Your spot of Smarch weather ...
I'm sure there is an Instagram account regaling only the curious about how Justin has to mingle with the little people.
Let me know when he is stripped of the pension he doesn't deserve.
THAT would be newsworthy:
The man who went from ski instructor and kindergarten teacher
virtually straight to being the Prime Minister of Canada has finally
left the building. He resigned. But that was all for show. His party
forced him out because the polls were diabolical. Go and read the Fraser
Institute’s analysis of Canada’s economic performance after 10 plus
years of Trudeau at the helm. When Justin took over from the
Conservative Stephen Harper government in 2015 the per capita wealth and
wages of Canada’s richest provinces compared well to all but nine or 10
US States. Today, wages and salaries are lower in every Canadian
province compared to all 50 States, below even the poorest US States of
Mississippi and Louisiana. Growth? Bad. Productivity? Woeful. Multiple
quarters of GDP per capita decline. And this was assessed before Trump
won last year’s November election, lest those with a bad case of TDS be
tempted to blame the Orange Man. (As a further aside, a painful one,
Canada’s economy is really bad. But Australia’s is worse than Canada’s
on all these measures. Just sayin’ because you won’t hear it on the
ABC.)
Trudeau loved to virtue-signal. He was a fully paid-up climate change
catastrophist and stopped pipelines from being built to let Alberta’s
oil and gas get to the ocean – the result today is that Alberta sells it
to the US or to no one. Trump didn’t do that. Trudeau did. So a Net
Zero cheerleader. Spent next to nothing on defence (meaning even less
than we in Australia do as a percentage of GDP). He ran a massive
immigration Ponzi scheme. And he was a thug – yes, a thug – during the
Covid lockdown hysteria. Ask the truckers. The result of all the schools
closing, paying people to do nothing, closing small businesses,
borrowing and spending money in unheard of amounts, weaponising the
police and more was that you got big time asset inflation, massive
monies transferred from poor to rich and from young to old, even worse
educational results, productivity killing ‘working from home’ and, well,
things will basically be screwed up for decades because of
lockdowns. (By the way, our Coalition government was as bad as, or worse
than, Trudeau on all these fronts. All but a couple Coalition MPs
during Covid should be hanging their heads in shame for the rest of
their lives. They won’t. But they should.)
At any rate, reality caught up to pretty boy Justin. Renewable energy
is ghastly expensive save for huge implicit and explicit subsidies –
you need baseload power Mr Bowen. Spending nothing on defence in a
Hobbesian world is stupid. Inflation was bad. Housing costs soared. The
young were being screwed over. By November of last year his Liberal
Party was 23 points behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. And Trudeau
led a minority government. The even further Left NDP party had the
power to bring down Trudeau and force an election any time it
wanted. Yet the NDP leader refused, even though his party had overtaken
Trudeau’s and had every likelihood of forming the Official Opposition
were there to be an election. (Poilievre’s much-repeated theory for why
the NDP refused to act and bring down Trudeau was that if the government
scraped along till this past February the NDP leader would trigger his
gold-plated parliamentary pension – he’d be set for life. All one can
say about that theory is that once no election could be held before the
pension would trigger, the NDP leader announced he’d bring down the
government.)
Too late. Trudeau resigned. He prorogued Parliament – which means he
put it into a sort of suspended animation between the end of one session
and start of a new one. This, in my view, was conventionally within
Trudeau’s constitutional power – the remedy lying with the voters once
the election is held. And a Canadian court recently upheld Trudeau’s
power to do this. ...
(Sidebar: it wouldn't be the first time that the legal system in this country proved to be positively venomous.)
Trudeau in his 11 years had appointed nearly all the Canadian judges. I
predicted he’d win the proroguing case and he did. The difference in the
two proroguing cases was whether the judges were with the politician or
against. It’s that bad I’m afraid.
Here we are now:
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday drew public attention to a report
that shows Mark Carney in October, while chair of Brookfield Asset
Management, brokered a deal with Chinese bankers.
A month prior
to Carney’s trip to China, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made him
chair of the Liberals’ Task Force on Economic Growth.
A report from the Telegraph, entitled Mark Carney meets [Chinese President Xi Jinping] as China woos the West,
says Carney met with the People's Bank of China deputy director in
October — two weeks later Brookfield secured a $256 million loan from
the Chinese state-owned bank.
(Sidebar: this China. The communist dictatorship that people can freely go to and that arrests Canadian nationals at will.)
Carney has repeatedly refused to
disclose his holdings in Brookfield. On Monday, he said “screens” have
been put up around his investments and they are now in a blind trust.
(Sidebar: visible to HIM.)
**
Liberal Leader Mark Carney defended Wednesday putting two green
investment funds in an offshore tax haven while an executive at
investment house Brookfield Asset Management.
Carney told reporters at a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont., that the funds were registered in Bermuda to avoid double taxation.
“The
important thing… is that the flow through of the funds go to Canadian
entities who then pay the taxes appropriately. As opposed to taxes being
paid multiple times before they get there,” said Carney.
Taxes are for little people, aren't they, Carney?
**
Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is behind a corruption-plagued South American toll road scheme, swamped in litigation over bribes paid to the mayor who issued the contract.
The Rutas de Lima toll road project, meant to ease the
paralyzing traffic in the Peruvian capital, collapsed into scandal with
revelations that the Brazilian firm Odebrecht had bribed the mayor with
$3 million in 2013 for a 30-year contract to run the highway system.
Instead of relief, Rutas brought predatory toll hikes that
crushed the working poor, while Odebrecht pocketed the money. Brazilian
authorities, in their expansive Operation Car Wash investigation of
international corruption networks, led to Odebrecht pleading guilty in
2016 to what the U.S. Department of Justice called “the largest foreign
bribery case in history.”
Yet, the elaborate plea bargain arrangement with DOJ in
New York oddly omitted any reference to Rutas de Lima. Just before the
scandal broke wide open, Odebrecht offloaded most of its stake to
Brookfield, a Toronto-based investment and asset management giant, for
about $500 million.
Brookfield knew South American public works business like
few others. But it claimed its due diligence had found nothing wrong
with its new Odebrecht asset.
New leadership emerged in 2022. On one side stood
Brookfield chairman Mark Carney, a powerful ESG or Environment, Social,
and Governance advocate – and now Canada’s prime minister – who
sidestepped the mess while his company kept turning the screws on the
city of Lima. On the other side emerged Lima’s freshly elected Mayor Rafael López Aliaga, a populist fighting to dismantle the corrupt contract.
Brookfield defended its soiled Rutas asset through costly
United Nations arbitration, profiting from Rutas escaping itemization in
the 2016 plea bargain. The tolls remain, doubts swirl about the DOJ
prosecutors’ impartiality during the plea bargain – particularly Andrew
Weissman, the ex-DOJ Fraud Section chief – that let Odebrecht pay at the
lowest end of the sentencing guideline range and kept Rutas’ name out
of the arrangement.
Brookfield then went on the offensive against Lima,
portraying itself as the victim and suing the city for $2.7 billion in
lost revenue. “Rutas” or “Routes” had become toxic in the eyes of many
locals who now call the highway project “Ratas de Lima,” or Rats of
Lima.
**
Ideology, ‘science,’ and policies over people, that’s just the Liberal way.
The
Trudeau-government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap will cost
150,000 jobs nationwide, and billions in royalties per year, warned
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Carney and Environment Minister Terry Duguid gave mixed messages on where the Liberals stand on emissions caps. Expect the worst. Carney’s a climate, green energy zealot who praised creepy little climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Meanwhile,
Liberal-imposed snow crab and other fish harvesting limits threaten the
“lifeblood” and the “bread and butter” of Newfoundland.
This Newfoundland:
But wait! There's more!:
**
The new boss is not all different from the old one.
Discuss.
Oh, burn:
After years of bristling at the idea of “vote splitting,” former NDP
leader Tom Mulcair has effectively warned NDP supporters not to split
the vote in the 2025 election. ...
Mulcair was leader of the NDP between 2012 and 2017 — a period that
saw the party form the Official Opposition against the government of
Stephen Harper.
It was also a position in which Mulcair often had
to resist charges that a vote for his NDP served only to split the
progressive vote to the benefit of the Conservatives.
Mulcair
acknowledged as much in his Bloomberg column, writing, “When I was NDP
leader I used to bristle when I heard Liberals warn about not ‘splitting
the vote.’ It seemed so entitled, as if ‘the’ vote belonged to them.”
**
At the start of the campaign, poll aggregator website 338Canada is
currently estimating that the NDP could be looking at electing between
two and 12 MPs across the country in the next election — down from the
25 MPs they managed to get elected back in 2021.
In Quebec, the
NDP will realistically keep Alexandre Boulerice, the lone MP who has
managed to stick around since the 2011 “orange wave” that saw Layton’s
party sweep 59 seats in la Belle Province and form the Official
Opposition for the first time in its history.
(Sidebar: an argument for term limits right there.)
Let the NDP go down in flames.
Jag held the country hostage so that he might get a pension that he doesn't deserve.
Burn, baby, burn!
No, throw it in the trash.
The plan does not extend to the entire population (only 3.4 million as of this writing) nor does it cover all treatments and procedures:
**
In short, it is rather like an American-style insurance plan sourced by a single entity - the government - tat can refuse treatment at any time.
Why not let people keep their money (taken from taxes) and let them direct their own care?
Toss it:
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised Tuesday that
Canadians receiving federal dental care would continue to do so, should
his party form the next government.
Poilievre outlined his
intention for the program, while appearing in Vaughn, Ont., where he
made an announcement on housing affordability.
Asked about dental
care and pharmacare, two programs the Liberals established over their
last term in government, Poilievre pledged to “protect these programs.”
Finally.
Something that makes sense:
Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada launched their
official campaign from Saint-Georges, Que., on Monday, focused on
slashing government spending while halting immigration.
"We need to stop that to preserve our culture, our standard of living, our economy," Bernier said.
The
former Conservative MP for Beauce is pitching his party — which
strongly opposed COVID-19 lockdowns — as the "real conservatives" in
this federal election.
In a scorched-earth exit from the Conservative Party of Canada in 2018 to found the People's Party of Canada (PPC), Bernier accused his former party of being too "intellectually and morally corrupt" to be reformed.
Bernier
outlined on Monday the four pillars of the PPC platform: pausing
immigration, ending what he described as "woke" policies, boosting the
economy by cutting spending and implementing policies related to
national security.
God help us!
The counter-culture!
A look at Canada's failed policies:
The number of British Columbians hospitalized due to opioid overdoses increased after B.C. launched its drug decriminalization and “safer supply” policy, a new study shows.
B.C. received Health Canada’s
permission to allow possession of small amounts of illicit drugs in a
three-year pilot project, which started in January 2023.
However,
the province asked Health Canada to reverse the decision in April 2024
after facing backlash and winding up instead introducing policies to
prevent drug use in public spaces like parks, playgrounds, and
hospitals.
The study published on the JAMA Health Forum looked at the number of opioid deaths and hospitalizations during the trial period in B.C.
The
American Medical Association journal said it found a 33 percent
increase in opioid overdose hospitalizations linked to the “safer
supply” program.
Researchers said drug decriminalization was
linked to a further 25 percent increase, leading to a 58 percent rise in
hospitalizations.
**
While most consumers seem to appreciate the convenience of an increasingly digital economy, a CBDC is a radical change from using
credit cards and online banking apps. A CBDC would likely lead to a
cashless economy, in which all financial transactions can be monitored
and controlled by government. A cashless economy would create severe
hardship for people who are homeless, technologically illiterate, or
without ready access to the internet.
**
It's called child abuse:
Newly published advice to Canada’s pediatricians continues to charge
“full steam ahead” with the gender-affirming model of care in the face
of increasing uncertainty about its safety, and suggests that parents
who don’t unquestionably affirm their child’s expressed gender risk
harming their child, concerned doctors say.
The advice, published in a brief paper
in the Canadian Paediatric Society’s flagship journal, is silent on the
Cass Review, a four-year long, independent British review that landed
last spring that concluded the evidence base for gender-affirming care
for minors is “remarkably weak” and that many unknowns remain about the impact of social transitioning, particularly on very young children.
We don't have to trade with China:
A panel of experts testified
to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that Chinese
companies mining for “green” energy minerals throughout Africa –
particularly in resource-rich countries such as the Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC), are creating a “catastrophic and unacceptable”
situation for locals.
The experts urged American officials to act to
contain the malignant Chinese influence destroying an entire generation
of African children and the environment in which they live, stressing
that the minerals in question – cobalt, lithium, tantalum, and copper,
among others – are pivotal to any high-tech economy.
