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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has greatly angered PM Harvey Weinstein Justin Trudeau and his cohort:

The federal government is interpreting Ontario's cancellation of its cap-and-trade program as equivalent to withdrawing from Ottawa's national climate change framework — and is reconsidering more than $400 million in funding as a result.

A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says the $420 million earmarked for Ontario under the Low Carbon Economy Leadership Fund is under review, since funding is contingent on agreeing to the framework, which includes imposing a carbon price.

Newly elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford has rescinded the previous Liberal government's regulation that established the cap-and-trade program in 2017, withdrawing from an arrangement with Quebec and California that established a joint carbon market to buy and sell pollution credits.

As a result, Canada has hit the brakes on Ontario's portion of the $1.4-billion climate change fund.

This scam cap-and-trade scheme:

“Cap-and-trade and carbon tax schemes are no more than government cash grabs that do nothing for the environment while hitting people in the wallet in order to fund big government programs,” Ford said in a statement Tuesday. “I promised that the party with taxpayers’ dollars was over and that this would include scrapping the cap-and-trade, carbon tax slush fund.”

Cap and trade added 4.3 cents to the cost of a litre of gasoline, 5 cents a litre to diesel and 3.3 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

The Ontario-Quebec-California joint program auctioned greenhouse gas emission allowances, raising about $1.9 billion for the Ontario government annually.

Former premier Kathleen Wynne made numerous commitments for at cash, including a pledge to pump $657 million into social housing repairs and retrofits — with about half slated for Toronto.

Wynne also promised that she would use those funds to help pay for $3 GO Transit fares within the City of Toronto and for short GO Train distances of less than 10 kilometres. The idea  was to make GO competitive with TTC fares, relieving pressure on the city’s packed transit system.

About $129 million of the cap-and-trade proceeds meant for social housing repairs has been secured, but the rest of the funds are in grave doubt, Mayor John Tory said.

That is not all that Ford has done:

As noted by the CP, A spokesman for Premier Doug Ford said Thursday the federal government has encouraged people to cross into Canada illegally and continues to usher people across the U.S.-Quebec border into Ontario. “This has resulted in a housing crisis and threats to the services that Ontario families depend on,” Simon Jefferies said in a statement. “This mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government, and the federal government should foot 100 per cent of the bills.”

Justin, whose mouth never met a foot it did not like, stated outright that Mr. Ford was woefully ignorant of how the immigration system worked in Canada:

Preening for the press, Trudeau claimed that Ford wasn’t “quite aware” of how the “asylum seeking” system works, and that he had to spend time “explaining it” to Ford.

Of course, Trudeau is the one who doesn’t understand how borders work, and his reckless invite of everybody to enter Canada was a huge cause of the crisis at the border which is having a seriously damaging impact on our social programs.

But instead of acknowledging his own role or taking responsibility for his mistakes, Trudeau arrogantly and condescendingly tried to one-up Ford, acting as if he was still a part-time drama teacher explaining something to a student.

Trudeau even started talking about “International obligations” and “UN Conventions,” ignoring the fact that protecting the integrity of Canada’s laws and Canada’s borders always takes precedence over what elitist international groups want.

Indeed.

Do Canadians run Canada or is its carcass evenly divided by others?


Why should Ontario pick up the slack that Quebec will not and because the Liberals want a voters block by 2019?


Also:

A number of laws passed by Ontario's previous Liberal government have been put on hold by the newly elected Progressive Conservative regime, including measures to tighten rules around vaping and to cap resale values for sports and concert tickets.

A spokesman for the Progressive Conservatives said Wednesday the new government, which was sworn in Friday, wants more time to consult and examine the laws before they come into effect.

While some advocacy groups welcomed the move, critics questioned the government's reasons for revisiting the laws.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath accused Premier Doug Ford of making changes without any explanation or public notice.

"No one voted for business to be conducted in secret, behind closed doors," Horwath said in a statement.

(Sidebar: what country do you live in, Andrea?)

Because Justin is a l/Liberal and the son of the one of the worst prime ministers Canada has ever seen, he prevaricates:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave his most detailed response yet Thursday to an 18-year-old allegation he groped a female reporter, confirming he had apologized to the woman at the time but saying he didn’t feel he had acted “in any way untoward.”

Facing reporters at Queen’s Park after his first meeting with new Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trudeau offered a more elaborate reflection on the allegation for the first time since it resurfaced in the past months.

“I’ve been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago,” he said. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.”

Yes, women tend to react badly when the trust-funded son of a former prime minister grope them or elbow them in the chest. The only faux pas (in his view) was that, had the reporter in question worked for the Globe and Mail, he would not have man-handled her so, as if to remind her that her humble status worked against her and being believed and recompensed.

His arrogance and inability to reflect and imagine what he might have done wrong are signs of a serious sociopathy.

And people voted for it.




I don't care if one was "here first". You cannot overturn a verdict:

Chief Ava Hill is asking the province's Attorney General to appeal the not guilty verdict for Peter Khill, with chiefs across Ontario joining the call for "immediate action."

The elected chief of the Six Nations of the Grand River says she'll be speaking with newly appointed Attorney General Caroline Mulroney on Monday and is hopeful she will challenge the verdict in the death of Jon Styres and begin an effort to correct systemic discrimination in the justice system.

Also:

A class action lawsuit has been filed by Merchant Law Group against the federal government for the RCMPs handling of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIW).

The suit, filed by Tony Merchant in Regina’s Court of Queen’s Bench, seeks $500 million in damages for the alleged mishandling of MMIW investigations, and an additional $100 million in punitive damages. 

Merchant stated the Crown breached the charter rights of family members to security and to be free from discrimination.

He said plaintiffs experienced depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of income, loss of enjoyment of life and suicidal thoughts as a result of the alleged mishandled investigations.

His Indian name is "Ambulance-Chaser".




Where did she get the money for that?:

A Salvadoran woman and her two daughters who fled their home country after allegedly suffering extortion and rape at the hands of members of the notorious MS-13 gang are among several parties challenging the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country agreement in court.

The case has been snaking its way through Federal Court for the last year, but this week saw a flurry of new filings by three additional applicants in the case: Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches, all of them longtime critics of the agreement.

How are those sanctions working out?:

When Pompeo returns, the world should know whether the Trump administration’s fundamental assumption—that Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his nuclear arsenal—is correct. 

If that assumption is not correct—and at this moment it does not appear to be so—then Trump will have to do something he jokingly said in Singapore that he would not do: admit he was wrong about the North Korean leader. 

Unfortunately, it appears the president will make no such admission. Instead, it looks like he has chosen to retreat, backing away from demands that the North give up its most destructive weapons.  ...

The deal with North Korea, Pompeo said, is that Kim will “fully denuclearize” and permit verification in return for “security assurances.” 

In response to Kim’s perceived good will, Trump and Pompeo have made several gestures of their own. First, Trump indefinitely suspended large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea. 

Second, the administration since the end of May has been holding off designating almost three dozen entities , significantly, some of them Russian and others Chinese, for violations of North Korea sanctions. 

The American concessions are especially significant. Take the suspension of the military exercises, what Trump called “war games.” Trump made that move without getting a reciprocal promise from Kim to suspend his military’s drills. As a result, the Korean People’s Army will go ahead with its summer training cycle and the U.S. and South Korean forces will forego the crucial Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercise in August. 

If the suspension of the American-South Korean exercises lasts, say, a year, there will be a substantial erosion in readiness and the alliance will start to become hollow. The United States and the South will still be able to repel an attack from the North, but casualties, both military and civilian, will be far higher. 

The decision to hold off the naming of new sanctioned entities will also have adverse consequences. Pyongyang changes front companies all the time, so not designating new ones undermines the sanctions effort quickly. Once Kim believes he has gotten around the American and international prohibitions, Washington’s leverage in “denuclearization” negotiations rapidly declines. 

While Trump is permitting Pyongyang to avoid sanctions, he is allowing Beijing to blatantly violate them. The forecast, therefore, is for even more brazen Chinese conduct. 

These two Trump concessions—suspension of exercises and nonenforcement of sanctions—mean time is now on Kim’s side. 

And time is on the North Korean’s side for another reason. Instead of stopping production of weapons—what we’d expect if Trump were right about Kim’s intentions—the regime in recent days has continued making improvements to its plutonium-producing reactor and other facilities at Yongbyon; it has at various undisclosed sites increased production of nuclear fuel ; and it has been finishing construction at the Chemical Material Institute , which makes parts for solid-fuel ballistic missiles. Furthermore, U.S. officials say the North is attempting to hide warheads and whole facilities producing fissile material. 

And there is one thing Chairman Kim has not done. Despite what Trump said at his post–summit press conference in Singapore, the boy dictator has not destroyed “a major missile engine testing site.” U.S. officials have subsequently identified that site as the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. 

**

I suspect many observers who professed to be appalled by Trump’s performance were really only lamenting the lack of that sheen. Their criticism of him for not getting more from Kim in writing makes little sense. Either the regime has changed fundamentally or it hasn’t. If it has, it would indeed be counter-productive to impose a series of hurdles that must be jumped over within a certain time. If it hasn’t, no concessions it might commit to paper are going to have any more value than the last ones.

(Kamsahamnida)
 

Mid-Week Post

Because America!

The same pants-wetting back-bencher who brought the country M-103 is now applauding the federal government's giving $23 million to known terrorist organisations:

Mississauga-Erindale MP Iqra Khalid who has been the mouthpiece of the divisive Motion M103 on ‘Islamophobia’ stood in her constituency office to announce that the Trudeau government was investing an additional $23 Million into its multiculturalism program.

With no mainstream media in attendance to ask any questions, Khalid boasted that her “hard work has resulted into tangible action.” She listed the following two groups as being among the recipients of the new funding:

1. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a former branch of the U.S. based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) that was named in 2008 as an unindicted co-conspirator connected to the “largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history. NCCM has denied links to CAIR.
2. Islamic Relief, a worldwide charity accused of links to Islamist extremism by Middle East Forum, Israel and the United Arab Emirates among others.

There is no solid record that the Canadian arms of these two organizations have contributed to current problematic behaviour.  Nonetheless, for over a year many Muslim Canadians, including yours truly, my Sun colleague Farzana Hassan as well as other Muslim critics of Islamism had warned that the M103 initiative was much more than the victimhood culture of guilt being forced onto ordinary Canadians.

On Wednesday, we saw our fears come true. While Islamists will receive millions to conduct their Sharia agenda in Canada, Muslim critics of jihad, polygamy, FGM and Sharia have been left on their own to fight global Islamofascism.

You can run to Latvia (which you said wasn't a real thing) but you can't run away from the lowly reporter-groping truth:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit Canadian troops in Latvia before attending the NATO summit in Brussels next week.

Also:

There is growing outrage towards the state propaganda network CBC after they revealed that they had the Trudeau ‘grope’ story for months, but didn’t report on it.

The story – based on an editorial in the Creston Advance – had featured allegations that Justin Trudeau groped a female reporter. The editorial even featured an alleged apology from Trudeau.

It resurfaced first on social media (no wonder the Trudeau Liberals are trying to shut down free expression), and then to websites like this one and international outlets. Only then did the Canadian establishment media start reporting on it – and it took them almost a month to even ask Trudeau a question about it.

Meanwhile, recently-elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been keeping a few of his promises:

The new Ontario government has issued a freeze on pay changes (pay hikes) for managers in the bureaucracy who aren’t covered by collective bargaining.

**

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the new cabinet have officially revoked the regulation that implemented the cap-and-trade carbon tax.

I imagine for the same reason that it ignores China's appalling human rights record:

Among the Trudeau Liberals’ most egregious foreign policy errors is to have positioned Canada as an apologist for the autocratic regime in Egypt. In the past few years, as Egyptian society has slipped deeper into despotic rule under former general Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, the Trudeau administration has seemed incapable of making a critical comment toward its North African partner.

I keep repeating myself:

Three weeks after the U.S.-North Korea summit and ahead of an impending trip to North Korea by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a leaked U.S. intelligence report and an analysis of satellite data suggest the North may be continuing its nuclear and missile activities despite a pledge to denuclearize.

North Korea has been showering the United States and South Korea with goodwill gestures in recent months, including the shutdown of its main nuclear testing site and the release of three American detainees. But many experts say nothing it has done is consequential enough to be seen as a sign that the country is willing to fully surrender its nuclear weapons.

The State Department said Pompeo is to visit North Korea from Friday in his third visit to the country in the past three months. President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, said Sunday that Pompeo and North Korean officials will discuss a U.S. plan that would lead to the dismantling of the North's nuclear and missile programs in a year.

If one imagines them as several Charlie Gards, they are easy to ignore:

Police on Tuesday arrested a “health care professional” on suspicion of murdering eight babies and attempting to kill six other infants as part of “Operation Hummingbird,” an inquiry into the sudden and unexplained deaths of 17 babies at a top-tier public hospital in Britain.

The female suspect worked at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital south of Liverpool.

Detectives were brought into the case following the mysterious deaths of 17 babies at the hospital between March 2015 and July 2016, alongside 15 “non-fatal collapses.”

 Wow. Russia had better send a really nice thank-you note:

Japan bowed out of the World Cup in the Round of 16 in heartbreaking fashion on Monday, but that didn’t stop the Japanese fans and players from showing profound respect for the event’s host country, Russia.

Following a devastating 3-2 loss to Belgium — where Japan took a 2-0 lead in the second half before losing in stoppage time — the Japanese players made sure to leave their dressing room at Rostov Arena completely spotless.

For a Monday

Ah, the sticky, oppressive heat ...

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has been seen leaving the West Wing of the White House:

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has wrapped up a Monday meeting with one of the most senior officials in the Trump administration.

The White House confirmed the meeting between Harper and Larry Kudlow, economic advisor to President Donald Trump, on Monday afternoon but did not say how long it lasted or what the two discussed.

Perhaps Mr. Harper was trying to clean up Justin's messes.

 

Meanwhile, the pervert thirty-nine percent voted for in the 2015 election tries to deflect an accusation of groping he cannot deny:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he does not remember any “negative interactions” during an event he attended 18 years ago in British Columbia — acknowledging for the first time allegations of sexual misconduct that recently resurfaced about him at the event.

Trudeau told reporters in Regina on Sunday that he remembers attending the music festival in Creston, B.C., in the summer of 2000, but said he doesn’t recall anything going amiss.

“I remember that day in Creston well, it was an Avalanche Foundation event to support avalanche safety. I had a good day that day. I don’t remember any negative interactions that day at all,” Trudeau said. ...

(Sidebar: except for grabbing a woman and then saying this -  “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper, I would never have been so forward.”)

The allegation is particularly problematic for Trudeau, who frequently proclaims himself a feminist and has generally taken a zero-tolerance approach to allegations of sexual misconduct within the Liberal party.

Four MPs have resigned or been kicked out of the Liberal caucus over alleged sexual misconduct since Trudeau became party leader in 2013.

These Liberal caucus members:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Liberal MPs, including one accused of sexual harassment, took part in a closed-door workshop on creating safe workplaces at the Liberal convention in Halifax.

**

An Ontario Liberal MP is facing an allegation of sexual assault following an incident in Halifax early Saturday morning.

Halifax Regional Police are investigating the alleged assault they say happened just after 2 a.m. AT on Brunswick Street across from Citadel Hill in downtown Halifax, near where the Liberal Party policy convention was being held.

Francis Drouin's office confirmed an allegation had been made against him. 

**

Nunavut's MP and former federal cabinet minister Hunter Tootoo made a statement Wednesday, finally addressing allegations he had an inappropriate relationship before his sudden resignation from cabinet and Liberal caucus this May. 

"I made a mistake and regrettably engaged in a consensual but inappropriate relationship, and that is why I resigned," he said in the CBC newsroom in Iqaluit this afternoon. 

**

Calgary MP Darshan Kang has resigned from the Liberal caucus amid allegations of sexual harassment.

** 

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has suspended ethics critic Scott Andrews and Quebec MP Massimo Pacetti from the party's caucus after two New Democrat MPs alleged they were harassed.

**

The Prime Minister's Office won't release the findings of a third-party investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against a former aide — and says its standard will be to keep taxpayer-funded probes private.

 

Claude-Éric Gagné served as deputy director of operations in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office.

He had a heavy hand in the Liberals' big 2015 election win in Quebec — the party's best result since 1980. Gagné resigned last week before the PMO received the results of an independent investigation into his behaviour. Several women alleged Gagné had acted improperly towards them. He denies any wrongdoing.

A whole list of allegations and resignations from allegedly "pro-women" leftist male politicians who clamour for belief and action and then quickly deny and silence any reportage about their involvement in acts they once said that they deplored.

He who lives by the grope shall die by the grope.


Also - for Justin, Canada Day was a day for pandering to the least important but highly visible electorate:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government continues to "engage deeply with leaders and communities" when he was asked whether he would visit an Indigenous protest on the Saskatchewan legislature grounds.

Trudeau made a brief visit to Regina on Sunday, where he chatted with families of steelworkers during a Canada Day event.

The Justice for Our Stolen Children camp was set up in February to protest racial injustice and the disproportionate number of First Nations children apprehended by child-welfare workers.

(Sidebar: did everyone forget Phoenix Sinclair?)

 

A suspect who planned to kill several people, especially children, on the Independence Day holiday in the US has been apprehended:

An Ohio man arrested on suspicion of planning to detonate a bomb at Cleveland's Fourth of July celebrations and then stand by and watch "it go off" was granted a public defender on Monday during his initial court appearance.

FBI agents on Sunday arrested Demetrius Pitts, 48, after he met with an undercover agent and said he planned to plant a bomb at an event celebrating the U.S. Independence Day holiday in the Ohio city.

Pitts, a U.S. citizen and Philadelphia native who had expressed allegiance to the al Qaeda militant group, intended to target other locations in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the agency said. ...

Pitts also suggested giving the children of military personnel remote control cars packed with explosives during the event, in the hope they would unwittingly detonate the bombs, the FBI said.

But ... but ... global warming!:

It is 30 years this past week that Dr. James Hansen, then well into the first of more than three decades as head of the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to a U.S. Senate committee that the then-current heat wave in Washington was caused by the relationship between “the greenhouse effect and observed warming.” This was the starting gun of a mighty debate about the existence, cause and consequences of global warming. Hansen was embraced by the environmental movement, from authentic scientists like David Suzuki to well-meaning faddists like the Prince of Wales, to cynical interlopers from the defeated international left grasping at anything to debunk and confound capitalism, like Naomi Klein, to complete charlatans like former U.S. vice-president Al Gore. ...

In any event, Hansen’s predictions have all bombed and he has not recanted. His polyglot and multi-motivated echo chamber, including Dr. Michael Mann and his infamous “hockey stick” of sharply rising temperatures, have had their noses rubbed in the fiction of increasing world temperatures throughout this new millennium. 

Surveillance shows that Kim Jong-Un is still developing his nuclear program, surprising no one:

New satellite photos show that Kim Jong Un is continuing to develop his nuclear weapons program, and U.S. intelligence sources say they believe North Korea has increased its production of nuclear fuel at multiple sites. This wasn’t supposed to happen after the Donald Trump-Kim summit last month in Singapore.

According to an analysis by experts at the Stimson Center in Washington, North Korea has improved the cooling system of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. Activity also continues at a nearby building where plutonium is extracted from spent fuel, and staining on the roof of another building suggests the North is enriching weapons-grade uranium using centrifuges. U.S. intelligence sources essentially confirmed this news by telling news agencies last week that the North has been increasing its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

After the June 12 summit with Kim, President Trump said that he trusts the young dictator and expects him to start fulfilling his promise to denuclearize immediately. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Mr. Trump tweeted the next day.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the President meant the threat from North Korea has been reduced. But the photos of Yongbyon show that isn’t true. Though the North stopped firing missiles and testing warheads, it can produce more weapons of mass destruction. The White House has declined to comment on the intelligence reports.

Part of the problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t get Kim to commit to a timeline for denuclearization, and Mr. Pompeo says the U.S. will not press for one. The President also failed to get the North to commit to giving the U.S. a complete list of its nuclear facilities. The U.S. could then check the list against intelligence to see if the North is being honest. Kim may now be exploiting these missed opportunities. Kim promised to dismantle a missile-testing facility at Sohae, but there’s no evidence he is doing so.

Even if there were a timeline for denuclearization, North Korea might not follow it for long. Kim’s father and grandfather reneged on every denuclearization deal they signed. But at least the U.S. could use missed deadlines to make a case for new sanctions at the United Nations Security Council.

(Kamsahamnida)




A couple in New Brunswick have a brush with a Great White shark:

Pat Barker and her husband, both avid canoers, were paddling through Passamaquoddy Bay toward Deer Island a couple of weeks ago.

At one point, they noticed that a dorsal fin had pulled up alongside their 24-foot-long canoe.

Barker said they thought it was a porpoise at first, but due to the creature’s colour and size — dark grey with a white underside and around 4.5 metres long — they quickly surmised it was probably a great white shark.

“I looked down, and I think, in my mind, I still wanted to see that porpoise shape,” she said.

“The girth around this thing was gobsmackingly huge. I can’t even describe it … it felt like I was coming up to a submarine.”

The predator turned towards the boat, dipped underwater, and circled around the back of the boat, she said.

As the couple hurried back to shore, she said, the shark followed them for some time, pushing a mound of water in front of it — Barker couldn’t say how long they were pursued, as she didn’t want to look back.

“It was terrifying,” she said. “I thought I was going to die. I thought that was it.”

After the couple reached the shore, Barker said they consulted a local shark expert in the area, who supported their theory that it was a great white shark based on their descriptions.

 
(SEE: boat, need, bigger)




UNESCO has added Oura Church as a world heritage site:

UNESCO decided Saturday to add 12 sites in southwestern Japan that are linked to the history of the country’s persecuted Christians to the World Heritage list.

The sites include the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving church in the country and which is already designated as a national treasure; the remains of Hara Castle, a site of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion that led to establishment of a national policy of seclusion; and the beginning of the hidden Christians’ unique system to transmit their faith and beliefs by themselves.

The sites were among 28 World Heritage candidates reviewed by the U.N.’s World Heritage Committee for four days through Monday in Bahrain.

The decision by the committee brings the total number of World Heritage sites in Japan to 22 — 18 cultural and four natural sites.

Happy Dominion Day!

(source)

Merry birthday, Canada!:

When the fathers of Confederation were assembled discussing the terms and conditions of Confederation and the drafting of the British North America Act there had been considerable discussion the day before and many suggestions as to what the new United Canada should be called, and no conclusion had been reached. The discussion on the name stood over until the next day. The next morning, as was Sir Leonard’s custom, he read a chapter from the Bible, and that particular morning he read Psalm Seventy-two. When reading verse eight of the said Psalm—He shall have Dominion also from sea to sea—the thought occurred to him, what a splendid name to give Canada. When he went back to the sitting of the convention that morning he suggested the word “Dominion,” which was agreed to, and Canada was called the “Dominion of Canada.”

Songs for a Nation, Part Deux

The last province to enter the Dominion (the non-DS9 one):

 

**

"Amazing Grace" in Inuktitut because it's beautiful:

**

There's always room for Stan Rogers:

Sunday Post

 Ora pro nobis ...




The province of Ontario will no longer offer free medications to youth whose families have private coverage:

Ontario's government will no longer offer free prescriptions to kids and young adults with private coverage, the province's new health minister announced Saturday.

In a news release issued a day after the Progressive Conservative government was sworn in, Christine Elliott said the move follows through on Premier Doug Ford's campaign promise to find cost-cutting measures that don't slash jobs.

"Premier Ford promised the people he would find efficiencies without compromising service or jobs, and we are delivering," said Elliott.

Children and youth who are not covered by private benefits will continue to receive their eligible prescriptions for free, the news release said, while those covered by private plans will bill those insurers first and the government second.

The release does not specify when the new system comes into effect, but Elliott said she looks forward to "working with insurance groups to ensure a smooth transition to this updated system."

Well, that's something.




Oh, my. This must be embarrassing:

In a surprisingly critical segment by power & politics, Moneybag’s own words were played back, where he was clear that construction was starting “immediately,” and was moving forward “right away.”

But it hasn’t started.

And when power & politics asked Morneau’s office what was going on, they received a reply that included this:

“Specific details regarding the cost and timing of the project will be subject of ongoing commercial negotiations.”

Public pensions are just another way for the government to steal from one.

Case in point:

The import of the minister’s very public declaration was that the CPPIB’s decisions should be assessed by some other criterion than mere return on investment. The reason she suggested “Canadians can be proud of” the CPPIB’s plans to invest in a range of environmentally-conscious projects of the sort the minister is known to favour — wind and solar energy, sustainable water, and so on — is not because they were likely to make pots of money for pensioners, but because they fit with the Trudeau government’s image of itself as forward-thinking environmentalists.

They might also make pots of money but, if that were all this were about, the minister would presumably not have thought it worth pointing out, still less talked about it in terms of “pride.” The appeal was moral, not mercenary. So the managers of the fund, if they did not know already, would know the kinds of investments that would earn the government’s approval, even if they did not earn much in the usual currency. Possibly this might come in handy one day.

They are after money, Mr. Coyne, otherwise they wouldn't do this. They dress it up and claim that Canadians don't mind the theft.




It's just money:

Canada's budget watchdog will crunch the numbers to shed light on the total costs of a surge in asylum seekers.

In response to a request from Conservative MP Larry Maguire, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) will take on a global accounting exercise to determine what costs have been incurred to date and how much the stepped-up pace of irregular migration might cost in the future.

"We just need to know, as Canadians, what the costs are and how the government intends to handle it in the future, given that many of our communities are becoming very loaded with the numbers of refugees, coming in to Toronto, Montreal and other areas," Maguire said.

"We need to know from these various departments just what the total costs are going to be."

More than 23,000 people have crossed into Canada outside official border points in the last year, most of them in Quebec and Manitoba. Major cities such as Toronto and Montreal are buckling under the pressure to house and support the new arrivals.

In a letter to the PBO, Maguire said the asylum seeker spike has created "serious financial strains and workloads" on several federal government departments, yet there has been little public reporting on costs.

Adviser to the Trump administration, John Bolton, states that the US has a plan to dismantle the North Korean nuclear program:

John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to co-operate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.

Bolton’s remarks on CBS’ “Face the Nation” appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timeline for North Korea to fulfil the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with President Donald Trump last month for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Despite Trump’s rosy post-summit declaration that the North no longer poses a nuclear threat, Washington and Pyongyang have yet to negotiate the terms under which it would relinquish the weapons that it developed to deter the U.S. Doubts over North Korea’s intentions have deepened amid reports that it is continuing to produce fissile material for weapons.

Yes, about that, Mr. Bolton:

US intelligence agencies believe North Korea has increased production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months and may try to hide these while seeking concessions in nuclear talks with the United States, NBC news quoted US officials as saying.

In a report on Friday, the network said what it described as the latest US intelligence assessment appeared to go counter to sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after an unprecedented June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that "there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

**

U.S. intelligence officials, citing newly obtained evidence, have concluded that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and secret production facilities, according to U.S. officials.

The evidence, collected in the wake of the June 12 summit in Singapore, points to preparations to deceive the United States about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, the officials said.

The findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize.

Also:

Megumi’s mother, Sakie Yokota, now 82, hopes the recent meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signals an opening that will allow her to see her daughter again before she dies.

“It’s a race against time,” she says.

Israel will not allow Syrian refugees into its territories:

Israel will not allow any Syrian refugees to enter its territory but will continue to provide them with humanitarian aid, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Friday.

More than 120,000 people in southwestern Syria have been forced to flee since the Syrian government launched an offensive to recover an area bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from rebels, a monitoring group said.

The Israeli military said an increased number of Syrian civilians had been spotted in refugee camps on the Syrian side of the Golan over the past few days, and that it had overnight sent aid supplies at four locations "to Syrians fleeing hostilities".

Lieberman remarks on Twitter reaffirmed Israel's stance, and followed Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz saying earlier on Friday that the refugees would not be allowed to enter.

"We are closely monitoring events in southern Syria. We will guard Israel's security interests. As always, we will be ready to provide humanitarian aid to civilians, women and children but we will not accept any Syrian refugee to our territory," Lieberman wrote.

Cue BDS movement.




No, Anchorage Annie, your passport says that you are an American and to America ye shall go:

A First Nations woman working to revive a threatened language in her traditional territory of northern British Columbia says she’s being forced to leave the country on Canada Day.

Mique’l Dangeli belongs to the Tsimshian First Nation, whose territory straddles the border between Alaska and British Columbia. She says Canada won’t recognize her right to live and work in B.C. because she was born on the American side on Annette Island Indian Reserve.

Her visa expires July 1, she said.

This:

To Remind One Further

More on this topic:

(Merci)

Songs for a Nation

On this eve of the eve of Dominion Day:

For a Friday

On days like today, I envy that dog.

Like I said, the party of failure:

Make no mistake, the Liberals will use the trade war with Donald Trump as a campaign issue. Who needs to get an actual deal when you can just wrap yourself in the flag and fight Trump.

Along the way, anyone that doesn’t bow to Trudeau will be branded as a traitor and not defending Canada. Which is ridiculous.

The Conservatives have been part of the push to secure a new NAFTA, as have the NDP. MPs from all the parties have traveled to Washington to lobby lawmakers there to get behind a deal that is good for all.

Conservative MP Erin O’Toole told me last week that his party even offered to Team Trudeau to go on American TV to sell Canada’s message on tariffs. O’Toole said there were even specific offers to put up Conservative MPs on conservative outlets like Fox News to make Canada’s point.

The Liberals were not interested.

God forbid someone should stabilise the situation. Why, there would be nothing for these emotional retards to run on!




Definitely not this issue:

Toronto has been filling up with the overflow of refugee claimants from Montreal, where the situation has already passed the crisis point. Unable to deal with the continuing flood crossing the border from the U.S., Quebec closed off its shelter system to new refugee claimants in April. While Ottawa fiddled with a “triage” plan to begin diverting claimants elsewhere, hundreds headed off to Toronto, which is no better prepared than Montreal to handle them all. As of May, the shelter system was at 96 per cent capacity. More than 3,000 claimants are being housed, with more arriving every day. Some 800 have been stuffed into dormitories at two colleges, which have to be emptied by August for use by students.

Not unlike these damn reindeer!:

Norwegian Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale on Wednesday said he would take measures to cull Swedish reindeer crossing the border as Sweden has been hesitant to ratify an agreement signed almost a decade ago. Until Sweden does so, grazing in the Nordic hinterland is governed by the Lapp Codicil from 1751, which gives rights for herders from Sweden, but also Norway, to largely ignore the border.

It's just a failed payment scheme:

A new federal report confirms the much-maligned Phoenix pay system has already cost taxpayers upwards of $1.1 billion and could cost up to $2.5 billion more to fix over the next five years, but the minister responsible is promising that it won’t take that long.

Quelle surprise:

This week, while attending the World Gas Conference in Washington, D.C., federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told Reuters construction could not begin until the federal government officially owns Trans Mountain. That wouldn’t happen until “mid to late summer” when Kinder Morgan’s shareholders vote whether to accept Ottawa’s offer or not.

“We think that construction and staying on schedule is important,” Carr admitted. “But that will be up to Kinder Morgan as long as they are the owner of the pipeline.”

 
If the US leaves the Korean Peninsula without a regime change in North Korea, it will be like running back to Busan all over again:

The United States formally ended seven decades of military presence in South Korea's capital Friday with a ceremony to mark the opening of a new headquarters farther from North Korean artillery range.

The command's move to Camp Humphreys, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of Seoul, comes amid a fledgling detente on the Korean Peninsula, though the relocation was planned long before that. Most troops have already transferred to the new location, and the U.S. says the remaining ones will move by the end of this year.

The U.S. military had been headquartered in Seoul's central Yongsan neighbourhood since American troops first arrived at the end of World War II. The Yongsan Garrison was a symbol of the U.S.-South Korea alliance but its occupation of prime real estate was also a long-running source of friction.

Kim Jong-Un had his half-brother murdered. Trump failed to point that out in Singapore:

Two Southeast Asian women on trial for killing the estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader are trained assassins who used “criminal force” to rub the toxic VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s eyes and face, prosecutors said in their closing arguments Thursday.

The women’s claim that they were duped by North Korean agents into thinking they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden camera show was an “ingenious attempt … to cover up their sinister plot in order to obscure the eyes of the public and the court,” prosecutor Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin told the court.

Indonesia’s Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam, who face the death penalty if convicted, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Kim in a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. Kim died within two hours. The women are the only suspects in custody, although prosecutors say they colluded with four North Korean suspects who fled the country on the day of the assassination.

South Korea will tighten its asylum laws just as an influx of Yemeni migrants come into the country:

South Korea will tighten laws governing the arrival of refugees, the Justice Ministry said on Friday, after a rapid rise in the number of Yemeni asylum seekers sparked anti-refugee sentiment in the racially homogeneous country.

More than 552 people from Yemen arrived on the southern resort island of Jeju between January and May, more than the 430 Yemenis who had ever applied for refugee status in South Korea, the ministry said.

The country has granted refugee status to just over 800 people since 1994. The sudden surge in Yemeni arrivals has fueled concern that many could be seeking economic advantage rather than protection and that they could lead to an increase in crime and other social problems.

More than 540,000 South Koreans have signed an online petition to the presidential Blue House in the past two weeks, asking the government to abolish or amend no-visa entries and the granting of refugee status to applicants.

The Justice Ministry said it will revise the Refugee Act to prevent abuses.

And now, something that renews one's faith in humanity:

Bystanders leapt into action to rescue a blind man who accidentally fell onto TTC subway tracks, a witness said Friday.

Julie Caniglia said in an interview that a man on her eastbound train jumped down to the tracks Thursday afternoon and crossed over to the westbound platform to help the man.

“You just don’t know if there’s another train coming. He didn’t even think about it,” said Canigila, adding the man had “guts.”

The Party of Failure

It never ends with these guys:

The Liberals have nominated their first candidate for next year's federal election.

At a Toronto-area rally Wednesday evening that included a speech by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Navdeep Bains was acclaimed as the Liberal candidate in Mississauga-Malton.

The minister of innovation, science and economic development says he will run a positive campaign and will steer clear of fear-based politics.

(Sidebar: yes about that -  "The WEF ranks Canada only 26th for business innovation. The OECD places business investment on research and development at 22nd among OECD countries. The IMF estimates Canadian business productivity as 17th among OECD countries." ; "In March, Canada’s federal government announced its 2017 budget with no increase in funding for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the organization that provides the vast majority of biomedical research funding to labs in Canada.")

He says the economy will be the party's number-one priority.

Trudeau, meantime, doubled down on his positive approach and the "sunny ways" campaign that brought his party to power in 2015.

He says negativity will surround both him and the party in the year ahead.

"Around the world, the politics of division, of polarization, of populism are taking more and more hold," Trudeau said to a cheering crowd of hundreds at a convention centre in Mississauga, Ont.

"We have to demonstrate here in Canada, for ourselves, for our communities, for our kids — but also for the world — that those don't always work."

The Liberals said last week that more nominations will take place at "a very quick pace" throughout the summer.

Yeah, Justin: 

Justin Trudeau caused uproar in the House of Commons today after he called Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent a “piece of shit” during a heated question time debate over the Kyoto Protocol.

** 

When Government House Leader Bardish Chagger rose to answer, Trudeau quietly heckled Mulcair, who last year lost a party confidence vote but is remaining NDP leader until the fall.

"It's amazing the NDP rejected him," says a voice that sounds like Trudeau (about 47 seconds into the video above).

**

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau manhandled a male Conservative MP, told another group of MPs to “get the f— out of his way”, and elbowed a female New Democrat — all of it on the floor of the House of Commons Wednesday evening, prompting one of the most bizarre parliamentary melees in decades.

**

Question period started off Monday with questions over a tweet sent out by the PM’s Principal Secretary, referring to alt-right media as Nazis, after criticism over Trudeau’s “peoplekind” comment.

**

The groping allegation against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is an exquisite case of poetic justice. By not personally addressing the allegation, he is hoping the public will ignore the blatant inconsistency between how he judges others and how he hopes he will be judged himself.

(Sidebar: the way people ignored these accusations of sexual harassment and how the Liberals closed ranks and press over the creeps in their midst.)

**

Trudeau spokesman Cameron Ahmad recently said, “Social media companies should immediately take action to fight back against those who deceive and manipulate for political gain…. Right now it remains clear that more action must be taken.”

Note how the Liberals are only worried when people are making fun of them. All of a sudden it becomes a societal issue, and ‘deception’ on social media is a huge concern for the government – despite all the lies they’ve told.

(Sidebar: whoa! Fascist, much?)