We
have all learned to live with judges shredding statutes in a moment of
dyspepsia, and, indeed, the original Criminal Code ban on assisting in
suicide was overthrown in such a spirit. But doctors and nurses are, in
today’s Canada, a higher species whose powerful force field repels any
thought of judicial review. WV is confined to saving his daughter
through strictly procedural arguments a month from now in the Alberta
Court of Appeal: he has to somehow show that AHS didn’t follow its own
written policies properly, and Justice Feasby does think he has a case
worth hearing.
But
various appellate courts seem to have created for Canadians a warped
kind of mathematical equation here, a chain of principles no one person
ever explicitly sought to weld together. Personal autonomy is paramount,
for those entitled to exercise it; people who have decision-making
capacity have the right to end their lives if they meet certain
diagnostic conditions; since the purpose of governments is to facilitate
the exercise of autonomy, doctors (and nurse practitioners!) must be
allowed to practice euthanasia, even if this conflicts with their
professional traditions; the law has no right to intervene in or even
demand information about any medical diagnosis.
(Sidebar: what is this personal autonomy one speaks of? Does it exist in Canada? Could people keep their jobs if they didn't get this ridiculous Covid jab, for example?
Splice these noble propositions together, and you don’t quite get
to a science-fiction suicide-booths-on-every-streetcorner scenario.
It’s merely a pretty close approximation. (And let’s face it: if suicide
booths were a popular idea — polls do indicate that Canadians are
remarkably tolerant of euthanasia — Canada would never get around to
procuring and installing ones that worked.)
This inquiry is a time-wasting exercise to save Justin from embarrassment:
Chinese émigrés yesterday pleaded with the China inquiry to counter
harassment campaigns targeting dissidents in Canada. Witnesses testified
foreign agents typically tried to bully pro-democracy activists into
silence: “The hidden agenda is trying to persuade these organizations to
remain, quote, unquote, ‘neutral,’ and not to be, quote, unquote,
‘political.'”
This won't sink Pierre, you rapist-supporting, Jew-hating inbred morons:
A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative
Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could
complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Nawaz
Tahir of the Hikma Public Affairs Council in London, Ont., met Poilievre
during the leader's outreach efforts in southwestern Ontario last
summer.
Tahir says he believes Poilievre has missed chances to
show compassion with Muslims and that building ties could be, in his
words, "much more difficult now."
Poilievre's reluctance to call
for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza came up in January when Conservative
MP Garnett Genuis met members of Mississauga's Pakistani and Muslim
communities.
In a video shared on social media, Genuis admits the
party's position may not be one that is "100 per cent" agreed with, but
says defeating Hamas is "critical" to establishing lasting peace for
Palestinians.
A Conservative spokesman says Poilievre has said
clearly that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestinians
need humanitarian relief "as a result of the war that Hamas has
started."
Conservatives have been trying to nurture the party's
relationship with Muslims and others as part of an overall effort to
grow support among newcomer and faith communities.
Tahir says
Muslims have been disappointed in Poilievre's opposition to funding a UN
aid agency amid allegations that some of its staff were involved in the
Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that triggered the war.
His rejection of a
case brought against Israel in the International Court of Justice has
also left some feeling dissatisfied, he said.
"We won't forget,"
Tahir said in a recent interview. "There's no chance that the Muslim
community will forget the Conservative position here."
And
with that April Fool’s Day pay increase, Canadian parliamentarians will
become the second-best paid elected officials in the world after
Americans.
According
to numbers provided to the National Post by the office of the Speaker
of the House of Commons, Canadian members of Parliament will get their
customary pay raise on April 1 — resulting in increases of anywhere
between $8,500 and $17,000 this year.
Right now, members of Parliament earn a base salary of $194,600 per year — but that’s due to rise to $203,100 on April 1.
The prime minister’s salary will see an increase of $17,000 to $406,200.
Eighty per cent of Canadians oppose the automatic April 1 MP pay increase, according to a Leger poll commissioned by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
In
the online survey of 1,541 Canadians of voting age conducted between
March 15 and 18, 62 per cent of respondents strongly oppose the pay
raise and 18 per cent somewhat oppose.
Those who hold more
senior roles or cabinet positions are entitled to additional
remuneration — roles such as house Speaker, opposition leader or cabinet
minister will be entitled to an additional $96,800 annually, plus car
allowances.
That increase was $92,800 before April 1.
Other positions, such as House leaders, whips and committee chairs, are also entitled to a bump.
There has been no capital deepening or productivity growth in Canada
in eons because the massive spending at the government level has
continued to crowd out private-sector investment. All the spending that
was used to combat the pandemic has become a permanent feature of the
budgetary landscape. The level of program spending in Ottawa today is 35
per cent higher than it was pre-COVID-19. Meanwhile, volume spending on
aggregate business investment is lower today than it was in 2012. How
can the citizenry be OK with that?
On a per-capita basis, government program spending
is 27 per cent higher than it was in 2019 and almost double the average
of the past 40 years. Inflation has only accounted for 40 per cent of
that gap in per-person spending now compared to four years ago. The
fiscal spending is out of control, and a clear sign is that when it
comes to the government sector, what is always billed as a temporary
spending measure to fight a crisis inevitably finds a way to remain on
the books.
Either
Canadians don’t know about what is going on with this fiscal profligacy
or, as is typical in this country, totally apathetic to what is going
on. The government incursion into the economy in this country is so
acute that the public sector now comprises 27 per cent of GDP. Business
capital spending? Try a mere eight per cent share and flirting with
two-decade lows. The capital spending share of the U.S. economy is
practically double that, which is why productivity growth stateside is
running at a 2.6 per cent year-over-rate pace versus minus 0.6 per cent
(yes, negative) north of the border.
When you blend labour and capital together, total factor productivity in
Canada, under this current government in Ottawa, is now back to where
it was a quarter-century ago. And productivity is the mother’s milk of
future standard-of-living enhancement and no amount of pro-immigration policies to provide the illusion of economic prosperity can act as a true antidote.
Are we to import expertise?
Is it actually coming in?
Where is it?
It's the stupid taxes:
Cabinet must cancel a planned 23 percent increase in the carbon tax,
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe yesterday testified by video conference at
the Commons government operations committee. “We don’t need to accept
this,” said Moe, who launched a February 29 carbon tax strike on natural
gas for home heating: “We can make changes.”
If Biden is re-elected in the U.S. and Trudeau in Canada, there will be
no recovery. The social fabric will have been torn and shredded beyond
the possibility of repair. It would no longer be a question of five
years or a decade but of the indefinite future. Moreover, the RCMP
warning that unregulated access to data via social media and the
internet will allow “private entities to develop the means to exercise
undue influence over individuals and populations at an unprecedented
level,” is abject nonsense and is symptomatic of the political mausoleum
that is being prepared for us. Hence the barrage of internet Bills
designed to prevent or curtail access to information and censor
exchanges among people. Not only is the origin of the sickness being
hidden or misplaced, which is an aspect of the sickness itself, we will
not be permitted to discuss and communicate freely about how to rectify
the disaster.
The two have already ruined their respective countries.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said his province had already considered alternatives to the federal carbon tax in the past, but decided against them because they were all too costly for Saskatchewan families and industries.
Moe was invited to a House of Commons committee on Wednesday to make the case for why the federal government should cancel the planned increase to the federal carbon tax on April 1 or, better yet, in his opinion, scrap the tax entirely.
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Since Jan. 1, Saskatchewan has refused to collect the federal carbon tax for natural gas and electric home heating.
The federal government has been insisting that provinces and territories are free to come up with their own system of carbon pricing if it complies with the federal benchmark in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If it doesn’t, the federal carbon tax applies.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated to premiers that his government remains “open to proposals for credible systems that price pollution that reflect the unique realities of your regions and meet the national benchmark.”
When asked by Liberal MP Charles Sousa if Saskatchewan had ever considered replacing the federal carbon tax with a system of its own, Moe answered in the affirmative.
“Yes, we did. All of them were costly to our industry, as is the federal backstop that we’re experiencing now, as well as costly to Saskatchewan families,” he said.
Sousa shot back: “It sounds like (kicking) the can down the road for the next generation to deal with. What we need is to take initiative and ensure that we are prepared to do what’s necessary for future generations.”
... says the idiot whose party drove up inflation, taxes and unemployment.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new measures he says will help protect Canadian renters and help them break into the housing market ahead of the 2024 budget.
He said Wednesday that the proposed three new reforms will “make the playing field fairer for renters” amid an affordability crisis making homeownership out of reach for many.
“It’s too hard to find an affordable place to rent, especially for younger Canadians. That’s why in Budget 2024, we’re taking action to protect renters, make the rental market fairer, and open new pathways for renters to become homeowners,” Trudeau said in a press release.
The proposed measures aim to amend the Canadian Mortgage Charter to allow tenants to count on-time rent payments toward their credit score, and propose $15 million in new funding to provincial legal aid organizations to better protect tenants against unfair rent payments, renovictions or “bad landlords,” the release says.
Argentine President Javier Milei plans to fire 70,000 government workers in the coming months in one of the clearest signs yet of how the libertarian’s chainsaw-style approach intends to slash the swollen state.
Beyond the job cuts, Milei boasted Tuesday at an event that he’s frozen public works, cut off some funding to provincial governments and terminated more than 200,000 social welfare plans, which he labeled as corrupt. It’s all part of his strategy to reach a fiscal balance at any cost this year.
“There’s a lot of blender,” Milei said in an hour long speech at the IEFA Latam Forum in Buenos Aires, referring to the erosion of wages and pensions by 276% annual inflation. “There’s a lot more chainsaw.”
Audio from the moments before a massive cargo ship smashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge reveals how little time first responders had to stop traffic before the bridge collapsed.
“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. … There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering so until we get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic,” one official is heard saying, warning of the incoming disaster.
“Make sure no one’s on the bridge right now. There’s a crew up there. … You might want to notify the foreman to see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily.”
Another voice is heard, saying he was about to drive onto the bridge to “grab the workers,” but at that point it was too late, and the vessel plowed into a support pillar.
The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.
In their criticism, Israel's opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The international community, and increasingly the United States, barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF for not doing enough to protect civilians—even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage. Instead, the U.S. and its allies should be studying how they can apply the IDF's tactics for protecting civilians, despite the fact that these militaries would almost certainly be extremely reluctant to employ these techniques because of how it would disadvantage them in any fight with an urban terrorist army like Hamas.
One in six Canadians (16
per cent) between the ages of 18 and 24 believe the Holocaust was
exaggerated, double that of 25- to 34-year-olds (eight per cent) and
eight times greater than those 65 and older (two per cent), according to
the Leger survey commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies
(ACS) in February. Only five per cent of Canadians overall hold this
view.
Jack Jedwab, the president of ACS, cautioned against conflating the findings of Holocaust skepticism with outright denial.
“I
wouldn’t necessarily use the word denial as it doesn’t suggest that
they think the Holocaust didn’t take place – though some of the group
surely subscribe to that – it’s more that they minimize or trivialize
the Holocaust, by questioning its scale and/or other aspects of it,” he
told National Post in an email.
The survey also found a nexus between Holocaust skepticism, negative opinions of Jews and support for Hamas.
While
74 per cent of respondents who believe the Holocaust was not
exaggerated have a positive opinion of Canadian Jews, less than half
(47.1 per cent) of skeptics feel the same. Indeed, the opinion of
Holocaust skeptics is virtually evenly split, with a similar share (47
per cent) holding a negative view of Jews. By comparison, less than one
sixth (14.6 per cent) of those who say the Holocaust was not exaggerated
have a negative view of the religious community.
Among
U.S. respondents, eight per cent said the Holocaust is exaggerated,
including 15 per cent of those aged 18 to 29, 12 per cent of 30- to
39-year-olds and 10 per cent of people aged 40 to 49. Fewer than five
per cent of people over 50 felt the same way. About 40 per cent of
Americans who doubted the historical account of the Holocaust also had a
negative view of Jews.
The findings square with recent polling in the United States from YouGov showing 20 per cent
of Americans between 18 and 29 saw the Holocaust as a myth, with over a
fifth (23 per cent) arguing that aspects of the genocide are
exaggerated.
Jebwab highlighted the paradox that nearly
two-thirds (65.9 per cent) of Canadians who subscribed to the view that
the Holocaust was exaggerated also described themselves as having “a
good knowledge” of historical genocides.
(Sidebar: I'm willing to bet that they don't.)
Poor breeding, inflating egos, little to no education, importing anti-semitism, letting existing anti-semitism to grow.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing back against premiers who
are asking him to cancel an upcoming increase to the federal carbon
price, saying they have not proposed better ideas to fight climate
change.
In a reply to the seven provincial leaders on Tuesday,
Trudeau said the last time they discussed the issue in 2022, their
governments either didn't propose alternative solutions or couldn't meet
federal standards for reducing emissions.
"We have made it clear
that we are open to working with any and all provinces and territories
that want to establish their own pricing systems (as long as they meet
or exceed the national benchmark)," the letter said.
The premiers
of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island,
Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador all asked to Trudeau to forgo a
planned increase on April 1.
The carbon price is set to increase
by $15 a tonne — from $65 to $80. The increase is expected to add about
three cents to the cost of a litre of gasoline.
The leaders cite
inflation and a high cost of living as reasons to slow down. Most have
also requested to testify before a House of Commons committee on the
matter, with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe set to appear by
video conference on Wednesday.
Cabinet will collect nearly a half billion in sales taxes on the carbon
tax this year, the Budget Office said yesterday. Finance Minister
Chrystia Freeland has repeatedly claimed the carbon tax is “revenue
neutral.”
The squeezed public was lied to.
The Liberals need the money.
It's that simple.
Also, for a government that forces its citizens to pay onerous taxes to fight some nebulous bit of so-called pollution, why is it sending coal to China?
The China inquiry tomorrow opens its public investigation with testimony
from Elections Canada officers who downplayed complaints of meddling by
foreign agents. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, the first to
testify, earlier told MPs he saw no evidence of Chinese interference
but acknowledged he didn’t look: “Our goal is to uncover the truth.”
The Canada Border Services Agency disciplined more than 140 employees in
a year for wrongdoing, Vice-President Jonathan Moor yesterday told
ArriveCan hearings. The Agency is one of the largest police departments
in Canada with 16,000 employees and a $2.7 billion annual budget: “We
have a lot to do.”
Girls were so brutally gang-raped that their pelvic bones were broken.
For Hamas terrorists, rape is not just a weapon of war, it is a way to
alleviate their feelings of inadequacy, prove their manhood, demonstrate
what they think signifies superior masculinity, and to ridicule, taunt
and torment Israeli men who are unable, at gunpoint, to protect their
women and children.
Symbolically, raping women in war signifies conquered territory and
the rape of a nation. During their attack, Hamas terrorists raped not
only women but men
as well. The symbolic meaning of male-on-male rape is that the victims
are being turned into women, which from a Palestinian hypermasculine and
homophobic culture is one of the worst forms of humiliation. For
Palestinians, shame is experienced as female traits of weakness. Hamas
terrorists raped and tortured Israeli men to expunge their own hidden
shame and project their humiliation onto their alleged oppressors.
Similar to prison culture, the victims become their “bitch.” The
rationale is, “he, and not me, is actually the woman.”
Hamas has used its nearly two decades of rule over Gaza to weaponize a
generation of Palestinians against the Jewish state, according to
analysts. Hundreds of ordinary Gazans, including teenagers, joined in
Hamas's assault, during which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and
took some 240 hostages, the Free Beacon previously reported.
"Hamas directed the education system, the media, and the religious
institutions to brainwash children, who make up half of Gaza's
2.2-million-person population," Michael Milshtein, the head of the
Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv
University, told the Free Beacon. "Israelis got their first up-close look at this Palestinian Gen Z on Oct. 7."
**
A lot of numbers were thrown around last week as members of the House of Commons debated an NDP motion
calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — even as several of these
numbers look increasingly to be totally disconnected from the reality on
the ground.
The motion’s sponsor, NDP MP Heather McPherson, for example, stated
on the floor of the House that “more than 30,000 innocent civilians”
had been killed since the onset of fighting between Israel and terrorist
group Hamas in Gaza, “including more than 13,000 children.”
McPherson failed to mention, of course, that these figures include at least 13,000 Hamas fighters, and were taken verbatim from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry (GMH), an entity whose reporting has been called into question from the earliest days of fighting.
A new analysis, published earlier this month in The Tablet,
in fact presents what may well be the strongest statistical evidence to
date that the Gaza Health Ministry has been fabricating casualty data
to fit Hamas’s preferred narrative.
The analysis, conducted
by Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, identifies a number of
glaring incongruities in daily casualty data released by the ministry
between late October and mid-November of last year.
“Hamas
hasn’t provided detailed data since early in the war. And why should
it?” Wyner told me via email last Wednesday. “You use what you can.”
The
most glaring of these red flags is what Wyner calls in his piece an
“almost metronomical linearity,” or maintaining a steady rhythm, in
daily reports of the total number of deaths in Gaza, which averaged “270
(deaths) per day plus or minus about 15 per cent” through an entire
16-day sample. For this trendline to be accurate, Israeli forces would
have had to kill a near-identical number of Gazans each day for over two
straight weeks, notwithstanding the inevitable variations in the
day-to-day frequency of bombings and density of sites bombed.
When
the Trudeau government publicly cut off military exports to Israel last
week, the immediate reaction of the Israeli media was to point out that
Canada’s military was far more dependent on Israeli tech than was ever
the case in reverse.
“For
some reason, (Foreign Minister Melanie Joly) forgot that in the last
decade, the Canadian Defense Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems
worth more than a billion dollars,” read an analysis by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Israeli military technology is “protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world.”
According
to Canada’s own records, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces were only
ever purchasing a fraction of that amount from Canadian military
manufacturers.
In 2022 — the last year for which data is publicly available — Canada exported $21,329,783.93 in “military goods” to Israel.
This
didn’t even place Israel among the top 10 buyers of Canadian military
goods for that year. Saudi Arabia, notably, ranked as 2022’s biggest
non-U.S. buyer of Canadian military goods at $1.15 billion — more than
50 times the Israeli figure.
What’s more — despite Joly adopting activist claims that Canada was selling “arms” to Israel — the Canadian exports were almost entirely non-lethal.
“Global
Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests,
and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major
conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” Global
Affairs said in a February statement to the Qatari-owned news outlet Al
Jazeera. ...
When
the Trudeau government publicly cut off military exports to Israel last
week, the immediate reaction of the Israeli media was to point out that
Canada’s military was far more dependent on Israeli tech than was ever
the case in reverse.
“For
some reason, (Foreign Minister Melanie Joly) forgot that in the last
decade, the Canadian Defense Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems
worth more than a billion dollars,” read an analysis by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Israeli military technology is “protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world.”
According
to Canada’s own records, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces were only
ever purchasing a fraction of that amount from Canadian military
manufacturers.
In 2022 — the last year for which data is publicly available — Canada exported $21,329,783.93 in “military goods” to Israel.
This
didn’t even place Israel among the top 10 buyers of Canadian military
goods for that year. Saudi Arabia, notably, ranked as 2022’s biggest
non-U.S. buyer of Canadian military goods at $1.15 billion — more than
50 times the Israeli figure.
What’s more — despite Joly adopting activist claims that Canada was selling “arms” to Israel — the Canadian exports were almost entirely non-lethal.
“Global
Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests,
and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major
conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” Global
Affairs said in a February statement to the Qatari-owned news outlet Al
Jazeera.
The Bank of Canada is warning that waning productivity growth in the country is an “emergency” that can force higher interest rates and limit rising wages for Canadians.
Senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers gave a speech in Halifax on Tuesday in which she sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity rates.
Rogers
argued that productivity is a way to “inoculate the economy against
inflation,” while sustaining “faster growth, more jobs and higher
wages.” An economy with strong productivity growth also does not need to
rely as much on interest rates when price pressures start to get out of
hand, she said.
“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” she told the crowd.
Productivity can be measured in a few ways, but in general it’s the
level of economic output per hour worked. Improving productivity doesn’t
necessarily mean Canadians working harder, but rather equipping them
with the tools they need to accomplish more in the same amount of time,
Rogers said.
One of the main issues dragging down Canadian
productivity rates is a lack of business investment. Canadian businesses
routinely lag their global counterparts when it comes to investment in
machinery, equipment and intellectual property, she noted.
Experts
who spoke to Global News in January about the country’s productivity
ills said Canada is a “significant laggard” behind the United States and
other nations when it comes to equipping workers with “capital stock.”
Physicians in Ontario are sounding the alarm as new data shows more
than 100 reserved for training new family doctors have gone unfilled.
Each year, medical school graduates decide what type of medicine they want to specialize in. The Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) matches graduates with residency placements at medical schools in two rounds.
There
were 108 unfilled family medicine spots out of a total of 560 in
Ontario following the first round of this year's match, up from 103
unclaimed spots last year, according to CaRMS data.
That's an increase from 100 in 2023, itself a sharp rise from 61 in 2022, 52 in 2021 and 30 in 2020.
Dr.
David Barber, a family doctor in Kingston, Ont., who chairs the section
on general and family practice with the OMA, said the data is the
latest in a worrying trend showing not enough medical students are
choosing family medicine as a specialty.
"What this tells us is
that medical students are not applying to family medicine," Barber said.
"It's because during medical school the students work with family
doctors and train under family doctors. They see how stressful it is,
how underfunded it is and how unhappy that the family doctors are."
The
dwindling supply of family medicine residents in turn means an even
smaller number of doctors choosing to enter family practice after
finishing their residency. A slowdown of the pipeline of new family
doctors could exacerbate Ontario's family doctor shortage and suggests
that those without family doctors may continue to face challenges
finding one.
One
of the more egregious examples of the politicized Canadian classroom
can be found in the halls of L.A. Matheson Secondary in Surrey, B.C.
There, the classroom of an anti-oppression curriculum specialist is
coated with social justice posters: ones that decry colonialism, ones
that inflame racial politics and one that even likens prostitution to regular physical labour.
It’s
not appropriate for a public school. Still, it’s the kind of teaching
that school systems across Canada are either turning a blind eye to — or
worse, encouraging. And when they face criticism, it’s they who claim
to be the victims, despite their use of tax dollars to pre-treat
students with certain political beliefs.
Criticism has very much confronted L.A. Matheson and its pro-social-justice, anti-capitalist teacher, Annie Ohana, now that web sleuths have stumbled upon it. Ohana has taken enough negative commentary online in recent days to warrant a visit from CTV News. Her primary critic, a former teacher named Chanel Pfahl
who herself was ostracized from the profession for daring to question
the growing fervour for identity politics in schools, stands accused of
causing danger to the class.
“She seems to be making a lot
of assumptions that were simply based on misinformation, lies, and in
fact, puts myself and other teachers and students and my community in
danger,” Ohana told CTV last week.
Defending
her methods, Ohana says she’s just helping to create “empowered citizens
that can speak up for themselves. Elsewhere, she’s insisted that her
students are just learning about “critical thinking.” Which would be believable if the classroom included political posters from across the left-right spectrum.
Ohana isn't an educator but an activist paid to brow-beat children.
She might as well call herself Big Sister, head of the Angkar, and declare that this is Year Zero.
This
is the problem with legislating against “online harms.” It’s near
impossible to put together a definition that won’t be too open to
interpretation and therefore open to abuse and result in an assault on
freedom of speech. That’s the main concern with Trudeau’s Online Harms
Act.
The
act starts off pledging to target the true scourge of child
pornography, introducing new rules to govern the removal of such content
from social media platforms. There are few critics of that provision,
although given that such vile content is already illegal, perhaps what
we need most is greater enforcement of the laws already on the books and
more law enforcement officers assigned to tackle it.
What
has people rightly concerned with the bill though are things like the
Digital Safety Commission and its Digital Safety Ombudsman, who will be
tasked with enforcing this new Act and its yet-to-be-unveiled definition
of what constitutes “online harm.”
Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who specializes in online legalities, said this of the Digital Safety Commission in a CTV interview: “It’s got enormous powers, investigative powers, the ability to demand information, it will conduct hearings, it can decide that those hearings can be conducted privately if it wants, it’s not subject to any rules of evidence, and even the commission itself, it’s a fairly small group of commissioners.”
We don’t need this commission or the ombudsman. They could very well be misused from day one. The act has yet to be passed and so any such changes—including a total shelving of the Act—remain possible.
The human rights tribunals were labelled “kangaroo courts” years ago, and the Digital Safety Commission is already giving off the same vibes. If a problem is that serious, it should be dealt with in the real courts, not some quasi-judicial forum. That way real offenders can be appropriately punished and also nuisance complaints can be effectively
defended against.
Make no mistake about it, we have a lot of problems with the online world. As the parent of children who will be entering their teenage years in the near future, I’m deeply troubled by the ills of social media and the abuse and exploitation that happens within it.
But this doesn’t mean we should give Justin Trudeau personal discretion to define what is and isn’t an “online harm” and how it should be dealt with.
A cargo ship lost power and rammed into a major bridge in Baltimore
early Tuesday, destroying the span in a matter of seconds and plunging
it into the river in a terrifying collapse that could disrupt a vital
shipping port for months. Six people were missing and presumed dead.
The ship’s crew issued a mayday call moments before the crash took
down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, enabling authorities to limit vehicle
traffic on the span, Maryland’s governor said.
The ship struck
one of the bridge’s supports, causing the structure to collapse like a
toy. The vessel caught fire, and thick, black smoke billowed out of it.
Austria, France, and Italy have all issued warnings of potential
terrorist threats to Europe by the Islamic State (IS) following the
group’s Moscow concert hall attack that killed 139 people.
The French government increased
the country’s security alert to its highest level, which means more
soldiers will be put on standby and ready to patrol sensitive sites,
including schools. According to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, France has
thwarted two attack attempts by IS since the start of the year,
including a foiled attack on the city of Strasbourg.
While Austria will retain its second-highest security alert level, officials have said
there will be an increased police presence during the upcoming Easter
holidays in the capital, Vienna, especially in places where large crowds
are set to gather. The branch of the IS, which claimed responsibility
for the Moscow attack, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP),
was the same group that planned an attack on the St. Stephen’s Cathedral
in Vienna in December.
Police will also feature
more heavily at popular tourist spots and at “sensitive sites” in Italy
during the Easter holiday, including places such as airports, train
stations, and cultural and religious sites. “During the Easter holidays
you will need to be very careful. We will always do the utmost to ensure
the safety of citizens and tourists,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani
said.
Terrorism expert Peter Neumann told
German national public radio on Monday that Germany and Western Europe
were facing an increased threat of Islamist terrorism since the Hamas
terror attacks on Israel in October. He noted that, whereas in the past,
the terrorists had acted individually, ISKP works in a more organised,
professional way, being able to organise its networks.
As we previously reported,
the ISKP is a UN-designated terrorist organisation and analysts
consider it the most dangerous of the Islamic State groups. It has a
wide presence in Afghanistan, as well as in Pakistan and other areas of
Central Asia. The group’s name (Khorasan) derives
from an old term for the region that included parts of Iran,
Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. General Michael Kurilla, the commander of
U.S. Central Command, told Congress last March that ISKP was quickly
developing the ability to conduct “external operations” in Europe and
Asia. Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of
Peace says
the group has sought to distinguish itself among jihadi fighters by
adopting a radical Islamic worldview more militant and uncompromising
than its rivals, including al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Recently foiled terror attacks in Europe that can be attributed to ISKP were a planned attack on the Swedish parliament, against Christmas markets in Germany, and against the cathedrals
of Cologne and Vienna. Conservative parties all around Europe have
pointed at the lax immigration policies of the EU as the cause of
increased terrorist activity in Europe. Sweden Democrat MEP Charlie
Weimers recently said: “This is a result of Europe admitting hundreds of
thousands of people from the third world, where Islamist and almost
mediaeval values prevail.”
