Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week schadenfreude ...


Schadenfreude for the deliberately clueless, inept, awful sponges:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday blamed hard times for the loss of a longtime Liberal seat in a Toronto byelection. Conservatives won Toronto-St. Paul’s for the first time since 1988: “Can the Prime Minister still stay on?”

 

Is that so, Chrystia?:

MPs yesterday agreed to spend months reviewing Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s proposal to raise capital gains tax revenues by $18 billion. New data show tax filers who report gains from the sale of farms, commercial buildings, vacation homes and other equity typically show profits under $50,000: “The government in an effort to start a class war has made a mistake.”

**

Higher grocery prices continue to wallop Canadian household budgets, with food inflation ticking higher in May for the first time in nearly a year.

Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that grocery prices rose 1.5 per cent in May, slightly higher than in April when they rose 1.4 per cent. It marks the first acceleration in grocery prices since June 2023.

 **

Even the word "arrogant" cannot cover the mind-numbing refusal to reflect on one's self and policies. 

The thing is that Justin has always been a vile narcissist and creep. Voters tolerated Justin's woeful inadequacies as a human being because they believed the juvenile mud-slinging the Liberals did to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Do you see where failing to use reason will get you?

Now, after nine years, the public might have an inkling that a failed substitute drama teacher whose dad was a rotten PM himself might not be leader material. 

What failures could have led them to that conclusion?

Any other leader would realise that a major loss signified a failure to handle things. They would at least have the good grace to step aside and let the party take another direction.

Take, for example, Andrew Scheer.

He did something wrong, accepted the blame and resigned for it.

Self-effacement, contrition and atonement are things that Justin, the master of unforgivable hubris, does not do.

To wit:

Facing new questions about his political longevity, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed resolve after a by-election loss Monday in one of the safest Liberal seats in the country.

“This was obviously not the result we wanted, but I want to be clear that I hear people’s concerns and frustrations,” he said of his party’s results in Toronto-St. Paul’s riding. “My focus is on your success and that’s where it’s going to stay.”

(Sidebar: no, you f---ing don't.) 

**

**

And there are many people who have argued persuasively that fearing for their seats, his backbenchers will throw him out. In this fantasy, Chrystia Freeland then takes over as prime minister, and they still have a chance in 2025. (It is more likely that Ms. Freeland would become a Kim Campbell to Justin's Mulroney.)

However, the prime minister could take refuge in the old argument that byelections don’t count. Voter turnout is low, and voters are just venting. They return to their senses at general elections.

In this case, voter turnout was just 43%; at the last election it was 65%. Liberal voters just stayed home you see, but they’ll be back when it matters. They always do. (That’s not to be assumed; this is the third election in Toronto St.Paul’s where the Liberal vote has trended down, from 32,500 in 2019, to 26,400 in 2021 and now to 15,500. Trudeau-fatigue has already set in.)

The problem with that analysis is that it doesn’t factor in the enormous sense of self that has defined Trudeau’s entire tenure of office.

Voters in the 905 may properly dismiss him as unserious, relentlessly trivial and focused on the wrong things. His behaviour however, and the priorities upon which he has been focused suggest that he has a messianic sense of mission. He believes he is just too important to a greater cause, to be thrown off by a byelection.

Results suggest that it  was always his mission to take this prosperous, well-ordered Anglo country and following an undeclared agenda, make it ashamed of its past, strip it of its sense of national identity and define moral excellence as living a carbon-neutral life. It would become a new kind of country, post-national and governed according to Chinese standards of public administration.

If the collateral damage is massive debt, impoverishment by inflation and growing homelessness, so be it. That’s the price people — other people — have to pay for his dreams.

And in his mind, this great commission is not accomplished. “There is work to do,” he declared recently.

So it is possible — likely, in my view — that he won’t accept the judgment of Toronto St. Paul’s.

**

As local residents went to the polls in the usually safe Liberal riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s on the day before, Freeland had warned them they faced a stark choice “between two visions of Canada, two sets of values.”

“I really want to encourage people to vote for our outstanding Liberal candidate, Leslie Church. What she stands for is the values we are talking about here today,” she said on Monday.

Values like investing in Canada. Working as a team. “Where we all work together to defend and support the national interest.”

The alternative, she warned, was “really cold and cruel and small. The alternative is cuts and austerity, not believing in ourselves as a country, not believing in our community and our neighbours.”

(Sidebar: and why would there be a need for austerity, O "Journalist" Sent to Do An Economist's Job?)

Toronto—St. Paul’s, it seems, went for cold and cruel. Just before dawn, when the final numbers were tallied, Conservative candidate Don Stewart was declared the winner by 590 votes, not a great margin but a momentous result in political terms given Liberals had racked up easy wins in every election for 30 years.

Freeland’s official reason for appearing at a news conference on Tuesday was to announce yet another Liberal spending plan. Last year’s deficit alone came to $50 billion thanks to the proliferation of spending plans. This time the Canada Infrastructure Bank would be “investing” more than $2 billion in internet providers. “This investment is supporting high-speed internet projects, connecting 430,000 more rural and remote Canadians households,” she announced.

(Sidebar: where will you get the money from, Chrystia?)

None of the journalists on hand cared about the Internet bit. They wanted to know if Justin Trudeau would resign.

Freeland obviously knew what was coming and was doing her best to brace for it.

“Everyone we’re hearing from behind the scenes believes that the result last night means catastrophic losses across the country,” the Globe and Mail told her right off the bat. “If you cannot win in Toronto under Justin Trudeau, why should anyone believe you can win anywhere else under him?”

Freeland took a breath. As is usual with Trudeau team members, the deputy prime minister ignored the question and delivered a pre-prepared talking point.

(Sidebar: not another pre-prepared remark! How typical!)

“Our government is focused on working hard for Canada and Canadians, and on delivering results for Canada and Canadians,” she said. “That is what the prime minister is focused on, that is what we are all focused on. The prime minister is committed on leading us into the next election, and he has our support.”

(Sidebar: are the results poverty?)

Next question. iPolitics wanted to know if, given the beating they’d taken, “a new leader in the party might be a necessary change.”

“I just answered that question,” Freeland replied, going on to cite a number of Liberal initiatives and the need to keep up the hard work for the good of Canadians.

 

Wow.

Just ... wow. 

The only hard work Chrystia is doing at the moment is running interference for her boss, a wiener glad to let a woman take the hit for him.

This is who Canadians voted for: greedy and incompetent pencil-pushers who lack even the most minute element of scruples and will never let go of a pension they clearly don't deserve.



Is this a vast awakening?:

The poll shows that millennials and Gen Z also aren’t in favour of more government spending, something the Liberals had promised in the April budget. The poll shows that 56 per cent said the government shouldn’t spend more money than it is currently spending.

Thirty-four per cent of Gen Z and millennial voters say want the government to spend less money, agreeing that they are “worried about generations like mine being overly taxed in future to pay for today’s debt.” Another 22 per cent say spending should stay at current levels.

And they’re not particularly enthusiastic about the Liberal government’s massive subsidies for electric vehicles and battery plants. Only 32 per cent of Gen Z and millennials agreed the handouts for auto and battery makers will “be of significant benefit” to their generation.

 

Vaguely related - South Korea, get out of the battery industry while you can:

South Korean companies are aggressively expanding their portfolios in the electric vehicle (EV) battery sector, developing new materials and technologies beyond their primary products to meet the growing demand for advanced and efficient batteries.

According to industry sources on June 26, Lotte Energy Materials is developing solid-state battery electrolytes and LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cathode active materials in addition to their main business, copper foil.

In February, they began constructing a pilot facility at their Iksan 2 plant, which is capable of producing up to 70 tons of solid-state battery electrolytes annually. Lotte Energy Materials plans to test and stabilize the facility by the end of this year, obtain performance verification from customers, and enter into supply contracts next year, with mass production slated to begin as early as 2026.

** 

The recent devastating fire at a lithium battery manufacturing factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, has starkly revealed the gaps in safety management for battery fires. Within 15 seconds of ignition, white smoke from the batteries filled the factory. An employee’s attempt to extinguish the fire with a regular extinguisher proved futile. Lithium reacts with water, causing heat and explosions, and requires metal fire-specific extinguishers or sand, none of which were available at the factory. There are no regulations mandating such equipment in factories. While the battery industry has rapidly advanced, fire preparedness remains practically nonexistent.



This is a country that lets people wander in unvetted and then supports them financially:

A video posted online shows Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, being handcuffed by two plain-clothed police officers.
The 41-year-old is told he is the subject of “an outstanding immigration warrant” and he is then led away.
Robinson was arrested shortly after giving a speech in Calgary, Alberta on Monday.
He has since been released but had his passport seized, according to his social media channel.
Robinson wrote online: “OK I’m free, well, sort of. None of this makes sense, I’m now detained in Calgary, prevented from leaving the city, these conditions stop me from continuing my tour of Canada and meeting with guests for podcasts.
“I’m not even allowed to leave to travel home.”



Hamas delenda est:

Hamas stood firm Tuesday against global pressure that it accept the proposed three-phase deal, stressing that any deal which did not guarantee a permanent ceasefire from the start “was not an agreement.”

The Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh released the statement after his sister was killed during an IDF airstrike in Gaza, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting her to pressure the group to take the deal.

“If [Israel] thinks targeting my family will change our position or that of the resistance, they are delusional,” he said.

 

Why would you put your family in harm's way, @$$hole? 



Kenya shows us how it's done:

Kenyan President William Ruto on Wednesday withdrew planned tax hikes, bowing to pressure from protesters who had stormed parliament, launched demonstrations across the country and threatened more action this week.

The move will be seen as a major victory for a week-old, youth-led protest movement that grew from online condemnations of tax rises into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul, in the most serious crisis of Ruto's two-year-old presidency.
 
But some demonstrators said on social media that despite Ruto's climbdown they would go ahead with a rally planned for Thursday, with many reiterating demands that he resign.


Also - the things that the white left and its financially obese backers refuse to allow are the very things that the little guy needs to survive:

Magatte Wade doesn’t mince words. She tells you what she thinks clearly and right off the bat. And right now, one of the messages the well-known African entrepreneur is most passionate about spreading is that the activists who are looking to shut down the expansion of natural resources are harming low-income people and people in the developing world, particularly her fellow Africans.

The Senegalese businesswoman firmly maintains that expanding access to natural gas is vital to help those in need. “And if you’re not able to come to that simple conclusion, then I want to ask what kind of a human being are you?” Wade said in an interview. “Do you want people to die today to save the planet years down the line?”

The interview was conducted as a follow-up to a presentation she gave to the International Gas Research Conference, which was held last month in Banff, Alta. But her message isn’t geared towards energy-sector experts — it’s aimed at a general audience and the anti-energy activists who sometimes hold sway over the public debate.

Wade hasn’t always voiced these concerns. It was through her experiences as an entrepreneur in the beverage and beauty-care industries that she saw first hand how the climate activists’ anti-energy agenda was making life more difficult for people struggling to bring prosperity to various parts of the world.

“We live with constant — and I mean constant — power outages,” said Wade, speaking of the energy grid in her West African country. “Sometimes the power within a frame of five minutes will go on and off maybe five or six times and in the process ruin our material.”

 


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Tuesday, June 25, 2024

And the Rest of It

A few notes ...

 

What's in YOUR wallet, Chrystia?:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s department confidentially polled Canadians on resentment against “the rich” before announcing an $18 billion hike in the capital gains tax, records show. Freeland, a millionaire, within days of receiving the pollsters’ report began characterizing critics as having “rich friends.”


But ... the floorboards!:

The idea that Catholic nuns oversaw clandestine burials in the school orchard was first put about by a defrocked protestant minister who arrived on the Canadian scene in the late 1990s with stories about murders, kidnappings, the incineration of children and an archipelago of mass graves at residential schools across the country. The Tk’emlúps’ report of May 27, 2021 gave every impression of confirming what had been one of Canada’s most ghastly urban legends.
“This report has caused renewed grief and dismay in Indigenous communities, especially for those who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School and for intergenerational survivors,” according to the Easter covenant’s text. “Many of those grieving are devout Catholics who, with others, are seeking solace, affirmation, and accountability from the Catholic Church.”
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The Tk’emlúps’ May, 2021 statement allowed the term “mass grave” to jump from the realm of macabre conspiracy theory to headlines across the country and around the world. A New York Times headline from the following day: “Horrible History: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada.” CTV News: “The discovery of the mass grave is gripping the nation tonight. . .” The Toronto Star: Mass grave of Indigenous children discovered in Kamloops BC.The CBC: “After childrens’ mass grave found, advocates say it’s time to scan all residential school sites.”
The Trudeau government jumped on the story, calling for a period of national reckoning along the lines of the American soul-searching exercise precipitated by the 2020 murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis police officer. That exercise ended up in waves of violent civil disturbances.
By the time Chief Casimir first tried to set the record straight, five days after its first shocking statement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had already lowered the flag on Parliament Hill and on all flags across the country. They would remain at half-mast for several months, and Ottawa committed $320 million to assist in the search for graves around residential school sites across Canada.
Article content
In her first clarification, Casimir noted that the GPR survey was “very preliminary,” referring to the “initial horrific findings of what potentially could be, they are very preliminary. . . there could very well be children beneath the surface.” Three days later, Casimir was even clearer: “This is not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented.”
However, the waters were muddied the following month when Casimir is recorded as having moved a motion at a gathering of the Assembly of First Nations, referring to “the mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.”
Before 2021 was over, a series of similarly-reported “discoveries” appeared in the news media, one after the other, involving allegations of secret or undisclosed burials of what added up to roughly 1,300 children at old residential-school sites. As it eventually turned out, in each case the confirmed burials were in known cemeteries, and the children’s deaths, almost entirely from infectious diseases, were dutifully recorded. There’s still sparse evidence that there are any “missing children,” strictly speaking, from the residential-school period.
Article content
But the die was cast in Kamloops. Across Canada dozens of churches and shrines were desecrated, vandalized, and in many cases, burned to the ground, perhaps most poignantly old Indian reserve churches beloved of generations of Indigenous Catholics. While it became routine to hear maudlin expressions of discomfort from Trudeau and his ministers, there were riots, statues were toppled, and anti-Catholic hate crimes nearly tripled. In 2021, Statistics Canada noted “the highest number of hate crimes targeting a religion since comparable data have been recorded.”
Last month, Chief Casimir hinted strongly at what could be construed as repentance, or regret, on the third anniversary of the uproars. She announced a “day of reflection” in almost exactly the same words as her initial 2021 statement, describing the same “unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented.” Except this new version referred to “the stark truth” that came to light during the GPR survey as “preliminary findings” confirming that what had been detected were “215 anomalies.”
 
Not good enough. 
She jumped in front of cameras when it suited her. Now, she has had to walk back on the most outrageous claims and after great harm done. 

One of the core supporting elements of the famine claim was a report produced in March by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed project to gauge food insecurity in various parts of the world that’s partially funded by the Canadian government.
It claimed that a famine was imminent, spurring a senior UN official to opine that the alleged famine was “human-made” and “entirely preventable.” Even supposedly credible humanitarian organizations lazily regurgitated the claims. Except there was never a famine, nor anything close to it.
While the IPC report garnered global headlines in March, in early June, the organization produced a follow-up study that has curiously attracted virtually no media coverage.
The authors of the new study, in sharp contrast to alleging an impending famine, admit that the March report “relied on multiple layers of assumptions and inference, beginning with food availability and access in northern Gaza and continuing through nutritional status and mortality.” The organization has now backed away from predicting an imminent famine.
 
Oh, my ... 

Armed militants attacked two Orthodox churches, a synagogue and a traffic police post in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, killing a priest, a church security guard and at least six police officers, Russian state news agency Tass said Sunday.

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that a Russian Orthodox priest and police officers were killed in the “terrorist” attacks.

Dagestan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said a group of armed men fired at a synagogue and a church in the city of Derbent, located on the Caspian Sea.

The attackers fled and a search for them was underway, the statement from the ministry said. Tass reported that the church and synagogue were set on fire in the attack.

 

 

We don't have to trade with China:

Mr. Matas has dedicated nearly two decades to exposing the Chinese regime’s systematic organ harvesting practice.

“Millions of families lost their loved ones to the state crime, which is comparable to the holocaust in World War II,” Mr. Zhang said.



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Canada the Lazy

The lazy attitudes even towards life have resulted in one of the worst political and social disasters the country has ever seen:

A recent report from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) revealed disciplinary actions against nearly 100 employees for various breaches, including serious criminal acts.

The most severe incidents included drugging and raping two foreigners, illegal sales of Canadian mission cars and a senior executive sending inappropriate selfies to women. As a result, 20 employees were terminated, though GAC determined that nearly 100 of its employees had committed breaches last fiscal year.

Those breaches ranged from administrative issues to criminal activities, according to the June 21 report. Some federal employees allegedly arrived to work intoxicated, watched pornography on work devices and used “mouse jigglers” to appear active while presumably away from their desks.


This Global Affairs:

Global Affairs Canada has not updated its human rights reporting on nearly 80 countries since 2019, according to a new report by a national security review body.

The department’s human rights reports are used by other government agencies to help make decisions about sharing information with foreign governments, informing diplomatic activities and directing foreign aid.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) said the list of countries that have not been reviewed includes Ukraine, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Belarus – a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his ongoing invasion of Ukraine – has not been updated since 2015.

Maintaining up-to-date profiles on countries’ human rights records is “vital” given how other government departments and agencies rely on GAC’s assessments, particularly when it comes to sharing information that could result in the mistreatment of foreign nationals abroad, NSIRA warned.

“(The reports) help inform Canada’s international engagement and programming decisions, including foreign policy, development, trade, security and consular activities,” the agency’s latest report, released Thursday afternoon, read.

 

 

It's called propaganda:

Since 2021, federal government departments and agencies have spent at least $1.7 million on influencers, and influencer marketing campaigns and strategies, documents recently tabled in the House of Commons and publicly available contracts show.

It’s just a fraction of what the government otherwise spends on traditional advertising.

“We need to evolve with the times,” Anand, who holds the government’s purse strings, said at a recent press conference.

 

You use those purse strings, Anita!

However, even the slackest of youthful voters who has had to have Liberal censorship laws and migrant values that involve Jew-hatred explained to him realises that if he can't pay rent, his voting for you isn't worth his time.

 

 

Tip, dammit!:

Compared to their U.S. counterparts, Canadians are less likely to tip at higher percentages. Just over a quarter (27 per cent) of Canadians are open to tipping between 16 and 20 per cent, while 38 per cent of Americans are willing to do so. Nearly half (47 per cent) of Canadians prefer to tip between 10 and 15 per cent, with 15 per cent tipping less than 10 per cent.

Besides expectations at restaurants, respondents support tipping delivery drivers (48 per cent) but are less enthusiastic about gratuities when placing an order at cafés (22 per cent) or counters (15 per cent).

From your corner coffee shop to a fine-dining restaurant, auto-tipping prompts on digital screens are commonplace. Despite their ubiquity, the survey suggests that Canadians are overwhelmingly opposed to them, at 77 per cent. On the other end of the spectrum, a small but growing number of spots have adopted no-tipping policies, such as the Michelin-starred Restaurant 20 Victoria in Toronto and Vancouver’s Folke. The data suggests that Canadian diners could get on board with this movement. Tied with Belgium, Canadians feel the most strongly about eliminating tipping, at 34 per cent.

 

Cheap b@$#@rds.


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A Political Upset Stuns Only the Most Dense of Canada's Absolutist Robber-Barons

Last night, Tory candidate Don Stewart routed Liberal favourite, Leslie Church, in the St. Paul by-election (a riding once held by the odious Carolyn Bennett).

No one saw that coming from a traditionally-held Liberal stronghold:


 

None more stunned than Justin the installed leader of the federal Liberals.

 

In typical fashion, he mouthed a standard and unsubstantive word salad that simply cannot hide the arrogance for which he is known:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his party still has a “lot of work to do” following a surprise Conservative victory in the byelection for the Toronto–St. Paul’s riding, which had been a Liberal stronghold for more than three decades.

 “This was obviously not the result we wanted, but I want to be clear that I hear people’s concerns and frustrations,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters during a June 25 press conference in B.C.

 “These are not easy times and it’s clear that I, and my entire Liberal team, have much more work to do to deliver tangible real progress that Canadians across the country can see and feel.”

 

Is that so, Justin?

Let's take a look at the "progress" so far:

This is likely a simple function of Canadian productivity taking a nosedive under Trudeau. The amount of investment per worker — a key indicator of productivity — plummeted almost immediately after Trudeau’s 2015 election and hasn’t recovered. Just last week, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge warned that Trudeau hasn’t once prioritized productivity in his economic policy, and Canadians are now feeling the consequences. ...

Opaque governance was one of the leading criticisms against Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper. Government scientists were “muzzled,” ministers rarely deviated from scripted talking points and Harper himself would go weeks without a single press conference.
“Government and its information must be open by default,” declared Trudeau in an “open letter to Canadians” issued soon after his 2015 swearing-in.
Article content
But a damning 2023 report by Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard concluded that the Canadian access-to-information system had only gotten worse, leading her to conclude that transparency was “not a priority” for the Liberal government.
Also, the scientists still feel muzzled. A 2023 survey of 741 environmental researchers found that 92 per cent felt they had experienced some form of “interference” in their research and public communications. ...
But while those predecessors mostly ignored the issue of rising home prices, Trudeau made “affordable housing” an explicit plank of his 2015 campaign. “Trudeau promises affordable housing for Canadians,” reads the headline from one campaign statement at the time.
Instead, Canadian real estate now charts as the most unaffordable on Earth, raw housing prices have spiked by about 50 per cent in just the last nine years, and rents have effectively doubled.

  

One could go on.


This by-election (which could be spun as insignificant by the wags who were sure that Leslie Church was going to pull this off) could spur one of two things: ramped-up efforts by the Liberals to "win" (SEE: Dong, Han - we know damn well what really happened) or that other ridings will see voter turn-outs to turf the Liberals.



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Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Mid-Week Post

Your pre-summer fun post ...



We don't have to trade with China:

Liberal appointee Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) yesterday said he feared Canadians in “regular contact with a foreign state agent” will be targeted under a new security bill. Woo earlier reacted angrily when asked by reporters if he was a Chinese Communist Party agent: “It is deeply insulting.”

**


The Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) revealed a major intelligence breach on Thursday – the discovery of piles of confidential military documents for sale as scrap at a recycling facility to any passerby for less than three dollars.

The MSS, which established an account on the regime-controlled WeChat online platform last year to pressure civilians into heightened vigilance against alleged threats to the Communist Party, announced that two individuals in charge of disposing of military documents were “dealt with” in response to the incident.

According to the state-run Global Times, the documents were discovered in an undisclosed part of the country by an elderly man named Zhang, who happened to be walking by the recycling facility and saw what appeared to be military documents for sale. Zhang “enjoys collecting military reading materials,” the Global Times detailed, and bought four books for $0.83, or six yuan, out of curiosity.

“When Zhang returned home and started carefully reading the books, he found they were with marked with words such as ‘classified’ and ‘confidential’ and suddenly realized that these materials may be related to state secrets,” the state newspaper detailed. The documents were described as “brand new,” meaning that they did not include outdated military information but, rather, highly sensitive and currently relevant information.

The Chinese government applauded Zhang for notifying Communist Party authorities “without hesitation” and said an investigation is currently ongoing into how the documents arrived in the possession of the recycling center, available to any interested party at a low price.


Or Elizabeth May's name?:


**

Liberal appointee Senator Donna Dasko (Ont.) yesterday questioned whether foreign agents did any harm in the last two general elections. A judicial inquiry ruled May 3 “it is possible” the outcome in a handful of ridings was influenced by the Chinese Communist Party: “Do you think that happened?”

**

For two weeks, the inferred conclusions of “treason” on Parliament Hill derived from an 84-page-report that none of us is allowed to read have only heaped fuel on a garbage fire that began with the leaked revelations of intelligence agency whistleblowers going back to November 2022.
The stinking reek of it all should not be expected to subside any time soon. All the parties in the House now seem content with having the matter kicked over to Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s Foreign Interference Commission. In the short term, if any legislative good comes of the international spectacle Canada’s political class has been making of itself, it will be in the outcome of Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act, which completed third reading in the House of Commons on Thursday.
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Among the milestones on the road to this juncture was the whitewash that the Liberals conscripted “special rapporteur” David Johnston to undertake on their behalf, which ended in June last year when Johnston abdicated in disgrace after the failure of his three-month, $1.9 million exercise in garbage-fire extinguishment. This did nothing but make the smell of it all more nauseating. Another important milestone was last September’s establishment of Justice Hogue’s commission, which the Trudeau government had fought tooth and nail to scuttle. The attempt to head it off failed only because of public outrage and the Liberals’ minority position in the House.
In their testimony during the commission’s hearings earlier this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic Leblanc, National Defence Minister Bill Blair and a gaggle of senior Liberal officials came perilously close to committing perjury in their efforts to pretend they didn’t know what the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had been warning them about for years, and in the attempt to hide what they knew about the role China’s proxies played in their party’s hair’s-breadth 2019 Don Valley North nomination of Beijing-friendly candidate Han Dong.
**
The federal and Saskatchewan governments are stepping in to prevent Canadian rare earth metals from falling into the hands of a Chinese buyer after facing backlash from critics who alleged that allowing the transaction to proceed was anathema to Canada’s critical minerals policy.
Australia-based Vital Metals Ltd. in December announced it was selling its stockpile of rare earths that were mined at the Nechalacho Project in the Northwest Territories to China’s Shenghe Resources Holding Co.,Ltd.
Vital agreed to the transaction after accepting a 10-per-cent equity stake financing from Shenghe.
When Nechalacho was operating, it was the only rare earth mine in Canada, and was promoted by Ottawa as part of this country’s solution to Chinese domination of critical minerals. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a visit to Vital Metals’ processing plant in Saskatchewan in 2023, praised its efforts to set up a Canadian supply chain in rare earth metals, as he pointed out that China is a “challenging partner at the best of times.”
Heather Exner-Pirot, senior fellow and director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute told The Globe and Mail earlier this year that it was “crazy” that Canada was selling its only rare earths stockpile to the Chinese.
But Vital Metals on Monday, in a reversal of its earlier strategy, said that it will not proceed with its plan to sell the stockpile to Shenghe. Instead, it will sell the metal to the Saskatchewan Research Council, an entity that is owned by the Saskatchewan government. Vital said the deal was facilitated by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). Vital is selling the metal for $3-million, or roughly $3.3-million (Australian) which is higher than the $2.6-million (Australian) deal with Shenghe.
Vital Metals in a statement said that Canada recognizes Nechalacho as a “strategic asset that contributes to the country’s prosperity and critical minerals goals.”
The move by both levels of government to intervene in the public markets is another example of the Canadian government taking an increasingly activist stance in bolstering the domestic critical minerals industry and rejecting Chinese investment.
Federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne in late 2022 said that he would only allow Chinese companies to finance Canadian critical minerals companies on an exceptional basis. Ottawa tightened the rules in large part because China has become so powerful in controlling the supply chain of many critical minerals, particularly battery metals such as lithium, cobalt and graphite.

** 

Quelle surprise:

The media was singled out in a recent review by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which Mr. McGuinty chairs.

It highlights how China and India are interfering with Canadian media content through direct engagement with journalists and media executives.

“Foreign interference is definitely in the media, and it is singled out in the review, not only in our most immediate review but in our past review,” Mr. McGuinty told reporters on June 12.

**

It was never about a virus:

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.


Oh, it doesn't end there.

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Chinese forces seized two Philippine rubber boats that were delivering food and other supplies to a military outpost in a disputed South China Sea shoal in a tense confrontation in which some Filipino navy personnel were injured, Philippine security officials said Tuesday.

The United States renewed a warning Tuesday that it is obligated to defend the Philippines, a treaty ally, a day after the hourslong hostilities in Second Thomas Shoal. The shoal has been occupied by a small Philippine navy contingent aboard a long-grounded warship that has been closely monitored by China's coast guard and navy in a yearslong territorial standoff.

There is fear that territorial disputes in the South China Sea, long regarded as an Asian flashpoint, could escalate and pit the United States and China in a larger conflict. China and the Philippines blamed each other for Monday’s hostilities, the most serious in recent months, but provided few details.

A Philippine government task force overseeing the territorial disputes condemned what it said were “dangerous maneuvers, including ramming and towing” which disrupted an effort to transport food, water and other supplies to the Filipinos manning the territorial outpost on the grounded ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, at the shoal. It did not elaborate.

Two Philippine security officials, who had knowledge of the supply mission at the shoal, separately told The Associated Press that two rubber boats manned by Filipino navy personnel had approached the BRP Sierra Madre at the shoal to deliver fresh supplies when several Chinese coast guard personnel on speedboats arrived to disrupt the mission, sparking a scuffle and collisions.

At least eight of the Filipinos were injured, including one who lost a thumb, in the scuffle, said one of the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were under orders not to discuss the high-seas confrontation publicly.

Five of the injured sailors were rescued by one of two Philippine coast guard patrol ships that were waiting at a distance to back up the navy’s supply mission at the shoal. The two rubber supply boats were towed away by Chinese coast guard personnel and then abandoned after being damaged and emptied of their contents, including an unspecified number of rifles, the two officials said. They were later recovered by the Filipino navy, they said.

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Some anti-China protesters said they were treated roughly by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Another scandal erupted when Chinese officials traveling with Li physically blocked an Australian journalist once imprisoned by China from appearing on camera with Li.

The premier is second in power only to China’s dictator Xi Jinping. Li was the first Chinese premier to visit Australia in seven years. He arrived on Saturday and made an appearance at the Adelaide Zoo on Monday, where he promised a new pair of giant pandas would arrive soon. China often uses “panda diplomacy” to either express its anger or soothe hurt feelings by withdrawing or promising pandas to other countries.

Adelaide, the state capital of South Australia, is a major exporter of wine to China. China brought that $800 million trade to a halt in 2020 with heavy tariffs — some of them over 200 percent — along with effective bans on other Australian products like lobster, beef, coal, and lumber.

China imposed these tariffs because the Australian government insisted on asking tough questions about the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus. Tensions also grew over Chinese interference in Australian politics, Australia excluding China’s telecom behemoth Huawei from its 5G networks, and Australia forging closer strategic relationships with the U.S., UK, and Japan.

China lifted the tariffs in March as relations between the two countries thawed, while Australia withdrew complaints it had lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO). China’s embargo on Australian lobster remains in effect, but Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell predicted it would be lifted after Li’s goodwill visit.



But I thought that this was all sorted out:

Newly revised economic data suggests Canada's pledge to bring its defence spending closer to NATO's benchmark is coming off the rails already, a House of Commons committee heard Monday.

A little more than two months after the Liberal government promised to increase its defence spending to 1.76 per cent of the gross domestic product by the end of the decade, a defence analyst told MPs that target likely won't be reached.

The pledge was made in Canada's new defence policy, Our North, Strong and Free, released back in April. It still falls short of NATO's benchmark, which calls on member states to spend at least the equivalent of two per cent of their national GDP on defence and security.

On Monday, NATO issued a report tracking all member countries' projected defence spending for 2024; it forecast Canada would spend 1.37 per cent of its GDP on defence.

"Since [the new defence policy] was published, the [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] economic projections used in that calculation have already been revised upwards for the next two years, which means that [Canada's] share of GDP spent on defence will drop," Dave Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI), told the House of Commons defence committee on Monday.

"As a result, as of today, we are already falling short of the spending as a share of GDP outlined in the policy."



Do you see what happens when you don't collect capital gains taxes?!

Somewhat related - wave the flag for Uncle Fidel:
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Defence Minister Bill Blair said he authorized a Canadian navy vessel to sail into Havana’s harbour last week at the request of navy commanders as part of a mission to demonstrate Canada’s capabilities.
“Their job is to demonstrate our presence there to demonstrate our naval capability and to demonstrate and assert Canada’s commitment to safe and open waters throughout the Americas, that’s why we were there,” he said on Parliament Hill on Monday.
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The HMCS Margaret Brooke docked in Havana with the Cuban government’s approval last Friday. The ship is one of Canada’s new offshore patrol vessels and is a lightly armed ship with the ability to carry a cyclone helicopter. It has now left Havana and is on the way back to Canada.
The ship docked beside a Russian navy missile submarine that was in Cuba at the same time, and was among a fleet of Russian vessels sailing near North America in recent weeks. Blair said the Russian vessels do not appear to be a threat, but he said Canada had dispatched other ships to patrol alongside American ships and keep a close eye on the Russian fleet.
“Canada is committed to maintaining a credible military presence in the sea and in the air around our continent and any foreign actors coming into our neighbourhood can expect to see our armed forces fulfilling their mission to protect Canada’s interest,” he said.
Blair said when he approved the HMCS Margaret Brooke’s trip into Havana the military was aware that the Russian submarine would be docked there at the same time. He said there were classified reasons for sending the ship that he would not share with the public.



No country for anyone: 

Next year, Grade 10 students in British Columbia will be required to learn about the Holocaust as part of their coursework to graduate. It is content the provincial government added to the mandatory curriculum last October, weeks after the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel.
But internal communications among members of the BC Teachers’ Federation, as well as screenshots of deleted social-media posts obtained by The Globe and Mail, show deep division about the current conflict in the Middle East, with some Jewish teachers deeply offended by the actions of other teachers belonging to a social-justice group.
The BCTF endorses and helps finance 31 provincial specialist associations, each representing like-minded educators who share focus areas. The groups facilitate the development of teacher resources and conduct professional-development sessions.
Last week, the council responsible for approving the creation of these associations denied membership to a group of teachers formed to advise on Holocaust and Antisemitism issues. But reporter Xiao Xu was directed to the website of the Anti-Oppression Educators Collective, one of the 31 that does receive funding.
The AOEC prominently displayed the BCTF logo on its homepage. Among the group’s activities was a workshop in April called “Teaching for Palestine,” designed to “guide educators through the complexities of teaching, organizing, and advocating for Palestinian human rights and equality within classrooms and schools.” Screenshots of social-media posts by the group encourage people to show up for pro-Palestinian rallies.
The letter rejecting the Holocaust and Antisemitism Educators Association’s application for specialist designation did not explain reasons, but in a later, unattributed statement on its website, the union said the council determined that existing PSAs “already can and do support the proposed work.”
One of those groups, according to the union, is the AOEC.
BCTF president Clint Johnston said the AOEC was formed to address all forms of discrimination and oppression, including antisemitism. Members of the AOEC have been developing more resources on antisemitism and have expressed an interest in working with members of the HAEA on contributions.
But internal correspondence from last winter between a group of Jewish teachers and the AOEC indicates that could be difficult.
In their letter, the Jewish teachers objected to social-media posts and other materials produced by the AOEC that called for the freeing of all Palestinian prisoners, that referred to Israelis as settler colonialists and declared support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.
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The CBC was flooded with a record number of complaints last year over its Mideast coverage with thousands citing anti-Jewish bias, says a report to the board. Audience complaints numbered 4,785 last year, “a 45 percent increase in volume from 2022.”
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 Canadian Favourability Of Israel:
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The mother of Liri Albag, a 19-year-old female soldier abducted on October 7, shares information about her daughter that she received from Noa Argamani, who was rescued from captivity in Gaza last week.

“Noa said that they were slaves, and so were the [female soldiers], including Liri,” Shira Albag says in a statement. “They cleaned the yard, did dishes and prepared food that they were not allowed to eat.”

She says her daughter was held in a luxury villa and was only allowed to shower after a month in captivity. After 40 days, according to Shira Albag, Liri was moved into Hamas’s network of underground tunnels.

“There it’s much worse, there’s no fresh water, and not much food,” she says, adding that the hostages have no clean clothes and no way to wash and dry their garments, “not even underwear.”





Who has the money to battle a government that wants this woman dead?:

The Calgary dad who desperately wants to block his adult daughter from ending her life through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) has abandoned his appeal of a court ruling saying the procedure can go ahead.
Court records show the lawyer for the father, who can only be identified as W.V., Sarah Miller, filed notices discontinuing two separate appeals of Justice Colin Feasby’s March 25 decision which lifted an injunction blocking the autistic woman’s access to MAiD.
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Reached Wednesday evening, Miller declined to comment on why her client was no longer pursuing legal action to block his daughter’s assisted suicide.
The Court of Appeal on Wednesday released a redacted letter sent by Miller on June 6, indicating she would be discontinuing the appeals as the daughter, M.V., took certain actions.
A court official redacted the portion of Miller’s letter explaining what that action would have to be.
Miller had told the court her client had received information, but what that was was removed from her email.
She went on to say she asked for clarification from lawyers for M.V. and AHS, but hadn’t received further information at the time of her correspondence to the court.
“As such, we write to provide advanced notice and advise the court that should M.V. (redacted content) we will be filing a discontinuation appeal as the question of an injunction will become moot,” the lawyer wrote.
Feasby ordered a stay of his ruling to allow the father to file an appeal, which he did.
Miller then asked the Alberta Court of Appeal to stay the Court of King’s Bench judge’s ruling.



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