Your middle-of-the-week return to school ...
Speaking of school ... :
In its application, UR Pride said the rules are not justifiable under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and deny gender-diverse students basic entitlement in a free and democratic society, which includes “a safe and welcoming educational environment in which to be themselves.”
The organization said the policy outs children who aren’t ready to express their identity to their parents or others, putting them in potential harm if they’re not accepted.
It said it also results in misgendering, as teachers are required to use students’ birth names, not their chosen names, if they don’t receive parental consent.
The organization said outing and misgendering violate Section 7 of the Charter, which gives “life, liberty, and security of the person,” and Section 15, which provides equality rights to every individual, without discrimination.
If there is anyone who knows the students better than the parents, it's the groomers who believe that they have the right to do this.
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Canada’s minister for women, gender equality and youth says policies in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick that require parental consent before students under 16 can have schools use their preferred pronouns and names puts transgender and nonbinary kids in a “life-or-death situation.”
A real country wouldn't have a department for women, gender equality and youth. Such a department is fit only for people who make absurd claims like informing parents of groomed children of their choice in words is a "life or death situation".
Also - when bland virtue-signalling meets commitment:
Just under half (47 per cent) of Canadians express some degree of support, either in that they consider themselves active allies and/or engaged members of the community (10 per cent) or that they support the LGBTQ2S+ community, but do not actively engage in allyship (37 per cent).
And regardless of how people view their ally or supporter status, the polling also found there’s a noticeable say-do gap in general support versus active engagement.
Not enough for the never-satisfied crowd.
And:
Two men in Uganda are facing separate charges of “aggravated homosexuality,” an offense punishable by death under the country’s controversial new anti-gay laws https://t.co/vwNet7XDuJ
— CNN (@CNN) August 29, 2023
We don't have to trade with China:
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Chong told National Post that members of Congress are interested in “understanding and learning what’s happening in other democracies like Canada.”There are many cases of people being pressured by China that go unreported, Chong said.“I hope to use my case as an example of what’s going on more broadly and to give voice to those who are voiceless who have been targeted by Beijing here,” Chong said.Foreign interference, Chong said, is a “serious national threat” to prosperity, economic growth and social cohesion. “It’s important that we begin to work much more cooperatively together as democracies to counter this serious national threat.”Earlier this year, it was revealed that Chong had been targeted by the Chinese communist regime, which had been attempting to collect information about him and his family in Hong Kong.Chong has also said he informed CSIS that he has received direct threats, which he believes are from the Chinese government. Then, earlier in August, a Global Affairs Canada program that targets misinformation, said there was a campaign against Chong happening on the social media app WeChat between May 4 and May 13.At the time there were byelection races, and while Chong was not directly involved, the Conservative party was.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department yesterday praised China for environmental leadership without mentioning its use of slave labour to make solar panels. A member of Guilbeault’s own caucus earlier noted China used slaves to export renewable energy products: “41.7 percent of polysilicon used to produce solar panels, for all the environmentalists in the House, comes from Xinjiang.”
(Sidebar: oh, did everyone forget Hans Gruber's trip to China? They weren't impressed with him, either.)
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Why are we funding a “Canadian” green technology investment company based in China that Steven Guilbeault was a strategic advisor to? Is this not a massive conflict of interest? https://t.co/8xKzkixG1v pic.twitter.com/eDRXWwH9uo
— Andy Lee - Special Rebel Rapporteur (@RealAndyLeeShow) September 3, 2023
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Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has instructed three of the founding investors of Wealth One Bank of Canada to divest their shares, and has also ordered the financial institution to comply with extraordinary national-security conditions intended to firewall its operations against the trio, who have faced federal scrutiny over alleged links to the Chinese government.
Scapegoats.
The RCMP are investigating three former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilots who are training military and civilian pilots in China, even though their employer, a South African flying academy, insists no sensitive information is being passed on to Chinese authorities.The work the three pilots are doing in China has also come under scrutiny from Canadian security officials, who reached out to the former top guns in late August. The Department of National Defence says it referred the matter to the RCMP.“The RCMP is aware of the report of former RCAF pilots taking part in training People’s Liberation Army Air Force pilots. As the RCMP is investigating these incidents, there will be no further comment on this matter at this time,” RCMP spokesperson Robin Percival told The Globe and Mail in a statement.The Globe contacted former RCAF pilot Paul Umrysh to seek comment on speculation in Canada’s aviation community that he and two other former fighter pilots, Craig Sharp and David Monk, have been teaching flying skills in China.
But the government allowed the Chinese to train on Canadian soil.
How would voters forget this by the time an election rolls around?
Who did you vote for, Canada?:
With the cost of living consistently on the rise, more Canadians are continually turning to credit, with the average credit card balance now standing at $4,000, according to a new report from TransUnion.
(Sidebar: I'm just going to leave this right here.)
Data that came from the TransUnion’s Q2 2023 Credit Industry Insights Report shows a 4.2 per cent increase, or $94.8 billion, in Canadian household debt compared to the previous year, with a total debt of $2.34 trillion for Canadians.
According to the report, this growth was primarily fueled by mortgage loan debt, which has maintained a consistent pace of growth for the fifth consecutive quarter at a nine per cent year-over-year increase, as existing home sales rebounded.
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Canadian banks use “customer stickiness” techniques to prevent clients from comparison shopping, says a Competition Bureau report. The practice makes it difficult for any new rival to challenge the nation’s Big Five banks, it said: “There are frequently direct costs associated with customer switching.”
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A survey by Maru Public Opinion found the mood about the economy continued to sour over the summer, with only 33 per cent of people saying they believe the national economic outlook will improve over the next 60 days, down from 38 per cent in July and 41 per cent in the May edition of the poll of approximately 1,500 Canadians.
People are also more pessimistic about the prospects for their local economies, with 35 per cent expecting them to improve over the next two months, down from 40 and 41 per cent in the previous months.
“The sentiment reality: Things are dismal,” said John Wright, executive vice-president of Maru Public Opinion in a press release accompanying the latest results of the consumer sentiment survey, which was conducted from Aug. 25 to Aug. 27.
— Prairie Putz (@prairie_2) September 2, 2023
What could be the root of all of this, aside from voters' complete inability to do basic math?
It's like there is a common factor:
Two different federal infrastructure programs have provided funding for more than 43,000 electric vehicle chargers since 2016, but fewer than one in five of them are actually operational, new data show.
The information provided by Natural Resources Canada came as Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson visited Quebec City Wednesday to announce another $25 million to fund 1,500 EV chargers in Quebec.
(Sidebar: remember that Mr. Wilkinson's wife invests in oil/gas companies.)
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Minister of Employment Randy Boissonnault announced at the University of Alberta on Tuesday that the federal government will be investing nearly $1 billion to support 4,700 researchers across Canada. Ten different programs will receive the funding, which will be administered by three federal granting agencies.
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Federal conflict investigations yesterday resumed with the appointment of Interim Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein, 78, a retired federal judge. A vacancy had forced a four-month halt to ethics probes: ‘Our hands were tied until there was a new Commissioner.’
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An internal federal memo admits mismanagement was to blame for extraordinary delays at the passport office. Half of employees were sent to work from home and 20 percent quit during the worst of the backlog last year, said the memo: “There needs to be a crack of the whip, big time.”
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The Department of Health warns taxpayers are “sensitive to cost considerations” of pharmacare, citing a Fraser Institute poll indicating Canadians won’t pay more taxes for universal public drug insurance. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to pass a pharmacare bill by year’s end under a vote deal with New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh: “Support fell by almost half to 40 percent if the program was to be financed by an increase in the GST.”
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Toronto's grim fiscal outlook takes centre stage at city council today, with a raft of possible new taxes and fees up for consideration to avert the crisis.
All 25 city councillors will get their first chance to debate — and potentially change — measures city staff recommended last month to address what they called an "unprecedented financial crisis." Civil servants have laid out possible tax hikes including increases to the municipal land transfer tax, vacant home tax, and the creation of a parking levy to raise hundreds of millions in new revenue.
Councillors will also be faced with a staff recommendation to create a municipal sales tax, which could generate as much as $1 billion per year for the city. That, however, would require provincial approval and an amendment of the City of Toronto Act.
Mayor Olivia Chow's executive committee endorsed the plan late last month, but must now secure the approval of council to move it forward. On Tuesday, she urged councillors to work together to address the financial crisis.
Sit back and watch this not work.
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Canadians most likely to save for their children’s education don’t need subsidies to do it, new data show. Parliament has paid out grants to savers for nearly two decades: ‘Families more likely to save for postsecondary education had higher incomes and owned a home.’
Imagine a government-sponsored blood libel.
Now imagine the government wanting to walk back from it:
Two years ago, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys revealed what were said to be mass burial sites near or on the grounds of numerous former ‘residential schools’. These schools were set up at the end of the 19th century to educate Inuit and First Nations children, in order to assimilate them into Canadian society. Undoubtedly, many indigenous children were mistreated in residential schools, but mass killings had never been alleged before.
This summer, an alleged burial site near the former Pine Creek residential school in Manitoba was excavated over the course of four weeks. Earlier this month, chief Derek Nepinak of the Minegoziibe Anishinabe First Nation revealed the results of the excavation: no bodies had been discovered. He said that this takes ‘nothing away from the difficult truths experienced by our families who attended the residential school’.
This is just the latest in a series of excavations of alleged burial sites at one-time residential schools. They have been undertaken at the former Mohawk school in Brantford, the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton and the Kuper Island Residential School in British Columbia. And they have all failed to unearth a single unmarked grave. This really ought to call into question the whole narrative of mass slaughter at Canada’s residential schools.
There has certainly been no shortage of people over the past two years willing to speculate about the number of indigenous children that were supposedly killed in residential schools. In June 2021, after the first claims of unmarked graves emerged, Murray Sinclair, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), said the residential-school death toll ‘could be in the 15,000-to-25,000 range’. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia, called it a ‘genocide’.
Yet so far, no evidence has been found to support the claims of a ‘genocide’. You might expect that those pushing the residential-schools-genocide narrative would be on the back foot as a result. But they’re not. On the contrary, they continue to go after those questioning the narrative around residential schools.
Now, this collective guilt can only work if proof of this genocide existed in these floorboards and mass graves.
So, where is it?
Also:
A former British Columbia residential school site being investigated as a possible location of unmarked graves has been purchased by the Williams Lake First Nation with the help of the provincial government.
Buying the private property will ensure the integrity of the ongoing investigation and allow the First Nation to consider how to honour both the children who disappeared and those who were taken from their families to attend the school, Chief Willie Sellars said Tuesday.
"It has long been the goal of Williams Lake First Nation's current and previous councils to see this property preserved and protected," Sellars said in a statement.
He said the return of the property to the control and stewardship of Indigenous people is an important step to commemorate the history and legacy of the residential school system in B.C.
A First Nation investigator said last January there was evidence of crimes against children. Two separate investigations using ground-penetrating radar at the former school site had detected 159 possible unmarked graves.
The Catholic-run school operated from 1891 to 1981 near Williams Lake, located about 500 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.
First Nations in B.C. have taken different approaches to former residential schools on their territories, with Alert Bay and Lower Post demolishing the sites, while nations in Kamloops and Williams Lake decided to keep the buildings.
B.C.'s Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Ministry said the Williams Lake First Nation purchased the 5.5 hectare property for $1.2 million from private owners, with an $800,000 contribution from the province.
Murray Rankin, B.C.'s Indigenous relations and reconciliation minister, said in a statement that residential school survivors and their families say the sites are of great significance and they must be protected.
And where are these bodies?
The show trial for convoy participants is underway:
They don’t want this seen in court at Tamara Lich and Chris Barber’s trial. So, do your thing, and share it far and wide. #TruckersForFreedom https://t.co/hs2aaP98CV pic.twitter.com/1SQdGC82Fs
— Andy Lee - Special Rebel Rapporteur (@RealAndyLeeShow) September 5, 2023
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The longer the Freedom Convoy protesters blockaded Ottawa streets in protest against COVID-19 public health restrictions last year, the more volatile the relationship between police and protesters became, an Ottawa police officer testified Wednesday.
Insp. Russell Lucas was called as a Crown witness in the criminal trial of key protest organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber to testify about his role in co-ordinating the police response to the convoy.
Lich and Barber are co-accused of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, obstructing police and intimidation for their role in the three-week demonstration.
You had a week to prepare for an influx of protesters, Inspector Lucas.
And nothing happened until the police started trampling and beating protesters.
Who gave the orders to do this?
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A Freedom Convoy sympathizer yesterday won an Ontario Court of Justice dismissal of a mischief charge over his Facebook posts. Other protesters also faced police charges targeting social media messages: ‘They peacefully exercised their Charter rights.’
Before anyone gets any ideas that the rubbish Charter is akin to the Magna Carta or the American Constitution, consider that this country not only has enshrined censorship into law, but is ramming it through at all speed and that the government has done its level best to hide information from citizens.
So there's that.
Not even migrants or the desperate see this country as worth their while:
The Institute for Canadian Citizenship says Statistics Canada data points to a 40 per cent decline in citizenship uptake since 2001.
The group's CEO, Daniel Bernhard, calls the drop alarming and says it should serve as a "wake up call" to improving the experience newcomers have in Canada.
In 2021, nearly 45.7 per cent of permanent residents who'd been in Canada for less than 10 years became citizens.
That's down from 60 per cent in 2016, and 75.1 per cent in 2001.
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A leading economist warned federal ministers at their cabinet retreat last week that there are around one million more non-permanent residents living in Canada, including foreign students, than government estimates suggest.The warning came in a briefing from Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets. He told the Liberal government gathering in Charlottetown that the undercounting in the official statistics means Canada is underestimating the number of new homes required to meet the country’s increasing housing needs.Mr. Tal said in an interview that the government estimate of the number of non-permanent residents in the country in 2021 was around one million. But his analysis found there were closer to two million. The main reason for the discrepancy, he said, is that the government is not counting people who remain in the country after their visas expire.Mr. Tal said Statistics Canada assumes that temporary resident visa holders, including international students, leave the country 30 days after the expiries of their visas. “Their software, their coding, makes the assumption that 30 days after your visa expired you left the country, despite the fact you have not left the country,” he said.He said a majority of temporary residents don’t leave in this timeframe, and many apply to extend their stays in Canada.In a report on his findings, published Wednesday, Mr. Tal says “the practical implication of that undercounting is that the housing affordability crisis Canada is facing is actually worse than perceived, and calls for an even more urgent and aggressive policy action.”The federal government has increased its immigration targets to historically high levels. It is now aiming to admit about 500,000 new permanent residents this year, and in each of the following two years. But those numbers don’t include foreign students on visas or people on temporary work permits.
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Revivaltime Tabernacle, a church that took in several hundred recent asylum claimants over the past few months in response to Toronto's shelter space crisis, says it will no longer be open as a shelter.
Pastor Judith James says that recent asylum seekers to Canada are no longer sheltered at the church as of Thursday and that previously postponed church services will resume.
She says that all 230 asylum seekers sheltering at the church have been moved to a temporary hotel or municipal shelter per an agreement with the City of Toronto.
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Snizhana Bora was forced from her home in Kharkiv by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
She left her father, a brother and husband behind to bring her mother and four-year-old daughter to safety in Canada — only to spend the last three months in a desperate search for somewhere to live.
"It was terrible. I really cried every day," she told CBC News.
"[It's hard] when you've lost everything and you can't find it here — especially a house, this feeling of home."
Calgary settlement agencies that work with families like hers say chronic underfunding and a national housing crisis are leaving many newcomers homeless or in precarious housing.
Agencies say they have found newcomers sleeping on Calgary's streets, at the airport or at homeless shelters because nothing else is available.
The government invited untold numbers of people into the country without a single thought as to what to do with them.
But at least they got the moral posturing right.
A pedestrian-involved incident left an elderly man deceased and a woman with critical injuries in a Scarborough parking lot on Tuesday afternoon.
Two reporters on the scene saw the body of the 90-year-old man under a tarp for over six hours in “excruciating heat” before a body removal crew arrived.
“An elderly man has been struck and killed by a reversing truck in north Scarborough. His body has been laying in the parking lot for 5 hours now under a tarp, completely visible to anyone passing by. The coroner has left, truck involved gone, but his body remains,” Michelle Mackey, a news reporter with CityNews, tweeted on Tuesday.
Additionally, “it’s been in full view of patrons at a neighbouring restaurant and drivers,” Mackey observed.
It is said that one cannot fix stupidity.
I present to you the Communist Party of Canada (not to be confused with the Liberal Party of Canada):
Capitalism is to blame for the August wildfire season, the Communist Party of Canada said yesterday. A Party periodical People’s Voice said trees planted by capitalist forestry companies were more susceptible to fire than other trees: ‘The trees are pinnacles of so-called capitalist efficiency.’
This Communist Party of Canada:
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is deeply saddened to inform you of the untimely death of Kim Jong Il, leader of the Korean people and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army.
On this occasion, Comrade Sandra L. Smith, First Secretary of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L) sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea expressing the deepest condolences of the Party and its members. CPC(M-L) also extends deepest condolences to his successor Kim Jong Un, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea and now the Supreme Leader of the Korean People.
The death of the leader of the Korean people, Comrade Kim Jong Il, is a great loss to the Korean nation to whom he dedicated his life and work. To fullfil the striving of the Korean people to control their own destiny, he worked tirelessly for Korean reunification and to achieve the prosperity of the DPRK. His death comes at a time when the DPRK is achieving important economic developments to improve the people’s well-being and standard of living. The untimely passing of Kim Jong Il is also a great loss to the world anti-imperialist and democratic forces and the world communist movement in which the role of the DPRK to uphold principle and oppose preparations for imperialist war has been decisive to ensure peace in the region.”
In-sook went into hiding with her daughter as soon as the pandemic hit China in 2020.
The young woman had illegally entered the country as she fled across the border from North Korea.
China had intensified its surveillance methods, meaning she could no longer continue her factory job without an official identity card. She only dared leave their safe house at night when it was harder for sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt her down.
Like many women who flee North Korea’s repressive regime into China, traffickers exploited In-sook’s precarious legal situation and sold her to a Chinese man as his wife.
When he drank alcohol, he cursed and physically abused her, prompting her to make the risky decision to run.
Unable to feed her child, she turned in desperation to a church for refuge, and then to Helping Hands Korea (HHK), a Seoul-based group who provide North Koreans with escape routes to safety.
“I’m afraid I’ll be caught by the Chinese police and repatriated to North Korea,” she told HKK, who helped mother and daughter to reach safety in southeast Asia.
In-sook’s story, recounted by HHK, is one of incredible hardship, yet she belongs to the ‘lucky’ few North Koreans who have been able to successfully make the perilous journey through China in recent years.
Before the pandemic, more than 1,000 were welcomed every year in South Korea, but that number has trickled to just 458 since 2020.
According to the UN’s envoy on human rights in North Korea, Elizabeth Salmon, and activist groups, up to 2,000 defectors may currently be languishing in Chinese detention centres in the country’s north east. If forcibly repatriated, they face torture and abuse, and even death.
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