Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week sorbet ...


Remember - this moron would still be on the supply list if he wasn't installed:

This is your Canada. This is your Canada on Trudeau. Any questions?#Cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/SY1NSgUmw7

— David Jacobs (@DrJacobsRad) July 8, 2023 >

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Comparing Canada to the U.S., Cross reports that business investment in Canada between 2014 and 2022, fell 17.6% by volume, compared with a 23.5% gain in the U.S., and that after peaking in 2015, Canada’s volume of merchandise exports fell 0.4%, compared to a 14% rise in the U.S.

“There is a growing recognition that Canada has wasted a decade of low interest rates on investing too much in government debt and housing, and not enough in business investment,” Cross writes. “Low levels of investment since 2014 resulted in an outright decline in net investment available per worker from $16,000 in 2014 to $11,900 in 2021.”

Cross says that “rather than encouraging capitalism and market competition, Canada’s political leaders tout their pro-business credentials by citing the host of laws and regulations they craft to cater to special interests.”

The problem, he warns, is that “regulations and subsidies for specific firms or industries are the antithesis of support for capitalism and undermine public confidence in competition … cultivating dependence and a culture of rent seeking instead of encouraging innovation in the business community” resulting in a track record of “persistent budget deficits and chronic slow growth.”

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So why is Trudeau finally getting Canada’s act together on NATO? In a word, pressure. In May of this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO members will be expected to meet the two per cent target. The statement came after leaked document revealed that Trudeau privately told our allies that Canada will never be able to meet that obligation. The revelation earned him severe criticism for the impact this would have on our relationship with our NATO partners, in particular the United States.


Oh, it gets worse:


More:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the opportunity to talk to Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) troops stationed on a NATO mission in Latvia to lecture them about his government’s actions on fighting climate change and disinformation. 

Trudeau was in the Eastern European nation ahead of the NATO Leaders’ Summit in Lithuania where allied forces will gather to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other pressing geopolitical issues. 

While at a lunch with CAF members stationed abroad in Ä€daži, Latvia, the prime minister spent his address discussing climate change and other issues despite recent reports indicating that troops stationed abroad have had to purchase their own equipment due to a lack of support from the Canadian government. 

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More on the censorship game.

This censorship game:

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With less than six months before tenets of the Online News Act come into force, the federal government has announced its next steps in making the contentious legislation a reality, as it continues its standoff with Meta and Google over news blocking.

In details posted online Monday, Canadian Heritage said work was underway to determine how, when and which portions of the act will be implemented, no later than 180 days after the act received royal assent on June 22.


Read: their stupid plan backfired on them.

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An order by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to pull all federal ads from Facebook and Instagram will cost the company $11.4 million, less than one tenth of one percent of annual revenues. It comes seven years after newspaper publishers pleaded with cabinet to stop sending ad dollars to Silicon Valley: “Will ministries in the government and members of your caucus stop posting on Instagram and Facebook?”

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Two Liberal MPs held shares in Facebook even as cabinet vowed to lead a national advertising boycott against the company. Neither MP commented yesterday after cabinet said it was “doing our part” to cut dealings with Facebook: “If the government and politicians don’t stand up against that kind of bullying or intimidation, who will?”

 


Because "transparency":

Canadians asking to see public records must first show their birth certificate, driver’s license or other proof of citizenship or residency under new legal requirements enacted yesterday by Treasury Board President Mona Fortier.  The ID mandate was never put to public consultation: “No consultations were deemed to be necessary.”


But no one can see anything on Chinese interference in Canadian elections.

Right ...



It's just taxpayer money:

Canada has committed more than $8 billion to Ukraine since Russia's February 2022 invasion, including over $1.5 billion in military aid.

That imprecise number — trumpeted in Department of National Defence news releases with each promise of weapons, vehicles or ammo — ticked upward in June after months at "over $1 billion." (As a point of reference, Canada's defence budget in 2022-23 is roughly $36 billion a year, the department says.)

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Cabinet effective August 1 will eliminate all credit checks on Canada Student Loan borrowers. “It only creates a barrier,”  said loan managers at the Department of Employment: “Difficulties affording postsecondary education can be expected to have long term impacts for all Canadians.”

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Cabinet yesterday approved billions more subsidies for battery factories in what the Canadian Taxpayers Federation criticized as a free for all for foreign automakers. Aid totals more than $31 billion for three Ontario plants: “The feds need to draw the line somewhere.”

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Another 21,000 federal workers hired since last year has brought the total added to the federal public service since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was first elected to 98,268, according to information published online by the Treasury Board of Canada.



"Don't think about the future," says journalist who has no idea how expensive she has made everything:

The Department of Finance says its budget forecasts “should not be viewed as a prediction of the future,” according to a letter to the Parliamentary Budget Office. The admission follows cabinet’s raising of its debt to GDP ratio in what Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had called “a line we will not cross.”


Quite:

Higher prices for basic groceries like cabbage and spaghetti are running at three and four times the rate of general inflation, new Statistics Canada figures showed yesterday. Details of price spikes for specific foods followed cabinet’s celebration of the last Consumer Price Index report as “good news for Canadians,” said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

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The wealthiest 20 per cent of households controlled more than two-thirds — nearly 68 per cent — of the total net worth in Canada in the first quarter of 2023, while the least wealthy 40 per cent accounted for 2.7 per cent, the federal agency reported on Tuesday.
The gap in net worth between the most and least wealthy increased 1.1 percentage points in the first quarter relative to the same time a year before, marking the fastest increase on record.



You trusted a total idiot who shtups for Quebec  and punishes western Canada to have your back.

Nope:

Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson cast doubt on hopes for a mining bonanza in Ontario’s “Ring of Fire,” saying there are better projects that can be developed easier in areas closer to existing infrastructure.
It’s the latest sign the Trudeau government isn’t yet convinced the region in the province’s vast, environmentally sensitive northern peatlands is the best place for new mining, even as it tries to make Canada an international powerhouse in critical minerals needed to power the global shift to a greener, low-carbon economy.
It also contrasts with Premier Doug Ford’s demands for faster development in the mineral belt where projects have been considered for more than 15 years.
While the Ontario government says mining the region’s known deposits of chromite, copper, cobalt, nickel and other metals could create jobs and resources for clean industries like the province’s nascent electric vehicle sector — which is set to get at least $28 billion in subsidies from Ottawa and Queen’s Park — the federal government has insisted potential environmental damage and Indigenous concerns must be addressed before development proceeds in the Ring of Fire.

 


How embarrassing:

CBC News is retracting a report alleging someone in Premier Danielle Smith’s office emailed Crown prosecutors to question and challenge the handling of cases involving COVID-19 protests in Alberta that blocked traffic at a U.S. border crossing for more than two weeks.



Perhaps one should ask why Israel gets punished for being its own state but China - which employs slave labour (among other things) - doesn't:

Federal regulators yesterday invited public comment over labeling of imported goods from “contested territories.” It follows a long running Federal Court feud over labeling of Israeli wines: “This is a matter of particular sensitivity and importance to the organized Jewish community in Canada.”


Speaking of slave labour, "God's children are not for sale."

Oh, yes.

When this film's detractors are more concerned about maligning a film about the evils of child exploitation and trafficking than not, then one knows all one needs to about why this film needed to be released and watched en masse:

The Post and Rolling Stone, aside from attempting to link Sound of Freedom to QAnon, praised the movie Cuties, in which little girls are sexualized in a twerk-dancing crew.

One statement from Rolling Stone said the backlash at Cuties was just part of a "tactic [that] has its roots in conspiracy theorist circles, such as the QAnon community." 

The article alleges the backlash to the film was part of the "far right's obsession with pedophilia."

Another piece from Rolling Stone called it a "coming-of-age movie" that was caught in a culture war. The piece says it was not "a salacious bit of pedo-bait" but instead said it was its "polar opposite" that points out what happens when children get too involved with sexuality. 

The Post called Cuties "an unflinching look at what it means to be a preteen girl." 

It is the "kind of story that isn’t told well very often, and deserves to be told more." The Post's article continued. "Whose gaze does the camera represent? How is this scene supposed to make us feel? These are the kind of nuanced discussions that art is meant to encourage," the article went on while discussing explicit scenes in the film.


Also:

A majority of Canadians feel such organized sexualized messaging to young children is a bridge too far. They no longer believe DQSH is “family-friendly” or pure “entertainment.” Some are calling it out for what it is: “grooming,” building children’s trust in men with an agenda that goes far beyond teaching about “diversity.” They are saying so in protests against such events as a four-day drag theatre camp in B.C.
In a news report, a progressive journalist deplored this surge of opposition, in particular some protesters’ use of the word “groomer” as a “homophobic” trope, which, the journalist writes, “advocates say was used to vilify the LGBTQ2+ community in the 1970s and 1980s.” It is true that a vocal subset of gays were vilified in the 1970s and 1980s. A little research, though, would have uncovered information that might have tempered the journalist’s indignation.
In 1969 the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a special interest group that advocated for abrogation of the age of sexual consent, became the first LGBT organization in Scotland, branding gay rights activism and child abuse lobbying as closely entwined goals there. From 1974 to 1984, PIE openly campaigned throughout the United Kingdom to normalize pedophilia as a legally and culturally acceptable practice. Such were the sexually freewheeling times, they were taken seriously at elite levels, even winning support from then Labour Health Minister Patricia Hewitt for such policies as reducing the age of consent to 10, and the decriminalization of incest. PIE activists were tactically sophisticated in their networking, branding pedophiles as an oppressed sexual minority, just like gays and lesbians.



Back to China:

China's highest-ranking diplomat urged Japan and South Korea to cooperate more closely with Beijing, saying they can change their looks but will "never become Westerners."

"It doesn't matter how much you dye your hair blonde, how sharp you make your nose, you'll never become Europeans or Americans. You'll never become Westerners," Wang Yi told South Korean and Japanese guests at a conference in Qingdao on Monday.

"We have to know where our roots are," the diplomat said, according to a recording of the conversation shared by Chinese media.


Yes, and they are NOT Han Chinese.

Typical racial and cultural chauvinism from the Chinese communists.



It was never about a virus:

A federal Covid vaccine death and injury compensation program has paid out nearly $7 million in claims to date, records show. The Department of Health said it anticipated $75 million in claims by 2026: “The benefits outweigh the potential risks but it is still a drug.”

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Three times as many Department of Employment staff were investigated as were reported fired for defrauding pandemic relief programs, says a federal briefing note. The disclosure follows confirmation of widespread fraud investigations at the Canada Revenue Agency: “We know in times of crisis the risk of fraud is heightened.”



This is Canada.

Treating the vulnerable like garbage is par the course:

Federal employees with disabilities are routinely harassed by managers, says a Treasury Board report. Workers complained needling and “public humiliation” were commonplace four years after Parliament passed Bill C-81 An Act To Ensure A Barrier-Free Canada: “Incidents of harassment occurred routinely.”

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A health authority in British Columbia has been actively promoting euthanasia via a slideshow it has allegedly been emailing to healthy seniors’ groups, according to a recent report.

The PowerPoint slideshow was alleged to be from Fraser Health Authority, which is a large healthcare region in a suburban area of the Vancouver area. It was obtained by Will Potter of the Daily Mail, who detailed it in a report published July 1.

The disturbing images actively promote euthanasia in a package of information for seniors regarding their pension packages.

Included in the slideshow was text on “expressions of wanting to die,” saying that it could be used to “promote a sense of control” as well as talk of being able to die by euthanasia in only a “day.”

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Veteran Conservative MP Ed Fast introduced a private member’s bill last spring that sought to reverse the government’s course on extending MAID to the mentally ill, while leaving the original euthanasia law intact for those with an incurable disease. Fast claimed that the government’s expansion “encourages death as a ‘treatment option’ for those struggling with the difficult challenge of mental illness.”

But, with the Bloc Québecois and the NDP supporting the government, his efforts will likely be in vain.



Quelle surprise:

On the same day of the brazen stabbing on Toronto's subway system, the accused, Moses Lewin, was supposed to make an appearance in a Milton, Ont. courtroom to face another string of charges, court staff say — but he didn’t show up

Instead, the court issued him a bench warrant.

Months before, Lewin was supposed to be in court in Toronto on other charges that included illegally possessing an eight-inch fishing knife, and never appeared, documents say. It’s unclear why the Toronto court released Lewin in the first place — he had another outstanding bench warrant after not showing up for further charges in Newmarket, the records show.

These are among several bench warrants, missed appearances, and charges of failure to comply with release orders described in documents obtained by CTV News that have sparked questions about whether various Toronto-area authorities could have done more to hold Moses Lewin in custody before the attack.

“It all suggests the justices of the peace telling him to behave is not worth the paper it’s printed on,” criminal lawyer Ari Goldkind said in an interview.



Performance theater at its best:


Shades of Jack Layton.



What did one expect when one tried to kill farming?:

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister for over 12 years, has announced he is resigning and leaving politics. He delivered the news on Monday morning, after the collapse of his coalition government on Friday.

The immediate cause of the government’s collapse is a row over the Netherlands’ growing immigration crisis. The issue has plagued the government for months, after chaotic scenes at a migrant-registration centre in Ter Apel near Groningen last autumn. People were sleeping outside for days and a baby was left to die in a crowded sports hall.

Rutte and his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) wanted to impose tighter curbs on immigration. But the other three parties in the coalition objected. And so Rutte, unable to break the deadlock, gave the government’s collective resignations to King Willem-Alexander on Friday. Rutte and his cabinet will stay on in government in a caretaker capacity until a General Election, which is expected to take place in November.

A row over immigration may have been the immediate cause of the government’s downfall. But its problems went far deeper. As with almost everywhere else in Europe, crippling Covid lockdowns have cast a long shadow. There was also the child-benefits scandal in 2021, in which 26,000 parents were wrongly accused of making fraudulent claims. Now there is an energy crisis and a cost-of-living crisis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, polling suggests that voters feel Rutte and his cabinet have been doing a bad job in general.

Arguably, the Rutte government’s biggest challenge came from the agricultural sector. Indeed, Dutch farmers have been in open revolt against the government for four years now. And for good reason. Under pressure from the EU, the Dutch government has been trying to cut nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands by half in order to meet Net Zero targets. This policy would be devastating to farmers’ livelihoods. It amounts to an order to significantly reduce fertiliser use and to cut livestock numbers. To ensure emissions are reduced, the Dutch government is targeting around 3,000 of the most polluting farms for closure.

Also:

Many places, including Canada and parts of Europe and Asia, have been encouraging more migrants to come to help alleviate labor shortages and offset demographic declines.
But the jump in arrivals, along with increases in illegal immigration to the U.S. and Europe, is making more voters uneasy. The influx since the end of the pandemic is altering societies, with many people blaming immigrants for increases in crime and higher housing costs.
The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after parties failed to agree on new measures to restrict immigration that has soared to record levels, triggering new elections in the fall. 
Anti-immigrant parties recently took power in Italy and Finland, and have started backing a minority government in Sweden. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is leading national polls.


Canada once had an immigration plan that attracted the best and brightest but has since gone lax.

Severely lax.

Now that people can use Canada as a springboard into the US, what is Canada other than an airport?


Also - and why would they?:

Military recruitment fell 35 percent last year, records show. Volunteers were harder to find amid “Canada-wide labour shortages,” said a federal briefing note: “The Canadian Armed Forces is experiencing a shortfall in personnel.”



The ugly tourists:

The tourist who infuriated a nation when he was captured scratching a love note into the Colosseum has apologized, claiming – with embarrassment – that he didn’t understand the history of the Roman monument.

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Police are investigating following reports that a 17-year-old Canadian tourist allegedly defaced a 1,200-year-old temple in Japan by carving their name into a wooden pillar.



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