And the Rest of It

Quite a bit going on ...

This goes back all the way to Confederation, long before Pierre Trudeau's worthless Charter:

Rowe agreed with that analysis, and also said the federal government is wrongly using the “national concern” doctrine to justify exercising jurisdictional power not explicitly granted to it in the constitution. Rowe said that doctrine is only meant to be “a residual and circumscribed power of last resort that preserves the exhaustiveness of the division of powers,” and shouldn’t apply to this law.

Essentially, there is a central government, not individual provinces, that are imposing a tax without a rationale. Even with a rationale, the ruling infringes the sovereignty of provinces.

Also:

The number of rejected Canada Summer Jobs program applications fell 72 percent after Christian charities sued, records show. Cabinet had required applicants to swear they were pro-choice when seeking hire-a-student grants: “The most sinister threat to free speech is compelled speech.”

**

The Edmonton-area pastor, released last week after spending a month behind bars for preaching in violation of COVID-19 regulations, once again appeared at a packed church service on Sunday.

The case of Pastor James Coates has become one of the highest profile and most controversial cases of freedom of religion versus COVID-19 health restrictions in the country. GraceLife, Coates’s church in Parkland county just outside of Edmonton, has for months consistently violated Alberta pandemic rules.

Had this been a gay night club ... well, people would still be trying to sweep it under the rug:

Two attackers blew themselves up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral during a Palm Sunday Mass on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, wounding at least 20 people, police said.

A video obtained by The Associated Press showed body parts scattered near a burning motorbike at the gates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.

Rev. Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest at the church, said he had just finished celebrating Palm Sunday Mass when a loud bang shocked his congregation. He said the blast went off at about 10:30 a.m. as a first batch of churchgoers was walking out of the church and another group was coming in.

He said security guards at the church were suspicious of two men on a motorcycle who wanted to enter the building and when they went to confront them, one of the men detonated his explosives.

Police later said both attackers were killed instantly and evidence collected at the scene indicated one of the two was a woman. The wounded included four guards and several churchgoers, police said.

The attack a week before Easter in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation came as the country was on high alert following December’s arrest of the leader of the Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been designated a terror group by many nations.

Also:

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Yannick Bandaogo is in police custody after undergoing surgery for self-inflicted wounds.

Police have not named the woman who died, but said she was in her 20s.

Six others were injured in the attack at the Lynn Valley Public Library.

Police said their injuries vary in severity and all six are expected to survive.

The attack occurred on Saturday. The accused's name was released only today.

Before I post this, read this:

I’m just going to come out and say it — as much as we love and honour the Snowbirds as a Canadian icon, the tour always seemed to me to be a distraction from the incompetence of this government; a self-serving exercise in feel-good Liberal branding as they spend us into bankrutpcy. Today’s crash stands as a terrible metaphor, a smoldering exclamation point on the shit show that is Justin Trudeau. What a damned waste.

And now:

The Royal Canadian Air Force released its final report Monday into last year’s fatal Snowbirds crash in British Columbia, noting that the cause of the crash appears to have been an engine stall following a bird strike.

“Evidence suggests that the damage caused by the bird ingestion was insufficient for it to cause a catastrophic engine failure but rather the engine most likely continued running, albeit in a stalled condition,” the report said.

From the Philly Cheese tribe:

Second, Black claims the Indigenous had a Stone Age civilization.

It’s difficult to make much sense of this statement, as the Stone Age spans about 3.4 million years of human evolution and ended around the time of the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 years ago. Civilization is generally taken to mean that which comes after the Stone Age — i.e. complex societies, agriculture, division of labour etc.

If it helps, at the time of Confederation, Canada had a population of 3,295,706, 2,616,063  of whom were native-born.

Does that apply Mr. Noakes assertions?

He hopes not.

Can one pronounce the unmistakably "white names" of Cernovich, Ó Baoighill or Achterkamp or is Global News desperate to create a mountain out of non-existent molehills?:

Workers push for inclusivity by rejecting acceptance of mispronounced, ‘whitened’ names

When Janani Shanmuganathan was in law school, she remembers hearing some misguided professional advice.

“You should take your husband’s name,” Shanmuganathan recalls someone telling her, because her own name was hard to pronounce. Her colleague speculated it would make it harder to get clients.

Shanmuganathan says she remembers being angered by the comment, not only because she was proud of her name, but because it is spelled phonetically — and she doesn’t mind helping people who ask her how it’s pronounced. Plus, she says, she wants up-and-coming lawyers to see Tamil women represented in the law community.

I won't argue that it was not unbearably rude for Miss Shanmuganathan's colleagues to suggest that she change her name but this no more a charge for basic human rights than it is an attempt to swirl the political flavours of the moment.