Mid-Week Post

Your crease of the work-week ...




Collateral damage from the Solemaini assassination?:

On Wednesday, Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran‘s civil aviation organization, said the country would not give the black box from an aircraft that crashed, killing everyone on board, to Boeing or the United States.

He added that the Ukraine International Airlines airliner’s black box, which contains flight data recorders, would be analyzed in the country where the accident took place in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules.

Oh, I'm sure they will.




Meanwhile, PM Blackface and his drunk beard swears to find answers ... blah blah blah ... bullsh--.

This country now runs from danger and lets someone else's sons die.




Why does this pantload sound familiar?:

“This disaster is a reminder of what it means to be Canadian and to belong to this cosmopolitan nation,” said Payam Akhavan, a Tehran-born former United Nations war crimes prosecutor, now a professor of law at McGill University, who gave the 2017 CBC Massey lectures on the perils of “us versus them” politics.

“There is a certain fluidity of identity when you open your doors to the whole world,” Akhavan said, and this crash is a reminder of how outdated views of national identity can distance Canadians from their own tragedies.

No, you are either a Canadian or a holder of a Canadian passport leaving out of Tehran in the middle of a heated global conflict.

No one cared about these "cosmopolitan" Canadians:

1. Aggarwall, Rahul, 23. 2. Ahmed, Indra, 47. 3. Ahmed, Sarah, 8. 4. Alexander, Annamma, 53. 5. Alexander, Anchanatt, 40. 6. Alexander, Reena, 10. 7. Alexander, Simon jr., 9. 8. Alexander, Simon, 54. 9. Allard, Collette, 46. 10. Anantaraman, Aruna, 15. 11. Anantarman, Rupa, 12. 12. Anantarman, Bhavani, 48. 13. Asirwatham, Ruth, 39. 14. Asirwatham, Hannah, 14. 15. Asirwatham, Elizabeth, 11. 16. Aurora, Shyla, 27. 17. Bajaj, Anu, 21. 18. Balaraman, Saradambal, 40. 19. Balaraman, Marayanan,17. 20. Balasubramanian, Ramachandran,43. 21. Balsara, Freddy, 29. 22. Beauchesne, Gaston, 54. 23. Bedi, Jatin, 9. 24. Bedi, Saroj, 34. 25. Bedi, Anu, 14. 26. Berar, Jogeshwar, 45. 27. Berry, Sharad, 16. 28. Bery, Aditya, 4. 29. Bery, Neelam, 37. 30. Bery, Priya, 7. 31. Bhagat, Adush, 29. 32. Bhalla, Nirmal, 31. 33. Bhalla, Manju, 14. 34. Bhalla, Dalip, 7. 35. Bharadwaj, Harish, 18. 36. Bhasin, Reema, 22. 37. Bhat, Muktha, 50. 38. Bhat, Chand, 27, 39. Bhat, Deepak, 9. 40. Bhat, Sidhant, five months. 41. Bhat, Parag, 26. 42. Bhatt, Tina, 9. 43. Bhatt, Bina, 15. 44. Bhatt, Chandrabala, 44. 45. Bhatt, Vinu, 42. 46. Bhinder, Satwinder, 41. 47. Bisen, Leena, 29. 48. Castonguay, Rochell, 32. 49. Chandrasekhar, Sukmar, 25 50. Chatlani, Nita, 44. 51. Chatlani, Mala, 13. 52. Chatlani, Marc, 4. 53. Cheema, Shingara, 35. 54. Chopra, Jagdish, 71. 55. Chopra, Shampari, 69. 56. Chug, Ratna, 19. 57. Daniel, Celine, 37. 58. Daniel, Robyn, 4. 59. Daniel, Ruby, 8. 60. Daniel, Varghese, 41. 61. Das, Anita, 16. 62. Das, Ruby, 44. 63. Das, Arindar, 14. 64. Desa, Anthony, 72. 65. Desouza, Ronald, 62. 66. Dhunna, Sunil, 2. 67. Dhunna, Shashi, 16. 68. Dhunna, Bhag, 33. 69. Dhunna, Rajesh, 14. 70. Dinshaw, Pamela, 26. 71. Dinshaw, Jamshed, 40. 72. Dumasia, Dara, 57. 73. Enayati, Ardeshir, 68. 74. Fourdoonji, Homai, 49. 75. Gadkar, Anita, 11. 76. Gambhir, Angi, 9. 77. Gambhir, Santosh, 35. 78. Gambhir, Julie, 4. 79. Gaonkar, Shyama, 28. 80. Ghate, Sangeeta, 28. 81. Gogia, Bhagwanti, 65. 82. Gogne, Ritu, 16. 83. Gopalan, Krishna, 23. 84. Gossain, Aparna, 7. 85. Gossain, Kalpana, 31. 86. Gossain, Arun, 4. 87. Grewal, Daljit, 42. 88. Gupta, Arti, 9. 89. Gupta, Ramwati, 37. 90. Gupta, Shashi, 36. 91. Gupta, Vishal, 11. 92. Gupta, Santosh, 57. 93. Gupta, Anumita, 16. 94. Gupta, Vandana, 15. 95. Gupta, Amit, 6. 96. Gupta, Rajesh, 45. 97. Gupta, Swantantar, 38. 98. Gupta S. (age unavailable) 99. Harpalani, Deepa, 9. 100. Harpalani, Sumenta, 5. 101. Harpalani, Rashmi, 40. 102. Jacob, Aaleykutty, 40. 103. Jacob, Justin, 8. 104. Jacob, Jancey, 9. 105. Jacob, Jissey, 12. 106. Jacob, Bulivelil, 45. 107. Jain, Rani, 36. 108. Jain, Ruchi, 18. 109. Jain, Anoopuma Annannupana, 15. 110. Jain, Parash, 43. 111. Jain, Rikki, 16. 112. Jaipuria, Mala, 27. 113. Jalan, Anita, 3. 114. Jalan, Devkrishan, 35. 115 Jalan, Shila, 29. 116. Jalan, Vinay, two months. 117. James, Annie, 41. 118. Jethva, Zebuniska, 42. 119. Jethva, Umar, 45. 120. Job, Aleykutty, 43. 121. Job, Teena, 14. 122. Jutras, Rita, 32. 123. Kachroo, Mohan, 57. 124. Kaj, Leena, 25. 125. Kalsi, Indira, 21. 126. Kammila, Rama, 15. 127. Kapoor, Santosh, 39. 128. Kapoor, Sabrina, 6. 129. Kapoor, Sharmila, 16. 130. Kashipri, Athikhom, 20. 131. Kashipri, Neli, 30. 132. Kaur, Gurmit, 22. 133. Kaur, Parmjit, 26. 134. Kaushal, Bishan, 45. 135. Kelly, Barsa, 48. 136. Khan, Rahamathulla, 25. 137. Khandelwal, Manju, 19. 138. Khandelwal, Chandra, 21. 139. Khera, Rashirashmi, 3. 140. Khera, Suman, 28. 141. Kochher, Sandeep, 21. 142. Kumar, Manju, 28. 143. Kumar, Chitra, 29. 144. Kumar, Kevin, 1. 145. Kumar, Ramachandran, 34. 146. Lakshmanan, Kanakasabapaphy, 40. 147. Lakshmanan, Preethi, 7. 148. Lasrado, Sharon, 23. 149. Laurence, Nicola, 16. 150. Laurence, Shyamala, 18. 151. Lazar, Sandeeta, 3. 152. Lazar, Sylvia, 38. 153. Lazar, Sampath, 44. 154. Leger, Joseph, 65. 155. Lougheed, Donald, 48. 156. Lulla, Monish, 16. 157. Madon, Sam, 40. 158. Mainguay, Lena, 35. 159. Malhotra, Atul, 26. 160. Mamak, Rajinder, 42. 161. Manjania, Nasib, 62. 162. Marjara, Seema, 17. 163. Marjara, Davinder, 47. 164. Martel, Alain, 32. 165. Mehta, Ne Ha, 15. 166. Mehta, Kishonechandra, 48. 167. Mehta, Chandralekha, 41. 168. Mehta, Nilish, 16. 169. Merchant, Natasha, 7. 170. Minhas, Balwinder, 51.

171. Minhas, Kulbir, 24. 172. Molakala, Prabhavathi, 34. 173. Mukerji, Shefali, 50. 174. Mukerji, Nishith, 50. 175. Mukhi, Renu, 26. 176. Mullick, Deepak, 42. 177. Murthy, Narayana, 8. 178. Murthy, Susheela, 40. 179. Murthy, Bhavani, 10. 180. Murugan, Gnanendran, 44. 181. Murugan, Sumithra, 37. 182. Murugan, Lavanya, 10. 183. Murugan, Ramya, 5. 184. Nadkarni, Rahul, 16. 185. Nadkarni, Deven, 17. 186. Narendra, Hanse, 56. 187. Nayudamma, Yelabarti, 62. 188. Pada, Brinda, 18. 189. Pada, Arati, 15. 190. Pada Visnu, 47. 191. Paliwal, Mukul, 15. 192. Patel, Bipan, 17. 193. Patel, Mohanbhai, 35. 194. Patel, Babubai, 42. 195. Patel, Marazban, 57. 196. Phansekar, Rita, 26. 197. Puri, Veena, 43. 198. Puri, Amit, 5. 199. Puri, Chaman, 12. 200. Quadri, Syed, eight months. 201. Quadri, Shaista, 24. 202. Quadri, Qutubuddin, 40. 203. Quadri,Rubina, 8. 204. Quadri, Arishiya, 3. 205. Radhakrishna, Ngasumdara, 36. 206. Radhakrishna, Thejus, 7. 207. Rradhakrishna, Jyoti, 13. 208. Raghavan, Suseela, 23. 209. Raghuveeran, Vasantha, 40. 210. Raghuveeran, Rajiv, 14. 211. Rai, Kiranjit, 11. 212. Ramachandran, Pratibha, 13. 213. Ramaswamy, Janaki, 15. 214. Rauthan, Budi, 40. 215. Rauthan, Pouja, 17. 216. Rodricks, Elaine, 32. 217. Sabharwal, Meghan, 11. 218. Sadiq, Sugra, 67. 219. Sagi, Sujatha, 31. 220. Sagi, Kalpana, 11. 221. Sagi, Kavita, 7. 222. Saha, Bimal, 37. 223. Sahu, Ram, 50. 224. Sahu, Pushpa, 14. 225. Sahu, Pradeep, 16. 226. Sakhawalkar, Usha, 49. 227. Sakhawalkar, Dattatraya, 49. 228. Sakhawalkar, Sanjay, 18. 229. Sakhawalkar, Surekha, 15. 230. Sakhawalkar, Sunil, 13. 231. Sankurathri, Manjari, 33. 232. Sankurathri, Sharadha, 3. 233. Sankurathri, Srikiran, 6. 234. Sarangi, Rajasri, 14. 235. Sawhney, Om, 50. 236. Seth, Sadhna, 31. 237. Seth, Alpana, 8. 238. Seth, Ahkur, 1. 239. Seth, Satish, 38. 240. Seth, Shilpa, 10. 241. Seth, Karan, 38. 242. Sharma, Versha, 11. 243. Sharma, Sakuntala, 66. 244. Sharma, Neeraj, 10. 245. Sharma, Sandhya, 14. 246. Sharma, Swati, 11. 247. Sharma, Indu, 38. 248. Sharma, Om, 54. 249. Sharma, Sharvan, 46. 250. Sharma, Uma, 43. 251. Sharma, Rina, 7. 252. Sharma, Manmohan, 40. 253. Sharma, Sushma, 34. 254. Sharma, Ruby, 8. 255. Sharma, Vikas, 3. 256. Sharma, Sumitra, 42. 257. Sharma, Anuj, 10. 258. Sharma, Sandeep, 16. 259. Sharma, Shyam, 41. 260. Shukla, Sunil, 33. 261. Shukla, Irene, 29. 262. Singh, Jagit, 24. 263. Singh, Mukhtiar, 55. 264. Singh, Abhinav, 8. 265. Singh, Shalini, 9. 266. Singh, Dara, 17. 267. Singh, Balvir, 46. 268. Singh, Ranjina, 38. 269. Singh, Shobna, 14. 270. Singh, Ajai, 3. 271. Singh, Amar, 9. 272. Singh, Usha, 35. 273. Singh, Akhand, 40 274. Singh, Jjoyosree, 33. 275. Singh, Surendra, 43. 276. Singh, Ratik, 1. 277. Sinha, Anjami, 42. 278. Soni, Usha, 39. 279. Soni, Moneka, 11. 280. Soni, Rina, 10 281. Soni, Pankaj, 3. 282. Sran, Primajit, 26. 283. Srivastava, Brijbeheri, 38. 284. Subramanian, Lakshmi, 42. 285. Subramanian, Veena, 8. 286. Subramanian, Gopalsamudram, 44. 287. Subramanian, Jayalakshmi, 38. 288. Subramanian, Krishnan, 13. 289. Subramanian, Sumitra, 3. 290. Swaminathan, Indira, 38. 291. Swaminathan, Padma, 8. 292. Swaminathan, Ramya, 5. 293. Swaminathan, Anand, 15. 294. Tachettu, Ivy, 20. 295. Thakur, Priya, 27. 296. Thakur, Vishal, 4. 297. Thakur, Kanaya, 46. 298. Thakur, Inder, 35. 299. Thampi, Vijaya, 28. 300. Thomas, Molly, 46. 301. Thomas, Kythakuzhical Vinod, 16. 302. Thomas, Kythakuzhical Anita, 15. 303. Thomas Kythakuzhical Kurian, 53. 304. Travasso, Anne, 44. 305. Travasso, Lyon, 16. 306. Travasso, Lorraine, 19. 307. Travasso, C.F., 46. 308. Trivedi, Nirmal, 40. 309. Trivedi, Parul, 12. 310. Trivedi, Neeta, 12. 311. Tumkur, Hitra, 17. 312. Tumkur, Rammohan, 21. 313. Turlapati, Sanjay, 15. 314. Turlapati, Deepak, 11. 315. Uppal, Sukhwinder, 35. 316. Uppal, Parminder, 10. 317. Uppal, Kuldip, 9. 318. Upreti, Virkam, 10. 319. Upreti, Hema, 40. 320. Upreti, Gyandra, 43. 321. Vaid, Noshir, 34. 322. Vaz, Juliet, 28. 323. Venkatesan, Sukuvanam, 31. 324. Venkatesan, Geetha, 29. 325. Venketeswaran, Krishnan, 46. 326. Verma, Balwinder, 29. 327. Wadhawa, Akhil, 5. 328. Wadhawa, Serina, 8. 329. Yallapragada, Murthy, 63. 330. Asano, Hideo – Killed in explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport (age unavailable). 331. Koda, Hideharu – Killed in explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport (age unavailable).

The bombing and aftermath of Air India 182 proved that this country is not only completely incompetent and unserious about dealing with terrorism and terrorists in all their wretched forms, it also proved that - thanks to political multiculturalism - that Canadians do not see each other as neighbours or compatriots, that passholders feel the same and that these terrorist acts are someone else's problem in another country. Any mouth-movement on Canadians' part regarding terrorism is as hot as the air that scorching Australian forests (and has absolutely zero to do with global warming climate change emergency dead polar bears).


Also - oh, like it was on track before this load of dingo kidneys?:

The U.S. strike that killed Iran‘s top military commander may have had an indirect casualty: a diplomatic solution to denuclearizing North Korea.

Experts say the escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran will diminish already fading hopes for such an outcome and inspire North Korea’s decision-makers to tighten their hold on the weapons they see, perhaps correctly, as their strongest guarantee of survival.

Are these the same experts who thought that Obama could buy off Iran and North Korea can be reasoned with?




Who runs Canada, anyway - the UN or the Chinese?:

With Canada now signed on to the United Nations’ feel-good indigenous agenda, UN operatives are back and claiming, as is their practice, that Canada is failing to live up to the full meaning of the declaration, which among other things requires Ottawa and the provinces receive full agreement from Indigenous peoples before proceeding with economic development. ...

Had the Trudeau government refrained from enthusiastically adopting the UN Indigenous rights declaration in 2016, the quick answer to these insistent directives would be to tell the global agency to look to parts of the world where rights are actually being trampled on. China, for example. Or how about Venezuela? Iran, anyone?

Pierre Poilevre may run for leadership of the Tory party:

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre is set to announce a bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada according to the Toronto Star.

Today in "bloated bureacracies and graying countries" news:

For a Victoria, B.C., woman suffering from end-stage liver disease, there was some good news: she had been deemed a candidate to undergo transplantation.

The bad news? When an organ became available, the patient and her spouse would have to pay for a three-month stay near the transplant centre in Vancouver, one of Canada’s most expensive cities.

So she set up a crowd-funding page, aiming to raise $10,000 and “relieve this stressful financial situation for my husband and myself.”

The woman, who eventually got her new kidney — and raised $6,100 — was not alone.

Soliciting money for medical needs on the internet may seem like a quintessentially American phenomenon, unnecessary in a country like Canada that boasts a universal, government-paid health care system.

But hundreds of Canadians have launched crowd-funding campaigns in recent years to support their organ transplants, asking for help financing drugs, transportation and lost income — and raising thorny ethical questions, a new study indicates.

Normally, they would euthanise such people.

Is that more moral?

**

The three biggest problems for patients surveyed about their discharge from Ontario hospitals all concern publicly funded home care, according to new research published in an international medical journal. 

The researchers hope the findings will encourage improvements in the hospital-to-home transition navigated by some one million patients every year in this province. 

The study involved more than 700 patients who had been admitted to Ontario hospitals over the previous three years. The researchers aimed to find out what affected the patients' experience during their discharge and transition to home. 

Among 52 factors considered in the study, the single greatest concern was "not enough publicly funded home care services to meet the need." That issue was ranked number one issue consistently across geographic, age, gender and ethnic groups, the researchers determined. 

Participants ranked home care support not being in place when returning from hospital as their number two concern, and the third-ranked priority was "having to advocate to get enough home care."

Euthanasia would solve that problem AND make spaces for people who just wander into the country. 

I thought that was the Canadian way.

By the way, stuff costs money.

Just saying.

**

This way, we will never know how completely decrepit the educational system is:

Teacher job action has left some students unprepared for the upcoming EQAO Grade 9 test so local school boards will have the option to delay it, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said Wednesday.

The announcement came on the same day that thousands of public high school teachers conducted a one-day strike, and also on a day when the province’s Catholic school teachers announced they will begin withdrawing some services.

Student preparation for EQAO testing — generally opposed by teacher unions — was one of the first things to go when job action was initiated.

China, North Korea, Canadian universities - what are places with no freedom of speech:

Alberta’s top court has concluded that students have Charter-protected free expression rights on campus, in a ruling related to a $17,500 security fee a student group would have had to pay to hold an anti-abortion rally at the University of Alberta.

“There has long been confusion about the status of universities — specifically, whether they count as ‘government’ for the purpose of the Charter — and (Monday’s) decision helps push this issue in the proper direction, at least in the free-expression context,” said Emmett Macfarlane, a constitutional law expert at the University of Waterloo, in an email.

“Other courts have not found that before,” said Emily Lapper, senior litigation counsel with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which intervened in the case. “That’s a big deal.”

Macfarlane said the court’s decision “also serves as a warning to universities across Canada that it may be unacceptable to use ‘security costs’ as cover to dodge these ‘free-speech controversies.’ 

Although the appellants did not receive a meaningful remedy for this breach, other universities should now be put on alert that they may have constitutional rights obligations in the free-speech context and that shutting down expressive activity by using potential security costs as an excuse may not fly.”

Oh, I'd love to see that stick.




India will execute four men whose rape and murder of a young student rippled through the country:

Four men sentenced to death for the gang rape and murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus in an attack that sent shockwaves across the world will be hanged on Jan. 22, an Indian court ruled on Tuesday.

The four men were convicted in 2013 of the rape, torture and murder of the 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a case that triggered large protests in India.

The attack prompted India to enact tough new laws against sexual violence, including the death penalty for rape in some cases, but implementation has been poor and the attacks have shown no signs of let-up.

Monday Post

A merry Рождество to all y'all.

Oh, my ... Are they still mad?:

“Crazy Trump, don’t think that everything is over with my father’s martyrdom,” she said in the televised address.

**

Iraq’s parliament called on Sunday for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave as a backlash grows against the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general, and President Donald Trump doubled down on threats to target Iranian cultural sites if Tehran retaliates.

This Qassam Solemaini:

Targeting of diplomatic compounds, Part I: Soleimani went after American civilians, too, and anyone associated with them in his twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 224 innocents, mostly Africans who either worked at the facilities or were passers by. 4,000 more were injured. Al Qaida got most of the blame, but Soleimani was the state sponsor for al-Qaida, giving it its start ...

Quelle surprise: 

Iran said Sunday it would no longer abide by any of the limits of its unraveling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers after a U.S. airstrike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, ending an accord that blocked Tehran from having enough material to build an atomic weapon.

Now this is interesting:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vanished from public view since an extraordinary session of the Workers Party Central Committee came to a close on Dec. 31.

State media reported last week that Kim paid his New Year's respects at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, the mausoleum of regime founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il, but published no pictures.

There is speculation that he has gone to ground since the U.S.' assassination of Iran's top military commander by airstrike on Jan. 3.

**

Saudi Arabia‘s foreign minister said on Monday the kingdom does not want to see further escalation of tensions in the region at a “very dangerous moment,” following Friday’s killing by a U.S. drone of Iran’s most prominent military commander.

Why, if I were of a cynical mind, I might think that the countries' despots fear being eliminated as messily as a half-brother was at an airport in Malaysia.

 

 

Also:

 

North Korea is suffering from a serious shortage of electricity and food, affecting even the privileged residents of Pyongyang, according to sources. 

 

What else is new?

I'm sure this was nothing:

French police on Sunday shot and wounded a man who had rushed towards a group of policemen with a knife shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) in the eastern city of Metz, local officials said.

Had that been Canada, it might have just occurred to the authorities to maybe look into him, possibly:

A complaint over the RCMP’s role in the arrest in the United States of a Toronto-area ISIS recruit has been referred to Canada’s new national security review agency, handing its members a challenging case early in their mandate.

A copy of the complaint obtained by Global News alleges Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy was “entrapped” by the FBI with the help of the RCMP, which was aware of his history of mental illness and addiction.

“Both agencies knew of his mental health problem and so entrapped him online, taking advantage of his unstable mental health, while he was manic and on the waiting list for mental health treatment,” the complaint alleges.

(Sidebar: aren't they always mentally ill?)




Justin would never irritate his Chinese bosses:

For years now, some experts have claimed the downfall of Canadian tech giant Nortel was in part caused by espionage and cyber-attacks involving China and Huawei. Since then, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – our Five Eyes intelligence allies – have effectively banned Huawei to one degree or another and the United Kingdom is still making up its mind.

Last month, opposition parties got together to vote against the Liberals in support of a plan by Conservative MP Erin O’Toole to create a special committee to look into our relationship with China. ...

Let’s think of this as a national unity project that is about putting Canada first. Right now, there is justifiable cynicism that the Liberals will do what it takes to stand up to this authoritarian superpower that currently has us up against the ropes.

It would be a powerful moment if Trudeau proved us wrong. The question is whether the cabinet has the ability to say those two simple words: Ban Huawei.

Justin doesn't unite. He divides and flakes off on holiday.


Also:

Hong Kong authorities activated a newly created “serious response” level as fears spread about a mysterious infectious disease that may have been brought back by visitors to a mainland Chinese city.

Eight possible cases have been reported of a viral pneumonia that has also infected at least 44 people in Wuhan, an inland city west of Shanghai, about 900 kilometres (570 miles) north of Hong Kong.

Why does this sound familiar?:

Fort McMurray saw about eight times more foreclosures on homes in 2019 than in 2015, new numbers from the province show.

In the 2015-16 fiscal year, there were 26 foreclosure statements of claim in Alberta's oilsands capital; in 2018-19, there were 220, according to data from Alberta Justice and Solicitor General. In the current fiscal year, there were 219 claims to the end of November.

A drop in property prices and increase in insurance costs since the 2016 fire have put pressure on homeowners in the town. Many homeowners bought when prices were much higher and there were abundant jobs in the oil and gas industry.

But the work has disappeared, household incomes have dropped and many are walking away from their homes to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Oh, yes:

Trudeau argued the NEP would pave the way for Canada to become self-sufficient in energy. How so? By forcing Albertan producers to sell domestically at a deep discount to world prices and allowing Petro-Canada an advantage in purchasing producing assets. Self-sufficiency would protect Canada from the volatility of the international oil prices so the logic went. Furthermore, Eastern Canadians would then be able to buy oil at below-market rates, and the federal government would have a view into an industry dominated by foreign owned petroleum companies.

Economic disaster quickly followed. Alberta’s unemployment rate shot from 4% to more than 10%. Bankruptcies soared 150%. A housing crisis ensued resulting in values collapsing 40% in both Edmonton and Calgary. As Libin notes, “it would take office landlords a decade to work off the glut.” Alberta’s government plunged into significant debt levels.

Ted Byfield, founder of the now defunct Alberta Report, was quoted as saying “there was an enormous amount of pain everywhere, Alberta was very much a small-business province. Behind the big oil companies, there were thousands of little people..all this was just brought to a crashing halt.”

Former premier Ralph Klein, who was mayor of Calgary at the time, said “thousands of people lost their jobs, their homes, their businesses, their dignity. Some took their own lives.”

Evict? No, cops should be "evicting" them:

Canada’s multi-billion LNG Canada project is facing fresh trouble, as work on a key artery linking the export facility near Kitimat, B.C. to natural gas resources in Dawson Creek area is being halted by First Nations groups.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, representing all five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, said over the weekend that they issued an eviction notice to the Coastal GasLink pipeline company, which is building the $6.6 billion project.

LNG Canada, which is also under construction, is said to be the largest private sector investment in Canadian history, with a price tag of around $40 billion and is being developed by a Royal Dutch Shell-led consortium. The project will export Canadian natural gas to Asian markets.

The First Nations’ move comes after the B.C. Supreme Court sided with the company and granted access to areas covered by the injunction at the end of December. The decision did not spell out what the RCMP can do to enforce the injunction but police have been heavily scrutinized over the past year for enforcing a previous injunction granted by Justice Church against Coastal GasLink protestors.

Wet’suwet’en says Coastal Gaslink violated its law of trespass, bulldozed through its territories, destroyed its archaeological sites, and occupied it land with industrial camps.

“Private security firms and RCMP have continually interfered with the constitutionally protected rights of Wet’suwet’en people to access our lands for hunting, trapping, and ceremony,” the First Nations said.

Coastal GasLink reported that its personnel discovered that trees had been felled making a key road impassable, which is “a clear violation of the Interlocutory Injunction as it prevents our crews from accessing work areas.”

“We have reached out to better understand their reasons and are hopeful we can find a mutually agreeable path forward,” the company said. “To that end, we are requesting to meet with Unist’ot’en and the Hereditary Chiefs as soon as possible. Over the past year, Coastal GasLink has repeatedly requested face-to-face meetings with the Unist’ot’en and the Office of the Wet’suwet’en but these requests have either been ignored or rejected by these groups.”

This needs to be repeated because the irrational eco-evangelists who take their cues from ludicrous scolding brats without science degrees rather than accept the plain truth that arsonists set fires in an arid country with a history of wildfires and have since caused twenty-four deaths (and think of all that carbon!) and that carbon dioxide (also known as plant food) is not a pollutant nor a culprit in these disastrous walls of flame that are consuming the Australian countryside. 

It also must be shouted from the roof-tops that science is no more at odds with religion (or vice-versa) than English composition is with chemistry. Science explains the physical world and religion explains theological matters. It's all perfectly fine. Whoever is hung up on someone's reading a religious text and keen on pitting a discipline that they don't understand just to make themselves appear wise and gain social standing among people just as daft as they possesses a sort of emotional retardation that hinders true progress.

But I digress:

A Canadian climate scientist who called on her Christian colleagues to help in the fight against climate change, says the crisis is “loading the weather dice against us.”

The article is couched to present Christians as backward. If only a voice in the wilderness could make them see reason!

Could the bribed press sink any lower than printing this dreck?

Oh, it will try.

For a Sunday

 

A lot going on .... 




Iran shakes its impotent yet mad fist at the US and Israel after Trump, responding in kind to an embassy attack (not unlike the one that Obama failed to respond to), blew a top Iranian general into chunks:

Iran told the UN Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday it reserves the right to self-defence under international law after the United States killed its most prominent military commander Qassem Soleimani.

How was Iran defending itself in Iraq while attacking an American embassy, the Iranians do not say.


Also - barely satire:

At a press conference held on Capitol Hill Friday, mourning Democrat leaders called for flags to be flown half-mast to honor the death of Qasem Soleimani.

Flags were spotted flying at half-mast around the country, notably at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and in front of several celebrities' homes. The celebrities went out and bought an American flag for the first time just to fly it at half-mast for this important time of grief.

"The grieving process is painful but necessary," said Rep. Ilhan Omar. "As a nation, we need to stop and grieve this great, austere, revered religious scholar. He was one of the good ones."

In a rare moment of unity with The Squad, Pelosi gave each of the girls a hug, telling them to just "let it all out" in their time of sadness.

Ocasio-Cortez didn't seem to know what was happening but adjusted her glasses to look smart.

A teary-eyed Barack Obama was also seen solemnly lowering the flag in front of his seaside mansion. "To think, this all could have been prevented with a few pallets of cash." He sighed and stared off into the distance, a look of pain and regret on his face. "If only Trump had targeted a U.S. citizen with a drone strike instead."

Canada responds with a mixture of stupidity and anxiety:

Rising security risks posed by the death of a prominent Iranian general have prompted NATO to temporarily suspend a training mission in Iraq being led by Canadian troops, the federal defence minister said Saturday.

Harjit Sajjan released a brief statement reiterating comments from the military alliance, which said the non-combat operation dubbed NATO Mission Iraq was on hold in the wake of the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The general, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force and mastermind of its regional security strategy, was killed along with other senior Iraqi militants in a Friday morning airstrike ordered by United States President Donald Trump.

Sajjan said that while the NATO mission's goal of preventing the resurgeance of Islamic extremism remains valid, the current political climate made it necessary to suspend the operation for the protection of those involved.

(Sidebar: bullsh--.)

**

Foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne is calling on all sides to exercise restraint after a U.S. air strike in Baghdad killed Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian general.

“Canada is in contact with our international partners. The safety and well-being of Canadians in Iraq and the region, including our troops and diplomats, is our paramount concern,” he said. “We call on all sides to exercise restraint and pursue de-escalation. Our goal is and remains a united and stable Iraq. ...

“I think de-escalation is certainly an appropriate call, but to somehow insinuate that American foreign policy has unnecessarily escalated the situation is not the best way to frame it.”

You may be perfectly fine with people committing terrorist acts on your soil but the Americans feel differently.

**

If you can’t even tell the difference between Iran and Iraq, maybe best to stay out of it and let the adults talk. https://t.co/7ZBJsb9AGg

— Jacqui Delaney (@JacquiDelaney) January 3, 2020

 

It's Iraq, by the way, Jag, and you count on people forgetting these little tidbits:

Is it appropriate for Sikh temples in Canada to display posters hailing the alleged architect of the 1985 Air India bombing as a martyr?

The bombing of Air India Flight 182 killed 329 people — 280 of them Canadians. Talwinder Singh Parmar was killed in India by police in 1992 and never brought to trial for his alleged role in the plot, but subsequent inquiries into the bombing identified him as the leader of a conspiracy hatched in British Columbia to bring down the plane.

Singh, who is an observant Sikh, danced around the question. His first response was to caution against exaggerating the conflict between Sikhs and Hindus. He then condemned the “heinous massacre” of people aboard Flight 182, calling it a terrorist act.

Pressed a fourth time by Milewski to denounce the posters of Parmar, Singh replied, “I don’t know who was responsible, but I think we need to find out who’s truly responsible. We need to make sure that the investigation actually results in a conviction of someone who is actually responsible.”

Some commentators have argued it was unfair, even racist of Milewski to ask the question. Writing in Maclean’s, Arshy Mann said the question reflected “a double standard that a white, non-Sikh politician would never have to face.” He noted that when Patrick Brown was elected leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, the CBC did not challenge him over his friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That friendship was forged at a time when Modi was an international pariah, accused of failing to stop the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots that left more than 1,000 people dead when he was chief minister for the state.

But for Bal Gupta, chairman of the Air India 182 Victims Families Association, Singh’s non-answer was a missed opportunity. “If leaders in Canada don’t disown terrorists and terrorism, then who would?” asked Gupta, whose wife Ramwati was killed in the bombing. He said families of the victims were very upset by Singh’s reply.

**

A second video of Jagmeet Singh has surfaced showing the NDP leader speaking on a panel focused on Sikh sovereignty, alongside another speaker who appears to endorse violence in the quest for an independent Sikh state.

This and other things are reasons why I refuse to believe that this country even cares that it must morally and politically condemn and act against terrorism. Canadians believe that terrorism is a "brown people's" problem overseas and politicians troll for any vote, even ones from those sympathetic to terrorism. 

Canada is rather like an unprepared simpleton surprised that as a major nation it has to take action and doesn't know if it should be angry or thank its lucky stars that its chief moron is getting drunk off of his @$$ somewhere.

Actually, that is exactly what Canada is right now.

We fought on D-Day and now look at us.

Yes, while the adults are minding the store, Justin is on yet another vacation (sans Sophie):

Photos of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his vacation in Costa Rica are showing up on social media, leading to questions on the cost and carbon footprint of his vacation.

Photos over the past few days have popped up on social media, triggering questions over the cost of Trudeau’s vacation to the taxpayer.

**

So how about attempting to determine “middle class” by what it is not? And just for fun, let’s use some Liberal behaviours from the past to assist–consider them a window into future expectations for this government.

For starters, middle class Canadians are not seconding government jets for a Costa Rican Christmas like Trudeau has done.

According to the PM’s New Year’s Eve itinerary, he will ring in 2020 at this tropical locale while middle class Canadians suffer through another winter, and now pay the Liberals’ carbon tax for the privilege of heating their homes.

Wow.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a new belly button ripped open for his holiday (more on that later).


In the mean time, Canada burns in another way:

A CBC article states that on Jan. 1, the new federal carbon tax will be imposed on Alberta. But it then goes on to say that it might be “good news for your wallet.”

The article claims that “The new federal carbon levy will start at $20 per tonne, increasing to $30 per tonne in April and $50 per tonne by 2022. Prices are set to rise by about 4.4 cents per litre for gasoline and $1.05 per gigajoule of natural gas—but experts say that doesn’t mean a bigger hit to the average Albertan’s wallet.”

Alright.

Let's tax the CBC $600 million in carbon taxes. It could help!

**

Some Indigenous communities could soon take over authority for their child-welfare systems under a federal law that took effect this week. But it could be years before others are prepared to take on the responsibility under what federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller calls a “complex” piece of legislation.

What could go wrong?

**

Of the respondents who completed this survey, 92 per cent had had at least one or more interactions with the CRA in the previous 12 months. Respondents were asked whether their interactions with the CRA had met their needs or not, their level of satisfaction with these interactions, what worked well and what needed improvement.

Approximately 83 per cent of respondents had had an experience with the CRA that did not meet their needs. Of those, a total of 84 per cent of respondents ranked their interactions as “poor” (between 1 and 3) on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent).

The CRA is a government agency and doesn't care about anyone.

Figure it out.

**

The opposition Conservatives are pressing the Liberals to deny Huawei a role in assembling the country’s 5G infrastructure, alleging it will allow Beijing to spy on Canadians more easily.

Some security experts say Huawei’s participation could give it access to an array of digital data gleaned from how, when and where Canadian customers use their electronic devices. In turn, the theory goes, Chinese security agencies could pressure the company into handing over the personal information.

Such fears stem from the fact China’s National Intelligence Law plainly states that Chinese organizations and citizens shall support, assist and co-operate with state intelligence work.

Hhmmm ... why would they distrust China? What possible reasons could there be?




If Canadians believe that communism is a viable economic and political success then maybe having teachers walk off the job might be a good thing. They are obviously not doing their jobs:

Ontario public high school teachers will hold another one-day strike Wednesday at designated school boards including Peel District.

Just over 41,400 students attend the 42 public secondary schools operated by the Peel District School Board in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga.

This will be the fourth rotating strike day by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF).

For a country that is practically a desert and where wildfires are common, Australians sure are dense about this:

Thunberg’s tweet takes aim at the wild fires that have raged across the continent over the past few months, many of which investigators allege have been started by people, both intentionally and on accident.

In Australia, those responsible for starting fires, especially if done so in a deliberate act, are often referred to as “firebugs.”

“As firefighters remained on high alert, police revealed 103 of the destructive fires that had lashed Queensland since September were deliberately lit,” The Brisbane Times reported. “Figures obtained by AAP revealed police had dealt with 98 people – 31 adults and 67 juveniles – for deliberately setting fires.”

“More than 120 fires are still being investigated and more people could be charged,” The Brisbane Times added. “The firebug revelations come as fire crews continue to face challenging conditions as a strong upper ridge sweeping across the south-east combines with fresh east northeasterly winds on Friday.”

Yet they look to this nobody for advice (even blaming Scott Morrison's personal faith because that's helpful and so accurate).

Interesting.

Whatever Australians do, let them not remember the "fire-bugs" or the myriad of mistakes made by hysterical eco-evangelists that they would rather people not remember.




At least ten people are dead due a building collapse in Cambodia:

At least 10 people were killed and 23 injured after a building in Cambodia collapsed, trapping workers under rubble, officials said on Saturday.

The seven-story concrete building collapsed on Friday in the coastal town of Kep, about 160 km (100 miles) southwest of the capital Phnom Penh.

It came a year after another construction site collapsed, killing 28 people in Preah Sihanouk province.

Wow. The state of New York really has a handle on these anti-semitic attacks:

The man charged in the machete attack on a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City had been questioned by local authorities in connection with an earlier stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in the same town, police said Thursday.

Grafton Thomas faces state and federal charges in Saturday’s Hanukkah attack, which wounded five people at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.

That attack came as police in the same town were investigating a Nov. 20 stabbing in which a man was critically injured while walking to a synagogue.

And now, a feel-good story:

When Margaret Cortes found herself unemployed in 2018, she decided to open a bakery to make sure she could afford her child’s education.

But the bakery also had another purpose: to employ her 16-year-old son, Frankie, who has cerebral palsy.

Cortes named the shop Special Kneads Bakery.

“He’s got a lot of diagnosis against him,” Cortes told KWQC-TV in a recent interview.

“He’s got cerebral palsy, he’s got Dandy-Walker variant, which is a malformation of the brain, he’s got vision issues so he’s blind in one eye.”

When her son was born, she added, doctors said he may not ever be able to walk.

Now, Frankie not only walks, but the high school senior works in the front of the shop, serving customers with a smile.

Mid-Week Post

Merry New Year!




Not all is quiet on New Year's Day:

(Sidebar: maybe this. Maybe.)

Thousands of Hong Kong residents took to the streets Wednesday for the city’s largest antigovernment protest in weeks, hoping to inject new momentum into a monthslong movement that has seen violent clashes and many arrests.

Wednesday’s protest is only the second large-scale demonstration to be authorized by the police since voters in November overwhelmingly elected pro-democracy politicians to neighborhood offices. That vote, a stinging rebuke to Communist Party officials in China, ushered in the longest period of relative calm since the city was first convulsed by protests in June.

More than 6,000 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began over legislation, since scrapped, that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. The protests have since expanded to include a broad range of demands for police accountability and greater democracy.

If one were of a skeptical nature, one might suppose that Mr. He's research was bunk and therefore embarrassing to the Chinese establishment at home and abroad. This is, after all, the country that steals organs from political dissidents. What modicum of human decency could they be referring to?:

He Jiankui, a Shenzhen researcher who drew widespread condemnation when he revealed his experiment last year, will also have to pay a 3 million yuan ($430,000) fine, said a report from Xinhua News Agency, citing the verdict of a court in the southern Chinese city.

Two others who assisted him were also sentenced. Zhang Renli, a researcher at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, received a prison term of two years and Qin Jinzhou, a researcher at the Shenzhen Luohu Hospital Group, received a term of 18 months, suspended for two years.

The verdict is China’s first public statement on the fate of He, who disappeared from view after his 2018 experiment sparked a global backlash. His work to edit the genes of embryos to make babies who are resistant to the virus that causes AIDs was sharply critiqued by the international scientific community as an abuse of new gene-engineering methods that are still not fully understood.

He’s experiment — which took place in near secrecy and was revealed only after twin baby girls were born — also ignited concern that China is not properly regulating its ambitious researchers in its push to become a global leader in science and medicine.

The Xinhua report said that in He’s experiment, for which he recruited couples with HIV who did not want to pass the disease to their offspring, two women became pregnant and three gene-edited babies were born. The trial proceedings were not made public to protect the identities of the children and their parents, said Xinhua.

The court found that He and the two others had forged ethical review documents and used “impersonating and concealing tactics” on unsuspecting doctors to complete their experiment, said the report.

In the wake of the controversy, China said earlier this year that it would more strictly control clinical trials involving gene-editing and other experimental life science technologies. Researchers will now require approval from the highest level of government before they can do such work.

Judicial activists don't have to be coerced by China to rule contrary to reason and common law. They do that already:

Not only did Beverley McLachlin get her first taste of being a part-time judge in the territory in recent weeks, she did it as a protest movement of historic proportions swirled around her. That movement is aimed in part to defend the legal system from Chinese interference.

But McLachlin said her initial experience on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal left her convinced the body is immune to such outside pressure, and unlikely to suffer “deterioration.”

This Beverly McLachlin:

She made waves with a 1985 judgment she wrote while on the Supreme Court of British Columbia, ruling that adults accused of sexually assaulting children can use consent as a defence, provided they were not in a position of authority ...

As a B.C. Court of Appeal judge, she wrote well-regarded decisions defining the Charter’s right to equality. She saw the law as an “organic” entity that grows and transforms in keeping with the evolution of societal views — known as the “living tree” doctrine. McLachlin saw this conception of gradual, tempered growth as quite different from the sort of judicial activism that had angered opponents of judicial power since the 1982 enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

McLachlin revealed the core of her judicial philosophy in a lecture she delivered at the University of Saskatchewan in 2001, observing that courts can justify making substantial changes to the law if, in doing so, they are reflecting clear changes in social values. Even then, she cautioned, courts ought to embark on these changes only when legislators have failed to address an underlying, pressing problem.

She was notable for her unwillingness to intrude on government budgetary priorities. In a 2004 case known as Auton v. British Columbia, for example, she ruled that it would not be unconstitutional for British Columbia to discriminate against autistic children by failing to provide them with intensive behavioral therapy.

**

The retiring chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada will get just over $270,000 per year from the government for the rest of her life. 

An order in council posted on October 26 sets out the annuity for Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who is set to retire on December 15 after a 36-year judicial career, 17 years of which were spent as the top court’s lead judge. 

The order “grants to the Right Honourable Beverley M. McLachlin an annuity of $270,266, commencing on December 15, 2017 and continuing during her life.”

A Liberal through and through. 




North Korea is preparing "counter-measures" against the US:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for active “diplomatic and military countermeasures” to preserve the country’s security in a lengthy speech at a key political conference possibly meant to legitimize major changes to his nuclear diplomacy with the United States.

Once again - don't trust North Korea. 




A chilling archive of the IRA's plethora of murders:

It has long been known that alleged agents or informers were often killed by the Provisional IRA, but the newly declassified documents include fresh details about those killed between 1978 and 1994.

During “The Troubles,” the government did not usually confirm whether those killed were informers.

“In a number of cases, persons murdered by the IRA have not been informers,” the official record, found in the archives, says.

“Furthermore, in other cases alleged informers have had to leave Northern Ireland at a moment’s notice and start a new life elsewhere, knowing that they can never return to their homes without facing the prospect of torture and murder, possibly having to cut off their links with close family members in order to avoid the risk of their new location being revealed.”

Informer or not, many of those named in the newly opened archives were dumped near the Irish border after being shot in the head.

Greta Thunberg (daddy's little money-maker) does not have a script to confront Donald Trump would not speak with Donald Trump:

Greta Thunberg said she would not have wasted her time talking to Donald Trump about the dangers posed by climate change at a United Nations summit.

Girl, please. Everyone knows that you are a fraud. 




Australian skies are red due to fires that are still burning:

Australia’s wildfire crisis intensified on Tuesday as coastal towns across the southeast caught ablaze, forcing thousands of stranded tourists and locals to seek refuge on beaches.

Thick black smoke billowing from infernos in Victoria and New South Wales states turned the morning sky pitch black or choked the coastline in a haunting red haze. Two people were killed as a fire ripped through the small community of Cobargo, taking the death toll since the devastating fire season began several weeks ago to 12. Five others are missing.

There’s no end in sight to the emergency as strong winds fan flames, wreaking havoc in popular tourist spots such as Batemans Bay during the peak summer holiday season.

The hatred that liberals dare not name - ever:

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise around the country, leaving Jews and their communities feeling frightened and unsafe. In New York City, anti-Semitic crimes have jumped 21% in the past year. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were 1,879 incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States in 2018, including more than 1,000 instances of harassment. The 2019 figures are expected to meet or exceed that number.

This year, Canadians are going to get the government they richly deserve good and hard:

Association president Jack Jedwab notes Pierre Trudeau was chosen by respondents in parts of the country key to current prime minister Justin Trudeau’s electoral successes.

“Justin Trudeau, who in many ways articulates the key pillars of his father’s vision … is today popular with the same constituents as his father is in the survey,” Jedwab says.

I'll just leave these right here:

When Trudeau came to power in 1968 under the slogan Just Society, he found the fundamentals of the Canadian economy in solid shape. Our dollar was strong and stable, unemployment hovered around 4%, the books were balanced, the economy was booming, and the federal debt represented about one-quarter of our economy (Flaherty’s long-term target).

Trudeau‘s first significant socialist salute was the 1971 Unemployment Insurance Act. The period of qualifying work was reduced by 73%, the benefits increased by 65%, and the benefit period extended by 40%. Turning seasonal employment into year-round income, at ski hills around the country exuberant youth began sporting t-shirts pledging their affinity to the “UIC ski team.”

The number of UI claimants doubled overnight. Provinces designed short-term work programs to get people off provincially financed welfare — to make them eligible for federally financed UI.

Trudeau’s folly, experts concluded, caused unemployment rates in Canada to rise by between two percentage points nationally and up to four percentage points in Atlantic Canada. Thus did Canada began to seriously underperform our major trading partners.

**

While some Canadians feared Pierre Trudeau as a peacenik and pacifist in 1968, when faced with the kidnapping of a British diplomat and a Quebec cabinet minister in October, 1970, he proved to be the exact opposite: an authoritarian and political opportunist.

Rather than protect civil liberties, as was his expressed passion, during the October Crisis 500 people were thrown into jail without being charged, 10,000 homes were searched without a warrant, and press censorship was the rule of the day.

Like this:

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letter includes regulations targeting the removal of illegal online content “harms such as radicalization, incitement to violence, exploitation of children, or creation or distribution of terrorist propaganda.”

Heritage minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letter

Firms such as Facebook or Twitter would be required to remove such content within 24 hours or face punishment.

If that seems a bit vague, it is because the definition of “illegal content” is not yet set, but according to iPolitics, Minister Guilbeault has said he will be meeting with Justice Minister David Lametti to clearly define it.

And this (an oldy but a goody):

Tal also chalks up a big part of the gap to taxes, which account for 30 per cent of gross income in Canada compared to 10 per cent in the U.S. The discrepancy is mostly explained by the higher level of government-provided services in Canada.

“Growth in gross income in the U.S. rose roughly at the same rate as net income. At the same time in Canada, net income rose more slowly,” he wrote.

“We estimate that the impact of faster-rising taxes and other transfers to governments [such as CPP] in Canada have accounted for close to one-quarter.”

These kinds of taxes: 

When Finance Minister Bill Morneau introduced a motion earlier this month to keep the Liberals' election pledge to cut income taxes for the middle class, he called the measure "significant" and said it would impact 20 million Canadians.

But most Canadians would have to study their pay stubs very closely after Jan. 1 to detect that tax cut and other changes to deductions that arrive with the new year. And unless they live in Alberta, they may not notice this year's tax changes at all ...

**

The basic amount most Canadians can earn tax-free is going up on Jan. 1, resulting in slightly lower federal income taxes.

How slightly lower?

**

The federal carbon tax comes into effect in Alberta on Wednesday, but the provincial government insists it’s nowhere near done fighting against the Liberal attempt to cut down emissions, saying Albertans voted against the tax in the election last spring.

 And now, look forward to a whole year of wacky barely-holidays:

January 18: National Thesaurus Day

British lexicographer Peter Mark Roget—who is most famous for publishing The Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (a.k.a. Roget’s Thesaurus) in 1852—was born on January 18, 1779. As such, this is a day to honor, celebrate, extol, laud, praise, revere, salute, etc. his contributions.