Your middle-of-the-week editorial ...
A bucket of ice for Justin behind curtain three:
Richard Mosley, 74, the Liberal-appointed federal judge who ruled the Freedom Convoy crackdown was unconstitutional, yesterday said civil rights lawyers changed his mind about the case. Ottawa officialdom including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had condemned protesters as anarchists: “I was leaning to the view the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was reasonable.”
Ex-cabinet members who advocated a 2022 Freedom Convoy crackdown yesterday had no comment after the Federal Court ruled their actions were unlawful. Using the Emergencies Act against peaceful protesters was unconstitutional, ruled the Court: “It captured people who simply wanted to join in the protest by standing on Parliament Hill carrying a placard.”
The Charter was written by a communist and is in no way comparable to the Magna Carta or the American Constitution:
If we are to learn anything useful from the weeks-long blockade of downtown Ottawa two years ago — a big “if,” and a probable “no” — it’s important to focus as much on what Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley didn’t say in his Tuesday decision as on what he did.
In his ruling on a challenge by several civil liberties groups to the government’s use of the act, Mosley did not find that invoking the Emergencies Act violated protesters’ right to freedom of association, for example.
“They were free to communicate with each other in pursuit of their collective goals and form whatever organization they thought necessary to do so elsewhere,” he wrote — just not in a weeks-long blockade of a G7 capital or while blocking a Canada-U.S. border crossing.
Mosley did not find that the Emergencies Act violated Section 7 of the Charter, which codifies the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”
“The regulations prohibited only a narrow, defined range of activities and did so for no more than nine days,” he wrote. “The regulations were tailored to limit constitutional rights no more than reasonably necessary to address the issues.”
Crucially, Mosley did not find that invoking the Emergencies Act violated protesters’ Charter right to peaceful assembly
“Gatherings that employ physical force, in the form of enduring or intractable occupations of public space that block local residents’ ability to carry out the functions of their daily lives, in order to compel agreement (with the protesters’ objective), are not constitutionally protected,” government lawyers argued. ...
The biggest victors in Mosley’s ruling, to my mind, are less the Freedom Convoy crowd than this country’s minuscule community of principled civil libertarians — people who oppose government overreach even when they dislike the “victims” of it and can’t see any other obvious way to solve the problem at hand.
Mosley found that the seizing of bank accounts under Emergencies Act regulations breached Section 8 of the Charter, which guarantees freedom from unreasonable search or seizure of property.
“Of particular concern … is that there was no standard applied to determine whether someone should be the target of the (economic) measures or (any) process to allow them to question that determination,” wrote Mosley. “As described by (RCMP) Supt. (Denis) Beaudoin in cross-examination, it was all informal and ad hoc.” Not good.
More fundamentally, Mosley argued, the government’s notion that the occupation represented a “national emergency” or a “national security threat” simply never held up.
“While I agree that … the situation was critical and required an urgent resolution by governments, the evidence, in my view, does not support the conclusion that it could not have been effectively dealt with under other laws of Canada, as it was in Alberta, or that it exceeded the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it,” Mosley wrote, referring to necessary preconditions under the Emergencies Act.
Justice Mosley also held the freezing of bank accounts was an unreasonable and unjustified search under Section 8 of the Charter. Financial records are part of the “biographical core of personal information” and can reveal personal details about someone such as their financial status and lifestyle choices. The suspension of bank accounts and credit cards affected joint account holders and credit cards issued on the accounts to other family members. Justice Mosley found there appears to have been no effort made to find a solution to that problem. Perhaps worse, there was no standard applied to determine whether someone should be the target of the measures or process to allow them to question that determination, and Justice Mosley described the process for freezing accounts as the police “making it up as they went along”.
The outcome in this case is obviously quite different from the outcome of the Public Order Emergency Commission, but the important difference is this case has the binding weight of precedent. The government has already stated their intention to appeal, but given the detailed reasons in this decision they will have a mountain to climb.
The Liberals will find a more sympathetic judge.
A federal consultant who boasted to clients that he had a secret contact in Chrystia Freeland’s office yesterday testified he made it all up. “I don’t even have those relationships,” said Vaughn Brennan, director TeaLav Consulting Limited of Ottawa. “I don’t have a Rolodex.”
Cabinet will collect nearly a half billion in sales taxes on the carbon tax this year, the Budget Office said yesterday. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has repeatedly claimed the carbon tax is “revenue neutral.”
Cabinet “delivered for millions of Canadians” under a 2017 National Housing Strategy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. Figures tabled in Parliament show in fact just over 100,000 homes were built under the program: “We are going to continue as we have done.”
Justin can't run on his record and Jag is simply useless:
“We should not imagine that it will ever be easy with the Americans,” Trudeau said at an event organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal. “The primary responsibility of any prime minister is to defend Canada’s interests against American interests. We were able to do that well. And we’ll be ready for the decision Americans make in November.”
But not Canadian interests against Chinese interests?
Justin knows that he cannot run on his poor record. All it leaves him is the mincing, cowardly distractions of anti-Americanism and stock phrases.
Why would anyone fall for this?
No wonder his own minions can't stand him.
No country for anyone:
A plurality of virtually every category answered “Jews”: Retirees, Canadians with a bachelor’s degree, full-time workers.The most conspicuous exception was Canadians aged 18 to 24, who framed the country as being caught in a tide of anti-Muslim hate that easily eclipsed anything happening to Canadian Jews.The Association of Canadian Studies compared two surveys; one conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and one in the first week of January. Of the 1,600 Canadians surveyed for the January poll, 46.2 per cent reported seeing a recent increase in “hateful comments” against Jews, while 37.8 per cent reported the same thing for Muslims.The results for respondents aged 18-24 weren’t even close to the mainstream total — or to the numbers yielded by any other surveyed age demographic.In the 24-and-under set, an incredible 62.8 per cent reported that they’d seen an “increase in hateful comments” against Muslims in the media, while just 20.8 per cent said the same about Jews.
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Toronto police announced Sunday that two men were charged with unlawful assembly, mischief and assaulting a peace officer in connection with the Dec. 17 rally outside of the Zara store at the Eaton Centre.Video of the demonstration that had been widely circulated on social media had showed protestors uttering threats.“I’m telling you, if you touch me, I’m putting you on the floor,” one man says in the video, wearing a mask and keffiyeh, to a group of shocked uniformed Toronto police officers.“I will lay you to sleep, I’ll put you six feet deep.”Charged are 19-year-old Amro Saeed Ahmad Abufarick, and 34-year-old Malek Said Ahma Abufarick, both of Toronto.Amro Abufarick also faces an additional charge of being a member of an unlawful assembly while masked.
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Because political multiculturalism is a dangerous farce that has only divided Canadians:
In November, a Postmedia-commissioned Leger poll asked Canadians specifically about what the Israel-Hamas conflict was doing to the country’s social fabric.A majority (51 per cent) agree that Canadian society was not doing enough to instill newcomers with values “of tolerance of other faiths, races, and orientations.” A slightly larger majority (55 per cent) said the “best way” for Canada to deal with new immigrants was to encourage them to leave behind whatever cultural identity was “incompatible” with Canada’s “values and traditions.”
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Justin would be glad to Israel erased from existence.
It's a good thing that Netanyahu doesn't care what Justin thinks:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Israel’s “short-term” actions could result in the withdrawal of “support for a Jewish state” from Canada and other allied nations.**
With almost 100 Christian churches attacked, Trudeau has yet to dedicate a single speech to the crisis. Judging by the lackadaisical responses of progressive politicians, one suspects that they see these fires as purgatorial. When the number of churches attacked was at 68, Trudeau appointed a Special Representative to combat Islamophobia; when the count was at 83, the Liberal and NDP Members of Parliament at the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee voted to adjourn to avoid considering a motion put forward by a Conservative MP denouncing the destruction of churches. Perhaps when the arson count reaches 100, or 150, Trudeau might consider reestablishing Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom, which he disbanded in 2016 after deciding it was no longer necessary.
(Sidebar: for Christians, everyday is October 7th.)
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MPs returning from a visit to the West Bank argue Canada needs to do more to prevent escalating tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, as they recount distressing scenes from the occupied territories.
"We can't imagine what the people of Palestine are going through," said Liberal MP Shafqat Ali. "What we witnessed with our own eyes, it's basically constant humiliation, and constant mental torture."
How about the actual torture of women being violated?
Also:
Hamas on Sunday released a statement denying its members committed atrocities on Oct. 7.
The denial is a complete reversal for the terrorist group and a total disavowal of its own footage, after it supplied GoPro cameras to its operatives so that they could capture for posterity their horrific deeds on that day.
“Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people, is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters,” Hamas stated in the 16-page document, claiming it only targeted Israeli military sites. (The Al-Qassam Brigades is Hamas’s so-called military wing.)
“We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people,” it added, saying that its members were “keen to avoid harming civilians” and that any such targeting was by accident.
A booklet recovered from the body of a Hamas fighter killed in Israel earlier this month included detailed instructions for operating assault rifles, grenade launchers and explosives. But along with those weapons of war, the pamphlet also listed directions for another key tool used by the militant group: a GoPro camera.
At least a half-dozen of the militants who breached the Gaza border and attacked Israeli communities had cameras strapped to their bodies, in an apparent attempt to collect propaganda material during the incursion. Now, videos from the devices of slain Hamas fighters are being combed through by Israeli first responders and intelligence officials.
The videos, some of which have been posted to social media, provide a harrowing first-person view of the Hamas fighters’ final hours of life, and the death and destruction they caused during their unprecedented assault. They show the slaughter of civilians, indiscriminate shooting in Israeli communities, and the taking of hostages — clear evidence of war crimes that undermines Hamas’ claims that its fighters did not enter Israel with the intent of killing civilians.
Also:
Israeli officials estimate Hamas is getting $8 million to $12 million a month through online donations, much of it through organizations posing as charities to help civilians in Gaza.
That would equate to a multi-fold increase for online funding compared to what the group was receiving before its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to several Israeli financial-intelligence officials. They all spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of their work.
Washington also believes that Hamas receives significant funding from online-donation sites and it is determined to help Israel put a stop to that, according to a senior U.S. official.
Canada is "currently assessing" whether the Shia Islamist Houthi movement should be added to the terrorist list in response to the Iran-backed group's attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
In a media statement, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the country's security and intelligence agencies are considering whether the Houthis, which operate primarily in Yemen, meet the explicit criteria for inclusion on the terrorist list.
"We will have more to say in due course," the spokesperson said.
Canada has faced pressure in recent months to add another group to the list — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran in January 2020.
That gruesome attack left dozens of Canadian dead. The government has so far resisted those calls.
Under the Criminal Code, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet can add an entity to the terrorist list if the public safety minister finds there are "reasonable grounds to believe that the entity has knowingly carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity."
A decision to designate the Houthis as terrorists would have serious criminal and financial consequences.
Canadian banks can freeze the assets of a designated terror group and police can charge anyone who financially or materially supports such a group.
(Sidebar: if you can freeze the bank accounts of out-of-work truckers but not actual terrorism financiers, well ... it doesn't win elections, even in Canada.)
Way to take a stand!
It's like Iran can't help itself:
Pakistan’s air force launched retaliatory airstrikes early Thursday in Iran, allegedly targeting militant hideouts, an attack that killed at least nine people and further raised tensions between the neighboring nations.
The tit-for-tat attacks Tuesday and Thursday appeared to target two Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. However, the two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories.
The strikes imperil diplomatic relations between the two neighbors, as Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks. Each nation also faces its own internal political pressures — and the strikes may in part be in response to that.
The attacks also come as the Middle East remains unsettled by Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran also staged airstrikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria over an Islamic State-claimed suicide bombing that killed over 90 people in early January.
Ukraine, you walked right into this:
A significant, even far-reaching event would have slipped almost silently under the radar in Ottawa this week, had it not been for Ukrainian news media.
The Liberal government quietly (perhaps deliberately so) handed over a draft of its proposed security assurances plan for Ukraine to officials in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office.
The milestone was acknowledged by Canada's Ambassador to Ukraine Natalka Cmoc, who was widely quoted by several media outlets in Kyiv.
Cmoc spoke about the security plan Monday. It took Global Affairs Canada until Friday to answer a rather straightforward question about what the ambassador had told the Ukrainians. Even then, the department's milquetoast response avoided the central theme, which has preoccupied the debate in the embattled country.
In an interview with the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Cmoc made it clear that Canada's promised security measures were best described as "assurances," not "guarantees."
By "assurances", you mean lies.
Canada could not protect itself from a Black Friday stampede.
You got played, Ukraine.
As far as I know, Javier Milei is of sound body and mind and is not seeking to kill himself:
Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.
Gerry Adams and his IRA friends were Marxists with a callous disregard for human life:
Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams faces a lawsuit by three people who were wounded in bombings attributed to the Irish Republican Army that date back more than 50 years, a judge said Friday.
Adams can be sued as an individual but not as a representative of the IRA, Justice Michael Soole ruled. The judge also threw out a claim against the IRA, saying the group could not be sued because it was not a legal entity.
Adams is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland’s decades of conflict and led the IRA-linked party Sinn Fein between 1983 and 2018. He has always denied being an IRA member, though former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.
It was never about a virus:
American scientists applied to engineer coronaviruses with remarkable similarities to SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018, just one year before the pandemic’s outbreak, according to newly released internal documents.
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A China-based researcher had already mapped the COVID-19 sequence two weeks before China’s ruling communist regime revealed such details to the world, raising questions about what other crucial pandemic information Beijing may have buried from view.
Documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee reveal that Ren Lili, a current Beijing-based recipient of U.S. federal grants through the New York nonprofit research group EcoHealth Alliance, uploaded COVID-19 sequencing data to a U.S. government genetic database on Dec. 28, 2019.
At the time, Chinese authorities were still calling the disease an unknown pneumonia and ordered health workers not to spread any information around it with threat of penalty.
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One of the scientists who spent a lot of time spreading lies was Francis Collins, who led the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic. He was among those who commissioned a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, and he expended great effort in downplaying the lab leak theory, calling it a “very destructive conspiracy” theory.
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Anthony Fauci's former boss admitted to Congress that the Covid lab leak theory was credible - despite previously calling it a 'very destructive conspiracy'.
Dr Francis Collins, former head of the National Institutes of Health, testified in a closed-door session with the House coronavirus subcommittee on Friday about his role during America's pandemic response.
Dr Collins was involved in suppressing the theory that Covid likely escaped from a Chinese biolab, a theory which implicated the sprawling agency he headed up. It was previously revealed that the NIH oversaw grants funding risky 'gain of function' research to make viruses more transmissible and/or deadly.
In a significant U-turn, House Republicans who led the hearing revealed that Dr Collins, 73, told them that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.
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In the wake of a plandemic that killed millions of people, caused by a bug that likely escaped from a Chinese biolab that was funded by the US government, the Chinese have decided to double down on playing with viruses that have the power to wipe millions or billions of human beings off the face of the earth.
The arrogance is breathtaking. 100% kill rate.
This time, the Chinese have announced that they have been breeding a bug that has a 100% kill rate in humanized mice, which is pretty impressive until you realize that this is not some fancy new way to eradicate rodents but a scary new way to liquify the brains of human beings.
But we need all of those students for cheap labour and to fill in the noticeable holes in our armed forces:
The number of international students in Canada now exceeds one million, according to official figures that show an increase that has escalated far faster than the government’s own internal forecasts.Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told The Globe and Mail that at the end of December, there were 1,028,850 study permit holders, with just over half of them in Ontario.Immigration Minister Marc Miller is preparing to cap the number of international students, and has called on the provinces to stop licensing sub-standard private colleges that he says churn foreign graduates out like “puppy mills.”
Then why don't you put a stop to it, Marc?
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Marc “we need cheap labor” Miller announcing a sharp cut to international student intake…
— Darshan Maharaja (@TheophanesRex) January 22, 2024
…immediately after Canada signed an agreement with the Punjab province of Pakistan to bring more workers from there. So a new source of cheap labor.
Clever.
Sinister, but clever.
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Immigration Minister Marc Miller is announcing a two-year cap on international student admissions.
The minister hopes the cap will give the federal and provincial government time to curb a system that he says is taking advantage of high international student tuition while providing, in some cases, a poor education.
The cap will mean a 35 per cent overall reduction in new study visas this year though some provinces, including Ontario, will see a reduction of 50 per cent or more.
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A Canadian Armed Forces program to recruit immigrants has seen only 77 applicants successfully enlist to date, says a briefing note for Defence Minister Bill Blair. Many thousands more applied but faced lengthy security checks: “Security clearances generally take longer for permanent residents.”
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First of all, these migrants aren't seeking asylum. Secondly, what Legault really means is that Quebec shouldn't be on the hook for these people:
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to slow the influx of asylum seekers entering his province, which he said is nearing a “breaking point.”
Legault made his request in an official letter to Trudeau sent Wednesday afternoon, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.
“We are very close to the breaking point due to the excessive number of asylum seekers arriving in Quebec month after month. The situation has become unsustainable,” Legault wrote.
He said that in 2022, Quebec took in more asylum seekers than the rest of the country combined.
The closure of the unofficial Roxham Road crossing point south of Montreal in 2023 “momentarily” slowed the flow, he said. “However, the arrivals have continued to increase at airports. The number of people arriving on a visitor visa and applying for asylum is also increasing significantly.”
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It's not like Mexico will admit that its people NEED asylum:
Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the Trudeau government is holding diplomatic talks with Mexico to deal with an increase in asylum claims from that country.
Miller says claims from Mexico have shot up in recent years and the rate of Mexican applicants who actually get refugee status is well below that of other countries.
He says the increase started after Canada lifted its visa requirement for Mexican tourists in late 2016, which experts say has made it easier for people to come and make an asylum claim.
Charge him with attempted murder:
A 22-year-old Nova Scotia man has been charged with allegedly lighting a fire last May that grew to become one of the largest wildfires in the province’s history.
The Barrington Lake fire southwest of Shelburne, N.S., was ignited on May 26, 2023, and burned 23,000 hectares before it was brought under control on June 13 and extinguished more than a month later amid heavy rain.
The fire forced the evacuation of more than 6,000 people and destroyed 60 homes and cottages, as well as 150 other structures.
The province’s Natural Resources Department issued a statement Thursday saying Dalton Clark Stewart of Villagedale, N.S., was charged Wednesday with three offences under the Forests Act.
Stewart is accused of lighting a fire on privately owned land without permission of the owner; failing to take reasonable efforts to prevent the spread of a fire; and leaving a fire unattended. Violations under the act can result in a maximum fine of $50,000 and up to six months in jail.
Stewart is scheduled to appear in Shelburne provincial court on March 7.
We don't leave enough people on Ellesmere Island:
Enbridge has filed a notice of appeal in Ontario's Divisional Court asking the court to set aside four key parts of the late December OEB ruling that would see customers pay the total capital cost of a natural gas connection upfront instead of spread over 40 years.
Energy Minister Todd Smith has said the OEB strayed "out of their lane" with the decision and said he will introduce legislation to overturn it because it would increase the cost of new homes.
Environmental groups said the decision was a huge win for the environment and Ontarians, as it would have encouraged the uptake of greener home heating and cooling like heat pumps, and the reversal would be just a gift to Enbridge Gas.
A word on heat pumps that need electricity (and, therefore, a grid) to work:
That heat pump will require green electricity if it’s to help meet net zero. So we must also allow for building and operating the wind farms, backup storage and grid network needed to replace gas heating with electricity. All those costs must be recovered through higher electricity prices, or direct government subsidies. Even if energy costs revert to “normal” pre-2021 levels, my calculations suggest that electricity prices could well double.
Also:
An ideologically charged Canadian federal government “green” program to try and get homeowners to switch their reliable heating oil furnaces for less reliable electric heat pumps via a large grant has been blasted by a taxpayer advocacy group as yet more government waste after it was revealed the program is set to cost nearly four times as much as originally thought.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, a recent federal Legislative Costing Note from the Parliamentary Budget Office released last Thursday showed that estimated costs for a federal government program to give households $15,000 grants to switch to new heat pumps have gone from $750 million to $2.7 billion.
“The Budget Office estimates there are up to 244,000 households nationwide that could be eligible for program funding,” stated the Legislative Costing Note, which added that if all eligible households access the program, “we estimate the program could have a maximum potential cost of $2.7 billion.”
According to notes from the Enhancements To The Oil To Heat Pump Affordability Program, the program uptake was “projected by extrapolating historical participation trends in the program.”
The original scheme was to allow $10,000 to eligible homeowners to convert from their oil-fired furnaces to an electric heat pump. The cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last October expanded the grants to $15,000 along with a $250 “one-time bonus payment.”
As it stands now, the grants apply to residents in the provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
According to The Budget Office, “approximately 10,000 households” to date have officially qualified for electric heat pump grants.
In October of last year, amid dismal polling numbers that showed his government would be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election, Trudeau announced he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canadian provinces for three years.
He then revealed the main reason for the announcement, which was to encourage locals to ditch their home heating oil units for electric heat pumps and said his government would be giving out free pumps to many homeowners.
No, we don't need anymore expensive and time-wasting inquiries anymore than we need to believe that Chanie Wenjack was a tragic figure but, in truth, just a homesick boy:
Parliament must fund a full investigation into longstanding claims of unmarked Indian Residential School graves in Kamloops, B.C., Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. Cabinet three years ago budgeted millions for a final search that was never undertaken: “Canadians deserve to know the truth.”
Also:
A Prince Edward Island cabinet minister has asked a law firm to conduct an inquiry into a village councillor's decision to display a sign denying the existence of residential school graves.
Communities Minister Rob Lantz issued a statement Wednesday saying Murray Harbour Coun. John Robertson had failed to comply with a ministerial directive to pay a $500 fine and issue an apology or resign — sanctions that were first imposed by the rural municipality.
Lantz said that under provincial legislation, however, he couldn't take action until an independent inquiry investigates Robertson's conduct, even though the municipality has completed its own probe. As a result, Lantz has appointed Michael Drake, a partner with the law firm McInnes Cooper, to carry out an inquiry, saying such a move is unprecedented.
"As a former municipal councillor, I respect and appreciate the role of democratically elected local governments," Lantz said in his statement. "We need to follow the letter of the law concerning the Municipal Government Act so that we are confident a decision can hold up.”
But children don't buy junk food; parents do:
Cabinet will detail draft regulations this spring to impose a billion-dollar ban on food advertising to children on TV and the internet, says a Department of Health briefing note. Regulations will still permit fast food ads on radio, billboards, movie theatre screens and sponsorships of minor sports leagues by restaurant chains: “Industry self-regulation is not enough to protect children.”
This is censorship under the guise of doing something good.
The government knows that it won't work, but, hey! Censorship!
Health Minister Mark Holland says while some provinces are using private health care as a stop-gap to try to address system strains, health-care delivery must stay publicly funded.
His comments come after two doctors last week warned that the crisis in Canada’s emergency rooms has become “horrific and inhumane,” and after the Ontario Hospital Association warned last week that a “huge spike” in population and aging residents is a major challenge for provincial health-care providers.
“We’re not going to allow that to happen. Let me be very clear, Canada and Canadians are deeply proud of having a public health-care system,” Holland said in an interview with The West Block guest host Eric Sorensen.
Speak for yourself, Mark.
Why don't YOU wait for cancer treatments?
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A federal incentive program dating from 2012 has drawn nearly 18,000 doctors and nurses to rural Canada, says a Department of Employment report. Auditors rated Canada Student Loan forgiveness a success though many medical and nursing students never heard of it: ‘They found out about it from family or friends.’
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The poll by Leger comes nearly a year after the federal government offered a $196-billion health accord to the provinces to increase health funding and address a growing shortage of health-care workers.
Doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals have warned for years about a dangerous lack of health workers, leading to understaffed emergency rooms and a lack of primary care that is felt across the entire health system.
The survey found Canadians are feeling the impact, as 70 per cent of respondents say they worry they won’t be able to get good quality medical care if they or a family member need it.
Euthanasia appeals to the death cultists out there:
Canada is only weeks away from legalizing assisted suicide for Canadians whose only underlying condition is mental illness. There are reports that assisted death is already being offered to Canadians who are suicidal. And MAID advocates are already speaking openly about extending physician-assisted death to children as young as 12.Amidst all this, a new report alleges that the “disproportionate power” of the country’s pro-MAID lobby has been singularly responsible for pushing the practice well beyond its initial promise as a form of euthanasia for the terminally ill.“It’s not clear where the organization would draw the line for who should have access to MAID,” writes author Miranda Schreiber in a profile of Dying With Dignity published this month in The Walrus.Dying with Dignity was the most active player in the passage of Bill C-7, which beginning on March 17 will legalize assisted suicide for Canadians “suffering solely from a mental illness.” The group’s future goals, as listed on their website, include pushing the federal government to drop the age requirement for MAID from 18 to “at least 12 years of age.”“As with adults, there should be a presumption of capacity for these minors,” reads a Dying With Dignity blog post on the issue of “Mature minors and MAID.”In an interview with the group’s CEO Helen Long, Schreiber asked if they may eventually consider lobbying for MAID to be extended to children whose only underlying condition is mental illness. Long replied, “I mean that’s so far down the road. I don’t know.”Long also rejected reports that MAID was prone to abuse or coercion, saying “as far as we’re concerned, there is no evidence that MAID has been delivered inappropriately.”Founded as an all-volunteer organization in 1980, Dying With Dignity is now a registered political lobby group whose resources reportedly dwarf those of the small coterie of disability and palliative care groups trying to push against Canadian MAID expansion. This has included the occasional government grant, including for paid Dying With Dignity staff positions funded through the Canada Summer Jobs program.
We need more Cardinal Zen in our lives:
Joseph Cardinal Zen has joined his voice to those opposing Fiducia Supplicans, calling for the text’s author, Cardinal Victor Fernández, to resign or be dismissed.
Writing on his personal website January 21, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong issued his response to Fiducia Supplicans and its subsequent January 4 press release, both of which were authored by Cardinal Fernández, the new prefect of the Congregation (Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“The Statement repeatedly emphasizes the need to avoid confusion, but the blessings encouraged by the Statement do in fact create confusion,” wrote Zen.
Failure of morality and education:
This Saturday is the centenary of the death of Lenin and I asked Whitestone Insight to do an opinion poll to discover what the British think of him. It emerges from this poll (of more than 2,000 people) that of those aged eighteen to twenty-four who have heard of Lenin and have a view one way or the other, the proportion who have a “favorable or very favorable” view of him is a terrifying 43 percent. If you include all the young people polled, the proportion who approve of Lenin falls to 15 percent, but that includes those who haven’t a clue who Lenin was and therefore couldn’t approve or disapprove.
Actual science will not be mocked:
The decision was handed down on Jan. 3 by the disciplinary board of the Collège des Médecins du Québec, the province’s medical college, against Dr. Raymond Brière.
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The inaccuracies are glaring. The toolkit tells teachers, for example, that biological sex is determined by seven elements (it asserts that no single element can determine sex on its own): external genitalia, internal sex organs, gonads, secondary sex characteristics, hormone production, hormone response and chromosomes.It’s a comically false framing of biological sex. Chromosomes determine sex. There are other features that are associated with sex, like body parts, but the primary determinant comes down to DNA. Irregularities exist within a tiny sliver population, but these are clearly medical conditions, not proof of a sex spectrum. In the same vein, a person born with one leg doesn’t disprove the fact that humans are a two-legged species.From there, the toolkit goes on to explain that the presumption that people are either men (if their sex is male) or women (if their sex is female), is racist.“Gender binary is a colonial and white supremacist structure rather than a natural and indisputable truth,” it stated, before linking to a couple of online blog posts and CBC articles as evidence.
At least three people are dead, and more than a half-dozen suffered injuries after a deadly earthquake toppled homes and buildings in western China early Tuesday, officials are reporting.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck at 2:09 a.m. local time in the country's Xinjiang region near the Kyrgyzstan border.
Seismologists could revise the earthquake's reported magnitude after reviewing data.
The notable quake took place during freezing weather and jolted the area of Wushi County in Aksu .
Data provided by USGS showed the earthquake was just over 8.0 miles deep and took place 18 miles northwest of Aykol.
Along an icy coast of Greenland, locals spotted the body of a rarely seen deep-sea creature. Wildlife officials identified the stranded animal as a 100-year-old shark.
The shark was spotted off the coast of Nuuk during a storm, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources said in a Dec. 14 news release. Annie Busk Lennert, one of the people who found the shark’s body, had earlier seen the shark either playing or fighting in the water but eventually lost sight of it.
Soon after, wildlife officials received several reports of a stranded shark on a rocky beach in Avannarliit.
Biologist Daniel Estévez-Barcia identified the animal as a Greenland shark, the institute said.
The female shark measured about 13 feet long and was just over 100 years old, Estévez-Barcia said in the release. Based on its missing tail, the animal was likely killed by fishermen.
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