actions sending a wake-up call and fears Canada was falling into communist dictatorship.

Justin does, after all, admire China's basic dictatorship.

(Sidebar: we laugh because we know it's true. Merci.)


Also - I'll just leave this right here:

From blank post-it notes to coded slogans hidden in murals, Hong Kong activists are coming up with creative ways to skirt Beijing’s new national security law.

The anti-government protest movement that escalated in June last year spawned an explosion of public art and graffiti, some of it calling for independence for the Chinese-ruled territory or urging residents to “liberate” the financial hub.

And:

The Department of Environment says mills and factories in East Asia – it would not identify China by name – account for most airborne mercury pollution in Canada. Chinese mines, mills and factories were blamed for high mercury deposits at remote Canadian lakes and mountains: “97% of mercury deposited in Canada as a result of human activities originates outside the country.”

That's a lot of admiration.




The last time the government tried this, it made people sign away their beliefs:

The federal Liberal government is facing growing calls to provide direct support to Canada’s charity and non-profit sector as some of the country’s best-known and largest organizations say they are struggling to survive because of COVID-19.

 
From the most obviously corrupt government ever re-elected:

A former employee of WE Charity says a speech she wrote for a WE Schools tour about her experiences as a Black woman was changed without her consent by a mostly white group of staff members.

 

**

In addition to the Ethics Commissioner, two parliamentary committees are now expected to dig into the Trudeau government’s controversial decision to outsource a $900-million student volunteer grant program to WE Charity.

On Tuesday, a majority of members on the federal finance committee voted to spend at least 12 hours investigating how WE Charity was chosen to administer the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG).

On the same day, the chair of the government operations committee agreed to host an emergency meeting Thursday to vote on a similar study, after a request by the NDP, Conservatives and Bloc Québécois. That vote is also expected to pass.

The announcements come just days after the federal Ethics Commissioner announced he would investigate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government’s handling of the decision to outsource the CSSG to WE Charity.

**

“BREAKING: PM Justin Trudeau says cabinet made the final decision on awarding WE Charity the contract to administer the student volunteer grants and despite his family’s ties to the charity, he did not recuse himself from that decision.” ...

This means Trudeau was directly a part of a decision to give control of a nearly $1 BILLION government program over to a charity with close ties to himself and his family.

(Sidebar: I'm sure the Cabinet was very careful and impartial when making this decision. Totally.)
 
** 

As reported by Blacklock’s, ‘neutral’ cabinet advisors – who were supposedly going to give the federal cabinet advice on where to give the bailout funds through applications – have made pro-Trudeau, and anti-Conservative statements. 

**

A federal audit has uncovered sweetheart contracting in the Department of Fisheries, including cases where “winning bidders and evaluators were former colleagues”. Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic cited numerous irregularities in the department that awarded more than half a billion in contracts over the past two years: “There were six cases where the department appears to have manipulated the number of bidders invited to bid.”

In a normal country, she would have had to resign by now:

Mismanagement of pandemic supplies by the Public Health Agency of Canada was “my worst nightmare”, a senior advisor to a 2003 SARS Commission said yesterday. Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam failed in her legal duty to stockpile masks, the Commons health committee was told: “They weren’t ready.”

Further:

The Department of Health in internal memos boasted it was completely prepared for Covid-19 and “working exactly as it should”. Records show Health Minister Patricia Hajdu believed the risk to Canadians was low as late as March 9, two days before the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic: “This is difficult work as you can imagine.”

Yes, Patty, about that:

Testifying before the Commons health committee, Mario Possamai said the measures taken by Ottawa and the Public Health Agency of Canada were slow, inadequate and failed to properly protect health-care workers.

As a result, these workers comprise almost 20% of COVID-19 infections in Canada, he said, triple the global average reported by the International Council of Nurses and four times the rate in China.

“COVID-19 has revealed that the system to protect Canadian health-care workers in a public health emergency is broken and must be fixed urgently, before the expected second pandemic wave,” Possamai said. “I tell you personally, I’m gutted that it has happened, that things have gone the way they have here.  This has gone far worse than my worst nightmare.” ...

Retained by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions to prepare a report on Canada’s pandemic response, Possamai took direct aim at Health Minister Patty Hajdu and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam for failing to ensure Canada had adequate pandemic supplies prior to the outbreak:

“The federal health minister and the chief medical officer of health have claimed stockpiling (pandemic supplies) was a provincial responsibility. I respectfully disagree,” he said. “Ottawa destroyed two million N-95 (masks) last year. It should have replaced them and purchased more … Remember, the federal stockpile had only 100,000 N-95s entering the pandemic.

Describing it as a “systemic failure” Possamai testified:

“I believe the chief medical officer of health and her immediate predecessor failed in their responsibility under Section 12 of the Public Health Agency of Canada Act to warn Parliament and Canadians that we weren’t ready, that we didn’t have enough personal protective equipment and especially N-95.”

On Jan. 31, days after the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in Canada, Possamai wrote to Hajdu expressing “profound disappointment” that “the Public Health Agency of Canada is risking health workers’ safety by recommending lower protections against the novel coronavirus. Failing to act with tougher policies would be a grave injustice to the victims of SARS and their families. Half of SARS victims in Ontario were health workers.”

He said Hajdu never replied.

I'll bet she didn't.


Also:

Twelve percent of Canadians wouldn’t take a Covid-19 vaccination even if it was available, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Two thirds of people, 68 percent, said they were very likely to get immunized: ‘How large a threat is the anti-vaxer movement in Canada?’

I wouldn't trust anything that came from China.




It's only an economy:

Providing almost all Canadians with a basic income for six months beginning this fall could cost about $98 billion, the parliamentary budget officer said in a report on the eve of a preview of how COVID-19 will shape government spending until next spring.

**

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is facing calls to begin unwinding key COVID-19 support programs in his fiscal update on Wednesday, as businesses warn that unrestrained extensions of financial aid could crimp an eventual economic recovery.

**

Higher personal income tax rates paid by Canadian workers compared to their American counterparts across all income levels will impede Canada’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession, warns a new study by the Fraser Institute.

**

Under Justin Trudeau's government, Canada now has the highest unemployment in the G7, according to a recent OCED Report. 

Canada's unemployment as a percentage of the labour force now stands at a suffocating 13.7 percent—only finishing below Columbia, Spain and Greece. 

The United States performed slightly better than Canada, holding an unemployment of 11.1 percent.

Why, that sounds like protectionism to me:

Under the new agreement, Canada will provide U.S. dairy farmers access to about 3.5 per cent of its $16 billion annual domestic dairy market.

This means America will be able to increase exports of some milk products to Canada.

However, Canada and the U.S. have different guidelines and rules when it comes to the production of dairy products, raising the question: Should Canadians be concerned about the safety and quality of these American products?

If the product can compete and win on the open market, people will buy it. These scare tactics are just desperate.




How could this go wrong?:

The federal government does not know the whereabouts of over 34,000 foreigners who were ordered to be removed from the country, including nearly 3,000 criminal cases, according to findings by Canada’s Auditor General.

It's always about bad driving:

The Transportation Safety Board says poor driving habits, not shorter daylight hours, are likely to blame for a statistical spike in rail crossing accidents in winter months. The Board yesterday called train-car collisions “one of the most serious types of rail accidents” with 26 deaths last year: “We need to do more work.”

The Khmer Rouge and North Korea tried communism.

What? It didn't work?:

“This is a good read. I know some people will see the word Communist and jump to all kinds of conclusions but I’d say give it a read before you do that, it may surprise you,” Anderson tweeted Monday in response to an article written by Elizabeth Rowley, the leader of the Communist Party of Canada.

I'm surprised at the death count.




If some white supremacist moron had said something similar, the talking heads would have exploded with shock by now:

A social media post has resurfaced from a Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder in which she apparently argues that white people are “sub-human” and are “recessive genetic defects.”

Yusra Khogali wrote the post on what appears to be her Facebook and attempted to use a genetic explanation involving melanin production to explain why white people are “defects.” It has now gone viral after it was shared by scholar James Lindsay.

Also - surrounding property is alright when rich white kids do it to proles:

Toronto’s mayor had harsh words for those responsible for a violent protest outside of his Yorkville condo Monday evening.

Should we defund the police now, John?




Wait - it wasn't vandalism before?:

Less than an hour after it was finished on Saturday afternoon, vandals came for the Black Lives Matter street slogan in Martinez, Calif.

A woman in flip-flops and a patriotic shirt splattered a can of black paint over the bright yellow “L” in “Black” heaving her paint roller over the letters outside the Contra Costa County courthouse. Her companion, a man in a red “Four More Years” shirt from President Trump’s campaign and red “Make America Great Again” hat, told onlookers, “No one wants Black Lives Matter here.”

I didn't know that she was Canadian but considering her screeching fragility and willingness to cry on cue, it all makes sense:

A Canadian white woman who called police and falsely accused an African-American man of threatening her life after he asked her to leash her dog in New York’s Central Park is being criminally charged over the incident, Manhattan’s district attorney said on Monday.

Amy Cooper, 41, whose actions on May 25 were recorded on a video that went viral and touched off discussions about “white privilege,” is being charged with filing a false report, a Class A misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in jail.

How "humiliating".




The British Empire abolished slavery in 1833. Didn't you tell Wallis Simpson Megan Markle that?:

In a video discussion broadcast Monday, the Duke and Duchess joined the trust’s conversation on its “historic injustice”, including the transatlantic slave trade.

Good:

The White House has officially moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a senior administration official confirmed Tuesday, breaking ties with a global public health body in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. has submitted its withdrawal notification to the United Nations secretary-general, the official said. Withdrawal requires a year's notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021, raising the possibility the decision could be reversed.

I hope not.




North Korea is taking advantage of the coronavirus its master has released on the world:

The U.S. point man for North Korea met with South Korean officials in Seoul on Wednesday for wide-ranging talks, overshadowed by Pyongyang’s insistence that it has no intention of returning to denuclearisation negotiations any time soon.

Also:

For years, North Korean defectors have used free speech protections of their new home in South Korea to taunt the regime in Pyongyang. Now, South Korean President Moon Jae-in believes some have taken it too far.

Two brothers who led prominent defector groups were questioned by police last week, after Moon’s administration sought to have them prosecuted over leaflets they sent north of the border. Previously, Park Sang-hak and Park Jung-oh chiefly had to worry about threats from Kim Jong Un, whose regime has denounced them as “human scum,” dubbing the elder Park “Enemy Zero.”

The episode has thrust North Korean defectors — and Moon’s uneasy relationship with them — back into the spotlight. While Moon entered politics seeking both stronger human rights protections and a better relationship with North Korea, he has often found himself as president prioritizing ties with Pyongyang over the abuses highlighted by defectors.

Oh, dear:

At least 15 people in Kyushu were feared dead, nine were missing and one was seriously injured Saturday as unprecedented rain overnight triggered floods and landslides and the Self-Defense Forces were called in to help.

The rain was so fierce that some 203,200 residents in 92,200 households in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures were ordered to evacuate.

In the village of Kuma in Kumamoto, 14 people were found “in cardiopulmonary arrest” in a flooded care home named Senjuen, local officials said. Another person was found in the same condition after being pulled from a landslide in Tsunagi, also in Kumamoto. In Japan, accident victims are often described as being in cardiopulmonary arrest pending official notification of death.

We may never know who is responsible for these acts of sabotage in Iran:

A massive explosion and fire at a highly sensitive Iranian nuclear facility last week was likely an act of sabotage, intelligence officials and weapons experts said Monday, but analysts were divided over the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program.

Satellite photos released over the weekend show a gaping hole in a large industrial building where Iranian technicians assembled machines that make enriched uranium. The building, on the grounds of Iran’s sprawling Natanz uranium-enrichment complex, was rocked early Thursday by a mysterious blast that Iranian officials acknowledge caused “significant” damage.

via GIPHY