Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week tea break ...

No matter what happens, Justin will never let his favourite country down.

China will never find cause to doubt his admiration for it:

Morris Rosenberg, a former top civil servant, who served as head of the foundation from 2014 to 2018 said at the time of the donation Canada’s relationship with China was different.

“At that time, universities, corporations and governments were all attempting to strengthen ties with China, including Mr. Harper’s government,” he said.

In 2016, the foundation accepted what originally was billed as a $200,000 donation from Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin. The foundation ultimately received $140,000, but reimbursed it after reporting earlier this year indicated CSIS intelligence believes the ultimate source of the donation was the Chinese government.

“If CSIS had any concerns about the donors at no time did anyone from the service speak to me about this,” Rosenberg said.

I'll just leave this right here:

Testifying before the House of Commons ethics committee, Pascale Fournier said her predecessor Morris Rosenberg told the National Post in December 2016 that the foundation didn't consider the donation to be foreign money because it was made by a company incorporated in Canada.

"This was a declaration on behalf of the foundation to say that it was not foreign money, that it was Canadian money," Fournier told MPs. "This was in the annual report as well. When, in fact, the tax receipt itself mentions China.

**

Morris Rosenberg was silent during the 2016 revelations that brought this donation into question. He had an opportunity to speak up.

Today we learned he was aware of it in 2015. He said there was an urgency to get the deal done before the election.

They knew what they were… https://t.co/Tgplcuvw9Y

— The Real Andy Lee Show (@RealAndyLeeShow) May 3, 2023

To recap: he didn't know about it but he did know about but Canada was a different time back then.

Right.

**

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service on Tuesday confirmed to Conservative MP Michael Chong that he and his family were targeted by the Chinese government after he sponsored a parliamentary motion condemning Beijing’s conduct in Xinjiang as genocide, the MP says.

He said CSIS also confirmed that Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat in Canada, was involved.

The Globe and Mail first reported the situation on Monday, citing a top-secret CSIS intelligence assessment prepared in July 2021.

The briefing provided to Mr. Chong took place Tuesday in Ottawa.

Mr. Chong declined to identify the senior CSIS official who briefed him, but said the official told him he was authorized to read to him from the CSIS report quoted by The Globe “because it relates to a threat to you and your family.”

So, Mr. Chong had to read about it in the newspaper?

How fitting.

Also:

Extortion? Pantomime? Bribery?

YOU make the call:

The head of the striking Canada Revenue Agency union says the employer’s latest wage offer is a “slap in the face to members” and is threatening to bring picket lines to the Liberal Party convention later this week if an “acceptable” offer isn’t tabled imminently.

His equally padded brethren seem to be satisfied with their places at the trough:

The deal reached between the government and over 120,000 striking public servants will cost taxpayers $1.3 billion per year, plus an additional $448 million in one-time signing bonuses, according to the Treasury Board.

Also - no one should be surprised:

Almost 30 organized crime groups have “influence or access within Canadian public sector agencies or departments primarily at the local or regional levels,” according to a federal report.

The level of infiltration into the public sector is “unknown” for more than 400 other organized crime groups, according to the Public Report on Organized Crime in Canada for 2022, first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

This infiltration can take many forms. They include “bribery, embezzlement, money laundering, interfering with investigations and fixing trials to avoid convictions, and hiding links between the government, the justice system, and organized crime,” said the Organized Crime report from 2020, which describes the infiltration in more detail than the current report.

“Organized crime infiltration in law enforcement, including correctional services and border services, can help facilitate illegal activities such as smuggling drugs, firearms, and contraband, and poses a high risk to maintaining a lawful and democratic society,” it said.

To remind one:

Tara Wilkinson is a director of marketing for Best Buy Canada. She also disclosed stock holdings in other federally-regulated companies including Canadian Pacific Railway, Bell Corporation Enterprise Inc. and the Toronto Dominion Bank, as well as federal contractors like Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Amazon.com and 3M Company.

Other cabinet members with family shareholdings in Enbridge include Attorney General David Lametti, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett and Senator Marc Gold (Que.), Government Representative in the Senate, as well as Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia, Liberal MP James Maloney (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.), chair of the Commons natural resources committee, and Liberal MP Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Que.), parliamentary secretary for labour.

 

Now:

Speaking at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Matthew Herder and Douglas Clark shed some light on the internal struggles that have been going on within the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) and the events that ultimately led to them and the acting chairperson stepping down in recent months.

At the heart of the issue is a letter sent by Duclos on Nov. 28, 2022, asking the board to “consider pausing the consultation process” to allow all stakeholders, including provinces and territories, to understand the impacts of the proposed new guidelines to lowering the price of drugs.

The request followed a similar one by the pharmaceutical industry weeks earlier.

“To say that I was surprised by that letter would be an understatement,” said Clark, who has been serving as the PMPRB’s executive director since 2013. He told committee members he is on leave and will be formally stepping down in June.

Clark said he had attempted to contact Duclos’ chief of staff and senior policy adviser by text messages, emails and phone calls prior to that letter in order to brief the minister on the proposed guidelines but got no response. He said he documented each of those attempts. ...

Clark also said that Health Canada officials expressed no concern to PMPRB about the new guidelines when they met seven times in October and November. “The feedback we got from them was consistently supportive. And they indicated that our policy approach was sound,” he said.

Liberal MPs on the committee asked the PMPRB members if they ever considered why Duclos or his department was too busy to answer their queries, given that they were dealing with a shortage of children’s medicine at the time. Clark acknowledged that “it was a crazy time all around for sure” but reiterated that Duclos remains the only minister of health whom he had not briefed during his tenure.

Herder, a director of the Health Law Institute at Dalhousie University who resigned as a PMPRB member in February, said Duclos’ letter “came across as more of a demand than a request” in his view and said it was “incredibly divisive inside the board.”

Another Liberal not doing his job on purpose.

Arrested for an opinion:

A judge has found Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski guilty of charges related to his role in protests against COVID-19 public health measures in a case that has dogged United Conservative Leader Danielle Smith as she tries to win her party a second term in the May 29 election.

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The protests at Coutts, Alta., blocked the province’s main border crossing into the United States for more than two weeks in early 2022.

“I am satisfied Mr. Pawlowski intended to incite the audience to continue the blockade intended to incite protesters to commit mischief,” Justice Gordon Krinke said as he delivered his verdict in Lethbridge, Alta., on Tuesday,

Pawlowski was found guilty of mischief and breaching a release order. Krinke said that although there was enough evidence to find Pawlowski guilty of a charge under the Alberta Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, he couldn’t record a verdict on that charge Tuesday because the defence has given notice of a constitutional challenge.

Because of course he did:

Sources say the St. Edward’s Cross that has been part of the Coat of Arms since 1957 — and on a myriad of police and military badges across the country — will be replaced by what critics are calling “the Trudeau Crown,” a new design created by the Canadian Heraldic Authority, the body responsible for granting coats of arms in this country.

People who have seen the design say it replaces all Christian and religious symbols (crosses and fleur-de-lis) with maple leafs, snowflakes and stars, leading to claims that the Liberal government has politicized the symbol of the Crown and the Royal Coat of Arms.

“It means the proposed Canadian crown is totally unconnected to the King or the coronation, and it means the unity of the symbol of the Royal Crown that represents the sovereign throughout the realms will be broken, further distancing the King and the monarchy as an institution,” said Christopher McCreery, an author and historian with expertise on Canada’s relationship with the Crown.