Wednesday, October 31, 2018

NOVEMBER 11, 2018: 100 YEARS, 100 BELLS

On November 11, at the going down of the sun, communities across Canada will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War with the ringing of 100 bells. The ringing of bells emulates the moment in 1918 when church bells across Europe tolled as four years of war had come to an end.

On November 11, the country honours its deceased Veterans in an outdoor display of their photos, projected near the National War Memorial, before the start of the Remembrance Day Ceremony. Anyone is welcome to send a photo of a deceased Canadian Veteran they would like to see in this act of Remembrance.

RUSHING CARAVAN TO USA BORDER BY MIDTERMS

   Traveling at a sluggish pace of 10 miles per day, the migrant caravan probably wouldn't arrive at the nearest US border crossing at McAllen, Texas until February, according to one observer, who debunked claims widely circulated by the media that the caravan would arrive before the Nov. 6 midterm election.
   But as it turns out, the organizations that have been aiding the caravan since it first formed in Honduras nearly three weeks ago have already accounted for this. And to help ensure that images of border patrol agents arresting families and separating small children from their parents are flashing across cable news in the days and hours before the polls open, these groups are employing a new tactic: Busing.

ANCHOR BABIES IN USA & CANADA

  The United States and Canada are alone in the developed world when it comes to offering unrestricted birthright citizenship that rewards even the children of illegal aliens.
  The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the country, a population that exceeds the total number of annual American births.
  Subsequently, when given birthright citizenship, anchor babies are also rewarded with the privilege of bringing their foreign relatives to the U.S. through the process known as “chain migration.” Every two new immigrants to the U.S. bring an estimated seven foreign relatives with them.
  Pro-American immigration reformers are praising President Trump’s announcement that he is readying an executive order to end the nation’s birthright citizenship policy.

MIGRANT CARAVAN SHOOTERS ARRESTED

   Mexican authorities arrested two Hondurans who allegedly shot at federal police officers escorting the migrant caravan across the southern state of Chiapas. The attack follows shortly after government warnings about Molotov cocktail attacks around a second caravan near the border with Guatemala.
   The attack took place near Ignacio Zaragoza, Chiapas, when members of Mexico’s Federal Police were escorting the migrant caravan as part of “Operativo Caminante” or “Operation Walker” across the southern border state. According to Mexico’s Interior Secretariat, two men identified only as 22-year-old “Jerson” and 17-year-old “Carlos” spotted the group of police officers guarding the caravan and began firing at them.

JUST ANOTHER OINKER AT THE TROUGH

  Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson is still billing Canadian taxpayers more than $100,000 a year in office expenses, and has now claimed more than $1.1 million in such expenses since she left Rideau Hall in 2005.
   Clarkson’s office refused to answer questions about what the money is being spent on or how Clarkson determines what expenses are appropriate to claim. Her executive assistant described the expense claims as a “private matter” between the office and Rideau Hall. The assistant said Clarkson is currently on a weeks-long trip in Europe.
The expenses are on top of the $1.6 million that Clarkson has collected to date as a government pension. It also does not include the $3 million in a start-up grant (plus up to $7 million over 10 years to match donations from the private sector) that was paid to establish Clarkson’s charitable organization, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. Both the pension and the start-up grant are standard for outgoing governors general.
    Clarkson is listed with the Speakers’ Spotlight agency, suggesting she likely receives speaking fees from her events.

FORD & SCHEER RATTLING TRUDEAU'S CAGE

  Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he’ll put his star power behind the federal Conservative effort to kick Justin Trudeau from office in the next election.
  “There’s only one way, one way we’re going to get rid of the carbon tax, (and that) is by getting rid of Justin Trudeau,” Ford told reporters Tuesday as he welcomed federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to Queen’s Park.
  The two spoke about irregular border crossings, internal trade and the federal carbon tax.

CITIZENS ON PATROL IN RURAL ALBERTA

  OLDS, Alta. — A town of 9,000 people — the population fluctuates because of the college there — Olds has one of the largest and most enthusiastic of the roughly 70 patrol groups in the province, members of the Alberta Citizens on Patrol Association. A version of the patrol had once existed in Olds, but disbanded in 2016 due to a lack of interest and resources, and an aging membership. But amid concerns about what seems to many like a wave of crime targeting rural communities across the prairies, the Olds patrol has been reborn.
   In the last few years, crime has become the foremost issue in the Alberta countryside. Landowners fear for their property and their families. The belief is that if something happens in the country, the police won’t show up fast enough, meaning people’s families might get hurt or their hard-earned possessions vanish. Rural residents blame the spike in crime on the recession and the collapse in oil prices, and on people who come from the city on crime sprees, perhaps to fund drug habits in the midst of the opioid crisis. There’s talk of a “revolving door” justice system, with its court delays and ineffective handling of repeat offenders. And there’s concern about what people ought to do if they’re victimized, and about what they can do to defend themselves.

COAL ISN'T DIRTY ANYMORE IN NEW BRUNSWICK

  In a climate-policy retreat over the treatment of coal, federal Liberals are proposing to loosen emission standards for power plants that burn the fuel, effectively lowering carbon taxes on each tonne of greenhouse gas released from coal-burning stations, like NB Power's Belledune, next year to less than $1.
  That could mean significant benefits for New Brunswick consumers, eliminating the need for power rate increases to pay for carbon taxes.
  But it also undermines federal claims made as recently as last week that major greenhouse gas polluters, like Belledune, would pay the most under Canada's new carbon pricing scheme.

BUT GOODALE DIDN'T SAY HE WOULD NOT DO IT

  Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says Canada has no legal responsibility to repatriate Canadian citizens detained by Kurdish forces in Syria, despite pleas from their families to help get them out of the war zone.
  Mr. Goodale said on Tuesday that Canada will not put its officials at risk by sending them into Syria to repatriate Canadians who chose to travel there and join terrorist organizations. At a separate meeting on Tuesday with officials of the Department of Global Affairs, advocates and families of the detained Canadians urged the federal government to help their family members in Syria.
  “There is no legal obligation on the government of Canada to repatriate in these circumstances. No offer of repatriation has been made,” Mr. Goodale told reporters following a cabinet meeting.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

CLOSE THE BORDERS WHILE YOU'RE AT IT

  Canada's border agency is stepping up efforts to deport failed refugee claimants and other foreign nationals not welcome in this country, setting a goal of dramatically increasing deportation numbers by up to 35 per cent.
  An email from the director of Canada Border Services Agency's Enforcement and Intelligence Operations Division, sent Oct. 17, outlines the plan to ramp up removals to 10,000 people a year.
   Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said the government has failed to stem the flow of people illegally crossing in to Canada outside of official border points, leading to excessive pressure on the system. The government also has failed to remove those deemed ineligible in a timely way, she said.
  "This shows the lack of seriousness that the government has in terms of this broader issue as well as the lack of a plan," she said. "So without seeing any sort of concrete plan to reduce demand on the system, as well as how it would be executed, I would say that this is lofty thinking rather than anything sort of real."

MOE & FORD NOT PLAYING LIBERALS' GAME

   The premiers of Saskatchewan and Ontario met in Toronto on Monday to talk trade, drawing the ire of a federal minister less than a week after the two provinces decided not to send officials to a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial representatives on trade in Vancouver.
  "It's extremely disappointing to see Ontario and Saskatchewan play political games with such an important economic file after being the only provinces absent from the table at last week's meeting in Vancouver on Internal Trade and the USMCA," said federal minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc in a statement.
  "The Premiers need to stop putting their partisan interests ahead of the growth of the economy and the well-being of Canadians."
  Yah  - Dominic Leblanc on a high horse of morality concerning growth of the economy.

FORD MUST CANCEL LIBERALS' RENEWABLE ENERGY CONTRACTS

    Ford has every reason to return the power system to some semblance of economic sanity. Ontario is now burdened by some of the highest power rates of any jurisdiction in North America, throwing households into energy poverty and forcing industries to close shop or move to the U.S. The biggest reason by far for the power sector’s dysfunction is its renewables, which account for just seven per cent of Ontario’s electricity output but consume 40 per cent of the above-market fees consumers are forced to provide. Cancelling those contracts would lower residential rates by a whopping 24 per cent, making good on Ford’s promise to aid consumers.
        Not only are Ontario’s renewables hopelessly expensive — 90 per cent of their cost comes from government-mandated subsidies — they also loom as major despoilers of Ontario’s environment. Solar cells cannot be easily recycled, leading environmentalists to warn that solar-panel disposal will become an explosive issue in two or three decades because of leaching from cadmium, a suspected carcinogen, and other solar panel components. Unsightly wind turbines and the long-distance transmission corridors they often require already rank as a chief despoiler of the Ontario countryside, quite apart from their toll on birds and bats.

SIMCOE'S BARKING MAN

 Provincial police in Norfolk County warned two men about noise after one man showed up at his neighbour's house and started barking and howling like a dog early Saturday morning.

CBC REPORTER BECAME MND POLICY DIRECTOR

  NDP MP Charlie Angus is asking CBC’s ombudsman to review its policy for protecting confidential sources, given the situation around the government’s hire of the journalist at the centre of the criminal case against Vice Admiral Mark Norman.
   CBC reporter James Cudmore wrote stories in the fall of 2015 that contained leaked cabinet confidences, including a crucial story on Nov. 20, 2015, revealing that a cabinet committee had decided to delay a naval project with Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding.
    On Jan. 12, 2016, weeks after the story was published, Cudmore joined Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s office as a policy adviser. He has since moved to the office of Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould.
  

ALBERTA HRC DISAGREES WITH EQUAL TREATMENT

CALGARY — The Alberta Human Rights Commission is hoping the Supreme Court will hear its appeal in the case of two Calgary Muslim students who were not allowed to pray at a non-denominational private school.
   The human rights tribunal ruled the school’s policy was too rigid and it could have accommodated the students without violating its secular status.
  That decision was upheld by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. The school then took the matter to the Alberta Court of Appeal which overturned the commission’s original decision ordering the school to pay a $26,000 fine for discriminatory behaviour and said another hearing was required because Webber Academy raised new issues under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

SPIRIT MOOSE SIGHTING IN ONTARIO

A northern Ontario couple was treated to a rare sighting of not one but two white ‘spirit moose,’ and they managed to capture the magical experience on camera.
Nicole Leblanc of Timmins, Ont., tells CTVNews.ca that she and her husband were driving to their camp near Foleyet, Ont., on Saturday afternoon when the two moose crossed Highway 101.
The moose hung around for a few minutes and she captured most of the experience on her phone camera.

TRUDEAU: STATS CAN DATA GRAB IS HARPER'S FAULT

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending a decision by Statistics Canada to compel banks and financial institutions to release the personal transaction data of 500,000 people without their consent.
Trudeau said his government would ensure that all personal information would be protected and the anonymized data will be used for statistical purposes only.
“It was the Conservative government who chose to stop the long-form census,” Trudeau shot back. “What that led to was more policy based on ideology and less policy based on evidence like we are doing now. Their attacks on data and information continue.”

Monday, October 29, 2018

ECHR's ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON FREE SPEACH

A new decision from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) confirms the all-out assault on free speech that has taken hold of Europe. In a chilling decision, the ECHR upheld a fine levied against an Austrian woman who called Muhammad a pedophile for his arranged marriage with a young girl while in his 50s. The court ruled that such views are not protected by free speech because they violate “the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.” The decision confirms the near complete subjugation of free speech to religious and other views in society.

MERKEL HUMILIATED BY ELECTIONS

   Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is to relinquish control of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in December, sources have claimed, after yet another humiliating performance in a regional election Sunday.
  News agency DPA cited unnamed sources within Germany’s ruling party on Monday morning that Dr Merkel, who has led the CDU since 2000 and has been Chancellor since 2005, would be stepping down in December in time for party conference.
 Although the CDU would then select a new leader, Dr Merkel is expected to attempt to stay on as Chancellor — Germany’s Prime Minister equivalent position — until the next national elections in 2021. This, Associated Press reports, is to give her successor enough time to build a profile as the leader but without handing over the reigns of the nation which Merkel has held for 13 years.

HILLARY MORE CLINGY THAN A WOOD TICK

  On Friday, failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated she would “like to be president” during a live taping of Recode Decode at New York City’s 92nd Street YMCA.
   “I’d like to be president,” stated Clinton. “I think, hopefully, when we have a Democrat in the oval office in January 2021, there’s gonna be so much work to be done.”
  By most accounts on both sides of the aisle, Hillary Clinton’s return to national electoral politics would likely be a disaster for the Democratic Party. Republicans and Democrats have spoken out about Clinton’s negative influence on the Democratic Party in the midterm elections, and any effort by her to run for president again would likely only energize the GOP even more than the party’s base is already fired up.

THE SLOWEST TRAIN CRASH



The chief executive of one of the country’s largest petroleum producers says the profound problem moving oil out of Western Canada is “the slowest train crash” he’s ever seen.

“From about 10 years out, you could see it coming, and yet we walked right into it as a nation, so a pretty, pretty sad statement on Canada,” Husky Energy CEO Rob Peabody said Thursday.

The trouble Peabody is talking about is the bottleneck affecting Canada’s oil transportation system and the wide price discount hammering petroleum producers this fall.

It’s costing industry and governments an estimated $84 million a day: $54 million to producers, $18 million to Alberta and another $12 million to the feds, according to the provincial government.

GOVERNMENT FOLLOWUP NOT NECESSARY

The bottom line to Veterans' Affairs Canada’s message control: not one clear and substantive resolution or commitment has emerged from six years of stakeholder meetings. As one internal document from an earlier summit instructs bureaucratic organizers, “participants are thanked for their contribution. They feel their input and presence is valued.” Government follow-up not necessary.
Our disabled veterans and their families deserve more. More voice, more consequential input, and more dignified treatment. If they are to make their lives whole again, disabled veterans and their families need accessibility to fulsomely deciding their future. Perhaps government will remember that instead of holding yet another “Summit for Bureaucrats” to tell veterans what a wonderful job Veterans Affairs is doing.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

CALLING OUT GREEN BULLSH!TTERS

On a recent appearance on CTV’s Question Period, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer couldn't say definitively if his still-being-drafted environment plan will meet the United Nations targets he's previously committed to, but that it will have a "meaningful" impact on global emissions.

"The question for everyone is, 'What are you going to do?' Stop poking holes and saying things that aren't true about our plan, and show Canadians what you would do," McKenna said, noting that "for too long politicians have done nothing."

Though, when asked to confirm her plan will meet the UN Paris Agreement pledge to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, McKenna couldn't say. Instead she pointed to the various environmental initiatives she’s overseeing, saying that there is more to their plan than a price on pollution.

ENVIRONMENT CANADA & CBC IN LOCK STEP

    Here's what climate change could look like in Canada.
   'This is real on-the-ground stuff that is costing us right now,' says one expert
   Climate change is here, experts say, and Canada can expect to suffer the consequences.
   The effects of a warming planet are going to be felt from coast to coast to coast. And, if we stick to a "business-as-usual" scenario — no change to our emissions — it's going to happen a lot sooner than scientists initially thought, according to a recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
  "People say, well gee, the world's warmed up by 1 C in the last 135 years, but there are parts of Canada that have warmed in some seasons by four, four-and-half degrees in a 70-year period," Environment Canada's senior climatologist, David Phillips says. "So twice as much in half the time."


TIME TO STRIP CITIZENSHIP OF TERRORISTS

  Canada has a “responsibility” not to leave its ISIS fighters for some other country to deal with.
  Karen McCrimmon, parliamentary secretary for public safety, made that argument in an interview, noting that doing otherwise would be the same as creating different classes of Canadian citizenship.
  “We don’t believe in two-tier citizenship and if someone’s a Canadian citizen, we’re responsible for them whether we like it or not,” she said.
  Unlike countries like the United Kingdom, Canada did not strip those who went to fight with ISIS of their citizenship.

CLEARING MCGUINTY/WYNNE DEBT


  
 
Every time there will be a cut, brace for howls.
  In a perfect world, sure we’d be expanding university campuses and doling out more freebies. But this financial world in Ontario is pretty well a disaster. When you get mad at cuts, get mad at McGuinty and Wynne. Because their largesse with your money was their legacy.
   The Liberals’ costly vote-buying schemes included free meds and free university. They doled out freebies like candy at Halloween. And the Liberals were promising free childcare for pre-school children, if elected. They were drunk on debt.
  A caption for the photo, anyone?

STATISTICS CANADA WANTS BANKING INFORMATION

   Statistics Canada is asking banks across the country for financial transaction data and personal information of 500,000 Canadians without their knowledge, Global News has learned.
   Documents obtained by Global News show the national statistical agency plans to collect “individual-level financial transactions data” and sensitive information, like social insurance numbers (SIN), from Canadian financial institutions to develop a “new institutional personal information bank.”
   Ontario’s former privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, said she was shocked by the initiative and said the ability for a government agency to build a massive database of personal banking information raises serious privacy concerns.   “Medical and financial records are the most sensitive personal data that exists.”

Saturday, October 27, 2018

FAKE NEWS & WITHHELD INFORMATION

While promoting obviously biased and possibly defamatory narratives is par for the course at NBC News (in another example, MSNBC's chief political correspondent suggested last night that Russia might be behind the spate of attempted mail bombings despite having no evidence to support that claim), its decision to sit on information that undermined the claims of one of the Brett Kavanauh "accusers" wrangled by attorney/presidential candidate/charlatan Michael Avenatti is simply baffling, as the Daily Wire reported.

GREENIE GETS SCHOOLED IN REALITY

  A British Columbia climate enthusiast had to abort his attempt to live off oxygen produced by plants in a sealed plastic container, when cloudy weather prevented sufficient photosynthesis to replenish his air.
   YouTuber Kurtis Baute says he wanted to teach people the ‘base science concepts surrounding climate change’
  Spending 14 hours inside an airtight plastic cube with rapidly rising carbon dioxide levels left Kurtis Baute feeling a little loopy.

THHE MAN WHO PUT THE SAUD IN SAUDI ARABIA

   Mark Steyn: The emerging Saudi position on the death of Jamal Khashoggi is that it was Mohammed bin Sultan's "Will no one rid me of this turbulent, er, Washington Post columnist?" moment, and that, as with Henry II's quartet of knights eight-and-a-half centuries ago galloping off to Canterbury, the fifteen-man House of Saud hit squad just got a little too eager to please and hopped a flight to Istanbul.
   Yeah, sure. The spilling of blood - especially important blood - is ordered from the top in Saudi. It always has been, ever since Britain and America cooked up the Frankensaud Monster of a state and set it staggering around Araby. Last year I offered a few thoughts on the blood-soaked Ibn Saud's establishment of his alleged kingdom, which I thought were worth dusting off amid all this talk of what a valued ally these chaps are.

Friday, October 26, 2018

AWAITING REASONABLE BEHAVIOUR FROM CHINA

   Canada's ambassador to China says a trade pact with Canada likely won't be reached until China caves on certain controversial policies.
   John McCallum says most of the work he is doing in Beijing right now is focused on bridging policy gaps between Canada and China on agricultural market access, wages and gender equity, and on addressing issues with the Asian nation's human rights record.
  "We are doing our best to persuade China to behave in what we would regard as the more reasonable way," McCallum

SQUIRMING, VIRTUE SIGNALLING PM TRUDEAU

   Another day and another attempt by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to disentangle himself from what is rapidly becoming — if it isn’t already — the most toxic Canadian trade deal ever.
  A major part of the problem is that the Liberals have tied themselves so closely to a progressive agenda and human rights that it is almost impossible to separate that from the $15-billion deal to sell light armoured vehicles to the Saudis.
  Standing up for human rights following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul would seem to require cancelling the contract.
  But ditching the deal would result in lost Canadian jobs and a bill to the taxpayer that Trudeau originally put at $1 billion and on Thursday said would now be “in the billions of dollars.”

DEALING WITH HOMELESSNESS & MENTAL HEALTH

    For the past five years, Edmonton Police Service Chief Rod Knecht had advocated on behalf of the service to anyone who would listen that the city would benefit from a wellness centre.  
 Knecht said the police and criminal justice system are not the solution to issues like homelessness or mental health.  
“We shouldn’t be arresting these people. Police should be focused on the predators, the people who are taking advantage of those people and not those who are disadvantaged and in distress.”

SAN FRANCISCO POOP MAP

The city of San Francisco now has a new app that allows users to report poop in public places. The city, under complete totalitarian leftist control, has a large homeless population thanks to unaffordable housing and the high costs of living in the city.

LOOK UP, SPECIAL DELIVERY!

A Boeing C-17 Globemaster military transport plane accidentally dropped a Humvee onto a community in Harnett County, North Carolina, Wednesday afternoon, Fort Bragg officials confirmed. 
The incident occurred around 1 pm in the small town of Cameron, which CNNsaid the Humvee landed approximately seven miles north of the intended Fort Bragg drop zone. 
Tom McCollum, Fort Bragg spokesperson, said the plane was several miles from the military installation, flying at an altitude of 1,500 feet when the Humvee prematurely dropped. 

Thursday, October 25, 2018

FORD WINDING DOWN ONTARIO COLLEGE OF TRADES

  The Ontario government is introducing legislation to replace parts of Bill 148, a labour bill passed by the previous Liberal government just before this past spring’s election. The replacement bill is being called the Making Ontario Open for Business Act. For those in the residential construction industry, these changes would, if passed by Ontario’s Legislature, represent a dramatic overhaul of apprenticeship training in the province, as well as addressing other labour issues. As part of the process, Doug Ford’s government says it will “wind down” the Ontario College of Trades.
   “Ontario’s Government for the People is helping employers and workers to better fill the demand for skilled trades and apprenticeship jobs and bringing quality jobs back to Ontario by cutting red tape,” a government news release says. “The province is taking the first steps to modernize and transform Ontario’s skilled trades and apprenticeship system. The current regulatory burdens placed on employers and apprentices create barriers to apprenticeship, making it difficult for Ontario to keep up in training the skilled tradespeople that will be demanded by the economy. About one in five new jobs in Ontario in the coming years are expected to be in trades-related occupations.”
   Key to the changes proposed is a change to the apprenticeship ratios in Ontario that will reduce ratios of journeymen to apprentices to 1:1, bringing them in line with most other provinces in Canada. “Currently, Ontario’s ratios are among the highest in Canada, limiting the number of apprentices an employer can train relative to the number of journeypersons they employ,” the release continues.

UNBELIEVABLE STUPIDITY OF UNIVERSITY SJW

  Britain:   A student Union President has caused outrage after she vowed to remove a mural commemorating students who died in World War One because it contains only white men.
  Emily Dawes, who leads the University of Southampton Student Union was widely condemned after tweeting: "Mark my words - we're taking down the mural of white men in the uni Senate room, even if I have to paint over it myself."The Rothenstein memorial, to which she refers, depicts an unnamed student receiving a degree from the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, representing all the young men who lost their lives in the war and were unable to complete or collect their degrees.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU'S WEASEL WORDS

 Brian Lilley:    "Directly," was a key word Trudeau emphasized as he made his announcement about carbon taxes "price on pollution”and bribes  "carbon incentives" on Tuesday.
  The feds won’t be giving citizens a rebate based on the price of pretty much everything getting more expensive, just on what you pay directly.
  Higher gas prices, home heating, etc.
  Higher grocery or food prices? You are on your own.

$121M & 246 KM² FOR LUBICON LAKE BAND

  A land claim dispute that spanned 85 years, spurred an Olympic protest and became a symbol for Indigenous self-determination in Canada ended Wednesday when the Lubicon Lake Band inked a $121-million deal with the federal and provincial governments.
   “There is no use lamenting the past, we have to look into the future,” said Chief Billy Joe Laboucan at a news conference held at the Federal Building on the Alberta legislature grounds. “This has been a long time coming.”

THE LOGIC OF THE MINISTER OF PLASTIC STRAWS

  Specifically, she blasted the Ford government’s decision to scrap the cap-and-trade program — implement by former premier Kathleen Wynne which would have made a federal tax in Ontario unnecessary under Ottawa’s rules — claiming the decision would hurt Ontario’s economic growth prospects.
   McKenna told the Ford government “if you don’t have a plan to fight climate change, you don’t have a plan to grow the economy.” In short, McKenna suggests that taxing carbon emissions helps the economy grow and, in fact, that doing so is essential for a viable economic strategy.

DEATH THREATS & VANDALISM

  Premier Doug Ford and a cabinet minister have received death threats and another minister’s office was ransacked after the government introduced new labour legislation.
   Graffiti saying workers will fight back over the pausing of a $15-an-hour minimum wage was sprayed on Labour Minister Laurie Scott’s constituency office in Kawartha Lakes shortly after midnight Wednesday.

CANADIAN FORCES OMBUDSMAN RAISES CONCERNS

  The Canadian Forces ombudsman won’t refer soldiers to a military program that is designed to resolve complaints at a local level after concerns were raised about the organization’s close relationship with senior officers as well as a lack of safeguards surrounding the confidential information provided by military personnel.
  Canadian Forces Ombudsman Gary Walbourne has faced intense pushback from the Canadian Forces and the Department for some of the recommendations he has made in his various reports about improvements or changes that could help military personnel and their families.
   In 2017 Walbourne publicly stated the senior leadership of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence are so thin-skinned they strike back each time they see something they don’t like emerge from his office. The DND controls the Ombudsman’s budget to the point where Walbourne even has to get permission from the department to travel to meet military personnel.

CRYBULLIES IN THE COURTROOM

   Blatchford:   What Sears wrote was that he’d not disclosed the CAS complaint against him before because “there was the chance that some hothead … would lose it and do something illegal, like bludgeon the Kinsellas to death … I chose to turn the other cheek and let enough time pass for (those) people to react with cool heads.”
   Now that, Ms. Kinsella said, was a call to action, a threat to “me, my husband, our six children and my grandchild.”
   What her husband tweeted, complete with the blogger’s information about where Sears lives and what he drives, however, was not.
   What’s sauce for the goose, you see, isn’t sauce for the gander, not when you’re doing God’s work.

A link to Your Ward News (YWN), a disreputable, far-right newsletter that hails from the east end of Toronto.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

DEFENDING AMERICA'S BORDERS

  WASHINGTON, DC — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that the United States would turn back the 7,000-person caravan of migrants from Central America when they reach the United States’ border with Mexico.
  “The United States also has a message for those who are currently part of this caravan or any caravan which follows: You will not be successful at getting into the United States illegally no matter what,” Pompeo said at a briefing with reporters at the State Department.

THE UNHINGED PELOSI

  Pelosi was being interviewed onstage by Paul Krugman, the left-wing New York Times columnist and Nobel economic laureate who predicted, the day Donald Trump won the presidency, that Trump would trigger “a global recession, with no end in sight.”
   In a long, rambling monologue, during which she stumbled on her words and appeared to lose her train of thought, Pelosi said:
   We have to have total clarity about what we do, when it comes to everything — a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage … whether it’s about immigration, whether it’s about gun safety, whether it’s about climate … I think that we owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there’s some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose.

LIBERALS TARGET CANADIAN BUSINESSES AGAIN

   OTTAWA — Small businesses are warning that the carbon tax rebate system outlined by Ottawa on Tuesday could force the private sector to shoulder an unfair portion of the costs, piling on new tax burdens just as expanded Canada Pension Plan requirements come into force next year.
   The “deeply worrisome” tax changes will affect everyone from small textile manufacturers to, say, pizza restaurants that use natural gas-fired ovens, said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). He said the rebate system introduced Tuesday could reignite anger within the small business community that came as a result of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s small business tax changes last year, which effectively raised taxes on high-wealth individuals and kicked off a political uproar.
   “They already picked a fight with business owners with the small business tax changes in 2017, and now it looks like there will be another big one in 2018 over carbon taxation,” Kelly said.

THE BLOVIATING PM TRUDEAU

  It really shouldn’t be that hard for a politician marking the fourth anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill.
  Keep it short. Keep it simple and sincere. Honour Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who died in the attack. Honour the Canadian Armed Forces in general. And then, maybe, put in a little something about keeping Canadians safe.
  It’s unbelievable, to use the Cirillo death as a prop for yet another pablum lecture about fear mongering and diversity. You’ve got to be pretty oblivious to not realize how inappropriate this sounds.

PM TRUDEAU'S CARBON TAX SIDE SHOW

  Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard the all-new Canadian Cynical Circular Carbon Circus, the amazing Liberal climate control spectacle that will send you on a great environmental ride into the future.
  Come on in! We will pay you to not consume fossil fuels — as individuals and as industries. It’s an economic revolution that takes us beyond blockchain and cryptocurrencies and cannabis into a brave new universe in which money goes round and round and everybody wins. We will pay Canadians with their own money — more than $20 billion over five years in carbon taxes that will raise the price of gasoline by 11 cents a litre by 2022, and ever higher thereafter if not sooner. Everybody pays and everybody wins, except for those who don’t. And some people win more than they pay. It’s better than a lottery!

RIGHTEOUS, CONDESCENDING KINSELLA IN COURT

  Blatchford:  In the corner of goodness and light are Warren and Lisa Kinsella, canny political operatives, fighting against a right-wing, barely literate, cartoonish and altogether queasy-making local newsletter called Your Ward News (YWN).
   In the obvious darker one are James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine, respectively the editor-in-chief and publisher of YWN.
  In his cross-examination of Warren Kinsella Tuesday, Murphy showed him a tweet he apparently retweeted in 2015. The original tweet, a blog of some sort, described Sears as a “neo-Nazi sex offender” and publicized his address, car and licence plate.
  Yet Kinsella insisted the alleged death threat was “completely unprovoked” and said unequivocally he would never tweet out such private information. Faced with his retweet of the original blog written by someone else, Kinsella said he’d merely tweeted the link to the blog and had never before read the actual article.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

SAD STATE OF CANADA'S COAST GUARD SHIPS

   The Canadian Coast Guard says three "interim" icebreakers that were recently purchased without a competition will be used for the next 15 to 20 years.
   Coast guard officials revealed the timeframe in interviews with The Canadian Press while playing down concerns about the state of their aging fleet — and the challenges in building replacements.
   The coast guard's existing vessels are on average more than 35 years old and have lost hundreds of operational days over the past few years due to mechanical breakdowns.
    Yet there are no immediate plans to replace them; the government's multibillion-dollar shipbuilding plan includes only one new heavy icebreaker, which won't be ready until the next decade.

Monday, October 22, 2018

JOACHIM ROENNEBERG, NORWEGIAN WAR HERO

  The leader of a daring World War Two raid to thwart Nazi Germany’s nuclear ambitions has died aged 99, Norwegian government officials said on Sunday.
  Joachim Roenneberg, serving behind enemy lines in his native Norway during the German occupation, in 1943 blew up a plant producing heavy water, or D2O, a hydrogen-rich substance that was key to the later development of atomic bombs.
  Picked by Britain’s war-time Special Operations Executive to lead the raid when he was only 23 years old, Roenneberg was the youngest member of Operation Gunnerside, which penetrated and destroyed key parts of the heavily guarded Norsk Hydro plant.

DEMOCRATS RUNNING CAMPAIGNS FROM JAIL

   Two Democrats running for political office who are convicted of crimes may be celebrating their electoral victories behind bars should they win their elections.
  A Democrat Texas state representative running for re-election and a Georgia Democrat running for Congress are continuing to run for their respective offices, despite serving time in jail for their respective crimes.

WE ARE TOLD THAT SHE'S THE SMART ONE

  Freeland said that ability to trigger a six-month withdrawal period without cause is nothing new, since it was in the original NAFTA deal.
   However, when asked repeatedly to say why the non-market economy clause was added to the USMCA, she struggled to answer.
   "It's there because it was part of the negotiations," she said.
   The Trudeau government has brushed away worries about this clause, saying it's standard in most trade deals — even though the European CETA and the Pacific region CPTPP trade deals don't include it.

$2.6B OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY WRITTEN OFF

   The Liberal government has quietly written off a $2.6-billion auto-sector loan that was cobbled together to save Chrysler during the 2009 global economic meltdown.
  The write-off, among the largest ever for a taxpayer-funded bailout, is buried in a volume of the 2018 Public Accounts of Canada, tabled in Parliament on Friday.
   The reference contains no explanation for the write-off, identifying neither the business that received the loan nor the sector of the economy.
    Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the Chrysler write-off is yet another example of governments keeping citizens in the dark about how their tax dollars bail out corporations.

LITTLE PUNK KID RUNNING CANADA INTO THE GROUND

 To summarize: the day Trudeau took office three of the most respected pipeline companies in the world were ready to put shovels in the ground and build pipelines to ocean water — all three have now abandoned those projects.
    Finally, the government has introduced bill C-69, which nearly doubles the timelines for proposed projects from 18 to 29 months and requires ill-defined studies of sociological issues before they can go ahead. A former TransCanada CEO called it an “an absolutely devastating piece of legislation”. Both he and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association have said the bill would mean there will not be another pipeline built in Canada if the bill passes.
   Not only would that allow Trump’s America to snatch our pipeline investment, but also to continue taking our oil at discounts of almost $40/barrel or half-price, at a cost of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

LIBERALS PLANNING RAID ON YOUR WALLET

   Hold onto your wallet because Justin Trudeau is coming to raid it.
   A report out this week on the cancellation of Ontario’s cap-and-trade system revealed the feds will be looking for more of your cash over the next few years, all thanks to the carbon tax.
    Sorry, that should say “price on pollution,” which is the latest catchphrase introduced by the Trudeau Liberals to obscure reality.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

LIBERAL MP DROUIN BANS PRESS FROM MEETING

In a closed meeting where the free press was banned, Liberal  MP Francis Drouin (Glengarry Prescott Russell) and Dairy Farmers of Ontario GM & CEO Graham Lloyd talk of subverting open disclosure with our primary trading partner.

FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE LIKE FIGHTING NAZIS

In remarks captured on video Friday night, Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the threat of man-made climate change to the threat from Nazi Germany in World War II. She suggested that the U.S. efforts in that war should be seen as a "blueprint" for remaking America's economy in the environmentalists' image.
"So when we talk about existential threats, the last time we had a really major existential threat to this country was around World War II, so we’ve been here before, and we have a blueprint of doing this before," Ocasio-Cortez began.
"What we had was an existential threat in the context of war," the candidate added. "And what we did was that we chose to mobilize our entire economy, and industrialize our entire economy, and we put hundreds of thousands if not millions of people to work in defending our shores and defending this country."

AMERICA BATTLES NARCO-TERRORISTS

   “More than 72,000 people died last year from overdoses,” Carter told Breitbart News, “and those numbers are expected to increase as narco-terrorists like the Sinaloa Cartel, and nations like China, continue to traffic Fentanyl and other drugs into our nation.”
   The dominant cartel, Sinaloa, is equipped with U.S.-based groups that protect drug houses and lead illegal drug distribution throughout the country. These groups are armed, and utilize the southern border as a means for trafficking enormous amounts of narcotics into America, seemingly with ease, traveling through U.S. Ports of Entry.
   With an unsecured border in the south, nowhere in the U.S. seems to be safe. The plague of narcotics and drug overdoses stemming from distribution by these foreign cartels is not isolated to border communities; it has spread, decimating communities across the nation.

CHINA IS A VICIOUS, EXPANSIONIST POLICE STATE

   The United States, the European Union and Japan all agree with the blindingly obvious, that China is indeed a “non-market” economy, that Beijing duped the World Trade Organization in gaining membership 17 years ago, and that Xi Jinping is moving China ever farther from anything resembling a “normal” trading country by the hour.
    With nearly a quarter of a century of lucrative post-politics sinecures, Canada-China “friendship” sleazebaggery and shameless pro-Beijing think-tankery having taken its moral and intellectual toll, it is no wonder that the very idea that China is some kind of normal trading country has been normalized.
    But it is no laughing matter that among the G7 countries, Canada’s political class remains uniquely persistent in its refusal to recognize China for what it is: a vicious, expansionist police state ruled by a violent, corrupt oligarchy that is quite explicit about its intent to overthrow the American-led world order that has guaranteed Canada’s peace and prosperity over the past 70 years.

"FORGOTTEN"

For anyone interested in the story of the British Home Children a 40 minute video on their story.

AMBASSADOR WHINES RE JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS

The real reason the Liberal government hasn’t been able to re-establish relations with Iran is due to its adherence to a “stupid” Canadian law allowing the seizure of Iranian assets, says Canada’s recently expelled ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

PUBLIC SERVANTS' CONTEMPT FOR TAXPAYERS

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, in the CD Howe Building, decided just before the end of the last fiscal year to buy big TVs. And someone whose identity is secret did an Access to Information Act search of the details. Those details are now public.
The price isn’t a big surprise: About $40,000 for the 65-inch TVs (the number of TVs is a secret), and $65,000 to install them on 11 floors of the building at 235 Queen, with new LAN connections.
But this required written input from at least 39 public servants, not counting everyone who was CC’d, and more than 300 emails.

FORD GOV'T TAKES ON TERRORIST TRAITORS

If ‘Jihadi Jack’ Letts — or any of the other 200 or so traitors who left Canada to go and take up arms with ISIS in Syria or other war zones — ends up in Ontario he should know he will not be in for the soft ride from the province’s premier as he may receive from the prime minister.
“It’s my strong belief that somebody who’s committed a criminal act as a terrorist outside of Canada, when they come back to Ontario, they should not have more privileges than somebody who lives in Ontario,” Smith told the Toronto Sun’s Bryan Passifiume, who broke the story. “Since the Federal Government doesn’t seem to take this seriously, I felt obligated to take action and send a message that there are consequences for leaving Ontario to commit indefensible crimes.”
Whatever the crime, the message is loud and clear: If you want to be a terrorist in the world, don’t think about you can come back to Ontario and milk our system.

PUT DOWN THAT BURGER, SAVE THE PLANET

If you want to save the planet, put down your burger. Or rather, finish it, savouring every single bite, and mentally prepare yourself not to have another until at least next week.
Raising animals for food is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for an estimated 14.5 percent of all global emissions. Following last week’s U.N. report on the dire prospects for the future of the planet, the Climate, Land, Ambition & Rights Alliance has presented its own self-described “radical” plan to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report rejects many of the U.N.’s technologically-driven mitigation solutions, such as carbon capture and geoengineering, in favour of a simple approach.
The bottom line: Eat less meat-a lot, lot less.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

LIBERAL MAGIC: $20BILLION VANISH

   2017-18 was a bumper year for government revenues, which rose by $20 billion, or 6.9 per cent, from the previous year.
   Personal income tax increases accounted for half of that flood of new money coming into the coffers, around half of which was related to economic growth and the other half to the unwinding of tax planning that had suppressed revenues in 2016-17 (when the Liberals announced they were going to raise the top rate of income tax to 33 per cent in late 2015, there was a rush of filing by high-income earners to declare income at the lower rate).
   Yet, rather than reduce the deficit and pay down debt in preparation for the next recession, creeping toward them as inevitably as mortality, the Liberals spent the lot. In 2017-18 expenses amounted to $332.6 billion — breaching the $300-billion mark for the second time — up $20.1 billion, or 6.4 per cent from 2016-17.

THE CORRUPTED IDEALS OF THE EU

   Along the way, membership expanded far beyond those original six countries. The EU now consists of 28 member states with a far more diverse mix of ethnicities and cultures than was originally envisaged.
   And as the EU has expanded, so tensions have emerged – perhaps inevitably, given that many of its member states have little in common, culturally and historically.
 The first fault lines were exposed during the global financial crisis, which highlighted disparities between the rich industrial countries of Northern Europe and less resilient member states such as Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
  Resentment of their subservience to dominant economies such as Germany was a key factor in the emergence of populist nationalist parties in Greece and Italy.

BRITISH POLICE FINALLY IDENTIFY CHILD RAPISTS

   Most of the groomers — who had sinister nicknames like Chiller, Dracula, and Bully — were Pakistani heritage, with some from India, two Sikh, and many Muslims.
   The case bears similarities to other cases in the UK – including Rotherham, Newcastle, and Oxford – with victims claiming police and authorities were slow or reluctant to act, potentially due to political correctness.
   Reporting of the case in the media was completely blocked by authorities, despite intense public interest and details available online. Activist Tommy Robinson was imprisoned after reporting details on social media, with a media ban on reporting about Robinson’s imprisonment also being imposed.

MIGRANT CARAVAN STORMS MEXICO

   More than 4,000 migrants forced their way into Mexico after storming a border fence with Guatemala.
  Video captured by Noticias Telemundo shows the moment when hundreds of migrants force the gate open and rush into Mexico despite officials efforts to keep the migrants out.

SAUDI DISDAIN OF THE TRUTH

   The Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya reported on Friday that the nation’s Attorney General has confirmed the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the nation’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
   Khashoggi reportedly died in a “fight” at the consulate, which he visited on October 2 to seek paperwork for an impending marriage, according to his fiance.
  According to Al-Arabiya, the Saudi government also announced that it has arrested 18 people, all Saudi nationals, in relation to Khashoggi’s death.

Friday, October 19, 2018

EXPOSING LIES OF OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

   The noose appears to be tightening further around the law-less behaviors of the Obama administration in their frantic efforts to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
   As Fox News reports, the transparency group Judicial Watch initially sued the State Department in 2014, seeking information about the response to the Benghazi attack after the government didn't respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Other parallel lawsuits by Judicial Watch are probing issues like Clinton's server, whose existence was revealed during the course of the litigation.
   The State Department had immediately moved to dismiss Judicial Watch's first lawsuit, but U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth (who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan) denied the request to dismiss the lawsuit at the time, and on Friday, he said he was happy he did, charging that State Department officials had intentionally misled him because other key documents, including those on Clinton's email server, had not in fact been produced.

PRELIMINARY WORK ON KEYSTONE XL

CALGARY — More than a decade after it was first proposed by TransCanada Corp., the Keystone XL project is moving closer to the construction phase in Canada and the U.S., despite legal obstacles facing the company.
Preliminary work has begun on the pipeline route in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana and South Dakota — except for the state of Nebraska, where it faces a legal challenge, a TransCanada spokesperson told the Financial Post.
The company is delivering pipe, conducting civil engineering work on pump stations and clearing vegetation along the route ahead of full construction, which is expected to start next year though the company has yet to officially announce a final investment decision.

WHEN THE POLICE TAKE 2 HOURS TO ARRIVE....

...."you’re your own first responder for anything."
    OKOTOKS, Alta. — When the Mounties showed up at Edouard Maurice’s home just outside the town of Okotoks one morning last February, he figured they would tell him they’d caught the thieves he’d called them about, the ones he’d seen breaking into his vehicle earlier that morning. Perhaps they would help him search his place, to make sure the intruders hadn’t stuck around after he’d fired his rifle to warn them away.
   He certainly didn’t expect the officers to arrive with their guns drawn, arrest him and lay charges against him.
   To his fellow rural Albertans, the story Eddie Maurice tells about that morning seems to confirm their worst fears: that crime is out of control, that police are unable to do anything about it, and that, should they try to defend themselves, their family or their property, those same cops will drag them off in cuffs.

REPLACING PRINCE MBS

The major French daily Le Figaro on Thursday published a bombshell story which reports the Saudi royal family is actively considering a replacement to crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) as next in line to succeed his father King Salman as the kingdom finds itself under the greatest international pressure and scrutiny it's faced in its modern history over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — widely believed to have been killed on orders of MbS himself.
  And this, of course, is purely coincidental:  
Saudi Arabia transfers $100M to U.S. as crisis over journalist Jamal Khashoggi deepens.

CRITICIZING MUHAMMAD

Considering how touchy Muslims get whenever they hear any critical talk of Muhammad, one might miss the ironic fact that, from the dawn of Islam to now, millions of non-Muslims have been asking Asia’s question -- “What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?” -- or variants thereof.
In one infamous instance in the late 1390s, Manuel II Palaiologos, one of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire’s most able emperors, told a group of Muslim ulema (scholars):
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
Like Asia Bibi, Manuel did not make this assertion to be provocative, but rather because he was in Muslim (Ottoman) territory, and a throng of Muslim scholars were also pressuring him into converting to Islam.
This has long been the problem: Muslims often initiate tensions by trying to persuade non-Muslims to join -- or perhaps just validate -- their religion, one way (persuasion) or another (jihad). But from the very start, whenever non-Muslims seriously examine the life of Muhammad -- the fount of Islam -- questions and criticisms arise. Then Muslims, frustrated because they cannot assuage these concerns, respond with outrage and violence.

SENATOR GRAHAM TO HAVE DNA TESTING

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), lion of the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation bonanza, is making, with his new DNA test plan, another savvy move to capture some cameras and, just maybe, get some folks on the wrong side of the aisle to think.
   It is not racist to test your DNA to find out how much Native American ancestry you have in your genetic record. We know that because feminist and intersectional liberal social justice icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-WTF) recently demonstrated so. And she proved to the 1/1024th degree that it's not racist at all because Democrats do it.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

SHARING THE COST OF CANNABIS LEGALIZATION

  Legalization of cannabis is upon us in Canada. It marks a potentially massive shift in how our society operates, touching upon so many institutions of Canadian life. From public safety to retail services to transit and labour law, legal cannabis will require significant and trusting co-ordination among all orders of government.
  Local governments are the order of government closest to Canadians’ daily lives and as a result, municipalities are on the front lines of cannabis legalization. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, whose members represent over 90 per cent of Canadians, has been helping communities get ready by providing tools and engaging our various partners. But municipalities cannot do it alone. An important element of a safe and effective rollout of cannabis legalization will require a clear framework for the sharing of costs that come with this new policy.
  Much has been said about the revenue potential of cannabis sales, but too often we forget about the significant cost. Legalization has operational and cost implications for as many as 17 municipal departments. And as of today, in many communities, local taxpayers will be on the hook for these bills.

OPEN & TRANSPARENT PM TRUDEAU

   Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly refused to comment Wednesday when asked whether his government will provide access to a ream of secret documents requested by the defense team for Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.
  Conservative MPs devoted every one of their allotted questions to the subject during question period in the House of Commons Wednesday, a sign they are keen to turn up the political heat on the Liberal government over the criminal trial of Norman, who was the second-highest officer in Canada’s military when he was suspended from duty in January 2017.
   Norman’s lawyers contend the government has not disclosed documents essential to their ability to defend their client. In a court filing on Oct. 12, Norman’s defense lawyers Marie Henein and Christine Mainville said the government has “cherry-picked” its disclosure so far, and made 52 requests for additional government documents, some of which may be considered cabinet confidences. A pre-trial hearing over the issue has been scheduled for December.

HORWATH'S TEMPER TANTRUM

  A PC MPP says she was pushed and screamed at by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath Tuesday in the Ontario Legislature.
   MPP Donna Skelly said she was sitting in Finance Minister Vic Fedeli’s chair having a discussion with a PC cabinet minister when a furious Horwath walked across the floor, pushed her shoulder to get her attention and began screaming “You disgust me.
   “I stood up and said, ‘Don’t touch me, get your hands off me,’” Skelly said.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

TRUDEAU'S TRAVELING TERRORISTS

  “This government proactively reached out to try to bring this individual, who has fought with a terrorist organization, back to Canada. They took it upon themselves to reach out to bring this individual to Canada, why?” Scheer demanded.
  Scheer pressed on with his line of questioning, asking Trudeau to “explain to Canadians why his government is taking it upon themselves to invite a British citizen who has fought with ISIS to Canada.”
  Trudeau eventually retorted that Conservatives were simply “grasping at straws” to “try and make Canadians feel unsafe.”

LEGACY OF THE PIGHEADED WYNNE

The defeated Liberal government ignored numerous warnings from top civil servants that its scheme to borrow billions to lower electricity prices a full 25 per cent was a “bad idea,” says the former deputy minister of energy.
   Serge Imbrogno told a legislative committee Tuesday bureaucrats were asked for options to further reduce hydro rates by former premier Kathleen Wynne’s government in 2016 after waiving the 8 per cent HST on hydro bills, but the financing plan came out of the blue from the office of then-energy minister Glenn Thibeault.
   Both Imbrogno and cabinet secretary Steve Orsini — who also headed the civil service under Wynne — testified they repeatedly expressed worries about the feasibility of the scheme to the Liberals, including in briefing notes to cabinet warning of higher costs and accounting issues later red-flagged by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk.

THE MURDER OF JAMAL KASHOGGI

It took seven minutes for Jamal Khashoggi to die, a Turkish source who has listened in full to an audio recording of the Saudi journalist's last moments told Middle East Eye.
Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general’s office at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and onto the table of his study next door, the Turkish source said.
Horrendous screams were then heard by a witness downstairs, the source said.

MARKS & SPENCER FACILITATING MEDIEVALISM

Now Marks & Spencer is being harassed again for showing proper deference to Islamic norms. Among the items it is hawking as part of its selection of “essential” school supplies are hijabs for young girls. How young? Different media report different figures. The Telegraph says that the hijabs are designed for girls aged nine and up. The radio station LBC says they fit girls as young as three. So does “secular Muslim” activist Maajid Nawaz, who in a tweet accused M&S of “facilitat[ing] medievalism.” The question of just what age the smallest of these hijabs are intended for was taken up, but not decisively settled, in an article in Metro, although an exchange of tweets between customers and helpful M&S employees made clear that the “large” size hijab -- they come in “large,” “medium,” and “small” -- is meant for “a 6-8 year-old,” and the Express noted that “online reviews suggest a 'medium' would fit a four-year-old.”

NOPEC & REVOKING IMMUNITY THREATEN SAUDIS

  OPEC has urged its members not to mention oil prices when discussing policy in a break from the past, as the oil producing group seeks to avoid the risk of U.S. legal action for manipulating the market, sources close to OPEC said.
  Proposed U.S. legislation known as “NOPEC”, which could open the group up to anti-trust lawsuits, has long lain dormant, with previous American presidents signaling that they would veto any move to make it law.
   But U.S. President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, blaming it for high oil prices and urging it to increase output to relieve pressure on a market hovering around four-year highs.
   That has made OPEC and its unofficial leader, Saudi Arabia, nervous about what it might mean for NOPEC, or No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

$3B MORE IN ONTARIO TAXPAYERS' POCKETS

  The Doug Ford government’s bottom line will take a $3 billion hit over four years due to the cancellation of the cap-and-trade program, a new report from Ontario Financial Accountability Officer Peter Weltman projects.
   Environment Minister Rod Phillips didn’t dispute the FAO’s $3 billion figure, but said that money went into the pockets of Ontarians who are no longer paying extra for gasoline, natural gas and diesel.
   “It was a $3 billion cut of a regressive tax that was targeting low and middle-income people,” Phillips said, describing cap and trade as a regressive carbon tax that didn’t achieve climate change goals.


JUSTIN'S JIHADIS

A Canadian, is a Canadian, is a Canadian. It’s one of Justin Trudeau’s mantras but I’m not sure how much he will want to wear that now that reports out that Trudeau’s government has a deal to take back more ISIS fighters.
According to The Guardian, the feds are set to take back 11 Canadians currently held by Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Among those said to be part of the deal is Jack Letts, a British born and raised man who left for Syria and to join ISIS in 2014.
The British policy for captured ISIS fighters in Syria is to let them rot in place. Britain has no consular services in Syria and tells all their citizens that they are on their own if they venture to the failed state.