Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week valentine  💕💖💗💘 ...

A shooting in Tumbler Ridge:

Several people are dead following a terrifying mass shooting Tuesday afternoon at a high school in Tumbler Ridge.

An emergency alert was issued around 1:20 p.m. Tuesday after police were notified of an active shooter situation at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

The alert also described a suspect as a woman in a dress with brown hair.

(Sidebar: oh, I think we can see where this is going.)

Police descended on the school to search for the suspect. Inside the building, police “located several victims.”

“An individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self-inflicted injury,” said police.

In total, six people — not including the suspect — were found dead inside the school.

Two other victims have been airlifted to hospital with serious or life-threatening injuries.

Another victim died while en route to hospital.

Police also found two people dead in a nearby residence, believed to be connected to the school shooting.

“Officers are conducting further searches of additional homes and properties to determine whether anyone else may be injured or otherwise linked to today’s events,” said police on Tuesday evening.

A total of 25 other individuals are “being assessed and triaged at the local medical centre for non-life-threatening injuries,” said police.

In the initial alert, police had asked the public to “stay inside and shelter in place, lock your doors and refrain from leaving your home or business.” ….

 

More to come.

It was never about a virus:

Ottawa Police Detective Helen Grus, a veteran investigator in the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit, was convicted of Discreditable Conduct under Ontario’s Police Services Act on March 25, 2025. 

Incredibly, the internal Tribunal Officer found that Detective Grus should have asked for permission before initiating an investigation into an unusual cluster of infant deaths – due to the “political and societal ramifications” of her inquiries, and because she was investigating “public officials”.

The written decision eliminates the right and duty of Canadian police officers to conduct investigations without political interference – or to investigate public officials or politicians without prior permission from above.

If allowed to stand, the Grus decision will undermine public confidence in the independence of police investigations, and cause serving police officers to look the other way when they suspect wrongdoing by ‘public officials’ or see possible crimes that have ‘political ramifications.’

In Canada, the patient is the expense:

Canada’s health-care system is facing a worsening crisis, with half of Canadians reporting they either don’t have a family doctor or struggle to see the one they have, according to new data from the Angus Reid Institute.

The survey highlights a decade-long decline in access.

In 2015, 40% of Canadians reported difficulty seeing a family doctor; that number has risen to 50% in 2025.

Meanwhile, those able to secure an appointment within a day or two have dropped from 24% to just 15% over the same period.

One-in-eight Canadians say they’ve been searching for a family doctor for more than a year — or have given up entirely.

The shortage of accessible primary care is not just a provincial staffing issue.

While most provinces have increased the number of family doctors per capita since 2015, Alberta and Ontario lag behind, and the aging population with more complex health needs has made timely access increasingly difficult.

It is said that the first Trudeau laughed when it was spotted that there were no property rights in the Charter:

An Indigenous group on British Columbia’s central coast is claiming ownership of private lands in a case that relies on a groundbreaking court decision from last summer that opened the door to Aboriginal claims on private property.

The Dzawada’enuxw First Nation is seeking a court declaration that almost 650 hectares of fee simple lands around Kingcome Inlet are rather “Indian settlement lands” that should never have been pre-empted by settlers more than a century ago. (Fee simple lands have long been known in Canadian law as the highest form of private land ownership.)

Most of the land is in the hands of two owners: Major lumber producer Interfor Corp., and the non-profit Nature Trust of British Columbia.

Until last summer, Indigenous land claim settlements and court actions steered clear of privately owned property. But in a 863-page ruling made on Aug. 7, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barbara Young recognized “Indian settlements lands” granted prior to Confederation, and declared that Aboriginal title is a senior interest in land above fee simple titles, which derive from Crown grants.

It's just jobs:

Canada’s top budget watchdog is sounding the alarm over soaring youth unemployment, warning that postsecondary students shut out of early work experience risk lower lifetime earnings and weaker attachment to the labour force.

Blacklock's Reporter says Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques told the Senate national finance committee that failing to land a first job — especially one tied to a student’s field of study — can have lasting economic consequences.

While stressing it is not his office’s role to weigh in on government policy, Jacques said academic research consistently shows how early career setbacks can echo for decades.

“If you are not able to find that first job or find a first job related to your studies, chances are your attachment to the labour force writ large over your lifetime and certainly your lifetime earnings will be lower,” Jacques testified.

Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey, released January 9, put unemployment among student-age jobseekers at 13.3%, roughly double the national rate of 6.8%.

For Canadians aged 15 to 24, joblessness climbed even higher in several provinces, hitting 14.5% in Alberta, 15% in Saskatchewan, 15.6% in Ontario and a staggering 19.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ontario Sen. Andrew Cardozo said the data points to a worsening crisis.

“From what I am seeing, we have a growing youth unemployment crisis,” he told the committee.

It's called waste:

In November 2025, just a few months ago, Dairy Farmers of Ontario disposed of 4.9 per cent of the province’s milk supply. The figure comes from Milk Producer magazine, an industry publication read largely by dairy farmers themselves. Most Ontarians will never see it, and that is precisely the problem.

That 4.9 per cent represents roughly 10.2 million litres of milk poured away in a single month. At retail prices, this amounts to approximately $18 million in lost value. The butterfat contained in that milk alone was worth roughly $10 million at retail. All of it was destroyed quietly, without public scrutiny, at a time when food banks across the province are reporting record demand and dairy products remain among the most expensive staples in the grocery cart.

Even this figure likely understates the true scale of the issue. Ontario is one of the very few provinces that reports milk disposal in any form. Most provinces provide no systematic disclosure at all. And even in Ontario, the terminology used is revealing. The industry avoids words such as “dumping,” “discardment,” or “waste.” Instead, it refers to the practice as “skimming,” a technical euphemism that makes a deeply uncomfortable reality sound routine and inconsequential. The outcome, however, is unchanged.

When questioned, dairy boards often argue that milk disposal is inevitable. Demand fluctuates, processing capacity is constrained, and surplus milk, they claim, cannot be used. Some level of loss, therefore, is presented as unavoidable. This narrative has been repeated for decades and has largely gone unchallenged.

It is deeply flawed.

Milk dumping is not an act of nature. It is the predictable result of policy design. Canada’s dairy sector operates under supply management, characterized by rigid production controls and some of the most expensive quotas in the world. For dairy farmers, quota is their most valuable asset, often worth millions of dollars. Unlike most other agricultural commodities, production cannot adjust gradually to short-term changes in demand. When the system overshoots, excess supply has nowhere to go.

Ironically, this is where supply management should demonstrate its greatest strength. Unlike the United States, Canada exercises centralized control over dairy production. In theory, this should allow policymakers to optimize resource use, smooth volatility, and significantly reduce waste at the farm level. In practice, the system has normalized the destruction of perfectly edible food while prices remain high for consumers.

Dumping millions of litres of milk while food prices stay elevated is not a technical necessity. It is a policy choice—one that contributes to tighter supply and helps keep dairy prices artificially high, penalizing consumers both at the grocery store and in restaurants.

There are realistic alternatives that could substantially reduce milk dumping without dismantling supply management. Allowing limited raw-milk sales for informed consumers, with clear risk disclosure, would create a modest outlet for surplus milk. More flexible quota-adjustment mechanisms could replace blunt monthly cuts that often miss real demand conditions. Expanded processing capacity for butter, cheese, and milk powder could absorb temporary surpluses. Temporary, non-subsidized export channels for dairy ingredients could be activated when excess emerges. Improved real-time demand forecasting, using retail and food-service data, could help prevent overproduction before it occurs.

 None of these measures require abandoning supply management. They require modernizing it.

Canadians are frequently told that supply management exists to ensure stability, fairness, and predictability for both farmers and consumers. That social license erodes every time food is destroyed under government-sanctioned quotas while households struggle to afford basic groceries and food banks run short of donations.

If Canada is serious about food affordability, sustainability, and food security, it must stop treating milk dumping as inevitable. It is not. It is a choice—and one that deserves far more public scrutiny than it has received so far.

Canadians will support a system because it is a system and will not drift away from it.

They will not even try visualising its waste or potential.

It's better to let things flow than to change them.

Also - if there is nothing wrong with it, why not tell the public?:

The Canadian government has quietly cleared the way for unlabeled genetically modified pork to enter the nation’s food supply.

The move is raising fresh alarm about transparency, food safety, and the growing push toward engineered “meat” products.

Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has declared that “pork” from gene-edited pigs engineered to resist porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is considered “safe” for human consumption.

According to regulators, the genetic alteration removes a small portion of a gene linked to PRRSV.

Health Canada claimed foods produced from the modified animals are “as safe and nutritious for people to eat as pork currently available in Canada.”