Your Wasteful, Kleptocratic, Vile Government and You

Did you vote for these guys, Canada?:

Trudeau added 98,000 bureaucrat jobs since he came to power.

Fed bureaucracy costs up 31% just over the past two year alone.

802,043 raises from 2020 through 2022.

Meanwhile, the feds paid out $1.3 billion in bonuses since 2015.

Under 50% of performance targets are met! 🤔 pic.twitter.com/rctHKo2z6Q

— Contrarian (@ContrarianTribe) July 11, 2023

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Want to know why Canadians are going broke?

Just listen for a few seconds to the guy who controls the national credit card. pic.twitter.com/KrIpJ43XuG

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) July 13, 2023

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Canada will contribute $450 million to the United Nations' main fund to help developing countries cope with climate change, the country's climate minister said on Wednesday.

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It's not like Canada can sell gas or anything.

Oh, wait!:

Imagine being the federal minister in charge of the energy file and skipping a major world conference on a lower carbon that was happening in your own backyard.

This isn’t an imaginary scenario, the minister who did this is Jonathan Wilkinson, Justin Trudeau’s minister of natural resources.

Wilkinson was a no show at LNG2023 last week despite several attempts to invite him and other senior government leaders. In place of Wilkinson, the world’s leading figure from both the business and government side of the liquified natural gas industry heard from Edmonton MP Randy Boissonnault, Trudeau’s tourism minister.

It’s not that Wilkinson would have had to go far, his constituency office is only about 30 minutes away from where the conference was held, it’s just that Wilkinson was too busy — there were scheduling conflicts.

“Unfortunately, there are a couple of domestic and international events that are in conflict with our event,” LNG2023 Executive Director Mel Ydreos explained regarding Wilkinson’s absence .

Key among those domestic events keeping Wilkinson away was his need to campaign for Elliott Weinstein, the Liberal candidate in the Calgary Heritage riding currently in the middle of a byelection. Wilkinson was out there for an event with Weinstein on July 11, the same day he announced funding for an Alberta solar project, while on July 11 he was meeting with a group called Student Energy, a youth climate change movement.

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The premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan have accused the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of wanting to shut down the energy sector in their respective provinces and have made it clear they are going to push back.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe were responding to comments made by federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault suggesting that his ultimate goal is the elimination of fossil fuels.

“If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. The Trudeau government doesn’t want to just reduce emissions in our energy sector, they want to completely shut down our energy sector,” said Mr. Moe on Twitter on July 15, sharing a CBC article about Mr. Guilbeault’s intention to push for a “phase-out of unabated fossil fuels” at the next international climate summit, referring to the 28th Conference of the Parties, or COP28, scheduled to take place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 this year in Dubai,

Mrs. Smith said in a statement on Twitter on July 15 that Mr. Guilbeault made comments to a reporter “about his intention to see the federal government impose a net-zero electricity mandate on all provinces for 2035” and “continued to reference Ottawa’s planned de facto oil and gas production cut.”

“I was also alarmed to read the minister’s belief that oil and gas production is likely to be reduced by 75 percent by 2050,” said the Alberta premier.

“This belief does not align with any credible forecast of future world energy consumption, which continue to see oil and gas dominating the energy supply mix for decades to come,” she said.

According to Mrs. Smith, the contemplated federal targets are unconstitutional, damaging to the economy, and will create investor uncertainty.

 

That's the plan!

 

 

The Bank of Canada cares not for your woes!:

The Bank of Canada paid out nearly $27 million in raises and bonuses last year even as it admitted bungling forecasts, records show. Access To Information figures obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation showed nearly half the Bank’s staff are now paid more than $100,000 a year: “We got some things wrong.”

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High interest rates, the highest in 22 years, will continue into 2024, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. Macklem said he has “been surprised” by persistently high prices for groceries: “Meat’s up six percent, bread’s up 13 percent, coffee’s up eight percent, baby food’s up nine percent.”

Let them eat caviar ... but not mine!:

The Governor General’s four-day visit to Iceland last fall racked up over $71,000 in limousine costs, according to receipts from the trip.

Obtained via access to information requests by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, expense reports from Gov. Gen. Mary Simon’s October 2022 working visit to Iceland list five separate line items for Icelimo Luxury Travel, a limousine and transportation firm based outside of Reykjavík.

 

 

Problems figure out themselves:

Just a few weeks ago, on World Refugee Day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau trumpeted his government’s commitment to refugees. In a statement , he said, “Everyone deserves a safe place to call home … And Canada is stepping up: In 2022, for the fourth year in a row, we were the top country in the world to resettle refugees.”

He concluded it with, “Today, we come together as Canadians to keep our country a welcoming place and help build a safer world for everyone.”

His high-minded words are near impossible to square with the current scene unfolding in downtown Toronto. Asylum seekers, including families and children, are being effectively abandoned on the pavement outside of 129 Peter St., a City of Toronto assessment and referral centre for those experiencing homelessness.

(Sidebar: asylum-seekers or migrants? You're not a refugee if you snuck in from the United States. Either way, there are no houses or jobs for them.)

The trouble is, Toronto’s shelters are full, so there’s nowhere to refer asylum seekers to when they land at Pearson International Airport. Instead, they’re sent to wait outside 129 Peter indefinitely.

They’ve been sleeping on concrete for weeks, through heat- and air-quality warnings, through thunderstorms and cold nights, many without adequate food or water.

Now in the dozens, asylum seekers have begun to set up an encampment using tarps, sleeping bags and blankets dropped off by volunteers. Yet, according to community worker and homelessness advocate Diana Chan McNally, security guards won’t allow anyone to fully cover themselves when it rains, citing security concerns.

 

Also - why did Justin pressure South Korea for weapons if the Ukrainians were never meant to return?:

A special visa program allowing Ukrainians to live and work in Canada is coming to an end this week and the government won’t say if it will be extended or replaced.

The Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel program was launched within weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The program allows Ukrainians to come to Canada and stay for up to three years on a visitor visa, which also allows them to work.

Before the invasion, visitor visas previously allowed for six-month stays and Ukrainian visitors were not permitted to work while in Canada.

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Once again, someone's wheelhouse, completely unmanned:

Canadian Forces officers used federal government resources without permission to help establish a charity that set up private side deals with defence firms and that has faced allegations of mismanagement, including providing Ukrainian troops with inadequate equipment.

Defence Minister Anita Anand and Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, as well as senior military leaders, were unaware the officers were directly dealing with military equipment suppliers or engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions with Ukraine’s government.

 

And:

ISC said they will receive less money from Ottawa – which makes up the majority of their funding – this fiscal year than last year. Contract updates from the federal government don’t reflect increased demand even as Alberta’s largest city grows by leaps and bounds, and so job vacancies won’t be filled.

Newcomers are already facing a 55-day wait to get a language proficiency assessment done, Ms. Philips said. And then four to six months to get into English classes after that. As demand continues to grow, she fears those wait times will stretch longer.

(Sidebar: it has been my experience that some don't even show up for these publicly-funded ESL classes but I digress ... )

“You’ve got this talent pool that Canada says they want in their country, but we’re doing very little even at the basic level of language, employment services and housing.”

(Sidebar: why aren't we training and keeping our own talent instead of pretending that it exists elsewhere?)

Another agency, the Centre for Newcomers, has laid off about 65 people – almost a quarter of its staff – in recent weeks. Chief program officer Kelly Ernst said the issue is a delay in contract updates with the federal government, which would provide a flow of money based on higher demand. He’s worried about some people falling through the cracks, as was the case for a newly arrived Ukrainian family he said his agency found living on the streets of Calgary last week.

(Sidebar: this would make sense if one were to accept that the government wants only voters blocks to be stacked and little else.)

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Officials with the town of Ajax, Ont., say in less than two weeks, the town has seen more than 200 asylum seekers arrive, creating a dire situation as shelters across Durham Region are at capacity.

Durham’s regional chair John Henry says the influx of refugees is something they’re not equipped for.

“We were never designed as a level of government to try to manage these problems,” says Henry.

Since the end of June, the town of Ajax has been transformed as the unsheltered set up anywhere they can for refuge. A similar situation has unfolded in Toronto at the shelter on Peter Street.

James Dark with the Salvation Army in Ajax says the situation was completely unexpected.

“It kind of caught everyone in the town of Ajax and the region off guard,” he says.

Dark says it appeared to have started with one phone call he received from colleagues at a GTA shelter.

“We got a phone call asking us here at the Salvation Army if we could provide food for refugees arriving here from Toronto,” he says.

And it grew from there.

 

 

Yes, but they boycotted Facebook, like, ironically and stuff:

The Liberal Party of Canada launched more than a dozen ads on Facebook to promote the government’s messaging just days after the Trudeau government announced it would stop advertising on Meta-owned platforms because of the ongoing conflict over the Online News Act.

According to the Meta’s ad library, the Liberal party launched targeted ads in Atlantic Canada earlier this week to promote federal carbon pricing amid criticism from premiers on anticipated energy cost increases with the start of the Clean Fuel Regulations on July 1.

 

 

Being too stupid for one's job is an excuse that Canadians will accept:

It is mid-July now, but there are a couple of cabinet ministers who have owed us explanations for months.

Both Bill Blair and Marco Mendicino haven’t adequately answered a question about why they didn’t know something important. Government officials tried to tell them, and somehow, neither was told.

But now the bigger issue is that there are no explanations.