Mid-Week Post

On the eve of spring 🌷🌸🌱 ...

 

Finishing off this country bit by bit:

Justin Trudeau, had he stayed in power until his term ran out or — God forbid — won another term, might have figuratively killed our nation. Canadians wanted him gone. But make no mistake — Carney will bring a raging fever by comparison.

Carney marched in, unelected — behaving as though he was, it should be noted — demanding the highest praise for reversing the carbon tax that his party has used to economically crush Canada since 2019. The party has since been manically posting about the move across social media: “We’re taking action. Carbon tax cancelled”; “We just cancelled the divisive consumer carbon tax. Our plan will make big polluters pay and build a stronger, more competitive economy”; “Mark Carney got it done”; and, most satirically of all, “We cancelled the carbon tax. While Pierre Poilievre offers empty slogans, we’re taking action to fight climate change, put more money in your pocket, and build a strong economy.”

Let’s get this straight: The Liberal party, under Trudeau, was so deeply unpopular that polls at one time showed that they risked losing official party status if an immediate election were held. The Poilievre-led Conservative party, at the same time, would have won a majority. Poilievre’s “empty slogan” that he would “axe the tax” can only now be considered empty insofar as Canada was robbed of the election that would have seen to it that Poilievre could follow through.

Instead, our former prime minister self-servingly prorogued parliament, to hold a party leadership race while we sat on the precipice of a trade war with the U.S. He was then replaced with a leader that did what Poilievre promised to do — and is now pretending that Poilievre’s promise was “empty.” The term “gaslighting” is overused in today’s popular culture, but certainly applies here.

There is nothing quite so obvious as the fact that Carney is in a desperate bid to cling to power by attenuating or, in some cases, abandoning the principles and mandates that defined his party’s decade-long rule.

Believing Carney is an insult to our collective intelligence. ...

The Liberal party is rotten.

Further, there is something deficient about Canadians’ reasoning if enough of us believe that the problem with Justin Trudeau’s reign was Justin Trudeau, rather than the Liberal brand.

If we do in fact vote for another Liberal term, well, then we truly deserve the hellish fever state we will have inflicted upon ourselves.

 

This. 

Carney is suave and different enough not to be the previous idiot Canadians tolerated for nine years.

Tolerating Justin and embracing Carney shows that Canadians are not a serious people, not a set of deep thinkers with an ounce of forethought.

Carney will be worse for Canada.

We don't have another nine years to figure that out.

 

Also:

On Monday, the newly-minted Liberal leader was asked totally legitimate questions about his “blind trust” by the CBC’s Rosemary Barton and the Globe’s Stephanie Levitz. Barton and Levitz essentially wanted to know why Carney didn’t disclose his financial holdings when he could have.

Levitz went first, querying Carney about the whereabouts of his millions. Carney’s response: “What possible conflict would you have, Stephanie? … Point final.”

Get that? “Point final.” That’s kind of the English equivalent of saying, in French, “This discussion is over, child.”

Barton wasn’t deterred by that. She said it “was very difficult to believe” Carney could have no possible conflicts of interest. At that point, Carney’s patrician mask fully slipped. “Look inside yourself, Rosemary,” he actually said. You are “trying to invent new rules,” he snapped at her. You are acting with “ill will,” he barked at the CBC veteran broadcaster.

Well, no. She was just doing her job. But in those few seconds, Carney revealed himself to be arrogant, pompous, evasive and condescending. He looked terrible — all that was missing was him gnawing at an apple.

 

Again, the new boss is the same as the old boss.

 

 

Is Trump fooling everyone?:

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would rather work with the Liberal Party leader in Canada to resolve a trade war he instigated with Ottawa, weighing in on an expected national election in the neighbouring North American country.

Trump in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday was pressed by host Laura Ingraham on polls that show the ruling Liberal Party of Prime Minister Mark Carney ahead of the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre. The likely contest comes after the U.S. imposed tariffs on its largest trading partner and threatened future levies in an escalating fight that has roiled the northern neighbour.

“I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me at all,” Trump said Tuesday in the interview.

The U.S. president also delivered a jab at Poilievre, saying that “the Conservative that’s running is, stupidly, no friend of mine.”

“I don’t know him, but he said negative things. When he says negative things, I couldn’t care less,” Trump added.

Trump’s comments come after Carney, the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, won the contest to lead the Liberal Party, succeeding former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month.

Carney could call a national election soon, and he has been portraying himself as an experienced crisis manager. He cites his tenure leading two major central banks during the global financial crisis and Britain’s exit from the European Union as making him uniquely qualified to deal with the economic threat posed by Trump.

 

Now, about that:

During a news conference in Iqaluit where he pledged to increase military presence in the Arctic, Carney said that he expects the ethics commissioner to create “screens” which would ensure he avoids conflicts of interest in the course of his prime ministerial duties.

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“What happens is that there’s a discussion with the ethics commissioner for certain screens around certain issues and that’s a process that is underway,” said Carney.

“I very much respect the system, and those screens become public as they’re developed.”

(Sidebar: the system that protected Justin, he means.) 

**

Poilievre accused Carney of “changing his mind constantly” as Bank of England governor and “printing too much money, which led to inflation.” Annual inflation averaged about 1.6% in the UK while Carney led the bank and he left in March 2020, meaning he didn’t oversee much of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic — after which it surged, peaking above 11% in late 2022.

“Mark Carney should have been fired when he was the head of the Bank of England,” Poilievre said.

 

Also:

In his book, Carney says financial institutions should commit to backing companies that have net-zero commitments. This includes companies in “heavy emitting sectors,” he wrote, such as steel, cement, and transportation.

He said net-zero investments can be a major opportunity for Canada, bringing jobs and enabling growth for the economy. Some of these jobs could be realized in the creation of a “zero-carbon electricity grid,” accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, increasing energy efficiency of homes and offices, and projects involving hydrogen as an energy source and carbon capture. ...

Carney praised Canada’s carbon tax scheme brought in by the Trudeau government, as well as mandates for the sale of EVs and a net-zero electricity grid, which were highly contested by Alberta and Saskatchewan.

“Effective public policies include carbon prices such as Canada’s legislated path to $170/tonne in 2030 with the proceeds rebated to Canadians, and our commitments to a clean grid and clean cars by 2035,” he said.

“And we can help build a new international economy. Cross-border trade in goods, services, capital, and carbon will increasingly align with countries’ shared values.”

 

No, they won't.

 

 

It's probably all those times you painted him as evil:

The Conservative party is breaking from tradition and will not be allowing media onboard planes and buses to cover leader Pierre Poilievre’s election campaign.

In an email Tuesday, national campaign director Jenni Byrne said costs for travel have “risen considerably,” as has the capacity for digital and remote access to public events.

 Sure, "costs".

 

 

My kingdom for a competent forensic auditor:

Military reserves are now 25 percent short of their targeted minimum strength, records show. The Department of National Defence in an in-house report said reserves were so poorly managed they did not spend more than a billion approved by Parliament to get them up to strength: ‘Lack of coherence has repercussions.’ 

 

So, the problem is not that Canada has illegal migrants collecting Canadian tax dollars but that someone ratted them out?:

Taxpayers Ombudsman François Boileau yesterday faulted the Canada Revenue Agency for cutting off benefit cheques to foreigners found to be in the country illegally. Boileau said the Agency policy, though technically correct, was a hardship for people “whose status is expiring.”

Birju, they're not helping:

Donors to a defamation fund for Birju Dattani, ex-Liberal appointee to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, urge that he “free the world from Zionism” and “take them all down.” The comments were posted by donors to a crowdfunding site where Dattani is attempting to finance a libel suit against three Jewish defendants: “Bring them down!”

 

True colours, ect.

 

 

You know, Harper demanded financial accountability but Justin did away with all of that:

A rare forensic audit has identified hundreds of thousands’ worth of budget irregularities at a small northern Saskatchewan First Nation. The Department of Indigenous Services yesterday would not disclose its complete audit of Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation at Loon Lake, Sask., population 1,815: “The purpose of the forensic audit was to conduct an independent investigation into allegations.”

 

What made the world less safe was the deliberate unwillingness to ward off China and rein Putin in:

Poland and the three Baltic nations say they want to withdraw from the international treaty banning landmines due to the threat Moscow poses to front-line NATO states.

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In a joint statement issued today, the defence ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia say they “unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention,” which took effect in 1999.

Axworthy was the driving force behind that convention _ which saw most countries agree to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines — and says abandoning it would help speed up the unravelling of the global order.

The former minister tells The Canadian Press that while he agrees with the region’s leaders when they say that security has “fundamentally deteriorated,” pulling back from the convention will make the entire world less safe.