Your middle-of-the-week happenstance ...
Dragging the show trial out for as long as they can:
The judge overseeing the trial for Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber adjourned the court proceedings until August to allow for the government to prepare legal arguments to back its claim that the leaders were “co-conspirators” as well as give time to the defense to prepare their case that the leaders are innocent.
The months-long court case started on September 5, 2023, in an Ottawa courthouse.
On Day 38 last Friday, the Democracy Fund (TDF), which is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs, noted in a legal update that Justice Heather Perkins-McVey stated that she would not hear the “Carter application before closing arguments” but that “it will be heard simultaneously.”
The government has been hoping to use what is called a “Carter application” to help them make their case against Lich and Barber by trying to prove that the leaders were “co-conspirators,” meaning that accusations placed against one leader automatically apply to the other.
The government’s “Carter Application” asks that the judge consider “Barber’s statements and actions to establish the guilt of Lich, and vice versa.”
A Carter application requires that the government prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there was a “conspiracy or plan in place and that Lich was a party to it based on direct evidence,” and, as such, the defense is asking the judge to dismiss the application.
According to the TDF, Perkins-McVey delayed the trial until August so the government and the defense have time to “prepare their submissions without knowing the exact evidence admitted by the Court against each defendant.”
“This is because the Court’s ruling on the Carter application determines whether the statements of one defendant can be attributed to the other,” the TDF said.
Thus far, the government has asserted “that the absence of violence or peaceful nature of the protest didn’t make it lawful, emphasizing that the onus was on the Crown to prove the protest’s unlawfulness.”
The government has held steadfast to the notion in trying to prove that Lich and Barber somehow influenced the protesters’ actions through their words as part of a co-conspiracy. This claim has been rejected by the defense as weak.
It's attrition through lawfare and bald-faced lies.
Whatever Quebec wants ... :
Ottawa and Quebec have reached an agreement in principle on increasing the Canada Health Transfer to the province by $900 million, Radio-Canada has learned.
The agreement in principle was reached during a meeting between Premier François Legault and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal on Friday, Radio-Canada reports.
Quebec was the last province not to have concluded an agreement with the federal government. The Trudeau government had set a deadline of March 31.
Radio-Canada has learned that, in the agreement in principle, there will be no accountability or conditions imposed on Quebec on the use of the funding, which had been a sticking point in talks between the two governments.
Filibuster the hell out of them:
Opposition MPs are signaling another slowdown on federal budget bills. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last year faced a five-week filibuster on complaints of deficit spending: “Canada feels more broken than ever before.”
Before there was ArriveCan, there was SNC-Lavalin:
The former clerk of the Privy Council says he was never interviewed by the RCMP in their investigation of the SNC-Lavalin affair, which concluded with the force declining to lay any charges.
Former clerk Michael Wernick testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on Tuesday and said he was not interviewed as part of the RCMP’s investigation into whether the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the law.
Normally, Justin is the mincing, little creep who talks about people behind their backs.
You would be surprised to see what thousands of dollars can pay for:
The Department of Canadian Heritage paid thousands to a Toronto pundit who disparaged Conservatives in a series of profane TikTok posts, Access To Information records show. Dylan Horner did not comment: “Shut the f–k up. This is exactly why you can’t trust Conservatives.”
Getting the government one voted for:
The poll from Abacus Data said that 68 percent of respondents were not optimistic that the country’s ongoing housing crisis would improve. Twenty-three percent believed housing issues would remain the same, while only 10 percent predicted improvement.But housing is not the only concern on the minds of Canadians: finances and government policies were also labelled as causes for unease among the majority of respondents.Seventy-one percent of Canadians said their household debt levels are increasing, causing “financial strain and instability,” while nearly two-thirds of those polled lack confidence in the government and the country’s economic stability.“The results reveal widespread concerns regarding housing affordability, financial stability, and trust in governance, emphasizing the necessity for comprehensive policy measures to address these issues and inspire hope for a brighter and more promising future for all citizens,” Eddie Sheppard, Abacus Data vice president of insights, said in a blog post.“This sentiment not only reflects the adversities Canadians face but also signals a growing disillusionment with the prospects for improvement.”
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What will they do when others get tired of holding their hands?:
The report reveals that young Canadian workers under 40 are increasingly feeling isolated and lonely compared to their older colleagues.
Forty-five per cent of workers say they do not have relationships with people they trust on the job, while younger workers say they’re more likely to lack “trusted relationships.”
The report says that lack of trusted relationships is a factor in loneliness, which can lead to lower mental health scores and poorer physical health.
The TELUS Mental Health Index also found 33 per cent of workers in Canada have a high mental health risk, 45 per cent have a moderate mental health risk, and 22 per cent have a low mental health risk.
The report also found more than one in seven participants rate their company’s culture around mental health as negative.
Canadians say they’re able to spot fake news online without help from federal fact checkers, says in-house research by the Communications Security Establishment. Participants in federal focus groups expressed unease with the government “declaring what is true or not.”
Also - if people were serious about ending bullying, they would raise kids properly, expel bullies from school, and take up tae kwon do.
Pink shirts, like ribbons and bands, are empty symbolism to express an unwillingness to DO anything when one can merely mention the problem once or twice:
Hundreds of thousands of students and staff have participated in 15 Pink Shirt Days across Canada and in over 100 countries around the world. Yet over the past few years, the bloom has started to come off the pink rose. A few academics and social justice advocates are asking what it’s accomplished beyond raising public consciousness.School bullying has not declined and, in many ways, has gotten worse, because it’s now impacting a wider range of kids who are targeted for being different. A 2020 Statistics Canada report noted that the prevalence of bullying victimization has remained relatively stable over the past 12 years. Verbal bullying and cyberbullying now exceed physical forms of bullying.Bullying is incredibly difficult to stamp out and that is borne out by recent studies. While Canadian experts on bullying prevention are reluctant to raise concerns about Pink Short Day, they do recognize that current approaches are not working and need to be more embedded into school cultures.York University psychology professor Debra Pepler, a specialist on aggression in children, points out that one-off interventions have little effect because the most effective strategies are usually implemented across the school and engage students and staff alike. Focusing on high school, where Pink Shirt Day originated, is a tougher slog because most successful interventions happen in the earlier grades.Pink Shirt Day appeals to “do-good” high school students with a social conscience. At its inception, the movement was mostly spontaneous with a touch of youthful naivete. After that Grade 9 student was bullied for wearing a pink T-shirt, Shepherd and Price purchased 50 pink shirts to distribute to their fellow students. In the wake of this show of solidarity, the grassroots protest was born.Yet contemporary critics have begun to pick holes in this heartwarming story. Three years ago, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives commentator Amanda Gebhard took exception to the popular version of Pink Shirt Day’s origin story.The initial victim, Gebhard claimed, “was not bullied for wearing a pink shirt. Classmates taunted and threatened him with physical violence because they believed he was gay.” Simple acts of kindness may not get to the real root of the problem — homophobia. ...Reclaiming classrooms, hallways and parking lots will require more than pink displays of solidarity. Talking about bullying does little to redress the power imbalance in schools where bullies enjoy status and influence, and intimidate others into silence. Standing up for Pink Shirt Day may actually expose some kids to more bullying.Pink Shirt Day is what Halifax journalist Suzanne Rent aptly described as “a performance and it looks great on social media.” Getting to the root of the problem will involve more than periodic demonstrations of solidarity, however well intended they may be.
“Woke” beliefs are associated with increased instances of anxiety and depression according to a new study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.Released earlier this month, the study involved nearly 6,000 participants in Finland, including university faculty, students and the general public. The CSJAS was based on theoretical frameworks from intersectional feminism, critical race theory and queer theory. ...Being on the political left was found to be more predictive of lower mental well-being than high critical social justice scores alone.“People who supported left-wing parties and female university students in social sciences, education, and humanities, as well as people with ‘other’ gender, were the most in support of the scale items,” wrote the study authors.
The overwhelming majority of immigrants who arrived in Canada within the last decade say that life is “more expensive” than they anticipated, according to a new national poll.The Leger survey found that 84 per cent of recent arrivals to Canada agreed that life is either “significantly” or “somewhat” pricier than they originally envisioned prior to immigrating. Meanwhile, just two per cent of respondents felt that the cost of living was “less expensive” than initially thought.This is unwelcome news for Canadian newcomers, given that seven in ten cited economic concerns as a primary reason for coming to the Great White North. This was followed by almost half (45 per cent) of respondents citing educational opportunities and 18 per cent were aimed at family reunification.“A core aim for Canada’s immigration strategy is to bolster the labour force, and therefore we draw in immigrants in search of economic opportunity,” Shanze Khan, a senior research director with Leger, told National Post in an email. “However, many newcomers encounter significant barriers in the job market, especially with credential recognition, contributing to economic pressures felt across the board.”
This is what a an unarmed population with a useless police force looks like:
Toronto Police have given advice to residents worried about the city’s spiraling auto theft problem – just let thieves steal your car by leaving them the keys.
Remember - these are the "experts":
Doctors’ groups across Canada are urging the provinces not to interfere with “evidence-based” medical treatment of children with gender dysphoria.But others say what little evidence exists points to using caution and restricting treatments for minors, and that Canada’s medical leaders are ignoring shifting trends in gender-affirming care.“Canadians have the right to make personal choices about their health with the support of their families, the guidance of physicians working with other regulated health professionals and free from ideological intrusion,” they said.
Oh, do we?:
“Unvaccinated COVID patients do not deserve ICU beds.”
“I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die.”
In the no-holds barred world of Twitter, comments like these, where the vaccinated say the unvaccinated deserve what they get, are becoming increasingly common. But even in the minds of people on the street, these sentiments are swirling in collective thoughts as the fourth wave of infections intensifies and vaccination rates plateau.
According to a recent Angus Reid poll most vaccinated Canadians are indifferent to the unvaccinated getting sick with the virus, with 83 per cent saying they have no sympathy for those who choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine and then fall ill. Anecdotally, patience is even wearing thin among health-care professionals.
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Among provinces and territories, the B.C. government forced the most frontline and long term care workers out of their jobs. The province reported in November that 3,325 personnel were put on unpaid leave after its COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadline expired.
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More than 40 physicians are currently being investigated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) for promoting unproven treatments for COVID-19 or sharing unverified information about its vaccines, Global News can reveal.
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The Supreme Court of Canada has decided not to hear an appeal by several churches that fought Manitoba’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Lawyers for the churches argued public health orders in 2020 and 2021 that temporarily closed in-person religious services, then permitted them with caps on attendance, violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
They lost that argument in two lower courts.
It was never about a virus:
This won’t be news to anybody who has paid attention to American education or science since 2021, but the New York Times has published a lengthy piece by Sarah Mervosh, Claire Cain Miller, and Francesca Paris summarizing studies of Covid school closures that show that “the more time students spent in remote instruction, the further they fell behind.” Not only that: “And, experts say, extended closures did little to stop the spread of Covid.” You won’t see an apology here to red-state governors who were relentlessly smeared for battling to keep their schools open, or any consequences visited upon public health “experts,” teachers’ unions, or voices in journalism who did the smearing. But the studies’ verdict is about as close as you’re going to get.
Some people are special:
In his study, The Section 87 Indian Act Taxation Exemption: An Analysis, Tom Flanagan argues the tax exemptions for Indigenous people are “contrary to the general ethos of democratic societies, which assumes that the state should treat all citizens equally and that all citizens should pay their fair share to support the state.”
The emeritus professor of history at the University of Calgary says that the main outcome of this tax policy “has been to generate resentment by the other 39 million Canadians who are required to pay taxes on income and sales.”
Since 1876, property owned on reserve has not been subject to taxation in order to protect reserves from the depredations of local and provincial governments. Since 1983, that earlier rule that’s codified in the Indian Act has expanded to other forms of income, such as earnings made on reserve by those who are what the Indian Act calls “Registered Indians,” capital gains on such property or GST and HST on sales made on a reserve.
Those expansions, Flanagan writes, are primarily due to court decisions, and not modifications of the Indian Act made by Parliament.
“If it wanted to exempt Indians from paying income tax, it could easily have amended the wording of the Indian Act to make that clear. Several generations of politicians apparently had no desire to absolve Indians from paying income tax in the same way as other Canadians do,” the report says.
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Perhaps they should stop relying on others to fix their problems for them:
The federal auditor general is “completely discouraged” to see so little improvement to substandard housing in First Nations over the past two decades, a new report says.
Karen Hogan also looked at the planned expansion of the highly criticized First Nations policing program, and found poor management is leaving communities underserved and funds unspent.
The reports tabled in the House of Commons on Tuesday paint a bleak picture of Ottawa’s record on First Nations housing and policing.
“Time after time, whether in housing, policing, safe drinking water or other critical areas, our audits of federal programs to support Canada’s Indigenous Peoples reveal a distressing and persistent pattern of failure,” Hogan said at a press conference Tuesday.
“The lack of progress clearly demonstrates that the government’s passive, siloed approach is ineffective, and, in fact, contradicts the spirit of true reconciliation.”
It’s the fourth time since 2003 that the auditor general has held the government responsible for unsafe and unsuitable First Nations housing.
Hogan’s report says communities with the poorest housing conditions received the least funding, and the government failed to ensure homes met building code standards.
“Many people living in First Nations communities do not have access to housing that is safe and in good condition — a fundamental human right,” the report reads.
“Improving housing for First Nations is vital for their physical, mental and economic health and well-being.”
We don't have to trade with China:
The Globe and Mail has learned that Xiangguo Qiu has been conducting research with Chinese military scientists and other virology researchers, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on antibodies for coronavirus and the deadly Ebola and Nipah viruses.
The Globe was unable to find any information on her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, who is believed to be with her in China. The two infectious-disease scientists were escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory in July, 2019, and later had their security clearances revoked. They were fired in January, 2021.
They have been under an RCMP national-security investigation since 2021.
Declassified documents tabled in the House of Commons on Feb. 28 show the couple had provided confidential scientific information to China and posed a credible security threat to the country, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The Globe found that Dr. Qiu’s name appears on four Chinese patent filings since 2020, two with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – whose work on bat coronaviruses has placed it at the centre of concerns that it played a role in the spread of COVID-19 – and two with the University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC. The patents relate to antibodies against Nipah virus and work related to nanobodies, including against coronaviruses.
The RCMP declined to discuss the whereabouts of the couple and whether their move back to China has affected the national-security investigation. Living in China places them beyond the reach of Canadian authorities.
But former RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson said he hopes charges will be laid even if Mountie investigators are unable to talk to the couple.
“The only thing you are missing is an interview with the person, but if they are out of the country, you can’t do it. There is no problem charging them. The problem is getting them back to face the charges,” Mr. Paulson said. “The federal Crown might have some reservations about charging them knowing there is no prospect of them showing up, but I think it is in the public interest that they be charged.”
Dr. Qiu returned to China despite it being under a COVID-19 travel lockdown for three years until January, 2023. As well, China doesn’t allow dual citizenship and, under normal circumstances, a Chinese national who has obtained Canadian citizenship is not allowed to retain their Chinese citizenship.
National-security and scientific experts say Dr. Qiu would be of high value to China.
“It’s very likely that she received quite preferential treatment in China on the basis that she’s proven herself. She’s done a very good job for the government of China,” said Brendan Walker-Munro, senior research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland Law School. “She’s promoted their interests abroad. She’s returned information that is credibly useful to China and to its ongoing research.”
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Applicants for Canada’s federal research grants aren’t screened for affiliation with China’s Thousand Talents Program, an initiative implicated in leaks to China from Canada’s infectious disease lab and which CSIS has warned poses a threat of economic espionage to research institutions.
The Thousand Talents Program is one of several programs Beijing uses to recruit well-placed people from Chinese expatriate communities working in science and technology fields in other countries, in a bid to increase Chinese research and development.
Documents released last month revealed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believed Xiangguo Qiu, a since-fired doctor at Canada’s microbiology lab in Winnipeg, had been part of the program and had multiple undeclared associations with Chinese universities.
But the federal government’s granting councils, which hand out more than $2 billion in research funding every year, don’t specifically screen for researchers connected to China’s program.
The National Post asked the Canada Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council about their policies and received an identical statement from all three agencies.
“Canada’s research ecosystem must be as open as possible and as secure as necessary as researchers need to collaborate with reliable and trusted partners to drive innovation,” reads the statement from David Coulombe with CIHR. “While the federal granting agencies do not collect data regarding participation in foreign talent and recruitment programs, such as China’s Thousand Talents program, they do provide advice and guidance on how researchers can mitigate their research security risks.”
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During his election campaign in 2021, O’Toole had offered an extensively detailed 180-degree turn away from the Trudeau government’s “win-win” approach to Beijing and the prime minister’s own kowtowing to Beijing’s powerful Canadian friends. Working in close consultation with expatriate Hongkongers, Canadian Muslims from China’s viciously persecuted Uyghur minority and veteran democracy campaigners among Canada’s Chinese diaspora, O’Toole proposed restraints on Chinese state-owned enterprises, closer relations with Taiwan, the establishment of a foreign agents registry and so on.Also directly targeted for election monkey-wrenching were O’Toole’s shadow foreign minister Michael Chong, Steveston-Richmond East Conservative Kenny Chiu and Vancouver East New Democrat Jenny Kwan. Until Monday’s reversal, Hogue’s inquiry had RESTRICTED the involvement of O’Toole and Canada’s Opposition parties to the same LESSER standing that Hogue had granted the distinctly Beijing-friendly senator Yuen Pau Woo, one of the first senators Trudeau appointed after coming to office in 2015.
China’s ambassador says the country will continue to do business in Canada’s domestic critical minerals sector despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “unfortunate” crackdown on foreign investment.
Could you imagine what would happen if Canada tried even a tenth of what Milei did?:
Argentina's monthly inflation rate:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 14, 2024
December: 25.5%
January 2024: 20.6%
February 2024: 13.2%
Argentina also just recorded its 1st budget SURPLUS in 12 years (of $589M)
Milei was inaugurated 3 months ago pic.twitter.com/nTOs7Dy9g7
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