What An Awful Culture This Is

Cases in point:

On Jan. 24, 2022, Peterson retweeted Conservative MP, now party leader, Pierre Poilievre. Like Shapiro, Poilievre called for an end to mandates, something Peterson agreed with saying people should be able to get on with their lives.

These two tweets make up the first complaint listed in the Registrar’s Investigation that was shared with Peterson. It is simply someone complaining to the College of Psychologists that Peterson had tweeted about COVID-19 restrictions in a way the complainant disagreed with.

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As True North reported last month, bylaw enforcement officers with the City of Oshawa told Ashley Wickett to scrap her planned Christmas Stockings for the Homeless event at the city’s downtown Memorial Park.

Organizer Ashley Wickett was told by the City that any distribution of goods in a city park required a permit, though she was offered no path to get one. She said she would remain on the sidewalk or hand out the stockings from her car to comply with the bylaw, but she was then told this would violate the highway vending bylaw.

“At this time you may not proceed with your proposed event,” the subsequent email from a bylaw enforcer said. “If you wish to contribute to the less fortunate, particularly around this time of year, there are a number of established charities and shelters in the area who would no doubt benefit from your compassion and initiative.”

Wickett and her volunteer group, Communities for Freedom, proceeded with their Dec. 18 event and handed out sandwiches, juice, clothing items and toiletries to about 50 homeless and needy people.

City vehicles were seen driving around taking photos and videos during the event, though bylaw officers didn’t intervene. Days later, however, Wickett was emailed a $250 ticket for allegedly violating the city’s highway vending bylaw.

On Jan. 24, Wickett will be fighting the ticket at Oshawa’s city hall. Communities for Freedom is hosting a rally in support of her.

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It's called grooming:

But as health professionals applaud the developments, some parents of children with gender dysphoria — the sense that their birth sex does not match their gender identity — are bristling at the role schools are playing. Teachers, principals and guidance counsellors, they complain, are essentially usurping the traditional responsibilities of mothers and fathers as they help advance children’s gender transition.

“The way that I see it, the schools are triangulating the family — they’re becoming a wedge between the child and parent,” said the mother of a teenage girl-at-birth whose school in Ontario’s Hamilton-Wentworth board adopted a name change immediately after he came out as a boy.

“It’s not a benign act. It’s a psychological intervention — and it’s not a minor psychological intervention — that teachers and counsellors are entering into without any psychological training at all.”

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J.D. Coon, the disgraced Ottawa child-protection lawyer who went on to molest a six-year-old client, was granted a licence to practice even though the law society knew about his child-sex crimes history.

The Law Society of Ontario gave Coon a licence in 2006, even upon learning that he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 1991. The judge at the time gave him a conditional discharge, which means he was spared a criminal record after 15 months of probation.

Beyond the child-sex crimes guilty plea, Coon also told the law society he had spent a lot of time and money “cruising red-light districts and hiring prostitutes.”

The law society gave him a licence just the same, saying a past finding of guilt doesn’t preclude someone from practicing law.

The law society said at the time it recognized people can rehabilitate and was mostly concerned with the “present.”

Coon went on to specialize in child-protection law only to molest another child, this time a client.

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B.C.’s government has worked toward a decriminalization approach to illicit drugs. The hypothesis is that addicted people can maintain productive lives if only they could get a safe supply of their drugs and could consume them safely. The province has even looked the other way as activists with a group called the Drug Liberation Front have been handing out small doses of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine to addicts on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

There is no such thing as a “safe supply” of methamphetamine or heroin, and the dramatic rise in overdoses in B.C. tells that tale. The number of fatal overdoses in B.C. continues to rise and set new national records, soaring from 20.4 for every 100,000 people in 2016 to 43.6 in 2021. Canada’s national average is 20.5 deaths per 100,000. Enabling addicts has only led to an increase in addictions and overdoses.

Non-fatal overdose responses in B.C. went from 19,275 in 2016 to 35,525 in 2021. Safe consumption sites and distribution of drugs such as naloxone have prevented many fatal overdoses. Unless the addicts are treated, however, they will often continue to overdose until a fatal event occurs.

Oregon learned this lesson when it decriminalized hard drugs and took a liberal approach to provide what it called a safe supply. Fatal overdoses in the state went from 280 in 2019 to 745 in 2021. How bad do things have to get before enough people realize addiction enablement policies don’t work?

People often point to Portugal and the success of its drug decriminalization policies. What people overlook though is Portugal coupled its policies with a highly developed treatment system that encourages addicts to get clean, and offers support in doing so.

That brings us to Alberta, where former premier Jason Kenney took a treatment-based approach to addiction. In 2019 Kenney promised an expansion of treatment facilities, and by the end of 2021 8,000 treatment spaces were available annually in the province. B.C. on the other hand has only funded 3,261 spaces for treatment despite a higher population and a more acute addiction problem.

Kenney also stood up to enablement advocates pushing for an expansion of consumption sites and supply. The city of Lethbridge was touted as a safe consumption site success as it had 670 visits per day. Funding was pulled from the site due to spending irregularities and excessive compensation being directed to the executives managing the facility. Within three weeks of the closure of the facility, the government reported a 36 percent decline in opioid-related emergency calls and a “modest decrease” in overdose fatalities.

Now for the good news.

The investment in treatment facilities appears to be paying off in Alberta, as overdose deaths fell by 47 percent in the first half of 2022. While six months is a short period of measurement, the drop in deaths is significant and in stark contrast to B.C.’s grim statistics.

The Alberta government is advertising and promoting addiction treatment facilities being immediately available and at no cost to patients. As with any illness, early treatment and intervention are essential, and Alberta is ensuring nobody is turned away if they are in need. The high cost of treatment and lack of beds had prevented many addicts from seeking help before.

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Saskatchewan has seen another record number of lives lost to fatal drug overdoses in 2022, according to preliminary data reported in January.

Saskatchewan Coroner’s Service estimates that there were 421 confirmed and suspected drug toxicity deaths in 2022, an increase from the now-confirmed record-setting 410 deaths in 2021.

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Police have identified a man killed in an alleged "swarming" attack by eight teenage girls in Toronto last month as Ken Lee.

Lee, 59, was pronounced dead in hospital after he was allegedly beaten and stabbed by the group of girls outside a downtown shelter in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, 2022.

Investigators said at the time they were working to notify Lee's next of kin of his death. Lee was from Toronto, police said in a news release Tuesday.

All eight girls, who range in age from 13 to 16 years old, were charged with second-degree murder. One was granted bail in late December, while the rest have bail hearings scheduled for later this month.

Their identities are protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

 **

If your knowledge matches that of Pythagoras, surely it was written down somewhere.

Right?:

The Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA) will be holding a retreat to discuss the power and potential of indigenous knowledge systems in math. 

“Math teachers who go to this retreat on Feb 6-7th (Mon + Tues) will learn to incorporate indigenous ‘knowledge systems’ to ‘create transformative learning” for their students,” said former Ontario teacher Chanel Pfahl in a Tuesday tweet. 

“Because ‘mathematics, along with other subjects, are not exempt from colonial bias.’” 

 

Like area, perimeter, multiplication, or simply treating aboriginals like mindless mouth-breathers who are easier to control when ignorant.