Sunday Post

Before one can comment on Trump's insistence that Justin dismantle the supply management system, such as one sees in the dairy industry, one has to define it and illustrate why it is unpalatable to most.


In the case of the dairy industry, farmers collectively set the price for milk and other dairy products and produce accordingly. Quite simply, it is not the market, or consumers, if one wills, that sets the price but a handful of people, a practice in some countries that has either been done away with or reduced. This reduces the market size and traps the Canadian consumer in a monopoly.


While Justin could have brought up American protectionism, he instead acted like a snivelling coward and talked about Trump behind his back but with an audience that might attest to his braggadocio:

It was weaselly, self-serving and does not project an appearance of self-confidence, strength or interest in the Canadian people and economy, interests that could hardly matter to an heir of a great fortune.

It is this behaviour that Justin will use to prove that he is defending Canadian interests, not hiding his ignorance of the supply management system and his failure as a negotiator.

Oh, look - everyone is ignoring Justin. (here)

Also - no one cares about "gender studies" and Justin's panty-twitching and it's high time that someone said it:

A tardy Donald Trump created a distraction Saturday when he showed up late for a G7 meeting on women’s empowerment.

The U.S. president arrived several minutes after the start of the breakfast meeting between G7 leaders and the gender equality advisory council that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau created for this year’s summit in the Charlevoix region of Quebec.

Trump missed Trudeau’s introductory statement at the meeting and entered the room while council co-chair Isabelle Hudon, who is Canada’s ambassador to France, was speaking.

His arrival was impossible to miss as security personnel had to open a path for Trump through a mob of journalists, many of whom were holding large cameras.

Trump stopped at the edge of the room and flashed a big smile in Trudeau’s direction before continuing to his seat.

And - that's not what you said before, Justin:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday rejected a U.S. demand for a sunset clause in NAFTA but said he was prepared to compromise on the issue, which is holding up talks to update the 1990s-era pact.

I'm sure someone explained things to him.



And - there is no money for veterans:

The Trudeau government announced at the G7 summit that it has raised more than $3.8 billion in an effort with other countries to send the world's poorest girls to school.

Virtue-signalling at its most expensive.

The wealthy white Laurentians would wet their shorts at the very thought of a successful African women's economic collective that didn't need "reproductive health" cash.



Hoisted by their own petard, as it were:

Doug Ford won the Ontario election on Google and Facebook, and was never in any danger of losing — despite what some public polls indicated, says one of his top campaign organizers.

The Progressive Conservative leader appeared for a brief encounter with the media Friday after capturing a majority government the day before, the party’s first Ontario election win in almost 20 years.

His adviser — speaking on condition of anonymity — offered fascinating insights into how that happened, and the importance to the victory of digital warfare.

Elections until recently were fought largely in the news media and with television advertising. But the PCs this time relied on “literally thousands” of online ads they produced inexpensively in-house, the campaign official said. With the ability to target specific demographic and geographic groups through Facebook and Google, those internet spots proved more important than any traditional media, the campaign official said.

The targeting was so precise, “a husband and a wife should not be seeing the same ads,” the organizer said.

And monitoring data suggest the Tories “crushed” the other parties in terms of the volume of their online advertising viewed by Ontario voters, he said.

The Canadian popular press has learned nothing from the American experience where it was predicted the vitriolic Hillary Clinton would ascend to the presidency handily.

Oops.

The popular press is not as influential as once it was. Social media allowed millions of disaffected voters to air their views (yes, millions), very few of which were complementary to the Liberals.


Speaking of whom:

Kathleen Wynne, who stepped down as Liberal leader after the party's dramatic downfall, said she hopes premier-designate Doug Ford will change the rules to grant the designation, which currently requires eight seats in the legislature.

"I think it's important," she said. "I hope that Mr. Ford will agree."

Don't do it, Doug. Finish the b!#ch. Finish them all.

Here is one (out of many) reason why:

The Ontario PC Party led by Doug Ford was very clear in the election: They would repeal cap-and-trade and fight against the hated carbon tax.

Doug Ford repeated it over and over and over again, and all PC candidates ran on that idea.

Knowing this, the voters of Ontario gave the PCs a massive majority government, and a clear mandate to implement their Plan For The People – including scrapping the carbon tax.

But now, instead of listening to the will of Ontario voters, the Trudeau government is arrogantly planning to impose the carbon tax anyway.

As reported by the Toronto (Red) Star – who tried taking down Ford but failed miserably – Liberal parliamentary secretary to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna Jonathan Wilkinson “told the Star the government wants to work with the incoming Ford administration on carbon pricing. But if Ford scraps Ontario’s existing system, as promised, Ottawa is prepared to impose one. “We need to move forward, and the Government of Canada intends to move forward,” Wilkinson said.”

Finish the b@$#@rds. Finish everyone of them off. Scorch the earth where they stood:

Now, this makes a little more sense:

President Donald Trump said Saturday he has “a clear objective” for his upcoming nuclear summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, though he acknowledged that potential progress “will always be spur of the moment.”

He described the meeting set for Tuesday in Singapore as a “one-time shot” for Kim and characterized it as a “mission of peace,” speaking shortly before he left a Group of Seven summit in Canada to fly to Asia.

 
Perhaps Trump is anticipating a repeat of decades of North Korean treachery.

One hopes he is, anyway.


Also - if human rights are not on the table, then Trump's previous disparagement of the Kim regime will ring hollow:

U.S. admission of North Korean refugees has almost ground to a halt since President Donald Trump took office because of his administration’s efforts to increase vetting of overseas arrivals.

**

Early in the reign of North Korea’s current supreme leader, merchant Kim Young-hee shared a flea-infested prison cell for a year with more than two dozen other women, enduring regular whippings from guards. Her crime was helping her sister’s child flee one of the world’s most repressive dictatorships.

There is no reason to make Kim prosperous while this occurs.



Was it something they said? :

THE Austrian government is to order the closure of seven mosques and expel up to 60 imams in a crackdown on political Islam and Turkish nationalism, it announced yesterday (Friday).

“Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country,” Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, said. Six of the seven mosques are being closed on suspicion of links to Islamic extremism. They are run by the Arab Religious Community, which the government has also ordered to be shut down.

The seventh mosque is to be closed on suspicion of links to the Grey Wolves, a far-Right Turkish nationalist group.

The move comes after images emerged earlier this year of children as young as four being made to wear Turkish army uniforms and salute the Turkish flag inside the mosque in Vienna’s Favoriten district.

Another reason why the popular press must be treated with contempt:
 

Jeff Amyx, a Baptist minister and owner of Amyx Hardware & Roofing Supplies, originally posted the sign in 2015 when SCOTUS ruled to permit same-sex marriage across the country.

Amyx claims that gay and lesbian couples are against his religion.

Following the ensuing backlash, Amyx took the “No Gays Allowed” sign down and replaced it with a sign reading, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech & freedom of religion,” according to USA Today.

Try reading the sign, Yahoo.

No, it does not follow that the poor, put-upon homosexuals in the United States will be excluded after the Supreme Court's decision to defend a baker's right not to cater a gay wedding. Only a self-absorbed, mentally ill, attention-seeking ambulance-chaser would think such a thing.

For a Friday

Aaaahhh, glorious day ...




Last night, fifty-eight percent of Ontario voters decided on fiscal conservatism over becoming Venezuela:

Doug Ford said Friday he's working with Ontario's outgoing Liberals to ensure a smooth transition to power — a process he said would take three weeks, involve the help of those who've worked at the federal level and see the formation of a strong Progressive Conservative cabinet.

The premier-designate, who secured a majority a day earlier with a slew of populist promises, said his first order of business would be to scrutinize the province's books.

"We have to see the financial situation that's been left behind, and over the next couple days and weeks you're going to hear from us, but the most important thing is getting our fiscal house in order," Ford said. "We'll be out looking for an auditing firm to go into the province to go line item by line item. I always believe in third party validation."

Mr. Ford will find out, as Mike Harris did, that he has an enormous, almost insurmountable mess to clean from the previous and completely unapologetic government:

As she began to speak, Doug Ford did likewise across town. TV stations reduced the Premier to a small box at the bottom corner of the screen. Few heard Ms. Wynne deliver her own funeral oration in real time. 

That was a shame. 

(Sidebar: yes, you fawning sycophant, it is a shame. Run along and cry some more.)

She hadn’t given many memorable speeches during her five years in charge, but this was four-fifths of one. 

Speaking in Obama-esque, big-tent terms – a style that already seems nostalgic – Ms. Wynne did a cinematic turn through the province. 

(Sidebar: that makes her sound more pathetic, but, please - continue.)

She used Steinian repetition to link each sentence – “Some of you …”

“Some of you have just started a new business … Some of you build cars … Some of you forge steel …”

No point scoring. No little jabs. No Us and Them.

And no apologies for being a corrupt, vile, unfeeling, heartless b!#ch who helped destroy one of the nation's economic engines.

That is why it is enormously emotionally gratifying that her and her fellow travellers have lost their official party status:

Wynne’s Liberals dropped so many seats in the election after 15 years in power, they lost official party status.

Of 124 seats, the Liberals won just seven — down from 55 at the time of the legislature’s dissolution, and one short of the eight required to be a ‘recognized party’ under the Standing Orders of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Below is a video clip from after it was determined that, thanks to Wynne, the Liberals had lost official party status and that Doug Ford was premier-elect with seventy-six seats:

Oh, wait! That's not the clip!


Anyway, when Ford finally assumes the office of premier, he should de-register the Liberals completely, abolish party subsidies, punish the water-carrying popular press and go further than this:

One of the obvious reasons for the big victory of Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives Thursday night was completely overlooked during the just-completed election campaign.

It was a new law in Ontario that for the first time restricted third-party advertising during the campaign to $100,000, and to $600,000 for the six months prior to the election.

That eliminated a huge advantage the Ontario Liberals enjoyed in the 2007, 2011 and 2014 elections, where there were no limits on third-party advertising and public and private sector unions spent millions of dollars relentlessly attacking whoever the PC leader happened to be at the time.

No special-interest group or person should be so powerful that they or he or she can sway an election or plot the course of a country. The Liberals may want it but that's just not how things are done in a democracy.


Also:

“We have won more seats than we have held in a generation,” Horwath told her cheering supporters.

“While the results did not get us there this time, I invite you to join us and together we’ll continue to fight to bring change for the better to Ontario.”

If Andrea Horvath had won the election, Ontarians would be eating their children by Christmas (SEE: Venezuela, North Korea).




In other news ...




No, Justin is afraid of running out of conditioner:

The problem with that is that Trudeau really needs to secure a deal with Trump on the North American Free Trade Agreement to keep those jobs numbers on track and head off the kind of electoral insurrection just witnessed in Ontario.

Trump upped the ante Thursday night with a tweet that accused Trudeau of being “indignant” about U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum but omitting that “they charge us up to 300 per cent on dairy that is hurting our farmers and killing our agriculture.”

That was typical hyperbole — Canada remains the largest market for American farm exports at around US $20 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Americans have their own trade-distorting farm tariffs — 350 per cent on tobacco; 132 per cent on peanuts — and an overall trade surplus with Canada, once services are included.

But Trump is right that Canada has been hypocritical when it chides him for protectionism but shelters its own dairy industry behind tariff walls. He is now fixated on the issue and it seems there will be no deal without major concessions on market access. Promisingly, Trudeau said on U.S. television last week that there was “flexibility” on farm access that was promising. ...

Trudeau is reaching that part of his mandate where he can no longer please all of the people all of the time. Tough decisions are being forced upon him and one of them should be to grant the U.S. market access on dairy, if that is what is required to strike a new NAFTA deal and forestall the 25-per-cent import tariff on autos Trump has threatened.

At the same time Trump is stalking Trudeau’s nightmares, Ford’s sweeping victory in Ontario ridings that voted Liberal in the 2015 federal election will only add to the torment.

The most striking thing about the premier-designate’s win was how convincingly he won seats in Etobicoke, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Markham, Newmarket, Pickering, Whitby and Ajax — the arc of suburban cities around Toronto that voted solidly Liberal in the federal election less than three years ago.

The question the parties will now be seeking to answer is: was this pent-up desire for change specific to provincial politics? Was Kathleen Wynne’s well-deserved trouncing because of an accumulation of scandals, cost overruns, hypocrisy, accounting tricks and tendency to place the interests of the Liberal Party over the province?

Or, could it be voters are getting fed up of the incessant identity politics also engaged in by the federal Liberal Party? If that is the case, the canary is bereft of life in its cage and the Trudeau Liberals had best take a leaf out of the populist Ford playbook.

Before last night's provincial election, former premier Kathleen Wynne attempted to paint herself as a victim for the growing unrest seen in Ontario. Justin, too, depicts Trump as the bully sorely in need of a global thrashing.The truth is that Justin is an incompetent, unserious hand puppet who finds himself unable to to please his backers and an angry electorate all the time. The Ontario election may just be another death knell for the Liberals, just like a sex scandal:

Everything old is new again, an expression that certainly applies to the story now taking on a new life on social media about claims of Trudeau’s “groping” of a young female reporter 18 years ago while visiting the Kootenay-area town of Creston Valley, B.C., (Pop: 5,300).

The editor of Creston Valley Advance certainly wasn’t impressed with Trudeau’s alleged sexual manhandling of his reporter, and even wrote an editorial about the incident—headlined, “Open eyes”— which is just now heating up Twitter.

The woman who answered the phone at the Advance remembers the incident, but not the name of the reporter.

The newspaper’s publisher, Lorne Eckersley, responded to an email while on vacation, stating “the editorial is authentic” and was written by an editor who worked at the Advance before his time.

The newspaper led off its editorial with what it called Trudeau’s one-day-late “apology” to the unnamed reporter, which wasn’t an apology at all but more like some high-society toff looking down his nose at someone who was obviously a lesser being.

For this is what Trudeau reportedly said to the offended young woman: “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper, I would never have been so forward.”

Say what? That it’s somehow okay to be inappropriate with a young reporter from a small-town weekly, but not to a reporter who might be also making a few extra bucks by stringing her story to a national newspaper?

What would be hashtag be for that? #MeTooButNotYou?

Or #MeTooDepending?

It's like there is a pattern.




But ... but ... the government is seriously vetting illegal immigrants:

Government data shows thousands of asylum seekers came into Canada illegally across the Canada-U.S. border through last year and the first quarter of this year, but only a fraction were removed from the country during that time.

Between Jan. 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018 only 135 individuals who made an asylum claim following an irregular entry were removed from the country, says information provided to the Commons committee on immigration.  

During that same period, more than 5,000 asylum seekers arrived through unofficial entry points.

The government says border officials can only remove failed refugee claimants after they have exhausted all legal options available to try for refugee status, including applications to the Immigration and Refugee Board, appeals and other administrative measures.

Japan is hoping that Trump will raise the issue of Japanese abductees during the talks with North Korea:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has plenty to worry about ahead of Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un next week, including the prospect of a deal that undermines Japan’s six-decade security alliance with the U.S. and leaves the island nation vulnerable to attack.

But it’s another issue that will top Abe’s agenda when he meets Trump for less than two hours at the White House on Thursday: The fate of 12 Japanese citizens abducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Japan wants progress on the abductees to be given the same weight as demands over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in Trump’s negotiations with Kim.

“I will discuss with the president about the issues of nuclear weapons and missiles, and most importantly the the abduction issue,” Abe told reporters on Wednesday before leaving. “I hope the U.S.-North Korea summit will be a success.”

Nope.




Birds of a feather, as they say:

Chinese President Xi Jinping gave visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin China's first friendship medal on Friday, calling him his best friend, underscoring the close ties between the two despite deep reservations many Western nations have of Putin.

Putin is in China for a weekend summit of the Chinese and Russian-led security bloc the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the port city of Qingdao, but dropped by Beijing first for talks with Xi.

Meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Xi lauded their relationship.

"No matter what fluctuations there are in the international situation, China and Russia have always firmly taken the development of relations as a priority," Xi told Putin at the start of their formal talks.

Xi then awarded Putin China's first ever friendship medal, on a large gold colored chain, an event carried live on state television.

Mid-Week Post

Back when we kicked @$$:

Troops from Le Régiment de la Chaudière waiting to land on Normandy beach (photo here)

 
**

“Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” he told Trudeau ...

Yes. Yes, we did.

That's what happens when James Madison is led to believe that he can burn down some Ontario potato farmers' fields and get a way with it.

I'm sure Mr. Trump meant that in jest. He should just carry on distrusting the petty little fruit Justin and his Chinese overlords as the rest of us do.


Also - who can blame Trump? Canada and Mexico need NAFTA badly and neither party are skilled in negotiating tactics:

U.S. President Donald Trump may seek separate talks with Canada and Mexico in a bid to get individual trade deals with the two countries, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Tuesday.  

“He is very seriously contemplating kind of a shift in the NAFTA negotiations. His preference now, and he asked me to convey this, is to actually negotiate with Mexico and Canada separately,” Kudlow said in an interview with Fox News. 

“He may be moving quickly toward these bilateral discussions instead of as a whole.”

More from the  most "transparent", fiscally responsible and least insane government in the country's history:

Let’s add this to the money spent building a refugee camp at the border. We can add it to the $173 million that was allocated in the budget for better processing times. Also the unknown cost of relocating some 800 Canada Border Services Agents from the Toronto area to the Quebec-New York border.

Justin Trudeau’s tweet sure is expensive.

Last fall the cost of each failed asylum claimant was estimated at $15-20,000. Michael MacDonald, Director General at Citizenship and Immigration gave that figure to the House of Commons Public Safety Committee.

“It varies with the individual case, but overall, as a general estimate, one can look at anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000. I think we’ll give you a more precise response, but it very much does vary,” MacDonald told the committee last September.

That figure includes social services but was also an estimate drawn up before we realized it would take years for each border crosser to get a hearing.

(Sidebar: these "asylum-seekers" -  Chahal said she has heard people are crossing the provincial border because the wait for a refugee hearing in Manitoba isn't as long as it is in Quebec, they don't speak French, or they feel better connected with local refugee communities in Winnipeg.

"We didn't see that last year. We're only now experiencing it. So we're trying to be proactive about it," she said.

Last week, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced $50 million would go to Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba to ease the housing costs for new refugees.

While Quebec received $36 million, Manitoba received $3 million.)

**

The national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women is accusing the federal government of putting its political interests before the safety of Indigenous women with its decision to extend the troubled inquiry’s timeline by six months instead of the full two years the commission requested in March.

(Sidebar: it is, after all, just money.)

**

In another sign of the chronic underfunding of the Canadian Forces, it turns out that the military has ran out of sleeping bags and rucksacks.

As a result, they are ordering soldiers who currently have sleeping bags and rucksacks to return them.

Some of the equipment was first issued in 1982.

Absurdly, the military is even asking for sleeping bag liners to be returned.

(Sidebar: could this be any more embarrassing and from a clearly indifferent Liberal government?)

**

The exchange, which took place as McKenna’s young daughter watched from the chairs placed behind her mother, came after a series of squabbles between the minister and some Conservative MPs. Last year, Conservative MP Gerry Ritz was forced to apologize after he called McKenna “Climate Barbie” on Twitter. The Tories have also been vocal in their opposition to her carbon tax plan.

In her opening statement, McKenna slammed the Conservatives for the former government’s environmental record. Things picked up during the first Tory question when Conservative MP Joël Godin accused her of delivering an overly partisan opening statement. In response, McKenna pointed out the Conservatives had attacked one of her public servants in a committee meeting.

“I do not like seeing attack ads using my public servants. And that was a Conservative attack ad, using my public servant who was talking about carbon pricing. I take great offence with that and I think Canadians take great offence,” she said.

Fast wasn’t having it.

“With respect, you’re in a political arena and if you’re going to be partisan at committee, you can expect an equivalent response,” he said.

As the questioning went on things continued to spiral downwards. MPs gestured dramatically and cried “point of order” until Chair Deb Schulte managed to restore calm.

It's no wonder people would rather vote Tory now (and they did not before because ...?):

A new Nanos Research poll shows the Conservatives now have more accessible voters than the Liberals.

It represents a big reversal for the Trudeau Liberals, who long held an advantage when it come to the number of Canadians willing to vote for them.

According to the survey, 46.3% of Canadians say they would ‘consider’ voting Conservative. 

That number is 44.6% for the Liberals, and 40.5% for the NDP.

One more day before Ontario finally decides that the Liberals have screwed it long enough:

The choice is between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats. Both are running on platforms that don’t add up. Neither will be able to keep its promises. Each appeals to specific voter groups with fixed beliefs that pit one part of the province against the other. The question isn’t which is the best of a bad lot? It’s which will do the least damage to the province, hurt fewer people, and have the least harmful impact over the long term?

I've noticed that none of the major parties have indicated how they are going to acquire money for all of the things they promised.

As long as Canadians don't demand leaders and independent parties or persons, our lot will always be the lesser of an amount of evils.


Also:

But it is reasonably clear to those who move in Ontario political circles that a culture of corruption had taken root; a sleazy streak now runs through our politics. ...

After an election, there is always a call for healing and desire to move on. That should be resisted in regards to the hygiene of our political culture.

Oh, please, Santa Claus, let this happen!:

If recent polls are correct, the Liberals look poised to drop from the governing party in Ontario to losing their official party status.

As of June 5, according to the CBC News poll tracker, the Progressive Conservatives were at 37.6 per cent support, the NDP at 36.1 and the Liberals at 19.9 per cent. 

As a result, seat projections were at 74 for the PCs, 48 for the NDP and two for the Liberals. That would be a stunning, though not unheard of, fall for a governing party that has been in power for 15 years.

Moderate? Hardly:

North Korea’s new top three military officers are known for their unquestioning support of leader Kim Jong Un and are flexible enough to accept the massive changes that may come from any deal with U.S. President Donald Trump, people who follow the secretive country say. 

If they are loyal to Kim, they will do as he asks which will not include surrendering its nuclear weapons or opening up the country.




The same China people still believe is democratic and can lead North Korea into being so:

Facebook Inc said Tuesday it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies including Huawei, the world's third largest smartphone maker, which has come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies on security concerns.

**

China's national carrier will resume flights between Beijing and Pyongyang this week amid improved Sino-North Korea ties, a company official said Tuesday.

Starting Wednesday, Air China will provide three flights per week on the route that it suspended on Nov. 21 last year. Relations soured last year as Beijing, angered by Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests, backed a series of United Nations' sanctions against its ally.

**

The anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre came and went this week, barely noticed, unmentioned in official circles in Canada, legally unmentionable in China and expunged by algorithm, in advance, from Sina Weibo’s millions of overseas social media accounts. It is as though the event never even happened. And in a way, it never did.

When it is remembered at all, the event is commonly understood to have been a riot in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that was brutally put down. A journalistic convention has evolved over time to mention hundreds, “perhaps thousands” of deaths. In the hours that followed the killings in Beijing, the Red Cross Society of China released an estimate of 2,700 dead. British diplomatic cables declassified last year, however, refer to an anonymous official with the State Council who put the butchers’ bill at 10,000 deaths.

In Beijing, most of the dead were not murdered at Tiananmen Square, but rather in the surrounding streets and boulevards, especially in the Muxidi district. They were shot, bayoneted, bulldozed and crushed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers. The killings were not confined to Beijing, either. Nor were the protests. Student-led rallies and marches for democracy and a free press had been underway for weeks.

June 6th isn't only for marking the D-Day operations that turned the tide of the Second World War. It is also for remembering the war dead who gave their lives for half of a country:

People who can afford to be blissfully unaware thanks to the sacrifices of others.

(Merci beaucoup)

For a Monday

Lots to talk about ...



With poll numbers so low that she could be an Antarctic heat wave, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has conceded defeat before the June 7th provincial election but not before issuing one last bit of spite:

After months of polls showing lacklustre voter support for the Ontario Liberals, the leader of the party said she was “sorry, not sorry” for what the Grits have done in the province. But the numbers suggest the race is coming down to the Tories or the NDP, so Wynne took matters into her own hands.

“On June 7th, voters will elect a new government. I don’t know who voters will choose but I am pretty sure that it won’t be me. After Thursday, I will no longer be Ontario’s premier. And I’m OK with that,” Wynne said Saturday. 

Clearly emotional with her voice breaking at times, the Liberal leader admitted it was a “hard thing to do.” After all, the provincial election was only five days away. However, she insisted it was the best move for her party to make the case for supporting local Liberal candidates.

“The more Liberal MPPs we send to Queen’s Park on June 7th, the less likely it becomes that either Doug Ford or the NDP will be able to form a majority government,” Wynne told reporters. “By voting Liberal, you can keep the next government, Conservative or NDP, from acting too extreme — one way or the other.”

No one likes a sore loser, Kathy.




Speaking of sore losers:

Trade frictions between the United States and Canada are a "family quarrel," President Donald Trump's economic adviser said on Sunday, brushing aside concerns expressed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an overreaction.

The Trump administration said on Thursday it was moving ahead with tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, ending a two-month exemption and potentially setting the stage for a trade war with some of America's top allies.

Trudeau responded on Thursday by calling the tariffs an affront to the longstanding security partnership between Canada and the United States, and Canada announced retaliatory steps.

Trudeau, in an interview aired on Sunday by NBC's "Meet the Press", said it was "insulting" to hear the U.S. claim that Canadian steel and aluminum posed a national security threat.

(Sidebar: Insulting? Really? A country defending its interests is insulting? Well, if you say so. you ought to know insulting, Hair-Boy.)

"I think he's overreacting," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said of Trudeau on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

Kudlow said steel and aluminum tariffs on U.S. allies "may go on for a while" or "they may not," because the matter is subject to negotiation.

But melodrama is what Justin does best. He doesn't even need a script for it.


Also:

Not only were Canadian officials scrambling to limit problems for travellers, they were simply trying to grasp what was going on when the Trump administration issued an executive order last year banning people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

Newly released internal notes from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reveal Canadian government officials fired off a list of 16 detailed questions with the aim of figuring out the order's impact on everything from refugee claims to biometric tracking.

The records were recently released to The Canadian Press in response to a February 2017 request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, asking for materials used to brief then-homeland secretary John Kelly in advance of phone calls with Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

Some 400,000 people and more than $2 billion worth of goods and services cross the Canada-U.S. border every day.

The order — officially the Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States — applied to people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. As soon as it was signed on Jan. 27, 2017, confusion erupted about who was allowed into the U.S., as did persistent headaches for some travellers from Canada.

The Nexus trusted-traveller cards of about 200 Canadian permanent residents were suddenly cancelled. There were several reports of minorities being turned away at the U.S. border. And a surge of would-be refugees coming north through remote border points continues to this day.

A week after the executive order, Goodale told the House of Commons the Liberal government was trying to ensure Canadian dual-nationals could still use their Nexus cards at the border.

Back to the election in Ontario ...

If Andrea Horwath wakes up as Premier of Ontario on June 8, she may have a shadowy foreign-funded group out of Vancouver to thank for her win.

Leadnow was set up in British Columbia in 2011 by a pair of young Canadians with the full support of a Tides Foundation backed group that sought to organize for left-wing causes.

In the 2015 federal election, Leadnow targeted 29 ridings held by Conservatives and took credit for dumping the Tories from 25 of them.

Now this group, which runs shadow campaigns to get their prefered candidate elected, is working the Ontario election.

Leadnow is working to make sure Doug Ford isn’t elected Premier with their #NeverFord campaign. They are even targeting Ford in his own riding of Etobicoke North to block his local win.

The Liberals and the NDP do not differ here. Both are willing to take foreign money, even if the country's economy were to suffer, in order to win.


(Merci)


Also:

But now, it has been revealed that Ontario NDP candidate Joel Harden – who attacked people who disagree with Andrea Horwath’s ‘sanctuary province’ scheme – said he looked to socialist Venezuela “For inspiration.”

The Ontario PC Party released an excerpt of a doctoral thesis by Harden, in which he said this about Venezuela:

“For inspiration, then, this thesis ends by reviewing the ‘socialism of the twenty-first century’ currently espoused by Venezuelan radicals. Their Bolivarian revolution, it is argued, despite its contradictions, suggest clues for global radicals elsewhere.”

So, we have a candidate from the socialist NDP seeking power in Ontario while taking his inspiration from a brutal socialist regime.

This Venezuela:

Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death.

His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals.

Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected. Aunts shooed away curious young cousins, mourners arrived with wildflowers from the hills, and relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families increasingly depend on amid the food shortages and soaring food prices throttling the nation. They gently placed the tiny wings on top of Kenyerber’s coffin to help his soul reach heaven — a tradition when a baby dies in Venezuela.

When Kenyerber’s body was finally ready for viewing, his father, Carlos Aquino, a 37-year-old construction worker, began to weep uncontrollably. “How can this be?” he cried, hugging the coffin and speaking softly, as if to comfort his son in death. “Your papá will never see you again.”

It's just money:

In a recent exchange during Question Period, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was again asked about a Fraser Institute analysis of how federal tax policy changes have increased the amount of income tax paid by the vast majority of middle-class families in Canada. The prime minister did not refute our findings about a growing income tax bill, but instead noted that the analysis did not account for government transfers to families.

This is a worrying response because it conflates taxes and transfers — which are not the same thing — and completely misses the point that most middle-class families are paying more in income taxes despite what his government promised.

For the Trudeau government, the promise to cut taxes for middle-class families featured prominently in the 2015 election campaign, and since coming to power, the prime minister and his top government officials — including the finance minister — have repeatedly claimed that the government fulfilled this commitment. As just one example, this government’s first budget claimed “the government cut taxes for middle class Canadians everywhere.”

When testing this claim, however, we found it was not true for the vast majority of middle-class families.

Here’s why. The claim rests on the reduction of the second-lowest personal income tax rate from 22 per cent to 20.5 per cent. But for most middle-class families, other changes to the personal income tax system made by the government more than wiped out the gain from this tax rate cut. (Keep in mind that this tax rate cut only applies to individual incomes over roughly $46,000.)

By eliminating a number of tax credits (provisions in the tax code that reduce a person’s income taxes, if they qualify) Ottawa increased income taxes for Canadians who previously claimed such credits. Specifically, the government eliminated the income-splitting tax credit for couples with young children, the children’s fitness tax credit, the public transit tax credit, the education tax credit and the textbook tax credit.

When all the income tax changes are considered, 81 per cent of middle-class families pay more in personal income taxes — $840 more, on average — due to the government’s tax changes.

**

He repeatedly said he was being ‘straight and honest’ with Canadians, then turned around and betrayed the country. Instead of three ‘modest’ deficits, we have huge deficits as far as the eye can see.

**

According to the National Observer, both Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson and Trans Mountain Expansion vice president David Safari are going to be getting $1.5 million bonuses.

The announcement comes after Justin Trudeau announced that he would spend $4.5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars to nationalize the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Ahmed Hussen is such a g-d- liar:

Since the border crisis began, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have been happy to let tens of thousands of people pour across the border unchecked. That might be changing.

At least anyone that wants sanity in our immigration policy should hope so.

Less than a week after admitting that crossing at Roxham Road in Quebec is illegal, Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen has said he wants to think about making the safe third country agreement apply to the whole border.

When the Conservatives have proposed such an idea the Liberals have mocked it.

In fact both Hussen and Ralph Goodale have said it is an unworkable idea. They have mocked Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel for proposing it.

He didn't stab the priest. The priest's chest just got in the way of his knife:

The Muslim man sexually harassed a female Christian pilgrim. The Priest rushed the female into the Churchyard with her group and asked the Muslim to stop harassing the lady. In response, the Muslim stabbed the Priest and injured him badly.

 
(Paws up)




How "moderate" could this guy be? :

All of North Korea's three top military officials are believed to have been replaced, an intelligence source said Sunday, in a move that could be aimed at taming the military ahead of a denuclearization deal with the U.S.

No Kwang-chol, first vice minister of the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, replaced Pak Yong-sik as defense chief, while Ri Myong-su, chief of the KPA's general staff, was replaced by his deputy, Ri Yong-gil, according to the source.

(Sidebar: read - executed.)

These changes are in addition to Army Gen. Kim Su-gil's replacement of Kim Jong-gak as director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army. The replacement was confirmed in a North Korean state media report last month.

Earlier in the day, a Japanese newspaper carried a similar report.

"The North appears to have brought in new figures amid the changes in inter-Korean relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula as the previous officials lacked flexibility in thinking," the source said. "In particular, No Kwang-chol has been classified as a moderate person."

Kim Jong-Un just doesn't replace people and usher them into retirement unless one means killing them off.


Also - but I thought that peace with North Korea was imminent:

Ahn Cheol-soo, a Seoul mayoral candidate, said Monday that the United States should maintain its troops in South Korea "for a considerable period of time" even if a peace treaty to end the Korean War is signed.

(Kamsahamnida)




And now, dogs prove once more how selfless they really are:

Authorities in Washington state say a hiker was killed in a fall from a cliff near Snoqualmie Pass — and the hiker’s companion avoided a similar fate thanks to a dog.

King County sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Abbott says the victim’s companion heard him go over the 200-foot (61-meter) cliff Sunday in the Pratt Lake area.

When he went to investigate, the companion’s dog — a Husky — pulled him back before he went over the edge as well.

Abbott says the companion told authorities that the dog was the only reason he didn’t fall.

Friday Post

Aaaahhhh, glorious June ....





This just in - Justin's friend is granted bail:

Former hostage Joshua Boyle is being released on bail ahead of his trial in Ottawa on charges of assault, sexual assault and more, a judge ruled Friday after a two-day bail hearing earlier this week.

Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden ordered Boyle to be released on recognizance.

Boyle will reside with his parents in Smiths Falls under strict conditions and will be placed under house arrest with GPS ankle bracelet monitoring.

Since assuming office, Justin has tanked the following:  the cancellation of the Energy East, Northern Gateway, Petronas LNG and the purchase of the long-stalled Trans-Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion plus costs not revealed to the taxpayers, a skating rink no one used that cost $100,000 a day, carbon taxes and higher business tax rates that have made Canada less welcoming for businesses, environmental assessment protocols that hinder natural resource projects, a widening $2.7 billion trade deficit, a failure to secure NAFTA and then lying about it, a series of failed trade agreements and now a trade row with the US:

Canada is imposing dollar-for-dollar tariff “countermeasures” on up to $16.6 billion worth of U.S. imports in response to the American decision to make good on its threat of similar tariffs against Canadian-made steel and aluminum.

The tariffs, which apply to a long list of U.S. products that includes everything from flat-rolled steel to playing cards and felt-tipped pens, will go into effect July 1, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told a news conference Thursday.

“This is $16.6 billion of retaliation,” Freeland said.

Like fun it is.

Considering the above ways in which Justin has tanked the Canadian economy and his complete inability to bargain or at least ameliorate the biggest and most trading partner Canada will ever have, that retaliation means nothing.

Trump knows that Canada has been allowing China to use it to dump Chinese steel into the North American market (if it didn't, then why would Canada initiate anti-dumping investigations against China?). This is why he put tariffs on steel and aluminum. He also believes that Canada have greatly benefited from agreements like NAFTA and that Justin's welcome mat for unvetted persons of all stripes endangers American security.

Has Justin proven Trump wrong?

Not at all.

Instead, he unleashed his pansy anger and put tariffs on felt pens and sleeping bags against the country Canada needs the most to make it more like a functioning economy and less like Juche-prone North Korea.

Smoke and mirrors. As long as Justin gets to hang onto his seat in 2019, what does he care if the Canadian steel industry goes under?


Also:

Most of all, its question was: Was the Liberal government really onside with the pipeline or not? Would the government back it, with full and unambiguous vigour, during the now most crucial stage — the actual construction of the damn thing? Or was the company expected to face intensifying opposition from the feverish enviros, more showdowns and blockades? Would it be with the company when the violence and dangerous confrontation loosely hinted at under the convenient umbrella of “civil disobedience” erupted during actual construction? Or would that be solely the company’s “problem?”

Was Kinder Morgan to face this, all on its own, while the federal government joyfully continued to waltz off with massive delegations to climate conferences, there to proclaim the evils of oil and carbon emissions and deplore those fiendish energy companies that kept insisting on supplying the world with the oil and gas the world depends on?

So Kinder Morgan hadn’t issued an “ultimatum.” Rather, it had declared instead a necessary “time out” to weigh this one question: Is it going to be much more of the same?

Unfortunately, we never got to hear the results of Kinder Morgan’s meditation. Because two days before the 31st the Liberal government stepped in to say it was buying the pipeline from the company. But no genius is required to deduce the conclusion the company had come to. It looked back at what it had already gone through, and looked ahead and saw vividly and to its horror it was only going to get worse.

The India trip that just will not die:

The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians has delivered a special report to Justin Trudeau on the prime minister's ill-fated trip to India.

But the public can't read it quite yet, and may never see the whole thing.

(Sidebar: this is allegedly the most transparent government in the country's history.) 

It's just money:

The federal government will provide $50 million to Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba to help pay for some of the costs they have borne as a result of the influx of asylum seekers illegally crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says this is not a final payment to these provinces for border crosser costs, but is meant to help address some of the immediate temporary housing needs in those provinces.

**

You might pass 24 Sussex Drive and say to yourself: “I wonder what it costs to keep that place running?”

So we found out — and it’s a bundle.

Some ordinary household bills for the official residence of the prime minister, the one that’s not been lived in since the 2015 federal election, were released by the National Capital Commission through an access-to-information request.

They show how the notoriously drafty old house sucks up energy — and money.

The total expenses for the period from November 2015 through March 2016 were $171,376 — for the building alone, not food or staffing. (The dates are approximate. Not all expenses were billed on the same schedule.)

Energy bills alone topped $50,000 for the first fall and winter that the Trudeau family chose not to live there.

(Sidebar: energy, you say ...)

Whatever you say, Mr. Ad-Scam:

Jean Chretien has ignored a letter from Nova Scotia's lobbyist registrar asking if he lobbied the premier about a port proposal during a recent closed-door session that drew a citizen complaint.

The registrar of lobbyists, Hayley Clarke, asked the former prime minister about a March 21 meeting in Halifax with Premier Stephen McNeil and Transport Minister Geoff MacLellan.

Chretien is an international adviser to Sydney Harbour Investment Partners, which has been seeking investor support for the Cape Breton container port project. Chretien is not a registered lobbyist in Nova Scotia, and both McNeil and MacLellan denied he lobbied them or discussed the port project.

Trump is ready to be lied to again:

President Donald Trump said on Friday an unprecedented nuclear arms summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the United States pulled out of will now go ahead as scheduled on June 12 in Singapore, adding another twist to a high-stakes diplomatic dance.  

Mike Pompeo is a g-d- tool:

"We think that working together, the people of the United States and North Korea can create a future defined by friendship and collaboration, not by mistrust, and fear and threats. We sincerely hope that Chairman Kim Jong-un shares this positive vision for the future."

Kim isn't starving his people because he forgot that humans need to eat to live.

This:

North Korea’s “songbun” system, which classifies people via state-assigned social class and birth, dominates the way in which North Koreans live. Those higher up the class structure live in better places, have access to better jobs, and receive more food – those lower down do not, and face starvation as a result.

Well-fed people with ideas tend to overthrow dictators.




Dreadful:

John Forde stood silently near the body of a dead female black bear as two little eyes stared back at him from a nearby bush.

The bear cub was about the size of a Jack Russell terrier, extremely underweight and very scared.

Forde, who co-owns the Whale Centre in Tofino with his wife Jennifer Steven, had been told the day before about a cub hiding around the body of its dead mother in Ross Pass.

Using a jacket, Forde covered the cub and was finally able to grab it, haul it to the boat and put it in the kennel.

The couple contacted conservation officers and arranged to transport the cub to the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre.

"It was in really rough shape, very malnourished and to the point where they figure if we hadn't had got it that day, it probably wouldn't have lasted another," Forde said.

Tawny Molland, animal care supervisor at the centre, said the male cub is between eight to 12 weeks old. It will stay at the centre for around 18 months before it is released into the wild.

"Every day we are seeing signs of improvement," she said.

Lions and tigers and bears and a jaguar! Oh my!:

Two lions, two tigers, a jaguar and a bear broke out of their cages in a western German zoo on Friday after heavy rains flooded the area and damaged their enclosures, sparking a massive search by police as they warned local residents to stay indoors.