Mid-Week Post

Your Lenten post ...

The more recent bribe is getting fast-tracked:

A one-time top-up payment will be coming to Canadians who receive the GST credit.

The “Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit,” which was first announced late last month as part of a number of the government’s affordability measures, passed the final vote in the Senate on Thursday. ...

The finance department says the benefit will provide a one-time top-up payment “as early as possible this spring” worth 50% of the credit.

The regular value of the benefit, which is paid to lower-income Canadians, will also see an increase by 25% starting in July and continuing for five years.

The top-up is expected to help more than 12 million Canadians so when combined, the measures mean a family of four will receive up to $1,890 this year — compared to the annual $1,100 current credit — and about $1,400 annually for the next four years.

Meanwhile, a single person eligible for the new benefit would receive $950 this year compared to $540.

The Conservatives have called the top-up a “Band-Aid solution,” but nevertheless, helped speed the bill through the House last week.

(Sidebar: then you're not really helping, are you?)

Fool me once, shame on me.

Fool me more times than have been counted ...

Somewhat related:  

In November 2025, Canada’s supply management system deliberately destroyed millions of litres of perfectly good milk in Ontario, even as grocery prices remained high and food banks reported record demand.

That destruction was not an accident or a processing failure. It was the predictable outcome of policy.

We don't have to trade with China:

While Russia remains a military threat in the Arctic, Canada’s security officials told a House of Commons committee this week that they remain primarily focused on China’s threats to economic security in the North.

“Russia has a tremendous interest and focus in the Arctic,” Paul Lynd, assistant director at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told the foreign affairs committee on Thursday. “However, they are of less concern than, say, the activities of China and other hostile state actors at this time.”

**

Carney’s new trade partner -what else did he commit to ?? pic.twitter.com/lii5f0hgtX

— Concerned Canadian (@Concern70732755) February 13, 2026

Canada the cruel:

Feminist and development groups are urging Canada not to turn its back on funding reproductive health and gender initiatives, as Canada focuses its foreign aid cuts on global health programming.

"A bold diplomatic voice is really crucial," Oxfam Canada executive director Lauren Ravon told a panel she hosted on Parliament Hill earlier this month.

No, you're just killing black people off.

Racist.

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Canadian doctors are considering euthanizing newborns under certain circumstances as a form of “healthcare.” When Dr. Louis Roy advocated for this in 2022, it sparked widespread outrage and the proposal appeared to be dead. It wasn’t. When the Daily Mail pressed the CMQ last year, it confirmed it still endorses the recommendation. It recently stated that euthanasia for babies with “severe deformations” or “extreme pain” may be medically justified. Public outrage, as usual, has faded in the shadow of Canada’s euthanasia bureaucracy.

Infant euthanasia isn’t yet law, but given the expansion of Canada’s euthanasia laws, it soon could be. In 2016, Canada legalized “Medical Assistance in Dying,” or MAiD, for terminally ill adults. Five years later, its Parliament lifted the requirement that a patient’s death be “reasonably foreseeable.” By 2022, lawmakers were discussing euthanasia for minors and in psychiatric cases, and next year MAiD for mental illness will become legal.

When a government grants permission to end a life, where does it stop? “Once you start legalizing, there is a risk that a significant number of physicians normalize this practice. It’s like putting fuel on the fire,” says Trudo Lemmens, a law professor at the University of Toronto, who now regrets supporting Canada’s original MAiD laws. Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute think tank asks the question: “If killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, why limit the killing to adults?”

The new under-dogs:

It’s been a long journey, but for the first time in history Israel has sent a bobsled team to the Winter Olympics — the 2026 Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy.

The team is led by American-Israeli AJ Edelman, who has poured in years of sweat and sacrifice to make this possible, even fundraising on his own to secure the resources necessary to compete.

Edelman was also the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics, representing Israel in the one-person skeleton sled at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Affectionately named Shul Runnings after the 1993 comedy film about the Jamaican bobsled team, Cool Runnings, the nickname plays on the Yiddish word shul, meaning synagogue.

Also - not a good look:

This is a watershed moment in Canadian history.

This is when the rest of the world realized what Canada’s true national character was: not the polite, friendly nation we pretend to be, but entitled, thin-skinned cheaters who scream “how dare you film us!” the second our… pic.twitter.com/YR2uASaOte

— Erik Thorvaldsson (@erik_thorvalds) February 17, 2026

And now for something completely different: