Yep:
Opposition MPs yesterday asked cabinet to reinstate visa requirements for Mexican visitors. Records show Mexico accounts for a larger number of refugee claimants in Canada than any other country: “We are always very much aware of potential criminality.”**
A Hamilton councillor's recent experience witnessing a baby born in an encampment in the city demonstrates the "unacceptable" housing crisis residents face and "eye opening" situations paramedics and police officers are currently responding to, he says.
Coun. Matt Francis (Ward 5) told CBC Hamilton he was doing a ride along with police on a cold morning in late November when they were called to a medical emergency at an encampment tucked away in an industrial area in the east end.
They arrived at the same time as paramedics and "to our surprise," he said, a woman had given birth in a tent and was holding the infant with the umbilical cord still attached. There was another person in the tent with her.
"I was one of the very first people to see this child born and I was shocked and saddened at the same time," Francis said in an interview Monday.
Paramedics cut the umbilical cord and wrapped the baby in a blanket, while police helped the mother onto a stretcher. She and the baby were taken away in an ambulance, he said.
**
A system too big to fail:
The following summer, in July of 2022, I had another X-ray done, and my GP—who was as supportive and helpful as he could be—said my hips were “completely obliterated.” Two months later I saw the orthopedic surgeon again, on a short-notice appointment because the pain had become even worse. He finally agreed to put me on the list for surgery, but the estimated wait time was two years. This is crazy, I thought to myself. I can’t live like this. I was angry at how our “free” health care system worked. Yes, the surgery would be free—when it happened—but I was paying now in a different way, in the time it took for constant trips to the doctor, lost time with loved ones, activities I couldn’t participate in and a dramatically lowered quality of life.
Of course, I know I’m not alone. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the benchmark wait time for a hip replacement in Canada—the target time—is 26 weeks. But barely half of all patients nationwide are treated that quickly, and the figure is even worse in Alberta, with only 38 per cent treated within the benchmark. Younger patients like me are pushed way down the priority list and forced to wait years, even as their quality of life is diminished and their condition deteriorates, making long-term recovery harder. In my case, for example, all my limping around had started to cause muscle atrophy.
But there is always killing people off.
Canada’s Health Minister Mark Holland says some provinces will stand opposed to expanding medical assistance in dying for ideological reasons, but the government wants to ensure a majority feel ready.
Holland recently acknowledged provinces have expressed fears that the country may not be ready for the change to take effect in March.
The governments of Manitoba and Saskatchewan say they are concerned about the potential risks of allowing Canadians to seek medical assistance in dying solely on the basis of a mental illness.
Holland said there is a need to make sure the right number of professionals have been trained, and to hear from provinces about whether their systems are ready, though he said some provinces will have “ideological objections.”
How dare people find killing the elderly distasteful, even in an election year?!
**
The federal NDP candidate and riding executives in Guelph sent a letter blaming “white fragility” for the removal of an Ontario MPP from the provincial NDP caucus after a falling out over her offensive comments about the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct. 7.The letter, obtained by the National Post, demanded that Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles immediately reinstate Hamilton-Centre MPP Sarah Jama to the party’s caucus, describing “dismay” and “anger” over the party’s decision to remove her last October.
Canada’s international development minister avoided reporters’ questions Tuesday on whether the widely publicized pause in the government’s funding of a contentious UN agency came before or after Canada had made a promised payment to the agency.On Monday, columnist Hélène Buzzetti posted in French on X, formerly Twitter, that the federal government had already made the first of four promised $25-million payments to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — despite last Friday’s announcement from International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen that funding would be paused after evidence emerged that agency employees took part in the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel.
UNRWA’s primary role is the provision of schooling to Palestinians, including in Gaza. The Israeli non-profit IMPACT-se conducts regular analyses of the textbooks used in UNRWA schools, and has uncovered overt endorsements of antisemitic conspiracy theories and violent Jihad. Israel itself is almost exclusively referred to as the “Zionist Occupation.” Geography texts feature world maps explicitly purged of the State of Israel. Reading lessons are filled with words such as “martyr,” “attack” and “intifada.”“A fourth grade math exercise asks students to calculate the number of martyrs (including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres) in Palestinian uprisings and it (is) accompanied by a photograph of raised coffins at a mass funeral,” reads a 2021 IMPACT-se report.
The Wall Street Journal also reviewed the dossier, publishing additional findings from the Israeli intelligence reports on Monday, including that around 10% of the U.N. agency’s 12,000-strong Gaza staff have ties to Islamist terrorist groups.One of the UNRWA workers is accused of kidnapping a woman, another of participating in the Kibbutz Be’eri massacre in which nearly 100 people were murdered, and a third of distributing ammunition.“UNRWA’s problem is not just ‘a few bad apples’ involved in the October 7 massacre. The institution as a whole is a haven for Hamas’s radical ideology,” a senior Israeli government official told the Journal.
“This province has no place for bigotry and racism. We stand with the Muslim community throughout Canada on this sorrowful day of remembrance.”So wrote David Eby, premier of the Canadian province of British Columbia and leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party, on Saturday in a social media post, which linked to his statement for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.He subsequently deleted the post and penned a new one. “Today, people all over the world will be remembering the six million Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust, along with millions of others who were targeted because of their ethnicity, sexual identity, disability or political opposition to the Nazis,” he wrote.
An investigation of ArriveCan spending has found outsourcing companies repeatedly won contracts by listing subcontractors who ultimately did no work, one of many findings that led the federal procurement ombudsman to conclude contracting rules were not followed.
The report specifically singles out contract work by two-person IT staffing company GCStrategies, saying the company frequently failed to prove that its proposed team of subcontractors had the résumés and work experience required.
The watchdog found “numerous examples” where GCStrategies “had simply copied and pasted” the required work experience listed by the government in a points grid to describe the skills and experience of the company’s proposed subcontractors.
The report questions why the government used criteria that “were overly restrictive and favoured” GCStrategies, resulting in the company winning a competition for a $25-million general IT services contract after no other bids were submitted.
The report by Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic is the first of what is expected to be several findings from various watchdogs, committees and government departments into how the cost to build and maintain the app for cross-border travellers came to exceed $54-million. The Office of the Procurement Ombudsman (OPO) released the report Monday as parliamentary sittings resumed.
The report provides a sense of some of the issues that are likely to be described more broadly on Feb. 12, when Auditor-General Karen Hogan releases her report into contracting issues related to ArriveCan.
The House of Commons requested the Auditor-General’s ArriveCan audit in a 174-149 vote over a year ago, shortly after The Globe and Mail first reported on the app’s growing cost and the federal government’s heavy reliance on outsourcing.
The procurement watchdog review examined 41 ArriveCan-related procurements. In many cases, the ArriveCan work was conducted through a Task Authorization (TA), essentially a carve-out for a specific job, tied to larger contracts for general IT services.
The report says the system is designed so that companies bidding on government work submit proposals describing the skills of specific individuals, referred to as resources, who would be subcontracted to perform the required tasks. In this points-based system, listing more experienced and qualified subcontractors increases the odds of winning the contract.
“In roughly 76 per cent of applicable contracts, resources proposed in the winning bid did not perform any work on the contract. When TAs were issued under these contracts the supplier offered up other resources, but not the individuals that had been proposed in order to win the contract. While it is recognized that there may be legitimate reasons for some proposed resources being unavailable, the number of times it occurred and the absence of file documentation explaining why these resources were not made available raised serious concerns with these contracts,” the report states.
Mr. Jeglic also sharply criticized the government’s public disclosure policies related to contracting, pointing out that 41 per cent of the ArriveCan-related contracts were not fully disclosed online as required.
“As discussed throughout this report, OPO found practices for awarding competitive and non-competitive contracts, for issuing TAs and service orders, and for proactive publication of contract information that were inconsistent with government policy and that threatened fairness, openness and transparency for government procurement,” the report concludes.
**
While not a full-scale overhaul of the federal voting system as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once promised, within the two-party confidence-and-supply agreement are a series of electoral reform proposals aimed at expanding "the ability for people to vote."
Specifically, the Liberals and New Democrats agreed to explore:
- Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections;
- Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and
- Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind.
The Americans did the same thing and look how that turned out.
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