Closing this admittedly large gap is not impossible. The economic literature is very clear on how to increase productivity: more investment. When companies invest in new, more efficient production processes, workers are able to do more, and do better, with each hour spent working. This produces more value, which ultimately increases potential remuneration.
Canada has been lagging behind for years when it comes to investment, the lifeblood of productivity. In 2018, for instance, non-residential private investment amounted to $17,389 per job in Canada. In the United States, still on a purchasing power parity basis, the level of non-residential private investment was $27,307 per job. In Sweden, it was $33,214 per job.
Our governments, both federal and provincial, are trying to make up for the lack of private investment with subsidies, but the subsidies required to close the private-investment gap with the United States are simply not sustainable. We would need $200 billion a year in taxpayer money to catch up. And that’s assuming subsidies are just as efficient as private investment, which seems unlikely.
The good news for taxpayers is that closing the productivity gap does not require diverting our taxes toward the private sector in order to close our productivity gap. If other countries succeed in attracting more investment, it’s because their business environment is sufficiently attractive for the private sector to be willing to risk its money there.
Oh, but that's not how the Liberals fool the taxpayers into thinking something is being done:
Academics, commercial banks and policy thinkers have all been warning the federal government that the pace of population growth, facilitated by immigration, is making the housing crisis worse.
“The primary cause for (the) housing affordability challenge in Canada is our inability to build more housing that is in line with the increase in population,” said Murtaza Haider, a professor of data science and real estate management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
A TD report released in late July also warned that “continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years.”
But the Liberals are doubling down on their commitment to bring more people into the country, arguing that Canada needs high immigration to support the economy and build the homes it desperately needs.
“Looking at the (immigration) levels that we have recently approved as a cabinet (and) as a government, we can’t afford currently to reduce those numbers,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections.
“We are certainly working on scenarios,” Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday.
And what are those plans?
Your attempt at distraction is not working, Diplomat Barbie. Everyone knows how bad this government is.
It's a poor attempt to slag some rather sturdy opposition here and abroad anyway.
Cabinet has donated a small portion of its mammoth pandemic ventilator stockpile to Ukrainian war victims. The Department of Public Works spent more than $700 million on Covid-era rush orders for ventilators that were never used: “I do have the Canadian taxpayers’ interests at heart when I am doing my job.”
A review of Covid contracts approved by the Department of Health showed more than a tenth failed to follow the rules, a federal investigation said yesterday. The department issued 17,000 contracts. Only 40 were checked at random: “Health Canada cannot demonstrate it followed the proper procurement protocols and that its practices were fair, open and transparent.”
A member of cabinet, Citizens’ Services Minister Terry Beech, paid for Facebook ads in the past month even after cabinet announced it was boycotting Facebook, records show. Beech was one of five Liberal MPs to break the boycott: “Working hard for you.”
Would that be like freezing bank accounts and threatening to euthanise pets?:
The recent letter from Arif Virani to Ontario's chief coroner outlined the Liberal government's response to a series of recommendations that came from an inquest into the 2015 slayings of three women in the rural Renfrew County area, about 180 kilometres west of Ottawa.
Carol Culleton, Nathalie Warmerdam and Anastasia Kuzyk were all murdered that September by Basil Borutski, who had a criminal history of violence against women.
Borutski, who had prior, separate relationships with all three of his victims, had been released from prison the year before the murders.
(Sidebar: ... and there it is. This government actively discourages self-defense, punishes those who DO defend themselves, rejects minimum sentences and makes it possible for violent offenders like Mr. Borutski and even Paul Bernardo to one day be released from prison. Passing this law is pointless busy-work that will do nothing to address actual problems.)
Last summer, a coroner's inquest into the deaths heard that at least one of the women had been trying to learn of his whereabouts once he was released, and that Borutski had been deemed a high-risk offender while in custody.
The advocacy group Canadian Anti-Hate Network faces a $50,000 federal lawsuit over a Freedom Convoy photo posted on its website. The Network in a Federal Court claim is accused of breaching the Copyright Act by using the image without payment or permission: “The Canadian Anti-Hate Network misrepresented to the Hill Times that the photograph was a screenshot from a video.”
Canadians must focus on “high value guests” in tourism, says a federal agency. Wealthy foreigners are “naturally curious,” “seek culture” and spend more than working people, it said: “In other words, value and values over volume.”
Far be it for me to question Mr. Juice-Box-Thingy but I don't think that he nor his merry band of parrots have ever read anything more complicated than a child's colouring book.
Do customs ask either Canadians or foreign visitors if they've ever read Dante?
Basically, what (the Liberals are) doing is setting end-of-life conditions or prohibitions on using natural gas and oil to generate electricity in all but certain circumstances.
So, if you have other sources of electricity that generate greenhouse gases, you’re going to have to, as a power generator, as a Crown corp. or what have you, find other sources of power by the time those facilities reach what the regulations define as their end of life — which is either 2035 or 20 years after they come into service. ...
So the clean-electricity regulations that came out last week, those are created under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. And so it’s federal environmental legislation, and this is an add-on regulation under that piece of legislation. Previously, regulations made under that environmental protection (law) have been challenged.
The courts determined that these were valid federal regulations under Parliament’s ability to enact criminal laws.
Article content
It’s not part of the Criminal Code, but it’s legislation that has the characteristic of criminal law. So that’s within the powers of the federal government.
In short, the government will control all power because it can.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand is tasking federal cabinet ministers with finding $15.4 billion in government spending cuts by a deadline of Oct. 2.
This Anita Anand:
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. ...
Canada’s auditor general last year criticized the agency for its “unsuccessful” efforts to minimize vaccine wastage that led to $1 billion worth of squandered vaccines.
**
For Canadian troops deployed in Latvia, those private purchases have been decidedly more practical than luxurious — given the fact that they're taking part in more live fire training exercises meant to deter Russia from setting foot in the Baltic country.
They've been buying their own modern ballistic helmets equipped with built-in hearing protection that doubles as a headset. They've also personally purchased rain gear and vests and belts to carry water and ammunition. And the number of complaints about the ill-fitting body armour issued to female soldiers has been growing.
These purchases — usually made through online retailers — involve brand-name tactical gear or weapon accessories that make soldiers' existing gear more personal or more comfortable to wear. ...
Canadian troops in Latvia are grappling with more urgent equipment shortages as well. The battlegroup of roughly 1,500 soldiers, including more than 700 Canadians, lacks modern anti-tank weapons, systems to counter drones and a dedicated short-range air defence system to guard against helicopters and attack jets.
Those frustrations have only been compounded by the arrival of more allied troops — among them Danish soldiers who are in some cases arriving with Canadian-purchased gear that makes them better equipped than Canadian soldiers.
I'm sure she will blame someone for her failures on October 3rd.
The federal government’s news release on this new funding was barely reported on, having come in the middle of summer, when few are paying attention.
Article content
The payment of an extra $463 million to Irving Shipbuilding is to allow the firm to modernize its Halifax-area facilities so the company can build the Canadian Surface Combatants (CSC).
Article content
Although the firm will be making a profit on the construction of the new warships, it had requested that the public fund the modernization of its private facilities.
That money, however, marks a significant reversal in the government’s official National Shipbuilding Strategy.
Irving’s shipyard was selected in 2011 as the winner of a multi-billion dollar program to construct the country’s new fleets of warships. Among the requirements for winning the bid was that the yard had the capability to build the vessels and taxpayers wouldn’t need to contribute funding to outfit facilities for the task.
If a yard didn’t have the ability to build the CSC, it wouldn’t get the contract.
Federal politicians, as well as defence analysts and think-tanks that receive funding from military companies and government, all boasted about that stipulation as an example of the cost effectiveness of the strategy.
The Liberals could have used Irving’s lack of capability to build the CSC as a way out of project that has been described by critics as endless money pit with little accountability or oversight.
Article content
Instead, the government’s decision to provide $463 million extra for CSC is a signal the Liberals are fully committed to the program no matter what it costs.
The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) released its second-quarter report last week, which saw the construction of both single- and multi-family units remain low but increase slightly in the second quarter — an improvement from the lows recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Around 67 per cent of the association’s expert industry panellists stated that the slowdown in the real estate market is causing them to build fewer units, compared with 59 per cent reported in the previous two quarters.
Are Canadians incapable of constructing dwellings? I’m a journalist by trade, so presumptively as useful in real life as, say, a poet. Or a consultant. But I have built a sleeping cabin and helped on that most iconic of Canadian dwellings, a cottage. I have even mixed cement. And doubtless others in this land surpass me. Including pros.
The minister cannot possibly think absent mass immigration we couldn’t build any homes. Where did our existing stock come from? The real issue is whether the current flood of immigrants contains enough extra homebuilders to provide extra shelter for that flood and then some. Especially as the minister cannot possibly think Canadian immigration policy is structured to bring in hundreds of thousands of framers, joiners, engineers and guys who use “footer” in everyday conversation.
Of course it derives from the more general, insulting notion that Canadians are such shlumps that without new immigrants we won’t work hard or effectively at anything. And not just those of us born in this notorious land of slackers; the millions who have poured in over the past quarter-century, and their offspring, are evidently assimilated to our culture of sloth so rapidly they can no longer be bothered hoisting a two by four instead of a 2-4 or something.
It’s the demographic version of the “bicycle” economic theory popular in Japan, that if they stopped pedalling they’d fall over. Whereas Japan’s real problem, and ours, is a plunging birth rate as we increasingly regard life as a burden or, at best, a brief party followed by MAID when the music stops, not a precious gift to be passed on. And you can’t fix despair with immigration because you really will get assimilation to that anomie unless we find a fix from within.
Canada’s annual inflation rate rose to 3.3 per cent in July, as economists warn the latest consumer price index report spells bad news for the Bank of Canada.
The number of empty health-care jobs in Canada has more than doubled and care providers are working more overtime and taking more sick leave since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to Statistics Canada.
A report, released last week, shows how nurses, personal support workers and care aides are now coping after struggling through the brunt of the pandemic to keep patients, and themselves, alive.
An all-time high of 95,800 health-care jobs were vacant in the fourth quarter of 2022, more than twice the 2019 fourth-quarter figure of 40,100. Two-thirds of the vacancies were for nurses and support workers.
Overtime rose from an average of seven hours per week in 2019 to 8.6 extra hours – more than a full day per week – in 2022.
Staff missed nearly an extra week of work in 2022 compared with 2019 due to illness – between five and six days for unionized workers and around about five for non-unionized workers.
The president of the Canadian Nurses Association warned the situation will only get worse if changes aren’t made.
“(Nurses) will leave the health-care system and they will work in other areas,” Sylvain Brousseau said, speaking from Blainville, Que.
“And the impact is the risk for the quality and safety for the patients.”
Why even bother? It's not like he has any teeth or that Justin listens to him or anything:
The federal government has remained without a conflict-of-interest and ethics watchdog for more than six months _ a vacancy that the most recent commissioner says is putting investigations on hold and could allow violations to go unnoticed.
Federal officials worried long-promised legislation declaring First Nations policing an essential service was being delayed by Assembly of First Nations hesitations about the bill, newly released internal documents show.
Records obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act also appear to show that one of the sticking points for both the advocacy organization and Ottawa is whether to recognize policing as an area of First Nations jurisdiction — something the government has done when it comes to child-welfare services.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised his government would bring forward a new First Nations policing law in 2020 after years of calls from Indigenous leaders.
The federal government committed to co-develop the law with the Assembly of First Nations, which represents more than 600 communities across Canada.
Last year, calls for legislative change were once again amplified after 11 people were killed and 17 injured in James Smith Cree Nation and the nearby community of Weldon, Sask.
The RCMP was the police service of jurisdiction, with the closest detachment located nearly 50 kilometres away. That prompted the community to call for immediate changes to emergency services in the area, including faster response times.
The anniversary of the tragedy is coming up at the beginning of September, yet the advocacy organization and Ottawa appear to be stalled on what a law around First Nations policing should even look like.
And leaders of existing First Nations police services say their offices are cash-strapped under an inequitable and overly rigid funding program from the 1990s that is cost-shared with provinces.
(Sidebar: what judgment would someone need never to do something this sick?)
**
Ottawa police charged a 40-year-old female high school teacher with sexual assaulting a minor on Friday and say they fear there could be more student victims.
Changes to New Brunswick’s policy on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools violate the Charter rights of children, the province’s child and youth advocate said Tuesday.
Kelly Lamrock released his findings in a report of nearly 100 pages, concluding that the Education Department did not seriously consider the legal consequences of its changes to Policy 713.
New Brunswick’s government made several revisions in June, one of which requires children under 16 to have parental consent before they can officially change their preferred first names or pronouns at school.
Lamrock said forcing any non-binary and transgender students to use a name they don’t identify with “is a violation of their protected rights under the Human Rights Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Parents have an important role to play in their child’s development, but the government’s changes were vague and created confusion, he said. “The parent has a right to teach their values to a child,” Lamrock told reporters after he released his report.
“The parent does not have the right to a state apparatus to force the child to live by their values.”
Parents, Mr. Lamrock thinks that you are merely custodians, someone there to clean up children's messes.
Richard Bilkszto, 60, was an experienced principal with the TDSB. He worked for the board for 24 years, mostly focusing on adult education.
He retired from his position in 2019 but continued to work as a substitute principal after that.
According to a statement released by his lawyer, a superintendent of the TDSB told Bilkszto he had proven his “excellence in equity, instruction, entrepreneurship, student engagement and breaking new ground for communities where chronic struggles, mental health, and newcomer status often brought more frustration than success.”
The statement also said that after his experience at the training sessions in 2021, Bilkszto “began advocating to bring people together through a more equality-focused, pro-human approach.”
Bilkszto attended three anti-Black racism training sessions in 2021 led by Ojo-Thompson.
According to audio recordings from the sessions, Ojo-Thompson was explaining on April 26, 2021, that Canada was a more racist country than the United States.
“Canada is a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism… The racism we experience is far worse here than there,” she said.
She said Canadians might find it difficult to see this reality given its ties to the monarchy, which, according to her, is “the very heart and soul and origins of the colonial structure.”
Bilkszto then disagreed, saying that based on his personal experience in a predominantly Black high school in Buffalo, N.Y., tax regimes, statistics, and facts and figures, he considered Canada a “far more just society.”
After some back and forth on the issue between the two, Ojo-Thompson said, “You and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people — like, is that what you’re doing?”
Bilkszto reiterated what he said, without changing his original position, and another attendee told him that the experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples in the TDSB were still not good enough.
At the next session, on May 3, 2021, Ojo-Thompson addressed the incident again, calling it a “teachable moment.”
“One of the ways that white supremacy is upheld, protected, reproduced, upkept, defended is through resistance,” she said. She then laughed, and continued, “I’m so lucky that we got perfect evidence, a wonderful example of resistance that you all got to bear witness to, so we’re going to talk about it, because, I mean, it doesn’t get better than this.”
She proceeded to say that white people should just believe and not question, since they don’t have the same experiences as racialized people.
Nobody seemed to jump in and defend Bilkszto. Instead, another woman (not identified in the recording) agreed with Ojo-Thompson and referred to Bilkszto as “the whiteness.”
That event allegedly triggered a series of workplace bullying incidents.
A Toronto accountant and friend of Bilkszto, Michael Teper, told The Free Press that the event ruined his job and reputation.
“They claimed he was a white supremacist, that he was a racist. They knew nothing about him. They knew nothing about what he stood for or what he believed. All they know about is what they believe,” he said.
When we don't tell well-funded con artists to cram it, we eventually fall under a sword that has been placed especially for us.
Two weeks ago, Meta began blocking news on Facebook and Instagram in response to the Liberal government’s Online News Act, which would force it to share revenues with news outlets (Postmedia, publisher of the National Post, is in favour of the bill). Some observers put the blame on the Liberal government for mishandling the legislation, while others place it squarely on Meta.
But no matter whose fault, the situation means news outlets and readers can’t view or share news on Facebook, a crucial way for Canada’s community and independent news to reach readers. Often started by the journalists themselves, operating in an environment where it was already difficult to survive, those small outlets are now the most vulnerable to Meta’s move.
The US has at its head a corrupt and feeble pretender.
This story began in February when a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted January report from the FBI’s Richmond office: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
The document defined “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who attend the Latin Mass and who frequently adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” The agents relied on half-baked “open-source” reporting from liberal outlets to justify more bureau investigation.
FBI headquarters quickly said the report didn’t meet its “exacting standards” and had been withdrawn. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was “a single product by a single field office.” He added that “as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems,” and he said he began an internal probe.
On July 25 the FBI finally provided the committee with a less-redacted version of that Richmond document. The report says that its information on Catholics was “primarily derived” from an “FBI Richmond contact”; an “FBI Portland liaison contact” who informed on a subject who “gravitated to” traditionalist catholicism; and an “FBI Undercover Employee” who reported on a subject who attended a Catholic church in California.
It also says the FBI’s Los Angeles field office “initiated an investigation” into a subject, and that the Richmond office “[c]oordinated with” FBI Portland to prepare the field report. In other words, this was a widespread bureau effort. Why was this suspicion about religion so widespread at the FBI?
Also troubling is the FBI’s decision to redact the Portland and Los Angeles roles from the original version of the Richmond document it provided Congress in March. In a letter with the less-redacted version, acting assistant FBI director Christopher Dunham said the redactions had been necessary to protect “information specific to ongoing criminal investigations.”
What changed from March until July, other than a threat of contempt from the Judiciary Committee? It’s hard not to conclude that the bureau was trying to hide the breadth of its Catholics-as-radicals investigation.
In his letter Wednesday, Mr. Jordan is asking Mr. Wray to amend his July testimony “to fully explain the nature and scope of the FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.” He intends to interview the special agent in charge of the Richmond field office, and he repeats his request to interview the chief division counsel who approved the Richmond field report.
Vaguely related - Pakistan, where brain cells go to die:
I am gutted by the visuals coming out of Jaranwala,#Faisalabad. Stern action would be taken against those who violate law and target minorities. All law enforcement has been asked to apprehend culprits and bring them to justice. Rest assured that the government of Pakistan stands… https://t.co/GHWUGA1NNq
Stepping into the van guarded by armed soldiers with five surgeons and nurses, Zheng Zhi didn’t know he was entering into a world that would haunt him for the next quarter of a century.
Dr. Zheng, then a resident doctor at one of China’s largest military hospitals, knew little more than they were on a “secret military mission” near a military prison located around the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.
A light blue fabric covered the four sides of the vehicle, shielding it from any curious glances.
When the door opened, four burly soldiers carried in a man whose limbs were bound with thin ropes that had cut deeply into his flesh. The man was no more than 18 years old; his organs, the surgical crew had been told the day before, were “healthy, fresh.”
A doctor instructed Dr. Zheng to “step on” the man’s legs and “don’t let him move.” He pressed the man's legs down with his hands and to his shock, they were warm to the touch. Blood was now flowing from the man’s throat.
He watched a doctor slice open the man’s stomach and two others reach in to remove a kidney each. The man’s legs twitched and his throat moved—although no sound came out.
In an apparent snub, the Chinese government has left Canada off a list of countries approved as international travel destinations for tour groups — a decision that threatens to leave Canada's travel industry at a competitive disadvantage as it continues its post-pandemic recovery.
In a media statement, the Chinese foreign ministry announced on Aug. 10 that an additional 78 countries had been added to a list of destinations approved for group tours and package travel. Travel agents from mainland China work from this list when they promote and book foreign travel for Chinese nationals.
In response to an inquiry from CBC News about China's rationale for excluding Canada, the public affairs office at China's embassy in Ottawa wrote that "lately, the Canadian side has repeatedly hyped up the so-called 'Chinese interference' and rampant and discriminatory anti-Asian acts and words are rising significantly in Canada."
"The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safety and legitimate rights of overseas Chinese citizens and wishes they can travel in a safe and friendly environment," the embassy added.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will travel to China on a diplomatic mission later this month, even as politicians in Ottawa continue to negotiate a public inquiry into alleged foreign interference.
Guilbeault will be in Beijing from Aug. 26 to 31 in what will be the first official visit of a Canadian cabinet minister to China since 2018.
A spokesperson for Guilbeault says the world is faced with the "triple crisis" of climate change, pollution and biodiversity, which can only be handled through urgent international co-operation.
Vladimir Putin has saved human civilization by invading Ukraine, according to a new propaganda-heavy textbook being taught to Russian schoolchildren.
As the Kremlin struggles to explain to ordinary Russians why they are being asked to make sacrifices for the brutal invasion of its neighbour, Putin’s regime has doubled down on brainwashing students.
Japan was radically changed after its war-time defeat.
On Aug. 15, 2021, only nine days after their capture of Zaranj, the Taliban entered Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country, and CH-47 helicopters were shuttling frantic diplomats from the U.S. embassy compound in Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan district to the bedlam of Kabul International Airport.
Thousands of Afghans were massing at the airport gates, clutching useless documents and hoping for an escape. Some stood in vain for days in a sewage ditch, fearful they would lose their place in line. Others rushed the runways, climbing onto the wings of departing aircraft.
Several Afghans were killed in the mayhem. Two men were shot by U.S. soldiers. Another two men fell from the wheel wells of a departing U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it ascended into the skies south of Kabul. A corpse was later discovered, tangled in a C-17’s landing gear. Then the breakaway Taliban faction known as the Islamic State — Khorasan Province carried out a suicide bombing in the crowds, killing more than 180 people, almost all Afghan civilians.
Article content
Two years on, with the anniversary of those appalling days now upon us, such commemorations as should be expected will be muted by a peculiar dilemma. The disgrace of those days cannot be apportioned to one side or the other in the fatuous “forever wars” debates that occlude a proper understanding of the American contribution to NATO’s 20-year efforts in Afghanistan, and the parallel exertions of the United Nations’ International Security Assistance Force in the country.
That’s because the Biden administration’s cruel abandonment of Afghanistan was the deliberate fulfillment of the most morally squalid policy adopted by Donald Trump’s White House: It was just “somebody else’s civil war.”
To make matters more complicated, Trump’s policy was formulated by Biden himself a decade earlier while he was Barack Obama’s vice-president, and the NATO capitals went along with the surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban’s Pakistan-sponsored barbarism. As a consequence, there’s not much high ground to be occupied by any major party or tendency among the think-tankers and foreign-policy establishments of the world’s liberal democracies. We were all just “war weary.”
Angel Studios has repaid 6,678 individual crowdfunding investors at a 20% profit for their contributions to “Sound of Freedom,” the studio said Thursday.
In a statement, Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon said: “6,678 Angel Guild members have now received $1.20 for every $1 they invested into the launch budget for ‘Sound of Freedom,’ and we are thrilled to be able to get funds back to them in three months. The Angel Guild is key to our theatrical strategy and paying out as quickly as possible is always our first priority.”
The faith-based studio’s thriller about a rogue government agent tracking child traffickers in Colombia has grossed $173 million at the domestic box office, a colossal success for a project of its provenance. “Sound of Freedom” was completed in 2018 under a distribution deal with a Fox subsidiary, but was shelved after the Disney acquisition, and eventually sold to Angel, producer of “The Chosen.”
A miracle?:
A miracle?
A Catholic church reportedly remains untouched by the wildfires as a symbol of hope in Hawaii
Around 67 people have died in the wildfires that has almost totally destroyed the Lahaina town in Hawaii’s Maui. While according to local reports coming out, Maria… pic.twitter.com/VxRzN1wX16
“I very specifically went
there that day because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I
would think about taking an overdose of medication,” Kathrin Mentler,
who has chronic depression and feelings of suicidality, told The Globe and Mail.
“The more I think about it, I think it brings up more and more ethical and moral questions around it.”
“In an exuberance to get used needles off the
street one of our staff posted a sign that was never meant for the
public. In no way, shape, or form was that communication meant for
children,” said Jason Altenberg, CEO of the South Riverdale Community
Health Centre, in a statement to National Post.
**
Yes, but those aren't the lyrics:
According to the survey published on Friday,
41 per cent of Anglophone Canadians are in favor of altering the
opening line of “O Canada” from “Our home and native land” to “Our home
on native land”. However, 44 per cent disagree with the proposed
modification.
Sheri Meyerhoffer, who is the Canadian
Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, says it's not clear whether the
company is doing enough to weed out components linked to the
mistreatment of China's Uyghur minority.
Her report says that in
response to her inquiries, Ralph Lauren insisted it's an American
company that isn't subject to a Canadian probe before detailing its
measures to prevent mistreatment.
Meyerhoffer has also asked
Toronto-based mining company GobiMin to improve its policies to prevent
the possible use of forced labour in its supply chains.
All four
of the initial assessments the ombudsperson has announced so far relate
to China's Xinjiang region, where most of the country's Uyghur
population lives and where Beijing insists it has never allowed the use
of forced labour.
The New Brunswick Family Court must consider the claims of
a gender-confused woman who claims to be the father of another woman’s
child.
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023, the precedence-setting custody
case for “Pip” began in front of a “Master” of the New Brunswick Family
Court. The Master of the court heard claims from representatives of
both the child’s biological parents and the gender-confused woman about
rights of “parentage” and custody over two-and-a-half-year-old Pip. The
outcome of the day’s proceedings was that Pip would be traded back and
forth in a chaotic and confusing custody schedule while awaiting another
hearing to determine a permanent schedule until the case goes to trial,
likely more than a year from now. Meanwhile, during the child’s most
formative and vulnerable years, Pip will be forced to go to and from an
abusive and manipulative home to which he has no relationship or
connection. The boy has already developed behavioral tics and is showing
signs of extreme stress.
The gender-confused woman, “Robin,” was accompanied by both her
current female partner and her lawyer. Robin claimed she had custody
rights and “decision making rights” over Pip as his “father” because,
she alleged, she had made a custody agreement with “Felicity,” Pip’s
biological mother. Felicity, appearing with her parents, her younger
sister, her husband, Pip’s biological father “Mike,” and her own lawyer,
counter claimed that Robin’s alleged agreement was obtained by
blackmail, agreed upon only because Robin had essentially kidnapped Pip
months earlier.
Felicity’s lawyer submitted more than 5 sworn affidavits
to the court attesting that Robin abused and coerced Felicity to force
her into the alleged agreement. The lawyer also submitted statements
attesting to the manipulation Robin used to have her name recorded on
Pip’s birth certificate, the document used by Robin to withhold Pip from both his biological parents.The same document was used by police and child services, without legal
authority, to discourage Felicity from rescuing her son from Robin.
The
company, which owns television station TVA and newspapers Journal de
Montreal and Journal de Quebec, says its rent amounts to $8,448 per
month — more than $100,000 a year before tax.
A preliminary search of a former residential school site in Saskatchewan
has uncovered 83 possible unmarked graves, including 12 potential
infant grave sites.
**
As he lay in a Calgary hospital bed in late July, retired Bishop
Fred Henry summoned the energy to publicly break the silence around what
he considers the prevailing “lie” about missing Indian residential
school children.
“Why is the Catholic Church not asking the federal government for
proof that even one residential child is actually missing in the sense
that his (or) her parents didn’t know what happened to their child at
the time of the child’s death?” he demanded in an e-mail.
It comes almost one year after Myles Sanderson’s rampage, which left 11 dead and 17 injured in the area, as well as the nearby community of Weldon.
In a statement, Melfort RCMP said they received a report of an assault and someone uttering threats on the Saskatchewan
First Nation on August 8, shortly before 11 pm. A woman reported
sustaining serious but non-life-threatening injuries in the attack.
However, she did not require medical attention.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday boasted “Canada did pretty
well” on Covid though death rates here were higher than in Australia,
South Korea, Norway and other industrialized countries. A proposal to
conduct an inquiry into cabinet’s pandemic management is currently
stalled in the Commons health committee: “Of course we could learn
lessons about how to do better.”
This
is incredible and demonstrates how little China cares about any
repercussions of its surveillance, interference, spying, and
intimidation of Canadians who dare to question Beijing's dictatorial and
genocidal policies.
Global Affairs Canada (GAC) admitted on Aug. 9 that
China unleashed a "coordinated network" of disinformation against the
official opposition foreign affairs critic, using a Chinese social media
platform.
