Mid-Week Post

In the bleak mid-winter ....

To wit:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took to social media imploring Albertans to turn off their lights, stop using appliances and hunker down to save the power grid from blacking out. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe tagged in, announcing his province was sending 153 megawatts to Alberta.  

When it’s -40 C, running the furnace isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is punishing Canadians with a carbon tax for the sin of staying warm and staying alive in winter. 

The federal carbon tax is currently set at $65 per tonne, costing 12¢ per cubic meter of natural gas and 10¢ per litre of propane. An average Canadian home uses about 2,385 cubic metres of natural gas per year, so the carbon tax will cost them about $300 extra to heat their home.  

Even after the rebates, average families will be out hundreds of dollars this year because of the higher heating bills, gas prices, inflation and the economic damage that comes with the carbon tax, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. 

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But the Trudeau government isn’t done. On April 1, the carbon tax is going up to $80 per tonne. That will cost 15¢ per cubic metre of natural gas. 

In fact, Trudeau plans to crank up his carbon tax every year. Over the next three years, Trudeau’s carbon tax will cost the average family $1,100 on natural gas alone.  

Canada is a cold place. Keeping the heat on isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And Trudeau’s carbon tax punishes families who need to stay warm during the winter months. Even worse, Trudeau knows the carbon tax makes it more expensive for families to stay warm.  

“We are putting more money back in your pocket and making it easier for you to find affordable, long-term solutions to heat your home,” Trudeau said, when he removed the carbon tax from home heating oil for three years.  

This was an admission of an obvious reality: the carbon tax makes life more expensive. Otherwise, why would Trudeau take the carbon tax off a form of heating energy? 

You invited swaths of unaccomplished people into Canada and have nowhere to put them in sub-zero temperatures.

You have outdone yourselves in the field of failure:

Key housing starts fell seven percent last year, CMHC said yesterday. New construction figures followed Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s pledge to “build more homes faster.” Starts in some cities were down as much as 40 percent or more: “No there is not a plan.”

It's just money:

The husband of Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner (Hamilton Mountain, Ont.) must repay pandemic relief cheques improperly claimed under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit program, records show. MP Hepfner yesterday had no comment but earlier praised cabinet for “rolling out these programs to help Canadians.”

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Canada’s economy has been making headlines for leading the G7, but many aren’t feeling the effects. That’s because gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has barely moved. Rather than growing the economy through economic improvements, Canada has only added more consumers through immigration. Adjusting for population, US households have seen their economic picture grow 10x faster over the past decade. The OECD previously warned Canada was heading into dangerous territory with their reliance on a debt-driven housing bubble. 

Justin acts as one who never has to answer for what he says and does because he never has to answer for what he says and does.

This is a sign of an unserious country:

In December, before Trudeau and his family left on the trip, the Prime Minister’s Office put out a statement saying that Trudeau would be paying for his own accommodations on the trip. In January, just before his return, his office put out another statement saying that Trudeau had stayed “at no cost at a location owned by family friends.”

There is a world of difference between those two statements and the logical question would be: Which version did Trudeau tell the ethics commissioner? Because as any Liberal will tell you, this trip was “pre-cleared” by the ethics commissioner, which of course would lead any normal person to think that it was within the rules.

Except, the ethics commissioner’s office said in a statement last week that they don’t “pre-clear” vacations.

“To clarify, the office does not approve or ‘clear’ regulatees’ vacations. The office has a role only in ensuring that the gift provisions of the act and code are observed,” spokesperson Jocelyne Brisebois said when asked for clarification on Trudeau’s trip.

He doesn't even see how the optics of his actions can be seen as bad.

He's the everyman, you see. When everyone was locked down and he was allowed to travel, that was fine. When people who cannot afford food and likewise cannot travel but he willingly accepted but could be interpreted as a favour, well that's just cool. Anyone would ahve done that.

What an @$$.

Also - the coward refuses to take a stand against these douches:

Medicines destined for Israeli hostages, but most of which will end up serving the Hamas terrorist organization, arrived in Egypt on Wednesday and are on the way to the Gaza border.

Canada hasn't mattered since Pearson and we all know it:

Canada is good at pointing fingers at other countries but is missing in action on the international scene when it is most needed, said former Liberal deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister John Manley on the podcast The Global Exchange.

Manley, who famously said two decades ago that Canada cannot sit at the G8 table and then excuse itself to go to the washroom when the waiter arrives with the bill, was asked if the country is now pulling its weight on the international scene during an episode recorded with former Quebec premier Jean Charest and former Conservative defence minister Peter MacKay. ...

“You know, we were a useful country,” said Manley, now 74 and chairman of CIBC. “Where Canada was most effective was when we found ways to be useful. We could talk to everybody,” he added, noting that Canada played a middle power role on the world stage and could act as a “bridge” with communist countries that the United States had severed ties with.

Manley also recounted that Chrétien told him, after he appointed him foreign affairs minister, that Canada’s role was sometimes to get into diplomatic rooms that the Americans cannot get into and then tell them “what happened in that room.”

“I feel that we have somehow lost our bearings. We weren’t often the chair of some of these international organizations or the secretary general, but we were often the rapporteur or the second. We played key roles. If we held the pen, we could influence outcomes better than some of the sometimes chairs of the United Nations or other committees could do.”

“We seem to have decided that we would rather carry a soapbox with us and get up on it and tell people how they need to do things differently, rather than finding ways to insinuate ourselves into these many complex and difficult situations in order to exert influence at a level that’s maybe lower profile but probably a lot more effective,” he added.

Bingo.

Canada is the sanctimonious busy-body and not the capable second-in-command it should be.

Thank the Liberals.

Also:

Too many Ukrainians have died in the year since Canada announced the “high-priority donation” of an advanced air-defence system to Ukraine that has yet to be delivered, the secretary of country’s National Security and Defence Council said Tuesday.

Oleksiy Danilov told The Globe and Mail that his own nephew, killed near the front line on Jan. 8, was among those who had died in the 53 weeks since Canada promised to purchase a US$406-million National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, on Ukraine’s behalf. While the reasons for the delay may make sense in Ottawa, the wait for the U.S.-made equipment is harder to understand for those facing daily Russian missile attacks.

“It’s a complicated question. If Ukraine had this air-defence system, would it have saved the life of my nephew or not? And there are a lot of people like my nephew. We have losses every day,” Mr. Danilov said in an interview inside the NSDC’s fortified headquarters in Kyiv. “The faster we get these protective systems, the fewer casualties we will suffer. When you ask me ‘Is one year too long?,’ how should we measure that?”

Canadian officials have said the NASAMS was paid for last March and that delivery has been held up by the requirement of a foreign military sales agreement between the U.S. and Ukrainian governments, which is still under negotiation. Defence Minister Bill Blair reportedly met with the U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, last week to request that the process be expedited.

NASAMS, which are also produced in Norway, are considered one of the most advanced air-defence systems, a badly needed shield against near-nightly Russian cruise missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities. Each system contains a radar unit, sensors, a mobile command centre and launchers that can be loaded with as many as six missiles each.

Ukraine already has at least one NASAMS battery, as well as two U.S.-produced Patriot anti-aircraft systems and some older Soviet units, protecting its cities. However, those have been increasingly challenged in recent weeks by Russian attacks that have seen dozens of missiles, some of them hypersonic, launched simultaneously in an effort to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences. Mass attacks on Dec. 29 and Jan. 2 each saw Russian forces launch more than 100 projectiles at the same time.

At least 58 people were killed in the Dec. 29 attack, which saw explosions in cities around the country, including Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv and Lviv. Six more people were killed on Jan. 2.

If the Liberals were animals, they would be scorpions.

Scorpions have no loyalty or sentiment, either:

The current federal Liberal government is trying to distance itself from the one that reportedly conspired with Australia to weaken United Nations language on Indigenous Peoples in the early 2000s.

Newly released Australian cabinet documents from 2003 show the two countries worked together on putting forward a softer version of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. ...

Every Liberal government is different, Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu told The Canadian Press, adding that every act of colonization and undermining Indigenous rights leaves a “stain” on the country.

“Indigenous, First Nations people deserve so much more than that, and that’s what we are trying to do as a Liberal government,” Hajdu said.

The documents, first disclosed by the Guardian newspaper, show the two governments worked in secret to weaken the declaration, while acknowledging their efforts would face stringent Indigenous opposition.

“Our approach has been to only discuss the alternative text with those key states that appear to share our views and concerns,” the document reads.

Rather, they paid lip service, didn't want to pony up the cash, and could easily blame everything on previous governments.

Typical.

Is Chretien's chin big enough for this sucker punch?

Also - lenience for special people did this:

Stories of horror and also incredible courage brought people to tears at the second day of a coroner’s inquest into a 2022 mass killing in Saskatchewan.

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The inquest on Tuesday heard a focused timeline, audio from 911 calls and testimony from RCMP providing further insight into the events of Sept. 4, 2022 on James Smith Cree Nation and in the nearby village of Weldon, when Myles Sanderson killed 11 people and injured 17 others during a stabbing rampage.

Community members at the inquest watched closely — some hugging and crying — as a video showed a rapid-fire account of where he went during those chaotic few hours.

Many survivors and witnesses couldn’t call RCMP right away as they fled to safety, helped others or treated their own injuries, Saskatchewan RCMP Staff Sgt. Robin Zentner said.

Jordan Peterson is a honey badger:

In November 2022, the administrative board that regulates the conduct of psychologists (and much more than that, it turns out) decided that my political views were a disgrace to my profession, that of clinical psychologist. I was therefore sentenced by that board, the Ontario College of Psychologists, to a bout of mandatory re-education, of indeterminate duration, at my expense, with my learning not evaluated by any standard method but subject to the opinion of those charged with, profiting by and exploiting my forced studentship. I took those decision-makers forthwith to court, and lost. The decision of the Ontario College of Psychologists was upheld. I then appealed, to a higher court. On January 16, 2024, that appeal was rejected. There were no reasons provided.

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This means that my legal options have been exhausted. Thus, I face two choices. I can comply, when the College goes ahead with its determination to require my re-education, dutifully attend whatever bloody classes their DEI-enthusiast “social media experts” (whatever those are) determine to inflict upon, confess the sins of my classic liberal/conservative or even Judeo-Christian political, philosophical and theological commitments, repent and silence myself — or even become a standard-bearer for the faux-compassionate woke cause, at least publicly. Alternatively, I can tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else, lose my right to practice or even to describe myself as a psychologist, and suffer the consequences on the reputation front ...

The medical profession has become politicised.

Thus, it has delegitmised itself by being partisan rather than being the medical authorities they were meant, this creating distrust.

Good going, guys.

China isn't sinking fast enough.

This vexes me:

China's economy last year grew at one of its slowest rates in more than three decades, official figures showed Wednesday, as it was battered by a crippling property crisis, sluggish consumption and global turmoil.

The figures were in line with expectations and even beat Beijing's target but will likely pile fresh pressure on officials to unveil more stimulus measures to kick-start business activity and get the country's army of consumers spending again.

China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that gross domestic product expanded 5.2% to hit 126 trillion yuan ($17.6 trillion) last year.

The reading is better than the 3% recorded in 2022, when strict "COVID-zero" curbs destroyed activity, but marks the weakest performance since 1990, excluding the pandemic years.

While 5.2% would be looked on enviously by other governments such as the United States and those in the eurozone — which each expanded around 2% in 2022 — it is well down from the levels around six or 7% constantly enjoyed in the 2010s.

After lifting its draconian COVID-19 measures at the end of 2022, Beijing set itself a growth target of "around 5%" for last year.

The economy enjoyed an initial post-pandemic rebound, but ran out of steam within months as a lack of confidence among households and businesses hit consumption.

And statistics last month showed deflation continued for the third month in a row, likely deepening consumer reluctance to spend.