And the Rest of It

A lot going on ...




It's just an economy:

According to a CP report, the C.D. Howe Institute has said the agreement will actually reduce Canada’s economic consumption.


The study says Canada will lose the equivalent of 0.4% of GDP, and household consumption will drop by over $13 BILLION in lost economic output.

Mexico will lose 0.79% of GDP, while the US loses the least, down 0.1%.

Justin made a huge issue of infrastructure during the 2015 election, something he didn't live up to, and is now blaming everyone else for being a total failure:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is becoming increasingly vocal in blaming Conservative premiers for stalling a long list of infrastructure projects, part of an ongoing dispute over Ottawa’s $190-billion spending plans that has already delayed major new developments ahead of a looming federal election.

But the Conservatives are hitting back, denying they are causing delays and accusing Trudeau of forcing through legislation that will critically affect energy projects and hurt the Canadian economy. The rift plays into a larger battle between the prime minister and a newly-elected bloc of Conservative premiers on everything from carbon taxes to infrastructure spending. ...

Ottawa has blamed provincial leaders for causing much of the delays in its spending plans, while critics contend they are part of deeper structural shortfalls. The program was spread across more than 30 federal agencies and departments, which led to sizeable gaps in the reporting of which projects had been selected for funding.

Trudeau announced his roughly $190-billion spending plan as part of a 2015 campaign promise, aimed at boosting the Canadian economy by expanding roads, bridges, public transit, telecommunications lines and other infrastructure.

But frustrations have been mounting in Ottawa over delays in rolling out those plans, which federal officials claim is a direct result of dithering by provinces — particularly Quebec, Ontario and Alberta — due to a failure to approve proposed federal projects. ...

Ontario rebutted Ottawa’s claims.

“Any suggestion by the federal government that Ontario has delayed infrastructure projects is categorically, unequivocally false,” a spokesperson for Ontario infrastructure minister Laurie Scott said in a statement.

The province has approved 15 major public transit projects in Toronto and other major urban centres, spokesperson Christine Bujold said, as well as another 144 road, bridge, air and marine projects.

Well, so much for that accusation.




It's not like the government actually cares about tackling foreign influences or its place on the world stage or anything:

Egyptian-Canadians are incensed over an Egyptian cabinet minister’s promise to “slice up” critics of her country, saying what might have been meant as a joke struck them as a serious threat from a repressive regime.

Those of both Coptic-Christian and Muslim backgrounds — who rarely see eye to eye otherwise — condemned Wednesday the comments made by Immigration Minister Nabila Makram on a visit to Mississauga, Ont.

They cite Cairo’s record of arbitrary detentions, violence against political opponents and other human-rights abuses since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power six years ago.

Some have complained to police, and the Peel Regional force in Mississauga says it is investigating the matter.

“No one in his or her right mind should take this — although it might be said in a joking manner — as a joke,” said Ehab Lotayef of the Egyptian Canadian Coalition for Democracy. “It really represents the mindset of the current Egyptian government and is totally unacceptable by a minister in a country that respects itself.”

Saskatchewan, which has challenged the carbon tax in court, leads the country in teaching the propaganda that spawns such a dubious tax:

A new study co-authored by a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia analyzed the high school curriculums of every Canadian province to determine how comprehensive their content on climate change was. Surprisingly, the oil-rich prairie provinces ranked high on the list.

Seth Wynes, a former high school science teacher who studies climate change mitigation at UBC, said his team went through the curriculums of every province and interviewed some of their creators to see if their climate change content accurately communicated all facets of the issue. ...

But according to the study’s parameters, Saskatchewan — which employs 18,320 people in the oil and mining industries as of May 2019, as well as accepts donations in the tens of thousands from energy companies — had the most comprehensive climate change curriculum in the country. It included content on how the climate is warming, how to fix it, and the most information on how experts are in agreement.

Stop making excuses for your little monster:

Alan Schmegelsky says his son, 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, had a troubled upbringing. He struggled through his parents’ acrimonious split in 2005 and his main influences became video games and YouTube.

“A normal child doesn’t travel across the country killing people. A child in some very serious pain does,” Schmegelsky said in an emotional interview Wednesday in Mill Bay, B.C., near his home in Victoria.

RCMP charged Schmegelsky and his longtime friend, 19-year-old Kam McLeod, with second-degree murder Wednesday in the death of Leonard Dyck of Vancouver.

Stupid Montaigne

How did that "noble savage" myth work out?:

Speaking about the relationship between the government and Indigenous Communities, Trudeau said this, as reported by CTV News:

“We have to be patient. We have to be present. We have to be unconditional in our support in a way a parent needs to be unconditional in their love — not that there is a parent-child dynamic here.” 

Trudeau also said Indigenous communities need to be able to “make their own mistakes.”

There, in a nutshell, is the position of the white French government and its racism of lowered expectations. The aboriginals can't be expected to be adults in a country where everyone else is.

Case in point:

An Ontario judge has raised colonialism, racism and the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women as reasons for declaring part of Canada’s impaired driving laws are unconstitutional, arguing it’s unjust to give a criminal record to a 22-year-old Indigenous woman caught with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit.

Who cares if she kills people? She's special because she's an Indian and residential schools and stuff, right? Let's make a separate set of laws just for her!


What will Justin do when this paternal racism wears off and aboriginals either reject this special status or become so inured by it that they become their own corporations?:


An Indigenous group planning to bid for ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline is launching a “listening tour” of Indigenous communities in B.C. and Alberta.

Project Reconciliation ...

(Sidebar: there's that word again.)

... says the tour will begin in Kamloops in mid-August and will invite First Nations and Metis Nation people and communities along the pipeline route from Edmonton to the West Coast to share their thoughts about Indigenous ownership.

Delbert Wapass, executive chair and founder of Project Reconciliation, says the tour will provide information on his group’s proposal but is also designed to gather feedback to be reflected in its final submission to the federal government.

That's what regulatory processes are for, which have already been done in this case.


Is anyone else tired of this multi-tiered system?

On the Korean Peninsula

That ever-restive part of the world ...




How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the East Sea from Hodo Peninsula, northeast of Wonsan, Seoul’s military said Thursday.

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, North Korea launched two projectiles from the peninsula in South Hamgyong Province at 5:34 a.m. and 5:57 a.m.

The first missile traveled about 430 kilometers, and the second flew about 690 kilometers, the JCS said, adding that both reached an altitude of between 50 to 60 kilometers. 


“The joint evaluation of South Korea and the United States revealed that the second missile flew about 690 kilometers. Further analysis is needed, as there appears to be a new form of launch,” a JCS official told reporters.

Both missiles are believed to have been launched from a transporter erector launcher and they are assumed to have hit the East Sea, the official added.

The JCS officials did not confirm whether they were ballistic or cruise missiles, saying more time is needed to analyze the data. UN resolutions ban North Korea from launching any kind of ballistic missile.  

One can see how effective the UN is here.




Says the country that shot down two hundred and sixty-nine people:

Russia on Wednesday denied that one of its warplanes violated Korean airspace and accused Seoul of threatening the safety of its air crew. 

The Russian Defense Ministry said, "The Korean pilots did not establish communications with the crews of Tu-95MS, fired flares and then the [Korean] F-16s conducted another maneuver, retreating away from the Russian planes." 

"If the Russian pilots felt a security threat, the response would follow quickly," it warned.

I'll just leave this right here:

Kamenski: “We must find out, maybe it is some civilian craft or God knows who.” Kornukov: “What civilian? [It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border.” ...

 
Kornukov: “Destroy it, use the 23 to destroy it, I said!”
Gerasimenko: “Roger, destroy it.”
Kornukov: “Well, where is the fighter, how far from the target?”
Gerasimenko: “Comrade General, they cannot see the target.”
Kornukov: “They cannot see the target?”
Titovnin: “They lost the target, Comrade Colonel, in the area of Moneron.”
Novoseltsky: “In the area of Moneron?”
Titovnin: “The pilots do not see it, neither the one nor the other. The radio forces have reported…that after the launch, the target entered a right turn over Moneron.”
Novoseltsky: “Uh-huh.”
Titovnin: “Descending. And lost over Moneron””

Yes, the Russians often feel threatened by anything that flies and prove to be utterly co-operative afterwards.

Oh, wait ...




Once again, Kim controls his people through food:
 

North Korea has refused to accept 50,000 tons of food aid Seoul wants to send through the World Food Programme amid posturing over joint South Korea-U.S. military drills next month.

A Unification Ministry official here on Wednesday said North Korean Foreign Ministry officials told WFP staff in a meeting that they do not want the aid and cited the joint drills. "We're trying to find out from the WFP what the North's official position is," the official added.

Seoul has been somewhat overeager to provide the food aid in order to bring the North back to the negotiating table.

In May, Pyongyang with characteristic gracelessness called the South Korean donation "condescending" despite holding out a begging bowl to the UN in February. By refusing to engage with Seoul, Pyongyang ensures that its only negotiating channel is with the U.S.

On July 16, the North Korean Foreign Ministry threatened to boycott working-level denuclearization talks with the U.S. and break the moratorium on nuclear and missile tests because of the planned joint drills.

On Wednesday, the North duly lobbed two unidentified projectiles into the East Sea. 

Once again, North Korea is playing the game it has always played. It pretends to be co-operative unless it does not get what it wants.




Uh, North Korea, a word of advice - Russian subs can't be trusted:

A new North Korean ballistic-missile submarine unveiled Tuesday looks like a remodeled old Soviet Golf-class sub.

Judging from photos and video clips released by state media, they have similar bridges and bows.

The Soviet Union deployed the Golf from the late 1950s until the early 90s. It was 98.9 m long with a submerged displacement of 3,500 tons and was capable of carrying three ballistic missiles.

In the mid-1990s the North imported one Golf from Russia that hardly more than scrap but did not dismantle it. At the time, the fire control system was missing but the missile launch tube was intact.
 
The Golf had a range of 17,600 km, long enough for the new North Korean sub to sail out and launch Pukguksong-1 missiles with a range of 1,500 to 2,000 km close enough to the U.S. mainland.

State media showed blurred or pixelated images of the back of the bridge where the ballistic missiles could be loaded. 

Mid-Week Post

Your mid-week intermission ...




From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

The Trudeau PMO reportedly sought to control statements made by former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney.

And their reason?

The “election environment.”

That’s the stunning revelation in a report (paywalled) by Robert Fife & Steven Chase.
According to the report, David Mulroney – Canada’s Ambassador to China from 2009-2012, says Paul Thoppil, the assistant deputy minister for Asia-Pacific at Global Affairs, told him he was passing on a message from the Trudeau PMO, asking him to ‘clear’ his comments on the ongoing dispute with China with them first.

While the Liberals will obviously try to downplay this and pretend it’s no big deal, Mulroney makes clear that he was “deeply concerned” by the attempt to control what he said:


Mulroney has said he doesn’t want to be “silenced or co-opted,” and noted that discouraging experts from speaking is “fundamentally an undemocratic idea.”

**

Justin Trudeau has appointed a bank executive to fill a seat in the elitist Liberal-dominated Senate.

The spot will be filled by Tony Loffreda, an executive at Royal Bank.

Loffreda is currently the Vice-Chairman of RBC Wealth Management, and has been high up in RBC for over a decade.

Trudeau has now appointed 50 people to the Senate.


While Trudeau falsely claims that his appointees are ‘independent,’ the reality is that the Senate is dominated by the Liberals, who regularly vote exactly how the Trudeau government demands.

The election is less about choosing the candidate who most represents one's values and more about entertainment. In the case of this upcoming election, who has the most dirt on Justin, the Chinese government's favourite frat-boy.

Cases in point:

Independent MP Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was removed as Attorney General and kicked out of the Liberal Party for refusing to do Justin Trudeau’s devious bidding, will be releasing a book.

Titled, “From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada,” the book will be released September 20th, 2019, ahead of the federal election.

Here’s part of what UBC Press – the book publisher – says in a press release announcing the book:

“In this powerful book, Jody Wilson-Raybould draws on her speeches and other writings to argue that true reconciliation will occur only when Canada moves beyond denial, recognizes Indigenous Rights, and replaces the Indian Act. The good news is that there are solutions. Now it is time to act, to end the legacy of colonialism and replace it with a future built on foundations of trust, cooperation, and Indigenous self-government.”

(Sidebar: the colonialism that allowed her to ascend to political office, among other advantages of living in a First World nation, but I digress ...)

While there is no word on whether the book will address the Trudeau PMO SNC-Lavalin Scandal directly, a supportive quote for the book mentions the “political pressure” she faced ...

(Sidebar: this SNC-Lavalin.)

**

“Out of context?” In what context are such statements by a future Prime Minister of Canada not concerning? Source: Trudeau campaign forced to address 2010 comments on Alberta ...

It's just money:

Since Parliament adjourned on June 21st, Justin Trudeau has announced $2.27 billion in new government spending.

As noted by True North News, a whopping 62% of those funds have gone to Quebec.

And guess how much has gone to Alberta?

Just 0.1%.


To put that in dollar terms, Quebec has received $1.4 Billion in new federal spending since June 21st, while Alberta has received just 3.34 million.

If she was rejected for "comments" (which, in Canada, are bad, heathenish and American things), then she sounds like someone one should pay attention to:

Two people — a former provincial party official and a campaign organizer familiar with the situation — told the National Post the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party asked Ghada Melek to drop out of the race for the provincial nomination in Mississauga-Streetsville.

Melek, however, denies the party rejected her, saying she withdrew “for personal reasons.”

She was seeking a nomination to run in the 2018 Ontario election when now-deleted tweets and retweets from her account surfaced, including some suggesting Islamic radicalism was pervasive and causing “economic hell” in places like Detroit.

Last year, Melek lobbied against what she termed an “offensive” advertisement on Mississauga city buses promoting tolerance of the hijab.

But there is “no communication” between the federal and provincial parties on potential nominees, said the Ontario PC source, and so Melek was chosen as the Conservative candidate for the federal riding of the same name last December.

“Why the federal party would be rolling that dice is beyond me,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “(If) they don’t want to consult, it’s on them.”

Melek, a Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt, said the Twitter posts — which date from 2013 and 2014 — were an emotional response to mass protests against her native country’s then-president, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohammed Morsi.

“As a Coptic Christian, I know what my family and friends often endured under Morsi and the Brotherhood, and that passion may have got the best of me at times,” she said in a statement. “While these are almost entirely retweets from more than half a decade ago, I do understand how some of them may be offensive, and I do regret that as well as retweeting them. I will always stand with Muslim Canadians.”

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s press secretary could not be reached for comment.

Oh, I'll bet he couldn't.




Uh, no:

A Federal Court judge has ordered Canada’s chief electoral officer to take a second look at whether voting day this October needs to be moved because it falls on a Jewish holiday — and come up with a decision in a matter of days.

Li Peng, who presided over the massacres at Tienanmen Square, is dead:

The legacy of former Chinese Premier Li Peng is reflected in modern China itself, where extended and broad-based economic growth is inextricably coupled with authoritarian political controls.

Li, who died Monday at 90, warned Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters in May 1989 that "the situation will not develop as you wish" a day before he announced martial law. And the pet project he pushed was the Three Gorges Dam, which displaced 1.3 million people and is now the world's largest hydroelectric plant.

I will refrain from speaking ill of the dead so I will keep my "Li Peng is in hell" comments to a minimum.

The South Korean tiger rears its head long enough to anger the countries that separated it from North Korea in the first place:

Russia carried out what it said was its first long-range joint air patrol in the Asia-Pacific region with China on Tuesday, a mission that triggered hundreds of warning shots, according to South Korean officials, and a strong protest from Japan.

The flight by two Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers, backed up by a Russian A-50 early warning plane and its Chinese counterpart, a KJ-2000, marks a notable ramping-up of military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.

I'm sure white liberal feminists will be all over this:

A recent Indian government report shows that none of the 216 births recorded in 132 villages from a northern Indian district are girls, leading local officials to suspect female foeticide.

Furthermore, 16 of those villages have not recorded a single female birth since the beginning of the year, according to the district’s magistrate Ashish Chauhan.

Officials in the district of Uttarkashi, Uttarkhand state have marked 82 villages as “red zones” to closely investigate local data and have asked local health workers to stay on alert. 

Female foeticide has been banned in India since 1994, but still continues in areas where communities place a higher value on boys than girls. 

“It is shocking to have a zero girl child birth rate in 132 village of the district, as we have rarely heard of (or) seen any incident of female foeticide in the hills,” said legislative assembly member Gopal Rawat, as quoted by The Independent.

 
Archeologists make new discoveries at L'anse aux Meadows:

L'Anse aux Meadows, the site of a Norse colony founded a millennium ago and where Indigenous tribes once hunted and gathered, is an already famous as an archeologist's dream — and the area is not yet done revealing history's secrets.

A team of archeologists from Memorial University, led by Paul Ledger, has discovered a new layer of evidence of human occupancy while they were searching for something else.

"We were there to do a study of the environmental change of the site in relation to the human occupation of the site. Primarily we were interested in how the environment had changed around the Norse colonization of L'Anse aux Meadows," Ledger told CBC Newfoundland Morning.

The key to finding that information? Digging through peat.

"Peat accumulates at a rate of a millimetre a year, effectively. And as it's doing that it records micro-fossils and things from the environment — things like pollen or charcoal that's in the air, or other living matter. And it incorporates that into the peat so as you go down through the peat, you go back in time."

Ledger's original aim was to collect the samples and then analyze them in the lab to see the environmental history.

Instead, his team found much more. They were about 35 to 40 centimetres deep, about 30 metres from the Norse ruins, when they found what appeared to be cultural material that carbon dating identifies as coming from the late 12th to mid-13th century.

"It had some charcoal in it, some wood chips. They looked like woodworking debitage [debris], basically, so they were sort of unusual angles and they look like they've been cut," said Ledger. "Some of it looks like it's been split with an axe or maybe a stone tool.

"We don't know what culture produced these things. They just look like they've been worked."

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Rutger Hauer:

 

For a Monday

That must hurt:

Canada’s privacy commissioner has found the federal government broke privacy rules when it revealed the identity of a Postmedia reporter to Irving Shipbuilding last March.

In a recent letter to Conservative MP Peter Kent, who filed complaints about the issue earlier this year, the privacy commissioner’s office concluded the Department of National Defence (DND) contravened the disclosure provisions of the Privacy Act when an employee “inappropriately disclosed the journalist’s information to a third party who did not have a need to know.”

The privacy commissioner decided that Kent’s complaint was “well-founded and resolved,” given that the department has already conducted an internal investigation and plans to provide additional training to its employees as a result of the privacy breach.

In March, Postmedia reporter David Pugliese sent questions to DND and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) about possible problems with the welding on the first of six Arctic patrol ships Irving is building for the Royal Canadian Navy.

Ninety minutes after submitting the questions, and before either department had responded, Pugliese received an email from an Irving representative saying the company had been made aware of his inquiry. In a subsequent telephone conversation, Irving Shipbuilding President Kevin McCoy threatened legal action against Postmedia, saying Irving’s lawyers would be “making sure you understand that if you write something false about our reputation we will pursue it.”

DND later confirmed there were minor welding problems with the ship, but nothing requiring it to be docked for repairs.

The two departments subsequently acknowledged they had provided Irving with Pugliese’s name and said they were investigating whether they had violated federal privacy law. They also said they had directed employees to make media requests anonymous going forward.

Also:

Alberta Queen’s Bench Judge Robert Hall says BC can’t block Alberta’s ‘Turn Off The Taps’ legislation – at least not in an Alberta or BC court.

In his ruling, the Judge said only the Attorney General of Alberta or the Attorney General of Canada can bring the matter to court:

“The only parties with standing to bring this action in this court are the (Attorney General of Alberta) and the (Attorney General of Canada).” 

“Neither party could direct me to any cases in which one province has sued another province seeking a declaration of constitutional invalidity of legislation enacted by the defendant province,” added Hall.

Is this a plea for pity or the aftermath of the Jody Wilson-Raybould affair? You decide:

Struggling construction and engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc on Monday withdrew its forecast for 2019, citing significantly lower results as it considers options for its resources unit and exits fixed-price contracts.

SNC’s shares, which have fallen more than 44 per cent in 2019, fell nearly 8 per cent in morning trade.

Montreal-based SNC has been facing a trial in Canada over fraud and corruption charges related to allegations that former executives paid bribes to win contracts in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which fell in 2011. The company’s unsuccessful attempts to reach a settlement led to a political scandal engulfing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Economies, like promises, are made to be broken:

The trade wars also will force Canadian executives to recognize that the U.S. — the only international market most of them care about — is an unreliable business partner.

Unreliable? Try fatigued.

Canadian voters handed a working economy to a frat-boy and truly believed that they could weather a storm like Trump. Trump was elected to represent American interests. That meant going toe-to-toe with China, a country the frat-boy believed he could replace the US with as a major trading partner.

Oops.




Let them fight:

Legault was insinuating the Liberals — who had held power for almost 15 years before the October 2018 election — were the party of English-speaking Montreal, while the new Coalition Avenir Quebec government had the support of the francophone majority.

The premier’s comments might have been directed at the Official Opposition, but they reflected a new government tone and approach towards anglophones — particularly to the lobby groups and other institutions, such as school boards, that claim to speak for them.

Legault’s Coalition has its support base outside Montreal, and it isn’t afraid of making policy decisions it knows are going to be massively unpopular with English speakers.

Liberal member Greg Kelley, who represents a riding in Montreal’s English-speaking West Island, said in a recent interview that Legault’s government uses the rhetoric of us versus them.

“It’s frustrating, because it’s not the tone you want to hear from the premier,” Kelley said of Legault’s March comments.

This is what happens when a country props up a linguistic minority and treats it like a separate entity above all others. The Liberals believed that they could manage this oligarchy until it got big enough to demand more, more and more.

These separatist movements don't like Justin or the Liberals. It will be interesting to watch them duke it in this very tight election.


Also:

Unbeknownst to most, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were on the hunt, too, scrambling to retrace FLQ ringleader Paul Rose’s steps — and to determine whether he had fled to the United States, according to the FBI’s newly released file on Rose.

Released almost 50 years after the October Crisis, the FBI file contains an untold story from one of the darkest periods in modern Quebec history.

It's just money:

Nearly four years after Justin Trudeau opted not to move into the prime minister's official residence over concerns about its crumbling state, the building remains vacant — except for staff who continue to use the kitchen to prepare meals for Trudeau and his family.

And it appears no decisions will be made on the future of the residence until well after the fall federal election.

The federal Conservatives accuse the Trudeau government of dithering over "critical" upgrades to the stately yet run-down home, and needlessly costing taxpayers more money in the process.

At the same time, none of the main federal party leaders appears willing to opine on whether the building should be torn down or renovated, or whether they would live in the residence if it were upgraded.

If this was truly about recognition, the apologies would have ended with the Mulroney government.

But it's about inflicting a permanent shaming practice on a country that - thanks to political multiculturalism - is comprised of people who don't see themselves as Canadians but extensions of the Chinese and Sikhs, the people who have a beef with the Japanese.

Who would have thought that political multiculturalism would be so divisive?:

Japanese Canadians across the country are meeting to discuss how an apology by the British Columbia government could be backed by meaningful action for those who were placed in internment camps or forced into labour because of racist policies during the Second World War.

The federal government apologized in 1988 for its racism against "enemy aliens" after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 but the president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians said British Columbia's apology in 2012 did not involve the community.

Lorene Oikawa said the association is working with the provincial government to consider how it could follow up on the apology to redress racism. The majority of about 22,000 interned Japanese Canadians lived in B.C. before many were forced to move east of the Rockies or to Japan, even if they were born in Canada.

"We weren't informed about the apology so it was a surprise to us," Oikawa said about B.C.'s statement, which, unlike with the federal government's apology, did not go further to resolve outstanding historic wrongs that saw families separated and property and belongings sold.

"We accepted the apology but we just want to have that follow-up piece that was missing so that is what the current B.C. government has agreed to and started with this process of having community consultations," she said of the redress initiative funded by the province.

Release every name:

Since Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest, the speculation has mounted. Will any among the rich and powerful he courted be caught up in the case?

Some answers might come soon. A judge could decide on July 24 how and when to unseal a trove of documents — some 2,000 pages worth — in connection with a civil lawsuit filed by an Epstein accuser against his one-time companion Ghislaine Maxwell. The papers may reveal allegations of sexual abuse involving people described in court filings as “prominent individuals.”

Just in time for Shark Week:

The great white sharks move torpedo-like through East Coast waters, cruelly efficient hunters with multiple rows of serrated teeth devouring seals and other prey.

But the “fascinating” creatures are themselves being closely watched by international teams of scientists who are attempting to document their apparent renaissance in the northwest Atlantic.

“We are seeing signs the conservation measures we’re taking are giving the animals a chance and enabling a comeback,” says Frederick Whoriskey, a marine biologist and ecologist at Dalhousie University.

“But we don’t have the numbers (of their abundance) yet.”

Saturday Post

 

Did he ever really leave?:

Among the 60 people who gathered at a downtown Ottawa hotel for a day and a half this month to discuss the Liberal government's campaign for re-election was Gerry Butts, the senior adviser and close friend of Justin Trudeau who left the Prime Minister's Office five months ago in the midst of Trudeau's painful spring.

In February, Butts stepped away because his presence — and the suggestion that he was somehow involved in inappropriately pressuring the former attorney general — threatened to be a drag on the government's ability to pursue its mandate. From the outside, Butts was able to mount his own defence against Jody Wilson-Raybould's accusations.

The return of Butts (who was widely credited with helping to define the Trudeau Liberal message and narrative in the first place) might reassure Liberals who valued his contribution to the 2015 campaign and the first three-and-a-half years of the Trudeau government.

Because Justin is as eloquent as a drunken turtle with its mouth taped shut.

Who is running Canada today, Justin - the Americans, the Chinese or Butts? 




Why not release his name?: 

A federal labour board has upheld the 2015 firing of a Canada Revenue Agency employee who worked next to the Calgary airport and wrote frequent Twitter and Facebook posts that “appeared to glorify the Boston Marathon terror bombing, celebrate the deaths of NATO military personnel, and cheer the downing of aircraft.”

The ruling, handed down May 16 but published online Friday, took the unusual step of anonymizing the man’s name after adjudicator Bryan Gray determined the former employee, who practices Islam and immigrated from Afghanistan in 1999, had already experienced racism in his day-to-day life.

“I accept the submissions of his representative that this decision, if it is published with his full name, could significantly increase the risk of this racist treatment being exacerbated,” he wrote.

The former employee, called A.B. in the ruling, lasted only ten days at the Canada Revenue Agency in January 2015. He worked in a call centre located on the grounds of Calgary airport, connected to the airport terminal by an indoor walkway.

Who vets these people?




Consider in Canada that this pervert would be wandering about:

Jeffrey Epstein, the rich businessman who served time more than a decade ago for soliciting a minor for prostitution, will await trial, on charges of sex trafficking dozens of underage girls, from behind bars.

A judge denied Epstein’s request for bail on Thursday. If convicted, Epstein, who pleaded not guilty, could spend the rest of his life in prison. ...


Here’s how jail-time exemptions work in Canada:

You’re likely familiar with conditional sentences. That’s when you’re convicted of an offence that carries a sentence of less than two years’ imprisonment and, rather than sending you to a provincial jail, the court orders you to carry out your sentence in the community — with conditions. That’s a type of sentence usually reserved for people who don’t pose a safety risk.

Another option is an intermittent sentence, occasionally referred to publicly as weekends in jail. In purely time terms — meaning the ratio of time spent in jail versus time spent out of jail during a prison sentence — that’s probably closest to what Epstein served when he was allowed out for 12-hour stretches most days. However, in Canada, this type of sentence is only for people who face 90 days or less in jail. ...

 


There was a time when seizing a British ship meant serious trouble:

Two British oil tankers were seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday night, in a major escalation of tensions in the Gulf.

The British-flagged Stena Impero had been en route to Saudi Arabia, but abruptly changed course and began sailing towards the Iranian island of Qeshm, data relayed by maritime tracking services showed.

The 30,000-tonne ship “went dark”, meaning its transponder was turned off, at 4.29pm UK time and nothing has been heard from her or her 23 crew since.

A second oil tanker, the British-operated, Liberian-flagged Mesdar, was intercepted by the Guards about 40 minutes after the course shift by Stena Impero, and was held for some time before being allowed to resume navigation.

Consider that protesting in Russia could mean enduring a beating from police. In Canada, no one would bother because they are lazy:
 

More than 10,000 people took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday to protest against the exclusion of most opposition-minded candidates from an election for the Russian capital’s legislature. 

Election officials barred around 30 candidates, mostly opposition-leaning, from running for the 45-seat legislature on the grounds they failed to garner enough genuine signatures from voters to qualify. 

The barred candidates say they have secured the required number of signatures, but that they had been excluded because they were challenging the control over the legislature exercised by those loyal to President Vladimir Putin. 

Police said around 12,000 people took part in the protests, while opposition groups said the figure was higher. Local authorities gave permission for the protest to go ahead, and there were no reports of any arrests.

The boss of an anime studio, burned due to arson, cannot explain what happened:

Many victims of an arson attack on a Japanese animation studio were young with bright futures, some joining only in April, the shaken company president said on Saturday, as the death toll climbed to 34.

Thursday’s attack on Kyoto Animation, well known for its television series and movies, was the worst mass killing in two decades in a country with one of the world’s lowest crime rates.

It was all the more poignant because of the young age of many of the victims when Japan has one of the world’s oldest populations.

Many of the victims were young women, company president Hideaki Hatta said.

“Some of them joined us just in April. And on the eighth of July, I gave them a small, but their first, bonus,” he said.

“People who had a promising future lost their lives. I don’t know what to say. Rather than feeling anger, I just don’t have words,” Hatta said.

Fifteen of the dead were in their 20s and 11 were in their 30s, public broadcaster NHK said. Six were in their 40s and one was at least 60. The age of the latest victim, a man who died in hospital, was not known and names have not yet been disclosed.

Authorities on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for 41-year-old Shinji Aoba on suspicion of arson and murder, NHK said.

But Trump could not bring his country and North Korea together:

US President Donald Trump said Friday he remained at the ready to help South Korea and Japan solve their lingering dispute over World War II-era forced labor that has blighted their trade ties.

After South Korea's high court ordered Japanese firms that used forced labor to compensate victims, Tokyo in early July restricted exports of chemicals vital to Seoul's world-leading chip and smartphone industry in an escalation of their decades-old row.

Also - any excuse not to sit at the table, eh, North Korea?:

North Korea on Saturday claimed that Japanese export restrictions targeting South Korean companies are politically motivated and aimed at getting more votes in an upcoming election.

Japan has tightened regulations on exports to South Korea of three critical industrial materials in an apparent retaliation over last year's South Korean Supreme Court rulings that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has the sinister intention of creating a favorable political climate ahead of the elections for the upper house of Japan's parliament on Sunday.

And - this is the margin for good childcare - getting fed:

Collective farms and factories rated “level three” or higher all operate their own childcare centers. 

Smaller factories or enterprises usually have their own childcare centers, but employees can send their kids to local centers. Full-time housewives generally take care of their children at home, making it easier to send them to kindergarten.

“[These women] hire childcare providers to look after their children at home rather than sending them to childcare centers. This ensures the kids avoid any issues that arise from being with other children, and allows the mothers to have more control over what their kids eat,” the source said. “Wealthy families tend to hire private childcare providers instead of sending their kids to state-run centers.”

The preference by many North Koreans for home childcare is based on a number of factors. While the source conceded that state-run and private providers offer similar services and that the state-run centers are more professional, home-based services allow providers to focus on a single child at a time.

“Regular childcare centers don’t provide anything except for diapers, so parents provide the milk, glutinous rice flour, rice and snacks for the children,” a source in North Pyongan Province reported.

This means that parents have to shell out more money to pay for food and other necessities. Parents pay up to 100 yuan – a substantial sum. However, the source said that many parents see it as a necessity.

She suggested that the rise in preferences toward home-based childcare services is due to North Korea’s recent economic difficulties. Parents need all-day childcare services because they are working from dawn until dusk.

(Kamsahamnida) 




And now, fifty years ago, human achievement hit its highest point.

Literally:

In total, it’s estimated that it took approximately 400,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians to make Apollo 11’s mission a success.

And the Rest of It

Quite a bit going on ...




US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reminds Iran that it needs to negotiate with the US:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the United States needed Iran to “come to the table” for negotiations, amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Pompeo, speaking at a counter-terrorism summit in Buenos Aires, also repeated an offer from President Donald Trump for talks without preconditions.

U.S.-Iran tensions have risen since Trump last year abandoned a nuclear deal under which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in return for the lifting of global sanctions crippling its economy.

Iran on Friday denied a claim by Trump that the U.S. Navy had destroyed one of its drones in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest episode to rattle nerves amid rising concern both sides could blunder into a war in the Gulf.

People have been speaking out against the Chinese dictatorship since that government thought it could mow down people in Tienanmen Square. I doubt that they will be listened to now:

Sairagul Sauytbai, an ethnic Kazakh who fled China last year after working in a so-called vocational training centre for ethnic minorities, wanted to tell others about the beatings and torture she said she had seen there.

But in neighbouring Kazakhstan, where she arrived to seek refuge, she was accused of crossing the border illegally, stripped naked, and told by state security agents to keep quiet about Beijing’s “de-radicalisation drive”, in which it has put hundreds of thousands of people in camps akin to prisons, Sauytbai and her lawyer told Reuters.


The plight of Sairagul and others who have fled China‘s western Xinjiang region because of the camps highlights the difficulties they face in neighbouring countries that have close ties with Beijing, and explains why many remain silent about their experiences.

Human rights groups say China has detained up to a million people in camps set up throughout Xinjiang, a region where Muslim Uighurs are the biggest ethnic group and where ethnic tensions have in the past resulted in violence.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here.)

**

The incident involving practitioner Gerry Smith was “very troubling,” and part of a wider pattern of coercion by Beijing’s representatives, said Alex Neve, Canadian head of Amnesty International.

But Ottawa continues to handle the issue with a scattershot approach that leaves possible victims unclear how to get help, he said.

“When something happens, they don’t really know where should they turn to report this,” he said. “Is this a criminal law matter, is this a security and intelligence matter, is this just a diplomatic incident? Is it all of the above, is it none of the above?”

(Sidebar: oh, they know. They just don't care.)




Good:

Three men accused of the murder of two Scandinavian hikers in the Atlas Mountains last year have been sentenced to death, an anti-terrorism court in Morocco decided Thursday.

Maren Ueland, 28, of Norway and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, of Denmark, were killed in their tent in December near the Moroccan village of Imlil, a popular hiking destination. The incident was labeled by Moroccan authorities as a terror attack after some of the men involved pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The men were tried under an anti-terrorism law and were the main defendants in a case that put two dozen suspects on trial over the women’s deaths last year.

After a seven-month trial, Abdessamad Al Joud, Younes Ouziad and Rachid Afatti were sentenced to death, while a fourth man, Abderahman Khayali, was handed a life sentence, according to Moroccan state television.

Now that is a letter:

The late champion boxer Muhammad Ali sent a condolence letter to Mary Jo Kopechne’s father after her death 50 years ago, telling him to sue Ted Kennedy “for everything he’s got,” her family said.

The Kopechne family, whose 28-year-old daughter Mary Jo drowned July 18, 1969, after the car driven by Kennedy careened off a bridge into the water, had never shared the letter publicly before, the Times Leader reported.

The short, handwritten letter is dated July 31, 1969, to Joseph Kopechne, who died in 2003. He signed it “Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay.” The letter was released by cousins of Mary Jo Kopechne.

“Dear Mr. Kopechne, assert yourself in the interests of the good name of your daughter. Get yourself a good lawyer and sue that no good son of a bitch, Edward M. Kennedy, for everything he’s got,” Ali wrote.

 
It is a tiger. If it wants to sleep on a bed, then there it shall stay:

A homeowner in the flood-stricken Indian state of Assam entered his bedroom on Thursday to find a fully-grown, slightly exhausted female tiger snoozing on his bed.


The tiger was first spotted crossing the highway boundary that surrounds Kaziranga National Park on Thursday morning, according to the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), an animal welfare organization operating in the area. The forested park is home to hundreds of animals, but over 95 per cent of its area has been submerged by the floodwaters, WTI says.

“Probably disturbed, [the tiger] jumped across the wall of a scrap garage and took refuge in the dark room,” WTI tweeted.

The homeowner discovered the tiger in his bedroom a short time later and called in forestry officials to remove it.

Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins achieved, against great odds, a feat that has yet to be re-duplicated:

At a House congressional committee in 1997, part of his ongoing effort to drum up interest in getting humans to Mars, Aldrin spoke about what he saw as the value of the first moon landing. “In the last 27 years, one thing has stood out that, as I meet people, they want me to know where they were when we were on the moon, and they remember vividly that particular day,” he said. “It’s not the value of the rocks that we brought back, or the great poetic statements that we all uttered. Those things aren’t remembered. It’s that people witnessed that event.”

The moon landing, after all, wasn’t about Armstrong or Aldrin; it was about us. Fifty years on, the two men who took those first steps are extensions of us, partly real, partly imagined: the stoic, unknowable commander and the brilliant, flawed pilot.

If Armstrong showed us what we should aspire to be, it was Aldrin who showed us who we are.

All of those men had to live with the reality of what they and hundreds of engineers and other staff had done. Standing on the moon's surface, looking down on the blue pearl that is Earth, they did what no one else had done and lived in the shadow of that enormous feat for the rest of their days.

There Is No Such Thing As A Clean Campaign

Don't look so proud of yourself.

Cases in point:

Following the hashtag #TrudeauMustGo going totally viral in Canada, Liberals are desperately trying to dismiss it.

Even after they tried to counter it with #TrudeauMustStay and #ScheerDesperation, those hashtags fell far short in terms of the number of retweets and reach as #TrudeauMustGo.

One could challenge these hangers-on to point out how marvelous a job Justin has done without mentioning either Harper or Scheer. The silence after that would be almost deafening.

**

Liberal Seniors Minister Filomena Tassi and Liberal MP Stephane Lauzon said “Canadian seniors remember how the previous Conservative government tried to balance the budget by making cuts to benefits that they rely on. We are concerned that (Andrew Scheer) is taking his cues from Doug Ford. Will his plan involve reckless cuts for five years? We worry about how these cuts will impact seniors.”

Except, the Conservatives aren’t doing that, and there is ZERO evidence that there will be any cuts to OAS.


The Liberals are flat-out lying.

They’re making this BS up.


Amazingly, those same Liberals arrogantly try to control social media and demand that ‘misinformation’ be banned, even when they’re the ones spreading the misinformation.

The Conservatives fired back, and countered the Liberal lies:


Alice Wong – the shadow minister for Seniors for the Opposition – said the Liberals are “creating a cost-of-living crisis for seniors” with its carbon tax. “They’ve hiked taxes, made everyday essentials like gas, home heating, and groceries more expensive. Our seniors helped build our country — we owe them so much better.”

Is it any wonder that even an anemic populist movement might rise up in Canada?

The well-paid popular press might find this laughable but when even politically lazy Canadians take the time out to note what many have known before the 2015 election - that Justin is a useless frat-boy who skated on his father's name and the fevered imaginations of the Laurentian elite - one should not be so hasty to dismiss those sentiments.

The chattering classes whose gushing tracts on Justin fall woefully short and who predicted Hillary Clinton's rise to the Oval office (oops) might find themselves walking back from their previous statements at the end of October.


And then there are the separatists:

Separatists in the Canadian province of Quebec are making a comeback after years in the doldrums and could regain enough strength to endanger Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bid to retain power in a federal election this October. 

The center-left Liberals, now trying to recover from a major scandal over alleged interference by officials in a criminal case, unexpectedly won 40 of Quebec’s 78 seats in 2015. They have said they will now need to win at least 12 more Quebec seats to offset losses elsewhere. 

To do so, they will have to fend off the Bloc Quebecois, a party that has long pushed for the province’s independence. 

Polls show the Bloc, which has lost support since the mid-1990s when it was the second-biggest party in parliament, gaining recent momentum as backers who abandoned it for the left-leaning New Democrats in the last two elections show signs of returning. 

The Bloc has 10 Quebec legislators and stands a chance of picking up some of the seats the Liberals are aiming for, especially those held by the slumping New Democrats. 

That could make all the difference for Trudeau, in a race where every seat will count and where the Liberals are eyeing victories in places they have not won in decades. 

Good times, good times ...

It's Just An Economy

A thing that people pay attention to during an election year, as opposed to some wild Twitter battle between a sitting president and a rabid anti-semite:

According to the ADP Canada National Employment Report, Canada added 30,400 jobs in June.

The manufacturing sector did not add any jobs, while there were 10,400 jobs added in construction.

The natural resources and mining sector lost -500 jobs.

Most jobs added were in the service sector, with 7,000 added in trade/transportation and utilities, while 8,800 were added in professional/business services.


However, the job gains in June have been dampened by a revision to the May figures.

Originally, it was reported that 16,000 jobs were lost in May. Now, ADP says 36,700 jobs were lost in May.

**

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged European partners this week to finalize Canada’s trade deal with the EU, a push that came with his government facing a tough sales job at home: getting domestic firms to use it.

A recent government survey suggests the vast majority of small and medium-sized exporters, which are positioned to benefit from the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, could very well be asking: CETA who?

The survey said only seven per cent of the surveyed businesses were familiar with details of the Canada-EU deal, while fewer than three quarters had even heard of it. Only nine per cent said they took advantage of CETA and 17 per cent planned to use it. ...

“Among Canadian (small-to-medium-sized enterprises), there was fairly low awareness of Canada’s free-trade agreements,” said an analysis that accompanied the results.

“Few companies use any of these free-trade agreements; the exception is (the North American Free Trade Agreement).”

Yes, but trade agreements look pretty impressive during an election year, so ...