Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-May bundle of thoughts ...

Enjoy the decline:

If the economy had stayed where it was heading in 2015, Canadians would all be earning an extra $4,200 per year, according to an illuminating new report by Statistics Canada.

Article content

This roughly means that if the Canadian economy had merely spent the last nine years sticking to its usual rate of growth, Canadians would have experienced a natural increase in their paycheques larger than any number of Trudeau government benefits, including the $500 one-time top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit offered in 2022, or the $650 per child currently offered to eligible families as part of the Canada Dental Benefit.

The Statistics Canada report — authored by researchers Carter McCormack and Weimin Wang — adds to a growing body of literature showing that Canadian productivity is dropping fast, resulting in noticeable decreases to income and living standards that are set to continue dropping for the foreseeable future.

Everyone from the Bank of Canada to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to the OECD have now issued increasingly dire warnings about Canada’s “productivity problem.”

Earlier this year, the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers warned that lagging productivity was now a national emergency. “You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” she said at a March speech in Halifax.

**

With the Canadian government’s high debt-to-GDP ratios, such as a ratio of debt to nominal GDP sitting at 68 percent in March 2023, economists warn that government debt could become unsustainably high if Ottawa fails to reduce spending, increase productivity, and re-establish business confidence.

“We’re not growing our income per capita, which means that we’re not going to get the tax revenues that we need, plus we’re getting a lot of people retiring. So the situation could end up becoming quite unmanageable if we keep our pace that we’re going,” said Jack Mintz, president’s fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

The federal government has run back-to-back budget deficits since the 2008 financial recession, with government spending spiking during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Canada’s debt as a percentage of nominal GDP rose from around 51 percent in 2009 to 74 percent by 2021, for example. Nominal refers to the current value for the particular year without taking inflation into account.

**

Canadians’ confidence in their personal finances has hit a record low, newly released research suggests.

Confidence levels are now lower than they were during the 2008 financial crisis, according to a report from Nanos Research. More than 50 percent of Canadians surveyed by Nanos said their personal finances were worse off during the first week of May than they were last year, while 37 percent experienced no change in their financial fortunes.

“Only 10 percent of Canadians report their finances are better compared to a year ago—the lowest reported score on record,” Nanos Research chief data scientist Nik Nanos said in the report, noting that the score fell five percentage points from a month ago.

Canadians also had little faith in the economy with the majority saying it would worsen or stay the same.

Forty-five percent of Canadians surveyed said they believed the economy would weaken this year, while just shy of 33 percent thought it would remain the same. Only 14 percent of Canadians said the economy was likely to strengthen in 2024.

The Nanos Pocketbook Index, which tracks public perception of personal finances and job security, also dropped during the first week of May. Sitting at 50, it matched the low hit during the height of the pandemic in April 2020, when Canada’s gross domestic product fell by 10.7 per cent.

**

It’s been almost a month since the Canadian federal budget was released and the long tail on budget articles and comments is normally not that long — perhaps a few days or a week at best.

But the furor over the capital gains inclusion rate increase from the current 50 per cent to two-thirds (with only individuals getting a $250,000 annual threshold at the current 50 per cent inclusion rate) is keeping the discussion alive and lively. The disingenuous and misleading messaging by the government that the proposal will only affect 0.13 per cent of individuals is also angering many.

**

April saw the Trudeau government unveil its unbelievably ambitious (and some would say impossible) plan to build two million extra homes by the end of the decade.

The construction sector’s immediate response to this plan, apparently, was to shed several thousand workers. It wasn’t much, but between March and April of this year, Canada counted 11,000 fewer construction workers, a contraction of 0.7 per cent.

If 90,000 new jobs is a better-than-average performance for the Canadian economy, it relied an awful lot on public sector jobs to get there. April saw another 26,000 people get government jobs, against just 50,000 who got private sector jobs (the rest were new self-employed jobs).

In the last year, meanwhile, the public sector has gained 208,000 jobs against 190,000 new private sector jobs.  

(Sidebar: this public sector.)

Your corrupt, inept, wasteful government and you:

Former government whip Andrew Leslie, in his recent interview with National Post, is merely the latest senior Liberal to publicly pour scorn on Trudeau, his cabinet and the cabal of senior advisers around him.

(Sidebar: this Andrew Leslie.)

He can be added to the list that includes former ministers Bill Morneau, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott in recent books and memoirs. Other former ministers who have left government, such Catherine McKenna and Scott Brison, have hinted at their exasperation, while publicly keeping their own counsel.

Can they all be dismissed as disgruntled former employees, or is there merit to the criticisms that the prime minister and his entourage are unprincipled hyper-partisans who care more about spin than substance?

A common complaint is that Trudeau makes brazen commitments that he knows he can’t, or won’t, deliver upon.

The latest charge from Lt. Gen Leslie is that the prime minister and his cabinet are not serious about defence and have no intention of meeting spending targets because they believe the Americans will always defend Canada.

Leslie was involved in drawing up the Liberal defence policy document prior to the 2015 election. He says that this contributed to 2017’s “Strong, Secure, Engaged” policy that had specific timelines for equipment and an annex of 110 or so deliverables that were mostly missed. He said that since 2015, the Liberal government has not spent or has reprofiled, deferred or lapsed around $20 billion that was promised to defence, leaving the army “in a state of despair.”

(Sidebar: those aren't the only breaches of security Justin is guilty of.)

Wilson-Raybould was at the centre of the infamous SNC Lavalin scandal, in which Trudeau was found to have used means that violated the Conflict of Interest Act to exert influence on his attorney general. Wilson-Raybould later resigned from cabinet, was kicked out of the Liberal caucus, won her seat as an Independent and then left politics in 2021.

Trudeau said he was merely standing up for the jobs of his fellow Canadians.

In her book, Indian in the Cabinet, she said she thought Trudeau would make a good prime minister and create a good team but was proven wrong.

“There are lots of pretty words, but there are a lot of promises that have been made that have not been kept. And that leads, of course, to disillusionment and disappointment,” she said in an interview with Reuters in 2021.

In her book, she said she was angry that she had believed Trudeau “was an honest and good person, when in truth, he would so casually lie to the public and then think he could get away with it.”

Philpott has also written a book — Health for All — which is diplomatic about her exit from the Liberal party, after leaving in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould.

Article content

But she also notes the demands by Trudeau’s staff to land partisan punches on the opposition. “I don’t think that things turned out the way they were initially described. The hyper-partisanship is so built-in, it just becomes insurmountable,” she wrote.

Morneau’s criticisms in his book, Where to From Here, are more explicit and damaging. The former finance minister said policy rationales were often tossed aside in favour of scoring political points.

He noted the recommendations of the Department of Finance were disregarded on the emergency wage subsidy during COVID, as Trudeau announced a much more generous program than the one Morneau thought had been agreed upon. “It was one of the worst moments of my political life,” Morneau wrote.

Challenges, he said, were not managed on a daily basis at the highest level and Trudeau’s management and interpersonal communication abilities were sorely lacking.

“The prime minister had an inability (for) or lack of interest in forging relationships with me, and as far as I could tell, with the rest of his cabinet,” he said.

Article content

Wilson-Raybould said she was chosen because she was “an Indian in the cabinet” and Morneau agreed that ministers were picked for promotional reasons rather than for what they brought to the table. But that hardly mattered because power resided in the hands of a cabal of advisers around the prime minister who compelled agreement from cabinet ministers, he said.

(Sidebar: don't pass the buck now, Bill.) 

One example of the improvised nature of public policy-making, according to Morneau, was the “baffling” decision to commit to a public dental plan when the pledge to bring in pharmacare remained unfulfilled.

Now, all of these people are rats, and, unlike Jagmeet Singh (the scourge of lobbyists - save his own brother), are desperate to distance themselves from the Boy Blunder.

It is, however, emotionally gratifying to see his familiars publicly state what everyone else already knew.

**

They'll still vote for her:

A picture is worth a thousand words as they say, and that’s certainly true of the photo below:

“This was the line-up for a food bank in Chrystia Freeland’s riding on Friday morning.”

**

Idiocy or disillusionment?

YOU decide:

New Democrats petitioned the Prime Minister for a Royal Commission into “the rise in the deep distrust some Canadians have of our media,” Access To Information records show. Catherine McKenney, a Party organizer and then City Councillor, privately complained after the Freedom Convoy that some Canadians no longer believed the news: “What is the reason?”

Oh, must you ask?:

An RCMP review of the federal police response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy reveals that officers were uncomfortable with the unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act and felt immense pressure from government officials. 

(Sidebar: this RCMP.)

The report titled, “National After-Action Review into the RCMP’s response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy,” was made public last week. 

One of the key concerns raised by officers involved in the response was that they were uncomfortable in exercising the additional powers granted to police by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.

“Respondents felt it was unclear what impact the invocation of the Emergencies Act had on the police response and police authorities. Furthermore, some respondents expressed they felt uncomfortable applying the peace officer authorities granted once the Emergencies Act was invoked as they did not feel that they had a clear understanding of those authorities,” wrote the RCMP. 

But you still followed orders.

**

Access To Information records uncovered by Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock, Alta.) show cabinet waited until after it invoked emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy to seek advice from Crown prosecutors. MPs for years have sought proof of cabinet’s claim it was told by lawyers beforehand that the action was lawful: “We will never know because Justin Trudeau censored it.”

**

As the government of Justin Trudeau appeals January’s Federal Court decision that found his invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to be unlawful, history is repeating itself in uncanny ways. Newly obtained records from 1970 show that former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, like his son, also didn’t meet the legal threshold to invoke emergency legislation used to quell a national crisis.

Article content

On Oct. 16, 1970, then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau announced that, at around 4 a.m. that morning, his cabinet had invoked the War Measures Act. A terrorist group possibly numbering in the thousands was about to overthrow the Quebec government. The only way to stop this feared insurrection was by suspending ancient civil liberties like the right against unlawful imprisonment, allowing police to make mass arrests of suspected members and hold them for weeks without seeing a judge.

Article content

The situation was indeed serious. The separatist Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) that had terrorized Quebec with bombings in the 1960s had kidnapped Quebec’s labour and immigration minister, Pierre Laporte, and the British trade commissioner, James Cross. Laporte was later killed.

But not only was there never any apprehended insurrection (a legal requirement to invoke the War Measures Act), Pierre Trudeau was wilfully blind to whether one existed. This is apparent from formerly secret testimony by then-commissioner of the RCMP William Higgitt, which was obtained through an access to information request by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, as well as the findings of lawyer Jean-Francois Duchaîne in his 1980 investigation into the FLQ crisis for the Quebec government. ...

This rhymes with the stunning testimony of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki to the Rouleau commission, which inquired into Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act in 2022.

Like Higgitt, Lucki attended meetings with the younger Trudeau in the days before the invocation of emergency powers, but was never asked for her opinion on whether these powers were needed. She later testified at the public inquiry that had she been asked, she would have said that police had “not yet exhausted all available tools.”

Article content

Why didn’t the Trudeaus ask? Perhaps they had simply made up their minds to invoke emergency powers, instead of using the ordinary criminal law. They may have wanted to look like they had brought a serious situation under control, whether their methods were legal or not.

A second eerie similarity is that both governments suggested a shadowy network much bigger and more sophisticated than truly existed.

When the War Measures Act was invoked in 1970, federal minister Jean Marchand estimated that there were as many as 3,000 FLQ members. In his investigation afterward, Duchaîne put the number at closer to 35. Meanwhile, McDonald commission reported that of the 467 persons arrested during the October crisis, only five were prosecuted.

During the Freedom Convoy protests, then-public safety Minister Marco Mendicino repeatedly claimed a group of right-wing extremists planned to violently overthrow the government. Mendicino repeated these claims when he testified to the Rouleau commission, stating that a “sophisticated and organized” group of people were “preparing to become violent.”

Article content

More than two years after the convoy, the government has offered scant evidence of a sophisticated and organized group intent on violence. The only potential serious violence associated with the movement was an alleged conspiracy to murder RCMP officers in Coutts, Alta. Two of the four men accused have pleaded guilty and been released from jail. The remaining two face serious charges, but the lack of similar cases suggests Mendicino may have exaggerated much like Marchand.

The eel is getting rid of the carbon tax; he is merely suggesting that it be renamed:

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney told a Senate committee on Wednesday that the federal carbon tax has “served a purpose up until now” and called on anyone who would want to scrap it to come up with a “credible and predictable” alternative.

Carney, who serves as the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, was invited as a witness to study Bill S-243, which would require banks and other federal regulated entities to “mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.”

Article content

Article content

But Conservative senators were hoping to grill him in the little time they had — the committee started late because of votes — on the federal government’s carbon pricing policy and overall spending, which led to some tense back-and-forths at times.

Leo Housakos asked Carney no less than three times if he supports “Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax” but the former governor gave a more direct answer to Yonah Martin.

“I think it has served a purpose up until now,” said Carney. “I think one can always look for better solutions and as a country, we should always be open to better solutions.”

But he insisted that any new climate policy should not only be better and more effective than the carbon tax, but also have the power to drive investment in a massive way.

“What’s critical in my view… is that if something is going to be changed, that something at least as good is put in its place. Ideally, if you’re going to change something, you put in place something better that still has that credibility and predictability,” he said.

“Because we’re in a position right now where we need $2 trillion of investments at the core of our economy in the next 25 years.”

No one is going to invest in a low-productivity, highly taxed country like Canada with few prospects and even fewer educated and trained prospective workforce members.

Any "green" project ends up being an expensive boondoggle, anyway.

Who, then, will Carney get to pay this new prohibitive tax?

First of all, these people were never Canadian.

Canada is a country of few immigration restrictions.

Canada was a stepping stone, just another house to occupy until something better came along.

This report would have more validity if the reporter had asked a native-born Canadian who paid into the system and was now forced to leave:

Nadia Bilal said her husband was making triple the salary as an information technology professional in Saudi Arabia, but he quit his job so their family could move to Canada.

Bilal, a 40-year-old robotics and coding teacher who lives in Mississauga, Ont., said her family landed in Canada in August 2017. Their savings was enough to help them survive as her husband looked for a job, which he found within five months.

Originally from Pakistan, she said she sought the dream of a better life and future for herself and her family, and that they found it during the first few years they were in Canada. Though Canada is inclusive and respectful towards religion, something the family sought out, she said now she isn't so sure it's the place they could realize their dreams.

(Sidebar: HA HA HA HA HA HA! There is SO much to unpack here!)

Bilal said her husband is "pretty happy" with his still-high-paying job in IT, and added all of her family members have become Canadian citizens.

But she's now trying to convince him that they should move out of Canada.

(Sidebar: are you going to renounce your citizenship?)

"I feel disappointed," Bilal said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca. "I was pretty happy living in this country. … I would have grown old right in this country. But now I'm reconsidering that."

Initially, she said, she expected Canada to have a safe environment and a good health-care system.

(Sidebar: HA! HA! HA! HA!)

"Like when you get taxed so highly, you expect these things to be given, right? But after the pandemic, … there is a downward trend."

With three children aged 15, 13 and just 22 months, she felt less safe going out as she noticed what she described as a rise in crime, road rage and general law breaking.

(Sidebar: oh, you DON'T say!)

She begged her husband to leave a very well-paying job for a pack of fictions.

What a maroon!

Also:

Immigrants to P.E.I. with soon-to-expire work permits are continuing to protest in downtown Charlottetown. 

Island workers with expiring permits in the retail and food service sectors will likely not have their documents renewed, due to recent changes to the province's immigration streams and Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) that will prioritize construction, health-care and child-care workers.

"We want them to grandfather us in and we want them to listen [to] what is right," says Rupinder Pal Singh, an internet technology sales representative who's lived in Charlottetown for one and a half years. His work permit is set to expire in two months.

"They want P.E.I. to grow... we want to be a part of it," he said.

No, you want to sponge.

**

The Department of Immigration is phasing out costly hotel subsidies to shelter illegal immigrants and refugees. It will be up to local authorities to find “permanent, sustainable” housing for foreigners by 2026, it said: “Funding in 2026 will be conditional.”

**

It's time to bill some people:

As the number of Canada’s refugee claimants hits new highs, a Conservative MP has revealed that Ottawa budgets about $224 per day to feed and house some foreigners who claim asylum after illegally entering the country.

Last week, Conservative MP Lianne Rood uploaded documents to social media showing the government’s answer to her question about what “goods and services” are provided to foreigners who have claimed asylum in Canada — but have not yet had their applications reviewed by immigration authorities.

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week white noise ...

March for Life: be there AND be square.

There is no perfect successor as all options are bad.

No one would angle for Himmler over Hitler, would they?

(Sidebar: save Hamas.):

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is the most prominent candidate when it comes to replacing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a potential Liberal leadership race, according to a new poll, while the majority of Canadian say they are unsure who is the best potential successor.

A recent Abacus Data survey provided to The Toronto Star asked 1,500 respondents who they think should replace Mr. Trudeau as Liberal leader if he were to step down. The most prominent response was “don’t know,” with 54 percent of those surveyed saying they were unsure who the best candidate would be.

Of those who did have a preference, however, Ms. Freeland was the top choice. As deputy prime minister and finance minister, Ms. Freeland has the highest profile of all the potential candidates, taking 13 percent of the vote.

Just behind her was former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney at 11 percent. Mr. Carney, who has described a future run for the top Liberal spot as a possibility, is best known in recent years for his climate change activism and support of the carbon tax.

Other potential candidates—Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Housing Minister Sean Fraser, and Treasury Board President Anita Anand—all garnered between 3 percent and 5 percent of Should you be worried about China rigging elections?:the vote as the best option for a future Liberal Party leader.

While Ms. Freeland and Mr. Carney appear to have more name recognition than the others listed in the survey, no one potential candidate appears to jump out as the clear public choice as a successor for Mr. Trudeau.

The cream of the crap, ladies and gentlemen.

A group, the only accomplishment of which is the destruction of Canada, proves that even the ovine masses have tired of this party but won't vote decisively.

Did the Liberals leave their keys in the mailbox?:

The federal Liberals are trying to crack down on a scourge of auto thefts across the country, even as the government is struggling to keep its own vehicles away from thieves, new data show.

Documents tabled in the House of Commons on Monday show 48 government vehicles from 14 departments and agencies were stolen between January 2016 and February of this year.

Shouldn't you be worried about China rigging elections?:

Canada’s intelligence agency predicts violence fuelled by “anti-gender” ideology is expected to continue over the next year, potentially driven by recent attacks and religion-motivated extremism.

Where is this religious fervour that holds that there are only two biological sexes?

I'll wait.

As ye sow ... :

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the "explosion of student disruptions" and the "virulent spread of antisemitism" at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire "anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024."

"Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism," the judges wrote. "It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct."

Who taught these guys how to negotiate?:

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the terror group had explicitly told mediators that some of the 33 hostages it would release under the first phase of the prospective deal would not be alive. The Times said it was not clear whether the terror group had informed interlocutors how many of the 33 would be alive.

A failure to release 33 living hostages would appear to conflict with Israeli demands.

I'd say so.

No one listens to Diplomat Barbie:

Canada’s foreign minister says Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip is “completely unacceptable,” and she’s holding out hope that ceasefire talks will prevail. 

Israeli officials announced Monday that the country approved a military operation into the border city, and Israeli forces began striking targets in the area.

The move came hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, which Israel says does not meet its essential demands. 

To be fair, Justin has failed every test in his life.

Why not a moral one?:

On Oct. 7, a cowardly, medieval, murder cult (campus heroes) Hamas took the lives of over 1,200 Jews.

Without warning, at a music festival; chased, toyed with; beating every Jew they could find; hunted them down, tormented them, raped them, shot them. A great insensate orgiastic jubilation over a massacre of innocent Jews of an intensity and enormity not seen since the demonic practices of Jew-hating, Jew-destroying Nazism. The greatest puncture in that useless lying balloon of “never again” since the failed slogan was first muttered. Jews massacred in their homeland. Jews killed again.

(Sidebar: a slogan that now has not aged well in the era of hatred, self-importance and - to say the least - bad taste. That's bigots for you.)

Hamas is in a squalid tradition; there’s a lot of Himmler in Hamas.

There was also the deep cruelty, the sadism of taking hostages, ripping families asunder if they did not kill them, scooping up babies, young children, keeping a special eye out for pretty girls — dragging over 250 innocent people of all ages to Hamas’s web of dirt tunnels. How could a man look into the eyes of a 10-month-old infant and sunder him from his family? How could men rape and beat so many female hostages?

Oct. 7 was an enormity, I say again, on a historic scale. Were an equivalent atrocity to have fallen on Muslims somewhere in the West, this world of ours would be spinning into the sun on the strength of universal and ferocious denunciations.

But hey, this was Israel. Those killed, raped and kidnapped were Jews. Jews who lived in Israel. So, this runs on a totally different moral and political plateau.

The ambush of unarmed civilians on that Oct. 7 demanded and still demands a clarion statement from our leaders of totally unambiguous support for Israel, a visit to relations of those killed, and those still hoping for release of their family members held hostage. ...

Hamas is in a squalid tradition; there’s a lot of Himmler in Hamas.

There was also the deep cruelty, the sadism of taking hostages, ripping families asunder if they did not kill them, scooping up babies, young children, keeping a special eye out for pretty girls — dragging over 250 innocent people of all ages to Hamas’s web of dirt tunnels. How could a man look into the eyes of a 10-month-old infant and sunder him from his family? How could men rape and beat so many female hostages?

Oct. 7 was an enormity, I say again, on a historic scale. Were an equivalent atrocity to have fallen on Muslims somewhere in the West, this world of ours would be spinning into the sun on the strength of universal and ferocious denunciations.

But hey, this was Israel. Those killed, raped and kidnapped were Jews. Jews who lived in Israel. So, this runs on a totally different moral and political plateau.

The ambush of unarmed civilians on that Oct. 7 demanded and still demands a clarion statement from our leaders of totally unambiguous support for Israel, a visit to relations of those killed, and those still hoping for release of their family members held hostage.

Political cowardice, the fear of losing some of the Muslim vote has Trudeau and Joly responding to antisemitism by dusting off tattered platitudes (“this is not who we are as Canadians,” or some equally flaccid slogan crafted by a herd of consultants and speechwriters). He has no moral force to exert, he has no high presence in the world’s leadership, his flighty antics and frequent displays of incompetence have left him an isolate on the world platform. Essentially, his sad record internationally, his unintellectuality (his mind is not overclouded with ideas) and the obsessional tie to global warming fantasies (serious leaders may mouth the words these days, but the global warming juggernaut is bogged down) have combined to place him outside the adults who do rule the nations of the world. He is no one’s wise man. ...

We never did get to hear our loudly, proudly self-proclaimed first male-feminist prime minister show any serious, extended response to the horrid tortures, beatings, rapes, kidnappings and murder of Israeli women, girls and infants. Remember — because a lot of people don’t seem to want to remember — this was an unprovoked mass killing by armed and hate-saturated Palestinians. As the records and film show (they filmed their own bestiality) they took special and malignant pleasure from the horrors, rape and murder of Jewish women. Women as children, teenagers, parents and elderly. Hamas loves to hate women.

What, my male feminist PM, kept you from taking the podium in your blackest denunciation mode? Where, most progressive of all progressive PMs, was your soul-tormented outcry that woman and girls were being raped and beaten — their dead and mutilated bodies put on exhibit to cheering Palestinians? And for the girls kidnapped to serve as hostages and “sexual relief” for the criminals of Hamas?

This was sexism at the murder and torture level. This was feminism, Hamas-style.

 

We need to stop expecting anything resembling basic decency or sense from Justin.

He clearly doesn't have it.

Instead, we must turn inward and ask ourselves why we tolerate this failure of a Peter Pan. 

Also:

Violent crimes targeting Jewish schoolchildren, storekeepers and other citizens totaled 77 last year, B’nai Brith yesterday said in its Annual Audit Of Anti-Semitic Incidents. The Criminal Code complaints were in addition to thousands of other incidents from online slurs to death chants at public rallies: “O Allah destroy the enemies of the people of Gaza.”

** 

First fact is that strict majority of people I talked to are neither students nor affiliated with our university. We have something like 100,000 students and tons of staff, so it’s not hard to find them! But yeah, “student encampment” is just objectively wrong as a description.

They took down one piece of fencing on the quad where convocation events happen next week, and have a handful of (masked) people controlling entry. I walked around the “sign-in” and no one noticed for ten minutes or so. But it’s *not* free entry.

The “security” and “spokesperson” both explicitly said that if you don’t support the collective’s view on Palestine, you aren’t welcome and they will remove you. Actually, I was specifically told to leave now or “it would become more uncomfortable.”

When I said, what do you mean, he tried to play it off as that it would be “embarrassing.” I did see a large group (50 people or so) surround a different woman who’d gotten in and start chanting “all Zionists are evil.”

Article content

In terms of posters, honestly, it was just a general melange of far-left policy. There was a speaker who was at the Wet’suwet’en protest (long story, but “traditional leaders” vs. elected leaders of a First Nation in B.C. on resource development), a Congo flag, a climate sign, etc.

One (white) person explained to me it was a black & brown led group. I responded that visibly the protesters are fairly obviously overwhelmingly white people. I was told this was only because non-white people don’t feel safe joining but that they all support it.

I talked to another protester about how, safety-wise, surely they must understand that a giant “Honour to the Martyrs” poster is interpreted as pro-violence given how that term is used in the Gaza conflict. She insisted martyr and intifada aren’t violent terms.

I asked “why protest here,” especially to folks who had no personal link to U of T. They said because U of T won’t divest. I said U of T has no such investments other than index funds and the like, same as that owned by the Canada Pension Plan or Teacher’s Pension or their parents.

Response was always “we agree, everyone’s complicit in genocide.” At one point, a group I was talking to argued that Kenya sending peacekeeping troops to Haiti was colonial violence. Given language, I suspect IMT (the International Marxist Tendency) played a role in organizing.

Article content

I discussed alternatives with some of the groups. Free speech, right to protest, Chicago principles: all great! But banning people who don’t agree with you, by force, from a common space on campus, especially when graduation for poor HS class of 2020 is next week, isn’t speech.

The university response right now is basically “let it peter out.” They have campus security in case a fight breaks out. But they’re still complicit in allowing the “entry gate” — an older woman with a Marxist shirt claimed to be the “group liaison with the school.”

**

On the surface level, there is a series of student groups that are organizing these protests—the most prominent among them being Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). “SJP has no U.S. revenue service (IRS) status and most of the money sources are hidden, which raises major concerns,” Steinberg said. “There is simply no transparency about who is funding them.”

Hatem Bazian, the founder of SJP, is one of the clearest links between these protests and terror organizations. Bazian was previously a major fundraiser for the Ohio-based nonprofit Kindhearts, which was censured in 2006 by the U.S. Treasury Department for giving money to Hamas. Kindhearts settled with the Treasury Department and was dissolved in 2012 over the 2006 case.

Bazian was also a prominent advocate and speaker for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which shut down after it was found liable in civil court in 2004 for its support of Hamas. “Hatem Bazian, the head of SJP, has clear connections to various terror organizations,” Steinberg told JNS.

A recent report by the New York-based Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) shed some light on the source of SJP’s funding. ISGAP found the central donors to be Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC); Tides Foundation; American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP); and JVP.

Bazian is also a co-founder of AMP. AMP is currently under investigation by the Virginia Attorney General after being accused of being a reincarnation of the IAP. Its former executive director, Abdelbaset Hamayel, and its current one, Osama Abuirshaid, were IAP board members and directors, respectively.

AMP has denied any links to Hamas but confirmed that the charity gives grants of between $500 and $2,000 to pro-Palestinian student groups. AMP’s national board member Salah Sarsour was also a major fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, which was designated a terrorist group in 2001 for funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.

**

A total 179 Gazans have received Canadian visas to date, figures show. Nearly 8,000 have applied, said the Department of Immigration: “This is Canada’s effort to get people out.”

 

 

 

That is because foreign meddling benefited the Liberals:

It’s 2024, and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has tabled the foreign-interference bill that would have been so useful in 2019.

A new offence for foreign interference, with serious jail time as the penalty, would have been in effect before the last election. A foreign registry would not just be on the drawing board, but in place and working years before the 2025 election. Now it will almost certainly come after the vote.

The Canadians from diaspora communities who were intimidated by proxies of foreign governments or police and felt like there wasn’t much of a response when they called the cops – maybe they’d already feel more secure.

But Mr. Trudeau’s government hemmed and hawed and delayed. Then there was a year and a half of troubling headlines and half a public inquiry and, finally, legislation about foreign interference.

By now, even the Liberals have to wonder how much trouble they might have spared themselves if they had just done this stuff sooner. Only the screaming urgency of political necessity made them act, and by the time they did, political damage had been done.

Slavery never went anywhere:

Border agents still have not prevented a single shipment from entering Canada on suspicion it was linked to forced labour, new data shows, almost four years after the country adopted new rules under the renegotiated North American trade pact. 

That’s a stark contrast to enforcement in the United States, where authorities report they have denied thousands of shipments of goods within the past two years over concerns they were made or sourced using forced labour.

It also comes as the Liberal government in Ottawa continues to promise it will table delayed legislation to “eradicate” forced labour from Canadian supply chains — a commitment first made during the 2021 federal election campaign — and as the first deadline approaches for businesses and federal institutions to report on their efforts to ensure the products they use aren’t tied to forced labour.

 

(Violent scene, viewer discretion is recommended) Chinese companies invested in some African countries, this is how a Chinese boss treated his African employees like slaves. Workers should NEVER be treated like this regardless what they did. Source: Sino Research Telegram channel pic.twitter.com/1pETzX7Ljh

— Bin Xie (@bxieus) May 2, 2024

The entire bill's goal is not protection but censorship:

The long-awaited legislation proposes to create a new digital safety regulator and includes changes to the Criminal Code to usher in stiffer penalties for hate-related crimes.

That has been met with heavy scrutiny, along with the government's plan to reintroduce a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow people to file complaints about hate speech online.

Critics warn that doing so could chill free speech, while Justice Department officials say only the most extreme examples of hate speech would be targeted.

 

What would those examples be?

Like these:

The CRTC is asking Canadian broadcasters for extensive details on their diversity initiatives in hiring and broadcasting.

 In a four-page letter sent May 1 by email, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) asked broadcasters six questions on their “program offerings and employment opportunities” to see if they met the requirements of the Online Streaming Act.

 “This includes the representation of Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages,” the letter says. “Further, broadcasters must provide opportunities to Indigenous persons and programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and languages.” 

 

(Sidebar: what's a "racialized"?)

 

Unelected and unaccountable are setting up a template.

Surely, they can pay for these things themselves.

And - oh, do you think so?:

The Leger online survey found 57 per cent of respondents who said free speech in Canada is under threat.

Article content

Of those, 34 per cent said it was “somewhat” threatened, while 23 per cent said they consider the threat a serious one.

Some 36 per cent said their free-speech rights were in no danger, while seven per cent said they didn’t know or did not answer.

The free-for-all that is Canada:

One of the suspects accused of gunning down B.C. Sikh temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar entered Canada using a study permit that he said took only days to obtain.

In a video posted online in 2019, Karan Brar said he applied for a student visa through EthicWorks Immigration Services in Bathinda, in India’s Punjab state.

“And in a few days I received my study visa,” he said.