Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week singularity ...

Mark Carney set to resume Justin’s work of ruining Canada on Friday:

Justin Trudeau’s last day as prime minister will be Friday, the day Mark Carney and a new cabinet are reportedly set to be sworn in by Governor General Mary Simon.

A senior source confirmed reports that Canada will visit Rideau Hall Friday morning to officially be appointed Canada’s twenty-fourth prime minister on Friday, simultaneously marking the end of Trudeau’s nine year run in the job.

He will not call an election then, or ever, because he cannot trust the voting public to not be wooed by lower or repealed taxes, or a sane adult to deal with the American situation the Liberals have been avoiding since January.

 

Also – what are you hiding, Mark?:

Incoming prime minister Mark Carney says he has put all his assets other than his “personal real estate” into a blind trust after months of Conservative questions about his potential conflicts of interest.

In a statement Tuesday, spokesperson Audrey Champoux confirmed that Carney had set up a blind trust and provided the confirmation document to the federal ethics commissioner when the Liberal leadership results were announced Sunday evening.

“We have been actively working with the Ethics Commissioner and we have delivered a full and robust conflict of interest management plan,” she added.

The statement did not detail the plan nor who would administer the blind trust. It also did not detail which assets he may have divested.

 

 

But we don’t need to worry about Chinese electoral interference, right?:

The RCMP in an internal report predict more “stalking and harassment” of politicians this election year due to anti-Israel street demonstrations. “Flash protests present a significant challenge,” said a police report: “The number and complexity of threats and violence targeting protected persons in Canada has continually increased.”

Rather, anyone pointing out that the current oligarchy is a fraud and obscenity will be as silenced as certain big-rig motorists were one frosty February morn.

 

 

Another by-product of the Trudeau government, the absolute failure that it was:

Urban crime is so alarming householders …

 

I’m going to stop right there.

Householders?

Why not say homeowners, or is that too bourgeoisie?

Moving on:

… may start to arm themselves, says pre-election Privy Council research. Federal focus groups targeted crime fears in the Greater Toronto Area where Liberals elected 49 MPs in the last campaign: “A number reported no longer traveling to certain parts of the GTA that they viewed as being dangerous.”

But that crime is the result of failed governance.

Why not own it?

 

 

The tax is not going anywhere:

Cabinet will attempt to cancel a 19 percent hike in the carbon tax due April 1, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. It was unclear whether Parliament must be recalled to pass legislation, he said: “What are the options? I don’t have the answers for you.”

 

Also – the new boss is the same as the old boss, perhaps worse:

Mark Carney, our next prime minister, has floated a climate policy plan that he says will be better for Canadians than the “divisive (read: widely hated) consumer carbon tax.”

But in reality, Carney’s plan is an exercise in misdirection. Instead of paying the “consumer carbon tax” directly and receiving carbon rebates, Canadians will pay more via higher prices for products that flow from Canada’s “large industrial emitters,” who Carney plans to saddle with higher carbon taxes, indirectly imposing the consumer carbon tax by passing those costs onto Canadians.

Carney also wants to shift government subsidies to consumer products of so-called “clean technologies.”

As Carney told the National Observer, “We’re introducing changes so that if you decide to insulate your home, install a heat pump, or switch to a fuel-efficient car, those companies will pay you — not the taxpayer, not the government, but those companies.”

What Carney does not mention is that much of the costs imposed on “those companies” will also be folded into the costs of the products consumers buy, while the cause of rising prices will be less distinguishable and attributable to government action.

Moreover, Carney says he wants to make Canada a “clean energy superpower” and “expand and modernize our energy infrastructure so that we are less dependent on foreign suppliers, and the United States as a customer.” But this too is absurd. Far from being in any way poised to become a “clean energy superpower,” Canada likely won’t meet its own projected electricity demand by 2050 under existing environmental regulations.

For example, to generate the electricity needed through 2050 solely with solar power, Canada would need to build 840 solar-power generation stations the size of Alberta’s Travers Solar Project, which would take about 1,700 construction years to accomplish.

If we went with wind power to meet future demand, Canada would need to build 574 wind power installations the size of Quebec’s Seigneurie de Beaupre wind-power station, which would take about 1,150 construction years to accomplish. And if we relied solely on hydropower, we’d need to build 134 hydro-power facilities the size of the Site C power station in British Columbia, which would take 938 construction years to accomplish.

Finally, if we relied solely on nuclear power, we’d need to construct 16 new nuclear plants the size of Ontario’s Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, taking “only” 112 construction years to accomplish.

Again, Mark Carney’s climate plan is an exercise in misdirection — a rhetorical sleight of hand to convince Canadians that he’ll lighten the burden on taxpayers and shift away from the Trudeau government’s overzealous climate policies of the past decade. But scratch the surface of the Carney plan and you’ll see climate policies that will hit Canadian consumers harder, with likely higher prices for goods and services.

 

 

Self-reflection is not what Canada does:

“Trudeauism,” the Canadian policy intellectual Sean Speer writes, “came to be marked by massive deficit spending, large-scale industrial policy, an unprecedented use of the federal spending power, a major increase in immigration in general and temporary migration in particular, and a significant expansion of the federal government itself.”

It didn’t work. Government spending nearly doubled, but business investment fell by a third and productivity plunged. Canada is now 30% less productive than America, and Canadian GDP per capita is no higher than it was in late 2014. This has been Canada’s lost decade.

The Trudeau carbon tax flopped, and even Mr. Carney now pledges to junk its consumer end. He’d replace it with a more complex scheme as well as a “carbon border adjustment mechanism”—a tariff or quota that is bound to elicit U.S. retaliation.

Liberal governance has left Canada in poor shape to face Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught. But irony of ironies, those U.S. tariffs have become the Liberals’ great hope, spurring a recovery of 10 or 15 points in election polls.

Never under-estimate the power of anti-Americanism.

It will be the weapons-grade cope Canadians want when Carney’s taxes wipe out their savings.

 

Whenever there is a regime change, the new dictators always raise the body count:

Perhaps some would call it the good massacre: Following a global rush to legitimize the new strongman at Damascus, Ahmed al-Sharaa, his forces are killing Syrians — up to 15,000 over one weekend — and condemnations, including at the United Nations, are nearly nonexistent.

A few days after Secretary-General Guterres shook Mr. Sharaa’s hands and praised his efforts at uniting all Syrians, has the world body’s chief made a call to Damascus? “No, he has not,” the UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, tells the Sun.

Images of mass executions around the port city of Latakia in Syria’s northwestern coastal region flooded social media, even as they garnered no major coverage on top news outlets. Forces loyal to Mr. Sharaa’s interim government seemed to return to their Al Qaeda roots, executing Alawites accused of loyalty to the ousted president, Bashar al-Assad.    

 

 

Don’t forget Pi Day on Friday!