Your middle-of-the-week sojourn into gloomier weather ...
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston led the Progressive Conservatives to a decisive majority win Tuesday, bucking a trend in recent provincial elections that saw incumbents roughed up by the electorate or soundly defeated.
As the returns rolled in, the Tories were leading or elected in 42 of the legislature’s 55 ridings, the New Democrats were at nine, the Liberals had three and there was one Independent.
Did someone say landslide?:
When they tell you not to panic, panic:
Cabinet is not “panicking” over threats of a winter tariff war with the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. Opponents dismissed Trudeau as too weak and distracted to stare down a 25 percent American tariff on billions’ worth of Canadian exports: “I don’t think the idea of going to war with the United States is what anyone wants.”
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government on Tuesday defended Canada’s border integrity.
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said he would impose 25% tariffs on his first day in office due to excessive drug trafficking and illegal immigrants coming across America’s northern and southern borders.
Enjoy the decline:
Consumer debt rose to a record $2.5 trillion in the third quarter as many Canadians continue to struggle with high living costs and rising unemployment, new surveys from two credit bureaus say.
Newcomers and consumers who borrowed money for the first time in the past 12 to 36 months saw the biggest rise in missed payments, compared with the same consumer group last year, Equifax's report published Tuesday, showed.
"Recent newcomers to Canada are facing challenges in navigating the Canadian financial economy. Historically, newcomers have demonstrated strong credit performance in the first few years of being in the country," said Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canada, in a statement.
"However, rising unemployment levels combined with high inflation in the last few years has likely added significant financial pressure to this group," she added.
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The federal government announced last week that the new Working Canadians Rebate would apply to all people who worked in 2023 and who earned less than $150,000. That excludes retirees, people with disabilities and other groups who are unable to work.
In a post on X, Ontario Liberal MP Chad Collins said he felt his primary responsibility was to respect and represent the needs of his constituents and that he would therefore vote against his government’s affordability package because it excludes those groups.
His colleague, David McGuinty, said he too had been relaying concerns from seniors and the disabled community in his riding about the cheques that they will not be receiving.
“For me, everything is negotiable,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not say if he were open to changing the eligibility criteria on the cheques on his way to his weekly caucus meeting on Wednesday morning. He said only that he and his MPs were going to have a “good conversation.”
Trudeau announced last week that his government would temporarily pause the GST/HST on a slew of items for the holidays and send cheques to all working Canadians next spring.
Both the Bloc Québécois and the NDP have said they are not willing to support the government’s latest affordability measures if the $250 rebate is not expanded to include retirees. The New Democrats said they would be willing to pass the GST/HST tax break on its own.
Don't take sides.
Sit back and watch them eat each other.
Oh, did Canadians just notice the new normal?:
An overwhelming majority of Canadians oppose politically motivated violence and vandalism — and most think protesters should not be allowed to wear a mask in public or express overtly racist views, a new poll finds.
Nearly three-quarters of Canadians (74 per cent) believe destruction is never acceptable during protests, according to a new survey conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).
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Regrettably, rioting, deliberately intimidating demonstrations, and threats of violence have found a place in Montreal and Canada. They have been happening since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Violent protests in support of Hamas began even before Israel had taken any military action in response. On university campuses, student “encampments” impeded foot traffic and disrupted graduation ceremonies. Jewish synagogues, day-care centers, and community centers have endured bomb threats.
Pro-Hamas demonstrators blockaded the entrance to a predominantly Jewish area in Toronto. A recent demonstration in that city took the form of a re-enactment of the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar—not in front of the Israeli embassy or consulate, as one might have expected, but in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.
I would never expect Canadians to outright call anti-semitism or willful destruction wrong.
That would be assigning a moral value to things and that is something Canadians will not do.
That is why this sort of thing is the new normal that might possibly chap people every now and again.
"Diversity" is the new word for "slave trade":
Twelve former employees allege Sunrise Caribbean repeatedly issued bounced or incomplete paycheques to its cashiers, servers and chefs, some of whom have now been out of pocket for almost a year. Most of them are refugee claimants or international students, the labour advocates representing them say.One of those workers, Gurman Brar, is owed more than $19,000, according to an internal labour ministry ruling obtained by the Star. In August, the ministry found Sunrise failed to pay him minimum wage, overtime or provide appropriate rest periods during his year working at the company.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller yesterday promised “a number of measures” to enforce the Immigration And Refugee Protection Act. The pledge followed a U.S. warning of a winter tariff war without a Canadian crackdown on illegal immigration: “Are you planning to deploy the RCMP?”
Economists are warning the hit to Canada’s economy will be significant if incoming U.S. president Donald Trump makes good on his threat of imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imports when he takes office.
Justin has given Trump no choice.
Also, Justin is a douchebag who will never control the northern border even if it means a fifty percent rise in tariffs.
That's who he is as a Canada-hater.
"Take the shot," they said. "It's for the greater good," they said:
The DNA contamination found in mRNA vaccines can integrate into the genome of normal human cells, a top molecular scientist has confirmed with an experiment in his lab.
Dr. Phillip J. Buckhaults, a Professor in the Department of Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences at the University of South Carolina, carried out the experiment in response to scepticism about earlier findings about DNA contamination and posted the results on X.
Concerns about DNA contamination in mRNA vaccines – a byproduct of their manufacture that should have been removed before use – emerged in early 2023 due to the work of Dr. Kevin McKernan of Medicinal Genomics, a medical research company.
The worries, which have been corroborated and amplified by a number of experts, led Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo to call for a halt to the Covid mRNA vaccine programme last December, noting the risks of genomic integration and cancer formation. Last month, Port Hedland council in Australia voted to notify all of the country’s 537 local councils of the evidence of the DNA contamination in the vaccines and associated risks. However, most regulators have dismissed the concerns, claiming the DNA is not dangerous.
