Mid-Week Post

Your plateau of the work-week ...



The main political parties in Quebec have opted not make the random shooting of six Muslims a day of remembrance:

The head of an influential Muslim group said he's disappointed Quebec's main opposition parties do not support a call by his organization to make the anniversary of Quebec City's deadly mosque shooting a day of action on Islamophobia.

Last Friday, the National Council of Canadian Muslims wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asking for the Jan. 29 anniversary of the mass shooting one year ago to become a national day of remembrance and action on Islamophobia.

Six Muslim men were shot and killed and 19 others were wounded in an attack on the mosque during prayers last Jan. 29. Alexandre Bissonnette is to stand trial in March on six charges of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder.

But this week, the province's two main opposition parties made it clear that, while they support a commemoration, they believe Islamophobia is a loaded term.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ibn Warraq:

An obsession with conspiracies leads to fatalism, a refusal to take charge of one's own destiny or to take responsibility for the manifest backwardness of one's own culture.

(Warraq, Ibn. Why the West Is the Best. Encounter Books, 2011. pg. 159)




Badgered at town hall meeting organised to make the average Canadian forget that he is a foppish cretin and a complete stuttering coward, Trudeau tries to justify handing convicted terrorist, Omar Khadr, $10.5 million - and he fails spectacularly (as one would expect):

“Why do you think it’s OK to give $10.5 million to a person that killed a soldier?” she asked.

“OK, that’s a great question,” Trudeau replied.

No, it isn't a great question, Justin. It's one that makes people very angry, even now. You can run to Nova Scotia and repeat the same spiel there you did when people first found out that you handed money to a terrorist whose IEDs may very well have blown off the legs of Canadian servicemen and women but you can't run away from the truth. You need people to be alright with this blood money or you wouldn't be polling everybody.



But Justin wasn't done with his deflection tour:

Justin Trudeau was going to find himself in hot water one way or another when he took a trip to the Aga Khan's private island, then later attended a pair of meetings about one of the spiritual leader's projects, the former House of Commons ethics watchdog said Wednesday.

Mary Dawson — whose final major pronouncement as federal ethics commissioner was to call the prime minister on the carpet over that ill-advised family trip in December 2016 — was the star witness at a special hearing of the Commons ethics committee, which has been seized of late with parsing the findings in her ominously titled "Trudeau Report."

In particular, committee members were focused on the question of how the word "friend" is defined in the Conflict of Interest Act. Trudeau has long defended the trip on the grounds that the Aga Khan is a close personal friend.

Dawson, however, concluded that Trudeau couldn't be considered a friend of the wealthy spiritual leader, considering how little the two have interacted over the years — which meant the trip should be subject to an ethics review.

She concluded Trudeau violated four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act when he and members of his family accepted the trip to the private island, since it could be seen as a gift designed to influence the prime minister.

She also found Trudeau should have recused himself from two meetings focused on a $15-million federal grant to the endowment fund of the billionaire philanthropist’s Global Centre for Pluralism. However, Dawson found no evidence that Trudeau used his position to further the Aga Khan’s private interest.

If the two were indeed friends, Trudeau would have been in trouble by sitting in on the two meetings, but not the trip, Dawson told the committee. In the opposite scenario, he would have been in trouble over the trip — in particular for using the Aga Khan's private helicopter.

"One way or another, there was going to be a problem," Dawson testified.

** 

Justin Trudeau took a light-hearted jab at what critics might call his penchant for tropical vacations Wednesday as he prepares for another stop on his cross-country town hall tour.

In Hamilton for the second of a series of cross-country question-and-answer sessions with Canadians, Trudeau made the crack during a radio interview with K-Lite FM hosts Sunni Genesco and Matt Hayes, who were broadcasting from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

He said he'd consider attending the pair's 25th anniversary party later this year, but stopped himself: "Is it going to be in Mexico? Because I've got to be careful."

Wow.

That was a funny as handing millions of dollars to convicted terrorist and then meeting his former brother-in-law before he got charged with sexual assault.




Hey! Does everyone remember when the Liberal Party was the party of the middle-class?

According to data published by Vancouver’s Fraser Institute in a year-end analysis, “81% of middle-class families in Canada are paying higher federal income taxes” under the Liberals than under the Harper Tories.

And the increase under the Liberals has been substantial, too, “about $840 more a year,” according to Fraser Institute.

Hey! Does everyone remember when Trudeau rolled out the welcome mat for illegal migrants?

When the Trump administration issued an immigration ban on citizens of seven majority Muslim countries a year ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent out an unambiguous tweet about Canada’s stance on refugees and asylum seekers.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength,” Trudeau wrote on Jan. 28.

But when U.S. Homeland Security announced this week that it was withdrawing Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for 200,000 Salvadorans, giving them 18 months to sort out their immigration status permanently or face deportation, the reaction from the Canadian government was more muted.

Fearing an influx of newcomers crossing “irregularly” into Canada from the United States, the Canadian government has embarked on an information campaign to discourage Salvadorans from trekking north, as thousands of Haitians did when threatened with a loss of protected status last summer.

The information campaigns that resulted in more illegal migrants flooding into Canada? Those campaigns?




What town-hall meeting could gloss over this?

Canada is increasingly convinced that U.S. President Donald Trump will soon announce that the United States intends to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, two government sources said on Wednesday.

If the nay-sayers could tell everyone how they would adjust the payroll, that would be great:

When you make things more expensive, people buy less of it

Many of the Canadian governments now backing a $15 minimum wage are also supporting a carbon tax. The principle of the carbon tax, of course, is that people will buy less fossil fuels if those fuels cost more. There’s no reason to believe the same principle doesn’t apply to workers. Labour, after all, is just another input into the cost of running a business. If a law were passed that suddenly made avocados more expensive, few would be surprised if restaurants started going easier on the guacamole. When diesel prices go up, it’s expected that trucking companies will start trying to increase their fleet’s fuel efficiency. Similarly, if a worker is more expensive, it’s rational to expect that employers will be more hesitant to hire them.

**

The window tax was also instructively unhealthy. To save on taxes, buildings, especially tenements, were made dark and damp. Just because something is well-intentioned doesn’t mean ignoring incentives won’t harm intended beneficiaries. Again the Ontario minimum wage, pricing teens out of their first job, springs to mind, or should.

**

Labour organizations across Ontario are holding rallies today to protest the actions some Tim Hortons franchises have taken in response to an increase in the province’s minimum wage.

Since the rate rose to $14 an hour on Jan. 1, several franchisees have announced they’re reducing employee benefits and eliminating paid breaks.

They say doing so is a necessary measure to help offset the added costs of the minimum wage increase.

But labour groups describe the company as “wildly profitable” and argue Tim Hortons and its parent company can afford to pay employees at the new rate without taking away previous perks.

Protests have been scheduled at more than a dozen Tim Hortons locations across the province throughout the day.

I'm sure these angry masses have just the solution that would make everyone happy and will provide that solution when pressed.

Any day now.  

Big Aboriginal needs victims, not people who remember their childhoods differently. It needs the accoutrements of post-modern Western life but without the acknowledgement of the ability and wherewithal that provided it. Above all, Big Aboriginal needs to know it can pull strings whenever it wants:

The letter Scheer cited read in part: “I’m no anthropologist, but it seems every opportunistic culture, subsistence hunter/gatherers seeks to get what they can for no effort. There is always a clash between industrial/organized farming culture that values effort as opposed to a culture that will sit and wait until the government gives them stuff.”

Scheer said that promoting “this comment is offensive and unacceptable for a Conservative Parliamentarian. To suggest that indigenous Canadians are lazy compared to other Canadians, is simply racist.”

But that was just a part of the letter, from someone identified as “Paul” on Beyak’s website.

Paul also wrote, immediately after the excerpt Scheer used, this: “Until that happens, it appears they will let everyone around them die. It’s (a) brutal way to live but that’s how it looks to me.

“If you took a bunch of Amish farmers from southern Ontario and banished them to a reserve in Northern Ontario, within a year they would have built all of their members a new home, a new church and barns for every homestead.

“Within a year, they would have dug wells and built a water treatment plant even if it was a simple sand, gravel and charcoal facility.

“Within two years, they would be exporting lumber and furniture to southern Ontario.

“At the same time, the aboriginals relocated to Amish country near Kitchener would have burned down the house and left the fields to gully and rot.”

And before the offending paragraph, Paul wrote this: “From the history I have read, it is likely that the Aboriginals received better treatment and education than society gave the Irish, the Scots, the Polish, the Jews and other minority or out-of-power groups, like the poor…”

One of the points Paul was attempting to make was one that many who wrote Beyak, and whose letters are also posted on her website, also made — that it was a much harsher world then, for everyone, that spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child was one of the operating credos of the day, and that it’s unfair to judge solely through the rear-view mirror. 

China will not attend a meeting on the crisis on the Korean Peninsula because it does not believe such a meeting will be fruitful:

China says it will not be attending an international meeting on North Korea next week in Vancouver, raising questions about whether the event will have any real impact.

The federal government is keeping a tight lid on exactly which countries have been invited to the meeting in Vancouver next week, which Canada is co-hosting with the United States.

But China says it will not be attending and that it believes the summit will hurt rather than help peace efforts, while Bloomberg News quoted a Japanese official raising questions about the fact countries like Colombia and Greece will be taking part.

Global Affairs Canada says it has repeatedly updated China on the Vancouver meeting, but won't say whether it was invited to attend nor provide a list of invited countries.

The meeting is ostensibly meant to demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the North Korean threat, discuss ways to strengthen sanctions against the country and look for diplomatic solutions to the crisis.

And that is why China is not attending. The meeting itself is a virtue-signalling farce spearheaded by the world's laughing-stock:

Two of North Korea’s closest neighbors have criticized Canada’s effort to help coordinate the international response to Kim Jong Un’s weapons program.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wednesday that an upcoming Canadian-organized meeting on North Korea would “not help” because it didn’t include key players, adding that it would “harm joint efforts to improve the situation on the peninsula.” Japan, South Korea, India and Sweden are among those invited. China and Russia -- who supported the North Korea side during the war -- were not.

Meanwhile, a Japanese foreign ministry official questioned the need for including countries as distant as Colombia and Greece.

Why would China take Canada seriously? It knows it has Trudeau in its pocket, that Canada is economically, militarily and politically weak and that unless Canada is willing to stamp down on China as Japan and the US might, China can continue backing the Kim regime until it does have a fully functional missile that can flatten Sapporo.

China simply doesn't have time to flit about at the kids' table.


Also - Moon needs these Olympics and - thanks to American co-operation - he has them:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued.

It will be back to sabre-rattling in March.


(Merci)




It seems that the comfort woman issue was not as hot as some let others to believe:

South Korea announced Tuesday it will not seek to renegotiate the 2015 landmark deal with Japan on the “comfort women” issue but at the same time indirectly urged Japan to extend a fresh “voluntary, heart-felt apology” for the victims forced to work at Japanese military brothels before and during World War II.

The announcement immediately drew strong protests from Tokyo. Under the 2015 deal, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has already expressed “his most sincere apologies and remorse” to all the former comfort women and Japan provided ¥1 billion to South Korean fund for victims, although Tokyo has denied any legal responsibility for compensation.

Well, obviously:

The Trump administration has issued some of its strongest words yet on China’s moves in the disputed South China Sea, accusing Beijing of “provocative militarization” of the strategic waterway, according to a top State Department official.

The condemnation of China’s push to fortify its outposts and claims in the contested waters comes amid the ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis, which some analysts say has captured the lion’s share of the White House’s attention. They say this has left Beijing with a freer hand to pursue its goals in the South China Sea.

And now, secret forest paths that took the faithful to Mass during times of persecution:

On Ireland’s southwest coast, in County Kerry, there is a small village called Caherdaniel. Nearby, there is a national park, a fort that offers glimpses of the Skellig Islands, and the sloping shores of Derrynane Bay. And, etched into this countryside, is the Caherdaniel Mass Path. Like other such paths around Ireland, this narrow track was used by Catholics to attend mass 300 years ago, during a time of religious persecution.