Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week ounce of reason ...



Elbows up, everybody:

Don’t get too many plans for your tax refund, if you’re getting one. According to new data, Canadians are using it just to keep food on the table.

The cash crunch is forcing Canadians to rely on their tax returns to cover their day-to-day expenses. According to data, 40% of Canadians depend on their tax refund to help address cost-of-living expenses, and 28% are going to use it to pay for everyday essentials.

Gen Z and Millennials take the worst hit, with 53% and 48% respectively saying they’ll cash in their refund for such expenses compared to 40% of Gen Xers and 17% of Boomers.

Recent Abacus data shows that 67% of Canadians say the cost of living where they live is the worst they can ever remember it being. Only 11% say the cost of living isn’t severe.

And if you think this isn’t unique to Canada, you might be wrong. Recently, 46% of Americans said the cost of living was at its worst in memory. It would suggest that Canadians are feeling the financial heat even more than Americans. …

The recent financial struggles play out among partisan lines. While it’s true that 58% of Liberal voters in the poll say the cost of living is the worst in memory, many more Conservative voters (75%) take that stance.

“This is not a marginal concern or a background anxiety,” the December Abacus report says. “It is a dominant lived experience that continues to shape how Canadians interpret government performance, leadership, and competing policy priorities, alongside concern about Donald Trump, trade, and global instability.” …

(Sidebar; Donald Trump isn't the reason why Canadians are the poor cousins. We all know it.) 

The survey found Canadians view the rising cost of living as the far-and-away top priority, ahead of health-care, home ownership and Canada-U.S. relations and those findings are consistent across all regions and age groups. Grocery prices are a top concern, and they rise the older you get, from 61% of those aged 18 to 29 to 93% of those aged 60 and over. …

Abacus said Canadians who view cost-of-living as a top issue skew Conservative in terms of voter intention at 44%, with the Liberals at 38% and the NDP at 8%. Government approval reaches 41% for cost of living voters, with 57% among others. Similar numbers reflect approval for Prime Minister Mark Carney himself.

“These gaps matter. They show that affordability concerns are associated with weaker approval and softer personal ratings,” Abacus said. “At the same time, they also show that the issue has not yet become a defining political liability for the Carney government.”

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From 2014 to 2024, Canada’s real GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity grew by just 3.2 percent in total, an anemic 0.4 percent per year on average, and the third lowest among 38 advanced nations. Over the same period, the United States posted 20.2 percent total growth (1.9 percent annually), and the OECD average reached 15.3 percent (1.4 percent annually). The measurement shortcomings cannot explain five-to six-fold differences in growth rates. ...

Canada’s real GDP per capita now ranks 19th among 38 OECD countries, down two positions from 17th in 2014. More troubling is the deterioration in Canada’s relative position on two fronts. Against the United States, Canada fell from 83.1 percent of American GDP per capita in 2014 to just 71.4 percent in 2024. Against the OECD average, Canada historically exceeded it but dropped to 99.5 percent in 2024, falling below average for the first time in recorded history.

The trend is what matters. This is not a measurement quirk; it’s a systematic decline.


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The Charter is a garbage document written by a wealthy communist and meant to support the government more than the populace.


There is an important constitutional conference going on in Ottawa this week. Haven’t heard about it? Don’t feel badly. Neither have most provincial governments who stand to lose one of the most important powers they acquired with the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.  

The provincial premiers have not been invited. There is none of the pomp and circumstance and media coverage that normally accompany constitutional conventions. No, this will all take place very quietly in the chambers of the Supreme Court, where the Mark Carney Liberals are asking the Supreme Court to effectively amend the Charter by imposing new restrictions on how provincial governments can use their Section 33 notwithstanding power.

The occasion is an appeal from Quebec dealing with Bill 21, which prevents some civil servants, most notably teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work. Bill 21 also includes the use of Section 33 of the Charter, which states that a law “shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter.”  

This notwithstanding power allows a legislature to exempt one of its laws from any judicial declaration of invalidity arising under the designated sections of the Charter. Its practical effect is to give elected governments rather than judges the last word when there is a disagreement over the practical meaning of a right. And that’s where the political fight begins. 

In 1981, Trudeau’s original draft of the Charter had no notwithstanding clause. Section 33 was added only after eight provincial premiers — the “Gang of Eight” — made it clear that they would not accept Trudeau’s proposed Charter without it. Hard late-night bargaining resulted in a compromise. Trudeau got his Charter. The provinces got the notwithstanding clause.

(Sidebar: everyone should have rejected anything coming from that wife-beating draft dodger.) 

The premiers knew from experience that the text of the Constitution does not speak for itself. At the end of the day, the Constitution means what judges say it means. In the worst-case scenario, Quebec and the Western premiers feared that Ottawa could use the Charter as a form of “disallowance in disguise,” a federal policy veto of provincial policies exercised by federal judges rather than by federal politicians. …

Sensing the risk of losing the strategic value that the Supreme Court’s Charter decisions give to the federal government — i.e., disallowance in disguise — the Carney Liberals have now asked the Supreme Court to impose new restrictions on when and how a government (read: provincial government) can use the clause. Carney’s government is asking the Court to rule that the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause is unconstitutional. Ottawa’s legal argument contradicts both the text of Section 33 and its clearly documented purpose. 

That purpose was succinctly explained by former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed in 1983: “We needed to have the supremacy of the legislature over the courts.  … we did not (want) to be in a position where public policy was being dictated or determined by non-elected people.” Lougheed argued in a 1991 speech that the notwithstanding power provided Canada with a “system of checks and balances between the judiciary and legislators before judicial supremacy could assert itself.” He used the examples of both Great Britain and Australia to demonstrate that it is possible to have constitutional supremacy without judicial supremacy, the rule of law without the rule of lawyers. 

That was the deal back in 1982. But now Carney wants to break it.

Starting Tuesday, after opening statements on Monday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear three days of legal arguments on Bill 21. Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have intervened to support Quebec’s position: that its use of the notwithstanding clause prevents courts from even hearing a Charter challenge against Bill 21. Forty rights advocacy groups — a who’s who of the Court Party, almost all of whom receive funding from Ottawa — have intervened to support the federal government’s position: that the notwithstanding clause cannot be used pre-emptively to prevent courts from ruling on the constitutional validity of Bill 21. 

Cheered on by their Court Party supporters, will the nine Supremes — six of whom were appointed by Justin Trudeau — rule in favour of the Carney Liberals? If they do, they will have effectively amended Section 33 to mean something very different than what Quebec, all the Western premiers and even the Trudeau government understood it to mean in 1982. For the Supreme Court to impose any new restrictions on the use of the clause would be precisely the abuse of judicial review that Section 33 was designed to prevent. 

Legal commentators are already predicting that an adverse ruling against Quebec and its provincial allies could “inflame separatism” and lead to a “national unity” crisis. I agree. The logic of Section 38(3) of the Constitution, which permits opting out of certain amendments, should apply to Section 33 as well as to the provinces’ traditional constitutional powers. Section 38(3) gives every province the legal right to opt out of an otherwise valid constitutional amendment if the amendment removes one of a province’s enumerated powers.

Still suffering from the devastating economic effects of Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Policy, Lougheed and the other western premiers fought successfully to force Trudeau to add Section 92(A) to the new Constitution. Section 92(A) confirmed each province’s exclusive jurisdiction over the development and management of their natural resources. With first-hand experience of their political vulnerability to central Canadian majorities, the western premiers saw Section 38(3) as an insurance policy against any future attempt by Ottawa to repeal their newly acquired (92A) powers.

Like Section 92(A), Section 33 is a constitutional power of each province. Why should Ottawa be allowed to do indirectly though the Supreme Court what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly by a formal constitutional amendment?



Oh, the Liberals haven't stopped their march to fascism there:






Cabinet has found $60 billion in savings in unnamed programs, says Finance Minister FranΓ§ois-Philippe Champagne. Budget documents tabled to date do not identify $60 billion in savings, and Champagne did not elaborate: “We should put the record straight.”

Printed or borrowed money?

Discuss.




Why do the Liberals surround themselves with incompetent aides?


An error by an anonymous clerk is to blame for records showing Prime Minister Mark Carney was untruthful with reporters when discussing his private meetings with Chinese Communist leaders, the Commons was told yesterday. The MP who uncovered the fact said Carney keeps “trying to change his story.”





RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme yesterday would not discuss failures identified in a federal audit showing the force is short thousands of members despite exorbitant spending on recruits. “We move forward,” he said in a statement.



It's the Tumbler Ridge Effect:



This is straight-up contempt that only Canadians are happy to tolerate:

Opposition members yesterday challenged the Department of Immigration to account for policies that cost Canadians’ jobs. “The unemployment rate for students is at 18 percent,” Conservative MP Vincent Neil Ho (Richmond Hill South, Ont.) told the Commons immigration committee.


Also - clearly not:

Immigration Minister Lena Diab yesterday denied responsibility for an audit that found her department was indifferent to known cases of fraud by foreign students. “We are doing our job,” she told the Commons immigration committee.



Good:

Cuban society, due to a U.S. naval embargo, is close to collapse.

Friends of Havana blame the U.S., but the Trump administration had to act before China turned the island into a military bastion.

America took control of Venezuela's national oil company, PDVSA, after the January 3 raid that resulted in the capture of NicolΓ‘s Maduro and his wife. Then the U.S. stopped the flow of Venezuelan oil to the Cuban regime.

At the same time, the Trump administration, by threatening tariffs on oil suppliers, imposed a de facto oil embargo on Havana. The U.S. Navy has deterred vessels from unloading cargo in Cuba.

To get through the American picket line, tankers have been employing deceptive tactics. For instance, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, carrying gasoil, was falsely broadcasting that it was "not under command" and drifting in the Sargasso Sea for almost three weeks. In reality, the ship spoofed its location and probably unloaded 190,000 barrels in Cuba in the early part of this month.

A delivery from the Sea Horse, according to the Windward site, would be "the first confirmed arrival of a refined products cargo at the island since early January."

As a result of the American actions, Cuba has almost run out of energy. The Cuban grid has collapsed three times so far this month, throwing the island into darkness.

"Why is the U.S. doing this?" asks Cambridge University's Jostein Hauge on X, referring to the blockade on Cuba. "For no reason other than its dislike of the Cuban regime. Cuba poses no threat to the U.S."

Really?

"China uses Cuba as a platform for many of its regional intelligence and security operations," Joseph Humire, then executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told this author in 2021.

There is, most prominently, the Lourdes facility just west of Havana near Bejucal, once the Soviet Union's largest listening station outside its borders. The Chinese are thought to have taken over the facility shortly after the fall of the USSR.

China now has more than just Lourdes. A December 2024 Center for Strategic & International Studies report identifies three more likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There is the Soviet-era Calabazar, and a second, Wajay, appears to have been built after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is also a new station, El Salao.

The CSIS report notes that unconfirmed accounts of China's intelligence presence on the island began with the visit of China's Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 1999.

The Chinese may have been operating listening posts in Cuba since 1993, R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College told Gatestone at the beginning of last year.

China and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2023, agreed in principle to establish a new listening site on Cuban soil. The Biden administration denied the report, but two days later declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals-intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.

Cuba is an ideal location to surveil America. "Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military," the CSIS report states. "The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites."

Moreover, Cuba is an ideal location for a Chinese military base. "China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida's coast," reported the Wall Street Journal in 2023.

China stated that the Wall Street Journal report was "totally mendacious and unfounded," but it is nonetheless evident that China wants an enhanced facility on Cuba, just as it has established de facto military sites throughout Latin America.

Moreover, President Donald Trump acted before the Chinese could base missiles in Cuba.

So, whatever one thinks of the harsh consequences of the U.S. naval embargo — there is a worsening humanitarian crisis in Cuba now — the Havana regime, by allowing the Chinese to have the run of the island, does pose a threat to the United States.


Also:


And:

As Can Force One moved toward Chinese airspace, the delegation’s electronic devices were powered down and secured in signal-blocking bags. Burner phones were passed out: the only machines the public servants, staff and journalists would be allowed to use for the duration of their stay. The Canadian Prime Minister’s security team was taking no risks.
But Mark Carney himself was on his way to do something many back home would consider very risky indeed: signing agreements with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade, global governance, energy, media access and law enforcement. The country Carney had called, only one year ago, Canada’s “biggest security threat,” was about to accomplish a magical transformation from frog to prince, from interfering foreign power to “strategic partner” in the “new world order.”
Faced with fears of a recession, stagnant GDP and a struggling jobs market, Carney is trying to address the impacts of America’s trade war with Canada by pursuing a policy of diversification. And while Canadian industry leaders and geopolitical experts support diversifying with trading partners such as India, Japan and South Korea, it is widely feared that a rapprochement with China puts Canada in a position of vulnerability. ...
On the same trip, a memorandum of understanding between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and China’s Ministry of Public Security was signed, agreeing to cooperate on corruption and transnational crimes such as drug trafficking. But the Ministry of Public Security has for years sought to control and intimidate members of the Chinese diaspora in Canada. Only last year, it offered a million-dollar bounty for the arrest of a Canadian federal candidate, Joe Tay, harassing him until, afraid to leave his house, he abandoned his campaign. Given this abuse, cooperation that would grant Chinese police access to information about Canadian residents should be completely ruled out. But is it? Nobody knows; the text of the memorandum has been kept secret. Shouldn’t Canadians be told, considering what’s at stake?
Collaboration with another country’s law enforcement presumes a certain amount of common ground on law, ethics and human rights. This does not exist with China. Law enforcement in China exists not to protect public safety, but to protect the stability of the regime. Such cooperation would also presume the Chinese government wishes to put a stop to transnational crime such as fentanyl trafficking. Garry Clement, who has spent five decades in law enforcement, intelligence and financial crime investigation, testified before the Canadian parliament that, far from wanting to end the fentanyl crisis, the Chinese government was, in his opinion, at its root. He went so far as to call the People’s Republic of China the largest transnational organized crime group he has ever seen.
Clement says cooperation with the PRC is never apolitical. Michael Kovrig, one of the “Two Michaels” taken hostage by China at the time of the Huawei crisis in 2018, and incarcerated for more than 1,000 days, agrees. Kovrig was, at the time of his arrest, a Canadian diplomat in China, working for the International Crisis Group. His arrest violated multiple international agreements signed by the Chinese government.
Kovrig, who was released in 2021 after Canada finally allowed detained Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou to return to China, is concerned about Carney’s deal with Beijing. He believes China intends to use Canada as a dumping ground for its excess production, which could spell the end of Canada’s manufacturing sector. Canada cannot compete with Chinese manufacturers because Canadian companies have to pay their workers more, aren’t heavily subsidized by government and are required to adhere to quality standards Chinese companies are not. Also, China isn’t interested in buying more costly products manufactured in Canada.
A country without manufacturing power lacks the ability to defend itself, to make and repair infrastructure and to be self-reliant at times of crisis. A country that cannot produce its own food is at the mercy of the nations who supply it. The canola deal that Carney has struck with China will certainly make it easier for farmers to sell their crops – but if Canada begins to rely on China accepting their canola, the CCP will be able to twist Canada’s arm into decisions and attitudes favorable to China. Will Canada dare to condemn China if it decides to attack Taiwan? Will Canada be pressured into silence if China commits human rights abuses?
If there were to be conditions under which trade with China were possible, they would include a government in a position of strength, capable of wielding China’s desire for status and influence as a bargaining chip, a government able to protect Canada from foreign interference. Most of all, they would include a government with the moral courage to counter the inhumanity of communism with the principles of justice, freedom and charity affirmed in Canada’s Christian heritage and its roots in European civilization.
Carney claims to be a devout Catholic, but his government is about to pass Bill C-9, legislation that seeks to criminalize passages of the Bible – the word of God – as hate speech. What is more fundamental to western civilization than the Bible? And what could signal weakness more clearly to enemies of western civilization than censoring its foundational text?

(Sidebar: devout, my @$$! Did he erupt into flame when he said that?) 

At Davos in January, Carney told the middle powers that “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Perhaps Carney should listen to himself. A Canada ashamed of its identity, negotiating with a communist one-party authoritarian state from a position of moral weakness, without enforceable safeguards, may find itself in the soup.


 

Why do want to go extinct, Japan?:

More than 60% of unmarried adults under the age of 30 in Japan do not want children, as they are concerned about economic burdens and career disruption, according to recent findings by a major pharmaceutical company.


Rohto Pharmaceutical conducted an online poll of 400 unmarried men and women between ages 18 and 29 in December as part of its annual survey on pregnancy and family planning.

The figure reached 62.6% in 2025, jumping 18 percentage points from 2020, when the annual survey first asked the question.

And the percentage of unmarried female respondents who did not want children surpassed that of men for the first time. Nearly 65% of women said that they did not feel inclined to have children — the highest rate on record — while the percentage was 60.7％ among male respondents.

More than 70% of women surveyed said they were concerned about the financial burden of having a child, compared with 63.2% for men.

In addition, 61.4% of women said they felt that having a child would obstruct their careers, compared with 51.2% of men who felt so.

Even among single men and women who are interested in having a child, the age at which they hope to have their first child has gone up. In 2018 when the company first asked the question, nearly 40% of the group said they wanted a child by age 30, while just 1 in 4 held such hopes in 2025.



Books.

This guys gets it:

A Vietnamese interpreter in Sendai is supporting his fellow countrymen in detention centers and prisons in Japan by sending them books written in their native language.

“Even those who committed crimes can change their lives if they read books and acquire the right mindset,” said Do Van Tuan, a firm believer in the power of books.

The 45-year-old interpreter often visits the Sendai Detention House in the city’s Wakabayashi Ward, one of the first places that prompted him to pursue the cause. When he accompanied a visitor to the detention center as an interpreter, he came to learn of the situation faced by foreign detainees, particularly Vietnamese inmates.


 One who languished under communist dictatorship knows whereof he speaks.

We ought to listen.



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Monday, March 23, 2026

We Don't Have to Trade With China

The other communist hellhole:

During Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China inJanuary, the issue of human rights wasn’t “proactively” raised duringdiscussions with Chinese officials, according to the Privy Council Office(PCO).

“Topics of human rights and foreign interference were not brought up proactively by the Canadian Prime Minister,” says a document tabled in the House of Commons on March 13 by the PCO, which is sometimes referred to as the prime minister’s department.

The document, first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter, was tabled in response to a Jan. 26 request from Conservative MP Ned Kuruc, seeking details on which meetings during Carney’s January trip to China included discussions of human rights or foreign interference.

Kuruc had also asked for details of all meetings between Carney and other ministers with Chinese officials during the trip.

The document indicates Carney met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Jan. 16 for roughly two hours, including a luncheon. It also lists a private meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and meetings with executives including from the China National Petroleum Corporation, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of Canada, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, the National People’s Congress, Rongsheng Petrochemicals, and the People’s Bank of China.

Carney had told reporters in Beijing on Jan. 16 that he raised the issue of human rights in his talks with Chinese officials, including the plight of former Hong Kong media executive and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, who has family in Canada. Lai, a former head of the now shuttered Apply Daily newspaper, was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong under the China-imposed national security law.

“These issues were raised in our broader discussions over the past few days,” Carney said, noting that Canada had led a G7 statement condemning the conviction of Lai and calling for his release.

When a reporter asked if concerns about human rights and freedom of expression are things Canada “just can’t afford to think about because we’ve got to diversify our markets,” Carney responded, “no.”

 

For the record, Mark Carney is a useless b@$#@rd.

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But Carney isn't the only one exploiting Chinese slaves:

Colorado Road was never a place where much happened. Set off on the impoverished fringes of this obscure Brazilian city, it bore little of note beyond a small ballet school, a few sun-scorched shrubs and a row of humble dwellings hidden behind decaying walls — until one day in May 2024, when Daniela de Oliveira opened her iron gate and heard a ruckus across the street.

Dozens of Chinese men were getting off a bus and heading into a pair of squat two-story buildings at the end of the road. Oliveira assumed the outsiders had some type of meeting and would soon be on their way. She’d been inside the structures, painted dark green, and knew they weren’t nearly big enough to house them all.

But one day turned to the next, and soon Oliveira realized her new neighbors — 56 itinerant Chinese laborers, none of whom spoke any Portuguese — were here to stay.

As weeks passed, Oliveira’s curiosity deepened. Their food was prepared in an improvised kitchen in the garage, amid industrial detritus and vermin, and they never seemed to do anything for fun. All they did was work.

“Seven days a week,” Oliveira, 35, recalled. “Sunday to Sunday. I never saw any taking a day off.”

They departed every morning at dawn and didn’t return until dusk. The hours in between were spent helping to build Latin America’s largest electric car factory for the world’s biggest electric automaker, China’s BYD. Constructed on CamaΓ§ari’s Henry Ford Avenue, on land formerly used by the Ford Motor Company, the plant represented one of China’s boldest bets yet in its bid to control the future of automaking.

It also reflected China’s rise in South America and America’s receding influence. China has replaced the United States as the continent’s top trading partner, expanding its annual total trade from $8 billion in 2000 to more than $365 billion in 2024, according to the World Trade Organization. One of South America’s largest ports, in Chancay, Peru, was built with Chinese money. Chinese funds are bringing a metro line to BogotΓ‘, Colombia, and powering a hydroelectric revolution in the Amazon forest. And now its signature automaker has leapfrogged Tesla in global sales, owing in part to its rapid expansion in Brazil.

One evening in December 2024, a phalanx of government cars descended on Colorado Road. Federal police formed a perimeter around the workers’ living quarters. Government investigators hustled inside. They were stunned by what they found.

Chinese men were inhabiting practically every square inch. Most slept without mattresses. Trash lay everywhere. Food was stored on the ground. In one of the buildings, 31 laborers shared a single bathroom; it was coated with an “excess of sludge,” government inspectors reported.

This went far beyond labor violations, the inspectors concluded. The workers enlisted by BYD to build its keystone factory in the Americas had been forced, they wrote, into conditions that recalled “slavery.”

The Washington Post reviewed more than 5,000 pages of court records in Brazil and China, and interviewed 41 people with direct knowledge of the case and labor conditions, including Brazilian investigators, former and current BYD employees, and workers who traveled here from the Chinese countryside in search of opportunity. They show how one of China’s most consequential international projects turned into a geopolitical clash over worker rights and human dignity.

The Chinese companies involved in the project have denied the slavery allegations and deemed them culturally insensitive.

 

 

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