To the South Of Us

An election that will either see the return of Trump in the White House or a blithering idiot with no plans to fix the mess she helped make.

We shall see:

A new poll from Angus Reid found that more than a third of Canadians — 38 per cent — think Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be a better prime ministerial match for a second Donald Trump presidency, while a similar number — 37 per cent — think current leader Justin Trudeau would be better at dealing with President Kamala Harris.

 

One set are adults and the other set is a vortex of idiocy. 

**

We have already lived through a Trump presidency, and we have already seen that the man did not descend that golden escalator in 2015 adorned in Nazi regalia. Nor did he don any fascist costumes throughout his term. That has not stopped presidential-hopeful Kamala Harris from outright calling Donald Trump a “fascist,” or from falsely accusing him of “invoking” Adolf Hitler, though.

 

How interesting:

On September 22, unnoticed by most Americans, the Biden-Harris administration adopted the United Nations Pact for the Future to transform global governance, which introduces the foundations of a world government. There was no debate, no media coverage, no press releases, and no interviews about the Biden-Harris administration's surrender of United States sovereignty to the UN.

Americans were apparently not supposed to find out.

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Because of course North Korea did:

North Korea fired off multiple short-range ballistic missiles on Tuesday, hours before U.S. voters headed to the polls in a hotly contested presidential election.

Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said the North had fired at least seven short-range missiles, with the weapons flying about 400 kilometers each before splashing down in waters outside Japan's exclusive economic zone.

Nakatani told reporters that the launch violates relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, calling it a serious concern that threatens citizens' safety.

 

 

Some People Are "Special"

Indeed!:

But more noticeably, Murray’s trilogy reads too much like a jargon-jumbled critical theory dissertation and syllabus on “settler colonialism,” the dead-end ideology that imagines Canada, Israel, the United States and Australia as irredeemably illegitimate settler states locked in perpetual systems of capitalism, patriarchy, genocide, misogyny, racism, oppression, and heteronormativity.

At least Murray is straightforward about it. The term “settler colonialism” appears 89 times in her final submissions. She name checks the critical-theory big shots, like Judith Butler, who’s probably best known outside the faculty lounges for her 2006 declaration that Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”

As with Butler’s view of Palestinians, Murray writes that Indigenous deaths are “ungrievable” in Canada. Lesser-known pseuds like settler-colonialism wizard Patrick Wolfe, author of such riveting page-turners as Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics, also get a look-in.

This might go some distance to explain why one of Murray’s key recommendations would require Canada to submit itself for prosecution before the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, on the grounds that many of the children enrolled at residential schools down through years are not just missing but are rather the victims of “enforced disappearance.”

It’s not clear just how many Indigenous children from the residential schools era died after their enrolment and it’s not clear how many are missing, or rather were “disappeared,” or where they are buried. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s researchers put the number at roughly 3,200. Others have suggested the figure is much higher. But are they disappeared, or even missing? In March, 2023, Murray told the Senate Standing Committee on Indigenous People: “The children aren’t missing; they’re buried in the cemeteries. They’re missing because the families were never told where they’re buried.”

This is the gnawing wound at the heart of Canada’s residential schools debates, which Murray is very keen to police and patrol. It’s not just the Canadian state that owes reparations. “Media organizations must make reparations for their role in supporting settler colonialism and by denying and limiting truths about the Indian Residential School System,” Murray concludes.

Newsrooms should investigate their past complicity in mass human rights violations against Indigenous people, perform audits and studies of their coverage of Indigenous affairs, issue apologies, develop “ethical standards for trauma-informed reporting” and undertake any other such reparations measures as identified in consultation with Indigenous people, Murray says.

To further guard against the boogeyman of “residential schools denialism,” an abstraction that presumes to describe any downplaying of the genocidal nature of the schools, Murray adds her voice to the New Democratic Party’s proposal to situate skepticism of certain commonplace claims about the schools in the same section of the Criminal Code that outlaws Holocaust denial. The proposal is also supported by Justice Minister Virani. It’s not clear whether his cabinet colleagues are completely onside.

The Online Harms Act, Bill C-63, should also be amended to “address the harms associated with denialism” about the schools, and about missing and disappeared children and unmarked burials, Murray says. These strictures would be difficult to enforce, to say the least, and not just because of the freedom of speech provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

During a spasm of national hysteria, riots and church burnings and desecrations that erupted in May, 2021 after the reported discovery of a “mass grave” in an apple orchard at the long-shuttered Kamloops residential school, the crime of “denialism” was widely alleged against any public notice that in fact no such thing had been discovered.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc had said nothing about a “mass grave” to begin with, having referred instead to 215 burials, and the Tk’emlups leaders themselves have since “downplayed” the ground-penetrating radar results to encounters with “anomalies” below the soil surface.

But it was the Kamloops imbroglio and a series of similarly misreported “discoveries” in the following months that led to Murray’s appointment. That’s when the trajectory of federal residential-schools policy remedies took an especially sinister turn.

**

The federal probe on Indigenous missing children and unmarked graves, the final report of which was released last Tuesday, does touch on the topic of residential schools. Mostly, though, it’s a 1,300-page tome that sets out arguments against the Canadian state.

And because it’s so long and full of filler, few people will ever read the thing to appreciate its absurdity. Even the executive summary, at an undigestible length of nearly 300 pages, defeats its own purpose. Canadians, this $10.4-million essay project isn’t for you. It’s for governments and lawyers to use as support for future billion-dollar payouts and future arguments in court for more colonial concessions.

 

 A rather long, verbose and expensive way to delete Canada from existence

But, you know, rea$on$.

 

Canada the Awful

It is not only the Canadian government that is rancid; it is also the culture.

The culture is no longer based on personal or political accountability. At no time are people appalled by crime or how the system handles it.

No longer do we see that people inherently have value and should be treated as such.

That Canada is gone.

This is what is left:

“Only now that the full impact of this cultural revolution is sinking in is the country waking up,” Kaufman wrote.

He talks about how Trudeau has described arson attacks on churches as “understandable” in response to unmarked graves being found at residential schools.

He also criticizes human rights tribunals for acting like “kangaroo courts” for “subjectively-defined offences like misgendering. Trudeau’s government has majored on speech policing and authoritarianism towards the right, abusing the language of ‘hate’ and ‘misinformation’ while trafficking in both.”

He reports on the dire outcome of this left-wing bafflegab.

“The downstream effects of this woke revolution include falling per capita GDP, rising crime and youth unemployment, soaring house prices and a surge in homeless encampments.”

He slams Trudeau’s open-door immigration policy.

“If you think Britain, with 50% more people than Canada, took in a lot of immigrants last year, consider that Canada admitted a staggering 1.9 million to the U.K.’s 1.2 million.

**

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.

** 

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. 

**

Around 47 percent of Canadians choose to stay home rather than seek medical treatment with a doctor or hospital because of long wait times, says a new survey.

 “For decades, the Canadian government and provincial governments have taken the general approach that the system isn’t working, so let’s throw more and more money at it,” Dominic Lucyk, communications director with think tank SecondStreet.org which published the study, told The Epoch Times.

 “And you look at wait-list numbers, you look at the numbers of deaths on wait lists, those continue to go up year over year.”

** 

Few Canadians would have disagreed with former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s impassioned defence of free speech, either. “I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who govern my country,” he said in Canada’s House of Commons on July 1, 1960. “This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”

That was then, and this is now.

Trudeau obtusely claims to support a Canadian’s right to free speech. In reality, he’s made speech in Canada less free than in any other previous time in its history. The focus under Trudeau’s leadership has almost exclusively shifted to so-called “hate speech” laws.

Canada has had hate speech provisions in federal and provincial legislation for decades. Section 264 of Canada’s Criminal Code covers criminal harassment which would cause a person to “reasonably, in all the circumstances…fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.” There’s also Section 319 related to “public incitement” and “wilful promotion” of hatred - and Section 157, which deals with “sexual offences, public morals and disorderly conduct.” These sections are applicable in legal matters related to child pornography, racist behaviour against individuals and groups, and hateful remarks made in public and on social media. 

The Canadian Human Rights Commission also used to hear complaints about hate speech through Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act. This controversial section prohibited online communications that were “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” It led to high profile complaints against media commentators Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, and turned off Conservatives. Left-leaning voices, including linguist/philosopher Noam Chomsky, also gradually recognised it did far more harm to free speech than good. Section 13 was repealed by Parliament in 2014. 

Canada’s infatuation with progressive-style thinking on hate speech has reached a whole new level under Trudeau’s leadership. He’s attempted to introduce several flawed concepts of hate speech legislation, including bills that would recreate portions of the unpopular and unwanted Section 13.

Bill C-36, introduced in 2021, would have amended the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act to protect people from “hate crimes, hate propaganda and hate speech” and focused on the “online communication service provider.” Ottawa would have redefined hate speech as “the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.” Heavily criticised by left-leaning and right-leaning commentators in Canada and abroad as being draconian and an affront to free speech, it was soon abandoned. 

The most recent attempt is Bill C-63, or the Online Harms Act. Its purpose is to go after online hate speech and “amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts.” 

Bill C-63, as it currently stands, would have a chilling effect on free speech and public discourse. It would enable a person, “with the Attorney General’s consent, [to] lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit” an offence. A judge could choose to issue a peace bond from a list of conditions, including home arrest and an electronic tag, without the person committing a crime. Fines of up to $50,000 per person could be issued on a supposed “balance of probabilities” rather than proof of criminal intent. Every person found guilty would pay “victims” up to $20,000 plus legal fees. New layers of bureaucratic control and taxpayer-funded departments would be introduced. It could potentially turn into a profit-generating industry for Canadians with political and personal agendas.
 

 

I believe that is the point. 

**

A man sexually abused a child, changed his name, wore a dress, appealed to go on a day trip to a retreat based on a fantasist's idea of what Stone Age justice is, and is now wondering what the fuss is about:

Desousa, then named Adam Laboucan, was 15 years old in 1997 when she sexually assaulted an infant she was babysitting in Quesnel, B.C. The baby required surgery to repair the injuries.

Desousa, who underwent gender-affirming operations while serving an indefinite sentence, also admitted to drowning a three-year-old boy when she was 11 years old, which the judge in the sexual assault case said was below the age of criminal responsibility.

B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis imposed an indefinite sentence and a dangerous-offender designation in 1999 because there was no foreseeable “time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.”

“In doing so, I do not intend that Mr. Laboucan be kept in prison for many years with no hope for release,” the judge wrote of the then-17-year-old.

“What is intended, and what must happen is that Mr. Laboucan be kept only so long as it is necessitated by the risk he poses.”

The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the dangerous offender designation in 2002.

Desousa’s application filed in Federal Court in Vancouver in October says she first applied for escorted leave to attend ceremonies at the Anderson Lodge “healing centre for women” in August 2023.

**

Because reasons:

Last year, 70-year-old Hassan Diab was convicted in absentia by a French court in connection with the 1980 bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris.

The explosion, which killed four people, was the first deadly attack against French Jews since the Second World War — and marked the beginning of a new era of French antisemitic violence committed by Palestinian or Islamist terrorists.

This fall, Diab is teaching the third-year course Social Justice in Action at Carleton — a fact that made headlines in Jewish and Israeli media over the weekend after it was the subject of an open letter by the group B’nai Brith.

Addressed to Carleton University president Jerry Tomberlin, the letter demands Diab’s dismissal, saying it “raises significant questions regarding Carlton’s dedication to the safety and well-being of its students and staff.”

One of the victims in the 1980 bombing was Israeli cinematographer Aliza Shagrir, whose widowed husband Micha Shagrir became one of the central figures of Israeli cinema.

“Apparently carrying out a murderous terrorist act against a Jewish target does not go against the values of Carleton University,” read a statement published this week in the Jerusalem Post by the Shagrirs’ two sons, one of whom was with their mother at the time of the blast.

**

A Pakistani man denied permanent resident status in Canada after an immigration officer discovered he had two wives has won another kick at the can, courtesy of the Federal Court.

It’s not that the court condoned polygamy, but it found that the man’s case was complicated and an immigration officer was being “unreasonable” when they failed to try and understand the circumstances that lead to the man being married to two women at once, for a time.

Your Wasteful, Conniving, Deceitful Government and You

What an appalling mess!:

Conservative MP Eric Duncan questioned why the election date was pushed back from Oct. 20 to Oct. 27. “You have a lot of cultural and religious observances that take place in the fall,” Sutherland said, referencing the Sikh and Hindu holiday of Diwali.

Duncan responded that the proposed election date was moved back for “purely political purposes” to help secure the pensions of the Liberal and NDP MPs, saying the Tories and Bloc MPs were not invited to the meetings.

“We’re going to find out who was at those meetings and when they took place,” he said.

 

They have their rea$on$.

Justin would have it no other way:

When Johnston resigned and Trudeau was forced to call a public inquiry, two discouraging things happened: First, the Government significantly expanded the mandate for the inquiry, indicating yet another instance of obfuscation from the core issue of Chinese interference in our recent elections. 

Second, the commissioner of the inquiry, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, allowed three Canadian politicians with ties to the Chinese government to stand in the inquiry (granting them access to confidential documents and the capacity to cross examine witnesses). The presence of these individuals led two Chinese diaspora groups to refuse to participate, citing security concerns. With a truly tragic irony, even the inquiry meant to address foreign interference became a venue for repression and interference.

Following the interim report from the public inquiry, the government did table Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference, but even here the efforts are minimal. As national security expert and Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Christian Leuprecht testified before the House of Commons Committee on National Security and Public safety, the bill “represents the absolute minimum the government would have to do anyway… only once its hand was forced.” 

The Prime Minister’s abdication of responsibility also came through loud and clear in the NSICOP report itself. In a section titled “briefing parliamentarians,” it becomes clear that between 2018 and 2022 the Prime Minister received, and failed to respond to, at least four detailed reports from three different government bodies or advisors recommending that new MPs be briefed on risks of foreign interference. When asked why he didn’t act on these recommendations, Trudeau reportedly responded that he thought that the Parliamentary Protective Service already briefs new parliamentarians about foreign interference. That is shocking negligence.

Canadian democracy is flatlining and those tasked with defending it are at best asleep at the wheel and at worst complicit in its downfall.

 

 

As long as they vote Liberal:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department in an internal report admits it took no steps to determine if foreign workers took Canadian jobs or kept wages low. “Impacts are not monitored,” said the report: “The program is less aligned with commitments to consider Canadian workers first.”

 

 

From the least transparent government in the country's history:

Auditor General Karen Hogan has declined a House of Commons committee’s request for a second, deeper audit of the so-called “green slush fund,” arguing that it likely wouldn’t dig up anything new.

In a letter to the public accounts committee dated Oct. 21, Hogan confirmed to members that her office would not be undertaking the “value for money and performance audit” of Sustainable Development Technology (SDTC) requested by the committee last month.

That’s because she says the report she tabled in June on the foundation — rebranded as the “green slush fund” by Conservatives — was essentially what MPs were asking for.

That scathing report found “significant lapses” in SDTC’s governance and handling of public funds. For example, Hogan discovered 90 decisions in which the fund had violated its own conflict-of-interest policies.

The report also discovered that 10 of the 58 SDTC-funded projects that she audited were ineligible and yet had still received a total of $59 million.

But in September, PACP members approved a Conservative motion calling on Hogan to conduct another “value for money and performance” audit of all projects funded by SDTC since Jan. 1, 2017, as opposed to a sample as she did in her first audit.

“We know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s probably a lot more going on here than the 226 projects the Auditor General looked at out of the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund,” Conservative MP Rick Perkins said at the time.

But in her October letter, Hogan said that’s unlikely.

She said that during the audit, her office looked at “all projects” related to allegations that were brought to her attention as well as every funding decision record by the board of directors during the audit period.

The audit team also used “representative sampling” when choosing which projects to assess that led to results with a confidence level of “no less than” 90 per cent and a margin of error of no more than 10 per cent.

“Given this approach to our audit work, it is highly unlikely that our main findings conclusion, and recommendations would be different if we were to look at additional projects,” Hogan wrote.

“We did a very thorough audit,” Hogan told MPs during a testimony to committee on Monday.

 

Rather, another look would only be costly, time-wasting and result in no punishment for the guilty parties.

Why even have an auditor-general?

**

A $2.14 billion Telesat “Lightspeed” satellite loan announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a promise of universal high speed internet does not require that any specific number of households actually get connected, records show. Trudeau had called it a taxpayers’ investment in “really cool stuff.”

 

What would Justin know about investments?

 

 

The forced climate plans are costly scams to satisfy eco-fanatics and fill governmental coffers with taxes that will never be used genuine environmental concerns.

But don't take my word for it:

Cabinet must be forthright in telling Canadians climate programs will be painful, says David Dodge, 81, former governor of the Bank of Canada. “We are all going to pay for it one way or another,” Dodge testified at the Senate energy committee: “I’ll call it pain.”

**

Oil and gas producers in Canada will be required to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about one-third over the next eight years under new regulations published Monday.

The government is also going to establish a cap-and-trade system that Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said will reward lower-emitting producers and incentivize higher-polluting ones to do more.

The regulations, which are still only in draft form and about two years behind schedule, were met with dismay from industry leaders and are further straining relations between Ottawa and the Alberta government.

**

A new cap on emissions in Canada’s oil and gas sector could eliminate over 112,000 jobs by 2040, with minimal environmental benefits, according to an analysis by the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI).

The think tank argues that the federal measure, set to reduce emissions by 35% from 2019 levels, will weaken the economy while having little impact on global oil demand.

“By targeting Canadian producers, the federal government has no effect on global oil demand,” said Krystle Wittevrongel, MEI’s director of research.

“Every barrel of oil Ottawa keeps in the ground here will be replaced by a barrel produced elsewhere.”

Wittevrongel criticized the policy, attributing it more to what she described as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s “bias against the energy industry” than to effective environmental strategy.

The MEI analysis reflects findings in a report from Deloitte, which estimates the cap could lower Canada’s GDP by 1% by 2040, equating to a $34.5 billion loss in economic potential.

According to Deloitte, the regulation could cost Canada 112,900 jobs, many of them high-paying positions in oil and gas extraction, where average salaries reach $151,461 — almost 2.4 times the national average.

Wittevrongel expressed doubt that workers displaced by the emissions cap would find equally well-compensated positions in other industries.

"Considering the negligible effect it would have on oil and gas consumption, it’s easy to understand why workers in the industry think it’s not worth the risk,” she said.

The emissions cap, which takes effect in 2026, is part of Canada’s broader effort to address climate change. But the MEI argues that restricting domestic production will not reduce global emissions, as other countries would likely increase their output to meet global demand.

**

Cabinet yesterday would not release a statutory cost-benefit report detailing direct costs of a proposed cap on oil and gas emissions. “You owe it to Canadians,” Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs (Lakeland, Alta.) told the Commons natural resources committee: “If Canada did not have contributions from oil and gas right now, Canada would be in a recession.”

As far as the Liberals are concerned, if Alberta burned to the ground, they would not care:

Parks Canada knew of dead pine throughout Alberta’s Jasper National Park prior to a disastrous July 24 fire, Jasper’s mayor testified at the Senate agriculture and forestry committee. Mayor Richard Ireland declined comment when asked if dead trees contributed to the blaze that left 40 percent of townspeople homeless: “I am not a scientist.”

** 

It is “astonishing” to question if politics played any role in forest management prior to a disastrous fire in Jasper National Park, Liberal MP Adam van Koeverden (Milton, Ont.) said yesterday. Van Koeverden, parliamentary secretary for the environment, made no mention of Access To Information memos showing Parks Canada feared “political perception” in managing fire risks.

Do explain the memo, Adam.

Was It Something He Said and Did?

Without a doubt:

“Tokenism is very disenfranchising, very dehumanizing…. I’m not allowed to speak to media, I’m not allowed to speak in the house, I’m not being sent anywhere. What kind of trip does that play on your mind? What does that do to the mind of a person when they know that the only thing that they’re there for is like, ‘omg, look at this I’m Black,’ and, ‘omg, look at these (gesturing to her breasts), I’m a woman.'” Overall, she said she felt, “duped and betrayed,” by the Liberal government.

At one point she told him, “If I’m here to fill any gender or racial gap within your cabinet, then I don’t want this role.”

In addition to having to deal with being used as a prop for her gender and race, there was also the explosive childish antics that Trudeau has become known for which has sent ministers fleeing from his sinking ship.

Later, Caesar-Chavannes came to Trudeau to make peace, but it did not go well. According to her, as soon as she opened her mouth and said, “Justin I’m s..,” the room became tense: “There was no words. It was a glare. It was this reddening of the face. It was the exhalation of his voice… And I was stopped in my tracks with the glare, the huff, and he got up from his seat and left, and I froze. Because at that moment, I knew that this person actually could make or break the rest of my life.” Trudeau sounds like a human resources nightmare. No wonder his cabinet never complains about his constant jet-setting and frequent absence in the House of Commons. They’re probably relieved.

But tokenism, empty platitudes and shallow virtue are all that Justin offers.

Were one to completely overlook his many, many, many personal flaws and focus solely on his ability to govern, one would have to ask why he has a template cabinet, one that is filled with political eye candy and  yes-men.

What does one expect from an attention-seeking, aging frat-boy who uses his own children as props?