This Canada:
The New York Times in fact sent reporters @Nataliekitro and @SarahMaslinNir to the scene, who documented RCMP officers accosting protesters with military rifles drawn. https://t.co/86B9BKKd5P
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) February 20, 2022
(Sidebar: more here.)
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We know the events in #Ottawa are upsetting. Still, we’re asking people to stop calling critical emergency and operational phone lines to express displeasure about the police action to remove an unlawful assembly downtown.
— Ottawa Police (@OttawaPolice) February 19, 2022
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Nick Strachan, a young man participating in the COVID mandate protest, became unexpectedly famous when video of him being relentlessly beaten by Canadian police was released on social media. “They were punching my face. They were kneeing me in the face. And simultaneously that’s when one of the riot officers took my nylon rainjacket…and wrapped it around my mouth and my nose and it was cutting off my breathing. I didn’t know if I was going to get another breath. The last thing I saw were fists and knees.”
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**Just to be clear, both Canada and the US will continue to import oil from Russia. Because our national governments consider the construction of oil pipelines from western Canada a greater threat than Russia, apparently. pic.twitter.com/dx5XGIjMBd
— Scott Moe (@PremierScottMoe) February 25, 2022
It would reduce Russia’s revenues by 36%, but the fact it’s unlikely to happen is a lesson for Canada about the importance of being energy independent in a volatile world.
A total embargo of Russian oil and natural gas exports — called for by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney last week — is not on the table because Russia supplies 40% of Europe’s natural gas and 10% of the world’s oil.
Most of the natural gas is transported through a pipeline that runs through Ukraine, operated by Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Despite economic sanctions imposed on Russia we’re told by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other world leaders are unprecedented, no one is talking about stopping the flow of natural gas from Russia to Europe.
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In smug Canadian fashion, the federal government announced with great fanfare that it was following suit in levelling sanctions against parts of the Russian regime, its enablers and henchmen. The problem is that Canada’s relations with Russia are already so limited, this announcement is largely performative. But if the federal government wants to get serious about effective containment, there are options at its disposal. ...
A week ago, the federal government was quick to invoke emergency measures to stem problematic financial flows. While those measures applied to resources associated with the unlawful occupation in Ottawa, it was business as usual for organized criminals. If Canada’s federal government were to adopt Australian-style foreign interference legislation and UK-style Unexplained Wealth Orders, it could actually start to go after dirty Russian money that has long sloshed around in Toronto’s real estate markets. As the Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia is showing, Canada’s financial and privacy laws are world class at protecting criminals and the ultra-rich at the expense of ordinary Canadians.
The federal government could also have an honest conversation with Canadians about gas pipelines. Putin’s war chest is plenished by Canada’s European allies that are procuring natural gas from Russia. Canada has ample supply of natural gas to liquify and export. Yet, Canada lags way behind in that game because it naively has no sense for geopolitics. Make no mistake: Canadians who oppose construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia, and pipeline capacity to enable liquified natural gas exports from Canada’s East Coast to Europe, are aiding, abetting, and condoning Putin’s behaviour. Those same Canadians are happy to oppose pipelines to sell Canada’s own oil across the continent and the world because they would rather fill their gas tanks with petrol derived from human-rights abusing regimes in the Middle East. Canadians’ cognitive dissonance on pipelines runs counter to our country’s geostrategic interests. This inadvertent complicity of Putin’s thuggery is the case in point.
Canada has a collective-defence obligation to its NATO member allies to ensure Russia’s tanks do not keep rolling beyond Ukraine, now or in the future. The federal government talks a good talk about deterring Russia, but it has little credibility in following through. By way of example, (thus far) Canada has no fighter jet capable of defeating Russian air defences. Canada effectively supports and contributes to European missile defence yet is pretentious in refusing to join with the United States in ballistic missile defence of North America. Canada is effectively abrogating sovereign decision-making when it is unable to defend against a bad actor’s strategic nuclear or conventional assets.
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A $100 billion pandemic relief program originally intended to aid small business instead benefited large corporations, Statistics Canada data disclosed yesterday. Large corporations were three times as likely as small business to receive the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: “One of the challenges the government has had is a profound misunderstanding of how small business works.”
The same morally corrupt, inept, weak and vile plutocracy that tramples protesters underfoot morally postures on Ukraine.
Vodka, anyone?
One more thing:
1/2 I deplore the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Canada has no business getting involved in this conflict.
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) February 24, 2022
China is the biggest threat to our security. Western powers have horribly managed relations with Russia and pushed Russians in the arms of the Chinese.
This China:
China's CCTV is running a program about how Ukraine's fate is the future of Taiwan.
— Bruce Gilley (@BruceDGilley) February 24, 2022
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Nine Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the hours following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Taiwanese air assets were scrambled in response, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.
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