The centre of the week ...
Plagued with scandal and forced to turf his wealthy, inept and equally corrupt finance minister and replace him with an Orc, Justin makes further promises he can't keep because there is no such thing as magical money-growing orchards:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is weighing sweeping changes to the country's social welfare system and a series of economic measures that will align Canada with ambitious climate goals, according to people familiar with the matter.
The plan to bolster the social safety net will especially help those hurt most by the pandemic and come after Trudeau replaced a fiscally cautious finance minister.
"The prime minister wants to go big," said a government source, adding that Trudeau, 48, sees the moves as part of his legacy.
(Sidebar: oh, it definitely will be your legacy, along with corruption and arrogance.)
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With the sudden resignation of finance minister Bill Morneau, Canadians should be asking a simple question: are the federal Liberals about to embark on a new spending spree? Differences in views between a finance minister and prime minister are common, but with Morneau’s departure the signal seems to be to loosen the belt — which is not easy when you’re already planning a deficit of $343 billion. Perhaps the new minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, will be a stronger personality with her own ideas of belt tightening. We shall see.
When I say “spending spree” I’m not referring to the multitude of temporary support programs that are already producing the gigantic deficit in fiscal year 2020-21. No, I mean permanent public spending, including growing interest charges. After the WE Charity scandal, rumour has it the Trudeau government is looking for a magic recovery bullet that will transform Canada. Two obvious candidate files are climate change and social policy, both supposedly sources of conflict between the PM and former minister Morneau. ...
For $50 billion over five years, the government can implement net-zero emission building codes and subsidize building and energy retrofits, clean energy work training programs and electric vehicles, which still account for less than four per cent of the auto market. These policies become necessary only because others don’t seem to be doing the trick — not the federal carbon tax and not new regulations, such as recently announced resource-stifling Bill C-69 assessment procedures. Subsidies will widen a federal deficit that has already turned from pink to deep COVID red.
(Sidebar: ahem ...)
But the price tag for climate-change policies pales in comparison to possible new social spending on health care and income security. Facing their own yawning deficits, the provinces are expecting more federal transfers for health care, which takes up half their budgets. The Liberals promised during the 2019 election to bring in national Pharmacare. Some provinces may support it if they can offload their program expenses on Ottawa, while others, most notably Quebec, will reject federal intrusion but claim compensation. Given our recent experience with COVID deaths in nursing homes, the Liberals are also expected to promote a cost-sharing program for long-term care. For years, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association has raised concerns about funding long-term care in our aging society, but little was done, given the daunting costs involved.
Another major welfare program would be a guaranteed annual income (GAI) to replace the temporary CERB. A Senate committee report recently looked at a GAI of $24,000 per year for couples and $17,000 per year for single people between 18 and 64 years of age. The payment would be clawed back by either 50 cents, 25 cents or 15 cents for each dollar earned by a worker.
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Media executives divvying up federal grants awarded their own companies 100 percent wage subsidies, accounts show. News Media Canada, a publishers’ lobby, yesterday did not comment: ‘Helping the press is in the interests of democracy.’
Now, it can be said that the average Canadian can be bought with as little as a can of beer (SEE: CERB) but even the most ovine can see through the charade played out before them.
This one:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday prorogued the minority Parliament, halting for at least a month ongoing committee investigations of federal contracting, China meddling and We Charity. Trudeau told reporters if Opposition MPs didn’t like it they could force an election: ‘We will force a confidence vote.’
(Sidebar: don't tempt them, douchebag.)
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Jesus, finally. The truth is out:
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) August 19, 2020
-Proof that it was the Trudeau gov't & not the public service who first put forth WE for the job.
-Proof of early PMO pressure
-Proof that WE leveraged relationships w Margaret & Sophie Trudeau to get the $#WEscandalhttps://t.co/XhrdnYTYxY pic.twitter.com/EaEfdFBE5M
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The idea that working with WE came from the bureaucrats is utter BS and not supported by the facts. Maybe CP should have read the documents before rushing out their copy. Here is one example of WE pitching to senior political figures before bureaucrats decided WE was it. pic.twitter.com/WnbI7X0O0k
— Brian Lilley (@brianlilley) August 19, 2020
(Sidebar: convenient, isn't it?)
Those who were burned have not forgotten:
Retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman has stepped forward on social media to call out the Liberal government’s decision to prorogue parliament.
“Leadership means facing problems not avoiding them,” Norman wrote in a social media post on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. “Wouldn’t it be nice if the millions of [Canadians] struggling with the challenges of the pandemic could just hit the ‘reset’ button and ‘prorogue’ their responsibilities.”
It's incredibly important that this is kept in the public consciousness even well after September when Justin finally remembers that the Papineau riding actually expects him to show up for work.
Karl Marx also didn't like people owning houses:
CMHC chief executive Evan Siddall in a 2019 podcast complained Canada has “glorified this idea of home ownership” and enriched property holders at the expense of renters. Siddall praised a federal consultant who advocated federal taxes on “unhealthy home values”. Conservative MPs yesterday served notice they will summon Siddall for questioning: “The losers are the people who have won so much already through the increase in house prices, the owners.”
The World Health Organization will not allow Canadian MPs to question its officials over dealings with China on Covid-19. The Commons health committee had issued an April 30 summons for Dr. Bruce Aylward, a WHO epidemiologist who repeatedly praised Communist Party measures to contain the coronavirus: ‘China is being successful.’
Also:
The results suggest many parents are torn, with 66 per cent of respondents with children admitting they were worried about children returning to school but 63 per cent saying they planned to send their kids anyway.
Yet 69 per cent also felt all classes should be suspended and learning shifted back to home if there is a significant increase in COVID-19 cases in their community, with 19 per cent saying classes should continue and 12 per cent unsure either way.
What is it that we need China for anyway?:
A dissenter within China’s Communist Party has said that leader Xi Jinping is “killing” China with his one-man rule, and added that many in the party want him removed as boss, with China “sliding towards disaster.”
Cai Xia, once a professor at China’s elite Central Party School, told the Guardian that she was “happy” to be kicked out of Xi’s party after an audio taping of her, in which she criticized Xi, was leaked two months ago. She said many in the party are opposed to Xi but fear what will happen if they speak out — including being hit with corruption charges.
(Sidebar: careful, Miss Cai. Had this been Canada, you would be Jody-ed by now. But China is very different!)
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The massive $190 million, 470,000-square-foot complex, dubbed the “World Commodity Trade Center,” is a joint venture between a Chinese state-sponsored company and a local development firm. The centre, first conceived in Beijing, has four warehouses and two large exhibition halls — to be lined with Chinese and Canadian flags — strategically located in the Campbell Heights industrial zone between Vancouver International Airport and the United States border.
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Rights activists estimate 40 percent of women have faced sexual harassment in China, where a patriarchal system, victim-blaming and conservative attitudes mean reporting sex crimes and securing convictions can be difficult.
Blind women in the massage industry are even more vulnerable, says lawyer Li Ying, who warns that the real number who have faced sexual harassment is likely far higher than the general population.
Many in the profession have told charities they endured physical or sexual assault but as such incidents are rarely reported to authorities there are no official records detailing how high harassment levels are.
Li was the first lawyer to bring a case under China’s new sexual harassment legislation — which she won.
What can go wrong here?:
North Korea is believed to have up to 60 nuclear bombs and the world's third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons totaling up to 5,000 tons, the U.S. Army has said.
Also:
North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party will discuss a “crucial” matter at a meeting Wednesday that comes as the country battles catastrophic flooding that’s dealt a blow to its staggering economy and tries to head off a coronavirus crisis.
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The neighbour can be heard yelling: “You're an asylum seeker. You're not from this country.”
Mum Myungseo, a North Korea national who lives in Croydon, South East London, took to Facebook to reveal her plight.
She wrote: “It's only me and my children, we don't have any relative or friend in the UK and this situation is affecting my mental health and my children's wellbeing.”
Myungseo said she moved to the house with her kids in November 2019 and her neighbour allowed her to share a bin.
(Merci)
Trouble in Japan:
Japan, home to one of the world’s longest-living populaces, is also the grayest society, with the highest percentage of older people anywhere in the world.
In 2019, people aged 65 or over made up a record 28.41 percent of the country’s total population, according to government data released Aug. 5.
Combined with dwindling numbers of newborn babies, which dropped below 900,000 for the first time ever last year, the world’s third-largest economy has a shrinking working population to draw on at a time when soaring social security spending to cover pensions and medical care for older people is weighing heavily on the budget.
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On paper, the nation's low unemployment rate suggests an economy weathering the novel coronavirus reasonably well, but official figures belie worsening prospects for the country's army of temporary workers, who make up about 40 percent of the employment market.
A rise in job losses would undermine one of the few successes of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" stimulus policies, which has been aimed at reviving the economy.
The jobless rate stood at 2.8 percent in June, much lower than the 10.2 percent seen in the United States and the 7.8 percent in the 19-member eurozone.
But a closer look at data shows a rising number of people are dropping out of the search for work. That prevents the official jobless rate — the ratio of job-seekers who are yet to secure employment — from rising much.
Wait - this actually happened?:
Dreams do come true — or at least they do in Switzerland, where chocolate fell from the sky due to a malfunction at the Lindt & Sprüngli factory in the town of Olten.
The chocolate maker says a ventilation problem launched cocoa powder into the open air outside its facility last Friday morning. The wind caught the powder and spread it across the neighbourhood, leaving a fine dusting of sweet, sweet chocolate.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ben Cross:
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