Your middle-of-the-week agent provocateuse …
What
does he care? He has his pension:
Former environment minister Steven Guilbeault will resign
as a Liberal MP. He will make the announcement to his colleagues Wednesday
morning in caucus and will give a speech at the House of Commons later in the
afternoon to explain his reasons.
A source close to Guilbeault confirmed the information to
the National Post after news of his impending resignation was reported by
different media outlets.
The source confirmed Guilbeault is leaving politics
because of the recent deal Prime Minister Mark Carney struck with Alberta to
advance a new oil pipeline to the West Coast, but also because of the
government’s environmental policy setbacks in general.
We
could be sweeping up right now:
It’s now officially been a year that the Carney
government has been musing about maybe, possibly building an oil export
pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast.
“Will I support building a pipeline? Yes,” was what Prime
Minister Mark Carney told CTV on May 13, 2025. He also said that he’d expressed
such thoughts “repeatedly.”
Although Carney retains extraordinary powers to
greenlight such a project at any time, this month he announced only that he
intends to approve construction by September 2027. According to a subsequent
report by CIBC World Markets, the “best case scenario” is that the project
might be moving oil by 2034.
And a West Coast pipeline has already been on the drawing
board for more than 20 years. As early as 2006, Enbridge first started inking
contracts for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, only for the project to
be cancelled by then prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2016.
So, if everything goes to plan, the current state of
affairs is that Canada might be able to begin operations on a West Coast oil
export pipeline more than 28 years after such a thing was first proposed.
This is a glacial pace unknown to any other major oil
producer. While Canada doesn’t have a monopoly on cancelled oil infrastructure
or red tape, its inability to move its own oil across internal borders is
unlike few other jurisdictions on earth.
The Strait of Hormuz bypass pipeline
If the United Arab Emirates’ official timelines are to be
believed, they’ve recently delivered a masterclass on how to fast-track an oil
export pipeline.
In March, the UAE first saw its oil exports thrown into
disarray by intermittent Iranian blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, the sole
waterway connecting UAE oil ports to the Indian Ocean.
Just this month, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. announced
that it was already half-done on a new pipeline that would bypass the blockaded
strait, with oil set to start flowing in 2027.
The UAE is able to fast-track this pipeline largely
because it’s following an existing right-of-way. The project merely expands the
existing Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, which first opened in 2012.
However, that situation also neatly describes the Trans
Mountain Expansion Project, which remains Canada’s only non-U.S. export
pipeline built in the last 50 years. That project, completed in 2024, followed
the route of the 1950s-era Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Even then, it took 11 years for TMX to go from
application to completion. And it wouldn’t have been completed at all if the
federal government hadn’t bought out the project in 2018.
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
Canada’s chief vulnerability in getting pipelines
approved is jurisdictional conflict. Any attempt to construct a pipeline across
provincial borders will often spur litigation and obstruction from neighbouring
provinces, not to mention an avalanche of litigation from any one of dozens of
First Nations along the pipeline route.
So it’s perhaps notable that in the early 2000s, a major
pipeline was laid across three sovereign countries without nearly as much
handwringing and red tape.
That would be an 1,800-kilometre pipeline running through
Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, all to connect the Baku oil fields to the
Mediterranean Sea. The intergovernmental agreement authorizing its construction
was inked in 1999, and it was pumping oil by 2005.
Sino-Myanmar Crude Oil Pipeline
The political case for a Canadian oil export pipeline to
the Pacific is that it’s effectively the fastest way for Canada to diversify
trade away from the United States. If Northern Gateway had been completed in
the 2010s as intended, it would currently be exporting 190,000 barrels of oil
per day. Right now, that would be at least $20 million in oil exports per day,
much of it going to non-U.S. customers.
A similar kind of sovereign pressure underlay the
development of the Sino-Myanmar pipeline project, which saw twin natural gas
and oil pipelines driven from Western China to ports in Myanmar.
Although it’s an import pipeline, the whole idea was to
reduce sovereign vulnerability to outside pressures. Specifically, the pipeline
is intended to bypass the Malacca Strait, a choke point between Indonesia and
Malaysia through which most of China’s imported oil is shipped.
Both Beijing and Myanmar are authoritarian countries,
which generally expedites infrastructure approvals. Nevertheless, the pipeline
was being driven through a region with active armed conflict. And rebel
militias in the area have indeed targeted pipeline infrastructure on occasion.
Nevertheless, the oil pipeline portion of the project was
officially inaugurated by 2015, less than six years after it was first
announced in 2009.
Dakota Access Pipeline
The Dakota Access Pipeline — much like any number of
Canadian oil and gas pipelines — was the target of a well-funded, all-out
activist attempt to shut it down. The most memorable component of which was a
months-long anti-pipeline encampment established on the Standing Rock Indian
Reservation in North Dakota.
And yet, those protests ultimately proved to be a mild
speed bump towards the project’s ultimate completion.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is several hundred kilometres
longer than any proposed pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast. And it took
just three years to go from its initial regulatory application in 2014 to its
completion in 2017.
Has no one asked why a government wants to spy on its own
citizens:
The federal
government never consulted widely on one of the most contentious parts of its
lawful access reform to how police and intelligence services can obtain or
intercept private data.
That’s according to Murray Rankin, the former NDP
politician and intelligence watchdog head who was tasked by the Liberal
government to consult and make recommendations to the government leading up to
Bill C-22.
In an interview, Rankin said Canada desperately needs
lawful access reform to avoid becoming an “oasis” for criminals because law
enforcement doesn’t have the tools to protect Canadians like our European or
Five Eyes alliance allies.
But he also noted that he was never asked to make
recommendations about a clause in the bill that would force yet undefined “core
providers” of electronic services to retain certain categories of metadata —
including transmission and location data — for up to one year so that police
and Canadian spies can obtain them via warrant if a judge allows it.
Bill C-22, which is currently at committee, is the Mark
Carney Liberals’ second attempt at lawful access reform and comes after the
government returned to the drawing board and tasked Rankin last summer to
quietly consult on the bill and issue recommendations to the government.
Lawful access, or the ability to obtain Canadians’
private information and intercept communications, is one of the most intrusive
powers afforded to police and intelligence agencies. Creating such a regime for
the digital age in Canada has been the subject of fierce debate for decades.
But some of the most fierce criticism has targeted the
bill’s one-year metadata retention clause, which privacy and security
specialists argue is far too long and a violation of Canadians’ right to
privacy.
“Imposing a blanket obligation on a whole class of
service providers to preserve everyone’s metadata for law enforcement purposes
would amount to a significant interference with the privacy interests of
millions of Canadians,” wrote Thompson River University law professor Robert
Diab.
On the other hand, some police services have told MPs
they’d prefer the retention period extended to two or even three years.
In an interview, Rankin told National Post that the
government never brought up the one-year retention period of metadata during
his roundtables, suggesting he was surprised to see the clause appear in the
bill.
“You know this business about the metadata, it never came
up in our conversations,” Rankin said. “In my work, it never came up.”
**
Google and Apple,
whose software runs in nearly every phone and tablet in Canada, warned that the
Liberals’ lawful access bill poses a “threat” to encryption and their users’
data and could facilitate crimes such as foreign interference.
Speaking to the House public safety committee Tuesday,
representatives from both tech giants said they respect the government’s desire
to adopt lawful access reform. They argued that their goal is to balance users’
privacy with the need for law enforcement to have the tools they need.
But they warned that the Liberals’ controversial Bill
C-22 goes too far and needs to be reworked significantly, lest it force them to
create a “backdoor” into their encrypted services to users.
Google and Apple’s software powers over 99 per cent of
all cellphones and tablets sold in Canada, as well as a significant portion of
portable computers. They also operate a significant portion of the cloud
storage business.
“Our users trust Apple with their most sensitive
information. They expect and deserve the strongest protections, that’s why
we’re so concerned about the threat to encryption posed by C-22,” said Apple
senior director Erik Neuenchwander.
Google’s Jeanette Patell went a step further, telling MPs
that the bill as it stands could force the company to undo many of its security
features and open the door to criminals.
“Without stronger definitions, the law could be used to
force the dismantling of critical privacy and architecture, such as breaking
encryption, overriding users’ data deletion controls, or building remote access
capability, all of which could facilitate foreign interference and weaken
global user privacy,” Patell argued.
The federal Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne also
told the committee the Liberals’ lawful access bill is overly broad and should
be narrowed to protect Canadians’ rights.
The government has repeatedly sworn that the new
obligations to telecommunications and electronic services providers would not
compel them to decrypt encrypted information. They argue the bill would allow
them to ask companies to decrypt information if that is already possible, but
would not force them to develop ways to unlock encrypted information.
But, many of the bills’ clauses “don’t compromise
encryption directly but try to get at it indirectly by circumventing it or
bypassing it. It still have the same impact in terms of the vulnerabilities
that they ultimately create,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Tamir
Israel to MPs Tuesday.
Lawful access, or the ability to obtain Canadians’
private information and intercept communications, is one of the most intrusive
powers afforded to police and intelligence agencies. Creating such a regime for
the digital age in Canada has been the subject of fierce debate for decades.
Also – what
about anti-Catholic groups?:
Attorney
General Sean Fraser yesterday said he feared some future justice minister
will use federal hate crimes legislation to settle scores with environmental
groups or political opponents. Fraser did not identify any person by name:
“Those are dangerous conversations.”
Never
forget who and what they are:
A majority of the House of Commons voted against a
non-binding motion on Monday that called on the federal government to protect
private property from First Nations land claims — a political issue the
Crown-Indigenous Relations minister has said is rife with partisan rhetoric.
B.C. and the Cowichan Tribes have both said they do not
want to invalidate any privately held fee simple titles on the lands covered by
the court decision.
The federal and provincial governments opposed the
Cowichan Tribes' claim. There are now appeals on both sides of the issue —
including an appeal by the federal government.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party have
seized upon the uncertainty created by the decision and have for weeks been
calling on the federal government to take action. Poilievre held a press
conference and town hall events in B.C. about the issue last week.
On Friday, the First Nations Summit released a statement
accusing the Conservatives of fearmongering and claiming Poilievre is
desperately trying to stay relevant.
"The Cowichan decision is not and never was about
taking away people's homes or private fee-simple property. The court simply
reaffirmed principles that have existed in Canadian law for decades — namely
that First Nations title was never automatically extinguished by the
Crown," said Laxele'wuts'aat, Chief Shana Thomas of the First Nations
Summit political executive.
Last month, Poilievre appointed B.C. MP Tako van Popta to
lead a Conservative task force on property rights. He was tasked with, among
other things, convening a parliamentary committee to study the issue.
"The ruling has shaken the foundations of British
Columbia's economy and sparked fear among landowners provincewide,"
Poilievre said in a statement on April 23.
The Conservative motion called for a number of actions,
including the creation of a special committee to study the legal,
constitutional and political steps that could be taken to protect private
property rights.
It also called for the government to put private property
first and argue that it has priority over all other forms of title, and to
ensure it does not make future agreements with First Nations that do not
include explicit protection of fee simple property rights.
The Conservatives voted in favour of the motion, while
the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois all voted against it.
There is no right to property in the Charter.
None could be
happier than Carney:
Canadians are resigned to failure in eliminating U.S.
tariffs, says in-house Privy Council research. Federal focus groups were unable
to reach any consensus on whether Prime Minister Mark Carney was “on the right
track” after promising to negotiate a win for Canada: “Few thought that it was
likely that an agreement could be achieved where all tariffs would be removed.”
The proles have no
right to ask questions:
The Department of Employment says its Canada Summer Jobs
program does help student hiring through 50 percent wage subsidies but cannot
say how many jobs it creates. A first-ever analysis called it “a good policy
tool” at more than a quarter billion a year: “How do you know if the program is
achieving its objectives without measuring exactly that?”
**
An unidentified
automaker is drafting a secret plan to export Canadian-made passenger cars to
Asia and the Middle East, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said yesterday.
MPs on the Commons industry committee expressed skepticism: “No company has
come to any committee on Parliament Hill or gone to the media to suggest that
this is a viable business plan.”
What
was once cruelty has descended into farce:
A London, Ont., doctor who assessed a patient with
inflammatory bowel disease and a history of mental health issues for MAID
outside a Tim Hortons location and later personally drove the man to the place
his life was ended has agreed to a minimum six months’ supervision.
In another case, Dr. James MacLean failed to administer
one of three drugs used in assisted deaths — one that paralyzes the body’s
muscles, including the muscles involved in breathing. The patient resumed
spontaneously breathing again after initially being pronounced dead, and after
MacLean had already left the home.
As first reported Monday by the The Globe and Mail, the
doctor’s case is raising new concerns about MAID’s oversight and
accountability.
“What is striking is not only the seriousness of the
concerns identified in these cases, but the limited regulatory response,” said
Dr. Ramona Coelho, a family physician and former member of the Office of the
Chief Coroner of Ontario’s MAID death review committee.
As part of an investigation by the College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) into two public complaints made against MacLean,
an independent assessor appointed to review a number of MacLean’s charts
concluded that he “did not meet the standard of practice of the profession,
displayed a lack of judgment and that his conduct exposes or is likely to
expose patients to harm or injury in five out of twenty charts reviewed,”
according to a summary decision of the college’s inquiries, complaints and reports
committee.
MacLean was called before the committee to be verbally
“cautioned” with respect to the MAID complaints.
In addition to agreeing to mandatory clinical supervision
for at least six months as part of an “undertaking” with the college, MacLean
will undergo ongoing review of his MAID patient charts and mandatory
professional education related to MAID, consent, documentation, professional
boundaries and professional behaviour.
After six months, he’ll undergo an assessment of his
practice, the results of which “may form the basis of further action by the
College,” Laura Zilke, a CPSO spokesperson said in an email to National Post.
“The undertaking imposes extensive oversight and
monitoring requirements on Dr. MacLean’s practice,” Zilke said.
“The college takes any complaints brought to our
attention extremely seriously as part of our mandate to serve the public
interest and ensure safe, ethical and competent medical care for all
Ontarians.”
MacLean declined comment when contacted by National Post.
“Due to the rules regarding privacy and my professional
responsibilities to the CPSO regarding confidentiality of complaint
investigations, I am unable to respond to your questions,” he said in an email.
According to The Globe and Mail, one of the complaints
concerns Thomas Dillon who suffered from Crohn’s disease and died, age 45, in
January 2024.
The anonymized death of the St. Thomas man was also
flagged by the Ontario coroner’s MAID death review committee.
In a report involving 2024 MAID deaths, the coroner’s
panel highlighted the case of “Mr. A,” a male in his 40s with inflammatory
bowel disease who, because of his illness, didn’t have an active social
network, had difficulty maintaining a job, found personal relationships
difficult and was dependent on family for housing and financial support.
He had a history of mental illness, previous bouts of
suicidal thinking and on-going alcohol and opioid misuse that cost him his
driver’s licence.
During a psychiatric assessment, Dillon was asked if he
was aware of MAID and given information on the option.
There was no documented input from the family who were
known to have had concerns about the MAID request.
MacLean and another assessor found Dillon eligible for
MAID under Track 2, designed for people whose death is not reasonably
foreseeable but who suffer intolerably from a grievous and irremediable medical
condition.
MacLean conducted his assessment outside the coffee shop.
The CPSO panel found it concerning that MacLean discussed “sensitive
MAID-related matters in an informal public setting,” according to the summary
of the inquiries and complaints committee’s decision.
“In the Committee’s view, this reflected a lack of the
level of formality and care expected when assessing requests for MAID.”
The panel was also troubled by the “quantity and nature”
of MacLean’s text exchanges with Dillon, which included comments about the
family’s views.
MacLean’s decision to drive Dillon to the MAID provision
location — which the Globe identified as an industrial-like facility where
bodies are prepared for funerals — “raised concerns about professional
boundaries.”
“Taken together, these actions created a risk that
(MacLean’s) involvement could be perceived as influencing the patient,” the
committee’s summary reads, especially given the patient-doctor power imbalance
and Dillon’s history of mental health and substance use issues.
According to a more detailed decision from the inquiries
and complaints committee provided to the family and obtained by The Globe and
Mail, Dillon refused to ride to the MAID procedure site with his sister when
she arrived at the Tim Hortons, where he and MacLean had again arranged to
meet. MacLean ultimately drove Dillon himself “to ensure that patient’s final
moments were dignified.” Dillon didn’t want to die at home, where he lived with
his mother, because he knew his family didn’t approve and he agreed to the
chosen site after other options were considered, the decision said.
“In this case, the assessment occurred during a single
encounter at a Tim Hortons coffee shop,” Coelho said in an email.
“The family was not engaged in the assessment process,
despite being the patient’s primary support and despite the MAID provider being
aware they were trying to raise concerns,” she said.
“Collateral information from those closest to the patient
is essential to understanding the factors contributing to the desire to die.”
The world sees Canada as willing to embrace cruelty.
Now it’s making this cruelty into a joke.
Also – look
– actual human concern yields positive results:
For years, Akiko Hashiguchi was told she was failing as a
mother.
Teachers criticized her parenting. Other parents
distanced themselves. Relatives and strangers alike blamed her for her son’s
behavior, which was only later understood to be linked to ADHD
(attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).
She found herself constantly apologizing.
By her account, the criticism did not create a single
rupture but steadily accumulated as small judgments that, over time, fostered a
sense of total isolation in a society where asking for help is often difficult.
By 2001, the pressure had become unbearable.
Hashiguchi, then 29, drove into the mountains of Shizuoka
Prefecture with her 6-year-old son, intending to end both of their lives. In
Japanese reporting, such incidents are often described as muri shinjū, a term
used for situations involving people in close relationships in which one person
kills another before taking their own lives.
“I placed my hands around my son’s neck,” Hashiguchi
said, having resolved to kill him and then drive the car off a cliff. “But when
he said, ‘I’m sorry for making you suffer, Mom,’ I suddenly came to my senses
and let go.”
Hashiguchi and her son in 1995. She felt small judgments
about her parenting from teachers, other parents and relatives steadily
accumulated and fostered a sense of total isolation over time.
Domestic murder-suicides are a recurring headline in
Japan.
Muri shinjū is not a legal term, but a journalistic
shorthand used in early reporting when circumstances are still unclear. It has
become embedded in crime coverage, often involving families, couples and
caregiver-dependent relationships.
The phrase combines shinjū (心中),
originally used for love suicides (when partners choose to die by suicide
together), and muri (無理), meaning forced — referring to
deaths within intimate relationships in which the intent is not shared.
Japan’s Children and Families Agency classifies
parent-child muri shinjū — including cases in which the parent survives — as
deaths linked to child abuse, framing them as an extreme form of maltreatment.
Beyond official classification, they are often discussed
in terms of how family distress is handled within the home in Japan. Financial
hardship, caregiving exhaustion and mental health problems are frequently dealt
with privately, with limited outside intervention until situations become
severe.
In parent-child incidents, social expectations around
resiliency, responsibility and self-restraint can intensify feelings of shame
among those already under strain, particularly for mothers, with signs of
withdrawal or exhaustion often only recognized in hindsight.
Keiko Ishii, a professor of cultural psychology at the
University of Tokyo who studies help-seeking behavior, said studies suggest
people in Japan may be more likely to worry about disrupting relationships,
being criticized by others, or making situations worse by speaking openly about
personal or family problems.
She added that social ties are shaped by expectations of
reciprocity and harmony, along with anxiety about being excluded or damaging
existing relationships.
“These concerns can make it
harder for people to seek comfort or advice when they are struggling,” she
said.
Ishii said her research suggests that people in Japan
tend to interpret hardship as a deviation from social expectations or
responsibilities — a view that can deepen shame, reduce empathy, and make both
seeking and offering help less likely. …
In response, new support efforts are beginning to emerge
in Japan. One Tokyo-based program, “Ikuji 119,” offers 24-hour assistance for
parents in distress, dispatching trained childcare professionals to their homes
within an hour of a phone call for a fee. ….
One of the few people in Japan to publicly share her
personal experience with muri shinjū under her own name, Hashiguchi has since
been involved in parents’ support work and advocacy around developmental
disorders.
She says her planned murder-suicide was an impulsive act
that was shaped by social isolation and a lack of support outside her family,
as well as a culture quick to judge mothers while reducing deeply personal
struggles to textbook solutions.
“There was no village to raise a
child in,” she said. “I just needed one person outside my family who would be
there for me. If I had that, things might have been different. I think we can
all be that for someone else.”
Akiko Hashiguchi and her son in September 2001 taken a
month after his ADHD diagnosis. Her son now supports her decision to share her
story, hoping it may help prevent another tragedy.
Akiko Hashiguchi and her son in September 2001 taken a
month after his ADHD diagnosis. Her son now supports her decision to share her
story, hoping it may help prevent another tragedy.
Ishii said that preventing people from reaching a
breaking point begins with addressing severe isolation. In Japan, she said,
social ties have traditionally carried strong expectations of mutual
obligation, sometimes enabling quiet, informal support such as checking in or
simply being present. But she noted that rapid social change has made that kind
of support harder, while formal systems do not always reach those most in need.
“Preventing severe isolation
requires creating spaces where people can seek help without feeling they are
imposing on others,” the professor said, adding that this can include
environments where people from different backgrounds can mix and share everyday
experiences.
Nearly a decade after the incident, Hashiguchi recalls
breaking down as she spoke to her son about what happened — trying to leave him
in the mountains, him chasing after the car and her attempt to strangle him —
before she begged for forgiveness. He now supports her decision to share her
story, hoping it may help prevent another tragedy.
“I know I will carry the guilt
with me for the rest of my life,” Hashiguchi said. “But if my experience can
stop even one parent from feeling completely alone, then I believe it has
meaning.”
I
was assured that these diverse doctors and engineers were far more tolerant
than native-born Canadians:
A recent survey has revealed that fewer Canadians support
people being able to express their gender however they choose compared to eight
years ago.
The findings, published in Statistics Canada’s Juristat,
were based on self-reported data from the 2018 and 2025 Survey of Safety in
Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS). The survey examined how attitudes toward
gender-related issues have changed over time.
When it came to gender expression, women were more likely
than men to agree with statements supporting people’s rights to gender
expression.
In 2025, 77 per cent of women and 70 per cent of men
agreed that people should be able to express their gender however they choose.
Women were also more likely to say they would support a family member if they
came out as transgender (77 per cent compared to 65 per cent).
However, support for people’s right to express their
gender however they choose has declined among both women and men since 2018.
The percentage of women who agreed that people should
have this right decreased from 85 per cent to 77 per cent, while support among
men dropped from 78 per cent to 70 per cent.
The StatCan survey doesn’t examine the potential causes
behind the decline, but notes that the changes in attitude coincide with “a
period of animated public discourse” surrounding the rights of transgender and
non-binary people. …
The survey found that 80 per cent of women and 71 per
cent of men born in Canada agreed that individuals should be able to express
their gender however they choose, compared to 70 per cent of women and 67 per
cent of men born elsewhere.
Imagine entire voters blocks that don’t care about liberal
feelings.
Also – a
known liar will not allow people to correctly conclude that a
troubled sociopath plugged with artificial hormones and given access to rifles
is
not the usual
tact of “misinformation” but actual truth:
Days after a shooter opened fire on a school in rural
British Columbia, a memo addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that
“false claims” and “misinformation” was circulating online regarding violence
and those who identify as transgender.
Officials also flagged that the incident risked giving
rise to criticisms around firearm regulations.
The document, released partially redacted to National
Post under federal access-to-information legislation, was dated three days
after the shooting of nine mostly school-aged children that injured dozens more
at a secondary school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., located in the province’s
interior.
Prepared for the prime minister by the Privy Council
Office, the document includes an appendix of analysis of the “sentiment” that
was being expressed by the public and online in the immediate aftermath, which
noted the spread of “grief, shock, and national mourning” as well as calls to
support victims.
“Early signs of polarization are emerging,” the note
read, “particularly on social media, where identity-related narratives, policy
debates, and misinformation are beginning to fragment public discourse.”
It specified that polarization was being observed on
social media when it came to the shooter’s identity, from “identity-based
political commentary” and “disputes over police handling of gender identity” as
well as “hostile exchanges between ideological groups.”
“False claims and misinformation involving transgender
violence have circulated online,” it added. “Media reporting confirms social
media narratives fuelling anti-trans rhetoric.”
The shooter, identified by police as 18-year-old Jesse
Van Rootselaar whom officers said was found dead from a self-inflicted wound,
was born a biological male and later transitioned to female.
The memo prepared for Carney pinpoints that among federal
departments that stood available to offer supports was Women and Gender
Equality Canada, which funds LGBTQ organizations, noting “the tragedy’s impact
on the “broader trans” and LGBTQ community.
It also pointed to an anti-stigma campaign which the
department had launched, meant to address the discrimination faced by those who
identify as gender diverse. “This may be useful for community leaders,
educators and parents to discuss these issues with children and others impacted
by the tragedy,” the memo says.
When it comes to firearms, the memo to Carney outlines
how the sentiment on social media was shifting from grief to more
accountability driven questions, such as mental health interventions “firearms
access, and whether warning signs were missed.”
Why, that sounds like a cover-up for an agenda-driven and
unaccountable plutocracy to me.
And:
Canada spent more than $722 million providing extensive
health care to tens of thousands of asylum seekers in the last fiscal year,
including a considerable portion on “failed refugee claimants” who are either
languishing in the system or avoiding removal orders, according to a new report
from the Parliamentary Budget Office.
The review of the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP)
also found that its costs continue to climb because of “backlogs” in Canada’s
asylum system that keep claimants waiting, in some cases for up to three years.
The IFHP was created to provide limited and temporary
health-care coverage to foreign nationals deemed vulnerable and disadvantaged.
Some people are special:
Parliament should
criminalize Indian Residential School denialism just as it outlawed wilful
downplaying of the Holocaust, First Nations leaders yesterday told the
Senate human rights committee. Indigenous witnesses condemned skeptics who
state “no children actually died or are buried at these sites.”
Not even close.
Outlawing
thought and inquiry, especially
into a largely exploded and fabricated moral outrage, is not the same as
Holocaust denial.
Comparing an actual genocide to claims based on shaky statements (and
lucrative agendas) is a base and transparent attempt at legitimacy for these
beliefs and deflection from genuine inquiry.
We don’t have to trade with China:
The Canada Pension
Plan Investment Board holds shares in a Chinese social media company used by
Communist Party agents to intimidate Conservatives in the last election,
records show. The Board had no comment on millions invested in operators of
WeChat, a platform used to distribute wanted posters of one candidate who was
forced to suspend his campaign: ‘The RCMP intercepted a credible threat to harm
me during the election.’
