Your Wasteful, Craven and Useless Government and You

The Liberals have never met a country that they didn't want ruined:

(Sidebar: even Israel, but especially Canada.)

The federal Liberals are proving that big government does indeed impoverish the populations they govern.

Canada’s in the throes of a seemingly endless cost of living crisis, and while it’s doubtless a consequence of federal policies like mass immigration and the increasingly punitive carbon tax, the country’s over-inflated civil service is an outsized factor.

Since Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were elected in 2015, the federal public sector has swelled by 42 per cent to nearly 370,000 employees. But because the government doesn’t produce revenue for the economy, bureaucrats are remunerated in taxpayer dollars and freshly printed money.

In 2014, the prime minister infamously claimed “the budget will balance itself,” but his government’s reckless spending has maintained upward pressure on inflation — which Statistics Canada says surged by over 19 per cent between 2015 and 2022. During this period, 31 per cent more executive-level bureaucrats were hired, and their total compensation surged by 42 per cent from $1.4 billion to $1.9 billion, with their average salaries growing from $193,600 to $208,480.

The government confoundingly hired 635 new public executives between 2020 and 2021, when it shut down the economy because of COVID-19. At the same time, billions were printed for income subsidies that were often excessive or poorly targeted. In total, the Fraser Institute estimates that “COVID fiscal waste” will accumulate to $110 billion by 2032.

Moreover, the auditor general found in 2022 that $4.6 billion in Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and other payments went to ineligible recipients (dead Canadians, prisoners and children), and $27.4 billion was deemed worthy of a government investigation. Another $9.9 billion in COVID subsidies was linked to more than 51,000 ineligible employers.

The federal government’s deficit per employed Canadian was $1,246 before 2015, but it’s since nearly tripled to $3,482. It’s worth noting the post-2015 deficit per employed person would be much higher without Canada’s recent population boom, prompting the question: are the feds bloating the population through immigration, even though it’s immiserating Canadians, because they’ve lost control of the deficit?

Whether through scandals like ArriveCan or generally pointless transfers, Liberals overspend with predictable results.

There is a causal link between unchecked spending and the price of consumer goods — the larger the former, the more expensive the latter. Moreover, as is the case with the carbon tax, consumer prices are increasing in Canada, and will continue to through 2030 when the tax reaches $170 per metric ton from today’s $80 per metric ton. This is affecting the production and transportation of everything from simple goods to livestock.

The latest StatCan data revealed consumers paid 2.4 per cent more for groceries in August than they did 12 months earlier, with meat and dairy increasing by 6.8 and 3.3 per cent, respectively, while beef prices grew by 7.4 per cent. The carbon tax raising livestock premiums is doubtless at play here.

Financial strain is metastasizing among Canadians, who are taxed to the hilt, while their buying power is eroding. Credit rating agency Equifax, noting that consumer debt grew by $2.5 trillion year-over-year in the second quarter of 2024, surmises that multigenerational households are growing in number due to economic strife. The growth is preponderantly driven by credit card debt increasing by 13.7 per cent to $122 billion, averaging a 17-year high of more than $4,300 per consumer.

Consumers’ waning spending habits and mounting debt signify they’re struggling to meet basic living needs, elucidating the depth of Canada’s cost of living crisis. But it didn’t occur in a vacuum.

 

 

Why would I want a foreign-owned toy car that will explode like an EV in a Florida flood?:

Canadian taxpayers must "rally around" Northvolt, the Swedish electric vehicle battery manufacturer, despite significant setbacks, including confirmed job cuts at its Swedish operations, said Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

Blacklock's Reporter says his comments came following Northvolt’s announcement of 1,600 layoffs, which the company attributed to "headwinds in the automotive market."

“We have to rally around them and help them,” Champagne emphasized to reporters, expressing his hope for Northvolt’s long-term success. “I hope we all want them to be successful.”

Champagne drew comparisons to other industry giants like Tesla, which took 17 years to turn a profit. “Look at Uber, how long it took,” he added, stressing that challenges are inevitable for groundbreaking projects.

“What’s important is we managed to get Québec into the automobile industry,” Champagne said, calling it a "big gain" for Canada.

(Sidebar: not even a gain for Quebec.)

“Now are you telling me there can’t be adjustments? You’re going from a technology that we’ve been doing for 100 years and now we’re looking at the next 100 years.”

In response to concerns about how the Swedish layoffs might affect Northvolt’s Canadian project, Champagne downplayed the impact, stating, “It concerns Sweden.”

He reassured that such hurdles are expected in long-term ventures, citing the 10- to 50-year timelines investors and managers typically consider.

 

 

Quebec is special:

Bill C-319’s second reading on Oct. 18, 2023, saw the Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives vote in favour and the Liberal Party vote against it.

During a debate on Oct. 4 that year, Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk said the bill is “not in sync with the demographic information we have.”

“I don’t negotiate in public, but I speak with all of the House leaders from all of the political parties ... on a regular basis, and that’s my job as the House leader to try and make this minority Parliament work,” Liberal House Leader Karina Gould told CTV on Sept. 25.

(Sidebar: you're lazy, Karina.)

While debating the legislation on Sept. 25, Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, without explicitly stating whether the government would support Bill C-319, said the government is “very much in tune with the needs of seniors, and we will continue to look at ways to support them.”

 

He was blowing smoke.

Quelle surprise:

Back in May, the Liberal/NDP’s Housing Minster Sean Fraser was traipsing across the country saying he would “actually solve” the housing crisis in Canada by building 3.9 million homes by 2031.  

That works out to about 488,000 new homes that Fraser expects to have built every year from 2024 to 2031 to “actually solve” the problem. 

To coin a couple of old adages, a new report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows Fraser was a day late and a dollar short, dreaming the impossible dream. 

To coin a new name for the Liberal’s plan for solving the housing shortage, let’s go with ‘Fraser’s Follies’ because that’s what it is. 

In its 2024 Housing Supply Report, CMHC said, “Total housing starts in the six largest census metropolitan areas rose by 4% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. The level of new construction (68,639 units) was the second strongest since 1990. However, when adjusted for population size, combined housing starts were close to the historical average and weren’t enough to meet growing demographic demand.” 

“Given the long history of supply not keeping up with demographic demand this level of activity is not enough to reduce the existing supply gap and improve affordability for Canadians.”  

The busiest construction time of the year is rapidly coming to a close, but let's be generous and say Canada’s builders are on pace to start 140,000 new homes in the country’s six largest cities this year, well short of Fraser’s Follies of 488,000 per year, nation-wide. 

But starts are only an indication of what the final outcome might be because the numbers that really count are completions and a number of variables, from labour to finances to the weather and more, play a significant role in how long the starts-to-completion phase can be. 

To shine some light on it, most of the starts in Canada this year and in the future, according to the CMHC report, will be apartments in low- and high-rise buildings. If we include the amount of time added by the bureaucratic gatekeepers at the municipal level for permits and approvals, a 20-storey apartment building can take anywhere from five to seven years to reach the completion stage.  

This time frame may or may not include the caveat that builders of high-rise buildings won’t receive financing until, depending on the situation, 50% to 75% of the apartments in the building have been sold and deposits received.

 

Only one's political superiors can eat meat:

Private member’s bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, was introduced in 2022 by Liberal backbencher MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. It would “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture” and enforce the “production of alternative proteins.”

The bill on September 17 began its second reading in the Senate. The House of Commons completed its third reading of C-293 June 5. The NDP supported the Liberals in pushing it through, while the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois opposed it. It was then passed onto the Senate, which completed its first reading the next day, on June 6. It is unclear when the second reading will be completed.

 

The very country that brags about its bloated and ineffective institution:

“This exodus of young nurses has been worsening for the past decade, contributing to our health care woes.” said MEI economist and co-author of the publication, Emmanuelle B. Faubert, in a news release.

A Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) survey found the most common reasons nurses leave is due to staffing levels, workload, and a lack of work-life balance.

 

 

Stop trying to rehabilitate your flagging career.

You let the blackface-wearing moron destroy this country:

Former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau is criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his office, saying that he was "never sure" if something conveyed to the Prime Minister's Office "ever got to the prime minister's ears."

In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live airing Sunday, he said he felt the PMO "acted as a bit of a filter," and that certain ministers had closer access to Trudeau, like childhood friends.

"There are occasions when a minister wants to talk directly to the prime minister. And I never felt, despite the fact that he said his door was always open, that was really something that he invited," he told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.

 

 

Oh, he's not the only one:

Earlier intelligence reports presented at the commission and summarized in the commission’s May 3 interim report say that international students were bused in to the 2019 Liberal nomination contest of Toronto’s Don Valley North riding in support of Han Dong, who went on to win the nomination and subsequently won in the 2019 election to become MP in the Liberal stronghold.

The intelligence reports said the international students had been supplied with falsified documents by a proxy of China, and had been told to support Dong’s nomination under threat by the Chinese consulate. Dong, who now sits as an Independent MP, has denied any wrongdoing. He hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

Other cases of foreign interference reported in the CSIS document released on Sept. 27 include Pakistani officials attempting to “clandestinely influence Canadian federal politics,” and Indian proxy agents being suspected of providing financial assistance to support specific candidates from three parties in federal elections.

Somewhat related:

China-backed cyber criminals hijacked nearly 10,000 devices in Canada and used them to hack government, university and critical infrastructure networks and steal confidential data, according to the FBI.

 

And:

Chinese-language media in Canada are playing a key role in promoting pro-Beijing narratives and facilitating censorship within the Chinese diaspora, according to recently released intelligence assessment.

Chief Electoral Officer of Canada Stéphane Perrault was asked at the inquiry on Sept. 24 about the report’s concerns that the Beijing regime “controls narratives by limiting opportunities for dissenting voices” by providing economic incentives and fostering self-censorship in its efforts to influence electoral outcomes.

Perrault said the Canada Elections Act’s foreign interference provisions contain exceptions for media content but agreed the activities could be a concern if economic incentives were involved and that they could violate foreign third party contribution rules.

 

 Rather, you don't think that it is your job to deal with this.

Because Japan:

I recently spent two weeks in Japan, including visits to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, where I noticed zero litter — not a cigarette butt, not a coffee cup — and just one person sitting on the curb apparently intoxicated. A police officer had him detained at that very moment. I went on dozens of subway rides without feeling unsafe once.

Japan convinced me that Canadians don’t need to accept so much urban disorder. Addicts deserve compassion and treatment, but there are no excuses for letting them destroy our downtowns, to say nothing of themselves.

So what’s Japan doing differently? Enforcement of strict laws against drug possession seems to be the solution. Japan has convinced me, despite my strong civil libertarian leanings, that it’s time to end the failed decriminalization experiment and treat possession of hard drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine as crimes again.

The prevailing viewpoint among Canadian experts is that we should treat drug addiction only as a health issue, not as a crime. As a result, drugs were officially decriminalized in British Columbia and unofficially decriminalized in many other places with a new focus on “harm reduction.” They have now been officially recriminalized in B.C. but even if technically illegal there is no sign yet of a zero-tolerance approach.

 

Never forget that Canadians are lazy in many respects.

That sort of thing does not fly in Japan. 

Because Canadian citizenship means nothing and Justin invited them here:

In 2016, the federal Liberal government dropped requirements that travellers from Mexico obtain visa to come to Canada, a requirement imposed by the previous Conservative government. Canada’s intake of asylum seekers from Mexico more than doubled each year from 2016 to 2023.

Canada also succeeded in closing the Roxham Road border crossing in Quebec last spring, where irregular migrants from third countries had been walking into Canada after first finding their way to the U.S. That preceded a sharp increase in arrivals at airports in Ontario and Quebec, according to federal data. At around the same time, the federal government implemented measures to speed up its processing of visitor visas to clear up a mounting backlog. It quietly dropped requirements that passengers arriving here by air from certain countries demonstrate they are just visiting, for instance by proving they had a return ticket home and funds in a bank account.

It proved to be a hugely consequential move that coincided with the surge in asylum claims.

Migrants are using the Montreal and Toronto airports as landing points because they’re Canada’s two biggest hubs for international flights.

 

Was It Something He Said and Did?

Probably:

A new Postmedia-Leger poll has found that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is popular only with an ever-dwindling coterie of hardcore Liberal voters, with every other voter demographic wanting him gone. ...

Virtually every voter cohort covered by the poll disapproved of Trudeau’s performance as prime minister, often by huge margins.

Disapproval of Trudeau was the one issue that united every conceivable demographic in roughly equal margins; women and men (64 vs. 65 per cent), rural and urban (71 vs. 64 per cent) and even under-35s and senior citizens (66 vs. 64 per cent).

The only exception was those who identified as Liberal supporters. In that group, the approval rate was a whopping 83 per cent, against just 15 per cent who disapproved.

Among the other parties, the numbers were reversed. Even among NDPers, 57 per cent disapproved of Trudeau, against just 37 per cent who approved.

Meanwhile, the share of Liberal supporters just keeps getting smaller.

Only 24 per cent of those surveyed expressed an intention to vote Liberal in the next election. While this isn’t quite the lowest the Liberals have ranked in an opinion poll, it still puts them in line for a gutting defeat at the hands of the Conservatives in the next election.

 

That might be why the Tories want another go at unseating him.

 

Merry Orange Day

It's like Kwanzaa but in Canada!

Let us  reflect on the undercurrents that drive this made-up holiday:

On Thursday, NDP MP Leah Gazan tabled a bill that would send the whole spectrum of residential school “denialists” — and downplayers — to jail for up to two years. Anyone who is caught publicly “misrepresenting facts” about residential schools, or “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying” them, in the course of wilfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples, could be found guilty if Bill C-413 passes. 

There are, of course, limits that the bill’s proponents will be especially keen to point out. The draft crime comes with a set of draft defences: truth, good-faith religious discourse, public interest and communication of hateful materials. Beyond that, courts have established (albeit foggy) limits to hate-promotion crimes as well — “Only the most intense forms of dislike” are in scope, and considerations must be made for the circumstances, tone and audience of the speech in question. 

But it’s hard to feel much confidence that these limits will hold, considering how fast we’re headed down the slippery slope, which is more of an inevitability than a fallacy.

Under this silly MP's proposed law, statements like these ... :

Around the time of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, social media users re-shared posts which falsely claim that in 1964 Queen Elizabeth took 10 children from Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia, Canada on a picnic and the children were never seen again. The monarch did not visit Kamloops in 1964 and Reuters found no credible reports relating to these claims, which seemingly stem from a conspiracy theorist.

**

The documentary’s premise is that the Williams Lake community on the Sugarcane Reserve secretly knew, for decades, that Catholic priests at St. Joseph’s impregnated their female students and then disposed of unwanted babies in the school incinerator.

**

The Cowessess people noted from the outset that they didn’t discover any graves; the crosses and headstones had gone missing under disputed circumstances decades earlier, and ground-penetrating radar had been brought in to enumerate and pinpoint the location of each burial. Cowesses Chief Cadmus Delorme told CBC News: “This is a Roman Catholic grave site. It’s not a residential school grave site.”

** 

Three years after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the discovery of 215 potential unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, no human remains have been recovered, and there is no public accounting for the $7.9 million allocated for the investigation, according to a report by Blacklock's Reporter.

** 

Casimir described the same “unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented,” only this time it was that “the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of 215 anomalies were detected.” (emphasis mine).

Anomalies, not “the remains of 215 children.”

... will never questioned.

One cannot get anything for nothing:

Ontario's only First Nation representative at Queen's Park plans to soon table proposed legislation, in his own Indigenous language, to have the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation declared a paid provincial holiday.

 

 

Mine cause is holier than thine cause:

Hundreds of students from 15 schools within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) attended a field trip on Sept. 18. The goal of the trip was to raise students’ awareness about the Indigenous community’s “efforts to address mercury contamination and advocate for their rights regarding mining and logging activities within their territory.” Parents were assured that their children would not participate in the “rally” but would “observe and learn from the presentations and discussions.”

This all became unhinged when the Grassy Narrows River Run Rally was hijacked by anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and students were co-opted into their ideologically driven demonstration.

The demonstrators hijacked the tragedy of Grassy Narrows to promote their own political agenda. Since when do we allow this? This is not education; it’s an attempt at indoctrination. Indigenous suffering was trivialized and used in the service of someone else’s false dogma. It was as galling as it was evil.

 

But students shouldn't be dragged into an issue they know nothing of.

School is for learning the rudiments of academics and ultimately how to think for one's self.

That's the going theory anyway. 

One should not be surprised at this hijacking.

When a wheel squeaks loudly enough, it will get the grease. 

Then there is this:

Let's declare #SophiaPooleyDay every year just before Canada's 'National Day for Truth and Reconciliation'

This will remind all that there must be truth before reconciliation is possible - and that many of the indigenous tribes of Canada practiced slavery, cannibalism, human… pic.twitter.com/ox9yhbMU0W

— DonaldBest.CA * DO NOT COMPLY (@DonaldBestCA) September 28, 2024

Let's not forget:

Justin Trudeau has done lip service, photo opportunities with First Nations for political gains or for a seat on some United Nations council (not to mention the millions wasted for this failed bid) — either to embarrass Canada and Canadians for being racist, bigoted, prejudice or out right genocidal.

Does the PM not remember the White Paper that his father wrote upon the Residential Schools in the early 70s? Or the fact that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Prime Minister during the time of the Residential schools? Or is that forgotten because he wants to portray his father as a great Quebec separatist as he is himself?

This Justin:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Tofino, B.C., with his family Thursday, as Canadians marked the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, his office has confirmed.

Though Trudeau's daily itinerary initially stated he was in "private meetings" in Ottawa, it was later updated to note he was in Tofino.

 

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week snack-run ...

What. A loser:

No one cares what Justin Trudeau has to say, not even at the UN where he gave his globalist ideologies filled speech to an empty room with a few staffers. pic.twitter.com/IOqta3pCMf

— Kirk Lubimov (@KirkLubimov) September 23, 2024

Don't be smug, Peter Pan.

You don't have anything to bribe the Bloc with:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s first non-confidence motion of the fall session was defeated by 211 to 120 votes on Wednesday after the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Greens voted against it, ensuring that the Liberal minority in the House continues to govern. ...

“Standing up to bullies requires us to call them out on their crap sometimes, and that is what I will do,” he said.

(Sidebar: says the pansy who ran away from the truckers he insulted at a distance.)

**

The Bloc Québécois has drawn its line in the sand. If the Liberals don’t pass two of its private member’s bills to increase support for seniors and protect supply management by Oct. 29, it says it will actively work to bring down the government. 

“If it’s not passed, we’re going to talk to the other opposition (parties) with a view to bringing down the government,” Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said at a news conference on Parliament Hill Wednesday.

This after supporting the pansy.

This is extortion and this country-destroying party knows it.

Canada is not a democracy. It is a collection of craven thieves conspiring against other thieves.

Speaking of thieves:

Indigenous contracting is rife with unscrupulous practices by “token Indians,” a director of the Assembly of First Nations yesterday told MPs. The Commons governments operations committee is investigating incidents of fake claims to take advantage of an Indigenous set-aside in procurement: “This is huge.”

The MP who tried blotting out her applause for a Ukrainian Nazi denounces the people who question the media her government bribes:

Criticism of media is an attack on Canada, Government House Leader Karina Gould said yesterday. Gould’s comments followed an on-air apology by CTV National News for deceptively editing comments by Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre: “By attacking the media he is attacking Canadians.”

It was never his job to do his job. Not now, not ever:

Elections Canada does not automatically verify that political donors comply with federal law, Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault disclosed yesterday. Testifying at the Commission on Foreign Interference, Perrault said he relied on the general public to spot illegal foreign donors: “We have asked questions, for example, if we see a cheque from a foreign bank.”

You have told Canadians that the greatest good is never to have children and don't keep grandmother alive.

Don't worry - we have cheap labour to have all of those babies no one likes:

Canada’s fertility rate, which has been steadily declining, has hit a record low and the country is now among the “lowest-low” fertility nations.

Statistics Canada released new data on Wednesday showing that the Canadian fertility rate in 2023 was 1.26 children per woman, which is the lowest recorded level since the agency began collecting data.

The record-low fertility rate was registered across the country in 10 of the 13 provinces and territories.

Fertility rate is an estimate of the average number of live births a woman can be expected to have in her reproductive life, according to StatCan.

In 2022, the fertility rate had already fallen to a record low of 1.33 children per woman. But that record has now been broken again.

“This decline from 2022 to 2023 mostly reflects an increase in the number of women of childbearing age in 2023, as the number of births was similar in both years,” StatCan said.

In total, 351,477 babies were born in Canada last year, which is similar to the number from 2022.

Let's put this in perspective: of the number of live births last year, how many are from native-born Canadians? This year alone, 13,000 students claimed asylum and none of them are going to leave.

Why people home-school:

More than a hundred protesters gathered in front of the Toronto District School Board headquarters on Tuesday to denounce a recent school field trip that turned into an anti-Israeli rally.

Protesters who gathered outside the building on Yonge Street waved Israeli and Canadian flags and held placards that read “Keep our kids out of your politics,” “We’ve lost trust in TDSB,” and “Hey teacher! Leave us alone,” among other slogans. The protesters called on the Ontario government to immediately fire those responsible for allowing students from 15 Toronto schools to take part in a protest held in downtown Toronto on Sept. 18.

Article content

“We’re here today because the Toronto District School Board has failed to protect our children, and they must all be relieved of their duties,” Amir Epstein told the protesters. Epstein is the executive director of Tafsik Organization, a Jewish advocacy group that organized the rally.

“Teachers put children as young as eight years old in harm’s way,” he said. “Countless pro-Palestinian rallies have resulted in violence and arrest. Everyone has seen these protests. No normal person would think to bring their children to such a place…. Yet, teachers, administrators, principals of the Toronto District School Board did.”

Last week, students attended a rally in support of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, a community in northwest Ontario that has long suffered from mercury pollution caused by a pulp mill that operated more than 50 years ago. Students were to attend the Grassy Narrows River Run, a march that started at Grange Park in downtown Toronto, but parents were reportedly told they would not be participating.

However, social media video emerged showing students at a rally chanting anti-Israel slogans, including “From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”

This can't be good:

Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.

IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists, according to one of the documents, a report that Kupol sent to the Russian defence ministry earlier this year outlining its work.

Kupol told the defence ministry in a subsequent update that it was able to produce drones including the G3 at scale at a factory in China so the weapons could be deployed in the "special military operation" in Ukraine, the term Moscow uses for the war.

Kupol, Almaz-Antey and the Russian defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment for this article. China's foreign ministry told Reuters it was not aware of such a project, adding that Beijing had strict control measures on the export of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Hand in glove, ladies and gentlemen.

Also:

When the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s former close allies sought to travel through the Northwest Passage to Alaska, the Canada Border Services Agency instead demanded he sail 1,000 nautical miles off course in an attempt to get permission for the voyage.

The 26-metre yacht Firebird is owned by Andrey Yakunin, the son of Vladimir Yakunin, who was a loyal Kremlin ally and president of the Russian Railways until his son applied for British citizenship a decade ago. The younger Yakunin, who now lives in Italy, attempted to make his journey at a time when tensions have risen between Canada and Russia over the invasion of Ukraine and tit-for-tat sanctions put in place by both countries.

Afuera!:

Argentine President Javier Milei used his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to deliver an enthusiastic condemnation of “globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda” and warn that the U.N. flagship Agenda 2030 is a threat to global freedom.

Are we still afraid to call a terrorist a terrorist?:

Yariv Mozer, the director of We Will Dance Again, a documentary film about the Nova festival, said that he had to agree with the BBC to not describe Hamas as a terrorist organization if he wanted it to air, according to an interview he gave to The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

The film, which is set to broadcast on the BBC today, contains unseen footage of the Hamas massacre at the festival on October 7. It was commissioned by BBC Storyville.

Mozer told The Hollywood Reporter that this was a concession he had to make if he wanted the film to be seen by the British public.

**

Muslim militants slit the throats of about 26 people inside a church: "All non-Muslim men over the age of 12 were separated out before being killed." — acnuk.org, August 30, 2024, Burkina Faso.

"So let everyone know that the role of Christians in Lebanon has ended! You have become a minority in this country, and yet you still hold high positions... Nobody would accept this issue. The coming generations will... not accept that the president must be Christian; he must be a Sunni Muslim or Shi'ite." — Reda Saad, pro-Hezbollah commentator, x.com, August 18, 2024.

"We informed the police about the accused, but they still did not take any action, giving sufficient time to Asad to convert the minor child and contract an Islamic marriage with her.... Fairy is just 12 years old. She had no access to a cell phone and rarely went out of the home by herself...." — Parveen Shaukat, mother of Fairy Shaukat,12, abducted, converted and married by Muhammad Assad; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.

"The accused not only kidnapped the child, he converted her and contracted an Islamic marriage to save himself from prosecution [a common practice by kidnappers to sexually exploit underage non-Muslim girls]." — Sumera Shafique, Christian attorney; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.

"Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt." — Coptic Solidary report, "'Jihad of the Womb': Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt", copticsolidarity.org, September 10, 2020, Egypt.

On August 5, a Muslim migrant from North Africa was arrested for robbing a church in Turin. There were many other acts of arson, desecration (including of a Christian cemetery), statue breaking, and thefts targeting churches in Italy throughout the month of August — torinotoday.it, August 6, 2024, Italy.

On Sunday, Aug. 18, a mob consisting of local officials forcibly dragged a Christian pastor from his church and sealed off its site on the dubious claim that the place had originally belonged to the government.... "What was disappointing was those people who closed my church were my friends...." — morningstarnews.org, September 3, 2024, Indonesia.

On Aug. 30, a massive fire "broke out" in the Coptic Christian Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building's contents.... [T]his is only the latest of many churches in Egypt to be torched and immediately attributed to "faulty wires" and other natural causes. In one month alone, August 2022, a full 11 churches reportedly "caught fire."... Also "interesting" is that "accidental" fires in mosques—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 40 to 1—are completely unheard of." — copticslodarity.org, September 2, 2024, Egypt.




 

Your Awful, Spineless, Hypocritical, Back-Stabbing, Wasteful, Vile, Vapid Government and You

Has this country had enough?:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has reaffirmed his commitment to the United Nations’ 2030 agenda and pledged $5 billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars in attempts to achieve it. 

The UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocates group, co-chaired by Trudeau, strives to end world hunger and poverty, achieve net zero emissions, and have universal education and healthcare programs. 

Trudeau urged his fellow delegates to work with the UN and other institutions to “renew our commitment to the sustainable development agenda for 2030.”

 

When Trump resumes his presidency in November,one of the first things he should do is withdraw the US and its funding from the UN.

Let's see where this horrid agenda is then. 

 

I'm just going to leave this here:

More than one-third (36 per cent) of Canadian women between the ages of 18-44 were in the Trump camp — a rate way higher than the 21 per cent of over-44 women who backed Trump. 

And young Canadian men emerged as the single most pro-Trump demographic in the poll. The survey saw a majority (52 per cent) of under-44 Canadian men vote Trump over Biden. 

This was higher even than the Trump support found within respondents who identified as Conservatives; those Canadians only picked Trump over Biden in 50 per cent of case.  

According to the most recent U.S. polls, Canadian young people seem to like Trump even more than their U.S. equivalents. A YouGov poll from last week found Trump polling in the mid-30s for under-44 voters.  

The Spark Advocacy results would seem to jibe with a growing body of evidence that young Canadians are stampeding towards the Conservatives.

Now to these Karens:

Three former Canadian premiers – at least two of whom have at one point denounced the perils of “American-style politics” – have been announced as the face of a new movement seeking to recruit Canadians for American politics. 

The group “Canadians for Kamala” announced Thursday it had been endorsed by former B.C. premier Christy Clark, former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, and former Alberta premier Rachel Notley. 

The group is seeking Canadian citizens to assist with the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Specifically, the Canadians would act as volunteer canvassers in Philadelphia.

“Hear why we’re coming together to rally behind Vice President Kamala Harris and how you can take action as a volunteer,” reads a Canadians for Kamala social media post.

 

Why would anyone want to do a thing like that? 

 

Palms must be greased:

Only days after former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney was appointed as a special advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it has emerged that Carney’s company is soliciting billions in federal dollars for a new investment fund.

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This week, it was reported that Brookfield Asset Management — of which Carney is the sitting chair — is pitching Ottawa on a $50 billion asset fund that would be seeded by as much as $10 billion in federal dollars.

This means that Carney is taking on a new job at the right hand of the prime minister at the precise moment that he oversees a company seeking to secure one of the largest contributions of federal cash in the country’s history.

 

 

It's just money:

Only two of over 100 federal government departments and agencies say they made efforts to identify and sanction staff who illegitimately applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

According to data tabled in the House of Commons Monday, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) are the only two government organizations that investigated and ultimately fired some of their employees who simultaneously received CERB while being employed by the federal government.

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They are incidentally also the two organizations that administered the $2,000-per-week benefit that was implemented as an emergency financial aid for workers who lost their job due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

In June, Conservative MP Adam Chambers asked each government organization if they had initiated or requested a review to ensure none of their workers had made “possible fraudulent claims” for CERB.

 

Because transparency:

On Wednesday, Government House Leader Karina Gould called on Speaker Greg Fergus to reject opposition parties’ claim that the government violated MPs’ parliamentary privilege by refusing to provide them with unfettered access to thousands of documents regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC).

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“Mr. Speaker, we are in uncharted territory with this matter,” Gould said in the House of Commons chamber. “The House has exceeded its authority in ordering the production of documents not for its own use or the use of members of Parliament, but rather exclusive to, and for the use of, a third party.”

On Monday, Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer accused the government of disobeying an order from MPs and asked Fergus to find that the government appeared to be in contempt of the wide-ranging powers of the House of Commons.

“The government has disobeyed a lawful order of this House. It has failed to provide all of the papers which were formally required by this House and, in so responding, many papers were altered or outright suppressed through the redaction process,” he said at the time.

Both the Bloc Québécois and NDP have since supported his call for Fergus to rule that the government appeared to have violated MPs’ parliamentary privilege.

The Speaker is now tasked with ruling on the issue that is becoming a serious test of the limits of the constitutional powers of the House of Commons. If he finds that the government appears to have violated MPs’ privilege, it will be up to Parliamentarians to decide next steps.

 

 

Marc Miller is a disgusting human being:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller accused the premiers of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Alberta of weaponizing a working group on asylum seekers and distorting the issue for their own political gains.

Who is cramming Canada with unskilled cheap labour and then moving that labour away from Liberal enclaves, Marc? 

Also:

Court documents filed in the case of a Pakistani man arrested in Quebec for an alleged plot to kill Jews in New York City reveal the RCMP didn’t have enough evidence to hold him in Canada.

The RCMP arrested Muhammad Shahzeb Khan on Sept. 4 in Ormstown, Que., as he allegedly prepared to cross the nearby border into the United States.

U.S. officials have charged Khan, 20, with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a terrorist organization — the Islamic State — and they are seeking to have him extradited to stand trial in the Southern District of New York.

Only Justin can live like a member of the House of Bourbon:

Will someone please offer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a job? Preferably, a nice sinecure at an NGO in another country that’s subsidized by Liberal donors.

The Canadian electorate — and now even his NDP sidekick Jagmeet Singh — are fed up with him. Earlier this month, Singh pulled out of a deal to prop up the Liberals, then ensured their political survival by pledging not to support a non-confidence motion that, if passed, would trigger an election. Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the same.

“New Democrats came to Ottawa to get stuff done, to work for people, to fight for people, not to play Pierre Poilievre‘s games,” Singh said. “We’re not going to let Pierre Poilievre tell us what to do.”

An election must be held a year from now by law, but Trudeau’s departure cannot come soon enough. He won’t resign, despite terrible polls, because he doesn’t have any career prospects. It now appears that he will make a deal with the separatists to stay in power.

The Trudeau years from 2015 to 2024 will be known as Canada’s “lost years.” Trudeau’s policies have unnecessarily bruised the country’s main wealth generator: resource production. His immigration policies have been hare-brained and contributed to the housing affordability problem and the crisis in health care.

Then there’s the “alarming state of federal finances,” as described by Fraser Institute analysts Jake Fuss and Grady Munro in April.

“The Trudeau government tabled its 2024 budget earlier this month and the contents of the fiscal plan laid bare the alarming state of federal finances. Both spending and debt per person are at or near record highs and prospects for the future don’t appear any brighter,” they wrote.

The Trudeau government estimates that program spending will reach $483 billion by 2024/25 and hit $542 billion by 2028/29 — an increase of 18.4 per cent from this year’s level, according to the Fraser Institute.

“Prime Minister Trudeau has already recorded the five highest levels of federal program spending per person (adjusted for inflation) in Canadian history from 2018 to 2022. Projections for spending in the 2024 budget assert the prime minister is now on track to have the eight highest years of per-person spending on record by the end of the 2025/26 fiscal year,” wrote Fuss and Munro.

“Per-person federal spending is expected to equal $11,901 this year. To put this into perspective, this is significantly more than Ottawa spent during the global financial crisis in 2008 or either world war. It’s also about 28 per cent higher than the full final year of Stephen Harper’s time as prime minister, meaning the size of the federal government has expanded by more than one quarter in a decade.”

Accompanying this ruinous spree are dramatic increases in government debt. “Between 2015 and 2024, Ottawa is expected to run 10 consecutive deficits, with total gross debt set to reach $2.1 trillion within the next 12 months,” they wrote. “By the end of the current fiscal year, each Canadian will be burdened with $12,769 more in total federal debt (adjusted for inflation) than they were in 2014/15.”

Trudeau’s track record in other areas is also abysmal. The country’s military has been degraded, our influence internationally has diminished and high taxes plague businesses and civil society. It’s little wonder that Trudeau’s face was not featured on Liberal election signs in Montreal before the recent by-election, which the Grits lost.

It’s enough already.

**

Last week, Postmedia’s Bryan Passifiume used flight tracker data to calculate the precise number of kilometres that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau logged by private jet over the course of the summer.

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He found that between June 1 and Sept. 12, Trudeau logged 92,104 kilometres of jet travel across 58 different trips (scroll to the bottom of this story for a complete table of Passifiume’s findings).

On average, Trudeau was in the air at least once every two days, and his total summer air miles would have been enough to circle the globe twice over. Or, alternatively, those 92,000 km could have been used to take him between Vancouver and St. John’s, Nfld., more than 18 times.

In those three months, Trudeau also logged more air miles than the year’s first seven months put together.

In terms of how much fossil fuel this requires, the best estimate using the Canadian Armed Forces’ own internal cost tables is that Trudeau’s summer schedule required the burning of just under 300,000 litres of fuel.  

Trudeau travels in one of two aircraft flown by the RCAF. There’s the CC-144 Challenger, which is essentially a private jet whose commercial model has seating for 12 passengers. And for overseas travel, the prime minister takes an Airbus CC-150 Polaris.

According to the most recent Cost Factors Manual published by the Canadian Armed Forces, the Challenger burns 1,172 litres of fuel for every hour it’s in the air.  The Polaris, meanwhile, burns 5,860 litres of fuel per hour. 

 

Interesting.

Now there is this:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department commissioned in-house polling that asked Canadians if they were willing to pay a green surtax on air tickets or take fewer flights. 

(Sidebar: this Steven Guilbeault.)

The research made no mention of frequent travel by public office holders despite Cabinet's 2023 promise to reduce its air travel budget, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“The department wanted to measure the public opinion of Canadians on a wide variety of issues,” said an omnibus public opinion research survey.

“The surveys are a quick mechanism to understand stated behaviour or future behaviour, perceptions and attitudes of the Canadian public. Departmental teams are able to use this information to shape communications, policies and strategies.”

A majority of Canadians surveyed said they did not book any air travel in the past year. Of those who did, 55% said they were vacationing or “visiting family or friends.”

Asked, “How likely are you to consider actions to reduce your flight’s impact on the environment?”, 41% said they were willing to “replace business travel with virtual meeting options.” Other actions were less popular.

Respondents sharply opposed green surtaxes on flights. Asked if they were willing to “pay an additional fee so airlines can purchase sustainable aviation fuel,” 63% were opposed. Asked if they would “pay an additional fee so airlines can purchase carbon emissions offsets,” 65% were opposed.

Findings were drawn from questionnaires with 1,503 people nationwide. The environment department paid $40,000 for the survey by Angus Reid Group.

“Suppose you have planned to take a flight for leisure travel that normally costs $500,” said the questionnaire.

“If airlines were to charge an additional fee to reduce the environmental footprint of air travel, for example by planting trees to offset the carbon emissions of a flight or covering the extra costs of purchasing sustainable aviation fuel, how much would you be willing to pay for your flight?”

A majority of respondents, 61% said, said they would pay nothing and “would not fly.” Only 30% expressed support for a green surtax providing it was $50 or less.

 

 

Oh, that's not all:

In-house Privy Council researchers have polled Canadians’ willingness to adopt a vegetarian diet for the sake of climate change. Only seven percent of people surveyed identified themselves as vegetarian or vegan: “How frequently or infrequently have you made efforts to eat a more plant-based diet?”

I'll leave this right here:

The agencies said they have seen no sign that more food than needed is delivered to North Koreans. “The main issue … is a monotonous diet – mainly rice/maize, kimchi and bean paste – lacking in essential fats and protein,” the statement said.