Yep.
What is there to be proud of?
A blackface-wearing moron who runs at the first sign of trouble, bankrupts a country, controls its news feeds for fun, lets China infiltrate all levels of government and sponges off of the taxpayers and a foundation his dad started because the father knew that he and his uglier and equally useless brother cannot survive on their own?
A country that thrives on nepotism?
Or the ovine masses who do not know their own history and define themselves by how American they are not?
This wasn't the country I grew up in.
Canada was more than a place. It was a home.
Now, it's an airport, a port of entry before the fleecing majority move to the US, and - worse - a carcass to be picked over by plutocrats and kleptocrats alike.
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However, the organizers have used the act and its anniversary to promote opposition to proposed legislation to create a foreign agent registry in Canada, with one calling the bill “Exclusion 2.0,” a reference to the 1923 legislation, which is also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act.According to a video posted on WeChat, the demonstrators, who appear to be senior citizens, wore red jackets and paraded in military style on Wellington Street during the protest.The protesters moved in sync with music from a loudspeaker playing the “March of the People’s Liberation Army,” the military anthem of the Chinese army. A female voice in the clip can be heard saying in Chinese, “Golden Years, Ottawa Parliament Hill parade. Start!”The Chinese characters “Golden Years” was visible on the back of the participants jackets as they performed a dance in front of the Parliament Buildings prior to the parade, according to a video taken by Chinese Headline New Media.The Epoch Times previously reported that organizers of the protest had called for support of a petition against establishing a foreign influence registry in Canada.
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Opposition MPs have raised questions about a meeting in April 2016 between the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials in the building that houses the Prime Minister’s Office. It turns out the foundation had two more such meetings in the building, according to records seen by The Epoch Times.Along with the April 2016 meeting, which was first reported by Montreal’s La Presse newspaper in April 2022, documents obtained through access to information indicate the foundation held another meeting in the building in January 2016 and a subsequent one in March 2017.All three meetings pertained to the foundation discussing its “Pluralism Project,” aimed at proving the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion with senior government officials.Interest in the Trudeau Foundation and its links to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has grown in recent months in the context of Chinese regime interference in Canada. The Globe and Mail reported in February that Beijing directed a Chinese Communist Party adviser in 2014 to make a donation to the foundation to curry favour with Trudeau, who went on to become prime minister in 2015.Since becoming Liberal Party leader in 2013, Trudeau has denied any links to the foundation set up in the name of his father.But MPs from every opposition party have suggested that the foundation benefited from privileged access to Langevin Block, which sits across from Parliament Hill. Trudeau renamed the building Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council in 2017 because its original namesake, Hector Langevin, one of the fathers of Confederation, had a role in the residential school system.Morris Rosenberg, president of the foundation at the time, was questioned about the April 2016 meeting when he testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on May 2.“It was actually quite surprising to see that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation was in the Prime Minister’s building with access to five deputy ministers. That is not a common occurrence,” said Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure during Rosenberg’s testimony.“It may not be a common occurrence, but the Langevin Building is located in downtown Ottawa, so it is very central and it is a place where senior officials often meet,” said Rosenberg, a former senior public servant who worked at the Privy Council Office (PCO), the prime minister’s department.
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Staff in a briefing note to Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly complained media coverage of misconduct by Chinese agents has been “very negative.” The analysis noted the Prime Minister was openly criticized “for appearing to be weak.”
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An ad hoc committee of parliamentarians has begun its probe into previously withheld documents related to the firing of two infectious-disease scientists from Canada’s highest-security lab in Winnipeg, according to a report.“Work is underway and documents are available to the committee members. They work independently,” said Mark Kennedy, communications director for Government House Leader Mark Holland, according to the Globe and Mail on June 29.Kennedy said the special parliamentary committee has begun its investigation and will receive unfettered access to all national-security documents related to the eviction of Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng from the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in January 2021.The couple was first escorted out of the NML facilities in July 2019 and stripped of their security clearances.CBC News later obtained documents through an Access to Information request showing that Qiu had been in charge of shipping the deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in 2019.Holland said in November 2022 that the committee probing the scientists’ eviction from the lab would also have access to documents involving the virus transfers, although the Public Health Agency of Canada previously denied any connection between Qiu and Cheng’s firing and the shipment of viruses to China.
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Shareef Abdelhaleem, dubbed a “principal architect” of a terror plot to blow up several Greater Toronto Area landmarks in 2006, has been granted full parole as is no longer considered an “unacceptable risk to society.”
In a decision Wednesday by the Parole Board of Canada, Abdelhaleem will no longer be under correctional supervision and only has two conditions that he must abide by: not to be in a position of responsibility or leadership in any religious or spiritual groups, and not to associate with any person known to be involved in criminal and/or radicalized activity.
“Given your overall progress, your CMT (case management team) is of the opinion that your release plan is realistic, structured, gradual and can be endorsed because it currently contains the necessary steps to achieve your objectives,” the board said in its decison.
“Therefore, it believes that you are ready and have reached the goals to be granted full parole.”
Abdelhaleem, 47, was sentenced in 2011 to life without parole for 10 years as part of the infamous Toronto 18 bomb plotters. He was the last of 11 convicted, with seven others released without charges.
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A $133,822 grant application by anti-Semitic activist Laith Marouf raised “no flags” at the Department of Canadian Heritage since paperwork was submitted in his wife’s name, records show. MPs protested funding for Marouf after he was banned from Twitter for fantasizing about shooting Jews: “If the individual’s views had been discovered the project would not have been funded.”
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To celebrate Canada’s 156th birthday, the Trudeau government is introducing their second carbon tax known as the Clean Fuel Regulations. The stated goal is to lower carbon emissions in Canada through regulations on industry, but the result is the price on fossil fuels like gas, diesel and home heating fuels will go up.
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But you voted for it, Maritimes.
New regulations that come into force everywhere in Canada on Saturday will require gasoline and diesel refineries and importers to start cutting down the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions that come from their products.
The situation is particularly heated on Canada’s East Coast, because on the same day, the four Atlantic provinces will move from their own provincial carbon-pricing systems to the national carbon levy.
That is creating a double cost whammy for consumers at the gas pump, particularly in Nova Scotia where the outgoing provincial cap-and-trade system wasn’t adding to gas prices anywhere near the amount required by the federal system.
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Sir John A. Macdonald called the Senate “a place of sober second thought,” which may have reflected his appreciation for at least occasional sobriety. But Bill S-243, the “Climate-Aligned Finance Act,” is the antithesis of thoughtful reconsideration. Its declared purpose is to regulate investment practices so as to reduce the risks both that financial institutions pose to the climate and that climate change poses to financial institutions. In fact, it would undermine free markets, with potentially debilitating consequences for financial institutions, the energy sector and the Canadian economy in general.
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Swedish manufacturer Northvolt AB is close to a deal to build an electric-vehicle battery plant near Montreal, a project that’s expected to be worth about C$7 billion ($5.3 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.
The Canadian and Quebec governments are preparing to give financial aid to Northvolt that may be worth billions, following a similar agreement with Volkswagen AG to build an EV battery plant in Ontario, the people said. An announcement is likely to be made in the coming weeks, though negotiators are still working on final details, they said, speaking on condition they not be identified because the matter is private.
A deal with Northvolt would underscore Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitions for Canada to capture a sizable piece of the North American electric-vehicle supply chain, at a huge cost to the public purse. Trudeau’s government, and the government of Ontario, have pledged more than C$14 billion to Volkswagen for its proposed factory in St. Thomas, Ontario. They’re also in talks with Stellantis NV on a EV battery plant in the city of Windsor, Ontario, across the border from Detroit.
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Google Canada yesterday joined Facebook in confirming it will halt all links to Canadian news content in protest over cabinet’s Bill C-18 the Online News Act. The announcement came only days after Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said the Canadian market was too “important to them” to retaliate: ‘You have to understand they make a lot of money in Canada.’
Google will pull Canadian news from Google Search and its other products in Canada over legislation that would force it to share revenues with news publishers, the company announced Thursday.
“We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada,” Google said in a blog post.
It will also kill existing deals with publishers. “C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada,” it said.
The Online News Act received royal assent earlier this month. It 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).
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that under the bill, which is aimed at the two companies, Google and Meta could end up funding more than 30 per cent of newsroom costs, just under $330 million a year. But if Google and Meta remove news from their platforms, they will no longer be covered under the Online News Act.
That means publishers won’t be getting additional funding, and will also lose an undisclosed sum in existing deals. In Canada, Google has signed deals with news publishers that cover 150 outlets through its Google News Showcase program, including with Postmedia. Google pays news outlets to licence content for the program, though the financial terms of the deals with outlets haven’t been disclosed.
While the Liberal government initially said it was in talks with both Google and Meta, a Meta spokesperson said this week the company isn’t negotiating and is sticking with its plans to block news content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. It has also begun cancelling existing deals with news publishers, including The Canadian Press.
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Whatever dreck is out there, it should be up to the individual to sift through, not a government horrified that someone out there knows that it is a mass of incompetence and greed:
Von Finckenstein said the bill was based on a flawed premise, that Google and Meta benefit from news links posted to their platforms, when it’s actually the news outlet that benefits. But Google and Meta do benefit from the data they collect from news content, von Finckenstein argued in a recent paper co-authored with Peter Menzies, who formerly served as CRTC vice chair and before that was publisher of the Calgary Herald.Menzies pointed out in an interview the fund would give Meta and Google certainty about how much they could be expected to pay, which is one of the key concerns they’ve expressed about the current bill. And, unlike opting out of the Online News Act, there would be no way for the companies to escape from it.Article content
Meta has said there is no compromise solution under the current bill, and that it’s no longer negotiating with the government. While Google initially entered into last-minute talks with Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, the company said Thursday those talks weren’t successful in addressing its concerns.Menzies said the companies could be “talked into” a compromise of a news fund, provided the contribution is reasonable. “If you make it make sense from a business point of view, you can do it.”
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I believe that was the plan, sir:
The damage caused by the government’s Bill C-18 continues to grow as Meta has started to cancel its existing agreements with Canadian publishers. The move should not come as a surprise since any deals that involve facilitating access to news content would bring the company into the legislative framework and mandate payments for links. Indeed, Meta said earlier this week that its 18 existing deals “did not have much of a future.” When this is coupled with a reported “impasse” between the government and Google over its approach to Bill C-18, the risks to the Canadian media sector look increasingly dire.
This was entirely foreseeable, yet Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez never seemed to take the risks seriously. It raises the question of whether the government developed estimates of the cost of its legislation if Meta and Google chose to comply by stopping news sharing or linking. While there were estimates for the benefits of new deals that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, did it conduct a risk assessment of the economic costs that would come from Internet companies exiting the news market in Canada?
There are obviously costs that extend far beyond the economics that include reduced access to news, increased prominence of low quality news sources, harm to the Canadian Internet, and the reputational damage to a government that handled this about as incompetently as possible. But from a pure economic perspective, the risks were always understated as they extended beyond just the value of increased traffic to publishers from the links they were themselves posting. Both Google and Meta have deals with Canadian publishers reportedly worth millions of dollars. As Meta’s step to begin cancelling deals suggests, those agreements are unlikely to survive the decision to exit news in Canada.
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