Your mid-week rest-stop ...
For a convoy:
According to Guinness World Records, the longest truck convoy ever recorded was 7.5 km long, in Egypt in 2020.
The Freedom Convoy heading from British Columbia to Ottawa is said to be considerably longer.
“It’s 70 km long,” said Benjamin Dichter, spokesman for the Freedom Convoy 2022. “I have seen footage from an airplane. It’s impressive.”
By Wednesday, truckers hope to have taken their protest through to Manitoba and will make it to southern Ontario on Friday.
Plans call for the convoy to arrive in Ottawa on Saturday for a protest.
If it gets there on time — and if the convoy holds together as it has in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan — it could be 10 times larger than the world record.
“The largest parade of trucks consisted of 480 trucks and is achieved by Tahya Misr Fund (Egypt), in Cairo, Egypt, on 20 November 2020,” Guinness says on its website. “With a length of 7.5 km, Tahya Misr Fund was able to organize a parade of 480 trucks, amid the harsh weather and heavy rain, breaking the Guinness World Records title for the largest parade of trucks, which was achieved 16 years ago in the Netherlands with a parade size of 416 trucks.”
There are estimates the Canadian convoy could comprise 50,000 trucks from the West, East, and even from the United States. It’s difficult to speculate what will transpire in the days ahead.
It looks like Ottawa could be swamped with long-haul trucks on Jan. 29. But with winter weather and potential issues, including possible roadblocks or traffic snarls, time will tell.
Whatever happens, it won’t be for lack of support.
Thousands of Canadians have lined the route, cheered from overpasses and offered to feed drivers in their homes and restaurants.
It’s a grassroots demonstration that has become far bigger than anything organizers had envisioned.
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Because the convoy has proven to be an attractive popular movement, it has its detractors in the chattering and ruling classes:
Gaslighting people about shortages by posting photos of fully stocked shelves in your own neighbourhood is asinine and callous. Apparently it’s inconceivable that other people experience problems which you do not. Those who enjoy mocking other people’s concerns this way should go the extra mile and send photos of their clean tap water to Indigenous communities so they know their problems don’t exist either — the principle is the same.
There is an ugly class dynamic to this phenomenon, too. As reported by The Globe and Mail , experts predicted that food shortages would be concentrated in vulnerable and remote communities. Erasing these communities’ struggles by citing bountiful shelves in Ottawa, or other comfortable metropoles, has a very “let them eat cake” energy.
Evidently many Canadians on Twitter were offended by being told that food shortages don’t exist, and subsequently shared photos of empty shelves in their neighbourhoods. In response, shortage-deniers doubled-down by questioning the veracity of these images, seemingly convinced that this is just some massive conservative disinformation campaign.
Have these people been living under a rock? There have been ample concerns about food shortages for weeks — and these warnings have also come from non-partisan sources, such as the Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab and The Canadian Trucking Alliance . Shortages also aren’t limited to Canada, as the United States has also struggled to keep supermarkets full in the face of Omicron.
But shortages aren't caused by the flu; they are caused by the government.
The Freedom Convoy 2022 is opposing vaccine mandates on a federal and provincial level, with their planned rally-point in Ottawa designed to create awareness of the ridiculousness of the government’s rules. Because mandates have become so associated with more liberal politicians like Trudeau and the federal Liberal Party they know that the awareness the convoy is creating is an attack fundamentally against their worldview. ...
(Sidebar: divisive is as divisive does. Even the pants-soiler enjoys more popularity than PM Blackface. Let that sink in.)
The Liberal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra has also tried to brush aside the issue that vaccine mandates have caused for Canada’s supply chains. Alghabra makes the rather ridiculous argument that mandates were helping to solve supply chain issues despite forcing many truckers into positions where they could not cross the board due to their principled opposition to being vaccinated against COVID-19.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra says he is concerned “about the small number of far-right, vocal opposition that is polluting” the political debate sparked by a vaccine mandate for Canadian truckers.
Look, Rumpelstiltskin Alghabra, if you have evidence that major person spearheading this movement is a part of a group promoting bigotry (dissent against the government isn't bigotry - sorry to burst your revolting bubble), then let's have it.
Could this troll's actions be any more obvious?
GoFundMe records show Singh's brother-in-law, Jodhveer Singh Dhaliwal, donated $13,000 to the group behind the demonstration — dubbed the "freedom convoy" by participants.
And - why isn't MP Girl Name supporting this convoy?:
Garnett Genuis, MP for Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan, Alb., said he stands with the truck drivers who are essential to supplying Canada’s grocery stores.
“Preventing people from bringing essential goods into Canada because of their vaccination status when those drivers are sitting alone inside their cabs, and when the Omicron variant is already on both sides of the border, is really the height of absurdity,” he wrote on Twitter on Jan. 22.
The convoy was organized in response to new rules introduced on Jan. 15 that make it mandatory for truckers crossing the Canada-U.S. border to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or face a mandatory two-week quarantine upon re-entry. The U.S. government announced similar requirements beginning Jan. 22 for non-U.S. nationals crossing into the country who are not vaccinated, including Canadian truck drivers.
Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, MP for Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask., blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media for introducing the vaccine mandate for truck drivers.
“Trudeau is attacking personal liberty and threatening everyone’s ability to get groceries because of his overreach on vaccine mandates,” he wrote on Twitter on Jan. 24. “He is the biggest threat to freedom in Canada.”
Scheer’s comments were supported by his colleagues Pierre Poilievre, MP for Carleton, Ont., and Leslyn Lewis, MP for Haldimand-Norfolk, Ont.
“I’m proud of the Truckers. Peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Lewis tweeted on Jan. 25. “The liberal mandates are unscientific, vindictive, mean-spirited, and promote segregation. The people have a moral obligation to oppose unjust laws and mandates.”
Another group deliberately cast aside by government policy:
Last week, during a press conference about Ontario's reopening plan, Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government made a "difficult decision" earlier this month to pause non-urgent surgeries in order to preserve critical care and human resource capacity at hospitals. The province placed a similar pause on non-urgent surgeries earlier in the pandemic.
"If people do have a life-threatening condition, of course they will still receive the care that they need, but we know that many people are upset and frustrated at having their surgeries pushed off yet again," Elliott said.
"We don't expect the peak of the admissions to ICU to happen until about mid-February ... so as soon as we can see that the numbers are going down both in terms of admissions to hospital and in terms of intensive care admissions, then we'll be able to get back on track with those surgeries and procedures."
Bullsh--.
The crumbling healthcare system where patients were kept waiting for months has been aggravated by policies that saw medical workers fired.
And, no, that won't be remedied.
Under Quebec’s draconian new vaccine passport scheme, unvaccinated people who visit large stores like Walmart and Costco will have to be accompanied by employees to make sure they don’t buy anything other than food or pharmaceutical products.
Yes, really.
The rule is set to apply in big box stores so as “to make sure they (the unvaxxed) do not go and buy other products or other items that might be in the store,” according to a CBC newsreader.
Because that will stop this twenty-four hour flu from spreading.
Rebates on carbon taxes haven't helped Canadians warm to them, a new survey suggests.
Results published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change say that not only did rebates fail to make much difference to public opinion, Canadians don't understand them very well.
And those convinced they were paying more in carbon taxes than they received remained just as convinced even when they were shown the facts.
It's a tax, an especially pointless one.
Oh, these bodies were casually chucked into rivers and went undiscovered for years, did they?:
Sellars said it’s clear from survivors’ stories that there are still children unaccounted for even after this initial geophysical sweep: “Their bodies were cast into the river, left at the bottom of lakes, tossed like garbage into incinerators.”
Let's try some science.
Cremation of a dead person takes about two to three hours and at temperatures of 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. These are special crematoriums built for the purpose of proper treatment of a dead person.
So, a multitude of bodies were thrown into an incinerator, not meant for cremation, which burned them all and completely, too, in a matter of hours and no one noticed?
Just like no one noticed corpses floating in lakes and rivers.
How interesting.
Because of course the WTO did:
A World Trade Organization arbitrator has decided that China can impose retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States totaling up to $645 million a year, capping a decade-long dispute over U.S. duties on some Chinese goods.
According to Francois Champagne, handing over a lithium mine to a communist dictatorship is a perfectly sensible thing to do:
NLC-X +1.09%increase to be acquired by state-owned Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd. ZIJMF unchno change without a formal national security review, saying the process was rigorous.“This transaction was absolutely reviewed to make sure there was no security risk,” François-Philippe Champagne said in an interview. “It was even subject to enhanced scrutiny based on the guidelines issued last March.”
That’s when the government updated the Investment Canada Act (ICA) to specify that all acquisitions made by state-owned firms must merit closer attention. The government also in March added that it would scrutinize deals through the lens of whether they threatened Canada’s supply chain of critical minerals.
In October, Zijin Mining announced it was buying Neo Lithium for $960-million. The Toronto-based development company plans to build a high-grade lithium mine in Argentina. Neo Lithium’s 3Q project has enough reserves to produce battery-grade lithium for 50 years.
All foreign takeovers of Canadian companies are subject to a security screening by Ottawa, a process that can involve the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and consultation with allies such as the United States. If the federal government suspects a transaction could be a threat to national security, it undergoes an in-depth review under Section 25.3 of the Investment Canada Act (ICA). That typically takes many months, and can result in a deal being blocked.
No such review transpired with Neo Lithium. In fact, despite the added checklist from the March guidelines, the dislocation of a federal election in the fall that left Parliament suspended until late November, and the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, the government gave the Neo Lithium deal the nod 45 days after it was announced. It was the fastest possible timeline for approval.
Taiwan has not received a request to change an office name:
Taiwan has not received a request to change the name of its de facto embassy in Lithuania, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after Reuters reported that Lithuanian officials were discussing whether to ask Taiwan to modify the name.
Ladies and gentlemen, Messrs. Fred Arsenault and Peter Robbins:
World War II veteran Fred Arsenault has passed away at the age of 101.
His death comes nearly two years after the Royal Canadian Legion encouraged Canadians to send birthday cards to Arsenault, who had hoped for 100 cards to mark his 100th birthday in March 2020.
Arsenault received nearly 100,000 cards from people all over the world.
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The original voice of character Charlie Brown in the early animated Peanuts specials, actor Peter Robbins, died last week at the age of 65.
Robbins’ family members confirmed to Fox 5 San Diego that the voice actor died by suicide. No other details about his death were immediately available, and his family issued no further comment except a request for privacy.
From age 9 to 13, Robbins played Charlie Brown in the 1960s classic cartoons A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, among others.
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