Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week bout of cynicism ...



There is only "transparency":

The Liberal government’s push to speed controversial broadcasting bill C-10 through Parliament hit a road bump Tuesday, when the Speaker of the House voided dozens of amendments to the bill.

The Heritage committee voted on those amendments last week, without debate or the ability to consult experts. The unusual process, in which the public wasn’t aware of what MPs were voting on until days later, was criticized as “secret” law-making by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.

The amendments were made public Monday when the amended bill was tabled in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Blake Richards asked the Speaker of the House to strike those amendments, arguing the committee exceeded its authority, and on Tuesday the Speaker agreed.

Speaker Anthony Rota declared dozens of amendments added at committee after debate time ran out null and void, and ordered the bill to be reprinted without them.

“In some ways it’s indicative of frankly how the Liberals have handled this bill, almost from the get go. You’ve had a minister unable to effectively communicate the contents of it, you’ve had a provision pulled back which clearly has sparked enormous amount of concern across the country,” Geist said Tuesday. “And now, in the rush to try to get this legislation through without any real debate, and it oversteps the very boundaries of committee. And especially for this government which came to power, arguing that it was going to give more power to committees and leave them more independent, to see them rebuked in this way by their own speaker is, I think quite telling.”

The committee had been limited to five hours of debate by a Liberal and Bloc-supported motion in the House of Commons in an attempt by those parties to ensure the bill passes through the House of Commons before summer break. It was a rarely-used move, marking the first time in 20 years that the House limited debate time at committee.


The Liberals have used to lockdown they forced on the country to enact everything they've wanted: a dead oil industry, taxation, now censorship.



Because some people are special:

It was heartening to see Mr. Trudeau prancing about in various photos, he who has been in lockdown longer than medieval hermits, now wandering with the Queen in her garden, unmasked in one picture, masked in another. Something like Batman, he has a secret identity (that everyone knows). It was good, too, to see him finally socializing a bit, and nice of Stella McCartney not to insist on a mask when they met.

Their frolics and inconsistencies have not gone unnoticed. The guy who normally runs a now closed barbershop, the owner of the bankrupt shoe store, the waitress at the closed restaurant, these people and thousands like them are only too painfully alert that there are two types of people in this COVID era. Those who have no choice but to bear the weight of the rules; and those who made them, and then pick and choose what day or moment they themselves will abide by them.

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Canada is not challenging the notion that compensation should be awarded. We are challenging the jurisdiction of the CHRT order because the CHRT is a tribunal created through statute and its jurisdiction is defined by statute.”


Listen, stupids, you further a ridiculous notion that the aboriginal class is not one of adults or citizens but children who will constantly be victims of a system most of them were never a part of but still attack the rest of the country as inherently racist. When things predictably go towards money, you get defensive.

You are cheap, lying, pandering, vicious b@$#@rds.

**

Then you don't need Albertan money:

Federal lawmakers are acknowledging Quebec’s right to unilaterally change the Constitution in line with proposed reforms to the province’s language law.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, a motion from Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet that asked lawmakers to recognize that right passed 281-2 with all-party support.

Blanchet’s motion cleared a path for House recognition of Premier François Legault’s attempt to amend the country’s supreme law by affirming Quebec as a nation with French as its official language.

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Only proles stay at rape hotels:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tested negative for COVID-19 following his return from the G7 leaders summit in the U.K. over the weekend, and is now allowed to leave hotel quarantine.

**

The Commons justice committee yesterday dismissed an investigation of Liberal Party vetting of federal judicial appointments. Opposition MPs had asked that Attorney General David Lametti appear for questioning on the use of Party lists in hiring judges: “It undermines the credibility of those people who have been appointed to the bench.”



Let them fight:

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul is firing back at what she described as a “small group of councillors” who she says were behind a push to dethrone her as the party’s leader on Tuesday night.

These councillors, Paul said, tried to “force a vote of non-confidence” on her leadership with “no substantive consultation with the members they represent.”

“They produced a list of allegations: allegations that were so racist, so sexist that they were immediately disavowed by both of our MPs as offensive and inflammatory and contrary to party ethics, and I thank our MPs for that,” Paul said.



But this "racist" country just handed you a pension:

Canada was excoriated as a racist, hypocritical failure Tuesday as MPs who don't intend to seek re-election said their official farewells to Parliament.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the New Democrat MP for Nunavut, used the opportunity to blast Canada as a country built on the oppression of Indigenous People and whose history is "stained with blood."

 (Sidebar: this Mumilaaq Qaqqaq.)

"People like me don't belong here in the federal institution," she told the House of Commons.

 

In a real country, you wouldn't.

If Canada was the bastion of exclusion you claim it is, then why were you elected? 


Also - pandering to a crowd that thinks mutilating girls is quite low. Subterranean low:

A former Conservative cabinet minister is apologizing for not pushing against his party’s culturally divisive polices of the Stephen Harper era, including an effort to ban face coverings during citizenship ceremonies.

In a Facebook post, Tory MP Tim Uppal says he has been talking to people about how to make all Canadians feel safe following the deadly attack this month on a Muslim family in London, Ont.

As minister of state for multiculturalism in the Harper government, Uppal was the spokesman for a bill to ban wearing the niqab while taking the oath of citizenship.

Campaigning for re-election in 2015, the party also proposed a “barbaric cultural practices” hotline people could call to tell authorities about the supposedly objectionable practices of others.


Why wouldn't slicing external reproductive parts of girls NOT be barbaric?



Yeah, I know:

Apparently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fancies himself the “dean” of the G7, based on his maturity, wisdom and … be quiet back there. This is a serious news story. ...

So what does the dean of the G7, based on his six years in office and ripe maturity at 49, think about China? We know, sort of, because the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) press release machine was going full blast at the time, as always, another simulacrum of seriousness churning out boilerplate like “Canada and the Philippines enjoy very strong people-to-people ties and a relationship built on shared priorities, including international trade, peace and security, and gender equality.”

So here’s the PMO’s take on the G7 summit: “leaders agreed to work together to address important challenges that all our people face, including ending COVID-19 and preparing for future pandemics, building a recovery that creates jobs and grows the middle class, fighting climate change and biodiversity loss, and advancing gender equality and democracy.” Uh, what happened to China?

** 

"If I may, the G7 in Cornwall risks being forgotten in the way that most G7 summits are forgotten. Beyond the beach and the BBQ and the royal banquet, what do you think the world ought to remember from this summit that will make a real difference?"

Trudeau starts to respond do the question. However, at no point in Trudeau's response does he actually talk about what was specifically agreed upon or accomplished in this particular G7.

Instead, he says, "I can't help but think back to our [2018] G7 Summit in Charlevoix, that was made famous from [sic] a tweet from an airplane."

"But what actually resulted in that G7 in Charlevoix was a commitment that saw millions, if not billions of dollars flowing to girls' education around the world. Investments that have made a real and tangible difference in the lives of thousands of thousands of women and girls in countries around the world."

"We moved forward on an oceans charter to fight plastics in the oceans that have actually had real impacts. We've moved forward on many partnerships that, no, didn't make the headlines the next day, but have been part of a steady working effort by G7 members to have a positive impact on the world."

At this point, Trudeau appears to get more agitated, as he appears to be trying to put a voice to the umbrage he has taken to the journalist's question:

"And, I don't know what you will all be writing about tomorrow, but I can tell you, the work we got done today, at a time where the G7 is more united than ever before, more focused on the responsibility we wield collectively as some of the world's leading economies, not just to our own citizens but to citizens around the world."

"During a time of dueling crises of the pandemic and climate change, the impacts of this G7 will be felt long after the newspapers you write for will have been used to wrap fish."

It appears that just after the video, Trudeau immediately walked back his comment, "saying it might get him in trouble if he repeats the fish wrap remark in French, and states commitment to journalism and it’s important work."

** 

So what went wrong? Well, not much has gone right with Trudeau’s “Canada’s back” boast to the world. Canada’s peacekeeping efforts are at a 60-year low, with our meagre 2019 mission to Mali lasting all of a year. Trudeau’s 2018 India trip was a PR disaster. And in 2020, Canada failed (again) to secure a UN Security Council seat, despite Trudeau’s lavish lobbying blitz.

Worse yet, Trudeau’s actual accomplishments have only come back to haunt him. In 2018, the prime minister presided over a G7 meeting at Charlevoix, Que., which saw a “historic investment” in women and girls. But a year later, the feminist PM steamrolled two high-profile female cabinet ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, in the SNC-Lavalin affair, in order to help a company that had admitted to international fraud and bribery.

On the trade front, Trudeau’s vaunted CETA deal with the EU has Western beef producers in a snit: almost four years in, exports from the EU to Canada have soared from $14.7 million to $129 million, while Canada’s inched up from $7.9 million to $32.7 million.

And despite supposedly chummy relations with the Biden administration, Trudeau has made no progress in reopening the border since the early days of the pandemic, to the consternation of both travellers and businesses.

 

Imagine another Kim Jong-Un (one not slimming down mysteriously but still the leader of a nation of starving people). Imagine inheriting one's position (with generous thanks to China) and being coddled by a sympathetic and paid-off press. Imagine, too, a compliant population that either dares not to question this pseudo-Kim or doesn't bother to. Now imagine that this Kim is forced to realise that he is nothing outside the borders of the country that installed him.

It's a tough blow for a big ego.


Also - take it from a North Korean. This is all nuts:

Like in North Korea, Park said she witnessed example after example of anti-Western sentiment and guilt-tripping. During her orientation, for instance, a staff member scolded her for liking classic literature.

“I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” Park said of her orientation. “Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’”

When it came to gender pronouns and manipulation of the English language, Park was even more confused.

“English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes still say ‘he’ or ‘she’ by mistake and now they are going to ask me to call them ‘they’? How the heck do I incorporate that into my sentences?” she remembered asking herself. “It was chaos. It felt like the regression in civilization.”

“Even North Korea is not this nuts,” she added. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”



I'm sure it's nothing to worry about:

Canada's annual inflation rate accelerated to 3.6% in May, up from a year-over-year increase of 3.4% in April, due to both the base-year effect and rising prices for shelter and vehicles, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday.


 

Wow, people really have a handle on this coronavirus thing:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged 13 million surplus vaccines to help the world get immunized against COVID-19 as he and other G7 leaders wrapped up a two-day summit in Britain dominated by the pandemic, climate change and China.


But what about the completely undiscerning Canadians who want those flu shots?

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Do we have enough masks for this?:

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a backlog of nearly 16 million medical services that could take years to work through, the Ontario Medical Association says.

“The effects of the pandemic will be felt for many years,” OMA president Dr. Adam Kassam said Wednesday.

**

Hundreds of people were administered doses of expired COVID-19 vaccines during an event in New York City’s Times Square, city health officials said.

The New York City Health Department confirmed that 899 individuals got Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine at the former NFL Experience building between June 5 and June 10.

**

A higher-than-expected number of young men have experienced heart inflammation after their second dose of the mRNA COVID-19 shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, according to data from two vaccine safety monitoring systems, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.

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AstraZeneca said on Tuesday a late-stage trial failed to provide evidence that its COVID-19 antibody therapy protected people who had contact with an infected person from the disease, a small setback in its efforts to find alternatives to vaccines. 



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