Your middle-of-the-week sleigh ride ...
The next election is not scheduled until 2025, but so far 14 MPs have decided not to run again, including 10 Liberals, ahead of what some pundits say will be “the most difficult election” for the party since 2015.
“This will be the most difficult election for a Liberal and any Liberal federally since before 2015, and it’s a combination of factors,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research. “They’ve been in power for a number of years, the economy is soft, the polling numbers are weak in terms of ballot support, the polling numbers are weak in terms of the leader, and the other thing that’s actually quite striking is that the Liberals aren’t as strong among female voters as they have been in the past, and they’re not as strong among younger voters. So it will be probably the most difficult election to run as a Liberal in quite a long time.”
Of the 10 Liberal MPs not seeking re-election, four are former cabinet ministers, and one is a former House Speaker. They include Carolyn Bennett (Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont.); Helena Jaczek (Markham-Stouffville, Ont.); Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, B.C.), Omar Alghabra (Mississauga Centre, Ont.) and Anthony Rota (Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont.). Four other backbench MPs include Wayne Long (Saint John-Rothesay, N.B.); Lloyd Longfield (Guelph, Ont.); Emmanuel Dubourg (Bourassa, Que.); and Ken Hardie (Fleetwoods-Port Kells, B.C.).
Also rats:
The Toronto Police Association said officers who were criticized for delivering coffee to pro-Palestinian protesters over the weekend have been maligned and deserve more support from within the organization.
Who in their right minds would support this, you moron?
You picked the side of anti-semites. You rewarded them with refreshments.
**
What is he being paid to be thrown under the bus?
Not that I feel sorry for him, but I would like to know:
A member of the RCMP security detail who grabbed and arrested a Rebel News commentator while questioning Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland Monday is under review by the federal force after video of the incident sparked outrage for a seemingly dubious arrest.
David Menzies was grabbed and pushed by an RCMP officer and told he was under arrest for assault as he was asking the minister questions about the government’s terrorism response, outside of a vigil in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto, to mark four years since Iran’s military shot down Flight PS752, killing 176 people, many of them Canadian.
“RCMP protective policing resources were involved in an incident while deployed on a protective operation,” said Sgt. Kim Chamberland, an RCMP spokesperson. “The RCMP is looking into the incident and the actions of all parties involved. No further comment is available at this time.”
When asked by National Post to clarify that the review applies to both Menzies as well as the unnamed RCMP officer, Chamberland replied: “It refers to all parties involved.”
The incident has received global attention.
“The arrest of the Rebel News reporter was made by the Prime Minister’s RCMP security detail. York Regional Police officers assisted as the interaction took place in our region,” said Constable Lisa Moskaluk, a media relations officer with York police.
“It was determined that no credible security threat existed and the subject was released unconditionally shortly thereafter.”
Menzies’ release without charge hasn’t muted expressions of outrage over the incident, recorded by a Rebel News videographer in a video which shows a man in a suit, tie and dark coat seeming to create a collision with Menzies that facilitated the arrest.
Menzies is seen on the video approaching Freeland outside as she walks towards the event’s entrance. She doesn’t stop to talk. Menzies asks two questions as he matches her pace.
Tilting his microphone back and forth between them as they walk to capture his questions and her responses that don’t come, Menzies almost walks into a column, behind which a man in a long dark coat stands, with his right shoulder seeming to poke out into the walkway.
Menzies collides with the man’s right shoulder and the man immediately reaches out to corral Menzies as Freeland then dekes around in the other direction.
The man grabs Menzies by his coat lapels and shoves him up against a wall as other men swarm in and Freeland, and a woman walking with her, keep walking.
“You’re under arrest,” the man says, according to the video. He then grabs Menzies’ arm that holds his microphone and twists it down. “You’re under arrest for assault,” the officer adds.
“Why am I under arrest, you bumped into me,” Menzies asks.
“You pushed into me,” the officer replies. Menzies asks him his name and badge number but he is not heard answering.
“You’ve been told you’re under arrest,” another unidentified man in a suit says as he reaches out for Menzies.
“Why am I under arrest? He blocked my way,” Menzies tells the second man. The first officer then tells Menzies he is a peace officer and Menzies is under arrest for assaulting a peace officer.
Uniformed members of York police first stand and watch but later are seen handcuffing Menzies and leading him away.
The incident sparked instant alarm and outrage, particularly from conservative commentators and organizations online. It is cast by the right-wing Rebel News as an attack on freedom of expression by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Rebel News widely shared the unsettling event: “SHOCK FOOTAGE: Chrystia Freeland’s bodyguards assault and arrest David Menzies when he asks her a question,” said the main headline on the site.
Rebel News described the incident as a “brutal arrest.”
Ezra Levant, founder and owner of Rebel News, said in the article he was “outraged” by the arrest and asked for financial help.
“The only way to get justice is in court. We’ve got the evidence of the false arrest — and of the police assaulting David. If we don’t stand up for David, this will just keep happening,” Levant said in his story.
“We need to sue Freeland’s out-of-control RCMP bodyguards. They claim they’re police, but they’re acting more like a police state.”
A real country would withdraw from the UN, like Leslyn Lewis wants to do:
A petition filed in the House of Commons asking for Canada to pull out of the United Nations has garnered over 71,000 signatures as its Tory MP sponsor takes flak from Liberal ministers.“Over 60,000 Canadians have now signed a petition calling on Canada to protect our national sovereignty by withdrawing from the UN and its subsidiary organizations,” wrote Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis on the X platform on Jan. 3. Ms. Lewis is sponsoring the petition filed by Doug Porter from Burnaby, B.C.The petition says that membership in the U.N. and its subsidiary organizations “imposes negative consequences on the people of Canada.”
All other refugees receiving aid from the United Nations are lumped together under a single agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Only the Palestinians have a dedicated UN agency, despite the fact that it’s been 75 years since the war that led to their dispersion and that there is nothing unique about the Palestinians compared to other refugees.The now-pervasive myth that Palestinians had a unique injustice done unto them and have a sacred right to return to their former homes is just that — a foundation myth. In truth, they are only refugees because they fled — or, in a minority of cases, were expelled — in a war that Arab countries started to restore Muslim supremacy to the land, rejecting a Jewish state in their midst under any conditions.
The federal government is so far staying out of the latest political flashpoint surrounding the war in Gaza, as it remains silent on a contentious accusation being heard this week at the UN’s International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians .
A Russian woman who feared being deported to face a conviction for opposing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been granted Canadian citizenship, months after officials blocked her from taking the oath.
“I was very anxious today when I woke up, but now I feel way more relaxed,” Maria Kartasheva said Tuesday afternoon, moments after becoming a Canadian citizen.
“I just don’t want anyone else to go through the same thing, because that was a very scary experience.”
Kartasheva went public last week about the Immigration Department blocking her from taking a citizenship oath, just before her ceremony was to begin.
She came to Canada in 2019 because of rising authoritarianism, and is now a tech worker in Ottawa who co-founded a grassroots activist group for democracy in Russia.
As first reported by CBC News, Kartasheva, 30, learned via her family that in late 2022 she had been charged by Russian authorities with a wartime offence of disseminating “deliberately false information” about Russian forces.
The charges related to two blog posts she wrote in March 2022, while living in Canada, in which she expressed horror at Russian troops killing Ukrainians in the town of Bucha. The UN human-rights office said that attack included “unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 50 civilians.”
Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the federal government's stated 1,000-person limit on temporary resident visas for Palestinians looking to flee Gaza is not a hard cap, despite previous suggestions.
In an interview on CTV News Channel's Power Play, Miller told host Vassy Kapelos that "no," the limit as previously stated is not set in stone.
"It is conventional for a number of these programs to have an internal number that is established. This was one that we thought at the outset — in the context of something being done in a relatively short period of time understanding that it's a war zone in Gaza — was something to manage flow, understand what the numbers are, and then you know remain flexible on the fly if we do see numbers that exceed that."
Now everyday can be October 7th!:
Schem and her girlfriend tried to escape the music festival on 10/7 but drove straight toward a group of Hamas terrorists who shot the tires out from under her car. Then a group got out near her and shot her in the arm. She says her arm was “detached.” It sounds from the description like the bone was broken and her arm just flopped. She picked it up and tried to hide in the car as Hamas continued killing anyone who seemed to be alive. Finally her car was on fire and she had a choice between burning alive and handing herself over to Hamas. She decided to live.
And immediately she was sexually assaulted, despite the fact she was covered in blood. They put her in a van and took her back to Gaza. She spent most of her captivity there with her captor and his family in a little house. For three days she had no painkillers and no medical attention. Then they took her to a hospital and operated on her arm. She was filmed for a Hamas propaganda video in which a doctor wrapped her arm but that was the last time she received any medical help. No meds or painkillers. She was barely given any food.
She says her entire time in captivity it was clear to her that her captor wanted to rape her but he couldn’t do that because his wife and family were in the next room. The wife was clearly unhappy about her being there as well and showed her unhappiness by taunting her with food or talking to her husband about how her hair was fake. Her captor later confessed to her that he was unhappily married and didn’t love his wife.
Even the children seemed to get in on the taunting. At one point her captor’s son brought candy for his father and then showed her what was in the bag and walked away. She described it as “pure evil.” Then she added, “There are no innocent civilians there…From the moment those children are born, they’re brainwashed that Israel is Palestine and that they must hate Jews.”
A German court delivered its verdict Tuesday concerning those responsible for the barbaric September 2020 gang-rape of a 15-year-old German girl in the northern city of Hamburg.
Of the eleven men initially charged in relation to the gang-rape of the minor — only four of whom were technically German — two were acquitted. Nine were found guilty. Eight got probation, not exceeding two years. Only one is headed to prison.
Good:
A former British Columbia attorney general says a recent Purolator arbitration case that ruled in favour of unvaccinated workers is a “game changer” that could wipe out vaccine mandates for health-care workers in the province.Suzanne Anton, a former justice minister under the B.C. Liberal government of Christy Clark, is weighing in on the likelihood of success for a lawsuit filed against B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry by a group of unvaccinated health-care workers. The doctors, nurses, and other health-care personnel, who were fired for not receiving COVID-19 shots, are asking B.C.’s Supreme Court to remove the province’s vaccine mandate so they can return to work.B.C. is the only remaining province to maintain the vaccine requirement for health-care workers.
Also - I think I know:
Statistics Canada has a talent for reporting deaths with numbing precision, but in such a way that makes it hard to know what’s really going on. ...
That’s almost five times as many as in 2019. Yet in their list, StatsCan doesn’t even rank order it: That right hand column is my addition.
Wouldn’t you think that was worth some comment? Just how many obscure causes of death are out there to fool pathologists?
Now, maybe there’s a perfectly rational explanation. But there’s none to be found in StatsCan’s breezy press release.
Look over here, it says: Life expectancy has declined for the third year in a row. (They do at least offer some explanation.)
In 2022, cancer and heart disease remain the two leading causes of death.(Not news: they have been forever.)
And here the furrowed brow, COVID-19 deaths were the highest since the start of the pandemic.
Think about that one. When COVID deaths were not even two thirds of that, governments were telling us to stay home and putting people in jail if they went to church. But if it doesn’t matter now, why did it matter so much then? Just asking.
This is the elephant in the room. And given the political reputations at risk as all the people who told us vaccines were safe and effective now run for cover, does this not demand closer scrutiny?
Whoa!:
Police say in a social media post that officers discovered 60 weapons — including Samurai swords, machetes, knives, axes and imitation firearms — at the Dawson Park encampment in the city’s river valley last week.
The useless CRTC has a code for its Ministry of Truth:
Federal regulators may draft a pre-election “code of conduct” for newsrooms, cabinet yesterday wrote in a legal notice. The Department of Heritage said under Bill C-18 the Online News Act already in effect, newsrooms are subject to CRTC guidance on ethics: “We will have to get precise on that.”
Not a single one of these parents asked why their children aren't learning math.
Just wow:
A legal challenge to Saskatchewan’s new law requiring parental consent if children under 16 want to change their names or pronouns at school is back in court this week. New Brunswick enacted a similar measure last year, and other provinces are looking at doing the same.
Lawyers representing UR Pride, an LGBT group in Regina, say the rule discriminates against youth who aren’t able to come out to their families. The Saskatchewan and New Brunswick governments have said they made the changes after hearing from many parents that they want them.
Saskatchewan used the notwithstanding clause, a rarely used provision that lets governments override Charter rights for five years, to prevent the court challenge from proceeding.
The Canadian Press sent reporters across the country to talk to parents about the issue.
Here we go again:
North Korea fired artillery rounds near its disputed sea boundary with South Korea on Friday in violation of a fragile 2018 military agreement, officials said, prompting the South to plan similar drills.
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Yeonpyeong local officials told AFP that civilians had been told to evacuate, describing the order as a "preventative measure".
South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island is situated in the Yellow Sea. It is located approximately 80 kilometres west of Incheon and 12 kilometres south of the coastline of Hwanghae Province, North Korea.
Authorities on Baengnyeong Island also reported an evacuation order there.
"We are making the evacuation announcements at the moment," a local district official at the Baengnyeong Island told AFP, adding that he had been told the South Korean military would conduct a naval drill shortly.
Pyongyang fired a barrage of 170 artillery shells onto Yeonpyeong island in November 2010, killing four people including two civilians in the first North Korean attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Japan not in the clear from its most recent earthquake:
A woman in her 90s was pulled alive from a collapsed house in western Japan late Saturday, 124 hours after a major quake slammed the region, killing at least 126 people, toppling buildings and setting off landslides.
October 7th is everyday in other countries:
Every two hours [in Nigeria], a Christian is killed for their faith." — Open Doors, April 22, 2022.
[T]he Associated Press (AP) failed to mention that the massacres occurred during Christmas, just as it failed to mention the identities of the attackers (Muslims) and their victims (Christians). Rather, it presented the conflict, as many commentators increasingly do, as a supposedly regrettable byproduct of climate change...
"It's tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn't a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black, chanting 'Allahu Akbar!' and screaming 'Death to Christians.'" — Sister Monica Chikwe, Nigerian nun, cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019.
In 2020, President Donald J. Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department's List of Countries of Particular Concern — that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Under President Joseph R. Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria... from the list.
[F]or the mainstream media and many politicians, black lives — well over 50,000 and counting — apparently do not matter. At least not when those lives are Christian and being slaughtered by Muslims.
An Alaska Airlines jetliner blew out a window and a portion of its fuselage shortly after takeoff 16,000 feet (4,876 metres) above Oregon late Friday, creating a gaping hole that forced the pilots to make an emergency landing as its 174 passengers and six crew members donned oxygen masks.No one was seriously hurt as the depressurized plane returned safely to Portland International Airport about 20 minutes after it had departed.Canadian airlines say they don’t fly the Boeing 737-9 Max jetliners. Airlines including Air Canada, WestJet, Flair Airlines and Lynx Air all say they fly the 737-8 Max jetliner, while Porter Airlines doesn’t fly any Boeing planes.Alaska Airlines had earlier voluntarily grounded its fleet of 737-9 Max aircraft, amounting to some 65 planes.
How is it that he can be removed from the ballot if he has not been convicted of a crime?:
The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off the ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, inserting the court squarely in the 2024 presidential campaign.
The justices acknowledged the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country. The court agreed to take up Trump’s appeal of a case from Colorado stemming from his role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Underscoring the urgency, arguments will be held on Feb. 8, during what is normally a nearly monthlong winter break for the justices. The compressed timeframe could allow the court to produce a decision before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs in a single day, including in Colorado.
Trump, speaking at a campaign event in Iowa, said: “All I want is fair. I just hope that they’re going to be fair.”
The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War. It has been so rarely used that the nation’s highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.
Actor Shia LaBeouf, known for his off-screen troubles as well as his film roles, has converted to Catholicism after being confirmed on New Year’s Eve at a Mass presided over by Capuchin Franciscan friars.
The Capuchin Franciscans-Western American Province announced the news on its Facebook site where it posted images of a smiling LeBeouf receiving Communion, kneeling with his eyes shut in prayer at Mass and hugging friars who attended the ceremony.
The sacramental ceremony was held at Old Mission Santa Inés Parish in Solvang, California, the same friary where LaBeouf — who has acknowledged alcoholism and faced abuse allegations — trained for months for his role as one of Italy’s best-known and most revered saints in the 2022 film, “ Padre Pio.”
“The Capuchin Franciscan friars are overjoyed to welcome him into the fold and witness his deep commitment to his faith journey,” the Catholic religious order said.
LaBeouf “has embarked on a profound spiritual journey that has led him to embrace the teachings of the Catholic Church,” the order said. "His decision to fully enter the Church is a testament to his sincere desire to grow in his relationship with God and live out the Gospel values.”
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