For a Tuesday

Much happening ...




The scandal that will never die. Ever:

A confidential document sent to the Liberal Party of Canada in 2016, and obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada, reveals how top officials at the embattled engineering firm SNC-Lavalin were named in a scheme to illegally influence Canadian elections.

The list of names, compiled in 2016 by federal investigators probing political party donations and leaked to CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête, raises new questions about an agreement by the Commissioner of Canada Elections not to prosecute the company.

The federal Liberals were sent the list in a letter marked "confidential" from the Commissioner of Canada Elections — the independent office tasked with investigating election law violations — on Aug. 5, 2016. But for nearly three years, neither Elections Canada nor the Liberal Party shared that information publicly.

The investigation reveals that over a period of more than five years between 2004 and 2009, 18 former SNC-Lavalin employees, directors and some spouses contributed nearly $110,000 to the federal Liberals, including to four party leadership campaigns and four riding associations in Quebec.

According to the letter, the investigation found that SNC-Lavalin reimbursed all of those individual donations — a practice forbidden under the Canada Elections Act.

Is this what Jody Wilson-Raybould was canned for or is the rabbit-hole much deeper?

Oh! It appears it is:

"Despite the evidence collected by investigators, the Commissioner of Canada Elections decided not to bring charges against the company" https://t.co/pR3vHmwnDL

— Rachel Curran (@reicurran) April 30, 2019

 

 But Justin won't take that dirty SNC-Lavalin money now that he's been caught:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says today's federal Liberal party wouldn't accept political donations like those that got SNC-Lavalin in trouble in the late 2000s.

Trudeau says the party has improved its standards and, in his words, "that is not what happens any more."

The Quebec-based engineering firm reached a "compliance agreement" with Canada's elections commissioner in 2016, admitting that executives who'd left the company by then had convinced employees to give money to both the Liberal and Conservative parties.

The agreement was public at the time but a CBC report today reveals the names of the SNC-Lavalin employees the elections commissioner believed were involved.

Reimbursing the donors with company bonuses was a way around an election law that forbids corporations to make political donations.

Also in moral and political corruption news:

About 108,000 millionaires migrated across borders last year, a 14 percent increase from the prior year, and more than double the level in 2013, according to Johannesburg-based New World Wealth. Australia, U.S. and Canada are the top destinations, according to the research firm, while China and Russia are the biggest losers. The U.K. saw around 3,000 millionaires depart last year with Brexit and taxation cited as possible reasons. 

**

The AIIB, launched in 2015, is a global development bank designed to fund infrastructure throughout Asia. Think the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. But instead of being dominated by the United States, this one’s headed up by China.

The U.S. and Japan have never joined the bank for fear that its purpose is to elbow the Americans out of this line of work and have China slowly replace them as the dominant player. While Canada initially refused to join under Stephen Harper’s leadership, Justin Trudeau has since signed us up for it. ...

The money Scheer wants us to put on hold — $256 million — is actually the cash we’ve ponied up to own our shares in the bank. We own 1% of the bank, while China is far in front with 30% ownership. The second place shareholder is India, with a much smaller 8%.

“By doing nothing, this policy of appeasement that Justin Trudeau has pursued with the government in China has clearly not worked,” Scheer said during his news conference in Ottawa.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here - "In the 1960s, a 41-year-old Pierre Trudeau visited Communist China during the great famine and co-wrote a book hailing Maoism and denying the existence of a national food policy that killed 38 million people. He never retracted his China views.")


This China:

Speaking Monday on Parliament Hill, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the Canadian’s sentence was “inhumane.”

“We’re very concerned by this sentence,” she told gathered reporters. “Canada stands firmly opposed to the use of the death penalty everywhere around the world. We think that this is a cruel and inhumane punishment which should not be used in any country. We are obviously particularly concerned when it is applied to Canadians.”

Get off of your cellulite-riddled @$$ and do something about it then, Chrystia.


Also - this is socialism. This is how it works. It is not kind nor gentle nor fair. This has been demonstrated time and time and time again. Anyone who asks for it should be slapped upside the head for their good and the good of all humanity:

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro, and violence broke out at anti-government protests as the country hit a new crisis point after years of political and economic chaos. ...

Protests broke out on Tuesday. A National Guard armored car slammed into anti-Maduro protesters who were throwing stones and hitting the vehicle in Caracas.

It's just money:

Canada’s lack of oil pipeline capacity cost our national economy $20.6 billion last year, or 1% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.

Even worse, the fiscally-conservative think tank says, a unique set of circumstances in 2018 meant losses in that year alone almost matched total losses for the previous five years combined, from 2013 to 2017, at $20.7 billion.

Out with the old and in with the new:

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney swore in 22 new cabinet members Tuesday morning at Government House in Edmonton.

It was a low-key affair compared with the public celebrations of the previous NDP government in 2015 when thousands of people showed up to the steps of the legislature for that swearing-in.

(Sidebar: and he has quite the mess to clean up.)

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On the last day of his 30-year reign, Emperor Akihito on Tuesday said he “sincerely thanks” the Japanese people for their support of him as the symbol of the state, paving the way for the nation’s first abdication in around 200 years and Crown Prince Naruhito’s accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne at midnight.

“Today, I am concluding my duties as the emperor,” he told a nationally televised ceremony marking his abdication.

“Since ascending the throne 30 years ago, I have performed my duties as the emperor with a deep sense of trust in and respect for the people, and I consider myself most fortunate to have been able to do so.

“I sincerely thank the people who accepted and supported me in my role as the symbol of the state,” he said, before closing his final remark as the emperor with a prayer for peace in times ahead.

“I pray, with all my heart, for peace and happiness for all the people in Japan and around the world.”

At no point did the emperor emeritus (not to be confused with pope emeritus), this grandfather of the nation, confuse the people he once led with people he did not.


The thing that now dogs Kenney and his new government is the resignation of Ed Whittingham:

A former Pembina Institute executive whose appointment to the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator drew criticism from the United Conservative Party has resigned after what he calls a "smear campaign" orchestrated by members of the incoming government.

In his letter of resignation, which he released to the media on Monday, Ed Whittingham says he realizes his decision to step down might be symbolic, "given the new government's well-publicized campaign to misrepresent my record and fire me from the AER's board for being a 'cat among the pigeons.'"

Yes, about that:

Ed Whittingham — the former executive director of the Pembina Institute from 2011 to 2017 — was appointed to a five-year, part-time, $76,500 per year directorship at Alberta’s Energy Regulator (AER), with an additional $750 for each day he participates in meetings with the organization, which is tasked with ensuring “the safe, efficient, orderly, and environmentally responsible development of oil, oilsands, natural gas, and coal resources over their entire life cycle.”

Whittingham’s appointment is TzeporahBerman 2.0 — only worse.

According to Vivian Krause, the Vancouver-based researcher who has followed the money trail and uncovered the concerted foreign Tar Sands Campaign to keep Alberta’s oil from reaching tide-water, Pembina has accepted almost $8 million of foreign funding from U.S. foundations — groups such as the Tides Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and other U.S. organizations under the auspices of the Tar Sands Campaign, which had the stated aim of “landlocking” Alberta’s oilsands by preventing any pipelines from being built.

He's right. Kenney was being too harsh.


Also:

“We’re looking at a between $8-million and $9-million hit last year with our lost revenue,” said Matt Keliher, general manager of solid waste management services for the City of Toronto. 

The sharp drop in profits has put municipalities at a crossroads: raise taxes or cut programs.

If "traditional knowledge" is so wonderful, why hasn't it worked before?:

Saugeen First Nation Chief Lester Anoquot said during a break in the hearing that the opening days of the hearings at Cape Croker would feature testimony from some of the band members who hold traditional knowledge.

“It gives more of a perspective from the natives’ creation story, for example, or how we walk through life or maybe some of the philosophies that go with living the Anishinaabe way of life,” Anoquot said.

If one recognises that actions before birth can affect someone after he or she is born, then why not go the whole nine yards and enshrine it in law? Otherwise, don't bother:

“Public policy and clinical care for people with FASD needs to change to respond to such predictable outcomes.”

Popova and her team estimated more than 400 disease conditions might be associated with fetal alcohol exposure, including impaired vision and hearing, heart problems, urinary and respiratory defects and joints problems. She estimates the annual cost of FASD in Canada is $1.8 billion.

Also:

For the first time in the history of Noonan syndrome, a genetic condition that prevents various parts of the body from developing normally and that afflicts one baby in every 2,500 born, Montreal doctors have reversed the most lethal symptom: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an excessive thickening of the heart that, in its most severe form, kills 70 per cent of babies before they turn a year old.

The doctors used a repurposed cancer drug to keep Lyana’s heart from essentially suffocating itself, and they’re now preparing to stop treatment in the hope the disease has essentially burned itself out. There is no guarantee, however, that it won’t come roaring back.

Well, it's a start.




Sri Lankan Catholics are livid that the government that failed to protect them before will not do so again:

Sri Lankan security officials have warned that Islamist militants behind Easter Sunday's suicide bombings are planning attacks and could be dressed in uniform, as the archbishop of Colombo complained about insufficient security around churches.

The militants were targeting five locations for attacks on Sunday just passed or on Monday, security sources said.

"There could be another wave of attacks," the head of the police ministerial security division (MSD) said in a letter to lawmakers and other officials seen by Reuters on Monday.

"The relevant information further notes that persons dressed in military uniforms and using a van could be involved in the attacks."

There were no attacks on Sunday and security across Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka has been ramped up, with scores of suspected Islamists arrested since the April 21 attacks on hotels and churches that killed more than 250 people, including 40 foreign nationals.

The government has also banned women from wearing face veils under an emergency law that was put in place after the attacks.

There were concerns within the Muslim community that the ban could fuel tensions in the multi-ethnic nation. But government officials said it would help security forces identify people as a hunt for any remaining attackers and their support network continues across the Indian Ocean island, which was gripped by civil war for decades until 2009.

(Sidebar: oh, yes, it's all about you, isn't it?)

 

The Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, said that security had not been sufficiently stepped up around churches.

“We are not satisfied with the security arrangements and urge authorities to ensure our safety," he told reporters.

Burma and Cambodia are leaning closer to China and that can be very, very bad:

Myanmar and Cambodia have both grown closer to China in reaction to pressure from Western nations over human rights issues. Concerns about Myanmar focused on the military's abuses of the Muslim Rohingya minority, which drove more than 700,000 across the border to Bangladesh, while Cambodia was criticized mainly for choking off political dissent, especially by having the only credible opposition party dissolved before last year's election.

(Sidebar: Year Zero.)

The Indian Army claims to have found footprints belonging to the Yeti:

The Indian army made an abominable claim on Tuesday, saying an expedition team in Nepal discovered large footprints in the snow belonging to the mythical Yeti, a.k.a. the Abominable Snowman.