"It's Not My Fault That I Can't Do My Job."

 The bar was once set at mediocrity. Now it is set at failure and no one seems to mind:

Former industry minister Navdeep Bains last night said he was not responsible for misconduct at a federal board cited for 186 conflicts of interest. Bains told the Commons public accounts committee his sole responsibility was to appoint directors: “Do you have any regrets?”

** 

The Budget Office for the second time in three months has calculated figures showing cabinet inflated claims of military spending in aspiring to meet NATO targets. Defence Minister Bill Blair dismissed the criticism as a case of “different numbers.”

 

The Carbon Tax Is a Scam

 ... and we all know it:

Canadians in Privy Council focus groups do not believe claims by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault that they pay less in carbon tax than they receive in rebate cheques. Participants disputed the math even when fed misleading statistics: “Most expressed opposition.”

 

The government compels the citizen to pay taxes, something that the citizen cannot back out of. The carbon tax isn't simply a sum taken from the taxpayer but is in every cost, good and service. 

The taxpayer ends up paying at least four times the taxes he or she is supposed to pay.

After Trudeau Goes, His Rotten Party Can Follow Him

It's time to expunge the Liberals and the Trudeaus from Canada's story:

Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne insisted that “the page is turned,” while Ottawa MP Mona Fortier said she was “very happy” and the caucus went “very well.”

Government House leader Karina Gould insisted the caucus is united with a solitary goal.

“What I can say is that our caucus is extremely united. We have one goal and that is to ensure that Pierre Poilievre does not become prime minister,” she said.

What was not discussed in caucus, according to several MPs, was the secret ballot on Trudeau’s leadership, with at least one of them saying it was not even brought up.

The mechanism to hold a leadership vote does not exist under current rules for either the caucus or the party.

Toronto MP Yvan Baker, who is among a growing number of MPs who have been calling for a secret ballot, said Wednesday “the ball is in the prime minister’s court” on this matter.

“I think now it’s up to the prime minister to decide. I think that would be the best way to move forward and I think the question should be asked of the prime minister if he supports a secret ballot and if not, why not?”

 

Because he wants to know who is stabbing him in the back.

 

" ... every statue and street and building has been re-named ..."

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been re-written, every picture has been re-painted, every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” 

 

(George Orwell, 1984)

If cancel culture has a silver lining, it's that Canadians will finally learn about their history before it disappears on them:

The forces of “decolonization” took one more historical victim last week in Oshawa, Ont. That’s where the city council moved to change the name of Bagot Street, which it believes — but isn’t even entirely sure — was named in honour of Charles Bagot, the governor general of the united Province of Canada from 1841 to 1843.

The city says Bagot has to go because of his links to the establishment of residential schools for Indigenous peoples. The case echoes that of Egerton Ryerson — defenestrated from positions of honour for highly dubious claims about his alleged links to the schools. The Bagot case is about as weak. The evidence in Bagot’s case is that during his tenure in British North America, Bagot established a commission to investigate the “Affairs of the Indians of Canada” and that, amongst its recommendations, his appointed commissioners called for residential schooling.

 

The case doesn't have to be strong; it just has to be made.

Because the party of re-imagination must break where it cannot nor will not make.

 

Canada the Cruel

Euthanasia is the slope off of which the post-civilised world careens.

Cases in point:

By authorizing its doctors to carry out “advance directives” for MAID starting Wednesday, the Government of Quebec has effectively told its health-care system to start committing murder.

(Sidebar: because Quebec is special.)

Last year, the Quebec legislature adopted Bill 11, which aimed to allow physicians to administer MAID to unresponsive or mentally incompetent patients, provided that the patient had given “advance” authorization to do so.

This is considered murder under federal law, so Quebec announced this week it will simply be instructing its prosecutors to ignore the relevant sections of the Criminal Code governing culpable homicide.

In a Monday statement, the federal Ministry of Health said they wouldn’t be challenging the decision – but warned Canada’s non-Quebec doctors not to get any ideas.

“As the Criminal Code applies uniformly across Canada and does not permit the provision of MAID based on an advance request, providing MAID pursuant to an advance request remains an offence under the Criminal Code,” it read.

 

And who is going to stop these murder-happy doctors? :

On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable, according to messages provided to AP by a participant on condition of anonymity due to their confidentiality.  

Some of the requests from the forums were approved and acted upon. Others were denied. But the discourse about patients who are poor, disabled or lonely shows a fraught process where medical professionals test the limits of what conditions warrant euthanasia. The controversial cases in the forums have never been disclosed through Canada’s oversight system, even in an anonymized manner. 

 **

Remember - euthanasia, like abortion, was supposed to be for the hard cases:

Coval said there is an “arguable case” about whether the MAID criteria were properly applied to the woman.

“As I’ve said, the evidence suggests (her) situation appears to be a mental health condition or illness without a link to any physical condition and it may not only be remediable, but remediable relatively quickly,” he said.

The woman and her partner have been granted anonymity by the court.

The application says the woman was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and later became convinced she had akathisia — an inability to sit still that is linked to certain types of medication — and began exploring medical assistance in dying.

“At the same time, (she) continued to express her desire to die. She did not want to do it herself, and regularly begged the plaintiff to end her life,” the application said.

It said two practitioners with expertise in the condition told her it was treatable, transitory and manageable, and if she followed their recommendations, “her akathisia could resolve within two to six months.”

The document claims she did not exhaust all medical treatments and was unable to obtain approval for assistance to die in Alberta.

 **

Fast forward to today. In less than a decade, the “slippery slope” has arrived, with Canada arguably having the world’s most permissive assisted dying regime – or medical assistance in dying (MAiD) as it is referred to in Canada. According to the latest Health Canada data, Canada will soon have the highest per capita MAiD death rate in the world. Year-on-year MAiD deaths have increased at a staggering rate of approximately 30 per cent. 

The “stringent and well-enforced safeguards” envisioned by the Supreme Court largely do not exist. What few safeguards there are have been ineffective. There are well-documented and shocking cases of vulnerable persons receiving MAiD due to poverty and social isolation. 

The discourse around MAiD in Canada has become perverse. During a parliamentary committee hearing, a physician representing the Québec Medical Association disturbingly recommended euthanising infants with severe deformities.

How did MAiD go off the rails so quickly in Canada? It didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because Justin Trudeau’s government has approached MAiD almost exclusively through the ideological lens of individual autonomy without appropriate regard for negative impacts to vulnerable persons. 

The Trudeau government, after being elected in 2015, was effectively forced by the Supreme Court’s decision to craft a legislative framework for MAiD, including eligibility criteria and safeguards. 

Initially, the Trudeau government took a somewhat cautious approach. The government’s original MAiD legislation required patients to meet certain criteria, including that their natural death be “reasonably foreseeable.”

It did not take long, however, for the Trudeau government to throw caution to the wind. 

In 2019, a Québec lower court judge ruled that the eligibility requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable was unconstitutional. Instead of defending a law passed by Parliament only three years earlier, Trudeau’s Attorney General opted against appealing the decision, and introduced legislation to remove the criteria.

The Trudeau government did this despite near universal opposition from the disability advocacy community. These groups warned that MAiD would lead to ableism and discrimination against persons with disabilities. 

Now persons with disabilities qualify for state-administered death on the basis that they are disabled – stigmatising and devaluing the lives of persons with disabilities. As Canadian disability advocate Gabrielle Peters aptly put it, “Canada has made disabled people a killable class.” 

By removing any connection to the foreseeability of natural death, eligibility has become significantly more subjective. This has widened the door for potential abuse. And it has devalued life, with persons who could potentially live for decades becoming eligible. 

The Trudeau government has proceeded to push the expansion of MAiD even further. Persons suffering solely from an underlying mental health disorder will soon be eligible. According to the Chair of the Trudeau-appointed Expert Panel on the implementation of MAiD for mental illness, anyone with a mental disorder listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM5-TR could qualify. That includes persons suffering from depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and personality disorders. This should horrify anyone of decency and demonstrates how depraved Canada’s MAiD regime has become under Trudeau’s watch.

While eligibility criteria have significantly widened, from the start, the so-called legislative safeguards have proven inadequate.  

To qualify, a patient needs only the sign-off of any two physicians or nurse practitioners. There is nothing to stop a patient from doctor-shopping until they are approved.

 
Under the law, there is no mechanism to review MAiD assessments. Accordingly, once approved by any two clinicians, there is no practicable means to stop a patient from receiving MAiD – even where there is evidence that the patient is not eligible.

There is no legal requirement that a patient undergo standard treatment options – only that they be advised of such options. Accordingly, a patient could qualify after declining treatments that would have ameliorated their condition.

There is a real risk of coercion when healthcare professionals proactively raise MAiD as a treatment option, given the power imbalance between physician and patient. Yet Health Canada’s practice standard, incredibly, encourages this practice. This is in contrast to other jurisdictions, such as the Australian State of Victoria, where this is prohibited.

Meanwhile, there is no comprehensive system in place to monitor and enforce the less-than-robust safeguards and compliance with the law. While the Trudeau government and Health Canada insist that instances of non-compliance are rare, this is almost certainly due to a lack of proper monitoring and oversight. Indeed, so permissive are the eligibility criteria, and so lacking are the safeguards, Canada’s MAiD regime is rife for abuse even if such abuse occurs in technical compliance with the law. 

This is evidenced by a growing list of disturbing cases of vulnerable persons who received MAiD under apparently questionable circumstances. Take the case of Rosina Kamis. In her last days alive, she documented that her MAiD request was motivated primarily by poverty, loneliness, and a lack of support. In another case, an Ontario woman with severe chemical sensitivities received MAiD after she was unable to find adequate subsidised housing free of cigarette smoke.

 

And, as again with abortion, the alleged safeguards meant to prevent this life-ending pursuit will never be pondered or questioned lest one swallow one's pride and admit that this practice is a cruel one and does not address any underlying problem.

Happy Halloween!

 

Fun fact: Halloween is the eve of All Saints and All Souls Day instituted to remember all of those who have passed away.

Halloween: not ONLY for candy.

Mid-Week Post

 

On this eve of Halloween ...

Haven't we heard this sort of thing before?:

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet yesterday pledged his 33-member caucus will join 119 Conservatives in supporting the next Commons non-confidence motion. The Bloc is “absolutely ready to go into an election tomorrow morning” after cabinet failed to meet his ultimatum to pass two bills into law, he said: “I am ready.”

 

If true (yeah, I know), this would pave the way for huge Tory gains.

Neither the Bloc nor the NDP can afford that.

Better the idiot devil you know than an adult in the room.

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

MPs on the Commons government operations committee yesterday agreed to pursue the destruction of federal emails with ArriveCan contractors. One Canada Border Services Agency executive destroyed records sought under Access To Information, a jailing offence if proven deliberate: “Something happened here.”

 

In Justin's Canada:

Canadians in federal focus groups now consider annual vacations a privilege of the wealthy, says in-house Privy Council research. Canadians also identified “dining in restaurants” and buying private medical treatment as desirable luxuries: “Asked how much money they felt one had to earn annually to be considered wealthy, participant responses ranged from approximately $100,000.”

Squirrel!:

The Canadian government alleged on Tuesday that Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was behind the plots to target Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.

The Indian government did not immediately respond but has dismissed Canada's prior accusations as baseless, denying any involvement.

 

 

We don't have to trade with China:

In 2019 Air Canada was flying up to 35 times a week to China - including from Toronto - while Chinese carriers operated 76 direct round-trip flights, Cirium flight schedule data shows.

 

China later all but shut its borders to travellers due to a zero COVID policy and suspended many inbound flights.

 

Canada in February 2022 said Chinese carriers could fly only six round trips a week into Canada, and there could be no direct flights between Canada and Beijing.

 

These restrictions were lifted on Friday, a Canadian Transportation Agency order said.

 

"We value Canada's initiative and hope Canada will continue to create good conditions for normal personnel exchanges between both countries," Lin Jian, spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry, said at a regular news conference on Wednesday.

 

More electoral interference!

 

 

In other news:

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu faces an uphill struggle to win a second term in an election runoff on Sunday in which her defeat could allow Moscow to gain more influence in a diplomatic battleground between Russia and the European Union.

Sandu, a 52-year-old former World Bank adviser popular in the West, has accelerated the southeastern European nation's push to leave Moscow's orbit, and in June began the long process of EU accession talks as the war in Ukraine raged to the east.

 

The vote comes after Saturday's parliamentary election in Georgia, another ex-Soviet country trying to join the EU, where a ruling party seen by many in the West as increasingly pro-Russian claimed victory.

 

"It will be an uphill struggle (for Sandu) with internal grievances, but also external pressure and meddling," said Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia programme.

 

She faces Aleksandr Stoianoglo, an ex-prosecutor general backed by the traditionally pro-Russian Socialist Party, who says that, as president, he would back EU integration as well as develop ties with Russia in the national interest.

 

In last Sunday's presidential debate, Sandu, whose term has seen a sharp deterioration of ties with Moscow, said Stoianoglo was a "Trojan Horse" candidate for outside interests bent on seizing control of Moldova.

**

Oh, this isn't good:

Social Democrats won 52 seats in the 141-member parliament, defeating the centre-right Homeland Union party in an election dominated by frustration with the cost of living and worries over potential threats from neighbouring Russia.

 

The Social Democrats are now in talks with several smaller parties to form a majority governing coalition.

 

The left-leaning party has pledged to maintain Lithuania's hefty defence spending which, at about 3% of GDP this year, is the sixth biggest per capita in the NATO alliance.

 

British (used in the loosest sense of the word) teen facing charges of terrorism:

A teen charged with killing three girls and wounding ten other people in a stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England refused to speak when he appeared in court Wednesday.

He faced new charges of possessing a deadly poison and a terror charge linked to possessing an al-Qaida manual.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, who appeared in Westminster Magistrates’ Court by video link from Belmarsh prison in south London, pulled the top of his gray sweatsuit over his nose and wouldn’t confirm his name or respond to other questions.

Also - Canada supports its fronts for murder:

As Israel cuts all ties with UNRWA amid charges that it is irreparably tied up with terrorism, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has doubled down on her support for the agency, which Canada continues to fund to the tune of $25 million per year.

I'll just leave this right here:

Canada is suspending funding to a controversial UN agency in Gaza after allegations this week that its employees participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel. ...

Canada had suspended funding to UNRWA under the previous Harper government due to long-standing allegations that the agency promoted antisemitism and was linked to terror groups, such as Hamas. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reinstated Canada’s $25 million in funding in 2016.

We Don't Have to Trade With China

This China:

The Vatican announced Tuesday that it has renewed its agreement with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for an additional four years.

The renewal comes days after a report from the Hudson Institute detailed how seven Catholic bishops in China have been detained without due process, while other bishops have experienced intense pressure, surveillance, and police investigations since the Sino-Vatican agreement was initially signed six years ago.

With the extension, the Sino-Vatican agreement will now remain in effect until Oct. 22, 2028.

 **

A new report sheds light on the repression faced by 10 Catholic bishops in China who have resisted the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to exert control over religious matters since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops. 

The report, authored by Nina Shea for the Hudson Institute, documents the harrowing experiences of Vatican-approved bishops who have suffered detention without due process, surveillance, police investigations, and banishments from their dioceses for refusal to submit to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), a state-managed group controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department. 

“This report shows that religious repression of the Catholic Church in China has intensified since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops,” Shea said.

“Beijing targeted these 10 bishops after they opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See,” she added.

The Hudson Institute published the report days before the expected Vatican announcement of whether the Holy See will renew its provisional agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops. 

The provisional agreement was first signed in 2018 and then renewed in 2020 and 2022. The most recent two-year renewal signed in 2022 expires this week on Oct. 22. 

News that a new coadjutor bishop of Beijing is expected to be installed on Oct. 25 in agreement with the Holy See suggests that the Sino-Vatican agreement is likely to be renewed.

The report also outlines steps that U.S. policymakers can take to advocate for the release of detained Catholic bishops in China.

 **

A new report details the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to “exert total control” over the Catholic Church and other religious faiths within its borders and to “forcibly eradicate religious elements” that the party deems contrary to its political and policy agenda.

The analysis, published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) last week, asserts that the CCP’s “sinicization of religion” policy consistently violates the internationally protected right to freedom of religion. The term sinicization means to conform something to Chinese culture, but the policy essentially subordinates faiths to “the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion,” according to the report.

Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping, according to the report. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches. 

To subordinate religions to the party, the government forces religious groups to enroll in various “patriotic religious associations” and their local branches. For Catholic churches, this means enrolling in the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, which is officially under the control of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the CCP’s United Front Work Department.

Anyone who practices religion outside of the state-approved associations is considered to be in a “cult” and subjected to anti-cult provisions in Chinese law, a policy that has resulted in mass arrests and imprisonment, according to the report. Chinese officials have enforced the anti-cult provisions against underground Catholics who do not recognize the authority of the government-backed clergy and the distortion of the faith.

**

Young people in Shanghai, China, took to the streets in Halloween costumes over the weekend despite rainy weather and a grumpy ban on holiday decorations, costumes, and anything with “horror or violence-related elements.”

Shanghai’s revelers made a point of defying those bans, turning out in costumes that ranged from period Chinese garb to horror movie icons, superheroes, and Japanese anime characters.

 

It's Election Season

And not just in the US but everywhere:

The half-brother of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he believes former U.S. president Donald Trump is “genuine,” while also urging Canadian government workers to quit their jobs in a four-minute-long video.

In a post on X on Monday, Kyle Kemper, who shares a mother with Trudeau, discussed how U.S. politics could affect Canada. In the video, which had been viewed almost 30,000 times by Tuesday afternoon, he endorsed Trump ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.

He said that he believes in his gut that Trump is a “genuine person” who wants to “leave a good legacy.”

“In a nutshell, (a Trump presidency is) going to mean a shift in the vibration of Canada. It’s going to open up the opportunity for government innovation within Canada, likely massive tax reform in Canada,” he said.

Kemper added that Trump said he was willing to get rid of income tax during a sit-down interview with podcast host Joe Rogan and that “policies in America will come up in Canada.” Many Canadians left the country after becoming successful, he said, because the “tax regime is just crazy” and not a “good environment to operate in.” When the tax system is fixed, he explained, “all that money is going to come back to Canada.”

 **

Why, that sounds criminal to me:

The FBI was working Tuesday with authorities in the Pacific Northwest to search for suspects after ballot boxes were burned in Washington and Oregon, damaging hundreds of votes a week before Election Day.

In Oregon, Portland police said they responded to reports of a fire at a ballot box in the Buckman neighborhood at about 3:30 a.m. Monday. Thirty minutes later and less than 15 miles to the north, Vancouver police responded to an arson at a ballot box.

Later Monday, Portland police released two photos of a vehicle investigators believe was tied to both fires. It was described as a black or dark-colored 2001-2004 Volvo S-60 with no front license plate and an unknown rear plate.

“We don’t know the motive behind these acts,” Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan said in a statement. “We do know acts like this are targeted and they're intentional and we’re concerned about that intentional act trying to impact the election process."

 

 

Gee, how many people want welfare?:

Premier Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party won a fifth consecutive majority government Monday, losing in the province’s big cities but retaining its iron grip on rural areas.

Moe’s party was shut out by Carla Beck’s NDP in Regina and lost all but two seats in Saskatoon.

However, it found enough support everywhere else to be elected in 35 seats in the 61-seat legislature, compared with 26 for the NDP.

 

 

Will the election in Nova Scotia go the way of New Brunswick?:

Polling aggregator 338Canada in March projected support for the PCs at 48 percent in the province, compared to 25 percent for the Liberals and 23 percent for the NDP.

A survey released by Angus Reid on March 13 said that the top provincial issues for Nova Scotians were cost of living and health care, with 70 percent and 67 percent of the population respectively pointing to these topics as issues of concern. The next item was housing, with 40 percent expressing concern about this issue.

 

 

And elsewhere:

Georgia’s ruling party is leading the official results of Saturday’s parliamentary election after a crucial vote which could decide whether the country pivots to embrace the West or falls back into Russia’s orbit.

Many Georgians viewed the vote as a make-or-break referendum on the opportunity to join the European Union. Initial figures suggest turnout is the highest since the ruling Georgian Dream party was first elected in 2012.

Georgia’s Central Election Commission said Georgian Dream won 52.99 per cent of the vote with the majority of the vote counted. Not all paper ballots and votes cast by Georgians abroad have been counted, and it is unclear when a final result could be announced.

**

The Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition's failure to retain its Lower House majority in Sunday’s general election begs the question — will Shigeru Ishiba remain as prime minister?

Under Japan’s parliamentary system, lawmakers vote for who among them should be the country's head of government. If the two chambers of parliament choose different lawmakers, the vote of the more powerful Lower House will supersede that of the Upper House.

This typically means that the president of the party that holds the majority in the Lower House, or that of the larger party in a coalition with control of the chamber, becomes the prime minister. Such was the case on Oct. 1, when Ishiba, having emerged victorious in the LDP presidential election a week earlier, was voted into the position.

However, in the wake of Sunday’s general election, the LDP and Komeito find themselves with just 218 seats, including three LDP members who were not endorsed by the party — short of the 233 needed for control of the 465-seat Lower House. As such, there is no guarantee that Ishiba has the numbers to remain as prime minister.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), has enough votes of their own to elect party chief Yoshihiko Noda into power. The CDP secured 148 seats on Sunday.

 

 

Some People Are "Special"

Squeaky wheels and so forth:

A federal cabinet minister asked the chair of a Senate committee to speed up the study of a Bloc Québécois private member’s bill aimed at protecting supply management from any new international trade negotiations but he refused, saying the government had no business telling the Senate what to do.

 

Read: protecting QUEBEC's dairy industry from international trade negotiations.

 

 

Who invited them in, Quebec?:

Anglophone media have reported on the suspension of 11 teachers from Bedford elementary school, in the very multicultural and immigrant-rich Montreal neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges. This came after the Ministry of Education found a “toxic environment” at the francophone school.

But anglo media either soft-pedalled or (in CBC’s case, amazingly) completely ignored what has made the story so politically relevant: The allegedly “toxic” teachers were apparently Arab Muslims.

According to a 90-page report from the ministry’s investigations department, witnesses reported “a strong influence on the community environment” exercised by teachers who “reportedly frequent a community centre and a mosque located in the neighbourhood.” It said that members of the mosque sometimes intervened on occasion to ensure the school’s education model was in line with their preferred “cultural model.”

“Members of the (community) centre created a Facebook page … on which they denigrated the teaching at Bedford School,” the report found. Community centre members also once “allegedly burst into the school, yelling at the teacher and then heading to the office,” where staff “had to call 911.”

The investigation mentions in particular stories that “many teachers at Bedford School … speak Arabic among themselves.” (This affair activates Quebec nationalists’ concerns about Islam and languages other than French in almost equal measure.)

“According to the witnesses, it is difficult to integrate into the (Arabic-speaking) group, particularly because it is impossible to understand conversations between some members of staff,” the report found.

The report accuses teachers in the school’s “dominant clan” of serial dishonesty. “Protecting their honour is a priority and is done to the detriment of honesty,” it finds. “Investigators were able to observe on several occasions that some teachers use lies to get out of embarrassing situations, even in situations where the lie is blatant.”

Witnesses spoke in particular of “lies” deployed “during interventions on the language spoken in the school. Teachers deny having spoken Arabic or Kabyle (a Berber-Algerian language) when they are caught in the act.”

From the students’ perspective, features of this toxic environment allegedly include severe neglect of special-needs pupils, what you might call old-school teaching methods (belittling and yelling at kids, slamming rulers on desks, etc.) and just a crummy overall experience, at best.

This all backs up reams of reporting by Montreal radio station 98.5 FM, which broke the story back in 2022. Why it took so long for everyone from the school board to the minister to respond is one of the key questions in play. Whatever was happening at that school — and other schools are now implicated in similar fashion — the “toxic environment” allegations have been more than borne out.

Many Quebec nationalists see a far bigger issue here than a few Montreal schools, however.

“We see here the effects of the mass immigration that we have been experiencing for at least 30 years,” highly influential commentator Mathieu Bock-Côté wrote in Le Journal de Montréal. “We should have realized this in (the separation referendum of) 1995, when the monolithic vote of immigrant communities aligned with the English-speaking community led to the defeat of the Yes camp by a few thousand votes.”

“We need to talk about the Islamization of Quebec,” Bock-Côté concluded, before moving on to a much less serious issue — but one that’s perhaps even more disturbing.

 

 

If we can just silence differing opinions, that MIGHT take the heat off of dysfunctional communities and the people who live in them:

“Overall, the goal of denialism is to protect the colonial status quo,” said Carleton, who is an assistant professor of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.

He also said some media outlets have been used to spread this disinformation.

That includes misrepresenting the number of children who died from tuberculosis in the schools by saying a lot of people at the time died from the disease, and leaving out the fact the federal government’s policies exacerbated the impact of the illness in residential schools through overcrowding, poor nutrition and a lack of proper sanitation and ventilation.

 

(Sidebar: yes, but all of that is true. It is - what some people call - factual.)

**

The are an estimated 40,000 indigenous children currently in Canada's child welfare system. While the nation has tied itself into knots trying to apologize and compensate indigenous people for the 150,000 children who attended residential schools over the course of a century, nearly 40,000 indigenous children are still in government care. I imagine future governments will feel obliged to compensate them as the cycle continues.

Since the 1990s, the solution to every indigenous issue has been to pour more tax dollars into the system and to hand control directly to the chiefs and councils on indigenous reserves. So far that strategy has led to mass corruption and housing and water shortages on reserves. Unemployment is rampant, poverty is rampant, people die at a younger age than those on reserves and they suffer from crime rates that make inner city levels look peaceful and safe by comparison. Not only that, but the people on reserves have become so socially and economically distressed that 40,000 of their children are now wards of the state.

So what solution is the government proposing?

They wanted to give $47.8 billion to indigenous people for child welfare programs on reserves. This is after the government already settled with indigenous people for $23.3 billion in 2023 to compensate them for having taken children into care in the past. The total comes to $1.77 million for each and every indigenous child in government care right now.

The funds are to be managed by indigenous reserves themselves as they take over the child welfare programs.

What could possibly go wrong?

Indigenous chiefs from across Canada gathered in Calgary last week to discuss the latest waterfall of funds being offered to ease their social ills. They determined that the offer of nearly $1.8 million per child wasn’t enough and rejected it.

Indigenous advocates still claim child welfare on reserves is underfunded.

Will it ever be enough?

No, it won’t.

Decades of tossing funds at indigenous reserves while never holding them accountable for the use of the funds has led to a class of entitled chiefs and advocates who have no concept of personal accountability and can’t look at solving any problems beyond holding their hands out for more funds. They will never be satisfied and they will never solve the problem.

The problem is the racial apartheid system of reserves. We could increase funding to the reserves a thousandfold, they still would be enclaves of socioeconomic misery. There is no situation where we can separate a race of people, put them in isolated places, and make them 100% dependent upon welfare where it would work out well for the residents of these places. Yet we keep trying.

 

One must ask who benefits from this never-ending cycle of cash and victimisation and who does not.

Your Vile, Cowardly, Thieving, Paranoid, Power-Grabbing Government and You

We don't need any of these people:

Sources speaking to the National Post on the condition they not be named said the letter that was read aloud to Trudeau did not contain the signatures of those who had signed it, but said upwards of around 30 who spoke expressed a desire to see the prime minister step aside. More came to the microphone, according to sources, some of whom called for the turmoil to end.

Ministers filing in to their weekly cabinet meeting Tuesday morning dismissed calls coming from some of their fellow MPs that caucus should vote on Trudeau’s leadership through a secret ballot — a mechanism that does not exist under current rules for either the caucus or party. 

 

Either confront the aging frat-boy (pension or no pension) or slither away.

The Liberal caucus cannot force Justin out, nor will he leave.

Canada is not a democracy but a land-mass ruled by the worst sorts of people.

 

If it's not China, it's India:

Trudeau has always been a lightweight. Canadians wanted a fresh face and a new style of politics. Trudeau, the son of a former leader, provided Canadian politics with the same makeover and generated the same enthusiasm that former Prime Minister Tony Blair did in the United Kingdom in 1997 or former President Barack Obama did in the United States in 2009.

Leadership is not a Hollywood movie, however. Trudeau quickly proved himself a naïf on the global stage, and China moved fast to exploit his international innocence.

Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, was Canada’s prime minister from 1968 until 1984, with a brief nine-month interlude in 1979-80. In 1973, Pierre Trudeau was the first prime minister to visit the People’s Republic of China, where he met with Mao Zedong. In 1984, the elder Trudeau invited Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang to address the Canadian Parliament. Justin Trudeau picked up where his father left off. China is Canada’s largest trading partner after the U.S. and the country to which Canada runs its largest trade deficit.

In 2016, Justin Trudeau paid a weeklong visit to China seeking a more balanced relationship but failed. In subsequent years, only press exposure stopped Chinese efforts to win favorable extradition treaty terms and the ability of Chinese state-owned enterprises to sue local Canadian provincial governments, including over environmental regulations. That same year, journalists uncovered a Chinese cash-for-access scheme in which Chinese interests could make large donations to meet Justin Trudeau in the homes of wealthy Chinese Canadians.

In 2019, Justin Trudeau’s defense minister attended a celebration to mark the 70th anniversary of communist rule in China at a time when the Chinese Air Force increasingly violated Canadian airspace and harassed its jets.

Earlier this year, Justin Trudeau testified in an inquiry after evidence emerged that China interfered in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian elections by illicitly subsidizing candidates it thought were sympathetic to Beijing’s interests. While Justin Trudeau downplayed the impact of Chinese interference, intelligence provided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service led to the exclusion of one long-term party ally with whom it alleged Beijing had compromised. Justin Trudeau’s party won both elections in which Beijing supposedly supported candidates.

With his allegations against New Delhi, Justin Trudeau had lowered the evidentiary baseline upon which Ottawa acts. If circumstantial evidence is the new standard, then there is far greater evidence to suggest he knowingly or unknowingly acts as Beijing’s useful idiot. Certainly, Communist China’s spies must be having a good chuckle at the witch hunt Justin Trudeau is leading against India when Chinese spies act with nearly free rein across Canada.

If Justin Trudeau purposely ignores Beijing’s machinations, the trouble could be even worse. From Beijing’s perspective, India’s rise is among its greatest strategic challenges. Not only is India now the world’s largest country, but China’s population is in free fall. Both trends have profound economic ramifications. Two years ago, I toured part of the India-China border between Ladakh and Tibet. As one Indian guide pointed out, every Indian soldier had three or four siblings. Every Chinese soldier was an only child.

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Canada’s top security and intelligence officials appeared before a parliamentary committee Tuesday to discuss the Indian government’s links to assassinations in this country, but MPs focused most of their questions on partisan talking points about leaks and security clearances.

 

Because of course they did. 

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Members of the Commons yesterday expressed shock after a lone Liberal MP single handedly vetoed a motion to appoint a special committee on Canada-India relations. The dissenter, MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North), parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader, did not comment: “It may not look good on Justin Trudeau.”

 

 

Pander to your new overlords! Pander, I say!:

The Senate is close to passing a private Liberal bill proclaiming April as Arab Heritage Month. “We are open to the world,” said MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South), sponsor of the bill: “How can we use this bill to heal divisions and reduce bigotry?”

Also - I never agreed to this:

A coalition of Canadian charitable groups is raising the alarm about a shortfall in donations to help with Lebanon’s humanitarian crisis, as Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly joined colleagues at a summit to try helping the country cope with the damage caused by Israeli airstrikes.

France hosted dozens of countries at the summit on Thursday, which it said had raised US$1 billion in pledges for Lebanon. A fifth of that is for the country’s military while the rest is targeted at humanitarian aid.

Canada has already allocated just under $50 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon this year, but Canadian charities say they’re falling short of a goal set with Ottawa to match donations.

The federal government has pledged to double every dollar the Humanitarian Coalition raises until Nov. 3, to a maximum of $3 million. The funding goes to charities like Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision to provide things like emergency shelter and medical support.

As of Thursday, the group had raised just $1.825 million of the $3 million Ottawa pledged to match two weeks ago.

 

When does the government match donations to veterans?:

A decade after the Canadian flag was lowered in Afghanistan, advocacy groups are calling for government support for those who fought, saying these veterans are most at risk of homelessness.

Alan Mulawyshyn, the executive director of Veterans’ House Canada, said a “bubble” of veterans who served in Afghanistan more than 10 years ago will soon “burst” onto the streets.

 

 

Why don't you just get your friend, Justin, to repeal the tax?:

Premier Doug Ford made the announcement during a news conference in Scarborough on Oct. 29, saying the government is providing the rebates to offset the “high costs of the federal carbon tax and interest rates.”

The provincial government will be sending out cheques to those eligible in the new year, Ford said. An estimated 12.5 million adults and 2.5 million children are eligible, according to an Oct. 29 government press release.

 

 

Oh, look - more corruption:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault “received zero dollars” from his interest in a subsidized Montréal firm, managing partner Andrée-Lise Méthot yesterday told MPs. However Guilbeault’s own ethics filings show he drew income from Cycle Capital Management while in cabinet: “I know Steven Guilbeault.”

 

Also - "common sense" must now be voted on?:

Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic yesterday petitioned Parliament to adopt “common sense” reforms in federal contracting. Jeglic earlier warned MPs that federal insiders were “using the system.”

 

Hans has just lost the cat-people vote:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department is targeting household cats as an ecological peril. The department in a report complained tens of thousands of pet cats were roaming Canadian cities hunting birds: “Did you know there could be up to 48,000 cats roaming in Gatineau, Que.?”

 

When do the forced euthanasias begin?

Speaking of which:

The woman, 51, requested anonymity because she lives in a small area with a limited number of doctors. She believes euthanasia was raised as “I was literally on my way into surgery” not because of breast cancer but because of her long history with autoimmune and other disorders that, theoretically, would make her eligible for MAID.

Her experience is drawing fresh concerns about doctors in Canada raising euthanasia before their patients do, a practice that is prohibited or strongly discouraged in most jurisdictions in the world with legalized assisted death.

The Nova Scotia woman, whose story was first reported by The Telegraph, worked, raised children and volunteered. She has never wanted to be pitied. “I’m nobody’s teachable moment.” She wasn’t offered MAID, she said. But the blunt question over whether she was aware of it “threw me. It came up in completely inappropriate places and completely inappropriate times.”

 

Asking you to kill yourself to save up space isn't merely "inappropriate".

Name the evil or don't bother. 

Stop asking the government for help or even regard.

Do what you are going to do.

That infuriates them:

The Liberals are playing wedge politics again. They’ve released yet another in a long line of official attempts-to-save-their-arse announcements. This time, they’re letting Canadians know that they’ve had enough of pregnancy counselling centres that provide information about abortion — regardless of their faith — but do not offer referrals for the procedure or disclose that fact. No more charitable tax status for you!, the Liberals announced. Unless these clinics give in, and go against their religious beliefs, or advertise openly that they won’t.

 

How dare adults seek out non-abortion help?

What will they do next? Think for themselves?

Is this still Canada?! 

The Charter is NOT the Magna Carta and it's time that we stopped pretending that it is:

Last Thursday, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that it’s possible for the province’s climate plan to violate the Charter rights of Ontarians — namely, the equality rights of young people, and the right to life, liberty and security of all. ...

Conveniently, Mathur v. Ontario saw the court use cherry-picked facts to imagine an artificially dire scenario, which was then used to steer Canada towards a future in which international consortiums — not Canadian voters, through their elected representatives — decide how we must legislate to mitigate climate change.

It's called theft:

In a news release, the province said one of the bill’s most alarming aspects is the “discretionary power it would grant to officials to shut down agricultural facilities without clear, objective criteria.”

The Alberta government also said the bill contains several public health mitigation strategies that encroach upon provincial and territorial jurisdictions when it comes to health-care systems.

 

Higher taxes means that no one wants to do business in Canada.

To wit:

“Canada taxes capital gains at a rate of 35.7 percent and dividends at 39.3 percent, well above the respective OECD averages of 19.7 percent and 24 percent,” the report said, noting that Canada ranks 35th out of the 38 OECD countries for capital gains tax competitiveness.

The changes to Canada’s capital gains tax, implemented June 25, mean Canadian companies must pay taxes on 66.7 percent of their realized capital gains, up from the previous 50 percent. Individuals now pay tax on 50 percent of the first $250,000 of capital gains earned in the year, and 66.7 percent of any gain above that threshold under the new system.

Critics of the hike say it penalizes doctors, farmers and small business owners but Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has described the changes as a way to encourage “fairness” in Canada’s tax system that will largely impact the wealthiest 0.13 percent of Canadians.

 

Never send a "journalist" to do an economist's job.

Mid-Week Post

Eleven more days until Halloween ...

 

As an absolutist kleptocrat, Justin will not leave office until physically ejected from the building.

His dwindling supporters can cheer-lead all they like, but the stench overhanging the country is noticed by everyone: 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his leadership of the Liberal party is not in danger, even as members of his caucus prepare to confront him Wednesday in the hopes of convincing him to step down.

He brushed off those concerns as he headed into the regular Tuesday meeting with cabinet ministers — and one by one, those ministers expressed their support for Trudeau.

"Anybody who has ever bet against Justin Trudeau is sorry they made that bet the next day," said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault.

The cabinet meeting lasted nearly twice as long as usual. Afterward, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne described it as a "very good meeting."

Even as Trudeau and his cabinet insist it's business as usual, a number of Liberal MPs have signed onto a closely guarded letter that aims to convince him to step aside before the next election.

It's not clear how many members of Trudeau's team of MPs plan to confront him, or exactly what their message will be, but a caucus revolt could pose the most serious challenge to Trudeau's leadership to date.

Charlottetown MP Sean Casey is the only Liberal to publicly say that he has signed the letter.

Still, there is no way for the Liberal caucus to force him out, so the decision about whether to stay or go will ultimately be up to the prime minister.

 

Canada is NOT a democracy. 

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Because transparency:

At the same time, a grassroots petition describing an “existential crisis” in the Liberal party was demanding an urgent secret ballot vote — both inside the caucus room and at the party’s national executive — on whether Trudeau really should stay on in the face of months of bad polls that place his party well behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

With Parliament Hill abuzz with speculation about Trudeau’s future, entrances to West Block were jammed with reporters and staffers keen to press MPs on what will happen inside the morning’s high stakes Liberal caucus meeting.

**

Liberal voters cannot distance themselves from the country they destroyed nor should they be able to:

Only 1 in 5 Canadians Want Prime Minister Trudeau to Run Again. Almost Half Want Him to Resign Immediately.

Two in three Canadians want the Prime Minister to immediately resign as Prime Minister (47%), or stay on as Prime Minister but not run in the next election (21%). Only 20% want him to run in the next eleciton and stay on as Prime Minister.

Among those currently supporting the Liberals, 9% want him to resign immediately while 26% want him to stay on as Prime Minister but not run in the next election. Just over half of current Liberal supporters want the Prime Minister to run in the next election and stay on as Prime Minister.

Among those who voted Liberal in 2021, but today do not support the party, 40% want the Prime Minister to resign immediately, 32% want him to stay on as Prime Minister but not run again while only 16% want him to stay on as Prime Minister and run again.

Among those currently open to voting Liberal (accessible Liberals), only 40% want the Prime Minister to fight the next election and stay on as Prime Minister.

 

 This is the useless, money-grubbing, money-wasting government the voters put into office:

In addition to closures, protests and large in-person meetings of child-care operators and parents, numerous webinars and other virtual meetings organized by AACE National in recent months have brought together child-care providers and parents from across Canada to raise awareness of the negative effects of the federal government’s actions. More than 1,200 parents registered for AACE’s webinar last week in which child-care providers described how the government takeover has led to revenue constraints, lack of support for special needs children, an administrative burden that diverts resources away from actual child care, exploding waitlists, staffing shortages, cost-cutting at child-care centres at the expense of quality, and limitations on flexibility as a result of government-imposed control.

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Cabinet could spend even more without risking national insolvency, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday told reporters. Her remarks followed a Budget Office warning that Freeland missed this year’s deficit target by 17 percent: “We could be spending even more.”

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Canada's auditor general will conduct a full audit of all government contracts awarded to GC Strategies, the company at the centre of the ArriveCan controversy.

In a letter sent to the House of Commons on Monday, Karen Hogan confirmed that her office will look at all government contracts awarded to GC Strategies, its predecessor Coredal and other companies incorporated by the two co-founders. She will also examine related subcontracts.

"We are in the process of gathering information that will allow us to properly scope and plan the audit," Hogan wrote in her letter to Speaker Greg Fergus.

The auditor general's letter came in response to a request from the House government operations committee, one of a number of parliamentary committees that have been scrutinizing GC Strategies in the wake of the ArriveCan project.

 

Yes, about that: 

Emails by a manager of the $59.5 million ArriveCan program have vanished, the Commons government operations committee learned yesterday. MPs sought thousands of emails and texts by Minh Doan, former chief information officer for the Canada Border Services Agency: “Something is rotten.”

 

From the government that promised transparency in 2015.