INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT ELECTRIC VEHICLES

    So, in the end, what we have is the country of Norway, credited with the greenest automotive fleet in the world financing its conversion to electric vehicles by shipping ever-increasing amounts of crude oil abroad, while China's government, credited with the most advanced electric vehicle development program is (partially) financing its research by building coal-fired electricity plants around the world. To borrow a quote from the immortal George Carlin — in his commentary on the American War Machine’s assertion that it was “fighting for peace” — building an electric vehicle market based on exporting greenhouse gases is a little like “screwing for virginity.”

NOTLEY'S ULTIMATUM TO TRUDEAU

   After Trudeau’s federal Liberals were elected in 2015, Notley envisioned a new path for Alberta’s domestic diplomacy, based on co-operation with the new prime minister.  That led to a tentative national climate deal, conditional on construction of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.
     But now there’s a whiff of pipeline betrayal in the air. And the premier, who has so far aimed her pipeline strategy at B.C., is starting to swing her sights to Ottawa.  That’s where the attention belongs. It’s time the heat was turned up on the strangely docile prime minister. There’s a growing view that his pipeline support is fading.
  In the legislature Wednesday, Notley said that if the pipeline isn’t built, there’s no way Alberta will sign on to Ottawa’s plan to raise the carbon price to $50 by 2022.

    Let's see you wiggle your way out of this one Justin.

JUDGE ENCOURAGES SELF-SUFFICIENCY

   An Ontario judge has rejected a Saskatchewan woman’s efforts to triple her spousal support two decades after her divorce, deciding instead to cut off her main source of income completely.
    Kevin Choquette, a retired bank analyst worth more than $14 million, applied to the court to end the $57,000 per year in spousal support he has been paying Yvonne Choquette for 22 years. In response, Yvonne Choquette requested that her support be tripled to $180,000 per year.
   In a decision published on March 1, Judge Kenneth Hood sided with Kevin Choquette, 62, explaining the reason he’s stripping Yvonne Choquette, 62, of what amounts to nearly 100 per cent of her income is because she’s made “no effort” to become self-sufficient.

NDP SINGH'S COMPLEX WEASEL WORDS

    The real sticking point in most of Singh’s interviews, and most notably the one he did with Carol Off on CBC radio, was on the question of violence. Off repeatedly asked Singh if he would say yes or no as to whether or not he approved of violence in the furtherance of Sikh goals. Singh simply refused to answer. He kept returning to the phrase: “It’s complex.”
   On the Air India bombing, Mr. Singh had said since he became NDP Leader last October that he didn’t know who was responsible. A Canadian judicial commission concluded in 2010 that Mr. Parmar, who was never convicted and died in 1992, had orchestrated the bombing.
   Video has also surfaced of Mr. Singh at a controversial event in Brampton in March, 2011, two months before he was elected to the Ontario legislature. It was held to denounce then-federal Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh, an outspoken opponent of Sikh fanaticism.
   Like other speakers at the 2011 town hall, Mr. Singh said Mr. Dosanjh had slandered and “attacked the Sikh faith … attacked the Sikh community” with his criticism of extremism.

PROVINCES' CARBON TAX WAR WITH OTTAWA

    FP: Together, the provinces representing half the Canadian population now are or soon might be arming for a carbon-tax war with Ottawa. That doesn’t even count Manitoba, which is still refusing to align its own less-burdensome carbon-tax plan with Ottawa’s pricing scheme. Or New Brunswick, whose plan is also at odds with federal requirements. Or Nova Scotia, whose cap-and-trade scheme doesn’t come close to meeting McKenna’s stipulations. (Newfoundland and P.E.I. haven’t revealed their plans yet.)
     So how many provinces exactly do Trudeau and McKenna think they can successfully fight? And if they thought trying to force wildly unpopular small-business taxes down peoples’ throats was a fiasco, wait till they see how ugly things get trying to force a carbon tax on hostile Canadians who loathe it even more than their premiers, who at least are tempted by the potential cash grab.
     Yet McKenna sounded positively blithe this week about the ease with which she plans to deploy her “backstop” weapon, in responding to a letter from Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan, who said the province could not accept her carbon tax. McKenna’s response: If Duncan’s government didn’t start taxing carbon at the minimum price she requires, “we would have no choice but to ensure that a price on pollution applies …. We would do so by applying the federal carbon pricing system in Saskatchewan.” It sounds so simple. Except the closer you examine her position, the weaker it seems.

CONVICTED KILLER ORDERED DEPORTED

     MONTREAL — A woman found guilty of murdering her three daughters in a so-called honour killing was stripped of her permanent residency Thursday and ordered deported from the country.
     But the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada’s expulsion order for Tooba Yahya will be executed only when she is released from a Quebec prison, her lawyer, Stephane Handfield, said in an interview.
    Yahya, husband Mohammad Shafia and their son, Hamed, were each found guilty in 2012 on four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
    The bodies of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Mohammad Shafia’s childless first wife in a polygamous marriage, were found in June 2009 in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ont.

ONTARIO'S LOST DECADE

    THE FRASER INSTITUTE:  Ontario’s Lost Decade: 2007-2016 finds that, despite upbeat government rhetoric, Ontario’s economic growth in 2017 was not enough to repair the damage done during the preceding decade when the province’s economic performance was among the worst in Canada. In fact, from 2007 to 2016 Ontario was at or near the bottom on several important economic indicators compared to Canada’s other provinces, including per capita GDP growth, debt accumulation and annual private-sector job growth.