Your middle-of-the-week spiritual reflection ...
I might feel better about this if I knew that everyone involved would lose their pensions:
What started out as a modest $80,000 piece of basic traveller-tracking software during the pandemic became a $60-million-plus boondoggle where juicy contracts were farmed out without competitive bidding to those without the skills or staff to deliver the goods.
The reviled ArriveCan app is a repressed memory for many travellers, who fought with the finicky technology while standing in customs lineups at airports or scrambled for Wi-Fi signals to fill it out at land border crossings.
But the auditor general’s detailed and damning analysis is the truly infuriating part of this technological ripoff. And Hogan says the worst may be in details she could not access.
For example, we still don’t know which bureaucrats handed out contracts to unqualified recipients, some without legitimate proposals to justify untendered money grabs, or why these specific companies received such special treatment.
No heads have rolled onto the unemployment rolls as a result of allegations dating back two years.
All we know is somehow GCStrategies, a two-person consulting firm based in a rural Ottawa Valley house, was able to write its own ticket to a $25-million contract despite having no hands-on expertise beyond knowing which bureaucratic backs to scratch.
In one case, they didn’t even have to submit a proposal. All they had to do was invite the decision makers to a whisky drinking event or a few dinners and the cheques fell into their lap.
But they were not alone. There were a number of companies, including the king of government contracts in KPMG, which received similar sweetheart procurements from velvet-gloved bureaucrats filled with blank pages where the detailed contract justifications should appear.
The faults and flaws which drove up contract prices were many and should’ve been easy to catch and fix.
The supervising power over procurement in Public Services did not review all the deals as one might expect.
In some cases, potential bidders drafted the terms of the contracts they would ultimately receive without any competition.
The lead agencies -- the Canadian Border Agency and the Public Health Agency -- each thought the other was taking the administrative lead so nobody was in charge.
Junior techs working the app were billing senior service rates and timesheets were not validated for work done, which helped inflate the daily pay rate to $1,090 per private tech employee versus $675 for an equivalent government worker.
What’s worse, if that’s possible, once the app was in operation it required a steady stream of major fixes, most of which were never tested before they were unleashed on the travelling public. In one case, the auditor general notes, that meant 10,000 fully vaccinated Canadians were needlessly quarantined by a glitch in the app.
Anyone in the private sector would have lost their job for this.
It's time to exact the same accountability for the nobs who did this.
The carbon tax is a tax on living:
A report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer released on Tuesday calculated that Bill C-234, a carbon tax exemption for farms that was heavily amended in the Senate, would save farmers a total of $27 million per year by 2026.
That pales in comparison to the unamended version of the private member’s bill which would have saved farmers $116 million in carbon taxes annually by 2026.
After a Dec. 12 amendment by the Senate, the bill was changed to no longer provide carbon tax exemptions for fuels used to heat or cool a building used for raising and housing livestock or growing crops.
An additional amendment by the Senate lowered the sunset period for the bill from eight years to three. The unamended version would have lasted until 2030, but with the amendments it will only go until 2026.
The previous estimate by the PBO stated that the bill would save Canadian farmers $162 million per year by 2030 before it was amended.
The changes come after a long process where the bill was bounced from the House of Commons to the Senate, where senators made sweeping changes to the legislation. The bill was first read by the House of Commons in February of 2022 and crawled through the Senate last year, culminating in the third reading and passing of the amendments by the Senate in December 2023.
The private member’s bill has become a fixture in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign against the Liberal government’s carbon tax policy. Demands from the opposition for more exemptions from the carbon tax, or to scrap it completely, got louder last year when the government announced an exemption to the carbon tax on home heating oil.
“It starts with passing Bill C-234 to axe the tax on farmers and food so farmers can make the food and Canadians can afford to eat it,” said Poilievre, in the House of Commons last month.
The original bill passed 176 to 146 in the House of Commons but Poilievre said there’s still uncertainty about whether or not the amended bill will be passed in the House or whether the Senate’s amendments will be stripped in the House and then sent back to the Senate.
“The Senate, under duress and pressure from the current prime minister, then sent (the bill) back with unnecessary amendments. Now the other opposition parties are flip-flopping and wavering.” said Poilievre. “Now they are not so sure. They are siding with the costly prime minister again on keeping the tax on our farmers.”
The censorship bills the Liberals were happy to pass have come back to bite them ... again:
(Sidebar: Justin's bluster notwithstanding.)
Bell’s announcement this week that it is laying off thousands of workers – including nearly 500 Bell Media employees – has sparked political outrage with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterizing it as a “garbage decision.” The job losses are obviously brutal for those directly affected and it would be silly to claim that a single policy response was responsible. Yet to suggest that the government’s media policy, particularly Bills C-11 and C-18, played no role is to ignore the reality of a failed approach for which there have been blinking warning signs for years. Indeed, Trudeau’s anger (which felt a bit like a reprise of his Meta comments over the summer) may partly reflect frustration that his policy choices have not only not worked, but have made matters worse.
Bill C-11, the online streaming law that is now before the CRTC, was never really designed to address Bell’s broadcasting concerns. Indeed, the company made clear what it wanted: access to cheap U.S. programming. When the company appeared before committee back in 2022, it said its primary risk was competition from foreign streaming services accessing the Canadian market directly and by-passing Canadian broadcasters. This challenge has been readily apparent for years. In fact, in 2011 I wrote about how this was likely to become a major issue for Canadian broadcasters dependent on licensing U.S. programming to profitably fill their broadcast schedules ...
The layoffs on the news side of the business implicates both Bills C-11 and C-18. In the case of Bill C-11, broadcasters are still holding out hope that the CRTC will order the large online streaming services such as Netflix, Disney and Amazon to contribute to their local news production costs. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters has asked the Commission to create a new News Fund that it would administer. Funding for the fund would come from the Internet streaming services, with 30% of their contribution allocated toward a sector with which they have virtually no connection whatsoever. Even if the CRTC agrees, the fund would not take effect until later this year and Bell was apparently unwilling to wait to see how it plays out.
While I have seen some suggest that Bill C-18 has nothing to do with radio station sales or layoffs, the government’s approach is inextricably linked to it. First, the government’s longstanding media approach has largely focused on print and digital news outlets, not broadcasters. For example, the labour journalism tax credit worth hundreds of millions of dollars excludes broadcasters. It is now worth nearly $30,000 per journalist, but broadcast journalists are not eligible. I think there are serious problems with this approach (not the least of which is the implications for press independence), but the government clearly made a bet that it could focus its attention on the traditional print sector with the expectation that hugely profitable companies such as Bell would continue to support their news divisions. Much like the mistaken bet that Facebook couldn’t live without Canadian news, the same may be true for parts of the broadcasting sector.
Second, the government promoted Bill C-18 as providing hundreds of millions to broadcasters for news. Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that it would generate $329 million, with 75% of that money going to broadcasters. Given Bell’s position in the market, it stood to be one of the two largest recipients of those revenues (alongside the CBC), amounting to tens of millions per year. But as everyone knows, Bill C-18 ultimately only generated a fraction of what was promised, with a single $100 million payment from Google shared among all sectors. Once the administrative costs and lost Meta deals are taken into account, that number is closer to $75 million, some of which is a re-allocation of existing Google money.
For Bell, the revenues are even smaller, however, because the government then decided to cap the amount allocated from Bill C-18 to broadcasters at 30% or $30 million (the CBC picks up another 7%). In other words, broadcasters went from expecting a quarter billion dollars in annual payments from Bill C-18 to support news to just $37 million for the entire television and radio broadcast sector. Further, those radio stations that do not produce news content to made available online aren’t eligible for anything and everyone has lost traffic and the resulting ad revenue due to the removal of links on Meta. To suggest that this had no impact on Bell’s media decisions this week is to engage in the same policy fantasies of the past few years that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and placed the independence of Canadian media at risk.
Oops.
Badly trained and utterly useless:
The figures show that 14,609 people were sent letters informing them they are facing deportation between 2016 and May last year.
But 9,317 of those were still living in Canada last year, including 2,188 people sent deportation letters in 2016 and 2017.
Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec, who received the figures in an answer to a parliamentary question he asked last May, said they suggest a lack of enforcement. He said they are a symptom of a “broken immigration system” and are contributing to an erosion in public confidence.
Oh, I never had any confidence in them, Tom.
Also:
They asked him in broken English if he could give them a ride to the nearest city. He apologetically told them he couldn’t help and then placed a call to the Border Patrol, which quickly detained them.
It has become a familiar scene here in Champlain, N.Y., nestled on the state’s border with Canada, so much so that the mayor keeps knit hats and gloves in the trunk of her car to hand out to the migrants she encounters.
“The weather is so severe you just can’t survive,” said Janet McFetridge, the village’s mayor. “Border Patrol is working extremely hard to save people’s lives because that’s what it’s come down to.”
As migrants continue to overwhelm the southern border in record numbers, a growing wave is trying an alternative route into the United States: across the less fortified, more expansive Canadian border.
Dare I utter an unpopular opinion?
They were stupid enough to come to Canada and stupid enough to flee it in winter.
And:
In their eagerness to gain a foothold in Canada, some residents of the Indian state of Punjab and elsewhere have gone to unusual lengths — including transactional marriages.
And:
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is asking MPs to support more funding for Global Affairs Canada, despite the Liberals undertaking cutbacks across the government.
Joly said earlier this week that the United States, France and rapidly developing countries are staffing up to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
She cited the countries known as BRICS, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as emerging market countries.
Canada needs more diplomats if it wants to have an influence in the Indo-Pacific and other key regions of the world, Joly said.
"I really hope that we can all agree on the fact that we need to invest more in our diplomats. It is important that we have our resources," Joly said.
No country for anyone:
This is Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
— David Jacobs (@DrJacobsRad) February 13, 2024
The hospital was established because Jewish doctors had no place to train or work due to anti-semitism.
Tonight a crowd is chanting for violence against Jews outside this place of healing.#antisemitism #BillC3 @SinaiHealth pic.twitter.com/YxiFumKVuE
**
“Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz,” writes the Dutch novelist Leon de Winter. Paradoxical? Not that much. And perhaps in the minds of many Europeans, Islam is the tool to put an end to this psychological paradox.
Just think that on 7 October, Hamas displaced 1,894 survivors of the Shoah and in Europe the streets were inflamed by Islamists.
The University of Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, has canceled (then resumed) a series of conferences on the Holocaust, because "the safety of the speakers, students, teachers and visitors cannot be guaranteed". The university capitulated to pro-Palestinian threats. “The reason is that we want to facilitate a diverse and balanced dialogue on this issue,” says the rector in Wokkese. “We need more time to place the events of October 7 and beyond in a broader perspective, with room for different opinions and beliefs ".
Fantastic, right? Now, to appease Muslims, European universities are canceling courses on the Shoah. And the courses on the crusades? And colonialism? And the history of religions?
The social fabric of Canada is gone.
Canadians only realise now that one can exchange money for goods and services.
Anything else either does not merit a first let alone second thought or seems utterly dandy to people who like having their personal license subsidised by the taxpayer (but not to have personal freedom and the responsibility that comes with it):
When the movement of a few thousand votes nationally could decide the election outcome, gender identity could prove to be an “Achilles heel” for the Liberals in the next federal election, especially within ethnic communities that are socially conservative and that are key part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party base, say political insiders.
At the same time, a leading pollster said the controversial issue could carry risks for both leaders of the two major federal political parties.
“Although this issue is initiated by [Alberta Premier] Danielle Smith, it will be a key battle line between Justin Trudeau and [Conservative Leader] Pierre Poilievre,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research. “We have to remember that the broader context for Canadians is that they’re struggling to pay for housing, and they’re struggling to pay for groceries. I’m not sure how enthusiastic Canadians are going to be to have their elected officials focus on issues other than those two things.”
**
He said the quiet part loud:
Canadian MP:
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) February 9, 2024
"There's no such thing as parental rights in Canada"
The leftists in Canada just said the quiet part out loud.
😶 🚨 pic.twitter.com/9J7YxtUpUn
**
Apparently, this is "understandable":
Another church been burned by some scum.
— Kirk Lubimov (@KirkLubimov) February 11, 2024
This is the historic Blessed Sacrament Parish church in Regina, Saskatchewan.
That's over 80 churches in Canada now. pic.twitter.com/Quw4cVKDpE
**
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is promising to revoke the planned expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) for people suffering solely from mental illnesses if he forms government.
“We will not expand MAID to include mental illness. So, where Justin Trudeau has delayed this decision until after the election, we will revoke it entirely,” he told reporters on Thursday in Vancouver, B.C.Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being “once again in the pursuit of a radical agenda that is totally out of step with the values of Canadians” and of seeking to expand MAID while many parts of the country are grappling with an opioid drug addiction crisis.The federal government introduced new legislation last week to seek another pause for the expansion of assistance in dying for three years — until March 2027 — for those whose sole medical condition is a mental illness. The next federal election should happen no later than fall 2025.
**
Canadians have no one to blame but themselves for their willful ignorance:
Only a third of Canadians rate news media trustworthy and balanced, says in-house CRTC research. The latest data follow Statistics Canada figures showing reporters are considered less reliable than politicians or lawyers: “Canada is facing not one news crisis but two. One is financial and the other is the crisis of mistrust.”
**
Police have laid drug-trafficking charges after a man allegedly handed out business cards with free samples of cocaine in Calgary.
Officers patrolling a downtown casino became aware of the cards on Christmas Eve after they were given out to patrons.
Police say the cards bore a name that the accused used as an alias, and small baggies with samples of suspected cocaine were attached.
Investigators began an investigation in January.
Last weekend, officers searched a vehicle and recovered almost 60 grams of cocaine individually portioned in more than 50 baggies, a digital scale, cash and business cards.
Seyyed Amir Razavi, 30, is charged with two counts of trafficking a controlled substance, one count of possession for the purpose of trafficking and three counts of possession of proceeds of crime under $5,000.
Razavi was released from custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 26.
Also - you were saying about tougher penalties for car thieves?:
As politicians, auto industry executives and police forces from across Canada gather for a national summit to address the country’s auto theft crisis, documents tabled in the House of Commons reveal that the federal justice minister’s vehicle has been a target of thieves, on multiple occasions.
The documents, shared on social media by CBC reporter Kate McKenna, show Justice Minister Arif Virani’s government-owned 2021 Toyota Highlander XLE was stolen in November but later recovered. The same vehicle was also stolen and recovered last February when David Lametti was justice minister.
In February 2021, a 2019 Toyota Highlander was also stolen during Lametti’s time as justice minister, and never recovered.
Earlier this week, a new report from insurance industry group Équité Association found that a vehicle is now stolen every five minutes in Canada, a record high.
Consider the Colosseum, Saint Peter's Basilica, Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, or even the joint-and-groove houses and the earthquake resistant buildings in Japan.
Forgive me if I would rather put my faith in their designs than not:
“This five-year strategic plan will put Concordia on the map. We’re telling the world this is what we’re doing, and this is how we’re doing it.”
This was part of a recent statement by Donna Kahérakwas Goodleaf, the Director of Decolonizing Curriculum and Pedagogy at Concordia University’s Centre for Teaching and Learning. She was talking about the university’s new five-year strategic plan to decolonize and indigenize its entire curriculum and pedagogy. The university’s provost, Anne Whitelaw, agreed: “This strategic plan … will change the ways in which we teach at Concordia.”
Goodleaf and Whitelaw are correct. This initiative will put Concordia on the map and change teaching practices at the university — but not in a positive way. The probable effect will be that Concordia becomes known for leading the charge backwards, away from reality and towards something more irrational. If so, this will mark out the university as a place to avoid if you’re hoping for a serious education or training in the fundamental disciplines that comprise modern scholarship. Concordia graduates will then be stigmatized for the simple reason that the university has promoted ideology over reality.
According to Goodleaf, the new university plan draws upon the “principles embodied in the Two Row Wampum Belt … an ethical framework for how colonial-settler governments are to conduct themselves while living in the land of the Rotinonhsión:ni — more commonly known as the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy.”
Concordia may be located on land that was once the Six Nations Confederacy, but for better or worse, it is now part of Quebec, a province within a country called Canada, which was confederated in 1867 under laws that have governed society for the past 157 years. As much as one might bemoan the fate of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, universities like Concordia exist precisely because they embody educational structures created to encourage study, learning, and research aimed at unravelling the true nature of reality and using that knowledge to help guide our modern society. Imposing political criteria like decolonization and indigenization on curricula that include physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and so on is to shackle these fields to fantasies. ...
And some worldviews are superior to others: especially those that conform to reality, rather than myth. Some people still believe that the Earth is flat, but that view is not consistent with building and launching of satellites that help us predict the weather, guide our travel, and save many lives. A worldview that helps create knowledge, including a better understanding of the realities of being human and of the laws that govern the cosmos, will help produce structures and technologies that improve our lives. A worldview based on myth and superstition, governed by ideological strictures that discourage or punish open questioning will diminish the quality of human existence. Human history has demonstrated this time and again.
Concordia’s Vice-Provost of Innovation in Teaching and Learning, Sandra Gabriele, offers the following explanation in defence of the new program: “To truly decolonize demands a willingness from all of our community members to think about how systems have been in place for centuries to support a particular worldview, and how those injustices and that discrimination became embedded in the ways we think and work.” ...
And this is not the only concern it raises. The program does not appear to be designed to promote open questioning and research into even these questions — research that might, for example, find that systemic racism is not endemic to engineering — but rather to promote standard postmodern critical race theory jargon and tropes. Consider the engineering course, ENCS691-G, in which,
“(S)tudents learn about the history of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the relation of social power and inequity, such as the marginalization of women, Black people, People of Color and Indigenous people in STEM. Students learn about intersectionality, gender and diversity in the context of STEM and you will acquire skills to identify and address inequity, marginalization and ‘othering’… Students get to know approaches to decolonize STEM.”
Whatever one’s views as to the scholarly validity of a course like this, it does not seem likely to provide students with skills that will be attractive on the job market. Will firms that hire electrical engineering graduates from Concordia be more inclined to select students who have spent time researching EDI, or will they prefer those who have concentrated on, say, advanced semiconductors or new battery technologies?
If one does not measure up, those metrics must be done away with.
Also:
After drawing criticism earlier this week for saying that some First Nations are burning down water treatment plants because of the federal Liberal government, a Conservative MP is now walking back his comments.
Saskatchewan MP Kevin Waugh made the assertion in the House of Commons on Monday during a debate on the government’s First Nations water bill.
“In my home province of Saskatchewan, I have seen reserves burn down water treatment plants because the Liberal government has done little or nothing,” Waugh said, directing his comments towards Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu.
He added there needs to be “education provided for people on reserve to operate these water treatment plants,” and blamed the Liberals for not doing more.
There already IS training for such things.
Stop doing it and see what happens.
Fake Indigenous communities have “sprung up almost overnight” by pretenders claiming to have First Nations, Métis or Inuit roots, says a Manitoba Senator. Debate on a proposal to investigate misrepresentation of Indigenous ancestry follows publicized cases like Buffy Sainte-Marie: “It is community theft.”
He can't be guilty of a crime because he is a doddering, old fool:
President Joe Biden knowingly stored and disclosed classified information kept in unsecured locations at his homes in Virginia and Delaware, according to a scathing report released by the Justice Department Thursday.While federal investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Hur found Biden’s conduct was improper, they stopped short of charging him with any crimes.
People committed electoral fraud for this.
Supporting Hamas isn't only lacking in compassion; it is lacking in reason, as well:
The unveiling of the tunnels marked the latest chapter in Israel’s campaign against the embattled agency, which it accuses of collaborating with Hamas.
**
IDF forces recovered the security camera footage during a raid of a “strategic tunnel” underneath the southern Hamas stronghold, according to Israel’s Channel 13. Seen entering the tunnel shaft with one of his wives and three children, Sinwar appears unhurt.
A Hamas operative with a flashlight accompanies the terror leader, who wears Adidas flip-flops and carries a small plastic bag.
Channel 12 News reported that the video was recorded on Oct. 10, just three days after Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 people in Israel’s northwestern Negev region. Israeli troops seized the footage several months ago.
“This evening, we air footage of the mass murderer and mastermind of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar,” wrote Avichay Adraee, head of the Arab media division in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, noting in Arabic that the video is one of many in the army’s possession.
“While the people of Gaza are suffering above ground, Sinwar hides in the tunnels below them, running like a coward,” he added. “Hamas leaders only care about their families and their money.”
**
Israeli forces in Gaza freed two hostages in an overnight mission Monday in Rafah.
Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Norberto Louis Har, 70, both kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, are in good medical condition, according to the Israel Defence Forces.
The IDF, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israel Police worked together to free the Israeli-Argentine nationals, the IDF said. They were kidnapped along with 251 other Israelis and foreign nationals during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of the northwestern Negev.
**
An IDF intelligence officer holding the rank of major announced his departure from his post due to his role in failing to identify Hamas’s invasion plans. He is reportedly the first officer to do so.
Also - Canada doesn't sell weapons to Israel:
Human rights advocates are accusing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of misleading the public over weapons sales to Israel, which have come under greater scrutiny amid the deadly Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
At issue is legislation that prohibits the government from exporting military equipment to foreign actors if there is a risk it can be used in human rights abuses.
**
In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank—not counting those slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023—while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero.
But the story the administration has been telling anyone who will listen is very different. By scrubbing any mention of the daily violence directed by Palestinian terror operatives against Jewish civilians living in the West Bank from his reports, Fenzel has eliminated the clear retaliatory motive for the vast majority of attacks by Israelis against West Bank Palestinians. Thinly laundered reports from expressly anti-Israel organizations, designed to support an illusion of innocent Palestinians being violently attacked by bloodthirsty Israelis, paint a picture of an Israeli equivalent to the Palestinian atrocities of Oct. 7, lending itself an easy “both-sides” posture meant to ease the way to creating a new Palestinian state in both the West Bank and Gaza. With an executive order now in place, the Biden administration has all the tools it needs to crack down on any form of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria, and on anyone, in Israel or stateside, who supports it.
Also - I'm sure someone is in utter disbelief with this:
A court of the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen has sentenced 13 people to public execution on homosexuality charges, the French wire service AFP reported on Tuesday. Another 35 people have been detained for similar charges.
The ruling was made in Ibb, a Houthi-controlled province from which the jihadist group has been launching attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, opening a war that reached its four-month mark this week.
We don't have to trade with China:
The probe concluded the foundation’s handling of tax receipts related to the Chinese donations violated the Income Tax Act, and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother, Alexandre, broke internal rules and policies by the accepting the $200,000 donation pledge, which he was not authorized to do.
In its findings, the special committee run by two lawyers from Norton Rose Fulbright said it did not believe that the motivation for the 2016 donation was intended to influence the foundation’s activities but acknowledged its real aim was likely the recently elected Trudeau government.
“We could not exclude the possibility that the donations in question may have been part of a wider influence scheme,” said the Feb. 5 report posted on the Trudeau Foundation website. “It is important to emphasize the fact that this potential scheme, if any, would have intended to target the Canadian government rather than the foundation itself.”
The report added it found no evidence the two Chinese billionaires – Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng – or the Prime Minister “were involved in any illegal activities in connection with the donation itself.”
The foundation, which offers scholarships, fellowships and leadership programs, commemorates the Trudeaus’ father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. It operates with a $125-million endowment from the Canadian government provided in 2002 when former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien was in power.
In February, 2023, The Globe reported, citing a national-security source, that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had intercepted a 2014 conversation between Mr. Zhang and an unnamed commercial attaché at one of China’s consulates in Canada. They discussed the federal election that was expected to take place in 2015, and the possibility that the Liberals would defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and form the next government.
The diplomat told Mr. Zhang that Beijing would reimburse him for the entire amount of the donation to the Trudeau Foundation, according to the source. The Globe has not named the source because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
In 2016, nine months after Justin Trudeau won a majority government, the Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal publicly identified Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu as the donors behind a $1-million gift. The men pledged $200,000 to the foundation. They also pledged $750,000 to the law school where Pierre Trudeau studied and taught, and $50,000 for a statue of the former prime minister that was never built. The school and the foundation ultimately received most, but not all, of the promised amounts.
After the Globe’s February, 2023 report, the foundation returned $140,000 to the Chinese donors, who had only delivered 70 per cent of the pledged money. The executive director and eight board members also resigned over the matter. They had wanted an independent forensic audit of the matter but the remaining board opted for a review by Norton Rose.
**
Unlikely.
One of the migrants videoed was in America for only three weeks and arrived in the country with no money and no identification.
If you had just landed somewhere as a migrant with nothing to your name, you would undoubtedly be preoccupied with finding your next meal, getting a place to live, making a livelihood.
You would not, within weeks of entering your new homeland, be sharpening your skills to kill.
You would not be thinking of killing unless... that is what you came to do.
The videos posted on X depict a sandy location. Blaine Holt, a retired Air Force general living in Idaho, knows Chinese migrants are taking target practice in his state as well.
"Tens of thousands of military-age men have come across our border and are now in America, organized by group and nationality" Holt told Gatestone this month. "Among them are terrorist and state actors, in particular, members of the People's Liberation Army of China. As we speak, these actors are training, making plans and obtaining weapons, watching our patterns, and learning our vulnerabilities."
"We are vulnerable to attack," Holt added. "Our enemies eagerly wait."
**
Just like the Nazis who got to stay here:
A former Chinese official who worked for a notorious religious persecution agency controlled by the Chinese communist regime resided in Vancouver at the time of his death, according to an official obituary. The agency, known as the “610 Office,” has been a key part of the persecution campaign against Falun Gong practitioners in China since 1999.Zhang Guoqiang, originally from Zhejiang Province, had served in various Chinese military and government roles, including as the director of the provincial 610 Office, according to the obituary published on local online news outlet Zhejiang Daily. He died at the age of 70 in Vancouver on Nov. 15, 2021, reportedly succumbing to an illness after unsuccessful medical treatments.
**
China’s workforce is ageing and shrinking, creating a headwind for growth. Younger generations, meanwhile, are increasingly disaffected. Youth unemployment hit a record high of over 21pc in June 2023. The Government’s response was to stop publishing the figures. Small wonder then that market sentiment is so cautious.
**
The Qinling research centre will “contribute to enhancing humanity’s scientific understanding of Antarctica, provide a platform for China’s co-operation with other countries in Antarctic scientific exploration, and promote peace and sustainable development in Antarctica”, according to the foreign ministry.
Xi said China’s polar research would “continue to explore the mysteries of nature and bravely ascend the peak of science”.
However, the US, Australia and New Zealand, which have made little public comment on the Qinling station’s development, are likely to be watching it closely. Australia responded to the base’s development by announcing an A$800 million (£410 million) investment in specialist drones, helicopters and vessels in 2022 to police the continent, where it has the largest territorial claims.
Qinling, named after a Chinese mountain range, is near the largest US research base in the Antarctic, McMurdo, and due south of Australia and New Zealand. It is therefore in a better position to monitor naval activity and missile launches than the other Chinese research bases, which are on the other side of the Antarctic land and ice mass, should it establish advanced satellite communications.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, thought Vladimir Putin went to war in Ukraine because he feared an imminent attack by the United States or NATO. Instead, after a two-hour interview of the Russian president in Moscow, Carlson said he was “shocked” to learn that Putin invaded for a different reason: “Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of … Ukraine,” he said.
“What you are about to see seemed to us sincere,” Carlson told his internet viewers before the interview was broadcast on Thursday evening: “A sincere expression of what he thinks.”
For Carlson, and the American audience that the Kremlin was aiming to reach by agreeing to the interview, that may have been a surprise. But for Ukrainians, who have been living for more than two decades with Putin denying Ukraine’s right to exist as a country separate from Russia, the interview sparked only fury.
For them, perhaps the one shock was that conservative American voters might fall for Putin’s litany of lies, half-truths and distortions, including a claim that he wants to negotiate with Washington to end the war, which would mean forcing Ukraine to surrender its territory. Ukrainians accused Carlson of being a Kremlin pawn, giving a platform to a warmongering dictator with strategic designs on influencing this year’s U.S. presidential election. ...
Ukrainians, however were not the Kremlin’s intended audience. Putin’s message, including a 30-minute falsehood studded history lecture, was aimed at Carlson’s demographic: Republican supporters of former president Donald Trump, many of whom have expressed admiration for the Russian leader and questioned U.S. support of Ukraine.
Perhaps everyone should be reminded that NO ONE cared when Putin took over Crimea or Georgia.
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