Is Canada a new focus of "Shark Week"?:
An unusual find on the southeast shore of Grand Manan Island is attracting the attention of locals and visitors.
A 7.6-metre basking shark washed up on the island's shore earlier this month.
Island resident Debbie Bath first came across the carcass while out for her evening walk.
"Just very surprised," said Bath of her reaction. "We didn't realize what it was until we got up to it and then it was the initial, 'Wow, this is a very large fish.'"
I'll say.
Why should anyone trust a system that gears itself against ONE presidential candidate?:
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) addressed New York business owners in a new interview and told them there was “nothing to worry about” after former President Trump was hit with a $463 million (with interest) fine and a ban on conducting business in New York for three years. He can’t even borrow money, and his sons can’t do business for two years. Son Eric is running the business in Trump’s absence.
If I were a business-owner, I would think twice about doing business in New York.
The legal system in Canada is a shambles.
And that is before someone railroads it further:
The Department of Justice has surveyed Canadians’ support for a separate Indigenous court system. The initiative followed a 2021 proposal to study adoption of ancient legal practices on First Nations lands: “People think we’re a lawless, savage people and that’s not true. Our people were very highly organized.”
(Sidebar: uh, yeah, you are. What due process was there in the Stone Age?)
**
Two former ArriveCan executives are attempting to quash a “scandalous” investigator’s report alleging criminal wrongdoing, according to Federal Court records. Cameron MacDonald and Antonio Utano, both ex-Canada Border Services Agency managers, were suspended without pay: ‘Untested accusations are of such magnitude any reader could only be left to draw the conclusion of potential criminal activity.’
**
The Canada Border Services Agency last year assigned just 207 staff to criminal investigations nationwide including 48 in Greater Toronto, auto theft capital of Canada, records show. The disclosure follows a cabinet-sponsored conference on auto theft one MP dismissed as a “good photo op.”
Calling people "far-right" or some such thing only lends further credence to a cause:
Protests against the government’s immigration policy have been mostly peaceful, but some have turned violent – including in Dublin last year where riots broke out after three young children and a woman were stabbed, allegedly by a man of Algerian origin. There has also been a spate of more than a dozen arson attacks in Ireland over the past year on migrant facilities and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants.
The Irish state last year accepted more refugees than it could accommodate, forcing the government to offer asylum applicants tents and sleeping bags as they arrived in Dublin. Since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have also been offered sanctuary in Ireland. I spoke to one Ukrainian refugee outside of an asylum processing centre in Dublin, who told me that despite sleeping rough in Ireland, he was nonetheless grateful for refuge from Vladamir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.
The number of asylum seekers arriving into Ireland has shot up to more than 26,000 over the past two years, the highest annual figures on record, and a growth of nearly 200 per cent from 2019. Last year, most asylum seekers arriving in Ireland came from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Georgia.
There are some TDs who have spoken out against “unsustainable” levels of immigration in the Irish parliament. Six of them have formed a loose coalition called the Rural Independent Group. I sat down with one of their members, Carol Nolan, to hear their side of the story. “I have never seen the feeling as strong on the issue of immigration as it is now,” Ms Nolan said. “I do feel that people will protest at the ballot box and I do feel that if the government doesn’t change direction quickly…that they will be punished.”
Ms Nolan said she felt anti-EU sentiment was being stoked by the government’s immigration policy. “There is a lot of frustration over the EU dictating everything a country should do – the numbers they should take in and so forth. So there is definitely frustration over that dictatorship as some people see it.”
Leo Varadkar’s government says it can tackle the problems around immigration with better messaging and tougher laws to censor what it deems as “hate speech”. But the Irish public say their concerns are legitimate – a view which is becoming harder to ignore as it gains political momentum. It’s beginning to look like the Irish government’s vision of an Ireland which looks more like its European neighbours is coming true – a multicultural country, ripe for a populist revolt.
Is it condescending or maddening when a tone-deaf leader claims that people are ignorant of what they can see around them?
Discuss.
**
When did it become ‘far-right’ to support European farmers who are fighting for their livelihoods and rural communities? If we were to believe the mainstream media coverage of the farmers’ protests, we might expect to see them marching through Berlin or Paris in jackboots rather than their working bottes en caoutchouc (Wellingtons to us Brits).
The ‘far-right’ political libel against hard-pressed farmers is really a sign of how far the EU elites have lost touch with the reality of life for the peoples of Europe. We should ignore the slurs, and get behind the fighting farmers.
The protests by angry farmers have spread across the European Union, with mighty convoys of tractors blockading roads and cities from Romania to Rome, from Portugal to Poland, from Bulgaria to Brussels and beyond.
There might be some national variations in the farmers’ specific demands. But what unites them all is opposition to the way that the EU elites are subordinating agricultural policy to their Green agenda and Net Zero obsession, leading to more hardship for farmers and higher food prices for other Europeans.
As tractor convoys blockaded German cities in January, farmers’ association president Joachim Rukwied spelt out that they were protesting not just against the government’s proposed cuts in fuel subsidies, but against an EU-wide system where “agricultural policy is being made from an unworldly, urban bubble and against farming families and rural areas.”
This week in Poland, 62-year-old protesting farmer Janusz Bialoskorski told the media that, “They’re talking about climate protection. But why should it be done at farmers’ expense?” Farmers, he pointed out, are not responsible for industrial pollution, and “nor do we fly to Davos on our jets.”
These farmers are now in the front line of a wider populist revolt, against those elitists who DO fly in their private jets to the World Economic Forum in luxurious Davos, Switzerland, where they lecture the rest of us about how to save the planet by sacrificing our living standards.
If people were true students of history, no one would have to implore for this:
Britain is estimated to have sent more than three-million Africans across the Atlantic into slavery, of whom 2.7 million survived. But it was also the country that changed course, and led the world in abolishing slavery elsewhere.
Another inconvenient truth for today’s secular society is that the major abolition leaders were motivated by their Christian faith.
Quakers led the way, holding that slavery was wrong and against God’s will: we are supposed to love our neighbour and do unto others as we would wish they did unto us, and who would want to be a slave? The Quakers, however, held no political power, not even the vote, as non-members of the Church of England. Yet they did circulate petitions and speak out against slavery.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, published his “Thoughts upon Slavery” in 1774, and in 1788, preached against it in Bristol, a major slave-trading port. He encouraged the (evangelical) William Wilberforce to take up the issue, and he led the push for abolition in Parliament.
Thomas Clarkson, a top abolition leader, when he was a student at Cambridge, had planned to become a clergyman, but after he won an essay contest on slavery, he decided to devote his life to working for abolition. He did research, published books and pamphlets, and travelled the country to win people over to the cause.
A third inconvenient truth might be seen in the inordinate time it took to abolish slavery and the slave trade in practice: passing a law against it in 1807 did not end the practice — too many people carried on, as there was money to be made and no penalty for breaking the law. It took an array of further laws, such as making it a crime to engage in the trade. Another law criminalized making profits from it.
In 1819, 12 years after the adoption of the law banning the trade, the British government set up a whole new sub-department in the Foreign Office, to persuade other countries to ban the trade, as well. It started small, but in time had the largest budget of any in the Foreign Office. It was not disbanded until 1882.
Yet many in Toronto, as in Edinburgh, blame Henry Dundas for delaying abolition by adding the word “gradual” into Wilberforce’s 1792 motion. Dundas argued strenuously for the need to gain the co-operation of the plantation owners. He talked with those he could and found that some were open to the idea.
Lord Palmerston, as foreign secretary, worked hard on getting other countries to join in abolition. The year before he died, he said the achievement that gave him “the greatest and purest pleasure was forcing the Brazilians to give up their slave trade,” through the passage of the Slave Trade (Portugal) Act in 1839. But Brazil kept up the slave trade until 1888.
Even Dundas, who had a much more realistic idea than Wilberforce and his supporters on what it would take to abolish the slave trade, had no idea that decades would be needed for the dream to be fully realized.
So why does Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow still rate what Dundas did as “horrific”? Wilberforce himself, and his cohort, in time went over to the “gradual” position of Dundas. In 1823, they formed the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions.
When slavery itself was finally abolished in the British Empire, in 1834, the British Treasury had to compensate existing slave owners. The government had to take out a major loan, equivalent to 40 per cent of the national budget for that year. Unseemly as this was — the former slaves were paid nothing — emancipation would not have happened without it.
This is not to excuse the terrible brutality of Britain’s conquests around the world. It is to say that when a country changes course, and for decades devotes its resources to doing the right thing, we should give it credit.
The Russian government has been doing things like this for ages:
The brazen poisoning renewed fears that roving Russian assassins were ready to kill Putin’s critics using a nerve agent which translates as “newcomer” in Russian. Novichoks were a group of advanced nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
The poison blocks signals from the nerves to muscles, causing bodily functions to break down. Constriction of the pupils is quickly followed, if the dosage is high enough, by convulsions, interrupted breathing, vomiting and then death due to asphyxiation or cardiac arrest.
I was assured that not allowing these Frankenstein surgeries would be detrimental:
A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.
Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%. And — importantly — this difference disappeared when the two groups were controlled for mental health issues severe enough to require specialist psychiatric help.
In other words: while transgender identity does seem to be associated with elevated suicide risk, the link is not very strong. What’s more, the causality may not work the way activists claim.
A new documentary shines a light on the disabled in Japan:
With its calm and peaceful depiction of a farm where people with disabilities work, a Japanese documentary film is aiming to give audiences a look into the everyday lives of people who are often kept in the shadows.
Originally intended as a statement against an ableist-inspired killing spree in which 19 residents of a care home were murdered eight years ago, the film, "Fujiyama Cottonton," ultimately took a more sanguine approach, although director Taku Aoyagi was clear in his purpose.
"What motivated me the most to create this film was the 2016 incident at Yamayuri En," the 30-year-old director said, referring to the mass killing, one of Japan's worst mass murder cases, which targeted residents of a nursing home in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture.
Satoshi Uematsu, 34, the convicted murderer, now on death row, who was an employee of Yamayuri En, also injured 26 others in the incident — many seriously. He said at his trial that people with disabilities who cannot communicate their thoughts "create unhappiness" for others, while justifying his crime as being "useful to society."
"I felt a sense of urgency (to make the film) from the fact that death-row inmate Uematsu determined the value of human life by measuring people, and there seems to be an atmosphere that his discourse was being disseminated through society," Aoyagi said in a recent interview.
In the film, Aoyagi attempts to show audiences how people at the welfare facility live full lives by communicating with others and pursuing simple passions, just like people without disabilities do.
We have devolved as a society:
Hamas is right. Many ordinary Palestinians did participate in the October 7 assault on Israel. The civilians, however, could not have entered Israel without Hamas's tearing down the security fence. The truth is that thousands of Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians participated in the carnage.
The participation of Palestinian civilians in the attack on Israel, though not surprising, refutes the claim by human rights organizations that ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip are not involved in the Israel-Hamas war.
Even Hamas leaders have publicly implicated Palestinian civilians in the October 7 atrocities.
**
“Seeing this young mother clutching her babies surrounded by a group of armed terrorists is horrifying. But it is also a call to action: That we must bring the hostages home,” said Hagari.
“We are very concerned about the condition and safety of Shiri and the children, and are making every effort to obtain more information about their fate,” he added.
Hagari said the videos were taken at a terrorist outpost belonging to the Mujahideen Brigades.
“Those who have the audacity to question our need to operate in Gaza but don’t have decency—the basic decency and humanity—to release the hostages, first of all, they all should take a good look at this terrified mother, Shiri, clutching her babies. Until Hamas releases our hostages, we will leave no stone unturned,” added Hagari.
**
F--- off, Joe! You aren't anything!:
Amid growing tensions between the two leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden spoke by phone for 40 minutes Thursday evening, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
An official in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel that the two discussed the hostages taken during the October 7 onslaught, Rafah and the next stage in the fight against Hamas, and touched on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
A White House statement also said the pair talked about hostage negotiations, conditions in Gaza and the prospect of an Israeli military operation in Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in the enclave, where 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have fled to seek shelter from fighting elsewhere.
“The president reaffirmed his commitment to working tirelessly to support the release of all hostages as soon as possible, recognizing their appalling situation after 132 days in Hamas captivity,” the readout said. “The president and the prime minister also discussed the situation in Gaza, and the urgency of ensuring that humanitarian assistance is able to get to Palestinian civilians in desperate need.”
On Rafah, the statement said Biden “reiterated his view that a military operation should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the civilians in Rafah.”
**
A former professional cyclist has been disinvited as the keynote speaker at an International Women’s Day event in Peterborough, Ont., because she served in the Israeli military three decades ago.
“I was hurt. I was angry. But most of all I was heartbroken,” Leah Goldstein, 55, wrote on her website.
In 2021, Goldstein became the first woman to win the solo category of Race Across America, a 4,800-kilometre bike race across the United States, and one of the longest endurance races in the world.
She was born in 1969 in Vancouver to Israeli parents. Raised in Israel, she, like most young Israelis, served in the Israel Defense Forces. Israel, unlike many nations, has compulsory military service laws. Before returning to Canada in the late 1990s, she also served as a police officer, according to the Times of Israel. She currently lives in Vernon, B.C.
“I don’t believe you hired me because I was a soldier and a cop,” Goldstein wrote in a post directed at the INSPIRE event. “While these jobs are part of my story (and I’m very grateful to have had these experiences), they do not define me as a human being.
“As a Jewish woman, I would never be offended if a Palestinian woman were to speak about her obstacles and life journey. I thought that’s what women were supposed to do for each other — listen and support!”
The Jerusalem Post reported that organizers said “a small but growing and extremely vocal group” had taken issue with Goldstein’s military service.
“Our focus at INSPIRE has been and will always be to create safe spaces to honour, share, and celebrate the remarkable stories of women and non-binary individuals,” the group told the paper in a statement. “In recognition of the current situation and the sensitivity of the conflict in the Middle East, the Board of INSPIRE will be changing our keynote speaker.”
**
Norway says it will transfer tax funds to the Palestinian Authority that have been frozen for months because of a dispute with Israel.
Under interim peace agreements dating back to the early 1990s, Israel collects taxes and customs on behalf of the PA, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank and also helps pay for public services in Gaza.
After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza, Israel reduced the transfers by the amount that is spent on the territory. The PA refused to accept the partial transfers, even though it relies on the taxes to cover most of its budget.
Under the agreement announced on Sunday, Israel will transfer all the funds to Norway. The Scandinavian country will in turn transfer funds for the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority while holding those destined for Gaza.
"The temporary scheme will play a crucial role in preventing the Palestinian Authority from collapsing financially,” it said in a statement Sunday. The transfer will allow the PA to pay salaries to teachers, health workers and other public employees.
Just ... wow ...
It wanted to blot out from public memory its adulation of a Ukrainian Nazi and then closes the doors on the inquiry concerning said Nazi:
MPs meeting behind closed doors have voted to cross-examine Liberal MP Anthony Rota (Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont.) over his “Canadian hero” tribute to a Nazi collaborator. Rota last September 26 became the first Commons Speaker in 66 years to resign under threat of censure: “It may not be good enough for some of you.”
And yet, we do:
There is no Second Amendment in China, and Chinese citizens are not permitted to possess firearms. So is it possible that the shooters in the videos are merely taking advantage of a new-found freedom in their new home country ?
Unlikely.
One of the migrants videoed was in America for only three weeks and arrived in the country with no money and no identification.
If you had just landed somewhere as a migrant with nothing to your name, you would undoubtedly be preoccupied with finding your next meal, getting a place to live, making a livelihood.
You would not, within weeks of entering your new homeland, be sharpening your skills to kill.
You would not be thinking of killing unless... that is what you came to do.
The videos posted on X depict a sandy location. Blaine Holt, a retired Air Force general living in Idaho, knows Chinese migrants are taking target practice in his state as well.
"Tens of thousands of military-age men have come across our border and are now in America, organized by group and nationality" Holt told Gatestone this month. "Among them are terrorist and state actors, in particular, members of the People's Liberation Army of China. As we speak, these actors are training, making plans and obtaining weapons, watching our patterns, and learning our vulnerabilities."
"We are vulnerable to attack," Holt added. "Our enemies eagerly wait."
War correspondent Michael Yon and the Rubin brothers of Muckraker.com have documented the presence of dangerous-looking elements — from China, Iran, Syria and Venezuela — among the hordes of migrants traveling up from Central America. Yon and the Rubins have noticed, among other things, that Chinese males of military age are traveling in packs of five to fifteen, are unaccompanied by family members, and are pretending not to speak English. Some of them, on their way to America, have performed Chinese military rituals.
Federal agents have periodically apprehended border-crossers with terrorist connections, but the surge in migrants from China is taxing law enforcement resources. U.S. Border Patrol chiefs testified last year before the House Homeland Security Committee that they are worried that, due to sheer numbers, migrants with links to the Chinese military and those who are members of the Chinese Communist Party are slipping through background checks.
Despite warning signs, the Biden administration is not keeping tabs on dangerous-looking elements once they have crossed into America.
China's Communist Party is at this moment putting in place the infrastructure in America to attack America. For instance, in Reedley, California, near Fresno, authorities found a secret Chinese biological weapons lab with at least 20 pathogens, including the one for Ebola, and almost a thousand mice that had been genetically engineered to spread disease.
There are no benign explanations for such a facility.
Moreover, it is unlikely that the Chinese regime has only one such lab in America.
It appears that the People's Liberation Army is planning to spread disease by having its agents transport the mice around the United States with its now many operatives already in place.
Chinese agents, in addition to hobbling Americans with disease and gunning them down, could bomb power stations, attack military bases, start wildfires, poison reservoirs, or create terror in dozens of ways.
These tactics come straight out of Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 book written by two Chinese air force colonels and first published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing. The colonels argued that China can and should employ any tactic in attacking a militarily superior United States. Now, Americans can see how Beijing is operationalizing the suggestions in this how-to manual.
**
Taiwan on Tuesday drove away a Chinese coast guard boat that entered waters near its sensitive frontline islands, in a rise in tensions a day after China's coast guard boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat that a Taiwan minister said has triggered "panic".
A Chinese coast guard boat, numbered 8029, entered Taiwan's waters near Kinmen on Tuesday morning, Taiwan's coast guard said in a statement, adding it dispatched a boat and used radio and broadcast to drive away its Chinese counterpart, which left the area an hour later.
Taiwan's coast guard said it will continue to use radar, surveillance and patrols to ensure the "harmony and safety" near the waters of Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, which are close to China's shores.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory despite the island's rejection, has been wary of efforts by Beijing to ramp up pressure on Taipei following the election last month of Lai Ching-te as president, a man Beijing views as a dangerous separatist.
**
And what makes you think that your Chinese bosses will help you?:
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on Sunday she asked her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to “help influence the Houthis to keep the Red Sea open.”
Joly said she met with Wang on Saturday and tried to convince him that keeping the Red Sea shipping lanes safe was “in China’s interests as an exporter.”
Joly and Wang spoke on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, which concluded on Sunday. Wang promised in his address to the conference that China would be a “force for stability” in the world, which would seem to imply that China might help to protect international shipping through one of the world’s busiest sea lanes against a vicious terrorist organization.
A sign of weakness and dependence on the paper dragon.
Did they know something that we did not?:
A large number of health care workers including most nurses surveyed were reluctant to take Covid shots over fear of side effects, says in-house Public Health Agency research. “Many critical questions remain,” said the first-ever study of vaccine hesitancy among Canadian medical staff: “The prospect of losing their employment played a role in their decision to get vaccinated.”
People lost their jobs and careers over this.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland by cabinet order has granted herself authority to increase federal borrowing this fiscal year to a record $517 billion. The figure is $73 billion higher than estimated for the year ending March 31: “You’re simply saying, ‘Give me a blank cheque and then trust me.'”
She needs to be stopped.
Elections have consequences:
British Columbia’s rampant drug deaths have more than once thrust public health officials into uncharted territory. It became the first province to decriminalize small quantities of hard drugs for personal use in 2022, about two decades after Vancouver opened the first supervised injection site in North America. But as overdoses increase in some British Columbia towns, there is disagreement in one city about how to address it.
In Richmond, one of British Columbia’s largest cities, with 230,000 people, municipal council chambers turned raucous this week as a full public gallery of residents opposed a plan for staff to study whether a safe consumption site for drug users would be viable in the community. The plan was adopted on Tuesday, but the effort is off to a rocky start, with few officials and agencies standing up to defend it.
**
Toronto has the lowest median employment income among the 15 largest metropolitan areas in Canada and the United States, a recent study by think tank Fraser Institute shows.
The study, titled “Comparing Employment Income in Toronto and Selected American Metropolitan Areas,” was conducted after several recent studies by the think tank found that a large “prosperity gap” existed between Ontario and nearby U.S. states.
“Workers in Toronto, our largest urban centre, are generally earning less employment income than people in the largest American metro areas,” said study co-author Ben Eisen, a senior fellow at the institute, in a Feb. 15 news release.
The study compared the 2019 median employment income in Toronto with that of the 14 largest American metropolitan areas. Toronto’s median was $37,550, $2,030 less than the lowest-ranking U.S. metropolitan area, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach in Florida, which had a median of $39,580, according to the co-authors, based on data sourced from Statistics Canada and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The gap widened to $32,765 when Toronto was compared with San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley in California, the highest-ranking U.S. metro area, with a median employment income of $70,315.
The calculation took into consideration wages, salaries and commissions from paid and self-employment income before taxes, and government transfers, said the news release.
**
Renters across the country faced record low vacancy rates and record high rent increases in 2023, but Statistics Canada says Toronto and Vancouver residents who don't own their homes face the greatest financial and mental pressures.
The agency says survey results over the last few years show renters are more prone to reporting lower quality of life than homeowners, especially in Vancouver and Toronto.
Statistics Canada says young people surveyed in 2023 were less likely to report "high overall life satisfaction" and "excellent or good mental health" compared with older Canadians 55 and up.
People aged 15 to 29 also reported feeling lonely and less "hopeful about the future" than older people from 2016 through 2022.
**
Quebec has reached a breaking point in its ability to provide essential services — from education to social assistance — to thousands of asylum seekers arriving in the province, and Ottawa needs to act to take control over the borders, the Legault government said Tuesday.
“People need to be aware of the magnitude of the situation,” Canadian Relations Minister Jean-François Roberge, flanked by three other ministers, told reporters at a news conference where the Legault government upped the pressure on Ottawa to act. “We need the federal government to assume its responsibilities.”
Together they outlined the consequences of the unfettered growth in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Quebec and the effect on demands in services. They said Quebec has had to provide the equivalent of $1 billion in services over the last three years to manage the influx.
Ottawa, they said, is dragging its feet on refunding Quebec the costs. Quebec previously was asking Ottawa for $470 million in costs. If you add the costs of 2023 alone ($576.9 million), the new bill is $1 billion.
Ottawa has paid $140 million to Quebec but it is not enough, the ministers said.
“We are calling on the federal government to rapidly respond to our demands,” said Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette. “This cannot go on. We are asking the federal government to act urgently, and we don’t sense this now. I would qualify the federal government’s attitude in the last year as passive.”
“There is enormous pressure being exerted on the system,” added Social Solidarity Minister Chantal Rouleau, noting the number of asylum seekers on basic social assistance has grown by 44 per cent from 32,016 to 46,357.
You wanted these migrants to do the jobs you won't do, including having the children you won't have, so YOU can pay for them.
If, as the cliché goes, political electability is about who voters want to sit down to have a beer with, then it is also about who they don’t want to sit down to have a beer with. And if we believe recent polling, it appears that voters really, really don’t want to sit down for a cold one with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Nor, it seems, do they want to share a $10 bottle of Kombucha with him. According to data from late last year, millennials are nearly twice as likely to vote for the federal Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre than they are the Trudeau Liberals. What’s weirder is that Gen Z — a demographic that lists climate change as a primary reason for not bearing children — appears more likely to vote Conservative in the next federal election. Overall, the vast majority of Canadians want Trudeau to step down as Liberal leader.
What exactly is going on here? Why are the age cohorts that include young parents and queer college kids turning on the political party that banned conversion therapy and gave them $10-a-day child care?
I’m going to go out on a very short limb and guess the reason is: a) these groups are struggling profoundly to earn money and find adequate housing and b) irrespective of any sound policy on the part of Justin Trudeau, people are just plain sick of the guy.
Yep.
Justin is not only merely annoying af; he also tends to promise things that he cannot deliver - like low cost loans for rentals in British Columbia or despoiling Banff's natural beauty to put up housing for the numerous unvetted migrants marching into the country - because he hasn't the money for them, has not thought the plan through, or is just plain lying.
What is missing from this equation, however, is the demand for political reform.
Assuming that the Chinese don't come through with some electoral fraud or intimidation of dissidents far and near and anyone but Justin wins the next "election", what is to stop anyone from running ad nauseum? When does Justin truly answer for his numerous scandals and wrong-doings?
Political reform, is my point.
Term limits.
No appointees.
Remove pensions for serious violations.
