No matter how oleaginous, stupid or thoughtless they are, they will do your thinking and spending (emphasis on the spending) for you:
Senate managers spent $95,000 in 2018-2019 on the hiring of doormen and
ushers in the Senate building without the approval of legislators,
according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
**
With backlash growing among the Conservative base to both Bill 195 (extending government emergency powers),
and Doug Ford’s removal of Belinda Karahalios from the PC Caucus for
opposing the legislation, CPC leadership candidate Derek Sloan is
slamming Ford’s move:
“Shame on @fordnation for Ontario Bill 195. Also, an
absolute disgrace that Ford has expelled @KarahaliosPC from PC caucus.
Belinda is a hero for standing up for democracy & freedoms &
against egregious government overreach! #cdnpoli #onpoli
#istandwithbelinda”
The Trudeau
government had to lease a new warehouses as they shuttered numerous
supply depots before the coronavirus pandemic took hold of Canada.
The government has not yet revealed to the public the true cost of this mistake.
**
Canadians have heard a lot recently about how, when granting a nearly
$1-billion contract to WE Charity, which had extensive links with the
families of cabinet members, the Trudeau government relied on the advice
of a “neutral, non-partisan civil service.” If only such a thing
actually existed! The civil service has been neither neutral nor
non-partisan for decades. Nor is it likely to have left a paper trail of
its involvement in the WE contract.
Gerry Butts, Trudeau’s ex-principal secretary who
resigned from that post amidst the 2019 SNC-Lavalin controversy, has
been named the vice chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk and
research consulting group he joined earlier this year.
Butts took over the role on July 1 and the firm says he will work closely with Eurasia Group CEO Maziar Minovi
on “strategic initiatives across all areas,” and will provide expertise
to clients on “climate and sustainable finance, trade and other global
negotiations, political campaigns, and artificial intelligence.” When
Butts joined the firm, he helped launch Eurasia Group’s expanded
coverage of global climate policy and sustainable finance.
“Gerald’s wealth of experience comes at a time when geopolitics has
never had more market-moving relevance,” reads a quote in a press
release attributed to Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer.
“His background negotiating international policy, running national
campaigns, and guiding institutions in both government and the private
sector will be a tremendous asset to our firm, and our clients who rely
on us for sharp analysis in a world increasingly marked by volatility
and disruption.”
I'll just leave these right here:
Trudeau advisor – and taxpayer funded government employee – Gerald Butts has disgracefully attacked critics of Justin Trudeau’s “peoplekind” comment.
He didn’t just try rebuking their criticism, he went to the most predictable and pathetic tool of the disloyal far-left.
He compared them to Nazis.
**
Former Trudeau election advisor Gerald Butts has deleted an unsavoury
tweet which made light mental illness, made fund of Christians, and
called several southern US states "Christian Iraq".
The post was
published last night as a "Map of the USA For Canadian Tourists," and
among other things, labelled Texas as "White Congo," Kentucky as "Whiter
Congo," Nebraska as "Schizophrenia," and Alaska and Hawaii as "Rape
Central."
The Liberal government on Wednesday announced pay hikes for 10,000
civil servants, even as private-sector job losses across the country
remain in the millions and the federal deficit continues to swell.
The
Treasury Board has signed a tentative agreement with the Public Service
Alliance of Canada (PSAC) to boost the wages of unionized workers by
6.64 per cent over three years, including new provisions for caregiver
leave, parental leave, and a 10-day domestic violence leave. It follows
an earlier agreement, announced July 10, that hiked wages for 84,000
“administrative services” bureaucrats, who also saw a 6.64 per cent
increase over three years. The tentative contract would terminate July
2021, with two of the three years being adjusted retroactively.
“Transport
Canada’s estimate of the total cost for the flights on which Minister
Hajdu was on is $73,220,” spokesperson Simon Rivet said, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
WE Charity’s former Canadian board of directors, Michelle Douglas, told MPs earlier Tuesday
that she quit in March because executives wouldn’t hand over financial
documents to explain why it was firing hundreds of staff, and “I could
not do my job.” She also said the board’s understanding was that guests
at WE Day events were not paid, as the Prime Minister’s wife, mother and
brother were over a period of several years.
Gradually being unearthed, the possibility that the Liberal government was bailing out WE:
A Liberal-appointed senator yesterday cited Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau for “ethical failings” in dealing with We Charity. “Did the
Trudeau government want to use public funds to come to the rescue of the
organization?” said Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne (Independent-Que.):
“The conflict of interest is glaring.”
**
WE was to be allocated $912 million by the Liberal government, a massive amount of taxpayer money.
The government could have paid them up to $43.5 million to administer the program.
The entire (public) point of the program was to provide student grants.
The government repeatedly said it was a $912 million program.
So why would only $500 million be set aside for actual grants?
**
The contract also called for the government to pay WE $19.5 million
on July 1, 2020 and a second payment of $13,530,000 on July 2 unless
either party had withdrawn from the agreement.
Essentially, WE was set to be paid up-front in this contract whether work was done or not.
After withdrawing from the contract on July 3, WE stated that all money had been returned.
As
reported last week, the agreement was actually not signed with WE
Charity, the main group known for helping build schools and clean water
systems but rather WE Charity Foundation, an organization set up to hold
the massive real estate holdings on WE and other charities.
Citing testimonials from an authoritarian regime’s chief print and
television organs, though, is only one way the co-founder of the WE
movement has forged ties with China.
WE Charity and its for-profit
partner, Me to We, have had a significant presence there for years,
performing development work in poor rural villages, holding at least two
“mini” versions of their inspirational WE Day events and selling trips
to Chinese youth that combined tourism and volunteer work.
China
is stepping up military preparedness to overtake Taiwan, the island's
Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Wednesday, following a recent spike
of Chinese drills near the island which Beijing considers its own.
Taiwan
has complained that China has stepped up threatening military
activities near Taiwan in recent months. Beijing has not renounced the
use of force to bring the democratic island under its control.
"Looking
on the long-term trend, China appears to be gradually stepping up its
military preparedness, especially in air or on the waters near Taiwan,"
Wu told reporters.
"What China is doing now is continuing to ramp up preparedness to solve the Taiwan issue," he said.
"The threat is on the rise."
There is something about China and WE that inspires group-think.
A proposal by WE Charity to pay teachers $12,000 for recruiting
student volunteers into the Canada Student Service Grant program would
have put many teachers in violation of their professional code of
conduct, experts say.
But even though the grant program is now
being run by the federal government instead of WE, it’s unclear whether
the $12,000 payments might still happen. A week after the National Post
asked Employment and Social Development Canada if the teacher payments
are happening, the department still hasn’t answered.
(Sidebar: who knows? There are a lot of real estate deals that certainly aren't normal for a charity that is supposed to "empower" but not seem to do much else. Rather like "voluntourism" where one can see upper-middle-class white sanctimony from outer space but no actual work to improve the lives of the impoverished and marginalised. But it was never about doing, only seeming. That's the Canadian way!)
Silly Canadians! Do you really think that you deserve answers?:
Newly released court documents say witnesses told the RCMP that the
gunman who carried out the April mass shooting in Nova Scotia smuggled
drugs and guns from Maine for years and had secret compartments inside
several of his properties.
**
Protesters gathered at two Nova Scotia locations Monday as family
members of mass shooting victims vowed to maintain pressure on Ottawa
and the province to hold a full public inquiry into the rampage.
Now, vote Liberal as you are told.
What do we need China for anyway?:
On Sunday July 5, five days after China enacted a new national security
law in Hong Kong, Yang Xiaolan and three dozen Falun Gong members stood
upright in a public park, their arms outstretched above their closed
eyes as their meditation soundtrack blended with birdsong.
The
spiritual group was banned in mainland China in 1999 but its members
have been allowed to practice in Hong Kong freely, even though the group
urges people to renounce the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Yang said
she no longer feels safe in the city after the security law made the
broadly defined crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion
with foreign forces punishable by up to life in prison.
**
Lawyers for a Huawei executive facing possible extradition to the United States
are disputing the Canadian government’s claim that it can’t release
some documents in the case because it would compromise national
security.
**
China’s massive Three Gorges Dam project on the upper Yangtze River is
at risk. If that dam breaks, the resulting flooding would be a
catastrophe of world-historical proportions. Hundreds of millions of
people live along the lower Yangtze River. And the catastrophe wouldn’t
simply be confined to China. The lower Yangtze is China’s commercial and
industrial heartland — which means it is perhaps the world’s most
important economic region. If it is swept away by a torrent, it could
easily crater the already weak world economy.
**
The Department of Public Works says it does not know if billions’ worth
of masks and other pandemic supplies contracted in China are made by
slave labour. MPs yesterday called the admission shocking: “Canadians
deserve to know if their government is financially supporting forced
labour."
**
China is stepping up military preparedness to overtake Taiwan, the
island's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Wednesday, following a
recent spike of Chinese drills near the island which Beijing considers
its own.
**
China's first domestically built icebreaker left this month for its
first trip to the Arctic, a few days after President Donald Trump said
the US was pursuing as many as 10 new icebreakers of its own,
underscoring the growing interest major powers have in being able to
access the region.
**
While the U.S. government has spoken out against the “political re-education” camps in Xinjiang for a couple of years — imposing some
visa restrictions in 2019 — and although knowledge of the camps has been
commonplace outside of China for three years, minimal concrete action
followed. But the tide started to shift this summer, as Beijing
subjected itself to increased scrutiny with an increasingly assertive
coronavirus-era grand strategy. The U.N.’s human-rights mechanisms
started to turn its attention to China — a group of independent experts
penned a letter calling for “renewed attention” to be directed to the
situation in Xinjiang. A few days later, a top China scholar published a
groundbreaking report
showing that Uighur birthrates have plummeted in the past year — the
result of government policy of forcibly administering birth control to
Uighur women, in addition to injecting some with unknown substances that
seem to have resulted in sterilization. Many observers have already
applied the term “cultural genocide” to the situation in Xinjiang, but
the June report added heft to the case for dropping that qualifier. The
images circulating this week will add momentum to that push.
The heads of groups of North Korean defectors, along with opposition
lawmakers, hold a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on
July 23, 2020, calling for the government to withdraw steps to ban them
from flying anti-Pyongyang leaflets into North Korea.
Not only did deaths in nursing homes soar compared to the number in
previous years, but people died in their private homes at far higher
rates than normal, the research concluded.
At least half, and
probably more, of the thousands of excess deaths were due to COVID-19
itself. Many, though, were likely the result of delayed or avoided
medical care and other reasons during the lockdown, the paper said.
The
findings by scientists from the University of Toronto, Western
University and Ontario’s chief coroner’s office are based on detailed
provincial data for cremations. Those typically represent more than 70
per cent of the province’s deceased.
Daisy the St. Bernard dog, all 55 kilograms of her, was hauled down the
lower part of England’s near-1,000-metre Scafell Pike at the weekend
after getting into difficulty.
