Beautiful Maine Lobsters will now move tariff-free to Europe! For first time in many years. GREAT new deal by USTR levels playing field with Canada. Millions of $’s more in EXPORTS...
The Department of Agriculture yesterday paid more than a million dollars
to distribute surplus seafood to Nova Scotia food banks. The initiative
to help processors get rid of unsold stock follows Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau’s appeal to Canadians to aid the industry by eating more
lobster: “Not only will it taste great but it will help people.”
No, the Liberals know how weak the population is and that they can still count on Chinese funds to leak into their coffers. No electoral apple cart will be upset, assuming anyone actually has the will to push it over.
Volunteer groups warned the We Charity program was misguided and badly
drafted, according to internal Department of Employment memos. One
organization refused a $100,000 fee from We Charity in protest over the
program’s design: “They indicated there was a fee.”
**
Federal auditors have cited a Crown corporation, the National Arts
Centre, for sloppy budgeting. Directors failed to set aside funds for
necessary maintenance and repairs even after charging taxpayers a
quarter-billion for renovations. Cost overruns at the concert hall once
prompted two parliamentary investigations: ‘It doesn’t match London or
Paris.’
Canadians get to wear this. They can drone on and on about Trump all day but at least he delivers on his promises and will leave office when his second term expires.
Canada is stuck with the snowboard instructor the way the North Koreans are stuck with Kim Fatty and his wicked sister.
The number of expropriations of private land exploded in Montreal
four years ago when city hall quietly delegated its seldom used power to
take properties for use as streets and alleys to civil servants,
documents obtained by the Montreal Gazette reveal.
For decades,
city departments responsible for real estate transactions and
infrastructure had to obtain approval from Montreal’s top
decision-making body, the city executive committee, to use a section of
the city charter that’s written expressly to enable the expropriation of
private properties for streets, places and lanes.
But
in May 2016, the executive committee under former mayor Denis Coderre
delegated its authority to use Section 192 of Schedule C of the charter
to the civil servants — specifically civil servants at the level of
department director, according to the documents obtained through
Quebec’s access to information law. The power gives the bureaucrats full
control to decide behind closed doors what properties to expropriate
without needing the executive committee to pass a public resolution on
it.
And
after the power was transferred to city employees, the number of times
Section 192 was used to acquire property for the city rose more than
sixfold, the documents show. The city clerk’s office gave the newspaper
the files for every expropriation under Section 192 since 2010 in
response to the newspaper’s request for information for the past decade.
The
files show that between 2010 and May 2016, the executive committee
approved 67 expropriations under Section 192 of the charter — an average
of 10 expropriations per year.
After the power to use Section 192
was delegated to the civil service, there were more than 200 such
expropriations between mid-2016 and August 2019, the files reveal.
Between 2016 and 2019, city employees expropriated, on average, 68
properties per year, which means the city was expropriating the same
number of properties each year that it had taken during all of the
previous six-and-a-half years.
Decriminalizing heroin and cocaine is “something worth deliberating”,
says Health Minister Patricia Hajdu. A private Liberal bill pending in
the Commons would repeal a federal law that criminalizes simple
possession of street drugs: “I hear the calls across the country.”
I hear calls across the country that this plan should only be enacted in front of Patty Hajdu's house.
... because that is easier than stopping all international flights and it also makes everyone think that the government is doing something solid to stop the coronavirus from getting into the country:
Nearly two dozen more flights have landed at major airports in Canada with passengers infected with COVID-19
According to the federal government, more than 55 flights have landed
in Canada between Aug. 1 and Aug. 18 that had passengers who tested
positive for COVID-19 after arriving in the country.
The vast majority of the flights with COVID-19 passengers have landed
in Toronto, but a number of them also touched down in Montreal,
Vancouver and Calgary.
On Valentine’s Day this year, O’Toole posted a video on Twitter accusing the CBC of being “out of control” and promising to slash its funding.
O’Toole
says he wants to maintain funding for Radio-Canada in Quebec and CBC
Radio which “maintains the original public interest mandate” of the
public broadcaster.
“Taxpayer dollars should not pay for things
like a Canadian version of Family Feud. Nor should they fund CBC News
Network, a channel no different from its private sector competitors,”
O’Toole’s platform reads.
If you don't have the intestinal fortitude to get rid of the CBC, MP Girl-Name, then join a party that keeps it going.
Justin's policies of waste and corruption can be interpreted as nothing else:
Venezuela is staggering in the face of a years-long power struggle,
food shortages, hyper-inflation and an exodus of its citizens.
The country’s foreign minister says, Blame Canada.
Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza is part of Nicolas Maduro’s government,
which most Western countries no longer recognize, but it does still
control most of the country’s institutions. He was speaking through Zoom
to a Canadian audience on Thursday, in an event organized by the
left-leaning Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
It can't be the political and social failure that is socialism, a system embraced wholeheartedly by Canadians and Venezuelans alike.
These policies would end up devastating the economy through a
combination of enterprise-crippling regulation, elimination of market
competition, and the removal of the price mechanism to match supply with
demand and allocate resources efficiently. Like the so-called “market
socialism” of the former Yugoslavia in decades past, the “democratic
socialism” now enjoying popularity is simply an attempt at rebranding
without new ideas or real improvement. Socialist policies inevitably do
damage, even in the oft-vaunted Scandinavian countries, which achieved
economic success before the rise of their welfare states. In Sweden, for
example, out-of-control public spending led to the 1990 economic crisis
and Sweden has since wisely reversed course somewhat. Norway and
Denmark are both currently led by government coalitions favoring more
free-market policies.
We should not ignore the lessons of twentieth-century socialism’s
failures, nor turn a blind eye to what socialism has wrought in
Venezuela—as some socialists, sadly, do. Until the socialist movement
evolves different policies, these failures remain relevant. There is no
reason to think that the same policies that failed in the past will
produce different results in the future.
Anyone who tells one that things can be freely provided and no one has to do any actual work to get anything is selling utter ruin in the form of stupidity and must be stopped for the good of humanity.
If
you move to Vancouver, assuming you have CAD $280,000 of income, you
will pay tax of $104,674. Your after-tax income will be $175,326.
Therefore, the effective tax rate is 37 percent. Every additional dollar
you earn will be taxed at 49.8 percent.
If you move to Seattle,
though, you’re in luck! Washington State is one of seven states without a
state income tax. You only have to pay U.S. federal tax. Assuming you
earn US $200,000 (about CAD $280,000), your total income tax bill would
be US $52,552. Therefore, your after-tax income would be US $147,448 (or
roughly CAD $206,000). The effective tax rate is 26 percent and every
additional dollar would be taxed at $33.45 percent. ...
There are many political groups, think tanks, organizations and
journalists who keep repeating the claim that the rich are not paying
their fair share of tax. Yet today, seven out of 10 provinces have a
combined federal and provincial tax rate of more than 50 percent on the
highest tax bracket.
According to Statistics Canada, the top 10 percent of income earners
earns 34 percent of all income in the country but pays 54 percent of all
income taxes! The top one percent of income earners earns 10 percent of
all income in the country but pay 21 percent of all income taxes. The
top 0.1 percent of income earners earn 3.4 percent of all income but
pays 7.9 percent of all income taxes.
This clearly demonstrates
without a shred of doubt that the richest people in the country are
already paying more than their fair share of income tax. Furthermore,
these figures only include income tax and do not take into account all
the sales taxes and property taxes these people are paying. The
erroneous belief that the rich are not paying their fair share of tax
has led politicians to unfairly and illogically raise tax rates to the
point of confiscation.
If Justin et al really felt that the rich should be heavily taxed, then he should surrender his WE earnings.
I am not afraid to question our government’s response to the COVID-19
pandemic. Canadians are rightly concerned with Canada’s involvement with
Chinese Communist Party-affiliated companies to develop vaccines to
fight COVID-19. They are right to wonder why social media is banning
videos of doctors around the world who are touting alternate, cheaper
and effective treatments to COVID-19.
No one questioned Justin's undying love for China in 2013. Are they willing to question his allegiance to China and his accepting money from those loyal to the communist Chinese and ignore the (as of this writing) 9,064 dead?
Poilievre’s press briefings had to be the dread of the wizards who
practice spin for Trudeau. Their spin was unspun, and the tangled
amateur “explanations” given out by the government about how Trudeau,
finance minister Bill Morneau and Youth Minister Bardish Chagger
variously locked arms and fired (email) billet-doux back and forth, were
both derided and destroyed.
His masterpiece was the very latest,
where he flung, with magisterial scorn, blacked-out page after
blacked-out page of the government’s file on WE Inc., over the press
podium. Most telling was his central point during that conference.
That the government wasn’t “proroguing” to work on a “reset” or
devise a post-COVID “agenda.” It was prorogued to shut down the
committees, one of which Poilievre headed, looking into the WE affair.
It was prorogued to halt the revelations hidden and obscured under black
ink that the government lathered over the documents released.
Prorogation killed the committees. That was its point. Its only point. Parliament had been done already.
It killed further revelations of how interwound Kielburger Inc. and the highest powers in Trudeau’s government were. ...
Another question. Why is there any redaction on a purely internal
transaction between a Canadian organization and the Canadian government?
These aren’t NATO documents. They are not high-level communications
between Canada’s military and the Pentagon. There’s no espionage, no
delicate trade talks and strategy discussions.
Why were there any
redactions? It can only be because between the Kieburger brothers and
ministers, civil servants, the PM, and members of his family, there were
at least more and other communications of an even more fulsome,
embarrassing kind. Displaying their connection, and thus shredding the
idea that the whole deal came about “only because the civil service
insisted that only WE could deliver the program.”
SNC-Lavalin, the company that landed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in
trouble with the ethics commissioner, has been awarded more than 100
government contracts since the controversy.
According to a database from Open Government, SNC-Lavalin received
142 government contracts with a combined worth of about $25 million
between January 2019 and June 2020.
Aaron Wudrick, the federal
director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said he was shocked
SNC-Lavalin was continuing to receive government contracts.
“I
think from SNC-Lavalin’s standpoint these are not giant contracts,” said
Wudrick. “They often deal with contracts that are much larger, so this
is small potatoes for them. But I think a lot of Canadians would be
surprised to know they are active in bidding after the seriousness of
what happened last year.”
In August of last year, Mario Dion, the
ethics commissioner, found Trudeau guilty of breaching ethic rules by
trying to persuade his attorney general to give SNC-Lavalin a deferred
prosecution agreement in relation to criminal charges it was facing.
... The RCMP have been investigating the possibility that someone in the
Trudeau government obstructed justice in the SNC-Lavalin case.
The news was revealed in a bombshell report by the Globe and Mail issued less than 12 hours before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to visit Rideau Hall and kick off the 2019 election.
The government has made clear
that “decarbonizing the economy” is one of their goals which effectively
means shutting down the oil industry.
“Of course, it has to be
part of it,” Trudeau’s new finance minister Chrystia Freeland said when
asked if decarbonization was part of the government’s economic plan.
Not
surprising given that the Liberals haven’t even walked back from their
promise to ban single-use plastics even as their use has shot up as a
way to deal with COVID-19.
I think we can also expect the
government to lay the groundwork for a universal basic income and pay
people not to work rather than get on with the difficult task of
creating an economy with jobs for all. Liberal-leaning thinkers have
been calling for this to happen since the pandemic broke out.
In a bombshell Vice article,
journalist Justin Ling detailed how Katie Telford’s husband, Rob
Silver, attempted to persuade the former Finance Minister Bill Morneau
into changing government policy. Silver has not registered as a
lobbyist.
**
The federal deficit is near $400 billion, seven times the previous
record, with proposals by cabinet yesterday to extend new benefits to
jobless workers. “Our government has taken on more debt so Canadians
didn’t have to,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters.
When
Trudeau was asked about if he stood by his initial statement that he
had first heard about the WE rollout on May 8, despite an internal memo
from the PMO was "weighing in" as of April 20, Trudeau discussed the
importance of the N95 project for Ontario and Canada.
Trudeau then
forgot the question. When asking to be reminded of what the question
was, Trudeau said that it was "something far less important than N95
masks."
"Furthermore, the tracking of hours by a third-party
may be challenging," they added. It may "result in potential integrity
concerns should students not be honest about hours accrued."
These
documents were released as a result of the prime minister's
controversial decision to prorogue parliament, effectively limiting the
ability of parliamentary committees to consider the government's role in
the WE scandal.
Not only did these documents reveal that the
$900 million contract was suggested by the Trudeau government, but it
also details early PMO pressure and the fact that the WE organization
made clear their closeness to the prime minister when they lobbied for a
contract ...
Newly-disclosed records contradict testimony by ex-Finance Minister Bill
Morneau that he had scant personal contact with a federal contractor,
We Charity. The finance department released a series of “Hello Bill”
emails from Craig Kielburger, co-founder of the charity: “They are all
besties.”
(Sidebar: they were totes besties! That's right - the government is run by eight year olds. This Morneau.)
**
Federal employees in internal memos expressed astonishment at the cost
of an untendered agreement to have We Charity manage a student aid
program. The plan was to pay post-secondary students $10 an hour, but
included $500 per hour fees for We Charity lawyers and six-figure
payments to project managers: “Bit of a shit show.”
**
We Charity highlighted Trudeau family members’ paid appearances with the
group in appealing for a $43.5 million grant, according to documents.
Internal memos indicate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office was
“weighing in” on the grant proposal weeks before the Prime Minister said
he first heard of it: “We have the documents right here.”
**
Suspension of Parliament has delayed disclosure of speaking fees paid to
the Prime Minister’s wife and family. Justin Trudeau as a first-term MP
personally collected almost $300,000 in talent fees from unidentified
sponsors: “That way we could at least limit the damage we’re about to
cause.”
**
The public service did indeed recommend WE. That is true. But WE was
recommended after the Trudeau government — not just the public service,
but cabinet ministers or their staff — was actively working with WE. The
recommendation of the public service, though undenied, did not happen
in a vacuum, nor was it generated neutrally. It took place against a
backdrop of active lobbying by WE and communication about the matter at
high levels of the Trudeau government.
This turns the Liberal
narrative on its head. Trudeau and his senior ministers and aides have
thus far used the public service as armour, putting it between
themselves and the scandal. They cop only to sloppiness. But we know
from these documents — sections of which remain redacted — that while
the public service recommended WE to the prime minister on May 13,
cabinet minister Bardish Chagger was communicating directly with WE as
early as April 17, and that a policy adviser in Morneau’s office was
communicating with WE as early as April 20. Indeed, WE’s Craig
Kielburger even sent Chagger an email on April 22, thanking her for her
“suggestion” of a student support program.
This hubris only works if certain parties forget to bring it up in the fall:
Mr.
Barrett was referring to Mr. Trudeau’s request to prorogue Parliament as
MPs on the House of Commons finance committee gained access to
thousands of pages of government documents on Tuesday regarding a
now-cancelled $543.5-million agreement with WE Charity to administer a
program for students.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is weighing sweeping changes to the
country's social welfare system and a series of economic measures that
will align Canada with ambitious climate goals, according to people
familiar with the matter.
The
plan to bolster the social safety net will especially help those hurt
most by the pandemic and come after Trudeau replaced a fiscally cautious
finance minister.
"The prime minister wants to go big," said a government source, adding that Trudeau, 48, sees the moves as part of his legacy.
(Sidebar: oh, it definitely will be your legacy, along with corruption and arrogance.)
**
With the sudden resignation of finance minister Bill Morneau,
Canadians should be asking a simple question: are the federal Liberals
about to embark on a new spending spree? Differences in views between a
finance minister and prime minister are common, but with Morneau’s
departure the signal seems to be to loosen the belt — which is not easy
when you’re already planning a deficit of $343 billion. Perhaps the new
minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, will be a stronger personality
with her own ideas of belt tightening. We shall see.
When I say
“spending spree” I’m not referring to the multitude of temporary support
programs that are already producing the gigantic deficit in fiscal year
2020-21. No, I mean permanent public spending, including growing
interest charges. After the WE Charity scandal, rumour has it the
Trudeau government is looking for a magic recovery bullet that will
transform Canada. Two obvious candidate files are climate change and
social policy, both supposedly sources of conflict between the PM and
former minister Morneau. ...
For
$50 billion over five years, the government can implement net-zero
emission building codes and subsidize building and energy retrofits,
clean energy work training programs and electric vehicles, which still
account for less than four per cent of the auto market. These policies
become necessary only because others don’t seem to be doing the trick —
not the federal carbon tax and not new regulations, such as recently
announced resource-stifling Bill C-69 assessment procedures. Subsidies
will widen a federal deficit that has already turned from pink to deep
COVID red.
But
the price tag for climate-change policies pales in comparison to
possible new social spending on health care and income security. Facing
their own yawning deficits, the provinces are expecting more federal
transfers for health care, which takes up half their budgets. The
Liberals promised during the 2019 election to bring in national
Pharmacare. Some provinces may support it if they can offload their
program expenses on Ottawa, while others, most notably Quebec, will
reject federal intrusion but claim compensation. Given our recent
experience with COVID deaths in nursing homes, the Liberals are also
expected to promote a cost-sharing program for long-term care. For
years, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association has raised
concerns about funding long-term care in our aging society, but little
was done, given the daunting costs involved.
Another major welfare
program would be a guaranteed annual income (GAI) to replace the
temporary CERB. A Senate committee report recently looked at a GAI of
$24,000 per year for couples and $17,000 per year for single people
between 18 and 64 years of age. The payment would be clawed back by
either 50 cents, 25 cents or 15 cents for each dollar earned by a
worker.
**
Media executives divvying up federal grants awarded their own companies
100 percent wage subsidies, accounts show. News Media Canada, a
publishers’ lobby, yesterday did not comment: ‘Helping the press is in
the interests of democracy.’
Now, it can be said that the average Canadian can be bought with as little as a can of beer (SEE: CERB) but even the most ovine can see through the charade played out before them.
This one:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday prorogued the minority
Parliament, halting for at least a month ongoing committee
investigations of federal contracting, China meddling and We Charity.
Trudeau told reporters if Opposition MPs didn’t like it they could force
an election: ‘We will force a confidence vote.’
(Sidebar: don't tempt them, douchebag.)
**
Jesus, finally. The truth is out:
-Proof that it was the Trudeau gov't & not the public service who first put forth WE for the job.
The idea that working with WE came from the bureaucrats is utter BS and not supported by the facts. Maybe CP should have read the documents before rushing out their copy. Here is one example of WE pitching to senior political figures before bureaucrats decided WE was it. pic.twitter.com/WnbI7X0O0k
Retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman has stepped forward on social media
to call out the Liberal government’s decision to prorogue parliament.
“Leadership means facing problems not avoiding them,” Norman wrote in a social media post
on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. “Wouldn’t it be nice if the millions of
[Canadians] struggling with the challenges of the pandemic could just
hit the ‘reset’ button and ‘prorogue’ their responsibilities.”
It's incredibly important that this is kept in the public consciousness even well after September when Justin finally remembers that the Papineau riding actually expects him to show up for work.
CMHC chief executive Evan Siddall in a 2019 podcast complained Canada
has “glorified this idea of home ownership” and enriched property
holders at the expense of renters. Siddall praised a federal consultant
who advocated federal taxes on “unhealthy home values”. Conservative MPs
yesterday served notice they will summon Siddall for questioning: “The
losers are the people who have won so much already through the increase
in house prices, the owners.”
The World Health Organization will not allow Canadian MPs to question
its officials over dealings with China on Covid-19. The Commons health
committee had issued an April 30 summons for Dr. Bruce Aylward, a WHO
epidemiologist who repeatedly praised Communist Party measures to
contain the coronavirus: ‘China is being successful.’
The results suggest many parents are torn, with 66 per cent of
respondents with children admitting they were worried about children
returning to school but 63 per cent saying they planned to send their
kids anyway.
Yet 69 per cent also felt all classes should be
suspended and learning shifted back to home if there is a significant
increase in COVID-19 cases in their community, with 19 per cent saying
classes should continue and 12 per cent unsure either way.
What is it that we need China for anyway?:
A dissenter within China’s Communist Party has said that leader Xi
Jinping is “killing” China with his one-man rule, and added that many in
the party want him removed as boss, with China “sliding towards
disaster.”
Cai Xia, once a professor at China’s elite Central Party School, told the Guardian
that she was “happy” to be kicked out of Xi’s party after an audio
taping of her, in which she criticized Xi, was leaked two months ago.
She said many in the party are opposed to Xi but fear what will happen
if they speak out — including being hit with corruption charges.
(Sidebar: careful, Miss Cai. Had this been Canada, you would be Jody-ed by now. But China is very different!)
**
The massive $190 million, 470,000-square-foot complex, dubbed the “World Commodity Trade Center,” is a joint venture between a
Chinese state-sponsored company and a local development firm. The
centre, first conceived in Beijing, has four warehouses and two large
exhibition halls — to be lined with Chinese and Canadian flags —
strategically located in the Campbell Heights industrial zone between
Vancouver International Airport and the United States border.
**
Rights activists estimate 40 percent of women have faced sexual
harassment in China, where a patriarchal system, victim-blaming and
conservative attitudes mean reporting sex crimes and securing
convictions can be difficult.
Blind women in the massage industry
are even more vulnerable, says lawyer Li Ying, who warns that the real
number who have faced sexual harassment is likely far higher than the
general population.
Many in the profession have told charities
they endured physical or sexual assault but as such incidents are rarely
reported to authorities there are no official records detailing how
high harassment levels are.
Li was the first lawyer to bring a case under China’s new sexual harassment legislation — which she won.
What can go wrong here?:
North Korea is believed to have up to 60 nuclear bombs and the world's
third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons totaling up to 5,000 tons,
the U.S. Army has said.
Also:
North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party will discuss a “crucial” matter at a
meeting Wednesday that comes as the country battles catastrophic
flooding that’s dealt a blow to its staggering economy and tries to head
off a coronavirus crisis.
**
The neighbour can be heard yelling: “You're an asylum seeker. You're not from this country.”
Mum Myungseo, a North Korea national who lives in Croydon, South East London, took to Facebook to reveal her plight.
She wrote: “It's only me and my children, we don't have any relative
or friend in the UK and this situation is affecting my mental health and
my children's wellbeing.”
Myungseo said she moved to the house with her kids in November 2019 and her neighbour allowed her to share a bin.
Japan,
home to one of the world’s longest-living populaces, is also the grayest
society, with the highest percentage of older people anywhere in the
world.
In 2019, people aged 65 or over made up a record 28.41 percent of
the country’s total population, according to government data released
Aug. 5.
Combined with dwindling numbers of newborn babies, which
dropped below 900,000 for the first time ever last year, the world’s
third-largest economy has a shrinking working population to draw on at a
time when soaring social security spending to cover pensions and
medical care for older people is weighing heavily on the budget.
**
On paper, the nation's low unemployment rate suggests an economy
weathering the novel coronavirus reasonably well, but official figures
belie worsening prospects for the country's army of temporary workers,
who make up about 40 percent of the employment market.
A rise in
job losses would undermine one of the few successes of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" stimulus policies, which has been aimed at
reviving the economy.
The jobless rate stood at 2.8 percent in June, much lower than
the 10.2 percent seen in the United States and the 7.8 percent in the
19-member eurozone.
But a closer look at data shows a rising
number of people are dropping out of the search for work. That prevents
the official jobless rate — the ratio of job-seekers who are yet to
secure employment — from rising much.
Dreams do come true — or at least they do in Switzerland, where chocolate fell from the sky due to a malfunction at the Lindt & Sprüngli factory in the town of Olten.
The
chocolate maker says a ventilation problem launched cocoa powder into
the open air outside its facility last Friday morning. The wind caught
the powder and spread it across the neighbourhood, leaving a fine
dusting of sweet, sweet chocolate.
Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the
Philippines, which faces the region’s largest outbreak, is studying to
see whether the mutation makes it more infectious.
The strain,
earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in a
Malaysian cluster of 45 cases that started from someone who returned
from India and breached his 14-day home quarantine. The Philippines
detected the strain among random COVID-19 samples in the largest city of
its capital region.
The mutation “is said to have a higher possibility of
transmission or infectiousness, but we still don’t have enough solid
evidence to say that that will happen,” Philippines’ Health
Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing Monday.
The
strain has been found in many other countries and has become the
predominant variant in Europe and the U.S., with the World Health
Organization saying there’s no evidence the strain leads to a more
severe disease. The mutation has also been detected in recent outbreaks
in China.
There’s no evidence from the epidemiology that the
mutation is considerably more infectious than other strains, said
Benjamin Cowling, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the
University of Hong Kong. “It’s more commonly identified now than it was
in the past, which suggests that it might have some kind of competitive
advantage over other strains of COVID-19,” he said.
Anyone who still thinks that our outdated system of keeping kleptocracies alive and letting a foreign Queen give the final nod on our laws, just ... no:
Julie Payette, Canada’s embattled governor general, was a central
character in the prorogue request from an equally embattled Liberal
government. It is the prerogative of the governor general to deny or
approve a request from the prime minister to prorogue Parliament.
Keeping the office of the governor-general alive, especially one as problematic and arrogant as Julie Payette (a nod to the province that demands a lot and returns with nothing but corruption), is like allowing the Divine Right of Kings to remain a practice.
“We
now have a government of corruption, coverups and chaos at a time of a
deadly pandemic, and the biggest economic collapse since the Great
Depression,” Poilievre said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
“His biggest priority was to flow a half a billion dollars to a group
that had paid his family a half a million dollars.”
Documents
related to the WE Charity scandal will still be released to the finance
committee but Trudeau maintained that the government will spend the
coming weeks establishing a “long-term plan for recovery.”
The prime minister explicitly stated he does not want this prorogation to lead to the opposition triggering an election.
I'm sure Justin was forced into that particular corner, too.
One more thing ...
If one has not read this book, please do. All of it. It outlines (with sources) not only how the Liberals screwed up during the Chinese-orchestrated pandemic but the relationship the Liberals have with China and how it slowly has grown to own this country.
The Liberal government will prorogue parliament and introduce a new throne speech before parliament resumes in the fall.
The
National Post has confirmed news first reported by CTV that Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau will ask to prorogue parliament. Proroguing will
shut down the House of Commons committees investigating the WE charity
scandal and remove the legislation currently on parliament’s order
paper. ...
It will also remove any bills currently on the order paper, giving
parliament a chance to restart. The details of exactly when parliament
would be suspended and when it would restart have not yet been released,
but the Canadian Press was reporting it would be sometime in September.
Chrystia Freeland will be Canada’s next finance minister, marking the
first time in the nation’s history that a woman occupies the powerful
post, and Dominic Leblanc will replace Freeland as minister of
intergovernmental affairs, sources confirm.
I love how people point out that someone is a woman as though it is an achievement for which one has worked all one's life.
BREAKING - Bill Morneau to resign as finance minister, MP following breakdown in relations with Trudeau over COVID policy, WE scandal https://t.co/vUre6V5e5U
It takes a lot for Justin to throw someone of Morneau under the proverbial bus to save himself. Perhaps, in retrospect, this move should have been obvious after Mark Carney was sought after.
The federal government was slow to act on warnings by the public service that Canada’s National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS) was low on supplies.
According to CBC News, the Public Health Agency of Canada alerted the
government on February 13 that the state of the emergency stockpile was
not prepared to handle a pandemic.
A powerpoint presentation dated February 13 by the agency notes that
Canada only had a “modest supply of personal protective equipment
including surgical masks, respirators, gowns and coveralls.”
“We anticipate increased demand and further requests, and also
shortages, limits to availability and impacts on the global supply
chain. We want to be as ready as possible to meet immediate needs,”
notes the agency.
Despite the early warning, the Liberals didn’t act to acquire more
medical supplies until the middle of March and by then, prices were
already inflated due to a global rush for personal protective
equipment.
New
Brunswickers will be heading to the polls Sept. 14 after Premier Blaine
Higgs on Monday said the province needed stability to face the coming
challenges and triggered the first election in Canada since the COVID-19
pandemic hit.
"We
are in a pandemic and the coming election campaign will not be like any
election we have ever experienced," Higgs told reporters following his
meeting with Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy, during which he asked her to
dissolve the province's 59th legislature.
He
said candidates will need to be creative and innovative to get out the
vote during the 28-day campaign while they follow health directives to
slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Canadians have a phenomenally childish view of how things are provided for:
Ontario, as with other provinces, is having a big fight over when and
how students should return to school. In a way, it’s the usual battle of
wills over who knows best about the welfare of students. But there’s
more to it than that. The reason the government can’t just accede to the
latest demands of unions, school boards, worried parents and the usual
array of squabbling bystanders comes down to a perennial problem: money.
Or, more accurately, lack thereof.
**
More than a quarter of retirees aren’t retired, says the Department of
Employment. New figures follow research indicating the number of
Canadians over 65 who remained in the workforce is the “highest on
record”.
Because people live well into their eighties now and the government still insists on mishandling the cash these august voters dole out.
Canadian home sales surged to a record in July as homebuyers emerged from lockdowns.
Transactions
for existing properties reached 62,355 in the month, up 26 per cent
from a month earlier, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported.
Benchmark prices were 2.3 per cent higher on the month, as pent-up
demand for homes collided with extremely low inventory levels.
Cabinet seeks to ‘scale-up’ drug injection sites with amendments to the
Controlled Drugs And Substances Act. The response follows protests in
two of four provinces that legally distribute heroin, fentanyl and
crystal methamphetamine to users: “We believe in supervised consumption
sites.”
Canadian youth rate climate change a greater threat than drugs, guns,
gangs or traffic accidents. The Department of Public Safety research
followed climate marches last September 27 and an apocalyptic speech by
teen activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations: “We are in the
beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money.”
Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou and her lawyers
are set to attend hearings in a Canadian courtroom via telephone on
Monday, arguing for the Canadian attorney general to release more
confidential documents relating to her arrest.
A fresh cluster of infections from giant churches in South Korea is
reviving concern the country could again become a coronavirus hotspot
due to its religious organizations.
South Korea warned of another
wave of infections after reporting the highest number of cases since
early March, most of which are tied to a flareup at Sarang Jeil church
in Seoul. Authorities have confirmed three cases from the Yoido Full
Gospel Church, the country’s biggest with 560,000 members.
North Korean dictator Kim Kong-un has ordered citizens to hand over their pet dogs — so they can be killed for food.
The
hermit state says pet dogs are now considered a “decadent” luxury and
“a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeois ideology,” and must be surrendered,
according to a report by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo media outlet.
A man jumped onto a great white shark and punched it to save his wife
when it attacked her on Saturday at a beach in Port Macquarie in the
Australian state of New South Wales, media and officials said.
Just when that shark thought it was safe to go back into the water ...
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in
Washington, D.C. found itself in a small scandal last month after
visitors to its website discovered
an infographic that listed "hard work" and "rational thought" as traits
of white culture. The crude stereotypes drew well-deserved derision.
It's not just the museum. Last year, Sandia National Laboratories, a
federal contractor responsible for building the U.S.'s nuclear weapons,
sent its executives to mandatory diversity training with the White Men's
Caucus on Eliminating Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Organizations.
This group's educational materials—which were obtained
by Christopher Rufo, a visiting fellow at the Heritage
Foundation—include many of the same racial stereotypes. As Rufo writes,
participants were told that the "roots of white male culture"
consists of "rugged individualism," "a can-do attitude,"
"hard work," and "striving towards success"—which sound good, but are in
fact "devastating" to women and POCs.
In fact, the trainers claim that "white male culture" leads to
"lowered quality of life at work and home, reduced life expectancy,
unproductive relationships, and high stress." It also forces this "white
male standard" on women and minorities.
The seminar also asked white males to recite a series of "white
privilege statements" and "male privilege statements." It concluded with
its white male participants writing letters of apology to marginalized
people whom they may have harmed, according to Rufo, who made the
documents available on his website.
As with all major initiatives of the Khmer Rouge revolution, the first
step was to eliminate all traces of Cambodia’s “imperialist” past. Once
this goal was accomplished, a “pure” revolutionary consciousness could
be inculcated. 5 With regard to literacy, the first step of the Plan was
“to abolish, uproot, and disperse the cultural, literary, and artistic
remnants of the imperialists, colonialists, and all of the other
oppressor classes…” The second step was “to strengthen and expand the
building of revolutionary culture, literature and art of the
worker-peasant class in accordance with the Party’s proletarian
standpoint.” 6To eliminate remnants of “the oppressor classes,” the
Khmer Rouge persecuted people they defined as “new people. The ability
to speak French, for example, revealed one’s association with Cambodia’s
colonial past and made one’s commitment to the revolution suspect. The
Khmer Rouge leadership intended “to smash” this segment of the
population, whose allegedly corrupt past precluded their ever attaining a
pure revolutionary consciousness. In their place, the Party would
cultivate a new generation using “songs and poems that reflect good
models in the period of political/armed struggle…” whose education was
not tainted by the “oppressor classes”.
Any similarities to the article above are entirely coincidental, I'm sure.
