Mid-Week Post

It's the mid-weekiest!

Bribing people with their own money:

On Monday, Parliament unanimously voted to fast-track Bill C-19, the Carney government’s new package of affordability measures, which includes a 25 per cent increase to the GST rebate for five years starting in July, along with a one-time additional payment this year equal to 50 per cent of the normal payment.

The government is right to focus on the rising cost of living — a recent poll found that 67 per cent of Canadians feel as though the cost of living “is the worst I can ever remember it being” — but simply rehashing the same strategy as the Trudeau government is not the right approach.

Each quarter, millions of Canadians receive a GST rebate — which the Carney government has renamed the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit — to offset how much they pay in federal sales taxes. To qualify for the payment, one must be at least 19 years old and below a specified income level.

Due to the Carney government’s 25 per cent increase and one-time payment, a family of four could now receive up to $1,890 this year (compared to $1,100 previously), while a single individual could now receive up to $950 (compared to $540).

Despite the payment’s new name, Prime Minister Mark Carney is following the same strategy as his predecessor. In 2022, for example, the Trudeau government sought to alleviate the effects of inflation by doubling the GST payment for six months.

Then, in 2024, it temporarily suspended the GST on select items for two months, and proposed giving some Canadians one-time rebate cheques of $250 (though the government eventually abandoned this plan).

The main problem with this strategy is that these rebates are poorly targeted, meaning they provide cash assistance to many individuals who don’t need it. For example, the Trudeau government would have sent its ill-fated rebate cheques to working Canadians who earn up to $150,000 per year.

Regarding the GST payment, according to a 2021 Fraser Institute study, more than one in 10 people (1.2 million) who received the payment were between the ages of 18 and 24 and living with their parents in households with total incomes of at least $100,000. Of these individuals, more than 70 per cent were in school.

In other words, approximately $340 million in GST payments was spent on young people who work part time, go to school and live in high-income households. These are not individuals in genuine need, even if their income level makes them eligible for the GST payment.

The Carney government’s proposed increase to the GST payment will cost approximately $3 billion this year and around $1 billion annually in subsequent years, yet it does nothing to correct this targeting problem. Simply put, the government will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on individuals in higher-income households that don’t need the money.

Meanwhile, the government’s books remain in dismal shape. In the 2026-27 fiscal year, the Carney government plans to run a $65.4-billion deficit, in large part due to already sky-high spending.

Indeed. 

It's just money.

Carney DID find the money for bonuses, however:

Executives in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Privy Council Office last year awarded themselves bonuses worth nearly $28,000 each, records show. Virtually all executives won an award even as Carney appealed to other Canadians for sacrifices: “We won’t play games.”

Failing upwards:

Liberal MP Bill Blair (Scarborough Southwest, Ont.), 71, yesterday was named High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. The appointment followed Blair’s dismissal from cabinet after a judicial inquiry found he “dropped the ball” on foreign interference.

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

Health Minister Marjorie Michel’s department has sealed internal reports on vaccine and drug injuries for 15 years, records show. The documents run to “several million pages,” it said.

We don't have to trade with China:

A petition supporting Prime Minister Mark Carney’s re-engagement with China is circulating in Canada’s Chinese diaspora, launched by an organization that has already submitted a policy proposal to the Prime Minister’s Office on establishing a national Nanjing Massacre Memorial Day.

The Chinese Canadian Proposals Committee, registered in Canada on August 31, 2025—several months after Carney’s spring election—proposed in October 2025 that Parliament establish a Nanjing Massacre Memorial Day “as part of a discussion on public history education,” according to a report posted on Weixin, a Chinese social media platform.

More broadly, the committee’s new “Building Consensus and Supporting Prime Minister Carney’s Promotion of Canada-China Friendly Cooperation” initiative appears to frame Carney’s China policy using language that mirrors Chinese Communist Party diplomatic terminology.

The committee says it works “together with several Chinese and other ethnic community organizations” but does not identify these partner organizations in its public statements.

The Nanjing war atrocities are central to an ongoing diplomatic dispute between China and Japan. The issue is also relevant to Beijing’s recent efforts to have Western powers criticize what it has characterized as Japan’s increasing military posture, and to a statement by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that Japan would be threatened by Chinese projection of force against Taiwan.

The Weixin report, which posts the petition, says that on January 13, the Prime Minister’s Office responded that Carney had “carefully read the proposal” and forwarded it to the Minister of Culture “for further understanding and consideration.”

When you are bought, you stay that way.

When will there be a memorial day for the Tiananmen Square massacre?

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Three men and one woman who are currently attending, or are alumni of, Western University face a slew of charges alleging — among other things — that they were storing chemicals that could be made into explosives at a house just west of campus in London, Ont.

"This is usually a pretty quiet neighbourhood. Nothing too exciting happens here,” said area resident Vivette Martin, after police taped off the beige corner house at 212 Chesham Pl. last Tuesday. "Everyone’s just been very curious as to what’s going on."

All four received additional charges on Monday, including the manufacturing of a gun. ...

Check out the accused.

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The Chinese New Year celebration observed later this month is the "Year of the Horse," but you probably will not want to put any money down on either win, place or show.

Perhaps not since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had at least eight of his top generals tortured and executed on the eve of World War II have we seen another nation dismantle their top military brass in the manner just pursued by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the closing days of January, Communist China's government announced that it was investigating their army's top general for "suspected serious violations of discipline and law." So we are clear, that top general, Zhang Youxia, was considered the highest military member of the Chinese government just below Xi. This was no casual action by China's strongman.

Like in Stalin's purge, General Zhang is not alone. The Chinese Defense Ministry said they were also investigating a number of senior staff on their Central Military Commission, China's top military body, along with General Liu Zhenli, who had been in charge of their military's Joint Staff Department.

One media outlet quoted Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis: "Xi Jinping has completed one of the biggest purges of China's military leadership in the history of the People's Republic."

In Stalin's case, he so decimated his military command that when Hitler invaded three years later, German troops could see the spires of Moscow before they were turned back, in part due to the fierce Russian winter. In Xi's case, it may take years to restore his nation's military leadership.

This purge was not the only setback for Xi's effort to project global dominance. The Supreme Court of Panama just ruled that a contract held by a Hong Kong company to run the ports situated on both ends of the strategically vital Panama Canal is unconstitutional. While that decision creates a "clean sheet of paper" as to who may run those ports next, it shows the door to a company that was clearly a conduit for Chinese power and Latin American influence.

Needless to say, the Chinese government is not pleased. Its Foreign Ministry issued the expected protest about "resolutely safeguard(ing) (their) legitimate rights."

For a regime that has used its military "rights" to harass and intimidate nations throughout the Pacific Rim, for a nation that has placed military bases on artificial islands -- thereby violating the sovereign waters of nearby countries -- and for a ruthless Communist giant that has used its economic power to bully and threaten others, it must come as quite a shock that in the Year of the Horse, the track just got so very muddy.

Remember - they wanted seven years a piece of hoking horns in Ottawa:

Police in Guelph, Ont., announced on Monday that they had re-arrested a man they consider to be a high-risk offender, just hours after informing the public that he had been released from custody.

On Monday at 2:24 p.m., Guelph Police Service posted to X that Medhani Yohans, 36, had been released from custody in Guelph Provincial Court after pleading guilty to a charge of breaching his probation order.

Referring to Yohans as “a high-risk offender,” police noted: “He has a history of violence that includes two stranger sexual assaults.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Catherine O'Hara:

Trudeau's Friend Blames the Internet For Canadians' Mistrust of a Failed Government

It's those pesky Tik-tok videos, I assume:

Heritage Minister Marc Miller in a letter to MPs says political organizers are using the internet to undermine Canadians’ trust in public institutions. He did not identify any by name: “The needs of protecting public interest journalism are urgent.” 

 

I don't need to see online how utterly corrupt and useless the Canadian governments in all their incarnations are.

I live it everyday.

Blotting out these alleged political organisers will do nothing. 

How is that Bombardier deal coming along?

 

Foreign Students Hired By Government

Wave any flag but the Canadian one:

Records show federal managers hire more than 800 foreign students a year while lamenting high jobless rates for Canadian students. The Treasury Board noted federal employers were supposed to hire Canadians first: “The Public Service Employment Act gives preference to eligible veterans first, then Canadian citizens.”

 

 But none of you matter.

"Co-operate" They Screamed

Why do people have to be so difficult?:

A senior Liberal MP yesterday complained cabinet is unable to pass most of its bills despite winning the 2025 general election. MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North), parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader, blamed Conservatives: “We have a Prime Minister who was just elected.”

 

I think he meant to say installed. 

 

Digital ID Plan Is Said to Be Voluntary

Just like wearing masks and getting jabs of questionable value:

Digital identification is a convenience that will never be mandatory in Canada, says cabinet. The Department of Employment overseeing digital ID development at a cost of billions said it had “no plans” to force Canadians to use the technology: “Using this online will be completely voluntary.”

 

 

I'm Sure They Do Remember

How they long for those halcyon days of diabolical fascism:

The Minister of Industry yesterday said cabinet needs new powers to protect Canadians in a “chaotic and dangerous world.” Opposition MPs in response recalled cabinet’s unlawful 2022 crackdown on the Freedom Convoy that saw anti-terrorist laws misused to freeze peaceful protestors’ bank accounts: “Why should Canadians trust you with these extraordinary powers given your government’s record?:

Indeed, but they do.

Also:

A Conservative MP sounded the alarm that Liberals might be flip-flopping on a promise not to ban Elon Musk’s X social media platform after Canada’s Artificial Intelligence Minister said the government is now “investigating” it yet again.

Speaking to reporters last Friday, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon told reporters that the “Privacy Commissioner has started an investigation into X.”

“And again, there was already an investigation before, but he’s added an investigation.”

Conservative MP Dean Allison warned in a post on X last Friday regarding Solomon’s X comments that the Liberal minister’s tone is “lingo” for his true intentions to ban the social media platform.

“A week ago, I said the Liberals will ban @X. They denied it,” he wrote.

“Now they’re back to ‘investigating it’ which is government lingo for ‘give us enough time for the story to die down, then we’ll ban it.’ Liberals censor speech. Conservatives support free speech. Simple as that, folks.”

It's Just Money

Not the government's money, of course:

Cabinet’s failed Two Billion Trees Program cost nearly a half billion dollars before it was wrapped up last November 4, documents show. The program fell 89 percent short of its tree planting target: “How many trees were planted?”

**

Cash grants to Ukraine war refugees cost taxpayers $839 million, says the Department of Immigration. Ukrainians offered free flights from the war zone were paid $3,000 per adult and $1,500 per minor child on landing in Canada: “There is a perception of unfairness.”

**

Free counseling, nursing, home visits, transportation, eyeglasses and other “supplemental health services” for illegal immigrants and refugee claimants cost hundreds of millions last year, new records show. Expenses tabled in Parliament followed a Commons health committee vote to audit the $884.6 million a year Interim Federal Health Program: “Six and a half million Canadians don’t have a family doctor.”

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week snowmaggedon ...

Carney didn't say anything to Trump because he had already left before Trump arrived.

Then Carney tried smoothing things over with Trump.

So much for standing up to him:

Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on Tuesday he stands by his recent Davos speech that implicitly criticized the United States, after U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told Fox News the prime minister walked back his remarks while speaking to the U.S. president.

“I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,” said Carney. “It was a broader set of issues that Canada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that he initiated, and we’re responding to that.”

You preached to an accommodating audience.

Enough already.

Canada was a middle power once:

While this notion of middle powerdom may seem like a novel approach in an era dominated by two superpowers, it’s in fact an echo from more than a couple of generations ago, an era that many international affairs specialists refer to as “the golden era of Canadian foreign policy.”

Foreign policy specialists, however, warn that the two eras are very different and a return to that so-called golden era, where Canada punches above its weight by leaning into its role as an honest broker and middle power, is unlikely. 

The key difference, said Fen Hampson, a foreign affairs specialist at Carleton University in Ottawa, is that Canada no longer has a special relationship with the U.S.

(Sidebar: or the world, really.) 

“The golden age was very different,” said Hampson, also co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations at Carleton. “We’re not in the middle — we’re on the menu.”

That past era, usually seen as a two-decade stretch from the end of the Second World War to roughly the mid-1960s, is nostalgic for many Canadians who were around at the time, or have studied foreign policy from that period. North America was the envy of the world in its prosperity, life for tens of millions on this continent seemed to be on the constant upswing, and much of the world – pretty much every key region outside China, the Soviet Union’s Eastern European bloc and a few satellite countries – was under the leadership of the U.S., Canada’s neighbour and closest ally.

That gave Canada some pull and prestige on the international stage. Ottawa used the leverage of that relationship for its own political, economic and security benefits, while choosing its moments to act as broker between the U.S. and other countries, particularly the European powers, to advance stability and other aims. That golden era for Canada in the world reached a zenith in 1957 when then foreign affairs minister Lester B. Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in preventing war during the Suez Crisis a year earlier and in creating the first United Nations peacekeeping force.

For those intrigued by the idea that Carney’s speech may be the start of a return to this era where Canada plays a special middle-power role, foreign policy specialists say it’s highly unlikely. 

There are similarities, however. Canada is once again pushing back against a superpower. Today, it’s of course Trump’s America, whereas during the Suez Crisis, it was mostly two weakened, post-war European powers: Britain and France. Another overlap is that Canada’s response in both cases was to emphasize the need for a rules-based international order and the potential for middle powers to collaborate.

But foreign policy specialists say that’s pretty much where the comparison ends. The critical difference between the two periods, Hampson said, is not just that Ottawa has lost its special status in Washington, but that the two North American neighbours are clearly at odds.  

(Sidebar: Canada lost its special status in the world. Do not mistake global dislike of Trump as a sign of Canada's seriousness.) 

“The problem we face now is there’s zero respect and it’s mutual,” said Hampson. “What’s different now is that Washington is the problem: it’s gone rogue.”

The U.S. was arguably the biggest beneficiary and leading creator and enforcer of the rules-based world after the Second World War. Washington led the way in designing international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the United Nations itself, locating each on home turf. 

But Carney said the world needs to face that that is now history.

“Nostalgia is not a strategy,” he told the international crowd.

Then don't rely on it.

Once you start killing people off to save a Weimar buck, well, there is no way that a civilisation comes back from that:

After Parliament legalized assisted suicide in 2016, 2,838 Canadians killed themselves with the help of doctors the following year. By 2024, that number had risen almost six-fold to 16,499.

Assisted suicide (euphemistically mischaracterized as medical assistance in dying, or MAID) is now the fourth-largest cause of death in Canada, accounting for 5.1 percent of Canadian deaths in 2024, and a shocking 7.9 percent of deaths in Quebec. After the Netherlands, Canada comes in second place as the global leader in assisted suicide, even dwarfing ever-progressive Belgium, where assisted suicide was responsible for 3.6 percent of deaths in 2024.

Across Canada, patients are routinely and repeatedly offered assisted suicide as a “treatment” option—including veterans. In March 2027, Canadian law will change again to allow doctors to help mentally ill Canadians kill themselves. Mental illness alone, even without physical suffering or a terminal illness, will be reason enough for Canadian doctors to legally help their patients to commit suicide.

Canadians rightfully fear dying alone and lonely, in a sterile and bleak hospital environment, separated from loved ones and from the comfort of home. Many Canadians would choose palliative care and spend their final days at home, or in home-like and agreeable surroundings in a hospice. Yet government policies fail to respect terminally ill patients who wish to spend their final days in care environments that affirm life.

In B.C., the government withdrew funding from the Delta Hospice Society over its refusal to offer assisted suicide as part of the palliative care it provided to patients. The same society is now intervening in a B.C. Supreme Court action in which Dying With Dignity Canada seeks to force a Catholic hospital in Vancouver to provide suicide-as-treatment to patients.

St. Paul’s Hospital is operated by Providence Health Care Society, which describes itself as “a Catholic health care community dedicated to meeting the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of those served through compassionate care, teaching, and research.” The court action maintains that St. Paul’s willingness to provide information about assisted suicide, and to transfer suicide-seeking patients to other facilities, is not an acceptable compromise. Dying With Dignity seeks to compel this Catholic hospital to assist patients in committing suicide. The goal here is coercion, not autonomy and choice.

No country for anyone:

Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm says there are similarities between the time leading up to Nazi rule in Germany, and eventually Europe, and antisemitic incidents that are happening in Canada now.

Already this year, swastikas were spray-painted on the windows and walls of a synagogue in Winnipeg, a message calling for the death of Jews was graffitied under a bridge in Toronto and an Alberta MP pushed for investigations into Canadians who served in the Israeli Defense Forces, which a Jewish advocacy group condemned as an “antisemitic witch hunt.”

Bohm said that during the Second World War, in her small town in what is now Romania, she didn’t know what was happening to Jews in the rest of Europe. “And didn’t believe it, even if we were told about it,” she said. Upon reflection, even though she was unaware at the time, she said she does notice parallels between the hate being aimed at the Jewish community back then, and in Canada now. But she is hopeful for the future of the country.

“Canada is more aware of the world and what is going on in the world … than it used to be, which is wonderful,” said Bohm, in a written interview with National Post.

No, madame, it is not.

Canada has gone full Himmler (which one should never go).

Also - if you can distort, you can deny and if you can deny, you can forget:

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honour the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and mark the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Eight decades later, the challenge of passing on the lessons of the Holocaust is ever more daunting, with the danger being less its outright denial than its distortion or revision — efforts to minimize or reframe the systematic murder of six million Jews. Recent surveys reveal an alarming number of young people in North America believe the Holocaust has been exaggerated, a reflection not so much of disbelief that it happened, but of the subtle erosion of the truth.

One of the most consequential forms of historical revision appears in those academic and pedagogical settings where the Holocaust is framed primarily through the lens of imperialism and colonialism. In such accounts, Jews and other victims are presented as part of an undifferentiated mass, with their suffering attributed less to the Nazis’ deliberate “final solution” than to yet another historic manifestation of European power and domination. Nazi perpetrators are portrayed as another authoritarian or colonial regime and Nazism cast as another chapter in the continuum of imperial violence. Regrettably, this perspective downplays the unique, ideologically driven obsession with Jews that defined Nazi policy and practice.

The insulting piggy-backing is not done to draw parallels but done by intellectually dishonest and academically bereft ideologues desperate to keep their pet causes in some sort of spotlight.

Imagine a population intellectually capable of calling such things out.

**

OH?:

Cabinet yesterday in an abrupt climbdown suspended MPs’ study of what it touted as a key bill to combat anti-Semitism. The quick withdrawal by Liberals on the Commons justice committee came only minutes after the Government House Leader demanded passage of Bill C-9: “This is about making Parliament work.”

**

Oh, they'll try again:

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) welcomes today’s news that Bill C-9 has been put on hold, calling it a necessary response to serious and unresolved conflicts between the proposed hate crimes legislation and Canada’s Constitutional protections for free expression.

Bill C-9 was unsound from the start. Rather than narrowly targeting violence or threats, it would have expanded criminal law into the realm of ordinary expression, lowered the threshold for criminal speech, and stripped away long-standing safeguards designed to protect Charter rights. As the bill developed, its problems only became more glaring. A December amendment to the bill even threatened to remove good-faith religious belief as an exemption from hate speech.

The CCF was at the forefront of opposition to Bill C-9. Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn spoke before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in November, and submitted a comprehensive written brief, warning that the bill posed an unjustified threat to freedom of expression. The CCF consistently called on Parliament to withdraw the bill entirely, including by mobilizing public support through a widely-circulated email campaign that helped more than 7,000 Canadians write their MPs.

“Bill C-9 threatened Constitutionally-protected expression and would have led to the chilling of necessary public debate across Canada,” said Van Geyn. “Shelving it for now is an important step toward preserving free speech, which we hope leads to the full abandonment of this deeply flawed legislation.”

The CCF hopes the Carney government will now recognize that legislation built on such deep constitutional defects cannot be salvaged and should not be pursued.

Israel Declares That There Are No More Hostages Remaining

A sad chapter is finished:

Israel will reopen Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt for the passage of people only after an operation to locate the body of the last remaining Israeli hostage in the enclave is completed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said late on Sunday.

The border was supposed to have opened during the initial phase ​of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the war, under a ‍ceasefire reached ⁠in October between Israel and Hamas.

However, Israel conditioned ‍the reopening on the return of all living hostages held by Palestinian militant factions in Gaza, as well as a "100% effort" by Hamas to locate and return the bodies of all deceased hostages.

All have been returned except for the body ‍of police officer Ran Gvili. The Israeli military said on Sunday it had launched a "targeted operation" in northern Gaza to retrieve his remains, while an Israeli military ‌official said there were "several intelligence leads" regarding his possible location.

The Israeli military "is currently conducting a focused operation to ​exhaust all of ‌the intelligence that has been gathered in the effort ‌to locate and return the fallen hostage, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, ​of blessed ‌memory," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

It added that when the operation is complete, "Israel will open the Rafah Crossing."

Make Gaza dust again.