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The scandal that just won't go away:

Ethics commissioner Mario Dion will be taking a long medical leave for unspecified reasons, but his office notes that investigations there will continue.

(Sidebar: oh, I'm sure.) 

** 

As another round of SNC-Lavalin revelations broke over the weekend, Justin Trudeau was spotted taking a breather in a remote corner of Southwest Florida.

“Canada’s prime minister, embroiled in a political scandal, is now escaping to Southwest Florida,” announced NBC 2, a local news affiliate who got exclusive word of the visiting national leader.

The broadcaster dispatched a reporter to North Captiva Island, a largely recreational island where Trudeau reportedly rented two large homes for his family and entourage. For much of the prime minister’s visit, the affiliate also kept up a live feed on the prime ministerial plane, a “maple-leaf-emblazoned” Bombardier Challenger parked at Page Field, a small airport close to Fort Myers, Florida.

(Sidebar: why does that sound familiar?)

** 

The privilege Trudeau waived was only partial, and Jody Wilson-Raybould still can’t fully speak about what happened after she left the Attorney General role.


She has said that she wants to testify again, and wants her privilege raised fully.

**

A Campaign Research poll shows just 13% believe Trudeau’s story on the PMO SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Meanwhile, 49% say they believe Jody Wilson-Raybould, 16% believe neither of them, and 22% say they aren’t sure who to believe.

(Sidebar: undecided wankers can't think for themselves.)

**

It was just over a week ago that Statistics Canada reported horrible economic growth numbers.

Real gross domestic product slowed down to 0.1% in the fourth quarter. Compare that to growth of 2.6% in the United States in the same period.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, real gross national income fell 1% mostly due to the low price Canadian oil was fetching on world markets.

Those are the kinds of economic numbers that should shake any government. Trudeau, and the rest of the country, barely noticed because we are trying to figure out if having friends in the PMO can actually get you out of criminal prosecution.

Last Friday’s job numbers were sold as good news and they were but for Ontario’s Doug Ford, not for Justin Trudeau.

The country added 56,000 jobs in February, mostly full-time — but also mostly in Ontario.

From the Statistics Canada news release: “Ontario was the sole province with a notable employment gain in February.”

Newfoundland, PEI, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan all lost jobs last month.

The 7,200 jobs lost in those provinces almost equate to the 9,000 SNC-Lavalin jobs that Trudeau is so desperate to save.

Of all the scandals that Pierre's idiot son sullied the country's reputations with - his numerous gaffes, his failed economic and foreign relations policies, his rewarding convicted terrorists (he's always had a soft spot for them) - this is the one thing that seems to stick.

Was the effect of Justin's arrogance and ignorance cumulative or are Canadians just slightly squeamish about corruption only?


Also - caught using templates for twitter praise, Justin's groupies prove that they cannot [insert verb here] nor are they [insert adjective here]. Everything they say and do must now be considered [expletive]: 

Oh my god it seems the Liberal Party of Canada is having its female MPs post prewritten boilerplate messages in support of Justin Trudeau. pic.twitter.com/Nh5E7X9rr3

— Sean Craig (@sdbcraig) March 9, 2019

 

**

pic.twitter.com/k0W3FDSFBf

— Mr. Pete V.V. (@pvandutch) March 10, 2019

It's just an economy:

Canadian workers at almost every economic level are paying significantly higher personal income-tax rates than their U.S. counterparts, undermining economic growth, says a new study by the Fraser Institute.

The report, Canada’s Rising Personal Tax Rates and Falling Tax Competitiveness, co-authored by Robert P. Murphy, Milagros Palacios and Jake Fuss, studied combined federal and provincial marginal income-tax rates on annual earnings from $50,000 to $300,000, adjusting for the U.S.-Canada exchange rate.

(The marginal income tax rate is the percentage of income you are taxed in the highest tax bracket for which you qualify.)

“At virtually every level of income, Canada’s tax rates are uncompetitive with the U.S.,” said Murphy, a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.

The report warns “high and increasing marginal tax rates — that is, the tax rate on the next dollar earned — discourage people from engaging in productive economic activity, ultimately hindering economic growth and prosperity. This occurs because marginal tax rates reduce the reward of earning more income and, in the case of personal income taxes, more labour income.”

The study says while U.S. income-tax rates have historically been lower than Canada’s (because of our publicly-funded health-care system, among other reasons), a series of federal and provincial income-tax hikes between 2009 and 2018 significantly increased the discrepancy.

The report found that as of 2018, in the 61 jurisdictions surveyed (10 Canadian provinces, 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia), marginal income-tax rates in Canada’s 10 provinces were higher than in any U.S. state, or higher with only a handful of exceptions.

It's an election year!:

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett says the government has reached a proposed settlement agreement with former Indian Day School students, including $10,000 in individual compensation.

Also - are there any recommendations for looking after your own kids?:

The report will reveal new details about how "the system turned Tina away" and new details about her biological parents and their contacts with the child welfare system, according to Favel.

Favel said she learned new insights into how troubled Fontaine's parents were, especially her biological mother.

"That family was doomed from the beginning," she said.

I'm sure it's a misunderstanding:

The three Chinese applicants for permanent resident status all received letters in 2016 saying there were reasonable grounds to believe they belonged to an organization that engaged in espionage, subversion or terrorism — making them inadmissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Either the applicant or a spouse worked for Huawei — one fairly senior, another a mid-level employee and the third a lower-level translator, said Lum.

Also: 

The RCMP said the youth knowingly facilitated a terrorist activity and counselled another person to "deliver, place, discharge or detonate an explosive or other lethal device" in a public place, though they also said no specific target had been set before they moved in.

A 20-year-old man was arrested at the same time, but was released hours later.

The bail hearing is expected to take two days, with the second one not scheduled until the end of the month.

A most inconvenient truth: 

The office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in responded sharply Tuesday to a conservative lawmaker’s accusation that he was acting as the “top spokesman” of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The Blue House said the comments by Na Kyung-won, floor leader of the Liberty Korea Party, were an insult to both Moon and South Koreans wanting peace, and demanded an apology.

Na’s speech at the National Assembly in Seoul was interrupted for about 20 minutes after legislators from the ruling liberal party reacted angrily to her comments, approaching the podium and engaging in shouting matches with opposition lawmakers.

“Do not waste energy that should be used for the country on insulting (South Korean) people and the head of state,” the Blue House said in its statement. “The Liberty Korea Party and floor leader Na should bow in apology to the people who yearn for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and permanent peace and prosperity.”

Na said Moon’s outreach to Pyongyang and proposals to restart inter-Korean economic projects banned under U.S.-led international sanctions are causing a rift with Washington, which has called for allies to maintain economic pressure until North Korea takes firmer steps toward relinquishing its nuclear weapons and missiles. She demanded Moon overhaul members of his security and diplomatic team and withdraw the appointment of Kim Yeon-chul, an outspoken supporter of inter-Korean rapprochement, as his new point-man on North Korea.

There is also that censorship of North Korean defectors. I'm sure that can't have been helpful. 


Also: 

U.N. experts say they are investigating possible violations of United Nations sanctions on North Korea in about 20 countries, from alleged clandestine nuclear procurement in China to arms brokering in Syria and military cooperation with Iran, Libya and Sudan.

This Iran:

Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, was handed a new sentence Monday that her husband said comprised 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory head scarves, was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran’s supreme leader, her lawyer said.

She was jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security — charges she denied — and was released after serving half her six-year term. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov human rights prize.

Speaking at a revolutionary court in Tehran on Monday, Judge Mohammad Moqiseh said that Sotoudeh had been sentenced to five years for assembling against national security and two years for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on Facebook that the sentence was decades in jail and 148 lashes, unusually harsh even for Iran, which cracks down hard on dissent and regularly imposes death sentences for some crimes.

Don't yell at your dogs. They have feelings, too:

French musher Nicolas Petit looked like he was in solid control of the world’s most famous sled dog race and about to erase a year of doubts and second-guessing after a last minute misstep cost him the 2017 title.

Then the dogs quit on him Monday morning.

A dog named Joey had been fighting with another dog on the team and jumped it during a break as the team was making its way to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race checkpoint of Koyuk on the Bering Sea coast.

“I yelled at Joey, and everybody heard the yelling, and that doesn’t happen,” Petit told the Iditarod Insider website. “And then they wouldn’t go anymore. Anywhere. So we camped here.”