Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week lunch break ...

 

Well, that escalated quickly:

Liberal MP Paul Chiang (Markham-Unionville, Ont.) last night abruptly resigned while under RCMP investigation after threatening a political rival with arrest for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. “I served with integrity,” said Chiang, a former police sergeant.


You served China with your disgusting threat.

 

Mark Carney will not be deterred!:

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday said he “will move on” after losing three former Liberal MPs in 10 days to suspected foreign interference. The trio’s ejection followed a 2024 warning from the Commission on Foreign Interference that Canadians must “shine a light on what is going on.”

 

This Mark Carney:

Two-thirds of Canadians think Liberal leader Mark Carney should proactively reveal his business interests before election day, according to a new poll.

A new Postmedia-Leger poll suggests 67 per cent of Canadians feel Carney should “voluntarily reveal his business interests” before voters go to the ballot box April 28.

Carney has so far refused to disclose the assets he says he put into a blind trust weeks ago, or his potential conflicts of interest. He’s argued he went above and beyond legal requirements by immediately setting up the blind trust and filing his disclosure to the ethics commissioner after being elected Liberal leader.

Carney also previously dismissed a reporter’s suggestion that he might have conflicts of interest after spending years working in the private sector, before later acknowledging he expects to recuse himself from his past work as chairman at Brookfield Asset Management .

 ** 

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is being dogged by questions regarding his time at Brookfield Asset Management, and the fact he co-chaired investment funds worth about $25-billion registered in Bermuda, a tax haven.

Mr. Carney says the tax strategy was designed to benefit Canadian pension plans and that there was no avoidance of tax. The former is true, but the latter is not. Booking profits in a tax haven is indeed tax avoidance.

**

Justin, too, thought that he could replace the US with China.

That isn't simply isolationism. That is empowering China:

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**

**

It shouldn’t be hard to distance yourself from someone who advocates for kidnapping a rival and handing them over to China for a bounty, but the Liberals blew this one. The resignation only came after the RCMP confirmed they were investigating Chiang’s comments which may have violated several sections of the law by counselling others to commit a crime.
**

** 

 

 

The United States will never own Canada.

That is because China owns Canada. 

 

Also:

What does it take to subvert Canadian democracy?

No grand conspiracies, misinformation bots, or foreign sleeper agents are required. All you really need are a couple of school buses.

Consider the case of MP Han Dong. In 2019, several busloads of Chinese international students suddenly arrived at the federal Liberal nomination contest for the Toronto riding of Don Valley North to support him. According to Marie-Josee Hogue, chair of the Foreign Interference Commission, “a known People’s Republic of China proxy agent” delivered those students and provided falsified documents that allowed them to vote for Dong and hand him the win.

As Hogue noted in her report, “Nomination contests may be gateways for foreign states that wish to interfere in our democratic processes.” In fact, it’s worse than that. Beyond the potential for foreign interference, the system Canadian parties currently use to select their candidates is deeply undemocratic and biased at all times. Its main features are shadowy backroom deals, constantly changing rules, and a disturbing lack of fairness. It all needs to change.

Party leaders in Canada wield an enormous amount of control over how their party’s candidates are selected. Leaders can directly appoint a preferred candidate or eliminate their competition altogether, ignoring the wishes of local riding associations.

 


Speaking of Canada ... :

It may be April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke. At a time when many Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, Canadian MPs have received a pay raise, according to the updated Members’ Allowances and Services Manual.
The April 1 increases range from $6,700 to an extra $13,400.
A backbench MP will now be making $209,800 (up from $203,100 in 2024), while the leader of the opposition, the Speaker and cabinet ministers will take home $309,700 (up from $299,900 last year). The prime minister will earn $419,600 (up from $406,200).
Article content
The annual adjustments are legislatively mandated in the Parliament of Canada Act, says Olivier Duhaime, media relations director with the Office of the Speaker.
The remuneration packages “are adjusted each year on April 1” based on an index of average-percentage increases in wages established in major settlements negotiated in the private sector, he added in an email to the National Post. “This index is published by Employment and Social Development Canada within three months (of) the end of each calendar year.”
The updated allowances manual shows the compensation for everyone from the prime minister down through party leaders, chief and deputy whips, caucus chairs, committee chairs and backbenchers.
But Canadians are questioning this set of annual increases — as they have in recent years, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Politicians don’t deserve a raise especially when millions of Canadians are struggling,” says Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The overwhelming majority of taxpayers say MPs don’t deserve a raise, he added in an email to the National Post. “If party leaders want to prove they care about taxpayers, they should stop the MP pay raises.”
Article content
The CTF commissioned a poll from Leger that shows almost 8 in 10 Canadians disagree with the increase.
“While 20 per cent only somewhat oppose the raise…59 per cent are strongly opposed, particularly those aged 35+, living outside Quebec, and living in rural communities,” according to the Leger polling results.
Conversely, according to Leger, men, younger Canadians (aged 18-34), Quebecers, Canadians in urban or suburban areas, and BIPOC individuals support the proposed raise in salary for MPs. “These results closely mirror those from 2024, when 80 per cent opposed and 13 per cent supported the MPs’ salary increase,” says Leger.
He pointed to the Stephen Harper government stopping the annual increases as Canadians coped with the fallout of the 2008-09 financial crisis.
“The Harper government ended the MP pay raises from 2010 to 2013 in response to the financial recession, and all party leaders should commit to ending the pay raises now.
“Over the last couple years, Canadians have struggled through a pandemic, lockdowns, a cost of living crisis and now a tariff war. If politicians want to prove that ‘we’re all in this together’ then they should put their money where their mouths are and stop the annual MP pay raises,” writes Terrazzano.

**

With Canada’s six-year national carbon tax experiment coming to an end, the early results are that program has collected about $45 billion while having few immediately perceptible impacts on carbon emissions. 

**

Cabinet to date has spent more than a quarter billion dollars on its Two Billion Trees Program with no deadline yet for completion, says a briefing note by Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department. It will take several more years to ensure “the right conditions,” wrote staff: “Tree planting at this scale takes time and careful planning.”

 

Behold, the bribery system that is Canada!:

A federally-sponsored foundation is offering cash for election coverage. The judges’ panel assigned to approve $35,000 grants is led by Margo Goodhand, a former Winnipeg Free Press editor who once urged Liberals to “stand up to the bullies” in the Conservative Party: ‘Trudeau will show us the way.’


 

What can go wrong?:

Canada must develop its own nuclear weapons program, says the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. The group yesterday released a National Policy Guide recommending Canada arm itself with nuclear warheads as protection against Russian terror and American expansionism: “The future of Canada’s freedom and the freedom of Europe depend on our ability to defend our sovereignty.”

 

Quebec is special:

Quebec’s language law reform, commonly known as Bill 96, has been included on a United States government list of trade complaints released two days before President Donald Trump is scheduled to announce new tariffs.
The annual report on trade barriers published Monday names Bill 96 as a “technical barrier to trade” because it would require generic terms and product descriptions that are part of trademarks to be translated into French.
Article content
The wide-ranging list of trade complaints came ahead of a scheduled announcement on Wednesday, where Trump is expected to announce new tariffs that could target almost all U.S. trading partners, including Canada.
U.S. concerns about Bill 96’s impact on intellectual property owned by Americans aren’t new.
The International Trademark Association has said trademark owners could risk losing their trademarks if they comply with the law or face significant fines if they don’t when the provisions affecting trademarks come into effect in June.
During the previous administration of president Joe Biden, U.S. trade officials discussed those concerns, according to emails released under Access to Information legislation.
Those conversations, which took place between late 2022 and early 2024, included discussions about whether trade sanctions could be imposed on Canada due to the law’s impact on intellectual property.
Officials from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office also discussed their concerns in a January 2024 meeting with senior Canadian trade officials.
Article content
The U.S. government said it also “engaged with Canada on Quebec’s Bill 96 at the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade meeting” in June 2024.
Also on the list of U.S. trade complaints about Canada are agricultural supply management — with the U.S. Trade Representative alleging that Canada is failing to meet its commitments under the renegotiated North-American free trade agreement to allow specific amounts of dairy products, eggs and poultry into the country — and Canada’s digital services tax, two issues that were also brought up during the January 2024 meeting.

 

 

But I thought that he was going to fight on the beaches and so forth:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday suggested that Canada would drop its tariffs on U.S. goods if President Donald Trump eased up on his tariffs on Canadian goods.

During an appearance with CNBC’s Ross Sorkin, he stated that the impending tariff war is “just going to hurt American jobs” and that Trump “said he was going to create jobs, create wealth, reduce inflation.”

Sorkin asked whether Ford believed it was fair that Canada has “tariffs on a whole number of products.”

Ford replied, “And we’d be willing to take those off tomorrow if he took all the tariffs off” and suggested that “China is the problem.”

The host asked why Canada wouldn’t have these negotiations before Trump imposed his tariffs.

The premier responded:

Well, we've had this conversation for over the last month. We don't want tariffs. We have another $65 billion dollars with a tariff to launch today. That's the last thing we want to do because it's just, again, it's going to hurt both countries. It's going to hurt American workers. That's the last thing I want.

Ford further explained that the Trump administration “knows that we’re willing to take these tariffs off in the next minute, if he said he’s taking their tariffs off.”

 

 

Jag has no problem with paranoid candidate:

New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday said he has “not had any circumstances” to drop candidates including one who posted anti-Semitic conspiracies on Instagram. Party headquarters declined to answer numerous questions regarding the New Democrat who claimed Jews controlled the Government of Canada: “Has the NDP had to drop any candidates so far in this race?”

 

Are we enjoying the decline yet?:

Canada should be an economic powerhouse. With the second-largest land mass in the world, a small but educated population, and an abundance of natural resources, there’s no excuse for widespread hardship in this country.

Food banks can’t keep up. Housing costs are out of reach. The middle class is being hollowed out. Small businesses are barely surviving, and young Canadians are giving up on ever owning a home or getting ahead.

This didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of nearly a decade of government policy that actively worked against growth, against investment, and against the industries that once made Canada prosperous.

We don’t need small tweaks or a fresh slogan. We need a full course correction.

For nine years, Canada has been on the wrong track. We’ve pushed away investment through excessive regulation, long approval timelines, and an unpredictable policy environment. We’ve discouraged risk-takers and entrepreneurs. We’ve punished the industries that built our economy — energy, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing — under the banner of climate virtue and political optics.

That money could have built infrastructure, funded innovation, created jobs, and secured long-term prosperity. Instead, it’s being used to build wealth elsewhere, because other countries have learned what we’ve forgotten: Prosperity isn’t created by government programs. It’s created by unleashing the private sector and letting people do what they do best — build, grow, and create.

We’ve lost major energy projects not because we lack resources, but because we’ve created an environment where companies don’t know if they’ll ever get to build. We’ve stalled development of critical mineral projects — like the Ring of Fire in Ontario and the 29 strategic minerals under Manitoba’s soil — while other countries are moving fast to dominate global supply chains.

We talk about the climate while importing oil from countries with no environmental standards. We delay Canadian projects that could help lower global emissions, supply allies with cleaner energy, and create jobs here at home.

This isn’t serious policy. It’s ideology pretending to be progress.

**

Canada’s escalating rents and a shortage of housing have not only created challenges for young adults seeking their own homes; they are also reshaping the fundamental structure of family living arrangements, new research suggests. ...

 The study focused on single-person households, couples, couples with children, and single parents with children. The researchers analyzed these trends in connection with housing accessibility, measured through turnover rents that have been adjusted for inflation.

 Researchers discovered a strong relationship between rental prices and household formation. In urban areas where rental rates have dramatically increased, countless Canadians find themselves “stuck in place,” unable to transition into their own living spaces, the authors said.

 Increasing rental prices in Canada have led to a growing trend of young adults sharing living spaces rather than establishing independent households. While this trend can be seen across different age groups, it is especially evident among those aged 25 to 29, the report said.

  

 

The moral decline:

A United Nations committee reviewing Canada’s treatment of disabled people is calling on Ottawa to repeal medical assistance in dying for anyone without a terminal illness, a procedure referred to as the “Track 2” option for MAID.
The new report from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also recommends Canada create a federal MAID watchdog to investigate complaints, and that the country invest heavily in addressing the systemic failures that lead disabled people to apply for assisted death in the first place.
The report, released last month, says MAID is offered as state-sanctioned relief from suffering to people who are failed by governments that don’t properly fund access to health care or accessible housing. The report also points to shortcomings in the prevention of homelessness and gender-based violence, and failures to provide adequate welfare support and at-home mental-health care.
Critics of Canada’s MAID laws heralded the report as echoing their long-stated concerns that systemic hardships are forced upon disabled people while assisted death is seen as a solution to their intractable living situations. So far in the 2025 election campaign, no federal party has proposed changes to MAID.

 

 

Political multiculturalism only encourages balkanisation and disunity.

But don't take my word for it:

Immigrants and visible minorities have negative views of other groups in Canada at similar, and sometimes higher, rates as the general Canadian population, a new survey has found.

The poll by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies challenges the conventional view that prejudice in Canada follows a simple “majority vs. minority” pattern, revealing that negative sentiment is more widespread and complex. The survey, which was conducted ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, suggests that prejudice exists across multiple demographic groups and varies by factors such as age, language and immigration status.

Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies, says these results challenge how policy-makers and the public discuss discrimination.

“Too often, we assume that those who experience prejudice do not express it themselves, but the data show a more complicated reality,” he said. “If we truly want to address discrimination, we need to move beyond the idea that prejudice is always about a dominant majority versus a marginalized minority.”

The survey found that overall, Arab Canadians face the highest levels of negative sentiment, with 26 per cent of respondents reporting unfavourable views of them. Black Canadians were viewed the least negatively at 11 per cent, while 14 per cent expressed negative views of Jewish and Indigenous Canadians, and 15 per cent for Chinese Canadians.

The results also highlight that while racial and religious minorities continue to be the primary targets of prejudice, negative sentiment is not limited to one group expressing bias toward another. It is expressed across multiple ethnic and racial groups.

Twenty-two per cent of visible minorities and 20 per cent of immigrants held negative views of Jewish Canadians, compared to 11 per cent of “not visible minorities” and 12 per cent of non-immigrants.

Seventeen per cent of visible minorities and 15 per cent of immigrants expressed negative views of Indigenous people, compared to 14 per cent each for not visible minorities and non-immigrants.

For Black people, 19 per cent of visible minorities and 16 per cent of immigrants expressed negative views, compared to nine per cent of not visible minorities and 10 per cent of non-immigrants.

Chinese people were viewed negatively by 19 per cent each of visible minorities and immigrants, compared to 11 per cent of not visible minorities and 14 per cent of non-immigrants.

Arabs were the only group viewed similarly by the four categories. For immigrants and not visible minorities, 27 per cent had unfavourable views and it was one per cent lower for not immigrants and visible minorities.

Additionally, 26 per cent of South Asians held negative views of Arabs, while the same percentage of Arabs expressed negative views of South Asians.

Jedwab said these findings demonstrate that prejudice is not limited to one group targeting another, but rather exists in complex, intersecting ways across Canadian society.

 

No sugar coating.

Racism is encouraged and old hatreds are not dispensed with.

Keep your COEXIST bumper sticker.

 

 

No country for anyone: 

Salo Aizenberg, from the US-based non-profit organisation Honest Reporting, said that Hamas’s March 2025 casualty update had removed thousands of people it previously listed as having been killed last year.
“Hamas’s new March 2025 fatality list quietly drops 3,400 fully “identified” deaths listed in its August and October 2024 reports—including 1,080 children. These “deaths” never happened. The numbers were falsified—again,” Mr Aizenberg wrote.
The casualty lists are released as PDFs by the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health, which has been cited by international media as a source for fatality figures in the enclave since the start of the war.
A report by the Henry Jackson Society in December said that the number of civilians killed in the Gaza conflict had probably been inflated by Hamas in order to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent people.

**

Keith Siegel — an American hostage held by Hamas for more than 16 months, speaking publicly in detail for the first time — described shocking abuse in captivity, saying he lived in constant fear and personally witnessed female hostages being tortured and sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists.

In an emotional interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, the 65-year-old, originally from North Carolina — who was kidnapped by Hamas during its brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and held in Gaza for 484 days — described the abuse, starvation, and psychological torment he endured in captivity.

On October 7, Siegel and his wife, Aviva, were taken from their home and dragged into Gaza in their own car, where they were held underground in Hamas-dug tunnels. 

“We were gasping for our breath,” he recalled. 

Aviva was released during a temporary ceasefire in late November 2023, but Keith remained in captivity for nearly three more months.

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Monday, March 31, 2025

If You Want the Oil to Flow, Remove the Impact Assessment Act

To wit:

It’s hard to get major projects built in a country that requires evaluations of systemic racism, local psychosocial conditions and confidential Indigenous spiritual knowledge to be considered at length before any approval is issued. But that’s the current scheme for building big projects that fall under federal jurisdiction and are thus subject to the Impact Assessment Act — and that’s exactly why any plan for turning around the country’s lost decade requires its repeal.

The Impact Assessment Act (IAA), passed by the Liberals with great pride in 2019, requires extensive sociological surveys — taking into account demographics, women, Indigenous and otherwise non-white racial identity — to be conducted alongside environmental assessments prior to any federal project receiving approval.

Impact assessments, according to the law, must take into account “social or economic conditions,” positive or negative, that are likely to arise from the project; confidential Indigenous knowledge, as well as Indigenous cultural concerns; “community knowledge”; and the “intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”

The result: delays, more work for consultants and, ultimately, fewer shovels in the ground. From 2019, when the law came into force, to 2023, only one of 25 total projects designated by the act for federal assessments received approval (and this was, in the later stages, delegated to the B.C. government’s process).

 

Is it fair to deprive aboriginal Canadians of work and other opportunities that our natural wealth provides?

If you are a Liberal, yes.

Only THEY may get rich.

 

 

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[Insert Own Commentary Here]

Of all the stupid, fear-mongering, logic-defying things I've heard this month, this Red Star morsel takes the cake and wraps tin-foil around it:

“It’s impossible to annex Canada without violence,” said Ahmad, who has advised generals at the Pentagon about counter-insurgency strategies. “No one is born an insurgent or resistance fighter. This is something that happens to people when their mom is killed, or when their kids are unable to get to a hospital. People fight back because they have to.”
Ahmad said otherwise ordinary citizens would start engaging in mild civil disobedience — cutting wires, diverting funds, thwarting the occupiers in small ways. Others would escalate to sabotage, ambushes and raids, sowing disorder and slowly draining the invading army of its energy and resources. Neighbours would provide the insurgents with safe havens, allowing them to fade back into the population.
“The research on guerrilla wars clearly shows that weaker parties can use unconventional methods to cripple a more powerful enemy over many years,” Ahmad wrote in The Conversation.

 

What is this? Red Dawn?

Have you ever read a bigger pile of dingo kidneys?

 


 

 

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No Country For Anyone

From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard has ordered the Department of Justice to disclose thousands of memos regarding ongoing concealment of postwar files on Nazi fugitives let into Canada. The department promised to comply with a deadline but only after the election campaign: “I order the Minister of Justice to provide a complete response.”


 

Are these lobbyists in the same room with us, Ehab?:

New Democrats yesterday declined comment over a candidate’s claim that Jewish lobbyists controlled the federal cabinet. Remarks by Ehab Mustapha (Mississauga-Erin Mills, Ont.) followed Party leader Jagmeet Singh’s 2021 pledge of more thorough vetting of candidates after two nominees were removed for anti-Jewish remarks: “Groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs have been influencing policy behind closed doors.”

 

 

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We Don't Have to Trade With China

I don't care how much of the country they own!:

Liberal Leader Mark Carney said Liberal candidate and incumbent MP Paul Chiang had a “terrible lapse in judgment” by suggesting a rival Tory candidate should be handed over to China, but he will nonetheless remain on the Liberal ticket.

 

Do you work for Xi as Justin did, Carney? 

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 Also:

Liberals on Saturday night acclaimed a new candidate without any Party meeting in Don Valley North, Ont., the Toronto riding that became the epicentre of foreign interference investigations. Ousted three-term MP Han Dong expressed disappointment: “You were aware then that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had concerns about foreign interference in Mr. Dong’s nomination?”

 


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Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Mid-Week Post

Your spot of Smarch weather ... 



I'm sure there is an Instagram account regaling only the curious about how Justin has to mingle with the little people.

Let me know when he is stripped of the pension he doesn't deserve.

THAT would be newsworthy: 

The man who went from ski instructor and kindergarten teacher virtually straight to being the Prime Minister of Canada has finally left the building. He resigned. But that was all for show. His party forced him out because the polls were diabolical. Go and read the Fraser Institute’s analysis of Canada’s economic performance after 10 plus years of Trudeau at the helm. When Justin took over from the Conservative Stephen Harper government in 2015 the per capita wealth and wages of Canada’s richest provinces compared well to all but nine or 10 US States. Today, wages and salaries are lower in every Canadian province compared to all 50 States, below even the poorest US States of Mississippi and Louisiana. Growth? Bad. Productivity? Woeful. Multiple quarters of GDP per capita decline. And this was assessed before Trump won last year’s November election, lest those with a bad case of TDS be tempted to blame the Orange Man. (As a further aside, a painful one, Canada’s economy is really bad. But Australia’s is worse than Canada’s on all these measures. Just sayin’ because you won’t hear it on the ABC.)

Trudeau loved to virtue-signal. He was a fully paid-up climate change catastrophist and stopped pipelines from being built to let Alberta’s oil and gas get to the ocean – the result today is that Alberta sells it to the US or to no one. Trump didn’t do that. Trudeau did. So a Net Zero cheerleader. Spent next to nothing on defence (meaning even less than we in Australia do as a percentage of GDP). He ran a massive immigration Ponzi scheme. And he was a thug – yes, a thug – during the Covid lockdown hysteria. Ask the truckers. The result of all the schools closing, paying people to do nothing, closing small businesses, borrowing and spending money in unheard of amounts, weaponising the police and more was that you got big time asset inflation, massive monies transferred from poor to rich and from young to old, even worse educational results, productivity killing ‘working from home’ and, well, things will basically be screwed up for decades because of lockdowns. (By the way, our Coalition government was as bad as, or worse than, Trudeau on all these fronts. All but a couple Coalition MPs during Covid should be hanging their heads in shame for the rest of their lives. They won’t. But they should.)

At any rate, reality caught up to pretty boy Justin. Renewable energy is ghastly expensive save for huge implicit and explicit subsidies – you need baseload power Mr Bowen. Spending nothing on defence in a Hobbesian world is stupid. Inflation was bad. Housing costs soared. The young were being screwed over. By November of last year his Liberal Party was 23 points behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. And Trudeau led a minority government. The even further Left NDP party had the power to bring down Trudeau and force an election any time it wanted. Yet the NDP leader refused, even though his party had overtaken Trudeau’s and had every likelihood of forming the Official Opposition were there to be an election. (Poilievre’s much-repeated theory for why the NDP refused to act and bring down Trudeau was that if the government scraped along till this past February the NDP leader would trigger his gold-plated parliamentary pension – he’d be set for life. All one can say about that theory is that once no election could be held before the pension would trigger, the NDP leader announced he’d bring down the government.)

Too late. Trudeau resigned. He prorogued Parliament – which means he put it into a sort of suspended animation between the end of one session and start of a new one. This, in my view, was conventionally within Trudeau’s constitutional power – the remedy lying with the voters once the election is held. And a Canadian court recently upheld Trudeau’s power to do this. ...

(Sidebar: it wouldn't be the first time that the legal system in this country proved to be positively venomous.)

Trudeau in his 11 years had appointed nearly all the Canadian judges. I predicted he’d win the proroguing case and he did. The difference in the two proroguing cases was whether the judges were with the politician or against. It’s that bad I’m afraid.

Here we are now:

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday drew public attention to a report that shows Mark Carney in October, while chair of Brookfield Asset Management, brokered a deal with Chinese bankers.

A month prior to Carney’s trip to China, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made him chair of the Liberals’ Task Force on Economic Growth.

A report from the Telegraph, entitled Mark Carney meets [Chinese President Xi Jinping] as China woos the West, says Carney met with the People's Bank of China deputy director in October — two weeks later Brookfield secured a $256 million loan from the Chinese state-owned bank.

(Sidebar: this China. The communist dictatorship that people can freely go to and that arrests Canadian nationals at will.)

Carney has repeatedly refused to disclose his holdings in Brookfield. On Monday, he said “screens” have been put up around his investments and they are now in a blind trust. 

 

(Sidebar: visible to HIM.)

 **

Liberal Leader Mark Carney defended Wednesday putting two green investment funds in an offshore tax haven while an executive at investment house Brookfield Asset Management.

Carney told reporters at a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont., that the funds were registered in Bermuda to avoid double taxation.

“The important thing… is that the flow through of the funds go to Canadian entities who then pay the taxes appropriately. As opposed to taxes being paid multiple times before they get there,” said Carney.

 

Taxes are for little people, aren't they, Carney? 

**

Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is behind a corruption-plagued South American toll road scheme, swamped in litigation over bribes paid to the mayor who issued the contract.

The Rutas de Lima toll road project, meant to ease the paralyzing traffic in the Peruvian capital, collapsed into scandal with revelations that the Brazilian firm Odebrecht had bribed the mayor with $3 million in 2013 for a 30-year contract to run the highway system.

Instead of relief, Rutas brought predatory toll hikes that crushed the working poor, while Odebrecht pocketed the money. Brazilian authorities, in their expansive Operation Car Wash investigation of international corruption networks, led to Odebrecht pleading guilty in 2016 to what the U.S. Department of Justice called “the largest foreign bribery case in history.”

Yet, the elaborate plea bargain arrangement with DOJ in New York oddly omitted any reference to Rutas de Lima. Just before the scandal broke wide open, Odebrecht offloaded most of its stake to Brookfield, a Toronto-based investment and asset management giant, for about $500 million.

Brookfield knew South American public works business like few others. But it claimed its due diligence had found nothing wrong with its new Odebrecht asset.

New leadership emerged in 2022. On one side stood Brookfield chairman Mark Carney, a powerful ESG or Environment, Social, and Governance advocate – and now Canada’s prime minister – who sidestepped the mess while his company kept turning the screws on the city of Lima. On the other side emerged Lima’s freshly elected Mayor Rafael López Aliaga, a populist fighting to dismantle the corrupt contract.

Brookfield defended its soiled Rutas asset through costly United Nations arbitration, profiting from Rutas escaping itemization in the 2016 plea bargain. The tolls remain, doubts swirl about the DOJ prosecutors’ impartiality during the plea bargain – particularly Andrew Weissman, the ex-DOJ Fraud Section chief – that let Odebrecht pay at the lowest end of the sentencing guideline range and kept Rutas’ name out of the arrangement.

Brookfield then went on the offensive against Lima, portraying itself as the victim and suing the city for $2.7 billion in lost revenue. “Rutas” or “Routes” had become toxic in the eyes of many locals who now call the highway project “Ratas de Lima,” or Rats of Lima.

**

Ideology, ‘science,’ and policies over people, that’s just the Liberal way.

The Trudeau-government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap will cost 150,000 jobs nationwide, and billions in royalties per year, warned Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

Carney and Environment Minister Terry Duguid gave mixed messages on where the Liberals stand on emissions caps. Expect the worst. Carney’s a climate, green energy zealot who praised creepy little climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Meanwhile, Liberal-imposed snow crab and other fish harvesting limits threaten the “lifeblood” and the “bread and butter” of Newfoundland.

 

This Newfoundland:

 

But wait! There's more!:

**

 

The new boss is not all different from the old one.

Discuss.

 

 

Oh, burn:

After years of bristling at the idea of “vote splitting,” former NDP leader Tom Mulcair has effectively warned NDP supporters not to split the vote in the 2025 election. ...

Mulcair was leader of the NDP between 2012 and 2017 — a period that saw the party form the Official Opposition against the government of Stephen Harper.

It was also a position in which Mulcair often had to resist charges that a vote for his NDP served only to split the progressive vote to the benefit of the Conservatives.

Mulcair acknowledged as much in his Bloomberg column, writing, “When I was NDP leader I used to bristle when I heard Liberals warn about not ‘splitting the vote.’ It seemed so entitled, as if ‘the’ vote belonged to them.”

**

At the start of the campaign, poll aggregator website 338Canada is currently estimating that the NDP could be looking at electing between two and 12 MPs across the country in the next election — down from the 25 MPs they managed to get elected back in 2021.

In Quebec, the NDP will realistically keep Alexandre Boulerice, the lone MP who has managed to stick around since the 2011 “orange wave” that saw Layton’s party sweep 59 seats in la Belle Province and form the Official Opposition for the first time in its history.

 

(Sidebar: an argument for term limits right there.) 

Let the NDP go down in flames.

Jag held the country hostage so that he might get a pension that he doesn't deserve.

Burn, baby, burn!


 

 

No, throw it in the trash.

The plan does not extend to the entire population (only 3.4 million as of this writing)  nor does it cover all treatments and procedures:

 

**

 

In short, it is rather like an American-style insurance plan sourced by a single entity - the government - tat can refuse treatment at any time.

Why not let people keep their money (taken from taxes) and let them direct their own care?

Toss it:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised Tuesday that Canadians receiving federal dental care would continue to do so, should his party form the next government.

Poilievre outlined his intention for the program, while appearing in Vaughn, Ont., where he made an announcement on housing affordability.

Asked about dental care and pharmacare, two programs the Liberals established over their last term in government, Poilievre pledged to “protect these programs.”

 


Finally.

Something that makes sense:

Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada launched their official campaign from Saint-Georges, Que., on Monday, focused on slashing government spending while halting immigration.

"We need to stop that to preserve our culture, our standard of living, our economy," Bernier said.

The former Conservative MP for Beauce is pitching his party — which strongly opposed COVID-19 lockdowns — as the "real conservatives" in this federal election.

In a scorched-earth exit from the Conservative Party of Canada in 2018 to found the People's Party of Canada (PPC), Bernier accused his former party of being too "intellectually and morally corrupt" to be reformed. 

Bernier outlined on Monday the four pillars of the PPC platform: pausing immigration, ending what he described as "woke" policies, boosting the economy by cutting spending and implementing policies related to national security.

 

God help us!

The counter-culture! 



A look at Canada's failed policies:

The number of British Columbians hospitalized due to opioid overdoses increased after B.C. launched its drug decriminalization and “safer supply” policy, a new study shows.

B.C. received Health Canada’s permission to allow possession of small amounts of illicit drugs in a three-year pilot project, which started in January 2023.

However, the province asked Health Canada to reverse the decision in April 2024 after facing backlash and winding up instead introducing policies to prevent drug use in public spaces like parks, playgrounds, and hospitals.

The study published on the JAMA Health Forum looked at the number of opioid deaths and hospitalizations during the trial period in B.C.

The American Medical Association journal said it found a 33 percent increase in opioid overdose hospitalizations linked to the “safer supply” program.

Researchers said drug decriminalization was linked to a further 25 percent increase, leading to a 58 percent rise in hospitalizations.

**

While most consumers seem to appreciate the convenience of an increasingly digital economy, a CBDC is a radical change from using credit cards and online banking apps. A CBDC would likely lead to a cashless economy, in which all financial transactions can be monitored and controlled by government. A cashless economy would create severe hardship for people who are homeless, technologically illiterate, or without ready access to the internet.
**

It's called child abuse:

Newly published advice to Canada’s pediatricians continues to charge “full steam ahead” with the gender-affirming model of care in the face of increasing uncertainty about its safety, and suggests that parents who don’t unquestionably affirm their child’s expressed gender risk harming their child, concerned doctors say.

The advice, published in a brief paper in the Canadian Paediatric Society’s flagship journal, is silent on the Cass Review, a four-year long, independent British review that landed last spring that concluded the evidence base for gender-affirming care for minors is “remarkably weak” and that many unknowns remain about the impact of social transitioning, particularly on very young children.

 

 

We don't have to trade with China:

A panel of experts testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that Chinese companies mining for “green” energy minerals throughout Africa – particularly in resource-rich countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), are creating a “catastrophic and unacceptable” situation for locals.

The experts urged American officials to act to contain the malignant Chinese influence destroying an entire generation of African children and the environment in which they live, stressing that the minerals in question – cobalt, lithium, tantalum, and copper, among others – are pivotal to any high-tech economy.

 

 


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