Your middle-of-the-week about-face ...
Canada is so far back that it can see the wooly mammoths:
Joly was appearing on CTV’s Question Period when she was asked to give a synopsis of Canada’s foreign policy under the Trudeau government. While speaking about how the world is changing, especially in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Joly let the veil slip.
“What we’re seeing is that the world’s power structures are moving, and therefore we need to be there to defend our interests without compromising our values, and we need to increase our influence,” Joly said.
(Sidebar: that's right, Barbie. It's the world that doesn't get us and our penchant for killing the poor and the elderly. Could you be any more tone-deaf and self-important?)
The Trudeau government was sworn in almost eight years ago promising to “restore Canadian leadership in the world.” They claimed, falsely, that Canada’s status on the world stage had diminished under Stephen Harper and that by working with the United Nations, restoring Canada as a peacekeeping country, our stature would grow.
“Our plan will restore Canada as a leader in the world. Not only to provide greater security and economic growth for Canadians, but because Canada can make a real and valuable contribution to a more peaceful and prosperous world,” the 2015 Liberal platform read.
Trudeau even appeared to cheers at both the foreign affairs headquarters in Ottawa, at the Paris climate summit and UN headquarters in New York while proclaiming that “Canada is back.” Of course, Canada didn’t leave the world stage under Harper, Trudeau just disagreed with Harper’s policies.
By contrast, under Trudeau’s Liberal government, Canada’s position on the world stage has diminished.
For the first several years after Trudeau took office, Canada’s overseas development assistance spending as a percentage of gross national income was lower than during the Harper years. It has recently overtaken Harper’s high point of 0.34% of GNI in 2010 driven mainly by the Trudeau government’s multibillion-dollar support of Ukraine.
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On defence spending, Canada remains a laggard and it is showing.
Canada ranks 25th out of 29 NATO countries on per capita defence spending. Officially we remain committed to reaching our NATO commitment goal of 2% of GDP being spent on defence, but in reality, we aren’t anywhere near that and will likely never meet it, something Trudeau has admitted to other world leaders.
A leaked Pentagon document earlier this year showed that America’s top military leaders are concerned about widespread shortfalls in Canada’s military spending, “straining partner relationships and alliance contributions.” The leaked document also showed that allies such as Germany, Turkey and Haiti are frustrated by Canada’s lack of capability and commitment.
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Things are so bad, we’ve been excluded from the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Trudeau government has tried to brush this off as a program for buying nuclear submarines but it’s much more than that and we aren’t invited.
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The RCMP admitted Wednesday that it was wrong for the force to deny an access-to-information request to a democracy-watchdog group in May by claiming police were investigating the interference of senior Liberals in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, since the investigation had been dropped months earlier.
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Policy is not merely a set of directives or laws but is, in fact, a reflection of the process itself. It underscores that the methods we employ, the systems we follow and the unwritten rules we adhere to. Bernardo’s transfer was not an arbitrary decision; it was the outcome of a routine security classification review, a process that takes place every few years. This process is one enacted and overseen by the CSC, an entity that operates under the larger machinery of the federal government.The decision to transfer Bernardo is a manifestation of the Liberal government’s “soft on crime” approach. The “soft on crime” policy, as it is often called, prefers rehabilitative and restorative measures over punitive ones. This approach, while noble in theory, can lead to decisions that seem lenient or even inappropriate when dealing with high-profile and dangerous criminals. The transfer of Bernardo from a maximum- to a medium-security prison is reflective of this philosophy. Liberals often fail to recognize that the desire to rehabilitate must be balanced with considerations of public safety and societal sentiments. Canadians intuitively understand that certain crimes are unforgivable, and there is, on occasion, no public purpose served by reintroducing a convict into society. If Bernardo is not one of those unreintroducible convicts, who else could be?
Electric cars may pose a fire hazard, says a National Research Council report. The Council said it did not know how many fires were caused by vehicles’ lithium batteries since federal regulators do not collect the data: “There are still questions regarding the fire safety of electric vehicles.”
Who could have seen this coming?:
Drug impaired driving rates have doubled since Parliament legalized marijuana, says a Department of Justice report. Legalization was accompanied by Bill C-46 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code that allowed random roadside drug testing: “The rate of drug-impaired driving offences increased 105 percent from 2017.”
The Department of Employment will offer a 50 percent bonus on loan forgiveness for medical students who agree to work in the country. The $3.2 million-a year cost is necessary to increase the number of rural doctors and nurses, it said: ‘Shortages are acute.’
In this country, she would have a cabinet position already:
The Koblenz Higher Regional Court on Wednesday sentenced a woman, Nadine K., on Wednesday for being part of the so-called "Islamic State" militant group and taking part in abusing a Yazidi woman.
The court ruled that the 37-year-old had abused a Yazidi woman, forcing her to be a "household slave" while living with the group in Iraq and Syria. She was found guilty of crimes against humanity as well as aiding and abetting genocide.
Also:
A Muslim charity stripped of its tax status for allegedly hosting radical speakers has regained its registration with the Canada Revenue Agency. Auditors said they “reconsidered” the charitable status of the Ottawa Islamic Centre and Assalam Mosque: “We ended the political activities audit program.”
It's called cutting Canada off from the rest of the world:
While the Liberal government has said it is in discussions with both Meta and Google on a bill that could see the companies block news in Canada, Meta now says it’s not actually negotiating.
“There are no negotiations currently,” Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, said during an interview on CBC’s Power and Politics Tuesday.Curran said “the way the bill is drafted doesn’t allow for negotiations outside the framework of the legislation,” and the company is sticking with its plans to block news content on Facebook and Instagram.“We are proceeding towards ending the availability of news permanently in Canada. We wish we weren’t here, but we are here, and there is really nothing at this point that’s going to alter that trajectory.”Bill C-18, the Online News Act, received royal assent last week. The law would force Meta and Google to reach commercial deals with news publishers, to share revenues for news stories that appear on their platforms (Postmedia, publisher of the National Post, is in favour of the legislation). Removing news from their platforms would mean Google and Meta would no longer be subject to the legislation.
Bad parents and lax policies:
The school of 900 or so students in grades 6, 7 and 8 (aged 11 to 14) is in crisis, not only because of uncorrected misbehaviour by students that puts safety at risk and undermines every student’s education, but also because of bitter acrimony between teachers and board administration about how to respond.
This blew up in public late last month, when a teacher at Tomken Road released an anonymous public letter, a dramatic plea for help. It was explosive, with lurid details of feces smeared on walls, of violence and fear in the hallways, of blatant threats to teachers, of ineffective discipline in a disordered educational environment.
But the Peel District School Board saw it more as a privacy violation. It received far more attention than any school board is accustomed to, including media reports across Canada. In the days since, the board’s response to these teacher complaints has been marked by further chaos, as the board investigates the whistleblower teacher, threatening reprisal under the privacy and confidentiality terms of their employment contracts.
The principal has been removed, and a crisis team from the board moved in to help with some students. The superintendent has become a regular presence in the halls.
But the misbehaviour continues, and behind closed doors, according to teachers and secret recordings obtained by the National Post, the board’s actions suggest it views the teachers’ public plea for help as the main problem, requiring the most drastic responses.
In private, the administration has accused teachers of spreading “lies,” of “abandoning” students and failing to care for them, of blaming and shaming them in public, and “doing a lot of harm to the community.”
It has instructed them to respond to students’ questions by simply affirming the students’ feelings, and offering only responses that are “aligned with the board’s responses.”
Spokesperson Malon Edwards told the National Post the board is “committed to cultivating safe and inclusive learning and working environments for students and staff.”
“We have been working with the staff and students to remind them of the many strengths of students and how to build upon the strengths,” he said. “The staff and students are working in collaboration to engage in the development of next steps to ensure a smooth conclusion to the school new year and a great start in September.”
The board’s public responses also include a press release that claims the reports of chaotic and dangerous misbehaviour “are not widespread and do not accurately depict the vibrant school community,” and that suspensions have been made “where needed.” It claimed students “are upset to see their school being depicted so poorly online.”
(Sidebar: the crisis management team here must also work for the Liberals and their desperate leak-plugging.)
The National Post has seen evidence that this behaviour has in fact been widespread and common, such that dozens of formal incident reports have been filed by teachers this academic year, and only a few have received the policy mandated formal response. Fewer still have ended in suspensions or formal discipline.
Some suspensions even appear to have been issued but quickly rescinded, one teacher said, citing the example of one student whose record shows one suspension for swearing, but makes no mention of two other episodes at least as serious, involving threats to teachers.
Bathrooms are “battlegrounds,” one teacher said. Some students use drugs in there, or sleep, and in one recent case set some kind of fire. Other students are afraid to use the bathroom, for fear of bullying or theft. Some students urinate outside to avoid the bathrooms. There are fights in the hallways, and on the bus, things thrown at cars, much of it filmed and shared on phones. Vulgar and racist graffiti, some targeting teachers by name, is visible around the school.
The common factor in this misbehaviour, according to teachers at Tomken Road who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal, is that there are rarely significant consequences. Their view is that this approach makes a hard situation worse.
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Just what is this?It is the plasticine, flavourless static verbiage that every school board pumps out from its vast cliché vat to stuff every one of the flaccid, sterile yawn-incantations it “issues” to cover some patent malfeasance, misfeasance, disorder, or parent complaint over behaviour in its schools.Safe. Inclusive. Environments. The tag-stickers of the woke. All that’s missing is a hymn to recycling and non-meat diets.This is not communication. It is verbal smoke, fog, marsh gas, stultifyingly boring in intent and effect, a smog of words, coming up a ventilator shaft from the sewer of bureaucratese — a verbal runnel identified long ago by both W.F. Fowler and George Orwell.Read it again. Do you think this platitudinous stream is actually saying something, providing even a forgotten cousin to real information?
It's the sort of disjointed, platitude-rich and verbose deflection employed when the chair-moisteners on the top know damn well that there is a problem but would rather people never, ever talk about it.
Too late.
Also - let's see how many useless degrees are being offered should this gain traction:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Thursday that colleges and universities should bear the burden when a student defaults on his or her student loan debt.
At a campaign event in South Carolina, DeSantis said that colleges should be accountable when a student defaults on his or her student loans, the university should be on the hook for paying back that debt. DeSantis also touted the fact that Florida does not allow state universities to raise their tuition.
Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange is one step closer to sainthood after Pope Francis declared her venerable in a decree on Thursday morning. Lange is a Black religious sister who founded the first African American congregation in America, right here in Baltimore, in 1829. The advancement of her cause from a servant of God to a venerable was announced by the Vatican. "She was a virtuous woman. She was a courageous woman. She founded a religious community for women of color before the Civil War in a slave state," Sister Marcia Hall said.
Dutch archaeologists have unearthed a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary said to have functioned as a burial ground and solar calendar similar to Stonehenge.
The sanctuary is the size of about four soccer fields and consists of several grave mounds, passages and ditches, all built out of soil and wood.The mounds contain the burials of 60 men, women and children and included valuables such as a bronze spearhead, a release said. The oldest artifacts uncovered at the site are estimated to date back to 2,500 B.C.The largest mound measures 20 metres in diameter and “served as a sun calendar, similar to the famous stones of Stonehenge in England,” the town said on its Facebook page, calling it a “spectacular discovery.”
