And the Rest of It

Oh, Florida liberals:

A headline published Monday by the Tampa Bay Times states that “Hillsborough schools cut back on Shakespeare, citing new Florida rules.” According to the story, “English teachers in Hillsborough County are preparing lessons for the new school year with only excepts from William Shakespeare’s works.”

The reason for the change is in part to expose students to a greater variety of writers and styles, Hillsborough County schools spokeswoman Tanya Arja told National Review in an emailed statement. “We redesigned our instructional guides for teachers because of revised state standards and new state exams that will cover a variety of books and writing styles,” she wrote. “Instead of 2 novels read in their entirety, students will read one full novel plus excerpts from 5-7 other novels and B.E.S.T. texts.”

But the decision, she said, was also made by “taking new state laws into consideration.” The law she is referring to, she said, is the state’s newly expanded Parental Rights in Education Act.

But state education leaders are pushing back against the notion that the state law should prohibit schools from assigning Shakespeare’s plays. “The Florida Department of Education in no way believes Shakespeare should be removed from Florida classrooms,” spokeswoman Cassie Palelis told National Review, noting that eight works by Shakespeare are included in the B.E.S.T. standards as recommended readings.

Other B.E.S.T. recommended readings for high-school students include books and writings by George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Geoffrey Chaucer, Cicero, Plato, and John Locke, as well as books from the Bible, important historical documents like the Federalist Papers, and poetry by writers like Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost. There are more than 120 recommendations for grades nine through 12.

The expanded Parental Rights in Education Act prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to children from prekindergarten through eighth grade. If the instruction is provided to high-school students, it must be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” The bill, HB 1069, also allows for parents or residents to officially object to and challenge school materials that are pornographic, depict or describe sexual conduct, are not suited to student needs, or are inappropriate for the grade level or age group they’re being used in.

 

 

 

 

Attending a church picnic is a sign of a theocratic state in leftist circles:

Apparently, Laser’s distaste for religion extends so far that she criticizes Oklahoma’s former attorney general for the entirely unremarkable and thoroughly American claim that “there’s a God who has values and endows us or imbues us with those values that are not granted to us by the government.” Those who place such a statement outside the pale of publicly accepted opinions to be transmitted to the next generation — and sue religious Americans who disagree — are neither defenders of the pluralism or authentic Americanism they are so keen to invoke. They are just secularists who wish to impose their secularism on religious communities. Something deeply un-American is under way in the state of Oklahoma, indeed.

 

Extraordinary:

A man rammed a car onto a sidewalk Thursday in the South Korean city of Seongnam, then stepped out of the vehicle and began stabbing people at a shopping mall, leaving at least 14 people wounded.

Just hours after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday called for “ultra-strong” law enforcement measures in response to that attack, police found themselves chasing the suspect in another stabbing incident at a high school in Daejeon city.

Cho Byeong-tae, an official at the Daejeon metropolitan police department, said the attack at Songchon High School left at least one teacher hurt. He did not identify the victim or provide details about the victim’s health.

At least five people were hurt by the car and nine others were stabbed during Thursday’s attack in Seongnam that occurred in a crowded leisure district near a subway, according to Yoon Sung-hyun, an official from the southern Gyeonggi provincial police department.

 

 

Stupidity Is Giving Your Government Carte-Blanche to Tax You Under the Guise of Saving the Environment

This is how industries and countries fold:

Over half of Canadians, 53 percent, say the federal carbon tax is ineffective at combating climate change, according to a new poll by Nanos Research, with most saying it's also badly timed.

**

What do Canadians think of carbon taxes? We know what the federal government thinks: Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is a huge fan, as he has been a vocal proponent of his government’s imposition of a minimum price of $65 per tonne of carbon, which has raised the price at the pump by 14 cents per litre in much of the country.

The escalating carbon tax, which will eventually reach $170 per tonne, combined with the new clean fuel regulations, which the PBO estimates will cost households between $384 and $1,157 a year by 2030, will raise gas prices even further.

As for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, she is carbon-tax-positive, as well. While in Prince Edward Island in July, she was asked about the impact higher fuel prices will have on residents and gave this tone-deaf answer: “I am right now an MP for downtown Toronto, and a fact that still shocks my dad is that I don’t actually own a car.… I’m like 300 metres from the nearest subway; I walk, I take the subway.”

While she apparently forgot that she has access to a ministerial car and chauffeur, she did concede that, “I understand that there are communities in P.E.I. and across Atlantic Canada where you need to drive.”

Indeed. And what do people in those communities, and the rest of country, think about carbon taxes? As it turns out, they’re not nearly as bullish on the subject.

A recent survey by Nanos Research found that two-thirds of Canadians think now is “poor timing” or “very poor timing” for a carbon tax increase. Western and Atlantic Canadians take the dimmest view, at 79 and 73 per cent respectively. Even in eco-conscious Quebec, 53 per cent of respondents think the timing is wrong.

Worse yet, Canadians say the tax isn’t effective at reducing fuel consumption. In 2019, Nanos found that 42 per cent of Canadians believed carbon taxes were effective or somewhat effective at reducing fuel consumption. Today, only 32 per cent hold that view. Sixty-five per cent of Ontarians and 63 per cent of British Columbians said they believe a carbon tax is not an effective way to encourage people to use less fuel.

 

But they voted for it.

**

In 2009, Ottawa made its first commitment to end “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies that “encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources, and undermine efforts to deal with climate change.” Last year, this was adopted as a mandate of the Trudeau government.

However, instead of delivering on this pledge when the federal government released its framework in July, the new policy consists only of guidelines to evaluate subsidies without announcing the elimination of any of them.

 **

This douche again:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department closed Arctic weather stations even as it warned of catastrophic climate change, records show. Parliament had voted $384 million to modernize the Meteorological Service of Canada: “Climate change has already altered our reality.”

**

Ratepayers will see higher costs for electricity, says a staff memo to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. The Department of Environment would not estimate how much more consumers and industry will pay for “green” electrification: “Expansion of clean electricity supply towards 2050 will increase costs.”

 **

Yes, but the Narrative:

Myron Ebell, director and senior fellow at the Center for Energy and Environment, said that while June and July were hot in many locations, other places experienced below-average temperatures. Los Angeles, for example, experienced its 10th coolest June on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Yes, June was hot, July was hot, globally, but not through the roof," Mr. Ebell told The Epoch Times. "The planet is not boiling. Southern Europe has been very hot. But not everywhere is having record-high temperatures."

**

Climate grifters assert that July 2023 has been the hottest month in 125,000 years.

But how do you explain the fact that in northern summer of 1846 Franklin sailed in the HMS Erebus and Terror north-west of Devon Island reaching 77°N - but today during the supposed "hottest… pic.twitter.com/q4V4nMH4Y4

— Craig Kelly (@CKellyUAP) July 30, 2023

Your Idiot Government and You

A tyranny foisted on a people can be overcome.

When the people inflict this kind of suffering on themselves, well ... :

Minister Miller says he’ll listen to arguments about whether current immigration targets are correct. The official target has been bumped up to 500,000 a year from 400,000, though in 2022 we hit 1.2 million — the only target Ottawa has bested in recent years.

But the minister will only listen so much. Attack lines are at the ready. As he said shortly after taking his new office: “In every wave of migration that Canada has had, there has been a segment of folks that have blamed immigrants for taking houses, taking jobs, you name it. Those are people that don’t necessarily have the best interest of immigrants at heart and we have to call that out when we see it and we won’t hesitate to do that.” No one who has watched the prime minister drive wedge after wedge into Canadian policy debates over the last eight years has the slightest doubt the Liberals will do that. People who would like to debate the immigration targets may well be anti-immigrant, Miller’s statement suggests, which is but one step of slippery logic away from the R-word: racist.

In this day and age, of course, we never actually discuss a policy issue: we look for the slightest doctrinal misstep in our ideological adversaries’ arguments and pounce, self-righteously claiming the moral high ground while accusing our opponents of having fallen into an ethical ditch.

Immigration seems an area where informed and informative debate will be especially difficult. So kudos to TD Economics for recently issuing a short study of the issue: “Balancing Canada’s pop in population,” by Beata Caranci, James Orlando and Rishi Sondhi. At a time when big banks seem to specialize in serving up politically correct pablum, this piece raises hard questions about how desirable a big boost in immigration is.

 

It gets better.

Increased immigration keeping people on the streets is not going to stop. 

No word on what streets these people are to live on.

Somewhat related - increased migration was about building loyal voters block and cheap labour.

Change my mind:

Federal inspectors have stepped up six-figure fines against employers accused of breaching migrant labour regulations, records show. The labour department as late as 2017 conducted no in-person spot inspections under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: “They have had ample opportunity to act on this.”

Driving up the costs in smaller towns instead of addressing why the Liberals allowed foreign homeless people to sleep on the streets:

Battaglia concurs that housing affordability is holding up well in Alberta, but says there are early signs that Maritime provinces — an earlier hot spot for interprovincial migration — are seeing housing market competition heat up.

Even if buyers end up increasingly boxed out of Alberta markets, Battaglia highlights Winnipeg, St. John’s, N.L., Saskatoon and Regina as a few cities carrying the flame of affordability. She argues, however, that the need to rapidly add housing supply will perpetually be a national concern as long as these hot spots remain in the country and Canadians uproot themselves to find an affordable life.

“Demand is not going to wane,” she says. “Cities grow, populations expand, and we just need to increase the supply of housing to accommodate that.”

According to this article, it takes anywhere from six to ten months to complete a single family dwelling in Canada.

The first day of fall is on September 23rd of this year.

The weather dips from there.

Are there jobs for these people claiming to be refugees? How will they pay for these houses?

 

 

I'm sure it's not important:

China could have been fined $25,000 for flying a suspected spy balloon over Canada without a federal permit, according to a Department of Transport briefing note. The balloon instead was shot down by U.S. fighter jets last February 4 and recovered in the Atlantic off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: “Any individual that breaks these rules can be subject to fines.”

It's just money:

A South Pacific junket led by Commons Speaker Anthony Rota cost taxpayers more than $150,000, records show. Guests invited to a three-day conference included a Liberal-appointed Commons clerk who resigned after he was accused of sleeping on the job: “Cooperation is a prerequisite for furthering people-to-people contact.”

** 

But it was promised!:

Five months after the federal budget abandoned plans to balance Canada’s books by 2027, new data from the country’s budgetary watchdog suggest a return to balance might not happen until the next decade.

Released late last month, supplementary data provided alongside Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux’s 2023 Fiscal Sustainability report projects the earliest the government could balance the budget would be 2035.

**

The federal government spent more than $20 million on public opinion research last year, nearly twice what it spent just three years ago.

In the last fiscal year, the government commissioned 164 polls spread across 34 departments and spent $20.3 million. The money went to 20 different public opinion firms.

 

 

It has always been about himself:

Justin Trudeau appears to want privacy for his family like Meghan and Harry want privacy for theirs, selectively at best.

Just days after posting about his separation from wife Sophie and asking for privacy, especially for the children, Trudeau was posting personal photos to social media.

 

And, no, he won't leave office. 

Nor will his dad's foundation admit that it is occupied by creeps.

Coilten Boushie went to the Stanley farm with the express purpose of robbing those who resided on it.

And now he's dead:

The RCMP braced for backlash across rural Saskatchewan and kept a close eye on Indigenous groups after the not guilty verdict of a farmer charged in the death of Colten Boushie, emails show.

The former top Mountie in the province also warned officers to watch their opinions, and police carefully watched and weighed in on testimony in the highly charged murder trial that exposed racial divides.

Essentially, the Stasi lived in fear of a minority that refused to accept that Boushie brought his fate on himself.

Silence is big in this industry.

What to do?:

Mr. Baja’s disclosure that Mr. Gadhafi secretly stashed “billions” in Canadian financial institutions during his 42-year rule in Libya – made in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail – comes at a critical time for both countries.

Libya is renewing its efforts to recover billions of dollars’ worth of missing assets that were looted by Mr. Gadhafi and his inner circle. That global hunt is resuming as political deadlock threatens to thwart plans to hold long-promised elections in Libya this year, fuelling fears of additional delays in repatriating state assets.

Canada, which has seen its internal affairs rocked by Libya-related scandals in recent years, is facing international criticism for its failure to find and freeze dirty money, and for its lax enforcement of global sanctions.

Given Libya’s shaky security situation, Mr. Baja says it’s his responsibility to prevent the financial assets uncovered in Canada from falling into the wrong hands, including Libyan militias. In the years following the overthrow of Mr. Gadhafi, rival factions attempted to abscond with some of his recovered assets. That’s why Mr. Baja chose to hide the cache of Canadian financial records until his country has a democratic government.

“I cannot give it to anybody else except an elected government – a legal one,” Mr. Baja said in a telephone interview from Benghazi, Libya. He declined to provide the documents to The Globe.

“There is money in these [documents], the account numbers, in fact,” he later added.

When asked to be more precise about the amount of money traced to Mr. Gadhafi at unnamed Canadian banks, Mr. Baja declined to provide specifics. “We are talking about a billionaire,” he said.

Mr. Gadhafi used front men, including Canadian proxies, to open bank accounts and shell corporations on his behalf to hide part of his fortune outside of Libya, according to two other people familiar with the matter. Additionally, Mr. Gadhafi intermingled his personal wealth with Libyan state funds in bank accounts in Canada and other countries, they said.

 

We Don't Have to Trade With China

It's not like people do not know that this paper tiger is a juggernaut; it's that they don't care:

Here are just a few things to consider about China vis-à-vis America:

• Its shoddy goods completely undercut our manufacturing sector, helped for years by greedy American unions that killed the goose that laid the golden manufacturing egg and by legislatively cheap postage.
• It’s been expanding rapidly and illegally in the South China Sea, using artificial islands and its military to exert control over formerly international waters.
• Its “belt and road” initiative has been making countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa economically dependent upon it. Of course, as with all its products, what it builds in exchange for a large piece of a country’s economy is garbage.
• Speaking of China’s large economic empire, it controls most of the rare earth elements on which our modern world relies, whether here or in Africa.
• It’s allied itself with Russia, and the two nations are showing increased aggression against America.
• Millions of Chinese-government-connected dollars have ended up in Biden family accounts.
• It blatantly sent a spy balloon floating across areas of America that are critical for national security, and (coincidentally, I’m sure) Joe Biden just let it happen.
• COVID—and I’m not even talking about that terrifying, illegal Chinese-connected bio lab in California. ...

Now we learn that the government is worried that Chinese illegal aliens are also slipping into America through Florida:

Federal authorities are growing increasingly concerned about a route Chinese migrants are utilizing to make their way to Florida illegally, according to an internal federal intelligence report obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The report states that law enforcement lacks information regarding who is coordinating the smuggling between the Bahamas and Florida, where the migrants are being staged in the Bahamas and why Chinese migrants are choosing the Caribbean island. It also references recent incidents of Chinese nationals entering Florida illegally via the Bahamas.

There have been five such incidents of Chinese migrants attempting to “self-smuggle” from the Bahamas, according to the report. One incident took place on July 16 and involved a group of six Chinese migrants.

 

** 

Silly Jag!

Everyone is loyal to anyone except Canada:

New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party has faced resistance to including countries other than China in the terms of reference for a public inquiry on foreign interference.

House leaders from the main federal parties have been meeting over the summer in an attempt to set the terms and timeline for an inquiry and to appoint a potential leader. ...

(Sidebar: why not one of Justin's uncles?)

Singh didn’t say which parties resisted, and the scope of a possible public inquiry remains unclear.

However, in late May, Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MPs voted in favour of an NDP motion calling for an inquiry to include a look at attempted interference not only by China but also Russia, Iran and India. The Liberals voted against that motion.

 

Oh! Can we look into Khalistan, too?! 

Seeing as one wants to expand the scope ...

**

"Shut up!" they explained:

Threats of legal action have recently been made targeting journalists who are focused on exposing foreign interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Canada

In June, Sen. Victor Oh proposed to create a national Chinese foundation to collect donations for launching lawsuits "against those unreasonable journalists, news outlets, and politicians who slander and defame Chinese people."

Joe Li, a regional councillor for Markham, Ont., has more recently echoed this threat against media outlets and reporters that he says are "smearing Chinese people." He made the remarks at an event celebrating the 156th Canada Day on July 1. He was one of the honorary guests who spoke at the event hosted by the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO).

** 

Calvin Chrustie, a retired senior officer with the RCMP who played a lead role in the investigation, blamed the mistake on disclosure laws that require defence lawyers to be provided with far more information than their counterparts in other countries.

“Out of 500,000 documents, or whatever they had, someone had accidentally put one piece of paper in the wrong pile. And that was the end of the case, which seems like a ludicrous outcome for a minor human error,” he said.

Christie, who now works with the security and intelligence advisory firm Critical Risk Team, said such lapses helped make Canada “a safe zone for the world’s most notorious crime groups.” 

“Canada provides a dysfunctional legal system that fosters a low-risk environment,” he said.

 

It Was Never About a Virus

In a just world, everyone involved in this would go to prison:

On April 17, 2020, with much of the country still in some form of lockdown and news of overwhelmed hospitals dominating the headlines, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then a member of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, was asked a question toward the end of a White House press briefing: Was there a possibility that this novel virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China?

“There was a study recently,” Fauci said confidently, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve, and the mutations that it took to get to where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.” In other words, it wasn’t from the lab.

This moment set the template for much that would follow from Fauci over the next three years. That is, evasion, deception, and misdirection about his support of high-risk virology research and its connection to the possibility that a lab leak in Wuhan caused a worldwide catastrophe.

Fauci, who was the face of the public health community during the crisis, pushed the idea that the evidence strongly indicated that the virus was just a tragic, natural occurrence. He insisted, repeatedly, that an epidemic that started in Wuhan was unlikely to have been the result of an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). 

But Fauci had an incentive to arrive at his conclusion about the deadly pandemic that started in Wuhan. The WIV was known for doing high-risk virology research studying and manipulating coronaviruses. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for almost 40 years, had funded such research at the WIV.

Fauci’s posture—dismissive toward the theory of the lab leak, and later, condescending toward those who entertained it—set what became the accepted narrative about the origins of the pandemic. It was a narrative that was parroted by the government, public health officials, and the media, and even enforced by social media platforms at the request of the Biden White House.

But last month, a trove of explosive emails and other documents were released by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. These revealed evidence of Fauci’s and other officials’ behind-the-scenes involvement with scientists and journalists, demonstrating their efforts to quash the lab leak theory.

The recently disclosed private communications, first reported by Public and Racket, lay bare that the “highly qualified” authors of the paper that Fauci had asserted in April 2020 likely disproved a lab leak—what became known informally as the “Proximal Origin” paper—actually had extensive uncertainty about the virus being the result of a natural event. This was grossly at odds with what became their published position.

** 

According to the House subcommittee’s report, since the commentary’s publication, it has been regarded as “the single most impactful and influential scientific paper in history” and “has been accessed 5.84 million times.” Government officials, the media, scientists, and many others referred to it as indisputable evidence that the lab-leak theory was a conspiracy and that anyone who brought it up was a conspiracist and a racist. The Chinese Communist Party welcomed the commentary as scientific backing to insist that Covid-19 originated in nature; thus, the CCP was not responsible for the 15 million Covid-related deaths and millions more suffering during the pandemic. ...

Yet through the Herculean efforts of a determined few, including journalists such as Ian Birrell, the volunteer group DRASTIC, and the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the public has now learned that the paper wasn’t an objective scientific inquiry but rather the result of coordinated efforts between them and public health officials. The most troubling aspect of the paper is that although the authors denounced the lab-leak theory publicly, they privately doubted their own conclusion and worried that there was growing evidence contradicting their assertion.

According to the House subcommittee’s report, on Jan. 31, 2020, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and adviser to President Donald Trump on the pandemic, requested Kristian G. Andersen, a scientist working at the Scripps Research Institute, to draft a paper aiming to “disprove the lab leak theory to avoid blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The next day, on Feb. 1, Sir Jeremy Farrar, then director of the Wellcome Trust (now the chief scientist of the World Health Organization), convened a conference call. Participants included all five scientists who later authored the “Proximal Origin” paper: Fauci, Director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the U.K. government’s chief scientific adviser until recently. Due to Fauci’s repeated nudging, Andersen began to draft a paper rejecting the lab-leak theory.

**

Pfizer Under Question

Watch as I question Pfizer representatives last night in a Senate Hearing.

The company was very reluctant to attend the committee hearing and also reluctant to supply a straight answer, automatically falling back on their 'safe and effective' mantra to… pic.twitter.com/PZmJ7yiW9l

— Malcolm Roberts 🇦🇺 (@MRobertsQLD) August 4, 2023

**

The federal government has destroyed more than 14 million unused and expired doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far this year, with four million more doses set to exceed their shelf life by 2023’s end, amid dwindling vaccine demand.

**

“The wiretap was calculated to intimidate Detective Grus and her family – but all these ‘Urgent Emergency’ wiretaps during the Freedom Convoy backfired.

 The wiretaps served only to galvanize Canadians and strengthen the legitimacy of protest against governments that overstepped their authority and power.”

It's Time to Re-think How We Educate and Train People

But don't take my word for it:

Chief commissioner Patricia DeGuire said at least one-third of students graduate without reaching the level of literacy that the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development says is necessary in today’s economy.

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To its credit, the province immediately announced a reading-improvement program. This was in February 2022. The unions were subsequently consulted on how the program should work. Now, the two unions say the program “was released Friday without notice.”

The unions attempted, rather lamely, to play off the government’s oft-repeated statement about creating stability in education. They claim that the government is destabilizing education by bringing in “sweeping changes without providing the necessary time and resources for proper implementation.”

And yet the government will spend $25 million on new reading resources, the change was announced 18 months ago and the unions participated in consultation on it. ETFO told the government that their members would require two years to make this single change.

So for the unions, stability at a low level of performance is preferable to the unpleasantness of having to do a better job more quickly than they’d like. Too bad about the kids who can’t read. ETFO, by the way, describes itself as an organization whose goal is to “advance a social justice agenda.”

While learning is a three-pronged approach, starting with the student, and his or her home, if teachers are going to use these students as bargaining chips, they might want to show how sincere they are at their jobs.

The United Kingdom Recognises That Crimes Against the Yazidis Were Genocide

And all Justin wanted to send was parkas:

The British government on Tuesday recognized as genocide those crimes committed against the Yazidi minority by Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq in 2014.

The decision comes days before the ninth anniversary of the crimes that were perpetrated by the terror group also known as ISIS or Daesh.

"The Yazidi population suffered immensely at the hands of Daesh nine years ago, and the repercussions are still felt to this day," Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, Tariq Ahmad, said in a statement. "Justice and accountability are key for those whose lives have been devastated."

Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority viewed as infidels by IS extremists.

In August 2014, IS carried out a massive attack on Sinjar, once home to the largest Yazidi community in the world. At least 5,000 Yazidis, mostly men and boys, were killed during the attack on the northern Iraqi city.

IS then kidnapped thousands of Yazidi children and women, who subsequently were used as sex slaves and child soldiers. More than 2,000 of them are still missing.

This decisions is years late and does nothing to address the ISIS members still living and thriving in the West.

It Was Never About a Virus

Who is to be held to account?

No one has forgotten:

Last year, Trudeau’s use of the Emergency Act brutally to subdue the truckers was scrutinised by a public inquiry, with the preposterous verdict that the federal government had reached the ‘very high threshold’ for such action. Here was the establishment marking its own homework. Concerns have been raised in the UK about the behaviour of banks following Nigel Farage’s exposé of Coutts, but in Canada it was government policy to close accounts of anyone involved in the truckers’ rebellion. Showing little remorse for three years of abject tyranny, presumably the Trudeau administration wants to be credited with competent handling of a crisis, with tough but difficult decisions taken. 

However the BMJ report is not concerned with state persecution of peaceful protesters, focusing instead on lack of sensitivity to marginalised groups. The authors assert that ‘Canada is among the healthiest and most diverse nations in the world’, that ‘multiculturalism is protected in national law’ and that ‘amongst a population of 40million people about a quarter are foreign-born’.  What is the relevance of this to lockdown and forced injection of experimental mRNA vaccines?

Allegedly, immigrant and indigenous communities were treated particularly badly, but ‘what saved Canada was a largely willing and conforming populace that withstood stringent public health measures and achieved among the world’s highest levels of vaccination coverage’.

I suspect that the BMJ critique has ulterior motives. Arguably, it is to undermine what the authors refer to as the currently running ‘so-called National Citizens’ Inquiry’. The National Post highlighted the report’s disdain for the resistance movement:  

‘According to the BMJ editorial the “National Citizens Inquiry (a citizen-led inquiry originally launched by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning) appears fuelled by vaccine safety misinformation and ideological concerns” about stringent COVID measures. The BMJ goes on to say it “is far from the full, national and public inquiry led by independent experts that Canada’s pandemic performance deserves”.’

This attitude will not surprise any critical thinker observing the UK government’s Covid-19 whitewash, which rather than engaging the multitude of sceptical views gave a platform to extremists of the ‘Independent Sage’ group. Few lessons will be learned from the BMJ report. Instead of incisive probing into the Canadian authorities, the purpose appears to be to swing the pendulum back from increasing citizens’ doubt to the official narrative that Covid-19 was a deadly contagion necessitating exceptional interference in lives and liberties.   

Comments beneath the National Post article were mostly critical of the Canadian government, for example:

‘The Convoy demonstrated that the Federal Government was not following science, but was more interested in autocracy and bullying tactics that saw civil liberties suspended, even though science did not warrant such.’

‘The unvaccinated deserve a huge apology from everyone.’

The BMJ was one of many publishers to provide free access to Covid-related material during the pandemic. Although the peer-review system may have been biased against contrary evidence and argument, such literature remains independent of official bodies such as the World Health Organization, which the globalist technocrats are exploiting for a huge power-grab.  

Nonetheless, the BMJ’s call for an ‘expert’ inquiry in Canada should be taken with a pinch of salt. Covid-19, like the contrived climate crisis, showed how ‘the science’ is deployed to suppress debate and fix truth to official narrative. A contrived ‘scientific consensus’ is no more valid as a representation of reality than a vote in parliament or a public opinion poll. As Carl Sagan said, appeals to authority should be rejected. Science is not a popularity contest but often (to quote Al Gore) ‘an inconvenient truth’.

The veneer of expertise has rubbed off, as has trust in government. Official inquiries will not expose the facts, falsehood and fraud of the Covid-19 regime, because the officials conducting such inquiries want to preserve their power. In the real world, however, it is the people who decide what is right and what is wrong. Increasingly they realise that their governments – and the privileged managerial-professional class – are working against them.

**

For a product that Pfizer is in front of the Australian Senate admitting was never tested for reducing transmission. He needs to be incarcerated as he incarcerated others. https://t.co/3LT6ZBfSZD

— Sheldon DuMont (@seaforthdoctari) August 3, 2023

Oh, a technicality! Well!:

An Albertan court ruled on Tuesday that lockdown orders enacted in response to Covid were invalid.

The ruling in Ingram v. Alberta will likely force prosecutors to withdraw charges against individuals, churches, and other organizations in several other standing cases.

Justice Barbara Romaine ruled in favor of the applicants because the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) delegated her decisions to the cabinet, which she was not authorized to do under Canadian law. The CMOH herself testified at trial that she provided only advice and recommendations to politicians but did not make the decisions herself.

Justice Romaine did conclude that although they violated the rights in section 2 of the Canadian Charter, lockdowns would not have violated the Charter if they had been implemented legally.

Your Idiot Government and You

Justin may be on yet another taxpayer-funded vacation but the rest of the government is hard at work screwing up:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department yesterday gave grocers until month’s end to comment on proposed curbs on single-use plastics like meat wrapping and fruit bags. A current ban on plastic six-pack rings and other goods will cost consumers $205 million, by official estimate: “There is a need to do business differently.”

**

“On one hand,” she observes, “they (the federal government) plan to ban the sale of internal combustion engines and allow only non-emitting and electrical vehicles in Canada eleven years from now, yet they themselves stand in the way of development of the resources right under our feet that can create the components for electric vehicles and battery storage systems, and enable our own self-sufficiency and security.”

Indeed, there’s a profound disconnect between the government’s timeline for the phase-in of EVs and the lengthy timelines needed to produce the metals and minerals to build them. The Trudeau government’s plan mandates 100% new light-duty zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035, with interim targets of 20% by 2026 and 60% by 2030. And 100% of new medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales must be zero-emission by 2040.

But what are the mining timelines for EV metals? According to the Energy Information Agency, the time spent (globally) from getting into production (“lead time”) to initial production for a Lithium mine is from about six to 19 years, with nickel lead times of about three to 18 years. The Ring of Fire was identified as a potential resource area in 2010 — that’s 13 years of the EIA timeline gone.

Yet, once again, nothing is happening. Talks with First Nations have stalled, says federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. “For any development to happen in the Ring of Fire, Indigenous nations will need to be part of the discussion in decision-making process,” he said. “That hasn’t happened, which is why I think we are not seeing any development.”

In case one forgot where the Liberals' interests truly lie:

China represents a last chance for the commercial viability of the Atlantic seal hunt, says a federal memo. China banned sales of Canadian seal oil and other products in 2011: “Industry views access to China as one of its last opportunities for their industry to again become commercially viable.”

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The Liberals have tailor-made Canada for China and restricted it to the point where the only options are China or the US:

In 2022, China was Canada’s second-largest trading partner, after the United States. Imports from China ($73.9 billion) made up 7.9 percent of total imports, and 3.9 percent ($36.9 billion) of exports went to China, according to Statistics Canada. 

From 2016 to 2018, Canada imported over $40 billion more than it exported to China. This figure rose to over $50 billion from 2019 to 2021, and in 2022, that trade deficit topped $70 billion.

China also made more direct investments in Canada in 2022 than vice versa.

Mr. Miller says decoupling will become a natural phenomenon as companies get increasingly concerned about Beijing’s state-led economic policies and as Chinese growth slows, and with any trade relating to advanced technologies remaining restricted.

Canadian investors, despite having fewer international investments than many other wealthy countries, in general own more assets in China compared to investors in other countries, says a July 23 analysis by The Globe and Mail about major Canadian pension funds pivoting away from China.

Chinese bonds and equities as a share of Canada’s foreign asset position roughly doubled in the past decade, far outpacing other G7 countries such as Japan, France or Germany, the Globe reported.

Oh, I am sure they have put their top man on it:

Ottawa says law enforcement is "engaged" after a video circulating online appeared to threaten Indian diplomats in Canada.

Public Safety Canada said in a Tuesday tweet that Ottawa will ensure the safety of all diplomats in Canada, but the department would not provide details.

It referred queries to the RCMP, which refused to confirm whether it had opened a criminal probe or say which particular video was involved.

Some Canadian Sikhs who advocate for the secession of a region in India have claimed that New Delhi was involved in the June death of a preacher near Vancouver, though police say they have no evidence of such a link.

Because, you know, special:

You will pay reparations, one way or another. It doesn’t matter that no one voted for it, or that politicians are unable to win the political argument in favour of perpetual historical guilt. When it comes to the era of activist politics, these battles for cash are fought and won in the shadows of ESG where corporate entities shake hands with the government.

Australia’s vocal but tiny ‘Blak activist’ collective is attempting to sneak new race taxes into the Constitution (Pay the Rent) stuffed into the stomach of the Voice’s Trojan horse – but Canada is a lot further down the path of this madness. Fortunes in reparations have been handed out under many different headings with the largest totalling over $43 billion without, many claim, sufficient consultation with Canadian taxpayers.