Mid-Week Post

Your pre-autumn spin-of-the-week ...

 

For some reason, Justin's hubris and complete inability to do anything right now grates on people, not like it should have in 2013:

Cabinet yesterday expressed shock and surprise over the loss of a must-win Liberal byelection in the Prime Minister’s hometown. Justin Trudeau and 15 cabinet ministers personally canvassed in the Montréal riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun: “We need people to understand.”

 

I think people understand that things are now too expensive and that their frat-boy prime minister would rather blame everyone else for these predictable failures: 

It’s not me, it’s you! If you’re wondering why the Liberals lost this week’s byelection in the supposedly safe seat of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, just ask Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: 

“We need people to be more engaged. We need people to understand what’s at stake in this upcoming election. Obviously, it would have been nicer to win and hold Verdun, but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it.” 

 

Words, words, words.

What Justin will never admit is that people, even in his own party, have grown tired of his failures. He chooses to blame other for not giving him what he wants.

It takes a special kind of narcissist to blame everyone other than himself for his shortcomings (I am being charitable here). Such a person is unfit to lead.

Further:

Actually, people fully understand what’s at stake in the upcoming election. The LaSalle byelection was about Trudeau, the St. Paul’s byelection was about Trudeau, and the general election will be about Trudeau. Voters don’t want four more years, or even two more years of him. It’s been fun, please exit the ride now sir, your time is up. 

Trudeau’s hubris helped sink his party in LaSalle even before the race began. He hand-picked his candidate, Laura Palestini, big-footing aspiring party nominees who were already working the riding, and who loudly complained about it. Then 52 Liberal staffers refused to volunteer because of the Liberals’ position on the Israel-Hamas War, and worse yet, sent a letter to Trudeau about it. Next, Trudeau’s national campaign director quit and a Quebec MP publicly called for him to step down.  

None of these things help win votes. And none of these things happen if a leader has the respect of his party.  

Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois benefitted from the rise of Parti Québécois fortunes in the province. They also mined the newfound clout the Bloc has in Ottawa since NDP leader Jagmeet Singh ripped up the party’s Supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals. Bloc leader Yves François Blanchet promised to deliver for Quebec by holding the Liberals to ransom — and now he has one more foot soldier to do it. 

 The votes weren't for confidence in the NDP or the Bloc but a repudiation of Justin:

Just as with Toronto-St. Paul’s, the loss in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun was particularly scary to Liberal insiders because of where it happened. Even in some of the Liberals’ most dire opinion polls of the last 12 months, the party was usually slated to continue winning seats in Montreal. As with Toronto, the Quebec metropolis has represented the country’s most reliable base of Liberal support ever since the Trudeau government took power in 2015.

These same dolts will prop up the Liberals once more when the non-confidence motion comes around:

Poilievre promised he would bring such a motion at the first chance he had, after the NDP ended its supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals earlier this month.

It now appears that chance will come on Sept. 24.

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Opposition parties can introduce motions, including those declaring non-confidence in the government, on specific days designated in the House of Commons calendar.

The number of opposition days and which party they go to is determined at the start of a session, and the actual days are scheduled by the government.

During a meeting of House leaders on Tuesday, the government told the other parties that the first of five opposition days for the Conservatives this fall will be next week.

That means a debate on the Tory motion is likely to happen Sept. 24 and the vote would be the following afternoon.

The schedule for next week will be confirmed in the House of Commons on Thursday.

Poilievre brought a non-confidence motion in March, asking opposition parties to join him in triggering a “carbon tax election,” but the NDP and Bloc Quebecois joined the Liberals in voting the motion down.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has said that without the supply-and-confidence deal his caucus will take each vote as it comes. He has also repeatedly said Canadians have lost faith in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

 

This Jagmeet Singh: 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh confronted a gaggle of protesters on Tuesday after one of them was heard to call him a “corrupted bastard.”

Accompanied by a staffer, Singh was walking towards the West Block of Parliament, tailed by two men recording him from cell phones.

“Are you voting non-confidence today?” asks one. “Corrupted bastard,” says another.

The latter comment prompts Singh to stop and turn around, saying, “You want to say something?”

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“Who said that? You got something to say?” adds the NDP Leader as he approaches the pair.

One of the men, dressed in a light-blue shirt and a bandanna, replies, “I didn’t say corrupted bastard … somebody behind me said that.”

Singh then turns his attention to a man in a Toronto Maples Leaf hat and wearing a T-shirt reading, “Unmuzzled Unmasked Unvaccinated Unafraid.”

Stooping slightly to meet the man’s eyeline, Singh asks, “Was it you?”

“No,” replies the man, who has busied himself with his smartphone.

“You sure?” says Singh, prompting an, “If it was me I would admit it, buddy.”

The party leader then takes a step forward towards the man, asking again, “Was it you or not?” yielding the reply, “If it was me I’d admit it.” The man in the Maple Leafs hat then offers, “It was the gentleman behind me, I guess.”

After unsuccessfully asking the man to point “the gentleman” out, Singh then lifts a finger to the man’s face saying, “You’re a coward; you’re not going to say it to my face.”

 

Step away from your bodyguards then, Mr. Rolex.

 

 

Mark Carney is another one who should never helm this country's economy:

Foster notes that “Carney has been a prime pusher of ‘net-zero,’ the notion that climate-related human emissions must be entirely eradicated, buried or offset by 2050 if the world is to avoid climate Armageddon.”

A central aspect of the “net-zero” agenda is the rapid phase out of fossil fuels. Clearly then, his agenda poses a threat to Alberta’s economy and prosperity. Despite the fact that Carney grew up in Edmonton, he doesn’t demonstrate much concern for this province.

Carney’s emphasis on fighting climate change leads Foster to quote the famous American writer H. L. Mencken as saying that: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule.”

That statement applies in this context because the “Carney-backed agenda is not predicated on working through democratic institutions but on circumventing them.”

More particularly, “Carney’s plan is to control the global economy by seizing the commanding heights of finance, not by nationalization but by exerting non-democratic pressure to divest from, and stop funding, fossil fuels. The private sector is to become a partner in imposing its own bondage. This will be do-it-yourself totalitarianism.”

Indeed, in a country dominated by policies designed to alleviate climate change, citizens will have less choices (consider the current war against single-use plastics,) less transportation (e.g., no more gasoline cars,) less meat (cattle release carbon emissions, after all), and less conveniences in general, but more poverty (due to deindustrialization.)

As Foster notes, Carney’s ideology embraces what libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit” of constructivist rationalism: “the belief that the largely spontaneous institutions of the market order should be rejected in favour of more deliberately planned arrangements.”

That is, give the government enough power, and central planners can arrange society — by force — into something much better than the supposed anarchy of a free society.

 

Um, tyranny.

 

 

Justin has doubled the national debt:

Pop the champagne! It’s now official. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has doubled the federal debt. It took nearly two dozen prime ministers and a century and a half for the federal government to rack up $616 billion in debt, which is where the total stood before Trudeau’s first year in office. But less than a decade later, on Aug. 30 of this year, the debt has officially doubled to $1.232 trillion. That’s according to calculations done by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation based on annual debt increases outlined in the government’s latest budget.

The Trudeau government’s debt binge has had, and will continue to have, a material impact on Canadians’ lives.

We all want to leave our kids and grandkids a bright financial future. But a baby born today is already on the hook for about $30,000 in federal government debt. That debt may never fully be paid back: Canada’s federal debt has never been zero, though at times it has been very low. But even if it’s entirely rolled over and not a penny of it paid back, the debt will generate continuing interest payments, which means higher taxes for future generations unless future governments cut spending and run surpluses.

In this regard, the future looks bleak. New data from the Parliamentary Budget Officer doesn’t see a balanced federal budget until 2040. That would mean another $296 billion added to the debt between now and then — even assuming the government introduces no new spending and the economy grows for 16 years straight.

The federal government’s debt interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion every week. The government now wastes more money servicing the debt than it sends to the provinces in health transfers. Paying debt interest takes every penny collected from the GST.

 

The economy has regressed from the wallet outward.

YAY! 

But consider the voters blocks:

This low-wage labor comes at a high cost for those Canadians trying to enter the labor market, however. Employers use TFWP as a business model, pricing out unskilled domestic workers. What does this look like in practice? Your local restaurant hires foreigners, leaving your teenaged kid without summer work, without employment experience, and eventually, living in your basement. It is also bad for the foreign workers. I know from experience that, in many cases, they are effectively paid below minimum wage, because they are forbidden from taking breaks, they work unreasonably long hours, and they live in employer-owned accommodations while rent is deducted from pay. This is tantamount to indentured servitude. A recent United Nations report exaggerated when it included the TFWP among modern examples of slavery, but only somewhat.

 

I wouldn't say somewhat. 

We don't have to trade with China:

The federal agency that investigates election infractions found insufficient evidence to support suggestions Beijing wielded undue influence against the Conservatives in the Vancouver area during the 2021 general election.

 

Rather, no one wants the evidence found.

**

MPs are vulnerable to electronic surveillance by foreign agents, the chair of the Commons national defence committee said yesterday. Testifying at the Commission on Foreign Interference, Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.) said Chinese hacking of his own cellphone may have exposed contacts he built up through nine terms in Parliament: “Maybe I am just being paranoid.”

Tell me again that these people are not delusional bullies:

Calgary transgender activist Victoria Bucholtz made a spectacle at a public meeting she was in with Alberta Independent MLA Jennifer Johnson (Lacombe-Ponoka) after she refused to recognize transgender women as women.

 

But they aren't. 

 

 

It's called grooming:

With the help of a teacher in York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB), her parents were kept in the dark about her use of “they/them” pronouns and a new masculinized name in the classroom. Only in June 2022 did her parents learn what was quietly going on in school. When they objected and asked school leaders to include them in conversations about their daughter, the school called the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), which investigated the family.

In December 2023, Julie detransitioned after realizing she’d been swept up in a social fad that overlooked her underlying mental health issues. Now, her family is raising the alarm about the power schools have to keep parents in the dark.

 

 

 

The courts are setting a dangerous precedent where express wishes can be over-ridden and property dispersed because they and not the owner says so:

A B.C. Supreme Court judge found that family assets weren’t evenly distributed after the death of Yat Hei Law, the mother of Ginny Lam and William Law. Under the will, about $2.9 million was left to the son, $170,000 to daughter ...

It's called communism.

Speaking of communists:

If Kamala had truly become a prosecutor to protect women and girls, she was doing a poor job of it. A 10% increase in rapes was bad enough, but the numbers were even worse in context.

In 2010, when Kamala first ran for attorney general, there had been 8,325 rapes in the state. By 2016, when Kamala was fighting to take Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, there were 13,695 rapes.

This was not a 10% increase, but a shocking 64% increase.

Kamala, who claimed to be crusading for women, had presided over the single largest increase in sexual assaults on women in the state in a generation. The 34.87 per 100,000 statewide rape statistic people put Kamala’s California well above the national average of 29.6.

Why was California so bad for women under Attorney General Kamala Harris?

Kamala Harris did not become a prosecutor to protect women, but to protect criminals. The 64% increase in rapes on her watch was a symptom of that larger problem. Alongside notorious Soros DAs like George Gascon, she led a rebrand of soft on crime policies as ‘smart on crime’. This would also become the title of her book arguing for keeping many criminals out of prison.

Among other things, ‘Smart on Crime’ meant cutting quick and easy plea deals while working as the DA in San Francisco to maintain the appearance of the high conviction rates that she would cite when running for attorney general. The plea deals that her office later cut statewide, including for her political ally Mayor Bob ‘Filthy’ Filner, cooked statistics by raising conviction rates and lowering prison populations to create the illusion that pro-crime policies worked.

By the time Attorney General Kamala Harris was ready to move on from the Senate, arrest rates had fallen to their lowest point since 1969 while violent crime soared. Even as violent crime rates increased, arrests continue to fall with catastrophic results for public safety in the state.

Did Kamala actually have any special feeling for women who had been sexually assaulted?

Proposition 57, one of the pro-crime propositions that ended public safety in the state backed by key donors who would prove crucial to her political career, offered a painfully stark choice.

The pro-crime proposition granted early release for criminals convicted of a crime not officially listed as a “violent felony.” That included not only many violent criminals, but also some rapists who committed different kinds of sexual assaults including ‘rape with a foreign object’.

Attorney General Harris had become notorious for abusing her position to write heavily distorted summaries for pro-crime propositions. And Proposition 57 was no different. The debate over Prop 57 provided Kamala the opportunity to stand with her pro-crime backers or with women.

And now for something completely interesting:

“We know that inbreeding reduces genetic diversity in a population, which can be detrimental to their ability to survive if it occurs over a longer term.”

Unlike modern humans, who are more connected, the results from analyzing Thorin “supports the notion that social organization of Neanderthals was different to early modern humans,” said Sikora.

There is evidence of early modern humans in Siberia “forming so-called mating networks to avoid issues with inbreeding, while living in small communities,” said another researcher from the University of Copenhagen Tharsika Vimala.

But that behaviour was not found among Neanderthals.

“This is some of the evidence that we were looking for and needed to figure out how likely this hypothesis of them going extinct because of their isolated lifestyle is,” said Vimala, adding that more genomic data is needed to “paint a better picture of their history.”

The same people who had music, roasted their food and had funerary rites.

But I digress ...

There Are No Settlers, Only Citizens

There are people who built Canada.

There are people who work everyday to provide for themselves and their families.

Then there are those who see currency in collective brow-beating so as to guilt and minimise those who worked and continue to work to keep this country afloat.

I thought that disparaging other ethnic and racial groups was supposed to be a bad thing:

Although the term ostensibly divides between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, most people use it as shorthand for “white.” It seems to be a way to talk about white people without explicitly referencing skin colour. It lets people attribute a whole slew of negative traits to one made-up cultural group — heaping all the worst aspects of Canada’s past onto currently existing people who happen to have the wrong skin colour.

Mostly this goes unsaid except when someone like the Anishinaabe writer Drew Hayden Taylor riffs on the term. He’s written about settlers a number of times and offers alternatives terms like “people of pallor,” or those who are “pigment denied.”

In one of his columns, he went through the words some of his Indigenous friends have for white people, such as a Lakota term that translates as “greedy person,” and the Mohawk phrase, “white foam people” — as in the foamy scum that forms on the top of lakes and rivers. ...

Most activists who are keen to talk about settlers and settler colonialism go out of their way to exclude non-whites. Don’t worry, they say, groups who are usually said to be “marginalized” — Black Canadians, recent immigrants, etc. — aren’t really settlers.

The pro-Palestinian lobby has adopted similar language — using a simple binary of oppressed and oppressor and mapping it onto the Middle East conflict. All you need to do is call the Israeli state an example of settler colonialism and you have all the answers. You know who the good guys are and who are the bad. Hint: the good guys aren’t the settlers.

That’s because the settler identity is also as much about a moralizing religious feeling as it is about race. To call yourself a settler is to awaken to a new faith. You embrace a new guilt-ridden sense of the country. It’s a modern hair shirt, a masochistic label by which you can do penance. By calling yourself a settler, you’re renouncing your privilege and announcing to everyone: “Don’t worry, I’m one of the good ones.”

The intellectuals who write books on the subject insist that you should feel “unsettled.” It’s right there in book titles, such as “Unsettling the Settler Within.” It’s hard to find a more Christian title than this — albeit in a seemingly secular fashion.

Canadians of previous generations used to spend a lot of time worrying about original sin — of how to overcome what the religious used to call the “taint,” and then turning to God for help. In the case of settlers, it’s the same thing under a new secular guise. Forgive me world, I am a Canadian of the wrong ancestry. Help me decolonize myself.

The effect is to divide Canadians into those who belong and those who don’t. It’s a citizenship test that so-called settlers need to write again and again — constantly professing their lack of belonging in order to appease the original sin of colonialism in the hope that someone, maybe even themselves, will allow them to belong.

So what are we talking about when we call ourselves settlers? It sure looks like we’re adopting a form of racism that wants to hide its worst aspects by steeping itself in moralizing self-flagellation. It’s a myopic way of picking out the worst aspects of the Euro-Canadian past and refusing to put them into a wider context. And don’t overlook the heavy dose of self-interest that’s often mixed into the moral righteousness.

This is an example of what Rob Henderson calls a “luxury belief.” That is, it’s a belief that gives status. It provides cultural and moral cachet. People have always tried to set themselves apart by their moral beliefs — by the way in which their heightened sense of right and wrong sets them apart. Self-confessing as a settler who wants to do better now does the same thing. By renouncing and denouncing their cultural past, self-professed settlers try to gain cultural prestige in the present.

Overt acts of racial discrimination are supposed to be illegal in Canada, yet the race-based settler moniker is spreading. Although I guess if you’re going to take it on yourself, there’s only so much anyone else can do.

 

Why don't people take their self-hatred and their grift elsewhere?

We don't need it here.

 

 

Another Case For Accountibility

Let's have some political reform like term limits and the ability to boot out party leaders:

Wasyliw said he believes the reason for his removal is that he has butted heads with Kinew on some issues.

“Wab Kinew is a toxic and dysfunctional leader,” Wasyliw said in an interview Monday.

“It’s not a collaborative environment. It’s sort of Wab telling people what to do and then being horrible to them when it’s not done perfectly.”

The premier ignores caucus and cabinet concerns, Wasyliw said, and forces others to take the blame when things go wrong.

“He controls all the decisions at the legislature. Nobody has any agency. All the decisions are his,” Wasyliw said.

“He gets an idea in his head … and he goes ahead with it no matter what the damage. And I don’t want to be part of that, frankly.”

Wasyliw said he will continue to sit in the legislature as an Independent and to speak for constituents who feel the NDP has strayed from its traditional values.

 

The values of sponging?

 

It's Just Money

Well, not their money, but our money:

Federal auditors cite Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department for poor oversight of millions spent on green subsidies. Management of taxpayer funds was so sloppy it represented “potential legal and reputational damage,” said a report: “We observed significant issues.”

 

The Narrative cares not for spreadsheets!

You could always not trade with China:

Tariffs on Chinese electric cars, steel and aluminum offer only a “short reprieve” for industry, the Commons trade committee was told yesterday. The tariffs take effect October 1: “This is basically a short reprieve, a temporary reprieve.”

Tie Liberals' Bad Decisions With Their Pensions

Let's see what stupid ideas they come up with when someone screws around with their money:

Last Friday, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that the federal government is extending a $2.14-billion loan to Telesat Lightspeed so it can “expand internet and 5G networks in communities across Canada, with affordable, high-speed broadband connectivity.”

Additionally, Telesat will help the federal government “bolster its satellite communications technology and support North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) modernization to keep Canadians safe.”

Conservative MP Michael Barrett critiqued the plan by asking Elon Musk what it would cost for Starlink to provide rural broadband throughout the country. Musk replied that the cost would be less than half the $2.14-billion price tag.

As expected, members of the unloved and increasingly bitter Liberal government attacked Barrett for his query, accusing him of selling out Canadian workers and industry for daring to suggest the U.S.-based Starlink might be a better option.

A bit more surprising was how Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who is usually regarded as one of the smarter members of the cabinet, derided Musk as a “foreign billionaire.”

Remember that silly quote spoken by Justin Trudeau during the 2015 election, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”? Well, Musk, who grew up in South Africa, inherited Canadian citizenship from his mother and went to Queen’s University. Yet the fact that he made his money in the United States apparently disqualifies him from being a worthy Canadian in the eyes of Champagne and some far less impressive members of the government. ...

 

(Sidebar: how ever will Frank explain away his Chinese-owned mortgages or the Chinese interference that is still being kept under wraps?) 

Further:

Last year, Ottawa and the Ontario government handed over $215 million to Rogers Communications to expand its rural fibre-optic network in the province. Had Starlink been commissioned instead and connected about 66,000 homes to its satellite grid, it would have only cost $50 million.

Rogers does not need one more sweet deal from any government at any level. It is already bolstered by regulations that favour domestic companies and allow it to maintain its oligopoly in the telecom market, alongside Telus and Bell. ...

Attempts by smaller entities to gain a foothold have largely been snuffed out by acquisitions and mergers. The result is that Canadians pay seven times more per gigabyte for mobile data than Australians, 25 times more than the Irish and the French, and an astounding 1,000 times more than the Finnish. ...

Neither Elon Musk nor the United States are hostile entities, and any attempt to equate them with the Chinese government is spurious.

Speaking of China, it was the Liberal government that awarded a contract to provide RCMP radio equipment to a firm linked to the Chinese government. For that and a variety of other reasons related to their former and current friends in Beijing, the Liberals have no right to be accusing people of compromising Canada’s national security.

 

I would never accuse the Liberals of being loyal to Canada.

If Liberals are confident that their expensive deal with a Quebec company is the way to go, let them invest their pensions in it, as we are forced to put our pensions in all manner of schemes we never approved of.

What do the Liberals have to fear?

 

MP Who Wanted Nazi Applause Blotted Out From Hansard Warns Bribed Press to Hold Pierre to Account

Let's start off with running the Way-Back Machine:

 

Moving on:

Subsidized media must scrutinize the Conservative Party, Government House Leader Karina Gould yesterday told reporters. Her remarks followed a colleague’s comment that cabinet was “happy to help” CBC-TV counter Conservative criticism: “Make sure we are holding (Pierre Poilievre) to account.”

Oh, let's not stop there, Karina.

The Slowburn

Not burning quickly enough:

The Liberal Party last night lost a byelection Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called “an important moment” for Canada. Montréalers voted Bloc Québécois in a once-safe Liberal seat: “I can’t wait for the conversations we’re having in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun.”

 

One might even think that there is a pattern.

**

After losing the June byelection in their formerly safe seat of Toronto—St. Paul’s, the Liberals were looking to save this Montreal stronghold once held by a former attorney general and a former prime minister. 

Results came in exceptionally slowly due to a record-long ballot, which is a repeat of a protest stunt by the same voting-reform group that kept the counting in Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection in June going into the early hours of the morning.

The voter turnout was about 40 per cent.

 

Attribute this to voters who know that elections are not a matter of choosing the best statesmen but ending up with the least obnoxious nag in the stable. If nothing, this by-election and the one in Manitoba served as a repudiation of Justin and his arrogance, even if the result was ensconcing a country-separating candidate in the place of a Liberal.

** 

This:

Would-be-candidates in the riding,had already done the work of knocking on doors and signing up new members, only to find they wouldn’t be given a chance to run. Reportedly, they were “shocked” by Trudeau’s undemocratic move of bypassing the nomination process. They shouldn’t have been. This is a man who has turned the government of Canada, not just the Liberal party, into a vehicle for his own ego, tossing allies overboard whenever it suits him.

This cannot be emphasised enough.

No one voted for Justin. He was installed.

Justin has been groomed to be a mincing autocrat who has never heard the word no.

He will take this loss personally but he will never - as real leaders would do - consider that he is the problem and resign.

If he will not go down in flames, he will form a coalition.

The good of the country never entered into anything.

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Thank you!

 

Doing Jobs Canadians Aren't Hired to Do

Indeed:

It is easy to imagine that the decision to approve the permits was a no-brainer for B.C., Ottawa, and the federal ministers who quarterbacked the exemption. And, yes, Lululemon is a brand Canadians surely feel positive about, leaving aside that little blip with the terrible Olympics outfits. 

But, you know, those positive feelings are surely strained just a tad when you hear about those jobs Lululemon couldn’t fill from the vast reservoir of educated and enterprising humanity that is the Lower Mainland of B.C. The company’s TFW exemption is allowing it to hire people for positions that no Canadian could conceivably fill, to wit: “graphic designers, advertising and marketing managers, computer systems managers, retail wholesale buyers, pattern-makers and industrial engineers.” This list includes some jobs I’ve seen friends move to Vancouver to do! Either things have changed a lot human-capital-wise out on the coast, or Lululemon just wanted a backdoor subsidy in exchange for maintaining its visible connection with Canada. 

 

 

No Country For Anyone

Another reason why this country should hang its head in shame:

On Tuesday, Marc Miller — breathless, voice quaking, and noticeably nervous — told reporters, “I’ve been getting questions about an individual that entered Canada and has been arrested in charges related to an attempt to cross the border for a terrorist plot.” He then confirmed that Muhammed Khan is a Pakistani national who was issued a student visa in May 2023, and waltzed into Toronto’s Pearson airport the following month. Miller had the disposition of someone surprised by the news, but he shouldn’t have been. Our student visa program has always been one of the weakest links in Canada’s national security.

In November 2023, only five months after arriving in Canada on his student visa, Khan began planning the attacks online with what were, unbeknownst to him, two undercover law enforcement officers. He chose Oct. 7, 2024, for the date of the planned attack aimed at “slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible.”

If Khan had been successful, only 17 months would have passed from the moment he received his student visa, to the time he entered, planned, and carried out the attack he fantasized would be “the largest attack on US soil since 9/11.” Clearly, there are holes in our student visa program, and foreign terrorists have identified them.

This is not, of course, the first time Canada’s student visa program has revealed its shortcomings. In 2013, two men, Raed Jasser and Chiheb Esseghaier, planned to carry out a terrorist attack on a VIA rail passenger train. Thankfully, their attempt was foiled. They were caught, convicted, and sentenced.

Chiheb Esseghaier was a 30 year-old Tunisian PhD student living in Quebec. During his studies at Université du Québec’s nanotechnology lab, he was “threatened with expulsion for his disruptive behaviour and strict religious views that alienated his colleagues.” Esseghaier made it into the country through the student visa program. His colleagues and members of the university administration considered his behaviour to be “off,” and yet no one alerted the government officials in charge of the student visa program. Perhaps some process changes are in order.

No censoring things this time:

Canadian Polish and Ukrainian groups have joined calls for the federal government to release the full list of 900 alleged Nazi war criminals who came to this country after the war.

The list is among documents created by a 1986 federal government war-crimes commission led by Justice Jules Deschenes. For almost 40 years the federal government has refused to release the material to the public.

Library and Archives Canada is deciding whether it will release the records requested under Canada’s access to information law.

Holocaust survivors and some Jewish groups have called for a full release of the 900 names of alleged Nazi war criminals. The list is believed to contain names of Nazi collaborators from eastern European as well as Waffen SS veterans such as those from a Ukrainian division known as SS Galicia.

The Canadian Polish Congress as well as the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians have now joined calls for the identities of the alleged war criminals to be revealed.

“Many members of our community are descendants of victims and survivors of Nazi atrocities, including those perpetrated by SS Galizien,” John Tomczak, president of the Canadian Polish Congress, wrote in a letter to Leslie Weir, Librarian and Archivist of Canada. “The Canadian Polish Congress believes that the greater risk lies in secrecy and omission. The Polish-Canadian community feels that any reluctance to release these names may only deepen existing wounds.”

Tomczak wrote that by only fully confronting the truth of Canada’s history regarding Nazi war criminals can “we can hope to bring a sense of justice and closure to the many families and communities who continue to grapple with the horrors of that period.” ...

Much of the renewed debate around Nazi collaborators in Canada was prompted by a September 2023 event in which MPs of all parties gave two standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, a resident of North Bay, Ont. Hunka was described by then House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota as a hero and he was thanked for his military service.

 

 

Churches should do the same:

As police investigate another incident of apparent vandalism at a Toronto synagogue — what looks like a stone or bullet hole through the stained glass of a Star of David — Toronto’s Jewish community has established a new private security agency to protect Jews and Jewish institutions against increasing threats of antisemitic attack.

If We Can't Speak About It, Then We Shouldn't Fund It

The issue is not settled, it is not healthcare, it is not single issue and it is certainly every taxpayer's business:

Last year, activist city councils joined the province in unfairly censoring the free speech of pro-life Albertans. The province already enforces so-called "bubble zones" around abortion facilities, but that wasn’t enough for the radical city councils of Calgary, Strathmore, and High River. They decided the truth about abortion was just too disturbing. So, they did what those in power often do when they can’t win the argument: they shut it down. No flyers, no conversations, no opportunities to inform the public.

But here’s the thing: Albertans don’t stay silent when something is wrong. We don’t sit idly by while injustices are swept under the rug. We stand up, we fight back, and we speak the truth — even when it’s difficult. And so, we did.

In response, Prolife Alberta launched The Reality of Abortion is Too Disturbing for this Billboard campaign. It wasn’t just a slogan; it was a challenge — a challenge to confront what we’ve been told to ignore. When something is so disturbing that we can’t even bear to look at it, should we really be accepting it at all?

For too long, we’ve been told to turn a blind eye to the truth. Abortion, we’re told, is a settled issue, neatly wrapped up in euphemisms like “choice” and “reproductive rights.” But no euphemism can cover up the ugly reality of what happens. And for too long, people of good conscience have been bullied into silence. A silence that hides the disturbing truth they don’t want you to know about abortion in Alberta:

• A minor can have an abortion without her parents being notified.

• Late-term abortions happen in Alberta, sometimes resulting in fully born babies being left to die.

• Dangerous chemical abortion pills are prescribed over the phone and online, putting both the woman’s and the baby’s life at risk.

• If you try to share life-saving information with women seeking abortions, you can be arrested because Alberta’s “bubble zones” protect abortionists, not the innocent.

• The Alberta government fully funds the killing of innocent human beings with your tax dollars, whether you agree with it or not.

These aren’t abstract issues — they are happening here in Alberta. And yet, despite this being the first term of a majority conservative government, with ample time left before the next election, the silence from leadership is deafening.

So we started small: a couple of billboards here and there, each one making a simple, bold statement: The reality of abortion is too disturbing for this billboard. It wasn’t hyperbole — it was fact. And people noticed. From Calgary to Edmonton, Lethbridge to Red Deer, Medicine Hat to Valleyview, 33 billboards now stand across Alberta. They are asking the question we’ve all avoided for too long: if abortion is too disturbing to show, why are we accepting it? (See for yourself at RealityOfAbortion.ca).

It seems even Premier Danielle Smith has taken the message of "Keep quiet. Don’t upset the status quo" to heart. We recently wrote an open letter to her office, asking for a response — asking her, and Justice Minister Mickey Amery, to address this issue that weighs so heavily on so many. But what did we hear back? Nothing.

When asked about the disturbing trend of fully born babies being left to die after abortion, the response was more silence. But silence isn’t leadership — it’s avoidance. They’re playing a game of political chicken, hoping that if they stay quiet long enough, we’ll just go away.

 

Indeed.

It is not longer a matter of disposing micro-parts into an incinerator. We've graduated into fully-fledged infanticide.

No society walks back from that kind of bloodshed.

 

From Russia With Indifference

 

 

Really, Justin doesn't need Russian help to be hated:

A website at the heart of an international Russian disinformation operation has produced more than a dozen articles about Canadian politics in an apparent attempt to undermine support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and boost his chief rival, Pierre Poilievre.

 

Is that so? 

Well ... :

It’s fascinating to watch the Trudeau government talk about Russian propaganda in Canada without acknowledging they have funded it.

While the Liberals and their CBC allies in the media sweep in on one Russia story, there isn’t much discussion of federal funds going to Russian propaganda.

Let’s unpack these complex, distinct and yet related stories.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced they had charged two employees of RT, a TV network and propaganda channel for Putin’s Russia. The allegation is that these two employees of the state-owned broadcaster funneled money to a Tennessee-based online media company, Tenet, that in turn paid American influencers in an attempt to push Russian talking points.

That Tennessee-based company is owned by a woman born in Canada and raised in Hong Kong named Lauren Chen. After studying in California and Utah, she settled in the Nashville area and built a popular online following.

There really is no solid Canadian connection here, but that hasn’t stopped Liberals in Canada from trying to draw one.

CBC journalist Jonathan Montpetit has published two articles on Russian media propaganda in Canada in the last week. The reason that’s shocking is that this “senior investigative journalist,” as his bio describes him, has only published four articles in all of 2024 – half of them on Russian propaganda with alleged ties to the right wing, but not in Canada.

Meanwhile, federal funding of an actual Russian propaganda film hasn’t been commented on by Montpetit or much of Ottawa’s establishment.

Russians at War, a documentary that was scheduled to air at the Toronto International Film Festival, received $340,000 from the Canadian Media Fund, $70,500 from Ontario’s government broadcaster TVO and an undisclosed sum from the government of British Columbia. While TVO has since denounced the funding of the film, there is no similar statement from the CMF.

Let’s be clear, the Canadian Media Fund wouldn’t exist without the federal government.

At $190 million in funding in 2023, the Department of Canadian Heritage is the organization’s biggest funder. The second biggest source of funding, Canada’s cable and satellite companies, only fund the CMF because they are forced to by the federal government.

Forget about any Russian propaganda in the United States being pushed by American influencers though a connection to a woman who used to live in Canada, this is direct funding of Russian propaganda by Canadian taxpayers.

The Canadian Media Fund wouldn’t exist without the federal government’s funding or it forcing other organizations to provide money. The current board chair Dr. Michael Schmalz was even one of the federal appointees through Canadian Heritage. ...

That said, if we are really worried about Russian propaganda and influence campaigns – and we should be – then let’s talk about the ones happening in this country rather than the ones happening stateside.

Yet, just as with China’s interference in this country, the main concern of the Liberals isn’t protecting the country – it’s using the Russia issue to try and win votes.

 

How awkward.

Russia is back being the Red Scare.

Just like in Justin's dad's days.

In closing:

Justin Trudeau has a son now of fighting age. Why doesn't he send him to Ukraine to fight the Russian Army - as Zelensky repeatedly begged Western men who say they support the Ukrainian cause to do - rather than casually risk a US/NATO-Russia war by lobbing missiles into Russia? https://t.co/9pbBh2hpBQ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 13, 2024

Be an example, Justin!