While grocers have been accused of price-gouging and
profiteering, Mr. Lander explained what's behind their record profits.
He gave the hypothetical example of a grocer who buys a
product for $1 from a supplier, then sells it for $2. That's an
"extreme" markup, he said, "but just so you'll see my
point." So if the the supplier starts selling the product for $2, the
grocer will mark it up to $4.
"[As a grocer,] I haven’t done a single thing
differently. I take whatever my cost is and I double it, turning it out the
door. But my profits have gone up, and the reason it’s gone up is because the
supplier has increased the prices on me,” he said.
In June, the House of Commons agriculture committee
recommended a windfall profits tax if a forthcoming report by the Competition
Bureau found grocers were profiteering. That report found major grocers’ profit
margins increased "by a modest yet meaningful amount over the last five
years."
Margins generally increased by one or two percentage points
since 2017, the report said, adding that this translates to about an extra
$1–$2 on each $100 Canadians spend on groceries.
“The Canadian grocery industry is a low-margin business.
Grocers make relatively little on each item, but make their profits in volume,”
the report said. “That means that even small changes in margins can be
meaningful.”
The Bank of Canada said in a June report that grocers and
other retailers are not guilty of price inflation. It said retail price spikes
are largely due to "global freight and energy" cost increases as well
as industrial inputs like chemicals, plastics, lumber, and metals, along with
costs associated with labour and commercial services such as trucking.
In a way, it shouldn't surprise one given that leftists will embrace whatever destructive ideology serves their ends.
It doesn't make it less sickening, however:
AP News confirming that the 98-year old veteran given standing ovation by Canadian parliament, is Yaroslav Hunka, who fought for the 14th division of the Waffen SS.
Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to an outright Nazi collaborator.
It's been confirmed that Hunka volunteered to serve in the 14th division of the Waffen SS. Hunka is a Nazi. Canada's Parliament gave a Nazi a standing ovation for fighting against the USSR. 👇https://t.co/rosTJCmDFC
BREAKING—Canada’s Speaker of the House will issue statement today concerning embarrassing blunder of inviting a former member of a Ukrainian military division connected to the Nazi party 4 @ZelenskyyUa ‘s visit with @JustinTrudeau Friday. Jewish groups want an apology. Stay tuned
Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau says he does not want to escalate tensions
further with India, on a day when Canada’s allies showed signs they are
unwilling to join Ottawa’s public condemnation of New Delhi for its
alleged role in the gangland-style slaying of a prominent Canadian Sikh
leader.
Despite these efforts, the United States, Britain
and other allies have declined to criticize publicly the government of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which they see as a counterweight to China
and a huge economic market of more than one billion people.
“We
are deeply concerned about the allegations referenced by Prime Minister
Trudeau,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne
Watson told reporters. “We remain in regular contact with our Canadian
partners. It is critical that Canada’s investigation proceed and the
perpetrators be brought to justice.”
Britain
will continue trade talks with India despite the Canadian allegations,
the British Prime Minister’s office said in a statement.
“When
we have concerns about countries we are negotiating trade deals with,
we will raise them directly with the government concerned. But with
regards to the current negotiations with India, these are negotiations
about a trade deal, and we’re not looking to conflate them with other
issues,” the statement said.
Australia,
for its part, said it was deeply concerned by the allegations raised by
Canada. The statement by a spokesperson for foreign minister Penny Wong
said Canberra had also conveyed its concerns to senior levels in India.
Some points:
Thanks to Justin, Canada's place in the world is so greatly diminished that even if Justin's concerns were valid, who would care?
This entire fiasco is related to Justin's recent humiliation in India. Once more, he made a total fool of himself and has zero in terms of trade and good relations to show for it. That is due to his failure as a diplomat, among other things.
It has been bandied about that this serves to bolster the Sikh extremist vote at home and help China in the process. While this may be, I lean toward the idea that Justin is incapable of being a mature, intelligent statesman and let his petulance get the better of him.
Was Nijjar murdered by the Indian government or some other party? In terms of Canada's saving face, it is irrelevant. Canada failed to quell Sikh extremism, to integrate all immigrants into Canadian society, root out all terrorist activity, protect its citizens and residents from external forces (cough-China-cough) or even get his state police to properly investigate a crime.
We see this kind of unravelling in banana republics where nothing works save for the tyrant.
And though the event has drawn comparisons to the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks in the United States, the Air India bombing did not
set off a dynamic of bigotry toward Sikhs in Canada as extreme as the
one inflicted on Muslims (and some Sikhs) in the United States after
9/11, he said.
That's because Canadians don't know anything about their own history.
David Johnston in three months as cabinet “rapporteur” on Chinese
interference awarded millions in sole-sourced contracts to favoured
consultants, records show. Payments included fees to a publicist to
“identify columnists and key opinion leaders” to promote Johnston:
“Actual expenditures for the Independent Special Rapporteur have not yet
been finalized.”
Behold the left in all its dime-shifting, child-grooming, bigoted glory!:
Toronto psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson plans to challenge sanctions imposed on him by the College of Psychologists.
Peterson
had been ordered by the college to take a coaching program on
professionalism when making public statements on social media after
complaints were made against him.
The complaints arose from comments he made about politics as well as his views of women, masculinity and gender issues.
Lawyers Howard Levitt and Peter Carey have filed for leave to appeal the sanctions to the Court of Appeal.
They claim the complaints came mostly from non-Canadians who had no connection with him or his professional practice.
“A
significant amount of public controversy has surrounded this case, in
Canada and abroad, since it impacts a large portion of the Canadian
workforce subject to regulatory trade and professional bodies. The
chilling effect that this decision has had will have on the freedom of
speech and debate of everyday Canadians is alarming,” Levitt said in a
statement.
A school board west of Toronto says it is focused on replenishing
resources in its libraries while reviewing training after its so-called
“weeding process” was criticized.
Last week, Education
Minister Stephen Lecce wrote to the Peel District School Board asking it
to halt the weeding process -—which assesses and removes older books —
after concerns were raised that some books were being removed from
shelves simply because they were published before 2008, based on new
equity-focused board guidelines.
Students and a group of Peel Region residents called on the board to
provide a clear explanation on what happened and share details on how
libraries with half-empty shelves would be replenished.
The
board said last week that older books, regardless of publication date,
could stay in school libraries so long as they were “accurate, relevant
to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the
current curriculum.”
(Sidebar: what does "inclusive" mean, by the way?)
Further
to the news that our current prime minister is blaming grocery stores
for heightened food costs, why doesn’t he realize that his own father,
Pierre Trudeau, was responsible for passing legislation that has cost
Canadian consumers in the grocery stores for decades?
The
federal supply management bill of 1971 artificially inflates the cost
of milk, cream, eggs, cheese, ice cream, poultry, etc. As a result of
this, in trade deals with other countries, Canada has had to sacrifice
benefits in other sectors, thus hurting many Canadian businesses.
Simple
solution: repeal the legislation. Once again, legislators care more
about vote-buying from a few dairy farmers rather than alleviating all
Canadians’ financial pain.
Oil companies should pay costs of wildfires, a New Democrat yesterday
told the Commons. MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) said it was
unfair to charge firefighting expenses to taxpayers since oil companies
were “burning the planet.”
Crime costs Canadians more than $43 billion a year, says a landmark
report by the Department of Justice. Researchers totaled expenses from
police overtime to victims’ lost wages, funeral expenses and trauma:
“The effects of crime are far reaching.”
Cabinet billed more than a quarter million for a three-day cabinet
retreat on inflation, records show. Expenses for the meeting at a
Vancouver Hyatt a year ago included tens of thousands of dollars for
food with catering from one café that sells an $88 “millionaire’s cut”
steak and lobster plate: “The cost of living, that is our focus.”
Nongovernmental groups called on the United Nations to urge the South Korean government to end its complicity in forced organ harvesting in China.
“South Korea, known as a major consumer of transplant tourism to China, has not taken sufficient steps to monitor and discourage this practice, despite being aware of the circumstances surrounding forced organ harvesting—a grievous and arbitrary deprivation of human lives," two nonprofits said in a statement on Sept. 13.
The two groups—the Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (KAEOT) and Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)—raised concerns about the Korean government's involvement in the organ transplant abuse, in a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee. A session of the global body is scheduled to take place in Geneva next month.
Kim Hwangho, director of KAEOT, said the report not only impacts the Korean government, but also helps to address forced organ harvesting in China, given that the multibillion-dollar business has been fueled by transplant tourists worldwide.
"Collaboration among NGOs to engage the Human Rights Committee in monitoring other countries for complicity in forced organ harvesting in China can help address this heinous practice, which relies on demand from other nations," Mr. Kim said in a written statement to The Epoch Times.
You know, China, Japan doesn't call you a Third World craphole that kills its girl infants, hates black people for fun and pollutes its air so much that people cannot see the sky:
The
calls come from numbers with Chinese dialling codes. One restaurant
chain in Fukushima reported more than 1,000 calls since last Thursday.
Tokyo has also warned citizens visiting China to take precautions and avoid speaking Japanese loudly.
Beijing has led criticism of last week's release of treated wastewater.
Tokyo has made daily reports, saying the seawater around the nuclear plant is showing no detectable levels of radioactivity.
Japanese
authorities say the calls from Chinese numbers began after the release
of water and they were made to government departments, schools and even
an aquarium.
The
callers speak in Chinese, Japanese and English - and sometimes use
abusive language. They speak about their opposition to Japan's decision
to release the treated nuclear water.
China has described the discharge as an "extremely selfish and irresponsible act".
I think giving the entire world a virus is extremely selfish and irresponsible.
Yet, while our countries certainly enjoy similarities, our relationship
is also complementary in nature. Canada is blessed with a great
abundance of natural resources, and Japan imports from Canada energy and
mineral resources that are absolutely critical for industrial
activities. LNG Canada, still under construction, will be the very first
project exporting liquefied natural gas to Japan from the west coast of
North America, helping to bolster Japan’s energy security. At the same
time, Toyota, Honda and other Japanese automakers have production
facilities in Canada, supporting the development of Canada’s
manufacturing industry. In this way, Japan and Canada have each advanced
the development of the other’s economy while mutually complementing
each other.
Japan, you have the knowledge, but Canada has resources it would rather keep in the ground.
Could this be the reason why Justin decided to be a b!#chy blabbermouth?:
Days after chief of proscribed
Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) Hardeep Singh Nijjar was gunned down by
unidentified men in Vancouver on June 18, External Affairs Minister S
Jaishankar went on record stating that rise of so-called Khalistan
politics was driven by “vote bank politics” in Canada.
During
the G-20 summit, the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval engaged his
Australian, UK and Canadian counterparts over the rise of Sikh
fundamentalism and violence against Indian assets in their respective
countries. It is understood that the Australian NSA and the UK NSA
reacted positively to Indian concerns but the Canadian NSA was unfazed
as the New Democratic party of Khalistan supporter Jagmeet Singh
supports the minority Justin Trudeau government. It was quite evident
from the NSA level meetings that the Canadian government was under
pressure from Khalistan supporters and would do little to help the
Indian cause. This was despite the fact that Khalistan supporters with
the help of US based Sikhs For Justice, proscribed under UAPA, were
openly threatening to assassinate Indian top diplomats posted in Canada
with photographs of the Indian Ambassador and two Consul Generals
splashed on posters and a reward on their heads.
Instead of
taking on the Khalistan radicals, drug runners and gangsters from Punjab
taking shelter in Canada either under fake Portuguese passports or
cooking up stories of political discrimination of Sikhs in India, Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday came out openly in support of the
radicals by blaming unidentified Indian agents for being involved in the
killing of terrorist Nijjar outside a radical place of worship in
Surrey, Vancouver. Trudeau, playing to the Sikh separatists gallery,
also decided to expel the Indian diplomat who was posted under official
cover in Ottawa and then also committed an undiplomatic act by naming
him. The Modi government retaliated today by expelling Olivier
Sylvestere, the Canadian intelligence chief in India, and asked him to
leave the country in the next five days.
While Trudeau accuses
India of interfering in internal affairs, he is blind to Canada based
gangster Arsh Dalla, who took responsibility for gunning down Congress
leader and Ajitwal block president Baljinder Singh Balli in Moga
district of Punjab on Monday. Fact is that Trudeau is playing politics
with India by taking no action against those openly targeting Indian
diplomats and diaspora in Canada in the name of freedom of speech.
Consider this:
· Killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a proclaimed
terrorist who had no less than 10 cases registered against him in India.
He had a red corner notice issued by Interpol against him and was a
mentor of Canada based gangsters Arshdeep Singh, Rinku Bihla and Goldy
Brar. He along with Australia based Gurjant Singh and Pakistan based
Lakhbir Singh Rode were involved in contract killings in Punjab and
illegal smuggling of weapons to India.
· No less than 37 FIRs
have been registered by state police against Arshdeep Singh Dalla, who
escaped to Surrey in Canada on July 8, 2020 on a passport issued in
Jalandhar. Although still holding an Indian passport, Dalla openly
threatens Indians in Punjab and in Canada while living with a wife and
daughter in Surrey. He is affiliated to Khalistan Tiger Force and is an
international gangster with terror links.
· Gangster and mafia
don Satinderjit Singh Brar alias Goldy Brar went to Canada on an Indian
passport on August 15, 2017. He is an active member of Lawrence Bishnoi
gang with no less than 13 FIRs for murders, attempted murders and weapon
smuggling registered against him in India. He has a red corner notice
from Interpol in his name and has an arrest warrant in his name.
Look what damage an ego - and bad domestic policy - can do.
Despite leaked intelligence reports about Chinese interference in
Canada's last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021, Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau has refused to hold a public probe into the matter.
[T]he passivity of Trudeau's Liberal Party is "permitting China
to colonize Canada." — Tasha Kheiriddin, Canadian political columnist, National Post, August 22, 2023.
"On housing: Chinese money laundering inflated Canadian property
values for decades and helped push home ownership out of reach for
today's buyers. On drug addiction: China is the main source country of
fentanyl found in Canada, paving the way for thousands of overdose
deaths. On the economy: China has targeted a host of Canadian industries
for control, from lobsters to lithium." — Tasha Kheiriddin, National Post, August 22, 2023.
"The CCP's basic strategy of overseas influence and interference
is to capture elites in politics, business, media, think tanks,
universities, and cultural institutions...It deploys a range of
techniques including flattery, financial inducement, exploitation of
anti-racist and anti-American sentiment, bribery, and honey traps... Key
figures in the Liberal Party have long historical ties to the CCP, not
least through business connections..." — Clive Hamilton, thehub.ca, June
2, 2023.
"I've often said that Chinese leaders are what I call CEO
whisperers, they're very, very skillful when meeting foreigners,
particularly senior foreigners. China inspires a kind of excessive
affection in people and an excessive sense of wonder and a desire not to
apply the usual sort of critical thinking skills, and people are
seduced by it." — Former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney,
thehub.ca, June 2, 2023.
China has reportedly openly been trying to influence [Canadian
PM] Justin Trudeau for the past ten years. One unnamed CSIS source said
that the CCP had its eyes on Justin Trudeau well before he became prime
minister.
Trudeau, during his first election campaign in 2016, visited the
homes of "wealthy Chinese-Canadians for private fundraising events. Some
of the hosts had close connections with the CCP and had been actively
promoting Beijing's takeover of islands in the South China Sea." — Clive
Hamilton, in his book, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.
The influence of the CCP is so pervasive that Canada's Minister
of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, "is pulling double
duty as an official adviser to the Chinese government" according to a
report in the Toronto Sun.
China... is a real threat to Canada's sovereignty. "Recent
Chinese actions and announcements are pointing to Beijing's
determination to have a military capability in the region that will
exceed that of Canada." — Rob Hueber, senior fellow at the
Macdonald-Laurier Institute and associate professor of political science
at the University of Calgary, Globe and Mail, August 25, 2023.
"What has not received as much attention is a research paper,
published in 2021, in which Chinese scientists explain their success in
developing Arctic-resilient underwater listening systems. The paper says
the listening systems are for peaceful purposes, but the actual
ramifications of the HABs [high-altitude balloons], buoys and research
systems are inescapable. China is refining its means of monitoring the
Canadian North." — Rob Hueber, Globe and Mail, August 25, 2023.
"China will very soon enjoy a major advantage in monitoring
Arctic waters, especially under the surface, and it will have confidence
that Canada has little ability to see what is going on or do anything
about it. Factor in the overwhelming evidence of Beijing's efforts to
target and interfere in our political system – and our reluctance or
inability to respond to these actions – and the larger threat to
Canada's very sovereignty comes starkly into view." — Rob Hueber, Globe and Mail, August 25, 2023.
**
Elections Commissioner Caroline Simard yesterday in her Annual Report to
Parliament omitted all mention of “China” in updating investigations of
alleged election fraud by foreign agents. Simard earlier dismissed 116
complaints of alleged interference prior to the May 8 expulsion of a
Chinese spy: “It is clear the issue of foreign interference weighs
heavily on Canadians’ trust.”
Three U.S. officials and two people briefed on intelligence
surrounding Li told the Financial Times that Washington has concluded
that the defense chief, who took up his post in March, had been stripped
of his responsibilities. They did not offer further insights into the
probe.
Li, who has not been seen in public since Aug. 29, would be the
latest senior Chinese official to lose his post, following Xi’s abrupt purge last month of two generals leading the country’s Rocket Force,
which oversees the country’s nuclear and land-based missile arsenal,
and the still-unexplained-disappearance of then-Foreign Minister Qin
Gang, who was stripped of his position in July, seven months into the
job.
Attention to Confucius Institutes has mainly been centered around
colleges and universities, but less so on K-12 education. This means
that Chinese state propaganda is probably now pretty much all over
American K-12 classrooms.
PDE observed that more than $17 million had been spent by the CCP on Confucius classrooms in the US between the years 2009-2023.
"Three of the nation's top science and technology high schools
have ties to Chinese government affiliated programs including Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has had ties to
Tsinghua University High School—the high school affiliated with one of
China's top military schools, Tsinghua University..." — Peter Wood,
President, National Association of Scholars, Daily Signal, August 15,
2023.
"[W]hat's happening in these schools is that they learn that
China is a benevolent institution, the heir of an ancient civilization
that means nothing but goodwill to the rest of the world... And the
notion that you can take children who have some aptitude for the hard
sciences and math and get them to view China as a potential partner and
friend... all through their educational careers. We're creating an
assembly line for talented young men and women who will be unable to
distinguish the American national interest from the Chinese national
interest. They're getting blurred together at a young age and that's
very difficult to undo once it's done." [Emphasis added.] — Peter Wood,
Daily Signal, August 15, 2023.
Wood noted that CCP infiltration of American K-12 schools is "almost everywhere."
"[I]t's concentrated in the feeder schools to elite education,
which means mostly West Coast and East Coast, but not exclusively
those.... China's... looking for places where buying influence will
yield results in the long term." — Peter Wood, Daily Signal, August 15,
2023.
"Programs vetted and managed by China's government have
infiltrated 34 states and Washington, D.C., which impacts approximately
170,000 students across 143 school districts. Unfortunately, this
investigation discovered 12 school systems in our own state have
received money from the CCP. This includes the New York City
Department of Education, which received $375,575.00 in CCP-connected
funding. Considering China's adversarial relationship with the United
States, this is deeply problematic and presents a national security
concern for our constituents and state." [Emphasis added.] — Letter from Republican Members of Congress to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, August 21, 2023.
Hochul reportedly has close relations with CCP representatives in
New York. She has repeatedly met with Huang Ping, China's New York
Consul General, who once described Hochul as "an old friend," an
honorific bestowed on those who have "rendered great services to China,"
as Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg write in their book, Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.
**
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet arrived in Beijing on Thursday on
his first official trip abroad since taking office last month. The visit
demonstrates his country's warm relations with China, Cambodia's
closest political and economic ally.
Hun Manet was expected to
meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in the capital and
to attend a weekend trade and investment expo in southern China,
according to Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry.
A ministry statement
said the two leaders would discuss tightening the nations' ties with the
building of a “Cambodia-China Community,” strategic directions for
their bilateral relations, and regional and international matters.
Chinese
state broadcaster CGTN posted images of Hun Manet and his wife, Pich
Chanmony, walking down the stairs from a plane to a red carpet on an
airport tarmac, where they were greeted by two children, a Chinese
official and others.
Hun Manet later laid a wreath at a monument
in Beijing's Tiananmen Square that honors those who died fighting
foreign invaders and in the protests and battles that brought China's
ruling Communist Party to power in 1949.
Cambodia is a key Chinese
diplomatic partner and supporter in regional and international forums.
It helps dampen criticism of Beijing within the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, several of whose members are engaged in
territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
China has
gained important influence in Cambodian politics and its economy, as
seen in the numerous Chinese-funded projects, hotels and casinos in the
capital, Phnom Penh, and elsewhere around the country. China’s state
banks have financed airports, roads and other infrastructure built with
Chinese loans. More than 40% of Cambodia’s $10 billion in foreign debt
is owed to China.
Tam’s original sins remain totally unexplained — at an official inquiry, for example, hint hint —
never mind expiated. For days and weeks in early 2020, while our peer
countries were closing borders and preparing for a pandemic, Tam assured
us “the risk to Canada is low.” She lied that World Health Organization
rules prohibited us from closing borders. She told us masks were worse
than useless, and the only excuse anyone can offer is that she was
fibbing to prevent Canadians from hoarding PPE. (I think she actually
believed it. Either explanation is a firing offence.)
Remember the utterly incoherent advice the Public Health Agency of
Canada provided to incoming travellers in the early days? Remember the
built-to-fail, purely political quarantine hotels that Tam said weren’t
necessary until they suddenly were — just as she said 14-day quarantine
at home wasn’t necessaryuntil it suddenly was?
We were weeks if not months behind most of our peer countries.
Regardless of your position on any given restriction, none of it made
any sense.
Most
of the day-to-day restrictions we lived with were provincial creations,
of course. And Tam’s provincial colleagues fared little better. British
Columbia’s Dr. Bonnie Henry was hailed as a hero early on — “she has
guided B.C. with a deep empathy, with vulnerability, and with decisions
that have been proven over and over to be right,” a Toronto Star
columnist gushed. Henry even had the flaming chutzpah to publish a self-congratulatory book about herself.
Not
long later she found herself facing down a revolt from parent groups
and school districts over her belief younger students needn’t mask up at
school. She flip-flopped, then waved away any suggestion British
Columbians had lost confidence in her. (Henry has always clearly been
far more skeptical about masks than her counterparts.) The restrictions
she implemented, the businesses she allowed to open and those she
ordered closed, were as bewildering and obviously politically motivated —
who’s going to complain least while we seem to be doing something? — as
in every other province.
Henry was perhaps the most strident Canadian voice
insisting that COVID-19 transmission at school was nothing to worry
about. It was a lovely idea. I wanted to believe it! But why would
COVID-19 be the one bug kids don’t give to each other at school like it’s their job? More recent evidence impugns Henry’s overly confident stance, as do internal emails published last year by online news outlet Capital Daily suggesting she was deliberately downplaying the risk.
The
flipside of Henry’s stance was Ontario’s, where public-health officials
(municipal and provincial alike) signed off on the longest school
closures in the developed world “for the sake of the children” — i.e.,
literally the people we needed to worry about least. Now schools are a mess of behavioural problems and learning deficits. Some kids seem to have gone downright feral.
Dr.
David Williams, Henry’s preternaturally hapless counterpart at Queen’s
Park until mid-2021, hit rock bottom early that year (along with the
Progressive Conservative government). On March 19, Williams signed off
on new regulations that would allow outdoor dining in some relatively
low-transmission jurisdictions. Restaurants stocked up, brought on
staff, bought patio furniture … and then two weeks later, amid a surge
in cases that everyone saw coming, Williams signed off on a month-long
province-wide shutdown — a totally inexplicable change from the regional
approach the government had been using.
The fact is,
public health officers have always been political actors, beholden at
least to some significant extent to their political bosses. And that has
always been awkward, conceptually: If your job is to give your best
advice behind the scenes and then support whatever the government
decides anyway, how are you anything other than an unelected cabinet
minister?
This basic arrangement worked when our biggest
problems were botulism-infected alfalfa sprouts, or heat warnings, or
MMR vaccination rates, or even SARS for that matter. Under the strain of
a world-class health emergency, however, it crumbled like meringue.
Politicians often sounded ridiculous, and doctors looked even more so
supporting them … because they’re doctors.
An investigation into COVID vaccines found that the jabs were “neither safe nor effective,” said the nonprofit National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) in a Sept. 15 post on X. The organization published a report Thursday detailing the flawed mechanism through which the vaccines were granted “approval” in Canada.
“It
is important to understand that the COVID-19 vaccines were never
approved under the traditional approval process for drugs in Canada,”
stated the report (pdf).
Instead, Health Canada, the federal agency responsible for national
health policy, approved the vaccines through an alternative
authorization process—an interim order. ...
Canada's
Food and Drug Regulations require that a drug can only be approved in
the country after its safety and effectiveness are demonstrated to the
Minister of Health. Then, the minister considers whether the benefits
outweigh the risks, following which, approval is granted.
Instead
of following regulations, the Minister of Health sanctioned an interim
order on Sept. 16, 2021, which exempted all COVID-19 vaccines from
normal review and approval. This provision usually allows the minister
to override normal regulations in situations of “significant risk” to
health, safety, or the environment.
**
Capt. Martel said when his squad arrived in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 18, they were placed 15 feet from the "front
line" established by police officers on the corner of Rideau Street and
Sussex Drive. He said the police were able to move approximately 150
metres forward over the course of many hours due to the protesters'
refusal to move.
"There were no projectiles that were thrown or anything. We could hear some yelling, but they just stayed in place," he added.
A Calgary pastor was sentenced to 60 days in jail Monday for his role
in protests against COVID-19 public health measures that blocked
Alberta’s main Canada-U.S. border crossing for more than two weeks.
But
a judge in Lethbridge, Alta., gave Artur Pawlowski 60 days’ credit for
time already served, meaning he walked away from the courthouse a free
man.
