And the Rest of It

She doesn't look crazy at all:

A Quebec woman accused of mailing poison last year to former United States president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to added charges in a Washington, D.C., court Monday.

Pascale Ferrier, who was previously charged with threatening to kill and injure the U.S. president, now also faces charges of sending threats through the mail and violating biological weapons prohibitions.

 

 

If the government can close down small businesses, it can certainly make a law that makes no sense:

Retailers yesterday appealed to the Commons environment committee to delay a ban on six single-use plastic items for at least a year. Quick enforcement would only hurt small shopkeepers, said the Retail Council of Canada: “Businesses need as much certainty as possible.”

I'm sure it's nothing:

Global Affairs Canada is “withholding information” on more than two dozen recent cases of Canadian diplomats reportedly being assessed for or reporting symptoms of what’s become known as “Havana syndrome,” according to a letter sent to Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau late last week.

 

 

See, It's Not Hypocrisy When THEY Do It

 Yep:

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson yesterday disclosed his wife Tara owns stock in one of Canada’s largest gas companies. Wilkinson has repeatedly invoked the couple’s school-age daughters in justifying federal climate change programs, but omitted mention of family shares in Enbridge Inc.: “It is something we must take action on in the short term if we want to leave a livable planet for our kids.”

 

Also: 

The Commons yesterday took up a Bloc Québécois bill to retroactively eliminate pension payments for ex-Governor General Julie Payette. MPs from all parties cited public outrage over Payette’s pension for life: “Things went terribly wrong.”

** 

Cabinet is seeking Parliament’s quick passage of a back-to-work bill to end a longshoremen’s strike at the Port of Montréal. A bill will be introduced today in the Commons: “The Port’s activities cannot be stopped. We need the Port.”

Rather, the political winds blew a certain way and that is why they acted as they did.

Standing Six Feet Apart Doesn't Work

And other total wastes of time:

Staying at least two metres apart from others while indoors has virtually no effect on the risk of exposure to COVID-19, a new study out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says.

The study, released online ahead of its publication in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS on Tuesday, suggests that now-commonplace distancing rules matter far less than the amount of time spent inside with other people, particularly if an infected person enters the room.

** 

Allen’s own cost/benefit analysis uses an elaborate calculation to determine how many years of lost life will have been caused by the various harms of lockdowns versus how many years of lost life were saved by lockdowns.

“The benefit of lockdown, therefore, was the avoidance of this extra 22,333 years of lost life. However, the cost of lockdown… was 6,300,000 years of lost life.”

Based on this calculation, the big picture long-term societal harms of lockdowns are 282 times worse than their benefits. It’s a staggering finding.

** 

Aylmer Police are expecting to lay charges for violations of Ontario’s emergency orders after a Sunday service at the Church of God.

Officers went to the John St. North church at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Aylmer Police say. A “large number of participants” entered the church, violating the province’s emergency rules on gathering limits.

 

See, they should have had their service at Wal-Mart.

 

Canada's Final Solution

 We are all Sophie Scholl:

Conservative senators are holding up the start of a long-awaited, legally required, special parliamentary committee that is supposed to review Canada’s assisted dying regime.

The various parties in the House of Commons have chosen 10 MPs to sit on the committee, which is to examine whether medical assistance in dying should be expanded to include mature minors and advance requests, among other important issues.

 

If you convince people that they should die, they might just do it.

 

 

We Don't Have to Trade With China

And yet we do:

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the government could intervene if necessary in the Bar Association, whose chief has been labelled an "anti-China politician" by Beijing's top representative office in the city.

Paul Harris, chairman of the Bar Association, has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Beijing forces, with the latest remarks coming from the Liaison Office on Sunday criticising him for speaking out against jail terms handed down to several democracy activists this month.

Speaking at her weekly press briefing, Lam said that while Hong Kong respects freedom of expression, there are limits.

 

(Sidebar: wow! Do you and Guilbeault go bowling?) 

"For the time being I do not see the case for any government intervention into the affairs of the Hong Kong Bar Association," Lam said. "But, of course, if there are instances or complaints about the bar not acting in accordance with the Hong Kong law, then of course the government would be called into action."

Harris had challenged the prison terms given to media tycoon Jimmy Lai and others for taking part in an unauthorised assembly during anti-government demonstrations in 2019, and also defended the right to peaceful protests.

The Liaison Office accused him of being "an anti-Chinese politician with intimate foreign connections," and questioned how he could safeguard the rule of law in the former British colony as well as if he should remain on as chairman.

 

 

Australia seems to the only country in the Pacific with any any real clout to stick it to China.

How long will that last?:

"Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again ... for the curse of war," Pezzullo said in a letter to staff on Anazac Day, which honours the country's war dead.

Pezzullo did not specify the catalyst for his warning but it follows a sharp deterioration in Australia's relationship with China and a rise in regional tensions over Taiwan.

Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said on Sunday that a conflict involving China over Taiwan "should not be discounted".

That's because there was never a real repeal of that draconian law:

China is set to report its first population decline since records began in 1949 despite the relaxation of the government’s strict family planning policies, which was meant to reverse the falling birth rate of the world’s most populous country.

The latest Chinese census, which was completed in December but has yet to be made public, is expected to report the total population of the country at less than 1.4 billion, according to people familiar with the research. In 2019, China’s population was reported to have exceeded the 1.4 billion mark. ...

China’s birth rates have weakened even after Beijing relaxed its decades-long family planning policy in 2015, allowing all couples to have two children instead of one. The population expanded under the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s, thanks to a bulging population of young people in the aftermath of the Communist revolution as well as increased life expectancy.

Official data showed the number of newborns in China increased in 2016 but then fell for three consecutive years. Officials blamed the decline on a shrinking number of young women and the surging costs of child-rearing.

The real picture could be even worse. In a report published last week, China’s central bank estimated that the total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman was likely to have in her lifetime, was less than 1.5, compared with the official estimate of 1.8.

I'll just leave these right here:

In the span of a generation, Chinese families will be much thinner than ever before. Extended kinship networks will atrophy across the nation, and many people will no longer have close blood relatives. This shift in the nature of the Chinese family is the unavoidable consequence of China’s prolonged decline in fertility rates, a trend that predated the implementation of Beijing’s harsh one-child policy in 1979 ...

**

It has been nearly two years since the Chinese Government modified its planned birth policy. In December of 2015, the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee officially transitioned from a one-child policy with a two-child policy.

Under the new policy, married couples are prohibited by the Communist government from having more than two children. For unmarried women who find themselves pregnant, the Chinese Government continues to enforce a zero-child policy, counting all unwed births as out-of-quota births unless they marry within 60 days after the child’s birth.

Special circumstances apply for divorced and remarried couples, and for couples with a handicapped child who “will not be able to join the labor force upon reaching maturity.”  ...

As a recent PRI on-the-ground investigation in China has revealed, in certain locales the two-child policy is being just as rigorously enforced as the one-child policy was. Indeed, as greedy and unscrupulous family planning officials find fewer targets for their fines and extralegal confiscations of property, and face the prospect of seeing their income reduced, they seem to be bearing down even harder on those who violate the new policy.

 **

Wang's uncle describes abandoning his own newborn daughter, hoping someone would adopt her, but he found her the next day dead, covered with bugs.

"My mom threatened to kill herself and said, 'If you keep this baby girl, I will either kill myself or I will strangle her to death first before killing myself,'" he shared. "I thought I could save her life by giving her away but she ended up dead."

Almost every person they spoke to said they didn't have a choice, from family planning officials to midwives to ordinary Chinese citizens.

Wang asks in the film: "What made these good people do evil things?"

 

 

No, you are not boycotting her. She is boycotting you: 

Last week, Japanese actress Yui Aragaki was appointed by H&M Japan for their new campaign Let’s Change, which will be held during Japan's Golden Week from Tuesday (27 April). Owing to the Xinjiang cotton scandal in China, many Chinese fans of the actress are upset with her endorsement. ...

Amid the furore, Aragaki’s appointment as ambassador for H&M Japan proved to be a vexing situation for Chinese fans, who have boycotted the clothing brand. Some of these fans said they were “heartbroken” and wanted to “divorce” Aragaki, who has been known as the “national wife” in China.

 

Make No Mistake, The Trudeau Government Is A Totalitarian One and It Wants Censorship

It can attempt to reassure people that it does not want to censor the whole Internet (as if it could or should do that) but the law, as it is thought of and proposed, will do exactly that.

Either people can get off of their @$$es and protect their kitten videos or they can be like North Korea and get flashdrives smuggled into the country:

The Liberal-dominated House of Commons Heritage committee has cleared the way for the federal government to regulate video content on internet social media, such as YouTube, the same way it regulates national broadcasting, under a new amendment made to a bill updating the Broadcasting Act.

Critics denounced the move to give the country’s broadcast regulator the ability to oversee user-generated content, and said it amounted to an attack on the free expression of Canadians, particularly in light of Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s recent plans to give Ottawa power to order take-downs of online content it deems objectionable.

 

(Sidebar: denouncing will do nothing. Fight it.) 

“Granting a government agency authority over legal user generated content — particularly when backed up by the government’s musings about taking down websites — doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy,” said Peter Menzies, a former commissioner of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

“It’s difficult to contemplate the levels of moral hubris, incompetence or both that would lead people to believe such an infringement of rights is justifiable,” said Menzies.

 

Oh, I can imagine it. 

This country needs a First Amendment.

"Shut Up!" They White-splained

Peel away the paper-thin layers of smarmy moral posturing, one will find the brittle ego of an inveterate racist every time:

An Alberta Christian university student council has disavowed its own apology, issued after a Black History Month speaker denied the existence of systemic racism in a speech on Biblical definitions of racism.

Last Monday, Ambrose University in Calgary said the speech, given in February by Samuel Sey, a conservative activist, blogger and Christian who is Black, “caused severe harm” to some students.

“As a Christian, what I was saying should not be controversial to them at all, but because they disagree with what the Bible says on racism, it becomes offensive to them,” Sey told the National Post on Monday. “They are essentially, by attacking me, attacking the Bible; I didn’t go there to share my opinion, I was going there to explain what the Bible says about racism.”

The apology, which was retracted Thursday, said the student council had “invited speakers to come and speak to our student body who have caused harm and offence with the words that they have spoken.”

An updated post detailed Ambrose’s commitment to free expression and intellectual diversity.

“Each person has their own experiences and we believe that by having healthy discussions and learning different world views that we have the opportunity to expand our horizons,” the statement says.

The apology was “never intended to be public and sought only to provide support for those students who had been emotionally affected,” the statement says.

(Sidebar: when we don't teach people to accept and deal with offense in an adult way, we end up with whinging masses of quivering jelly. Prove me wrong.)

 

The left is incapable of seeing a world as it is and definitely unwilling to see a world in which Western Civilisation proves to be morally and socially dominant. That is why when an erudite and eloquent member of (what they see as) a protected class challenges their notions or simply puts them to rest, the ego has taken such a shock that it lashes out in ugly, ugly ways,

We Don't Have to Trade With China

Justin's favourite country:

Canada’s international trade minister on Monday would not provide details about whether the federal government has barred the flow of imported goods from China suspected of using forced labour, months after Ottawa introduced measures purportedly to stop the practice.

In a committee testimony, Minister Mary Ng declined to answer questions from a Conservative MP about how much, if any, imports from the Chinese region of Xinjiang Canadian authorities have intercepted since the Liberal government said it would be cracking down on the issue in January.

Rule number one about China's Human Rights Abuses Club - we don't talk about China's human rights abuses:

A spokesperson for the Xinjiang region called accusations of genocide “counter to the facts” as China came under more pressure this week over its treatment of the Uyghur ethnic group in the remote border area.

The British Parliament approved a nonbinding motion Thursday that said China’s policies amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. The New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch appealed to the U.N. earlier in the week to investigate the allegations of crimes against humanity.

“The motion adopted by the British side was totally groundless,” Xu Guixiang, the deputy director-general of the Communist Party’s publicity department in Xinjiang, said Friday.

“The decision was made on the basis of remarks by some politicians, some so-called academic institutes, some so-called experts and scholars and some so-called witnesses.”

SEE: Canada, Screw-Up, Handle On

At this point, no one can out-screw-up Canada on this:

The media say premiers should resign for mistakes in responding to the third wave that Trudeau’s vaccine and border failures caused.

Why not fire the guy who caused the problem?

— pierrepoilievre (@PierrePoilievre) April 24, 2021

This guy:

Here are the only pertinent facts: as of April 24, the United States has vaccinated 67 out of every 100 people — 41 per cent of the population have received one dose and 27 per cent have been fully vaccinated within the manufacturer-specified 21 or 28 days; Canada, on the other hand, has vaccinated 32 out of every 100 people — 29 per cent of the population have gotten one dose and a mere 2.7 per cent have been fully vaccinated because the Liberals have permitted four-month delays in giving second doses.

Advertisement

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content

Canada may be the only developed nation in this “2.7 per cent fully vaccinated” category. Other countries in this category include Argentina, Guyana, Mongolia, Dominica, India, Colombia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Belarus and virtually the entire Third World. Canada even lags Mexico, which has fully vaccinated 4.2 per cent of its population.

This metric — the percentage of people who are fully vaccinated — is what counts, and Canada is the only country in the world that is officially denying people their vital second shots for four months.  ...

Among Trudeau’s long list of scandals, this is by far the biggest. And yet, the press and the opposition parties are failing to hold the Liberals to account. The public shouldn’t fall for Trudeau’s pharma flimflam. His government’s incompetence is causing death and economic dysfunction.

**

Health Canada had a hell of a month last week. Its top docs and the minister responsible tried their best, over and over, to pooh-pooh any emergency measures to prevent or at least slow the B.1.617 COVID-19 variant’s arrival on Canadian shores from India, where cases are soaring. Not for the first time over the past year, they looked foolish. (As it turns out, the variant has already been here for weeks.)

But Justin isn't alone in being inept and heartless:

The Department of Health in internal emails rated a failed contractor as “solid” even after its Covid test kits failed clinical trials. Spartan Bioscience Inc. received a $16.6 million cash advance for rush orders of test kits never delivered before it filed for bankruptcy court protection April 6: “We are in good shape.”

**

The Public Health Agency of Canada awarded Switch Health a contract in early 2021 worth nearly $100 million to manage hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests for travellers arriving in the country at land-border crossings and at airports in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

Switch Health uses a remote two-step process that includes an initial test within 24 hours of arrival. The government requires a second test seven days later. Prior to April 23, the second test was required nine days after arrival.

Under Switch Health’s system, travellers who arrive in Canada can rely on couriers, including Uber and Purolator, to deliver home-testing kits where they are needed, and pick up completed tests for delivery to labs.

The government awarded the contract to Switch Health in support of new requirements that took effect on Feb. 22 for non-essential international travellers to get tested in Canada upon arrival.

Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said on Feb. 12 that the new requirements were among the “critical measures” needed “to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and the introduction of new variants of the virus into Canada.”

Skinner told Global News he wound up taking his swabs without supervision and that they were approved after the test results came back negative.

“This is supposed to be the safety net that is protecting Canada from COVID-19, but the government is not getting what it paid for,” said Skinner, one of more than a dozen people who spoke to Global News about their experiences in recent months, describing in detail a dysfunctional and inefficient testing system.

**

The Federal Court refused to order an immediate end to the federal government’s quarantine hotel rules, but agreed it is an issue needing close judicial scrutiny because of restrictions it places on travellers.

“A public health emergency, like the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, is in one sense simply another emergency. However, it must also be recognized that it is a type of situation that can inspire irrational fears and passions, which may in turn provoke a government to adopt excessive measures that trench unduly on the rights and freedoms of individuals,” the court said in its ruling.

To wit: unaccountable people have ruled that a stupid government is allowed to keep its rape hotels because it can and shut up.

**

She ought to know. She's a graphic arts designer:

In an exchange with an independent MP during Question Period on Thursday, Hajdu dismissed a question about how vitamin D supplements may help prevent illnesses like COVID-19.

“Can the minister explain why Health Canada’s website states that most Canadians are getting enough vitamin D and doesn’t actively recommend supplementing,” asked independent MP Derek Sloan.

“I would encourage the member opposite to not fall prey to the myriad of fake news articles that are circulating around the Internet,” replied Hajdu.

“What Canadians need now is trust, and they need to be able to trust in the information that their elected officials are sharing. I would urge the member to get his sources from credible sites.”

This would be news to my doctor in Toronto, who prescribed vitamin D to me during my recent pregnancy and specifically said it could be a preventative measure against contracting COVID-19.

**

The Atlantic provinces abolished mobility rights a year ago, and British Columbia completely abolished religious liberty six months ago. It has all proved enormously popular. The courts, to the limited extent that they have been consulted, are more or less cool with it.

Article content

But it wasn’t the police that tripped up the Ford government as much as the playgrounds. It ordered them shut down. Parents were furious. The government retreated quicker than a teeter-totter reverses direction.

Then came the signal moment: the cabinet admitted that it had been lying to the people all along. Not exactly, but close enough, and the damage will be significant.

Health Minister Christine Elliott was asked whether the ukase on playgrounds came from Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s public health chief. “No, Dr. Williams recommended to us that we reduce mobility as much as possible,” she said.

For most of the pandemic, governments promulgated restrictions giving the strong impression that public health officials asked for them. That was partly true and partly false. Public health officials advise certain specific measures — adequate personal protective equipment for hospital workers, for example — and general goals that governments choose to advance in different ways.

For example, mask wearing reduces the transmission of contagions, which is why they have been worn in operating theatres for eons. That is a specific public health recommendation. A government that hopes to discourage people from moving about might go farther and mandate tuques, mittens and winter boots. It is not safer virus-wise, but it would discourage people from leaving home in the summer.

Ramp up the drama before people get less scared:

As Ontario continues to get a handle on the surging third wave of COVID-19 cases and crushing patient loads at intensive care units, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Red Cross are preparing to deploy medical personnel to the province after a recent request for assistance.

Oh, you mean making people learn the language of the majority might actually save them?:

While COVID-19 has heightened hardships for those enrolled in language classes and programs, language instructors and researchers say it has also highlighted innovative learning practices that could be applied in Canada, to work towards better supporting education.

The communities engaged in second-language learning classes range from newcomers and refugee families learning English for jobs and life in Canada to children in immersive programs developing an additional skill.

It has been my experience that these classes - free of charge to migrants - are often not attended for any number of reasons (mostly indifference, in my experience).

What innovative things might be applied to making them attend in the first place?

Now, a catalogue of the often contradictory and sad misapplication of treatment and information on the virus that the Chinese communist government let spread all over the world:

BREAKING - The C0VI-D Vaccines are so safe that just 90 women have lost their baby, 16,282 have suffered ear/eye disorders inc. going deaf & blind, and just 145,806 have suffered nervous system disorders inc. brain damage, stroke, seizure & paralysis...https://t.co/jEiNNubmmb

— The Daily Expose (@DailyExposeNews) April 23, 2021

**

Israel‘s Health Ministry said on Sunday it is examining a small number of cases of heart inflammation in people who had received Pfizer‘s COVID-19 vaccine, though it has not yet drawn any conclusions.

Pfizer said it has not observed a higher rate of the condition than would normally be expected in the general population.

In an emailed statement to Global News Sunday, Pfizer confirmed that they are “aware of the reports of myocarditis in recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.”

**

After just 900 people in Lytton were vaccinated with the shot, Dr. Hoffe observed numerous concerning allergic reactions and neurological side effects from the vaccine, with the most concerning reactions occurring in First Nations patients. ...

“In stark contrast to the deleterious effects of this vaccine in our community, we have not had to give any medical care what-so-ever, to anyone with COVID-19. So in our limited experience, this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than COVID-19,” Dr. Hoffe wrote, calling for answers from the provincial Ministry of Health.

Your Corrupt Government and You

When not planning on banning kitten videos, they are doing something else:

A federal agency bought stock in a money-losing Kenyan cellphone company at three times the price of shares in Ford Motor Co., records show. Export Development Canada called the “investment” speculative, and said it now plans to dump the stock that cost taxpayers $15,400,000: “The rate of return on this investment is difficult to predict.”

**

Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna says she needs to “do a better job of explaining” where billions have been spent on public works. Auditors in a March 25 report said they found only a partial picture of where the money went: “Even the Auditor General for Canada can’t connect the dots.”

If they were really sorry, they would not have stopped the inquiry:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is apologizing to ‘any woman’ who experienced harassment while serving in the military — though she says she never knew about the allegations against former chief of defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance.

**

But Conservative committee members wrote to the committee clerk today asking for further hearings into the Liberals’ handling of the allegation against Vance following Friday testimony from former Trudeau adviser Elder Marques.

He told the committee that he was directed by Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford or her assistant to reach out to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s office in March 2018 to talk about an allegation against Vance.

That testimony appeared to contradict the sequence of events laid out by Sajjan and raises new questions about what Trudeau knew about the allegation before a Global News report came out in February.

Article content

The Conservatives are expected to press for Telford to appear before the committee if members agree to further hearings.

That's if you believe that carbon is a pollutant - which it isn't:

Based on our current emissions of 730 tonnes (for 2019, the most recent government figures available) that will require a 324-million tonne reduction by 2030.

That would mean eliminating the equivalent of Canada’s entire oil & gas (191 million tonnes), agriculture (73 million tonnes) and electricity sectors (61 million tonnes) — totalling 325 million tonnes — in less than 10 years.

That’s absurd. No Canadian government, Liberal or Conservative, has met a single emission target it has set in three decades.

When Trudeau came into power in 2015, Canada’s annual emissions were 723 million tonnes. Today, they’re seven million tonnes higher.

Canadians are paying a high price for Trudeau’s failures — $60 billion for “climate action and clean growth” from 2015 to 2019, and another $53.6 billion for “Canada’s green recovery” since October 2020, according to the PM’s own statement at the Biden summit.

Finally, no matter how much Canadians pay in carbon taxes (currently $40 per tonne of emissions rising to $170 per tonne in 2030), nothing we do matters because Canada is responsible for less than 2% of energy-related global emissions.

China alone is responsible for more than 28%.

Imagine A Boot Stamping on Netflix and Youtube Forever

 Are people worried about Goebbels  Guiltbeault's censorship now?:

The Commons heritage committee has voted to regulate YouTube under federal law. The Department of Heritage said YouTube management, not individual users, will be liable for complying with the Broadcasting Act: “The only reason the government is doing this is to stretch the justification of regulating public airwaves into a justification for regulating private viewing.”

**

Gov’t Will Regulate YouTube – from Blocklock’s

...

They’ve done this because the head of the CRTC, Ian Scott, CEO, demanded the right to regulate all forms of transmission. Thing is, they can do it when radio spectrum must be controlled as there is a limited supply and to use it requires a large, fixed, transmitter. Not so for Netflix, Youtube, etc. We’ll see how the battle goes. There will be three sides, Netflix/Youtube etc., the governmnet and Canadians.

This coming along with a movement by the government to take their money; but that will probably end up in symbolic payments as long as they do the government’s censoring.

(Merci)

**

According to Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, the Liberal government is now planning on adding streaming apps to the scope of the proposed Bill C-10, bringing them under CRTC regulation.

The federal government proposed Bill C-10 last fall as an amendment to the Broadcasting Act that would push taxes and regulations on all streaming services on the internet, obligating them to contribute to Canadian content like traditional broadcasters.

(Sidebar: read Michael Geist's article here. It explains that anything put on Youtube is subject to the proposed law.

And The Rest of It

Yep:

The Supreme Court of Canada says an American Indigenous man has a constitutionally protected right to hunt in British Columbia given his people’s historic ties to the region.

The decision today comes in the case of Richard Lee Desautel, a U.S. citizen who was charged with hunting without a licence after shooting an elk near Castlegar, B.C.

What can go wrong?:

CMHC yesterday said it is “exploring opportunities for ex-prisoners” to become homeowners. The federal insurer awarded a $246,000 grant for a research “lab” on finding suitable housing for parolees: “You can imagine the challenges they face in finding a place to live, especially with a criminal record.”

Japan still on edge as the Olympics draw near:

The government said the state of emergency - set to last for about two weeks - would be "short and powerful".

Under the measures, bars will be required to close and big sporting events will be held without spectators.

The government has insisted that the Olympics will go ahead in July.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced the measures on Friday, saying they would begin on Sunday and remain in place until 11 May. In addition to Tokyo, the prefectures of Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo will be affected.

It marks the third state of emergency in Japan since the pandemic began.

"I sincerely apologise for causing trouble for many people again," he said. "It is feared that contagion in major cities will spread across the whole country if we take no measures."

We all know that we can trust China:

More than 500 federally funded scientists are under investigation for being compromised by China and other foreign powers, the National Institutes of Health revealed Thursday.

The federal health officials told a Senate committee that they are fighting to keep up with large-scale Chinese efforts to corrupt American researchers and steal intellectual property that scientists hope will lead to biomedical advances.

NIH has contacted more than 90 institutions about more than 200 scientists they’re concerned about, said Dr. Michael S. Lauer, NIH deputy director for extramural research. But the investigations’ workload is weighing down the nation’s top medical research agency, and new cases are turning up constantly across the government.

**

Some stand there, Britain:

British lawmakers on Thursday approved a parliamentary motion declaring that China’s policies against its Uyghur minority population in the far western Xinjiang region amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.

The motion is non-binding and does not compel the British government to act. But it is another move signalling the growing outcry among U.K. politicians over alleged human rights abuses in China.

Your Government At Work

 "Work" is used rather loosely here:

The $144.9 million earmarked in the 2019 budget for cybersecurity of Canada’s critical infrastructure still hasn’t been put to use after two years, despite warnings that systems such as energy grids and telecom networks could be targeted by hostile actors.

The 2019 budget outlined the money would be spent over five years “to protect Canada’s critical cyber systems including in the finance, telecommunications, energy and transport sectors.” The funding was dependent on new legislation to “introduce a new critical cyber systems framework,” which still hasn’t materialized.

We've heard similar things over the years.

All untrue:

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson yesterday promised cabinet will not further increase the carbon tax. Cabinet made a similar pre-election promise in 2019 before raising the tax 240 percent: “No, we do not intend to.”

**

Cabinet will not tax Canadians’ home equity, the Commons finance committee was told last night. “Just for the record,” said Liberal MP Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.), parliamentary secretary for finance: “Any suggestion to the contrary is entirely false.”

(Sidebar: this Sean Fraser.)

These rich Canadians:

A proposed federal tax on “extreme wealth” would affect about 16,000 people, records show. Data indicate most Canadians with employee stock option deductions had claims worth an average $7,000: “There are so few people in the top one percent.”

I'm sure they keep all of their assets on Canadian soil, too.

Where indeed?:

The Commons finance committee is asking what became of billions spent to Covid-proof public school classrooms. The Canadian Teachers’ Federation yesterday said pandemic supplies have been scant, and teachers have paid out of pocket to keep children safe: “I’m shocked.”

 

Wow, Canada Really Has A Handle On This Coronavirus Screw-Up

Inept and corrupt would be no way to go through life unless one lived in Canada, a country where incompetence is rewarded with pensions, positions of authority and a populace so indifferent to the goings-on of all levels of the government that the b@$#@rds could get away with it:

In the face of an overwhelming number of COVID-19 cases in South Asia, on Thursday Canada finally imposed a month-long ban on direct passenger flights from India and Pakistan. The announcement came only hours after a letter from the premiers of Ontario and Quebec pleaded with Ottawa “to protect the lives and well-being of our citizens” by stepping up Canadian border controls.

Because that's where the problem really lies.

Oh, wait ...

Another chapter in the Trudeau government's contempt for the population that helped manufacture this current screw up:

India’s Serum Institute signed a contract with Canada earlier this year to provide two million doses of their version of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada. The first 500,000 doses arrived in March, with a further shipment of a million doses expected in April, and the remainder of the order expected in mid-May.

**

Close to two thirds of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine imported into Canada came from a U.S. factory that American authorities say was rife with quality-control issues, Health Canada confirmed Thursday.

Also - but ... the Narrative!:

Bazant and Bush question long-held Covid-19 guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization in a peer-reviewed study published earlier this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America.

“We argue there really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks,” Bazant said in an interview. “It really has no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room so you’re more exposed to the average background than you are to a person at a distance.”