(Insert Flag Here)

This is a hate symbol

So is this:

The Canadian Red Ensign was the de facto Canadian national flag from 1868 until 1965. It was based on the ensign flown by British merchant ships since 1707. The three successive formal designs of the Canadian Red Ensign bore the Canadian coats of arms of 1868, 1921 and 1957. In 1891, it was described by the Governor General, Lord Stanley, as “the Flag which has come to be considered as the recognized Flag of the Dominion both afloat and ashore.” Though it was never formally adopted as Canada’s national flag, the Canadian Red Ensign represented Canada as a nation until it was replaced by the maple leaf design in 1965.

 

Did you get that?

Good.

Because: 

Cabinet yesterday approved a taxpayer-funded booklet for schoolchildren that calls the Red Ensign flag a hate symbol and identifies the Conservative Party by name as a target of “infiltration” by racists. It also warns children to beware of classmates who speak in favour of Donald Trump: “It represents the next stage of our work to fight and win against hate.”

 

These sort of people:

Several high profile British Columbia politicians attended an event celebrating China’s takeover of Hong Kong alongside Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials last week. 

 

And who can forget this douchebag?:

"You know, there's a level of of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say 'we need to go green fastest . . . we need to start investing in solar.' I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting."

 And boy - has he done his level best to turn this country into China!

Some People Are Extra-Special

Never let facts get in the way of anything:

First, no unmarked graves have been discovered at Kamloops or elsewhere. GPR has located hundreds of soil disturbances, but none of these has been excavated, so it is not known whether they are burial sites, let alone children’s graves. At her original press conference, the Chief of the Kamloops Indian Band called these findings unmarked graves, and the media, politicians, and even Pope Francis ran with the story without waiting for proof.

Similar claims from the chiefs of other Indian reserves ran into grave difficulty (no pun intended) because the GPR research was conducted in whole or in part on community cemeteries located near the sites of residential schools. It would hardly be surprising to find burial sites in a cemetery! But again, since no excavations have been conducted, it is not known whether these unmarked graves contain the bodies of children.

North American Indians did not conduct burials; they usually exposed the bodies of the dead to be worn away by predators and the elements. Christian missionaries introduced the practice of burial. But Indian graves were usually marked by simple wooden crosses that could not long withstand the rigours of Canadian weather. Thus Indian reserves today contain probably tens of thousands of forgotten unmarked graves of both adults and children. To “discover” these with ground-penetrating radar proves nothing without excavation.

Second, there are no “missing children”. This concept was invented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), whose members spoke at various times of 2,800 or 4,200 Indian children who were sent to residential schools but never returned to their parents. Indeed, some children died at residential schools of diseases such as tuberculosis, just as they did in their home communities. But the legend of missing students arose from a failure of TRC researchers to cross-reference the vast number of historical documents about residential schools and the children who attended them.

In the fake news stories, the “unmarked graves” are presumed to be populated by the “missing children”, who died at residential school. Lurid tales of torture and murder, of babies thrown into the furnace and hanging from meat hooks, make the stories more colourful. However, the notion of missing children cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. Indian parents, like other parents, loved their children and certainly would have noticed if they went away to school and never came back. But no inquiries about missing Indian children were ever filed with the police. Moreover, children were carefully tracked in the residential school system. Similar to boarding schools all over the world, each child received a number upon admission for keeping track of clothing and other possessions.

The federal Department of Indian Affairs also recorded students because it paid a per capita subsidy to the schools. It reviewed admission records meticulously because it didn’t want to pay for the white and Métis students who sometimes got into the residential schools, even though they were supposed to be only for Indians. On the other side, the residential schools were equally motivated to keep track of students because their income depended on the per capita subsidies. If students disappeared, their subsidy would have decreased.

Third, stories about Indian residential schools are almost always accompanied by the frightening claim that 150,000 students were “forced to attend” these schools, but the claim is misleading at best. Scholars generally agree that more students attended day schools on Indian reserves than went away to residential schools. Moreover, a large number didn’t go to any school at all. It wasn’t until 1920 that school attendance was made compulsory for Indian children, and enforcement was often lax. It was estimated in 1944 that upwards of 40% of Indian children were not in any kind of school.

For students who did attend residential school, there had to be an application form signed by a parent or other guardian. Many of these forms still exist and can be seen in online government archives. The simple truth is that, despite allegations of physical and sexual abuse, many Indian parents saw the residential schools as the best option available for their children. Cree artist Kent Monkman’s famous painting The Scream, showing missionaries and mounted policemen snatching infants from the arms of their Indian mothers, is a fever dream of the imagination. It is not even close to an accurate depiction of historical reality, not even if taken metaphorically.

 

Read the whole thing. 

How interesting:

While Trudeau dismissed the protests as sexist, racist outpourings of white supremacy, the indigenous participants I spoke to were keen to emphasise their diversity. Some indigenous people arrived in full regalia; a mother marched with a papoose on her back and two small children in traditional dress. “We met so many people from every background,” said an Ojibwa woman from a Northern Ontario reserve who helped organise protestors in her area. “Because we’re just like everyone else. We want the mandates to end. We want freedom of choice and autonomy over our own bodies. We want a good life and we want our children to have a good life. We want the same things.”

She pointed to problems on reserves but linked these to broader issues in Canadian society. “Like the rest of the population, we have suffered from so many drug-related deaths and suicides. Covid just made that worse. We don’t want that anymore. We’re so sad seeing this and we’re just hoping for change. Just like everyone else.”

Yet many in the indigenous community disagreed. Leaders issued statements condemning the protests, and in particular the use of traditional ceremonies and objects by both indigenous and non-indigenous people without “permission from us in order to proceed”, dismissing them as “ignorant acts of cultural appropriation”. While there was some controversy about a kitsch “pipe ceremony” that was posted online, the broader message underscored that ceremonies and ceremonial objects only have a place in certain approved protests and in relation to certain approved issues. Indigeneity, it appears, is the sole province of those who toe a certain line. And that line is not about freedom, but safety and protection.

 

Why does this sound familiar? 

It's called "controlled burn" and it is not mystical or nor does it bolster the "noble savage" myth:

This June, British Columbia earmarked $359 million for future wildfire protection, with $1.2 million invested in burn projects this year. The province says it supports cultural burning which is prescribed by the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan (UNDRIP).

But fire ecologists say that support is falling short and plans to burn often fizzle out because of approval delays.

In B.C., hundreds of thousands of hectares used to be deliberately burned each year, but now fewer than 10,000 hectares of land is set on fire for community protection.

In the past two years, the Ministry of Forests says burn projects have doubled — rising from 33 to 69 between 2021 and 2022. This year, a total of 9,100 hectares of planning burning was tracked, but not all of it was burned due to weather or safety issues.

Worst wildfire seasons in B.C. by area burned, in sq. km.

The ministry says it's supportive of Indigenous-led burning, which is eligible for funding under the Community Resiliency Initiative program, and the province has worked with First Nations in the Fraser Canyon, the Okanagan, the Kootenays, the Cariboo and Chilcotin and the Pemberton Valley.

Minister of Forests Katrine Conroy said in a statement: "Last year's devastating fire season highlighted the importance of wildfire prevention for B.C. communities and, as we saw first-hand in places like Logan Lake, how it can make a real difference for people's lives."

Earlier in June, Conroy said the province earmarked $25 million for the Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. for programs to reduce wildfire risk, including prescribed and cultural burning.

But fire keepers say that support is too limited.

 

"Fire keeper".

Okay.

I am not a blogger but a Mystical Scribe.

Yep.

Aboriginal Group Returns Donation From Religious Order

They can get more money from the Canadian taxpayer:

The foundation's board secretary, DeDe DeRose, says it was a tough decision to cut ties with the nuns and return a generous gift, but the foundation doesn't want its integrity questioned due to a donation from a group that was historically involved in cultural genocide.

 

But you are still alive and thriving.

How does this happen?

 

"Let's Surrender Canada!"

 ... says someone who won't actually leave it:

(Sidebar: Kaitie with an I - because she is different - is a PhD Candidate in Political Theory, and not at all a STEM graduate.)

As a white scholar studying territorial rights, I see my status as a settler as part of being Canadian. It is not an accusation, but a reality of living on unceded Indigenous lands. It is a recognition that the benefits Canadians enjoy are built on the denial of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to self-determination of their land according to their laws.

Settler Canadians have a responsibility to build respectful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations on our shared geographic space. This relationship starts with land restitution.

 

Where will you go? The US? Europe? A Third World nation that doesn't care about your feelings?

Now that you've publicly prostrated yourself and volunteered to return the second biggest country to a nomadic people (like you could actually do that), what will you do when someone calls your bluff?

Mid-Week Post

 

 

 

 Your mid-week appeal to sanity ....

 

It's called communism, you worm, and it failed wherever it was:

The frequently criticized centralization of power within the Prime Minister’s Office is a necessary part of governing — regardless of who is in power — argued two former prime ministerial advisers, at an event in Calgary Tuesday.

It’s a criticism that can be levelled at both of Canada’s most recent prime ministers said Ian Brodie, Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, and Gerald Butts, formerly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s principal adviser. The demands of governing sometimes require stiff, centralized power, they told the crowd of roughly 250 people at Alberta Relaunch, an event held at a conference centre on the Calgary Stampede grounds. ...

In 2015, Trudeau promised to roll back the centralization of power in the PMO, saying, “I quite like the symmetry” of ending a trend his father is credited with starting.

 

That is one of the reasons why Pierre Trudeau is burning in hell. 

Also - Buttsy isn't done making a fool out of himself:

No idea what the real story is in the Lucki imbroglio. But if you’re accepting the word of the Nova Scotia RCMP brass at face value on anything related to Portapique, I’ve got some swampland in Pictou to sell you.

— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) June 29, 2022

 

Yes, about that:

A scathing letter from an RCMP communications manager released Tuesday says RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki referred to direct pressure from the federal public safety minister to release firearm details in the days after the Nova Scotia mass shooting.

It's the second such claim by an RCMP official who was on an April 28, 2020, conference call in which Lucki criticized Halifax staff, nine days after the rampage that resulted in 22 deaths.

The letter from Lia Scanlan dated April 14, 2021, claims the RCMP's leader focused on the Liberal government's agenda of passing firearms legislation during the hastily arranged meeting.

Hours earlier during a news conference, Supt. Darren Campbell hadn't provided full details about the two rifles and two pistols used by the killer. According to his handwritten notes, released to the public inquiry, the RCMP was concerned providing this information might jeopardize their investigation.

As the dressing down unfolded, Scanlan said Lucki "informed us of the pressures and conversation with (Public Safety) Minister (Bill) Blair, which we clearly understood was related to the upcoming passing of the gun legislation."

"I remember a feeling of disgust as I realized this was the catalyst for the conversation and perhaps a justification for what you were saying about us."

Scanlan's letter is part of the evidence provided to a public inquiry into the April 18-19, 2020, mass shooting.

According to Scanlan, who was the strategic communications director at the time of the shootings, Lucki had come on the line incensed that the Halifax staff hadn't released the gun details, suggesting they had let down surviving children whose parents were killed in Portapique, N.S.

"It was appalling, inappropriate, unprofessional and extremely belittling," Scanlan wrote.

"To have anyone in the RCMP say we let the boys down. There is nothing that makes that acceptable, especially that it was said by the person, who by rank, is at the top of our organization."

 

Did he misspeak, Buttsy? 

Also:

One report that included testimony from Supt. Darren Campbell, who was the public face of the RCMP in Nova Scotia, and Lia Scanlan, the director of communications for the Mounties in the region, was particularly damning in linking the guns used to upcoming anti-gun legislation.

“The commissioner said she had promised the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP (we) would release this information,” read the handwritten notes Campbell took at the time.

“I tried to explain there was no intent to disrespect anyone; however, we could not release this information at this time, the commissioner then said that we didn’t understand that this was tied to pending gun control legislation that would make officers and the public safer.”

 

 

Tamara Lich is a political prisoner and we all know it:

Tamara Lich is back in jail after police in Ottawa determined she breached her bail conditions. Maxime Bernier, head of the PPC, slammed the move, calling it “disgusting.”

Maxime Bernier believes Tamara Lich is a “political prisoner,” and that the Liberal regime is treating her like a dissident in an authoritarian state. Bernier states that he will “continue to support this courageous woman.”

 

 

Whatever you say, Jag:

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in an interview on Monday that plunging Canada into an early election was “not an option” he’s considering despite claiming that his party could potentially unseat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

 

You have neither the ability nor the interest, you liar.

 

 

Posturing doesn't have to cost the Liberals anything: 

In the Environment department’s own “regulatory impact assessment,” federal researchers claimed, “the proposed regulations would prevent approximately 1.6 million tonnes of plastics from entering the waste stream over the analytical period.” That’s 2023 to 2032. But the ban “would also add about 3.2 million tonnes of other materials to the waste stream from the use of substitutes.”

Mostly the substitutes are paper – paper straws, paper bowls, and paper takeout containers. Some are wood fibre, mostly in the form of utensils.

So the irony is while the new ban on plastic straws and bags, six-pack rings, takeout containers, stir sticks and cutlery is projected to keep 1.6 million tonnes of plastics out of landfills, incinerators and recycling plants, the alternatives will add 3.2 million tonnes.

That’s a net increase of 1.6 million tonnes of waste – by Ottawa’s own calculations.

Five or six years from now the same shrieking environmentalists who told us plastics were “toxic” and had to be banned, will come hollering about how paper waste is creating an environmental Armageddon.

Double irony: Much of that added paper waste will make it to landfills in plastic bags because, for now, plastic garbage bags are still okay with the Trudeau government. They’re not banned.

Triple irony: Given current recycling technology and infrastructure across Canada, soiled paper is much harder than plastic to recycle into consumer products. That means there is a likelihood that the feds’ ban on single-use plastics will give municipalities more trash to deal with in their landfills, not less.

 

 

Did you start looking at your fellow MPs?:

Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier yesterday acknowledged the value of taxes owed but never collected is billions more than originally claimed. Legislators have spent six years prodding the Canada Revenue Agency to calculate the so-called “tax gap.”

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this was an attempt to audit the average citizen and squeeze him or her for more cash.

Also:

The Open and Accountable Government guide, codified after Justin Trudeau became prime minister, specifies that when fundraising or dealing with lobbyists, Ministers must avoid conflict of interest with potential to affect government decision-making.

In contrast, a National Post article states that one in six donors have affiliations with organizations currently lobbying our federal government.  Donations from international sources are said to have increased ten-fold after Justin Trudeau became prime minister. Conservatives called for an investigation into conflict of interest regarding foreign donations totalling over half a billion dollars.

Net result? Not a darn thing. No detailed analysis has been published by media. Upon deeper analysis, we discover details on the “international” donations. The bulk of them appear to come from China.

In 2016, the Globe and Mail reported on a fundraiser at the Toronto home of a Chinese-Canadian business executive. One of the guests was a wealthy donor seeking Ottawa’s approval to begin operating a new bank aimed at Canada’s Chinese community.

“Trudeau was the top draw at the $1,500-a-ticket Liberal Party event, attended by insurance tycoon Shenglin Xian, the founder of Wealth One Bank of Canada and president of Toronto-based Shenglin Financial Group Inc.”

Among the donors was Zhang Bin, a wealthy Chinese businessman and political advisor to the Chinese government in Beijing. The newspaper said Zhang, along with a partner, donated $1 million to the Pierre Trudeau Foundation.

What to conclude? How about the idea that the Liberal Party and the Trudeau Foundation pulled the whole thing off without so much as breaking a fingernail.

The intimate relationship between the Liberal Party of Canada and the government of China is something all Canadians should be aware of. We are not, for a simple reason: establishment media have been hiding the Liberal Party-Chinese government relationship since Pierre Trudeau became prime minister in 1968.

And:

Pro-Chinese agents posed as concerned local residents on social media to try to spark protests over the opening of rare earth mines in the U.S. and Canada, cybersecurity researchers said in a new report.

The fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to give China, the largest producer of rare earth minerals, a competitive advantage, cybersecurity research company Mandiant disclosed on Tuesday.

Mandiant has reported on a network of thousands of fake accounts across numerous social media platforms, websites and forums since 2019 that support China’s political interests. In one recent campaign Mandiant coined “Dragonbridge”, fake accounts purported to be concerned local residents and environmentalists on Facebook to orchestrate protests at the Texas facility of the Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths Ltd., according to Mandiant. It was unclear who was behind the campaign, the firm said.

The fake accounts claimed that the processing facility would spur irreversible environmental damage and radioactive contamination that could cause cancer and deformities in newborns, Mandiant researchers said. The accounts also criticized President Joe Biden’s plan to expedite mining of these rare minerals.

China has used its dominance in the rare earth minerals market, critical for manufacturing mobile phones and other electronics, to threaten the U.S. with export bans.

As a result, the Pentagon has promised to beef up domestic production. It inked a US$30 million deal with Lynas in 2021 to build a facility in Texas, which the Australian company said could help it produce a quarter of the world’s demand.

Dragonbridge was also behind fake accounts criticizing a new mine in Saskatchewan from Canada’s Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp., which was announced this month, according to the report. In addition, the campaign’s accounts stoked anger over USA Rare Earth LLC’s plans to open a mine in Oklahoma, Mandiant said.

**

It remains unclear whether Canada will participate in a new US$600-billion project from the G7 being set up as a western counterbalance China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative economic power play.

 

(Sidebar: it won't.) 

I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with.

It's probably because of all the lies that you tell:

A Covid Alert app failed in part because Canadians don’t trust the government, says a Department of Health report. The $20 million program was disbanded last Friday: “Trust in government is clearly an issue.”

 

People lost pay cheques and businesses because of the lockdowns. Some people became so despondent that they took their own lives.

Something to think about:

CMHC employees received the equivalent of more than $6,000 in pay raises through the pandemic, according to Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The pay hikes were in addition to performance bonuses that averaged $11,000 a year: “We share in the tragedy and the fact the pandemic has made things worse for homeless people.”

Whatever Nancy wants:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly received Holy Communion at a Mass with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday.

Pelosi was banned from receiving Holy Communion in her home diocese, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, in May.

San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said Pelosi should not be admitted to Communion, nor should she present herself to receive the Eucharist, until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion.

Pelosi, who is in Rome on a family vacation, attended Pope Francis‘ Mass for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Archbishop Cordileone said on May 20 that the step to bar Pelosi from Communion was “purely pastoral, not political” and came after Pelosi, D-Calif., who has described herself as a “devout Catholic,” repeatedly rebuffed his efforts to reach out to her to discuss her abortion advocacy.

Grades are necessary. Teachers' unions are not:

The end of the school year usually comes with all the fear and anticipation of final marks. But that’s not the case for the students in Stacie Oliver’s English classes. They already have a pretty good sense of how they did — that’s because they graded themselves.

Valentina Virviescas-Medina proposed a 90, up from the 82 she gave herself at the midterm. With a digital portfolio of her year’s work to show and a convincing verbal demonstration of what she had learned, the Grade 12 student is graduating from A.B. Lucas Secondary School in London, Ont., with, you guessed it, a 90 in English.

But this isn’t a story about marks.

It’s about an approach to learning, one where a top grade isn’t the ultimate goal. The love of learning is.

This past semester, Oliver introduced the concept of “ungrading” to her Grade 9 destreamed and Grade 12 enrichment classes. It’s a movement that flies in the face of the provincial government’s back-to-basics philosophy, but one that has had growing interest, especially during the pandemic when educators worried about learning loss and wondered aloud about more humane and impactful ways to measure student achievement.

Instead of grading assignments, Oliver gave her students continual, meaningful feedback.

 

That's what grades are. Coupled with comments, these are meant to inform the student and his or her parents the direction the student is going and what action must be taken.

And who has a love of learning, teachers' unions? The kids who would rather go to the beach than watch your attempts at teaching?

I'm sure future employers will also appreciate this hands-off approach when they watch their trainees struggle to perform a simple task.

Your Morally and Economically Bankrupt Government and You

The list of waste and vile behaviour is almost never-ending:

On June 15, 2020, Erskine-Smith’s motion asked the House of Commons industry committee to summon grocery executives to explain why they cut the bonuses and “how those decisions are consistent with competition laws.”

Within weeks, top executives from each of the three chains — Loblaw Companies Ltd., Sobeys parent Empire Co. Ltd., and Metro Inc. — appeared before the committee, where they revealed they had been in contact with one another before cancelling the hero bonuses.

Loblaw’s president at the time, Sarah Davis, said she sent a “courtesy email” to let competitors know about her decision ahead of time. Metro CEO Eric La Flèche said he called executives at competing chains trying to get information about when they planned on cutting the bonuses. Empire chief executive Michael Medline said he opted to have legal counsel on the call with La Flèche and declined to talk about his plans for hero pay. Davis said she told La Flèche she hadn’t made a decision. All three companies stressed that they made their decisions on hero pay independently, and denied any wrongdoing.

“Business is booming,” Erskine said at the hearing. “Profits are coming in in record numbers and, Mr. La Flèche, you are proactively reaching out to your competitors to say, ‘When can we cut pandemic wages?'”

“With all due respect, again I disagree with that,” La Flèche responded.

“I’ll leave the remainder of those kinds of questions to the Competition Bureau,” Erskine-Smith said.

But the Competition Bureau — the agency that enforces competition law in Canada — didn’t investigate. In a letter to Erskine-Smith in 2020, Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell explained that the Competition Act did not consider it to be a criminal offence when employers collude to fix wages or agree not to hire each other’s staff — known as “no-poach agreements.”

That’s because, at least in the eyes of the law at the time, collusion between businesses to lower the cost of inputs isn’t always a bad thing for consumers. If, for example, independents pool their resources to get a deal on ingredients, then their customers potentially benefit from lower retail prices.

 

These chains acted as a monopoly and a few of the things opened when governments around the world enforced house arrest. It offered store-workers a public-pleasing measure and then withdrew to keep money in their own pockets.

Am I missing something? 

**

Let's start with the government.

I know that my movements are tracked all the time:

The tax gap represents the difference between the total amount of taxes that would be paid if every Canadian individual and corporation fully reported all their income properly (including income from the underground economy), took only appropriate expense deductions and properly claimed only the tax credits to which they were entitled compared to the tax actually paid and collected by the Canada Revenue Agency. In short, it’s a measure of the potential loss of tax revenue resulting from tax non-compliance.

The new report shows that for 2018, Canada’s federal “gross” tax gap was estimated to be between $35.1 billion to $40.4 billion before taking into account the CRA’s compliance and collection activities. Through those ongoing audit and collection efforts, the CRA is expected to ultimately reduce the gap to between $18.1 billion to $23.4 billion, or approximately seven to nine per cent of federal tax revenue. This percentage has been fairly stable over a five-year period, even as Canada’s federal tax revenues haven risen to $272 billion (2018-2019 fiscal year) from $237 billion (2014-2015). The gap in 2014 ranged from $15 billion to $19.1 billion.

In calculating the tax gap, there are two main forms of non-compliance: reporting non-compliance and payment non-compliance. Reporting non-compliance is when taxpayers fail to provide complete or accurate information on their tax returns by under-reporting income or claiming deductions or credits to which they are not entitled. Payment non-compliance occurs when assessed taxes are not fully paid on time by taxpayers for a particular tax year.

During tax years 2014 to 2018, around 80 per cent of the total gross tax gap was related to reporting non-compliance while the other 20 per cent was related to payment non-compliance. Drilling down deeper on the personal income tax gap, around 70 per cent was related to reporting non-compliance and 30 per cent was related to payment non-compliance. For corporations, 95 per cent was related to reporting non-compliance and five per cent was related to payment non-compliance.

 

 

That is because he is a two-faced, groping scumbag:

“Unacceptable” means “not able to be accepted.” It’s an adjective people often use for events they don’t like but are going to have to, well, accept. Someone should tell Mayor Plante that, as cosmopolitan as her city is, being its mayor does not get you a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, nor in the U.S. Congress nor even in a U.S. state legislature, where abortion law will now be made by democratically elected representatives of the people — as it is in this country, as it is in most of the democracies we typically compare ourselves with. 

Actually, our own current lack of an abortion law is a result of a tie vote in our unelected Senate in 1991 on a bill that would have replaced the law our own Supreme Court struck down in 1988, not for violating any clear constitutional right to abortion but on much narrower grounds. In the now backwards-heading United States, they have at least figured out how not to have tie votes in their Senate, which, unlike ours, is elected. 

Mme. Plante is not a U.S. citizen, nor even a dual citizen, so she doesn’t get to vote in U.S. elections so, lacking any leverage except her Twitter account, she’ll have to accept the SCOTUS decision whether she finds it hard to swallow or not. 

Speaking from Rwanda, our prime minister had a similar reaction: “We need to continue to stand strong … which Canada will do, whether it’s fighting for women’s rights here in Africa, or supporting people fighting for their rights in the United States and elsewhere.” Mr. Trudeau is not just a mayor but a national prime minister. Even so, his ability to fight for the rights of Africans and Americans is limited. How about he instead turn his rights passion to transgressions against people who actually fall within his jurisdiction? English-speakers in Quebec, say. 

We’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainians, the prime minister repeatedly tells us. He even went to Ukraine to literally stand beside President Zelenskyy. From Africa he says we’re “standing strong, to defend everybody’s rights and freedoms in Canada and … internationally.” (All this standing! Anyone got a chair?) But a provincial government in his own country is about to circumscribe use of one of that country’s two official languages — languages that have official status thanks largely to his own father — and he is basically silent, even when the outlawing is of businesses whose regulation is in his own federal jurisdiction.

 

(Sidebar: yeah, about that ...) 

Also - woman freely avail themselves of these services because all that YOU offer the, cottage cheese-@$$, is abortion. No choice there:

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stated that organizations that provide "dishonest counselling" to expectant mothers will be "ineligible" for charity status.

Her comments came in response to a petition from a group of Canadians concerned that the Trudeau government would be cracking down on pro-life pregnancy centers.

"The Liberal Party of Canada has promised in its 2021 platform to deny the charitable status of organizations that have convictions about abortion which the Liberal Party views as 'dishonest'," the petition read.

"This may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters, and other charitable organizations which do not agree with the Liberal Party on this matter for reasons of conscience."

 

Your tyranny has been noted, b!#ch. 

And - it's not treason if he always hated Canada:

“In the face of international condemnation of Iran’s destructive pursuit of nuclear weapons, filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau and senior advisor to brother Justin’s campaign for leadership of the Liberal party, reports that Iran’s atomic ambitions are for defensive purposes only.”

It was never about a virus:

The Canadian Pacific Railway could not fully comply with a federal vaccinate mandate and keep the trains running safely, according to labour board records. The CPR said full compliance would “place the critical operations of the railroad at risk.”

 

 

When is the mule tax?:

The federal government is delaying new emissions standards on gasoline and diesel another year but is demanding the oil and gas sector make bigger cuts to fuel emissions by 2030 given how much more money the companies are now making.

Cabinet approved the final regulations for the long-awaited Clean Fuel Standard last week and The Canadian Press obtained them today ahead of their intended publication on July 6.

 

 

Because "transparency":

The secret trial is happening in the wake of a recent story in the National Post detailing a concerning rise in the number of discretionary publication bans being sought in Canadian courts.

The case at the Vancouver Law Courts is referred to on the court docket as “Named Persons V. Attorney-General of Canada,” but very little else about the civil matter is readily available.

When a reporter arrived at the courtroom shortly before the trial was to begin, the doors were open and there was a small number of lawyers present.

One of the lawyers, who declined to be identified, said there was a publication ban on the case and noted that the court file had been sealed, but did not provide details of the ban and added that the matter would have to be addressed by the trial judge, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson.

But before the arrival of Hinkson, B.C.’s top trial court judge, a court clerk handed a typed notice to the sheriff, who advised the reporter that the case was going in-camera, or behind closed doors. The reporter left the courtroom.

A clerk in the civil registry confirmed that the file was sealed and declined to provide any details of the case, including the names of counsel involved in the matter.

Later, a Postmedia lawyer was told much the same thing when he made inquiries about the sealing order at the registry.

The doors to the courtroom remained closed after the lunch break. No one answered a knock on the door. The notice, which said, “This courtroom is closed to the public”, remained attached to the door of the courtroom.

Retired judge Bruce Cohen, who acts as a spokesman for the superior courts, said that he had made inquiries into the reason why the case had gone in-camera, but there was no information available to him that he could pass on.

 

 Let's get people used to show trials and secrets.

When will this book be banned in Canada?:

Good read. Very informative/detailed. Sr RCMP screwed up big time - biggest issue - no-one in power was from NS - had no idea where critical incidences were occurring during or in media availability

Be interesting to see how these new details fit into the narrative pic.twitter.com/782RlUIZih

— Tea 🇨🇦 (@Tea_O_CANADA) June 24, 2022

Nigeria Gets It

More should get it:

Zamfara in northwest Nigeria is encouraging its residents, especially farmers, to apply for licenses that will allow them to carry guns and other weapons, for self-defense against worsening insecurity in the state.

The state’s plan is to start with 500 gun licenses in each of the state’s 19 emirates, to be issued by the police. That means nearly 10,000 guns will soon be in private hands in the state but it is not clear what the criteria for issuing licenses are, including what kinds of guns are permissible.

The move seems to be because local alternatives to formal state security outfits—the Nigeria Police, and Army, both seemingly stretched for resources—are also under attack. For example, in April, a gang killed seven members of a vigilante group that provides some security in Mada community.

Just Have A Damn Steak

Your body will thank you for it:

Proteins in plant-based meat alternatives may not be as accessible to human cells as those from real meat, a new study has suggested.

While plants rich in protein, such as soy beans, are commonly used worldwide, researchers, including those from the Ohio State University in the US, say it is unclear how much of the nutrient makes it into human cells.

In the study published on Wednesday in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists assessed if human cells grown in a lab absorb the same quantities of the protein building blocks peptides from meat alternatives as they do from chicken.

The findings may lead to new ingredients that may increase the uptake of nutrients from plant-based meat products, researchers say.

To mimic the look and texture of real meat, they say plant-based substitutes are usually made by dehydrating plants into a powder and mixing them with seasonings.

These mixtures are then typically heated, moistened, and processed through an extruder to produce plant-based meat, researchers say, adding that these products are often thought to be more nutritious since the plants used to make them are high in protein and low in undesirable fats.

However, researchers say the proteins in substitutes may not break down into peptides as well as those from meats.

In the new study, they analysed the quantity of peptides absorbed from a model meat alternative by human cells and compared this to the amount the cells absorbed from a piece of chicken breast (CB).

For the research, scientists created a model meat alternative (MA) made of soy and wheat gluten with the extrusion process.

When cut open, they say the material had long fibrous pieces inside, just like chicken.

Researchers then cooked pieces of the substitute and chicken meat, and broke them down using an enzyme that humans use to digest food.

They found that peptides and their amino acid building blocks from the meat substitutes were less water-soluble than those from chicken, and were also “not absorbed as well by human cells”.

 

 

Sometimes, One Must Take Another At His or Her Word

Case in point:

I’m pretty sure Ana Navarro is umm… suggesting that autistic people and people with Down syndrome be aborted because her relatives with autism and Down syndrome are just too much work. This whole clip is so incredibly evil. pic.twitter.com/rZDWYn9Tus

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 25, 2022

 

Ana Navarro is also too much work but no one would suggest the unthinkable.

[REDACTED]

There is no reason to trust this government:

The federal Liberal government has agreed to provide sensitive cabinet documents to the inquiry examining its use of the Emergencies Act during the “Freedom Convoy” protest.

The Public Order Emergency Commission says the government has agreed to a request not to claim cabinet privilege over documents that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers considered when they made the decision.

It says the government has committed to the extraordinary step of providing “all the inputs that were before cabinet” when it decided to declare the emergency in February, weeks into the convoy protests that took over Ottawa’s downtown and erupted at border crossings.

The commission notes this is only the fourth time in Canadian history that a government has decided to provide such access to a commission of inquiry.

It says it has not yet received the documents but expects them to come in “shortly.”

Trudeau’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.