Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week notion of some kind ...

 

Enjoy the decline:

 

The Liberal government will bring its proposal to increase the inclusion rate on capital gains to the House of Commons before the parliamentary summer break, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday.

"In the coming weeks, and certainly before the House rises, we will begin the legislative process to implement our increase in the inclusion rate," Freeland confirmed during a news conference.

The finance minister announced the capital gains tax changes as part of her April budget, but left the new inclusion rate out of the budget legislation she tabled last month.

The Liberals must table a motion in the House of Commons before they bring forward the actual legislation.

The government says that even if a bill has not yet passed, the change will take effect on June 25.

(Sidebar: crazy election promises don't pay for themselves. The money must come from somewhere.)

The government proposes to make two-thirds of capital gains taxable. Currently, only one-half of the profits made on the sale of assets — such as stocks or secondary real estate property — are taxed.

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What he really must have meant is that it demonstrates the Liberal government’s commitment to central planning and wasting taxpayers’ money. Just two months ago, in insisting that his fifth annual carbon tax increase (to $80 per tonne) must go through, Trudeau defended the carbon tax on the grounds that it is better than using “the heavy hand of government through regulations or through subsidies or some other way to pick winners and losers in the economy.” If Trudeau practiced what he preaches, Canadians — of both genders — could have saved a cumulative $160 billion.

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And if we fail to retain the businesses and individuals that create products and services and hire Canadian workers, then our living standards will inevitably fall. It’s why you hardly ever see factories being built anymore, why good-paying jobs are drying up, and why investment capital is fleeing our country.

The reality is that in today’s borderless world, it’s difficult to cage in money. Investors will simply move to jurisdictions where there are fewer restrictions, lower taxes and fewer headaches.

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 One-third of Canada’s debt will be refinanced this year at elevated interest rates, a significant cost to taxpayers that Conservatives argue could have been avoided if the government had issued more of the country’s debt in the form of long-term bonds when rates were lower.

 

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The social contract is broken.

We take pride in killing people we consider to be a burden.

That is before we even get to the deplorable state of the economy:

 

Canada used to be an admired country worldwide, and now it's horrible. In the old days, when I traveled around the world, I used to proudly wear my Canadian flags. Now I'm embarrassed.

When I went back to Canada, disappointment, disgust, and anger were my emotions.

I think the effects of inflation have hit both countries the same in housing and rental property. I think people who are leaving Canada for the US are running into the same housing problem. The cost of housing is ridiculous in both places.

You can't get a one-bedroom apartment in Thunder Bay for under $2,000. Toronto is as expensive as Phoenix if you're comparing cities in both countries.

I wouldn't advise Americans to move to Canada. I think that people trying to escape each country's downfalls are going to be surprised.

The reality is — no matter which way you come, north to south or south to north — you will be rudely awakened: "Oh my God, they have the same problems, if not worse, in either country."

 

 

 

From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

 Most federal records on the Freedom Convoy, 87 percent, were never disclosed by a 2023 inquiry, says the Privy Council. Canadians will wait decades to see the confidential memos and emails: “These questions would need to be posed to former Commissioner Justice Rouleau.”

 

 

The hall monitor is totally partisan:

 

The Liberal party apologized to Speaker Greg Fergus Tuesday for using partisan language to advertise his event, after the Opposition Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois called for his resignation.

The opposition parties called it yet another display of partisan behaviour from the Speaker of the House of Commons, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his faith in Fergus isn't shaken at all.

The latest accusation stems from a post on the Liberal party website promoting a summer barbecue event featuring Fergus, who is a Liberal MP.

The event details included a political attack on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, saying his "reckless policies" would risk the health, safety and pocketbooks of Canadians.

"The promotional material of this event uses very partisan, inflammatory language concerning the Conservative party and the leader of the official opposition," said Alberta Conservative MP Chris Warkentin in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The language in the event details was automatically included based on a template for events posted to the website, said Liberal spokesman Parker Lund.

 

 

How many of these seniors voted for the Trudeau crime family?

 You are thus rewarded:

 

A new report says shelters are not designed to meet the physical or mental health needs of the growing number of older adults who are homeless.

Lead author Dr. Jillian Alston says people who experience homelessness age faster than people who are housed due to factors such as ongoing stress and the inability to properly manage chronic medical conditions.

The paper, published this morning in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, says many people who are homeless are considered seniors as early as age 50.

Alston, who is a geriatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, says shelters don’t have essential supports seniors often need, including medication storage or proper wound care.

Seniors with mobility issues are also at an increased risk of falling and those with cognitive impairments are at risk of being victimized in shelters.

Alston says an aging population, the affordable housing crisis, and life changes – such as losing a partner, becoming injured or relying on a reduced income – all contribute to the rise in homelessness among seniors.

 

 

Also:

 

One of the clearest examples of what I mean is liquefied natural gas (LNG). Our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who would prefer to virtue signal about trendy causes, repeatedly says there is no “business case” for Canada to sell LNG to the world.

Forget the fact the PM wouldn’t know a business case if it fell out of an overhead bin onto his head. In the time Trudeau has been prime minister, the Americans have built more than 20 LNG export facilities. Canada has built none. Is that because Americans are too dumb to see there is no business case?

Liberal policy and tax failures have driven down productivity, investment, incomes and the dollar while driving up the cost of nearly everything — especially food, housing and energy.

Under the Liberals, the cost of mortgages and rents have doubled. Where it once took 44% of the average Canadian income to afford a house, it now takes 63%.

The Fraser Institute (the source of the calculation on our declining living standard), this week also released statistics showing that over the past 20 years, Ontario was ninth out of the 10 provinces in economic growth. It was also dead last in inflation-adjusted wage growth.

 

 

 

The public sector that moistens far too many seats in this country are craven trolls and cowards.

 

Case in point:

 The Canadian Human Rights Commission was so upset by a backlash over Christmas it says it feared for staff safety. The Commission in 2023 provoked an uproar in Parliament after publishing a report denouncing Christmas as a racist observance “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.”

 

No one is going to wait for you in the parking lot for attempting to stamp out Christmas.

 

Nothing about you is worth even getting a warning for.

 

Pathetic.

 

 

Just a reminder:

Canada has never had slavery.

Canada was created in 1867 and slavery had been abolished in the British Empire in 1833.

There has been slavery since time immemorial in the geographical area that ultimately has now become Canada. Slavery was present long before the arrival of… https://t.co/0vgw0QAdIc

— Tim Pettit (@Tim_Pettit_) May 20, 2024

 

 

 

 

It was never about a virus:

 

The nation’s top public health official during the Covid-19 pandemic admitted that the origins of the coronavirus remain up for debate, the lab-leak theory is not a conspiracy, and that there was no scientific evidence to support the government’s social-distancing guidance.

 Former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins testified behind closed-doors earlier this year and made those admissions to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, according to a transcript and accompanying subcommittee memo provided to National Review.

“Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-foot distance?” a staffer asked Collins about the Centers for Disease Control’s social distancing guidance during the pandemic.

“I do not,” Collins said.

“Is that I do not recall or I do not see any evidence supporting six-feet?” the staffer replied.

“I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point,” Collins said, according to the transcript, adding that he has not seen evidence since then to support the CDC’s six-feet guidance.

Collins was the boss of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic. And his testimony is similar to Fauci’s, who admitted to the subcommittee that the six-foot guidance just appeared.

Fauci invited Collins to the February 2020 call that set in motion the publication of the “Proximal Origin” paper in Nature that attempted to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis at the start of the pandemic, Collins testified. Before the phone call, Collins said he had not expressed an opinion on whether the virus came from a lab.

Afterward, he said, he did because he trusted the experts. Collins defended his decision by asserting the need to challenge claims that the coronavirus was engineered by humans.

The subcommittee implicated Collins and Fauci in a report published last year on how top public health officials orchestrated the “Proximal Origins” paper. In an email after the February 1, 2020, conference call, Collins warned of the “voices of conspiracy” doing harm to science. He later influenced the substance of the “Proximal Origins” paper.

Now, Collins believes that the science is not settled on whether coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China or came from animals.

“We have talked about this an awful lot, I think I know the answer to the question, but I want to ask it. Is the origin of COVID-19 still unsettled science?” Collins was asked.

“Yes,” Collins replied.

When asked if the idea that the coronavirus may have leaked from a lab was a “conspiracy theory,” Collins replied, “Not at this point.”

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At long last, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”

“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

The response comes after more than four years of evasions from federal public health officials — including Tabak himself and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci — about the controversial research practice that modifies viruses to make them more infectious.

Tabak added that “this is research, the generic term [gain-of-function], is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.”

Dr. Bryce Nickels, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and co-founder of the pandemic oversight group Biosafety Now, told The Post the exchange “was two people talking past each other.”

“Tabak was engaging in the usual obfuscation and semantic manipulation that is so frustrating and pointless,” Nickels said, adding that the NIH bigwig was resisting accountability for risky research that can create pathogens of pandemic potential.

 

 

 

No country for anyone:

 Canada has announced an additional $65 million in international aid to Gaza, bringing its total funding to $165 million to support Palestinians in the region.

 

The funding aims to address the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza due to a ground offensive by Israeli forces into Rafah, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said in a May 16 news release.

 

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 Who was it again that applauded a Ukrainian Nazi and whose party wore the kaffiyeh?

 No expensive waste of time needed here:

The far-right is clearly antisemitic and Islamophobic.

The Heritage committee was suppose to study the rise of the far-right, but Conservatives refused to bring the study to a vote.

If Conservatives really cared about antisemitism or Islamophobia they'd vote for the study. pic.twitter.com/rDQLO1omux

— Niki Ashton (@nikiashton) May 18, 2024

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Is it an election year?:

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opted against taking a stance on a push from the International Criminal Court to prosecute the Israeli prime minister and Hamas leaders over the war in the Gaza Strip Tuesday.

 

 

Now, about this:

 Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, the calculation and reporting of Palestinian civilian casualties there have sparked intense debate by researchers and activists from both sides. Adding to the already complex situation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has announced a significant revision to the numbers published previously. This revision, which cuts the original number of women and children in Gaza “identified” as deceased by more than half, has prompted questions about the general accuracy and transparency of casualty data until now.

 

Until May 6, OCHA had reported a death toll of over 34,000 from the conflict. The Hamas-controlled Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza claimed that 27% of the fatalities were women and 42% children. 

 

The UN agency released revised figures on May 8, stating that only 24,686 deaths could be specifically identified (or confirmed). According to OCHA, among the deceased, 20% were women and 32% were children. This revision indicates a reduction in the reported number of women and children killed in Gaza since October 7 by 52% and 53%, respectively.

 

 

 

 

Ebrahim Raisi was a butcher and little else:

 Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in the country's northwest on Sunday, Iranian state media agencies and government officials reported on Monday morning.

Raisi's death was reported along with the deaths of Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, among others. According to Mehr news agency, all passengers on board were killed.

The other officials who were killed include Seyyed Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, the Islamic Republic's representative to the East Azerbaijan province, and Malek Rahmati, the province's governor. The aircraft's pilot and co-pilot were also killed.

 

 

I'm sure it's nothing:

 

A former Chinese spy has revealed new information about the Chinese regime’s targeting of a Chinese dissident who died in British Columbia in 2022.

 While the RCMP says the death was not suspicious, it was raised as a warning last year to another exiled Chinese activist now living in Toronto. The warning was conveyed in a phone call between the activist and one of his friends in China, whom the activist said was under pressure from Chinese police and described the death as being “under mysterious circumstances.”

The former spy, identified only as Eric, who defected to Australia last year, spoke to Australia’s ABC News “Four Corners“ program in a May 14 interview in which the reporter called it “the first time anyone from China’s secret police has gone public.”

 

 

 

It's nothing ten million can't fix:

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by a Canadian-born former Guantanamo detainee who was seeking to wipe away his war crimes convictions, including for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Omar Khadr had waived his right to appeal when he pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder. But his lawyers argued that a subsequent ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington called into question whether Khadr could have been charged with the crimes in the first place.

A divided three-judge panel ruled that, despite the appellate ruling, Khadr gave up his right to appeal.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the Supreme Court’s consideration of Khadr’s appeal because both had dealt with the case while they served as appeals court judges. Jackson explained her recusal from Monday’s order; Kavanaugh did not.

Khadr had been sentenced to eight years in prison plus the time he already had spent in custody, including several years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he was released in May 2015 pending his appeal of the guilty plea.

 

 

It is said that the Devil hates the Rosary.

 

Indeed:

 

In November, an elderly woman was arrested by the National Police while praying the rosary outside the headquarters. Others have received subpoenas, including the organizer who led the rosary and a 17-year-old. Their subpoenas are for disobedience and resistance to authority. They received fines amounting to 3,600 euros and 1,800 euros respectively.

“These events are part of a series of prohibitions and attacks by the Government against citizens who profess religious beliefs. It is necessary for these facts to be brought to the attention of the international community to ask for protection and to stop a trend which may soon reach levels of repression typical of dictatorial regimes like those in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela,” the petition to the UN states.

“Religious freedom protects that believers can pray when and where they want. All over Europe, they are trying to bring religion into the strictly private sphere and believers are not allowed to manifest themselves as such,” Maria Garcia, president of the Observatory, explained.

The Observatory for Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience is is an advisory organization to the Monitoring Commission of the Action Plan to Fight Hate Crimes, which is dependent on the Ministry of the Interior..belongs to the Monitoring Commission of the Plan against Hate Crimes of the Ministry of the Interior, according to Garcia. 

It requested an explanation for the arrest and fines from the government. According to Garcia, the government justifies itself on the grounds that people who pray in the street are harassing others.

“As the Observatory for Freedom of Religion, we have been able to verify how these people are not harassing anyone, but only exercising their right to religious freedom, which is the most intimate right of the person, because it concerns their conscience,” she said. 

 

 

 

And it's Babylon Bee for the win:

An upcoming change of the global guard began today, as longtime leader of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab announced he was retiring to spend more time with his lizard family on the planet Zarkon VII.

Having met many of his important goals in the area of world domination and the destruction of freedom around the world, Schwab made the decision to step down from his throne made of human skulls and return to his homeworld, where he will live out the remainder of his life watching the plans he set in motion on Earth come to fruition.

"It appears my work on this planet is finished," Schwab hissed. "I am proud of everyzing vee have accomplished here on zis world. Vee have successfully set humanity on a path toward its eventual annihilation. My only regret is that I vill not be here to watch the nations burn down as the humans are diminished to an animalistic state, eating ze bugs and killing for supremacy. Instead, I will return to my home on the planet Zarkon VII, where I will commune with others of my kind. Farewell, people of Earth."

At publishing time, the World Economic Forum was planning a grand sendoff for Schwab, featuring fireworks, spoken word exhibitions, and battles to the death for sport, after which the Davos elite would bathe in the blood of the slain innocents and watch Schwab board his starship and set off for the loving reception of his lizard family.