GATOR SAVES CANADIAN PM

Trudeau had to climb aboard a John Deere Gator all-terrain vehicle and take back roads from his weekend residence in the Gatineau Hills to make it to the office in downtown Ottawa.

The prime minister took a John Deere Gator ATV, similar to this model, to get to work on Monday. (John Deere)

The road to Harrington Lake, located in the wooded area of Gatineau Hills near Meech Lake, was washed out and couldn't handle cars. Trudeau was picked up by his official motorcade once he got past the washout point.

MANAFORT & GATES UNDER HOUSE ARREST

Manafort and Gates have been released to house arrest while they scramble to gather money for their bail, set at $10 million and $5 million, respectively, after pleading not guilty to a 12-count indictment charging them with making tens of millions of dollars while secretly working for the Ukrainian government and then hiding the money from the U.S. government.

CLINTON ANGLE TO EVERY GREAT SCANDAL

MURPHY:  But still, it is curious that whenever something scandalous and really big consumes a whole nation’s attention, it always intersects with a storyline about the Clintons.

QUEBEC POLITICIAN CLAIMS HE WAS FRAMED

MONTREAL—A former cop-turned politician, a vengeful anti-corruption police force and a mystery interview recorded by a politician fearing he will be jailed before he can go public with the findings of his own probe.
The politician, a former Sûreté du Québec biker gang detective named Guy Ouellette, has shared the alleged findings of his own renegade corruption inquiry with a Montreal radio host. The contents, which have not been independently confirmed, could be explosive.

WHO'S AFRAID OF JASON KENNEY?

Folks laughed when Jason Kenney launched his unite-the right campaign in Alberta 15 months ago. He hopped out of a shiny pickup truck – painted Tory blue – and told reporters that he was going to visit every constituency in the province. "I figured my Dodge Ram would do a better job than a Prius," he joked.

A hundred thousand kilometres and 850 events later, no one is laughing anymore. He has achieved the near impossible: engineered a brand-new party from scratch, steamrollered his opponents and won the leadership by a decisive margin. Next stop: premier. Justin Trudeau isn't going to like it.

 

ATTACKING CANADIAN GOVERNMENT COMPUTER NETWORKS

The Canadian government's computer networks have been hit by state-sponsored cyberattacks about 50 times a week — and at least one of them usually succeeded.
That acknowledgment from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the secretive agency charged with preventing such attacks, is a rare glimpse into the scale and frequency of attempts by foreign powers to penetrate federal government systems.

FOOLS GOLD

The Royal Canadian Mint is investigating how a sealed, "pure gold" wafer with proper mint stampings may in fact be a fake. 

The one-ounce gold piece, which was supposed to be 99.99 per cent pure, was purchased by an Ottawa jeweller on Oct. 18 at a Royal Bank of Canada branch. Yet tests of the bar show it may contain no gold at all.

MATH IS HARD

While the government did reduce the second-lowest personal income tax rate (from 22 per cent to 20.5 per cent), it also eliminated a number of tax credits (provisions in the tax code that reduce a person’s income taxes, if they qualify), thereby increasing income taxes for Canadians who previously claimed such credits. Specifically, the government eliminated the income-splitting tax credit for couples with young children, the children’s fitness tax credit, the public transit tax credit, the education tax credit and the textbook tax credit.

When all the income tax changes are considered, 81 per cent of middle-class families pay more in personal income taxes now because of the Trudeau government’s tax changes.

MEANWHILE IN SAINT-BERNARD-DE-LACOLLE

Winterized trailers will soon be replacing the tents providing temporary shelter to asylum-seekers who have crossed the Quebec-U.S. border, even as the number of irregular border crossings continues to drop.

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says a contract has been awarded to a private company to provide heated accommodation for up to 200 people near the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border station.

$63TRILLION OF WORLD DEBT

In an ideal situation, governments are just borrowing this money to cover short-term budget deficits or to finance mission critical projects. However, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, around the globe, countries have taken to the idea of running constant deficits as the normal course of business, and too much accumulation of debt is not healthy for countries or the global economy as a whole.
The U.S. is a prime example of “debt creep” – the country hasn’t posted an annual budget surplus since 2001, when the federal debt was only $6.9 trillion (54% of GDP). Fast forward to today, and the debt has ballooned to roughly $20 trillion (107% of GDP), which is equal to 31.8% of the world’s sovereign debt nominally.

OXYCONTIN BILLIONAIRES

The family fortune began in 1952 when three doctors — Arthur (d. 1987), Mortimer (d. 2010) and Raymond Sackler — purchased Purdue, then a small and struggling New York drug manufacturer.
According to The New Yorker, Oxycontin ” has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue” since 1995.
 OxyContin’s sole active ingredient is oxycodone, a chemical cousin of heroin, which makes it highly addictive.  The New Yorker further says Purdue used marketing techniques to deceive the American public of the drug’s true addictive characteristics.

 

HILLBILLY DEFEATS GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

“If you don’t know your rights, you haven’t got any.”
That’s Spencerville crop farmer Shawn Carmichael’s take after a verbal confrontation with an Ontario government inspector who pulled into his father’s farm yard in a pickup truck on Oct. 11.

LIBERALS PROPOSE JOINING ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK

The Liberal government has introduced a second large budget bill that includes a new law establishing Canada's participation in the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The bill includes a new law called the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Agreement Act, which sets the terms for Canada's relationship with the emerging bank.

Mr. Morneau's March budget made one reference to the bank, stating that Ottawa would be contributing $256-million over five years to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Yet, the budget bill gives the Finance Minister the authority to transfer up to $375-million (U.S.), which is about $480-million in Canadian dollars. A Finance Department official said the legislation would give Canada the flexibility to buy more bank shares than the current plan of $256-million if desired.

 

WHEN CRICKETS & CICADAS GO ROGUE

Could the mysterious "sonic attacks" allegedly waged against U.S. Embassy employees in Cuba really just be the sounds of very loud crickets and cicadas?
That's what Cuban officials seemed to suggest Thursday in a half-hour prime-time television special titled "Alleged Sonic Attacks."
The special broadcast was Cuban officials' most detailed defense to date against U.S. accusations that American diplomats in Havana were subjected to mysterious sounds that left them with a variety of ailments -- including headaches, hearing problems and concussions.

NFL IS A PRIVATE MONOPOLY THAT IS FAILING

The NFL is a cash machine.  It generated about $14 billion in revenue in 2016.  The average salary of an NFL player is $1.9 million per year.  About 68% of NFL players are black.  They’re all millionaires.
So here we are in 2017.  Taxpayers build the factories (stadiums) where the NFL’s essential employees (football players) produce its saleable goods (footballs games).  What a deal. Congress gives you a monopoly and the taxpayers build your factories.  Then all you have to do is run the factory for half of the year and play a football game once a week.  It’s a guaranteed gravy train for everyone.  The NFL could profit forever.  How could the NFL possibly foul it up?
To repeat, how is it possible to fumble a monopoly?  Answer: turn it over to the race industry.

DC SWAMPERS OPPOSE BIODIESEL REDUCTIONS

The biodiesel proposal reflects hard realities. Biodiesel costs over $1.30 more than regular diesel made from petroleum. Despite this far higher cost, it gets fewer miles per gallon than conventional diesel. Domestic US producers are unable to make enough biodiesel. In fact their output is at least 250 million gallons below the mandated amount; the rest is imported, keeping America reliant on foreign suppliers.
While demand for biodiesel is down, senators and crony corporatists deep-sixed proposed EPA reductions in biodiesel mandates

ENERGY EAST SABOTEURS WANT RECONCILIATION WITH ALBERTA

In an open letter this week, Quebec’s government house leader, Jean-Marc Fournier, surprisingly called for “reconciliation” with Alberta following the cancellation of the Energy East pipeline project.
It’s a brazen pitch for a province that didn’t miss a chance to sabotage it.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre’s famous last words, that the project’s cancellation was “an enormous victory,” will be forever etched in Alberta’s collective consciousness as confirmation that Energy East was sacrificed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accommodate Quebec, which mobilized against it, and where the Liberals need votes in the next federal election.
Nevertheless, Fournier maintains in an Oct. 23 letter that “TransCanada’s termination of the Energy East project is not due to Quebec’s position.”

KENNEY ELECTED LEADER OF ALBERTA'S UCP

   So it’s Jason Kenney by a thumping majority, taking charge of the United Conservative Party he forged in the fires of conservative disunity and enmity.
    The tally was 61.1 per cent for Kenney, 31.5 per cent for Brian Jean, and 7.3 per cent for Doug Schweitzer.

ALBERTA'S OILPATCH NEWS

It’s easy to grow pessimistic about the future of Alberta’s oil and gas industry with the barrage of bad news surrounding sluggish commodity prices and the inability to get pipelines built.
In the short term, third-quarter financial results released this week show many petroleum producers are back making money after enduring difficult cuts over the past two years.
In the longer term, the NEB still sees oil production rising almost 60 per cent by 2040, even with the global push toward de-carbonization.

A TALE OF DUPLICITY OR INEPTITUDE

BLATCHFORD:  Twenty-one minutes after she responded “I have no records” to a Freedom of Information request seeking documents from the office of outgoing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty on the infamous cancelled gas plants fiasco, Laura Miller’s “life partner” Peter Faist tried to wipe clean her desktop computer.
Faist failed in his attempt. To use the software, he needed what are called “administrative rights,” a special login and password usually restricted to IT staff.
Thus was born “Pete’s Project,” as Miller called it, which early the next month saw Faist spend three days in the offices of McGuinty, wiping the computers of 21 senior staff, some of whom weren’t told what he was doing.

IT'S A WOMAN'S CHOICE, RIGHT?

Gatineau police have charged a man for allegedly beating his teenage daughter over the course of more than a year because she refused to wear a hijab.
The 35-year-old father is facing one count each of assault, assault with a weapon and uttering death threats, police said in a news release Thursday.
In what police described as a case of so-called "honour-based" violence, the father began the series of assaults upon learning his daughter had removed her  head covering when she left the family home.

POLAND WARY OF RUSSIAN MILITARY EXPANSION

Poland’s army will increase the size of its army and introduce a 50,000-strong volunteer militia as fears grow of a military resurgence in neighboring Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Ever since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and backed an insurgency in the east of the country, Russia's neighbors have viewed its military expansion warily.

EXPOSING BIG PHARMA'S ROLE IN THE OPIOID CRISIS

The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” have just peeled back another sordid layer in the War on Drugs by exposing Big Pharma’s role in expanding the Opioid Crisis that has resulted in more than 30,000 deaths per year.
All the disgusting details can be found here, but it is really a straight forward case of legal bribery and corruption in the market for legal opiates — the driving force in this crisis as doctors continue to turn untold thousands of innocent people into opiate addicts.

ORBAN INVESTIGATES SOROS OPEN SOCIETY NETWORK

Apparently, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban thinks his propaganda campaign to discredit Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros - Orban’s political archnemesis - hasn’t been sufficiently effective.
As Orban’s ruling party gears up for parliamentary elections in April - where it is the prohibitive favorite to win largely thanks to its refusal to accept refugees under a plan devised by the European Commission - the prime minister has instructed his intelligence services to map what he described as the networks run by the billionaire financier’s “empire” targeting his country, Bloomberg reported.

SAUDI ARABIA'S CROWN PRINCE PLANS REFORM

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has vowed to return the country to “moderate Islam” and asked for global support to transform the hardline kingdom into an open society that empowers citizens and lures investors.
In an interview with the Guardian, the powerful heir to the Saudi throne said the ultra-conservative state had been “not normal” for the past 30 years, blaming rigid doctrines that have governed society in a reaction to the Iranian revolution, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with”.

IRS PAYS $3.5MILLION FOR ABUSE OF POWER

In 2010, various conservative and Tea Party groups realized they had been waiting longer than usual to be verified for tax-exempt status by the IRS. The scandal broke wide open in May 2013, but the Obama administration denied any ideological discrimination, saying instead that the delays were due to "mismanagement, poor judgment, and institutional inertia."

On Thursday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) settled two cases in the IRS targeting scandal. In the class-action lawsuit involving 428 conservative plaintiffs, the IRS agreed to pay $3.5 million, Citizens for Self-Governance President Mark Meckler told PJ Media. He insisted that justice had not been done, however.

"There's no apology for violating these plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, for dragging these plaintiffs through years of litigation, for the millions of dollars that had to be spent to get to this point," Meckler insisted.

 

UNREGULATED USA MARKET FOR HUMAN CADAVERS

When Americans leave their bodies to science, they are also donating to commerce: Cadavers and body parts, especially those of the poor, are sold in a thriving and largely unregulated market. Grisly abuses abound.

THE TAXMAN COMETH

Sufferers of autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental health issues are the latest victims of a clampdown on access to the disability tax credit by the Canada Revenue Agency, according to several accountants, mental health associations and other advocacy groups.

MISREPRESENTING REALITY IN THE EU

"Respect Words: Ethical Journalism Against Hate Speech" is a collaborative project that has been undertaken by media organizations in eight European countries – Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, and Spain. Supported by the Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Union, it seeks, according to its website, to help journalists, in this era of growing "Islamophobia," to "rethink" the way they address "issues related to migratory processes, ethnic and religious minorities." It sounds benign enough: "rethink." But do not kid yourself: when these EU-funded activists call for "rethinking," what they are really doing is endorsing self-censorship.

CHALLENGING ONTARIO'S GREEN ENERGY ACT

Before a full gallery at its Committee of the Whole meeting Thursday, council unanimously showed support to CCSAGE (Concerned Citizens for Safe and Appropriate Green Energy) in its early stages of legal proceedings.
CCSAGE seeks a Judicial Review in Divisional Court to challenge the Green Energy Act and how it relates to the Renewable Energy Approval (REA) issued for wpd’s project in South Marysburgh.
The application’s purpose is to ask the Supreme Court of Ontario if the REA shows institutional, procedural or operational bias by various ministries; is it fair to place the burden entirely on rural areas.
The GEA removes powers from municipalities and CCSAGE notes it takes no meaningful account of the impact on health, endangered species, or local economy, tourism or property and business values.

BILL MORNEAU: MR. GENEROSITY

The federal ethics watchdog is considering whether to launch a formal investigation into whether Finance Minister Bill Morneau had a conflict of interest in sponsoring a pension bill known as Bill C-27 while still owning shares in his family's pension company.
On Thursday the embattled finance minister said he will donate the profits earned on his Morneau Shepell shares since he was elected to charity.

HOW ABOUT $0 PER TONNE?

Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government will announce a carbon tax of $25 a tonne Friday — to be implemented sometime next year — and keep it at that rate, a government source familiar with the file confirmed to The Canadian Press.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said the province will refuse to follow federal government demands to raise the tax to $50 a tonne by 2022.

RCMP COMMISSIONER SAYS DITCH THE SSC

Earlier this year, for instance, an 11-hour network computer outage downed every single Mountie's BlackBerry, affected police dispatching and prevented 240 police forces from accessing the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database.
Even on relatively low-tech yet crucial requests, Shared Services Canada has failed to meet RCMP standards. In another case it took SSC several months to deliver on a high-priority request for new phones and telephone headsets for 911 dispatchers — and when the equipment arrived, it was used and faulty.

ONTARIO'S ENERGY PLAN IS A POLITICAL DOCUMENT

Ontario households are using less electricity but will still see their monthly bills rise steadily over the next decade to $186 a month or $2,232 a year.
According to the Ontario Long-Term Energy Plan released Thursday, the lowest electricity bills – less even than this year’s bills – will be in 2018, an election year, when the average residential monthly bill is projected to be $123.

KEEPING CANADIANS IN THE DARK

A member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's caucus says she was only trying to put witnesses "at ease" this week when she successfully pushed public hearings about subsidies for the fossil fuel industry behind closed doors.

Brossard—Saint-Lambert Liberal MP Alexandra Mendès, vice chair of the House of Commons public accounts committee said the maneuver was meant to foster a "frank discussion" as federal MPs reviewed the matter.

 

THE PANAMA PAPERS

A law clerk from Toronto and a paralegal in Montreal commanded a prolific corporate empire of nearly 200 companies over the past 25 years — while knowing nothing about the businesses or the multimillion-dollar deals bearing their names, they say.

FBI INFORMANT TO TESTIFY IN CLINTON-RUSSIA TRIAL

 The FBI informant who helped the Justice Department secure a conviction against the top official from the US subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, but was blocked by the Obama Justice Department from testifying about Russian efforts to bribe and extort their way into possession of North American uranium assets - a process which was cleared by both Hillary Clinton's State Department and Robert Mueller's FBI - has as of moments ago been cleared to testify, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday evening.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG

Bank of Canada is not the only government agency using the services of Morneau Shepell, the Sun has learned.
At least four other federal departments and agencies have ongoing contracts with Morneau Shepell, the human resources firm formerly run by Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

32,000 ON WAITING LIST FOR LONG TERM CARE

The largest group of long-term care operators in Ontario is calling for a dramatic increase in spending on nursing homes.
The province should create 10,000 new long-term care beds in the next five years and boost its subsidy for older nursing homes to rebuild, says the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA) in its pre-budget submission to the government, released Wednesday.

ZIMBABWE'S NONAGENARIAN

STEYN:  Half a decade or so back, I wrote: "It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the U.N." 
 That's how it went last Friday when the World Health Organization, ostensibly one of the least nutty operating units of the UN (compared with, say, the Human Rights Council), announced that Robert Mugabe was being appointed a WHO "Goodwill Ambassador".  Mr.  Mugabe's idea of "goodwill" is to send his goons round to your farmhouse to announce he's stealing your land - and, if you're minded to object, kill your farm workers or wife or kid. When Zimbabwe's nonagenarian monster goes Goodwill hunting, best not to stand in his path.

$31.3MILLION TO THREE INNOCENTS ABROAD

The federal government has paid a total of $31.3 million in settlements to three men wrongfully accused of links to terrorism and tortured in a Syrian prison, CTV News has learned.
The lump sum was split between Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin. Officials won't confirm how much of the total $31.3 million each man received.
The three men filed $100 million lawsuits over the federal government’s role in their imprisonment, claiming that their reputations were destroyed and they were left psychologically and physically shattered after the ordeal.

TD BANK OUTSOURCING WORK OVERSEAS

Alyson Mosher knows a lot of private information about the TD Bank customers whose fraud claims she handles — and now, she says, that information is going to offshore workers without most people's knowledge.
"They see your birth date, your social insurance number, whether you have a chequing account, a savings account, a line of credit, a mortgage, investments, Visa cards, anything," Mosher says.
"They have access to your entire identity."

LIBERALS RE-OPEN HOSPITALS BEDS THEY CLOSED

Ontario is reopening two mothballed hospitals – including one it shuttered just two years ago – as part of a bid to tackle overcrowding and prepare for what could prove an especially brutal flu season.
The NDP, which has focused on hospital overcrowding for months during Question Period in the provincial legislature, said the Liberals' latest investment falls far short of what is needed. "This government has been underfunding hospitals for a decade now," party Leader Andrea Horwath said. "They've squeezed and squeezed, and now we are in a crisis mode."

LIBERALS' COMMITMENT TO NEVER-ENDING DEFICITS

Tuesday’s fall economic statement by Finance Minister Bill Morneau demonstrates why nothing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says in the 2019 federal election campaign about Canada’s debt and deficits can be trusted.
Contrary to every message Trudeau delivered both before and during the 2015 election, Morneau laid out the real Liberal agenda going forward, which, to use his phrase, is “doubling down” on permanent deficits and wanton spending.

PROTECTING MORNEAU

The Trudeau Liberals used their parliamentary majority Tuesday to defeat an NDP motion on closing a loophole that allowed Finance Minister Bill Morneau to retain close control over a significant stake in his family company even as he ran a department with power to affect the fortunes of Morneau Shepell.

The Liberals also continued to dodge questions on whether Mr. Morneau recused himself from internal discussions on Bill C-27, legislation that opposition parties say could be expected to benefit Morneau Shepell, one of four major firms in Canada's human-resources and pension-management sector.

 

ACCESS TO INFORMATION REFORMS FALL SHORT

A Liberal government bill to modernize the Access to Information Act would create new barriers for people seeking federal files, transparency advocates told MPs studying the measures.
Cara Zwibel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told the House of Commons information, ethics and privacy committee the government's proposed updates are deeply disappointing.
"This is not the open and transparent government that Canadians want and deserve, and it's not the overhaul of the access act that is clearly needed," Zwibel said Monday.

SUDBURY BRIBERY TRIAL RULING

Candidates in a nomination battle aren’t, yet, candidates in an election. With this conclusion of Justice Howard Borenstein, the Crown’s case in the Liberal Elections Act trial began to crumble without the defence even firing a shot.
By legal accounts, Judge Borenstein is on solid ground in ruling a candidate cannot be bribed if he was never a candidate in the first place. Yet, Borenstein’s ruling in this very first case to scrutinize the bribery provisions of the Elections Act leaves other nagging questions left unanswered.

IT'S ACCEPTABLE WHEN LIBERALS DO IT

The flow of staff from the Prime Minister’s Office to key posts in ministerial offices reveals an underperforming rookie cabinet, increasingly controlled by the PMO despite promises that a Liberal government would reverse Stephen Harper’s centralized approach, say some Conservatives and Liberals.
Many The Hill Times spoke with said this style of governance, coupled with inexperienced MPs in need of support, is a natural outcome of the Canadian parliamentary system that places the prime minister as first among equals. But they pointed out that Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) promised a different approach.

MORNEAU SHEPELL & BOMBARDIER

Morneau Shepell, which bills itself as Canada’s largest administrator of retirement and benefits plans, administers “some” group insurance and pension benefits for Bombardier, a knowledgeable source who declined to speak on the record told the Star. The contract has been in place for over a decade and there has been no substantial change since the 2015 election, the source said.

H. CLINTON'S WAR ON TRUTH

On 16 October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.
Wading through the Clinton book, What Happened, is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. “They” (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian “nihilist”, Julian Assange.

ITALIAN MIGRATION CRISIS

Given the absolute fact that practically 100% of those landing in Italy are illegal aliens as they are NOT running away from wars and political persecutions, the Geneva convention clearly states that NO country has the duty nor the obligation to welcome and give assistance to immigrants who pay criminal organizations to cross several borders. Now, it is a duty and an obligation to rescue human beings in a situation of distress at sea. That’s maritime law and the Italian Navy alone is perfectly capable of fulfilling that task without any phony “humanitarian” help from these NGOs that are there to fulfil “somebody else’s” agenda, certainly not on behalf of the Italian people.

But, once rescued at sea, these people must be brought back to the departing country.

 

TERRORISM CASES QUADRUPLED IN GERMANY

More evidence revealing the ridiculousness of the centrist position on immigration – namely that refugees can be seamlessly integrated into European society without a spike in crime or terror – has emerged courtesy of the German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag which revealed Sunday that the number of terrorism-related cases investigated by German authorities has quadrupled over the past year.
Prosecutors have opened more than 900 cases so far this year, compared with just 240 throughout 2016, and 80 cases in 2013.

STOMP YOUR FEET TOO

Thousands of anguished libs in Boston and Philadelphia will be taking part in scream fests on Nov. 8 to commemorate the anniversary of Donald Trump's election. Liberals in other cities around the country are likely to step up to the crazy plate as well as the big day draws near.

Over 4,000 Facebook users in the Boston area have RSVP'd to attend the event they're calling "Scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election." Another 33,000 have expressed interest in attending the event at the 383-year-old Boston Common.

 

THE UNDERWEAR BOMBER: PERENNIAL VICTIM

Always the victim. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to murder 289 people on a jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 by detonating a bomb hidden in his underwear, has filed a prison lawsuit. His complaint says that the Colorado Supermax prison where he is held prohibits him from “having any communication whatsoever with more than 7.5 billion people, the vast majority of people on the planet.”  Also, he says that prison rules “severely restrict his ability to practice religion” with his fellow Muslims.

UK NOT PROSECUTING RETURNING TERRORISTS

A top UK official told the BBC last week that ISIS terrorists from the UK returning from Syria and Iraq will not be prosecuted. Instead, the government will try to reintegrate them back into society because they were "naive" when they joined the genocidal terrorist group.

This came just two days after the chief of the UK's MI5 spy service gave a rare speech warning that the terrorism threat was higher than he had ever seen.

 

THE TAXMAN COMETH

Diabetes Canada was among the groups that joined Conservative politicians to publicly denounce what they say is a clawback of a long-standing disability tax credit to help them manage a disease that can cost the average sufferer $15,000 annually.

OOPSIE! TRUDEAU'S BRAIN FART

People are upset with the Canadian prime minister for accidentally using an Arabic word to celebrate Diwali. Diwali is the biggest holiday in India held for five days in autumn to coincide with the Hindu new year marked by the lunar calendar.

POLITICALLY INCORRECT BILLIONNAIRE WINS CZECH ELECTION

The election outcome, the result of popular discontent with established parties, is the latest in a recent wave of successes for European populists, including in Austria and Germany. The populist ascendancy highlights a shifting political landscape in Europe where runaway multiculturalism and political correctness, combined with a massive influx of unassimilable migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have given rise to a surge in support for anti-establishment protest parties.

GERMANY'S STATE CENSORSHIP

A new German law introducing state censorship on social media platforms came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online "criminal offenses" such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint -- regardless of whether or the content is accurate or not. Social media companies receive seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law.

SJW TYING THEMSELVES IN KNOTS

“Burka is (the) single most reprehensible cause for keeping Muslims backward ... it is synonymous to ‘jahalat’ — ignorance and backwardness. The sooner it is abolished, the better.”

TWO-FACED SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS

Where were the Hollywood social justice warriors back then, when the accused was Bill Clinton? After all, Hillary Clinton once said that when women make allegations of abuse, "everyone should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence." Didn't Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, repeatedly say, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other"?

TIME TO TOSS THE ETHICS COMMISSIONER

Mary Dawson should at least be tossed off the bus, if not under it, not just because Trudeau was using her as an excuse for his finance minister's ethical pickle but because her ticket long ago expired.
She no longer is a watchdog who invokes fear.

CONTROLLING CATALONIA

MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government will dismiss Catalonia’s secessionist leadership and force the region into a new election, it decided on Saturday, unprecedented steps it said were needed to prevent the region breaking away.

MUGABE REMOVED AS GOODWILL AMBASSADOR

An invitation to make Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe a "goodwill ambassador" for the World Health Organization has been rescinded after international outrage scuttled the idea.

ENDING EPA'S "SUE & SETTLE" PRACTICES

Administrator Pruitt Issues Directive to End EPA “Sue & Settle” 
“The days of regulation through litigation are over,” – EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt​
WASHINGTON (October 16, 2017) – In fulfilling his promise to end the practice of regulation through litigation that has harmed the American public, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued an Agency-wide directive today designed to end “sue and settle” practices within the Agency, providing an unprecedented level of public participation and transparency in EPA consent decrees and settlement agreements.

EPA TO REFORM SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARDS

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday he planned to curtail the practice of distributing research grants to scientists appointed to the agency’s scientific advisory boards to improve their “independence and transparency and objectivity.”

QUEBEC'S MINISTER OF ANGLO AFFAIRS

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has appointed a minister responsible for anglophone affairs in a move to improve relations with the province’s English-speaking community.
The appointment of a new Anglo affairs minister is a first since the Marois government, in a province where tensions over dueling languages and cultures have simmered for decades. Longtime cabinet minister Kathleen Weil will take on the new role.

$9.5BILLION FOR ALBERTA'S STURGEON REFINERY

It’s been more than a dozen years since Ian MacGregor put in motion a plan to build a diesel refinery in Alberta, which he believes will demonstrate the benefits of producing high-value products at home rather than sending raw bitumen abroad.
But after years of delay, a price tag that surged to $9.5 billion (it was $4 billion in the very early days, then $5.7 billion, then $6.5 billion and then $8.6 billion), changes in government priorities and business conditions, and now some start-up pains, the Sturgeon refinery in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland is expected to produce the first diesel derived from synthetic crude oil at the end of the year, and the first diesel derived from bitumen in early 2018.

ONTARIO'S WIND DICTATORSHIP

In May, 2009, through the Green Energy Act, the Ontario legislature, ruled by the governing Liberals who have been in power for 14 years, made itself the authority over all energy-related industrial wind turbine developments.
Individual property rights were expropriated and local
planning authority was transferred from municipalities to the province.
In effect, Ontario proclaimed itself an energy dictatorship

WYNNE LIBERALS IGNORING ACCOUNTING STANDARDS

“Ontario’s Auditor General uncovered an appalling attempt to hide the true $4 billion cost of Kathleen Wynne’s hydro rebate scheme, a price which will be paid by ratepayers, Brown said in a statement.
“She concluded senior government officials knowingly ignored the government’s own policy for preparing financial statements to create an unnecessary, complex, financing structure designed to keep the true financial impact of its rate reduction scheme off the province’s books.
“More damningly, the Auditor General said the Canadian Public Sector Accountability Standards are the standard for all federal and provincial governments of Canada and that the Liberal Government “has brushed aside these standards,” he said. “The unavoidable and very strong suggestion is that something highly improper has transpired.”

TRUDEAU'S HYPOCRITICAL DOUBLE STANDARD

So Justin Trudeau is incensed, right, given how outraged he was over Stephen Harper’s limited niqab ban? He overturned the Harper ban within 10 days of being sworn in as prime minister, so he’s planning an immediate court challenge to Quebec’s Bill 62, right?
Not exactly.
Because this ban is backed by Quebec Liberals rather than Western Conservatives, Trudeau is being feckless.
"It's not up to the federal government to challenge this," Trudeau told reporters Thursday in Roberval, Que., where, coincidentally, he was campaigning for a Liberal candidate in a federal by-election on Monday.

THE DISASTROUS LIBERAL A-TEAM

NP,  REX MURPHY:  The question is worth reiterating: Is there a single significant policy that Trudeau made central to his party and government that has not been a tangle of confusion, inept communication, reversal, or abandonment? Electoral reform: a messy bust. First-past-the-post. Gone with the wind that produced the promise. The inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women: over the months that it has stumbled along, the inquiry has shed its members, been dismissed by those it was meant to serve, and has had the bitterly ironic result of making relations between aboriginals and government worse than before it started.

URANIUM & DIARRHEA, INC.

STEYN:    The big story this week is that the FBI uncovered a Moscow bribery plot just before the Obama Administration approved the transfer of 20 per cent of American uranium into the hands of the Russians.
And who precisely were the Russkies trying to bribe?

TIME TO REIN IN THE BUILDING INSPECTOR

In a separate case, Frank and Sarah were slated to build their new $650,000 home on Neville Road in South Glengarry. Frank took the spring and summer off from his pipeline job out west to help with the construction.
Sarah’s dad is a major contractor and, as luck would have it, a former local building inspector.
Hence, all the I’s were dotted and the T’s crossed when they went in with their plans, but, alas, the building inspector, who never built a chicken coop, found stuff wrong with the documents.
Time revealed that everything was in order. No matter, there was a problem the second time around

"GANG VIOLENCE" IN SWEDEN

    Twenty members of the Moderate Party in Sweden have proposed the government deploys the armed forces in some of the country’s most dangerous no-go zones to combat “gang violence”.
    Moderate Party politician Mikael Cederbratt made the proposal this week saying: “The situation in our areas of exclusion has deteriorated. The gangs have taken over and the police have had to retreat.  Swedish law no longer applies here.

CRUMBLING FROM WITHIN

The Evangelical Luther Church of American was founded in 1988 with 5,288,230 members. By 2016, less than twenty years later, the ELCA had shrunk to 3,563,842 members. With that kind of "growth," the ELCA has less than forty years before the final member throws her hands up and quits. Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, N.C., believes that they've found the answer to stopping the mass exodus of tithing members. They've stopped preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and have embraced progressive theology and social justice.

A CAPTIVE MEAL

Heather Szilagyi was on a British Airways flight with her seven-year-old daughter and fiancee Eric Neilson on Oct. 10 when she said they noticed what appeared to be bedbugs crawling out of the seat in front of them.
She said the flight attendants couldn’t move them because there were no other available seats on the plane. After landing, Szilagyi discovered they were covered in bites.
“To actually see them pouring out of the back of the TV on the seat, that was actually really gross,” she said.

BOMBARDIER BUSINESS CONTINUES: SUCKING SUBSIDIES

And whatever else may have changed as a result of the deal, the basic elements of the Bombardier business model — sucking subsidies from the government — have not. The CSeries will be controlled in Europe, it will be built in Alabama, but it will still be subsidized in Canada.
Indeed, it’s not quite right to say that Airbus is getting its stake for free. In fact Bombardier is paying it to take it (much as Bombardier was effectively paid to buy De Havilland and Canadair, decades ago). Not only is Airbus paying no cash and assuming no debt, but Bombardier will remain on the hook for any future losses on the project, up to US$700 million. In addition, Airbus receives warrants to buy 100 million subordinate voting shares in Bombardier at the price they were trading at last week; those shares are already worth almost 20 per cent more than that.

MORNEAU'S CRITICAL LACK OF JUDGEMENT

Still, had that been the extent of it — minister takes advantage of loophole, misleads the public, but eventually does what he should have done two years before — that would perhaps be that. It’s what happened in the interim that has landed him in such hot water. For, knowing he was still in possession of his Morneau Shepell shares, the minister introduced legislation that would almost certainly benefit the company, and therefore himself.

MORNEAU'S TIES TO BANK OF CANADA

New details uncovered by the Toronto Sun show that Morneau Shepell — the firm founded by the father of Finance Minister Bill Morneau — has a contract with the Bank of Canada worth over $8 million.

GRANTING REFUGEE STATUS TO PHONY CLAIMANTS

More than 15,100 people have crossed into Canada at unofficial points of entry along the U.S. border since January.

According to new data from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), 10,790 asylum claims were referred to the IRB between March and September. Of the 592 cases – or 5.4 per cent – the IRB processed during that period, 408 – or 69 per cent – were accepted as legitimate refugee claims.

    However, the government is warning that the data should be taken with a grain of salt.

"The statistics released by the IRB are based on a small sample size – only 5 per cent of the total number of asylum claims within this particular cohort that have been referred to the IRB. As such, these early statistics should not be used to draw broader conclusions about asylum seekers who cross from the U.S.," Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen's office said in an e-mail.

 

CELLPHONE TRACKING NEAR PARLIAMENT HILL

The Supreme Court of Canada and a senior executive with the Canada Revenue Agency anxiously reached out to Canada’s communications spy agency for help after the CBC revealed cellphone tracking technology was being used near Parliament Hill, according to documents.
In April, a months-long CBC News and Radio-Canada investigation revealed that someone was using cellphone spying and tracking technology in the parliamentary precinct.

LIBERAL COMPUTER SKILLS AMID GAS PLANT BACKLASH

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty's chief of staff got instructions on how to double delete e-mails in the summer of 2012, a period when the government was under mounting pressure to release documents related to the controversial cancellation of two gas-fired power plants, court documents show.

WHAT VICTORY OVER ISIS LOOKS LIKE

The declarations of victory played out across Iraq and Syria: The long campaigns to retake city after city from Islamic State militants had come to an end.

But the hard-won battles left vast destruction in their wake, and the celebrations from atop the rubble of once-grand buildings are ringing hollow for hundreds of thousands of displaced residents.

Iraqis and Syrians return to cities that are ghosts of their former glory, lacking the infrastructure for normal life to begin again. Now they must grapple with how to rebuild.

 

100 YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD'S SYSTEMIC SEXISM

From the earliest days of Hollywood, women were stage managed and manipulated by older men in powerful positions. And it’s clear that, although Harvey Weinstein has been outed, little has changed

NANNY STATE'S SODA TAX WOES

Just one week after Chicago shockingly repealed their soda ban following a revolt from local business owners (see: Soda Tax Fizzles In Chicago As Cook County Officials Cast Decisive 15-1 Repeal Vote), it seems that Philadelphia's flirtations with forming a more perfect "nanny state" via the elimination of sugary drinks could be on a collision course with a similar fate.
As WHYY points out today, a survey conducted by Philadelphia's Controller Alan Butkovitz — a longtime opponent of the soda tax — found that nine out of 10 businesses reported revenue loss since the city’s sweetened beverage tax took effect earlier this year. Of those reporting revenue loss, 60% of them blamed the soda tax for their woes.

RUSSIA'S ARCTIC OIL DEVELOPMENT

Neither sanctions nor persistently low oil prices are hindering Russia’s ambitions or plans to develop oil resources in its sections of the Arctic.

RULES IN NEED OF AN UPDATE

 Embattled Finance Minister Bill Morneau says he plans to put his substantial personal assets in a blind trust, hoping to tamp down an escalating controversy over conflict of interest allegations that have threatened to undermine the federal Liberal government.

A SELFIE WITH YOUR CREDIT CARD APPLICATION

The selfie is everywhere — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — and soon your bank could be asking for one in order to approve your purchase or credit card application.
Payment processing giant Visa Inc. is launching a platform to allow banks to integrate various types of biometrics — your fingerprint, face, voice, etc. — into approving credit card applications and payments.
Financial companies are particularly interested in biometrics, not surprisingly, as mostly a fraud protection measure. While a birthdate, Social Security number or last name can be more easily stolen or mimicked — as anyone who has been a victim of identity fraud will tell you — it’s much harder to fraudulently mimic a person’s face, fingerprint or voice.

ARCTIC OIL DREAMS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — America within a few years could be extracting oil from federal waters in the Arctic Ocean, but it won’t be from a remote drilling platform.
Federal regulators are taking comments on a draft environmental statement for the Liberty Project, a proposal by a subsidiary of Houston-based Hilcorp to create an artificial gravel island that would hold production wells, a processing facility and the start of an undersea pipeline carrying oil to shore and connections to the trans-Alaska pipeline.

GREEN ENERGY COSTS JOBS

Ontario used to be a jurisdiction with low electricity costs. This was a competitive advantage, helping to attract and keep business and foster economic growth. Recently, however, largely as a result of the Green Energy Act and its induced inefficiencies, Ontario electricity prices have soared, threatening in-dustrial competitiveness, in particular that of the manufacturing sector for which electricity is a major input cost.

SHOW YOUR FACE IN QUEBEC

Quebec has adopted a law that will force people to show their faces when taking the bus or borrowing a book from the library, pushing ahead with legislation that is being criticized for targeting Muslim Canadian women.

Bill 62, which the Justice Minister described as a North American first, requires one's face to be uncovered when giving or receiving public services. The law marks the outcome of a contentious, decade-long debate about the place of religious minorities in Quebec.

 

EUROPE'S LOST TESTICLES

There have been odious incidents of European women being groped, stripped, and sexually assaulted by Islamic criminals in public venues, unchallenged by what passes for European manhood. Just as odious is the pressure brought to bear on those seeking to publicize such incidents. In the US, your “intellectual” credentials aren’t in order unless you hail Europe as a “model.” It’s a model all right, for what happens when governments have no fear of their citizens. Europe’s emasculation is a potent argument for full firearms freedom in the United States.

CLINTON FOUNDATION LINK TO RUSSIAN BRIBERY

As The Hill pointed out earlier this morning, the latest development in this sordid tale revolves around a man that the FBI used as an informant back in 2009 and beyond to build a case against a Russian perpetrator who ultimately admitted to bribery, extortion and money laundering.  The informant, who is so far only known as "Confidential Source 1," says that when he attempted to come forward last year with information that linked the Clinton Foundation directly to the scandal he was promptly silenced by the FBI and the Obama administration.

MORNEAU'S FINANCES

The stink surrounding Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s finances is getting worse.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION OF THE WYNNE LIBERALS

   It will cost them — read, Ontario taxpayers — an additional $4 billion in interest fees, money that loan sharks like to call their “juice.”
“Anywhere else in Canada, you won’t see this done,” said Lysyk. “The government’s proposal is to treat that ($4 billion) loss as an asset.
“That’s like you treating your credit card debt as an asset in your books. Does that sound right to you?”

BOMBARDIER'S ACT OF DESPERATION

But its move to cede control of the C Series now for zero cash seems like an act of desperation. Airbus's undertaking to keep the C Series program and the current jobs associated with it based in Quebec is, like most such agreements, unenforceable. If C Series sales fail to take off, or a downturn hits the entire aerospace sector, as it surely will at some point, guess which jobs will go first?

INCONSISTENT WITH THE TRUTH

In the exquisitely even-handed manner that is his trademark and in his usual careful language, Ontario’s former top public servant Tuesday called former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty a big fat liar.
Peter Wallace was being cross-examined by Brian Gover, lawyer for former McGuinty chief of staff David Livingston.
Livingston and his former deputy, Laura Miller, are pleading not guilty to charges relating to their alleged destruction of documents about the McGuinty government’s billion-dollar decision to cancel two gas-fired electricity plants in Oakville and Mississauga.

INVESTIGATIONG THE CLINTONS

As the mainstream media continues to obsess over $100,000 worth Facebook ads allegedly purchased by Russian spies in 2016 seeking to throw the presidential election, we're almost certain they'll ignore the much larger Russian bombshell dropped today in the form of newly released FBI documents that reveal for the very first time that the Obama administration was well aware of illegal bribery, extortion and money laundering schemes being conducted by the Russians to get a foothold in the atomic energy business in the U.S. before approving a deal that handed them 20% of America's uranium reserves and resulted in a windfall of donations to the Clinton Foundation. 

POT-IMPAIRED DRIVING

“THC is a more complex molecule than alcohol and the science is unable to provide general guidance to drivers about how much cannabis can be consumed before it is unsafe to drive or before the proposed levels would be exceeded.”
How much marijuana can you consume and still be safe to drive? The government doesn’t know.
How much marijuana can you consume before you’re over the legal limit? The government doesn’t know.

LIBERALS COSTING ONTARIANS AN EXTRA $4BILLION

The Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government is flouting accounting rules and taking on an unnecessary $4 billion in extra borrowing costs — to be applied to future electricity bills — to keep the true cost of its Fair Hydro Plan buried, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk says.
A battle between accountants is not usually the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, but Queen’s Park was enthralled Tuesday as Lysyk and her experts faced off against the government and its counter experts.

MORNEAU'S LACK OF JUDGEMENT

That’s why Morneau’s continuing troubles are so disheartening. Canada needs someone like him up there steering the ship, above reproach. But this past week has seriously called Morneau’s judgment into question.
But he’s yet to be completely forthcoming with the public and opposition. On Monday, Prime Minister Trudeau ran interference for his key minister at a Stouffville, Ontario, press conference, insisting on answering questions put directly to Morneau, who stood beside the PM, about his undisclosed villa in France.
“You have to ask a question of me first – because you get a chance to talk to the Prime Minister,” Trudeau bizarrely said.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

re Boyle & Coleman: 
As for their rescue by Pakistan’s army, Amrullah Saleh, a former national security advisor of Afghanistan, wrote in the Indian Express, in a story headlined, “Donald Trump is taken in by Pakistan’s deceitful acts”:
“It is an open secret in Kabul that the US-Canadian couple and their family that was recently rescued had been kept in Waziristan for some time, in the exact same part of Pakistan where the Pakistan army only recently declared Mission Accomplished in its Zarb-e-Azb operation and sent all the bad and unwanted terrorists to Afghanistan ... So when they were released as a result of a well-planned, well-executed surgical operation in which only four tyres of a vehicle were punctured, we all laughed.”

NENSHI RETURNED AS CALGARY'S MAYOR

High turnout in the campaign resulted in long line-ups at the polls and some voting stations running out of ballots on Monday. 
Polls officially closed at 8 p.m., though those who were already in line at the time were still able to cast their ballots.
But with some frustrated voters choosing to leave rather than wait, the chaos at the polling stations had caused some consternation among the campaigns.

DIY NUCLEAR BUNKER

The elderly couple has survived all manner of calamity in recent weeks, except for the one disaster they have actually been preparing for over the past 50 years — a nuclear war. Beach is the founder of Ark Two, a privately owned, 10,000-square-foot nuclear fallout shelter, sunk beneath several metres of concrete and soil on a 12.5 acre parcel of land near his home. And, yes, the 83-year-old is accustomed to being dismissed as a “kook.”

TRUDEAU'S TAX REFORM SURRENDER

NP, Ivison:   Justin Trudeau attempted to convince the nation that it was always the government’s intention to menace small businesses with the prospect of hefty tax increases, then turn around and offer an across-the-board tax-cut sweetener.
Does he think our heads zip up at the back?

ARE CANADIAN TAXPAYERS OFF THE HOOK NOW?

Bombardier Inc. has struck an agreement to sell control of its marquee C Series airliner program to Europe's Airbus Group SE, a bet that handing the keys to a better-financed global giant will ensure the Canadian plane maker's future in the face of relentless competition and punishingly high tariffs imposed by the United States.

REVENUE MINISTER DENIES LAYING BLAME

     Canada's revenue minister denied throwing public servants under the bus Monday, a few days after her staff blamed her department's civil servants for a public outcry over taxing employee benefits.
"I was not made aware," Diane Lebouthillier repeated, fingering the bureaucrats she said she wasn't blaming. "Dommage, I was never made aware. It's administrative work. It did not make its way up to my office, but as soon as we were made aware, we took measures."
    Last week, Lebouthillier asked her department to delete a folio — a document explaining the upcoming tax changes for the 2017 financial year — from the government's website. The folio, which was published in 2016, had caught the eye of the Retail Council of Canada, which sounded the alarm last month.

DOESN'T PASS THE SNIFF TEST

 “Hey, let’s make the best of this and at least go home with a larger start on our dream family.”

ISLAMIC STATE CALIPHATE COLLAPSES

The Islamic State group once drew recruits from near and far with promises of paradise but now bodies of jihadists lie in mass graves or at the mercy of wild dogs as its "caliphate" collapses.
Flies buzz around human remains poking through the dusty earth in the Iraqi town of Dhuluiyah, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, at a hastily-dug pit containing the bodies of dozens of IS fighters killed in 2015.

TOO MANY PEOPLE DO NOT WORK

“The basic problem I think in the United States is that too many people don’t work,” said Ron Haskins, a former senior adviser for welfare policy under President George W. Bush and current Brookings Institution fellow. “There’s no question that it’s getting worse. It’s been getting worse for 40 years. So we should not rescue people who don’t work without getting something in return.”

Horn noted that more than 50 percent of work-eligible participants in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program did not log a single work-related hour in the month prior to enrolling. That includes preparing to go to work, looking for work, training or education.

 

KURZ WIN IN AUSTRIA

While the center-left SPÖ campaigned on a track record of lowering unemployment and of economic growth, Kurz's ÖVP promised to prevent a repeat of 2015's wave of migration and cut access to social welfare benefits for newcomers for at least five years.
In a poll by state broadcaster ORF, 55 percent of respondents that voted for the ÖVP said they did so because of their stance on asylum and integration.

TRUDEAU'S BROKEN PROMISES

Halfway through his electoral mandate, won on the night of Oct. 19, 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a sudden and unexpected drop in the polls, along with a growing list of broken promises from that election.

LIBERAL WEASEL WORDS

The Liberal government has yet to explain how it intends to fulfil Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge not to go after anyone’s employee discounts -- despite that promise contradicting how the Canada Revenue Agency enforces the law.

ONTARIO COLLEGE FACULTIES ON STRIKE

Faculty at 24 Ontario colleges went on strike late Sunday, affecting more than 500,000 students.
The Ontario Public Services Employees Union says the two sides couldn’t resolve their differences by a strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Monday.

EPA'S KANGAROO COURT PROCESS

EPA then used its carbon dioxide “Endangerment Finding” to justify anti-fossil fuel regulations, close down coal-fired power plants, block pipeline construction, and exempt wind and solar installations from endangered species rules. It put the agency in control of America’s energy, economy, job creation and living standards. It drove up energy prices, killed numerous jobs, and sent families into energy poverty.
EPA’s egregious misconduct inflicted significant harm on our nation. Having acted to repeal the Obama Clean Power Plan, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt must reverse carbon dioxide’s conviction and scuttle the Endangerment Finding that serves as the foundation and justification for the agency’s war on coal, oil and natural gas. Any harm from fossil fuels or carbon dioxide is minuscule, compared to the extensive damages inflicted by the decision and subsequent regulations.

VENEZUELA'S $3.5BILLION DEBT PAYMENT IS DUE

With its coffers empty and its financial moves restricted by U.S. sanctions, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government is facing a nightmarish scenario with the approach of Halloween, when a series of debt payments totaling more than $3.5 billion are due.
Analysts said the government will do everything possible to make the payments, even if it means further cuts in already reduced food imports, which would deepen shortages in a country where a majority of people cannot get three meals a day. 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article178518756.html#storylink=cpy

AUSTRIA VOTES

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election that is expected to see 31-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz become chancellor on a pledge to take a hard line on refugees and prevent a repeat of Europe’s migration crisis.

IS RELIGIOUS SELF-DEFENSE "HATE"?

The conflict between the Buddhist majority in Myanmar (Burma) and the Muslim ethnic minority known as the Rohingya is intensifying, and the Buddhists are winning, forcing the Muslims across the border into Bangladesh or into boats bound for Malaysia, both Islamic lands. Naturally, the western media takes a very dim view of this.

WHEN POLICY WRITERS INHALE

The federal government has released a draft of its planned drug concentration levels but admits the new rules provide no guidance on how much marijuana it would take to push a driver over the legal limit.
The lack of clarity worries Kyla Lee, a Vancouver-based criminal defence lawyer who specializes in impaired driving cases.  Lee calls the proposal "absurd."
"That's incredibly concerning. Because you have the government saying we don't think this is criminal but we're going to create a criminal offence for it in order to prevent it from getting to the level where it might be criminal. That's unheard of in our legal history," Lee said.
Got that?

INNOCENTS ABROAD. OR NOT

What were Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle really doing in Afghanistan?
Boyle's version of events.

ALIENATING CANADA'S WEST

It was not at all helpful that the less-than-affable Montreal mayor, Denis Coderre, declared it a “victory for Canada” when TransCanada withdrew its licence application for Energy East, a pipeline project that actually would have provided market-diversification benefits to the national economy. It would be no different than if the mayor of, say, Winnipeg — home to a Boeing plant — declared it a Canadian victory after the U.S. Commerce Department slapped on two import duties on Quebec’s heavily subsidized Bombardier planes.
Coderre’s insensitive comment reminds many Western Canadians of their own past grievances. It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father who, with the 1980 National Energy Program, imposed a breathtakingly unfair wealth transfer from Western provinces to Central Canada.

THE TAXMAN COMETH

The Justin Trudeau government has announced that it is giving the CRA $444 million more over several years “to detect, audit and combat tax evasion and avoidance...These measures will enable the CRA to recover $2.6 billion in additional federal revenues.”

TESLA: THE STINKING MESS

Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired, although Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, and added that it expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition. Tesla employs about 10,000 workers at its Fremont factory; it lost $336 million in the second quarter, and burned through a record $1.16 billion in cash in Q2, or $13 million per day.

HUG A TURKEY OR HUG A TREE?

Eastern North America’s wild turkey population is growing so fast that two Pennsylvania scientists say they are damaging parts of forests in their state, and Ontario could suffer as well.
The Ministry of Natural Resources brought American turkeys into southwestern Ontario in the 1980s, and in 1997 released the first couple of dozen in Eastern Ontario, in Renfrew County.
The ministry described them at the time as “like a grouse on steroids.”
But these are different birds than the native Ontario ones — a bird that is hardier in cold, happy to browse in farm fields, not afraid to live near people, and able to multiply fast. Today, there are many thousands here and in West Quebec, and more than 70,000 across Ontario.

COUILLARD SHUFFLES AND MISDEALS

So, it was mainly Kathleen Weil’s fault that the Liberals lost the Louis-Hébert byelection. At least that’s the impression you might get from Premier Philippe Couillard’s emergency cabinet shuffle this week.
The shuffle was hastily improvised in response to the rout of the governing Liberals at the hands of the Coalition Avenir Québec party in Louis-Hébert nine days earlier; it was immediately after the byelection that rumours of an early shuffle began to circulate.

WHAT HAPPENED TO COMPETENCE & MERIT?

Many universities across Canada are introducing term limits for their Canada Research Chairs to get new academics into the jobs as the prestigious program struggles to meet diversity targets set by a court settlement.

CALLING BULLSH!T ON LIBERAL SURPRISE

My friend reminded me that the first Finance Minister to propose taxing employee discounts was Allan MacEachen – in 1983! When Justin’s father, Pierre, was prime minister!
Discount sweaters for mall clothing store clerks have, apparently, been a bee in the bonnet of some Liberals for a third of a century.
There is no way the current Liberal government was caught unawares. Nor was CRA going rogue.
On Tuesday, Liberal MPs were saying this was nothing more than the clarification of an existing rule – nothing to get excited about.
By Wednesday, after the manure hit the public fan, Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier was claiming to be “deeply disappointed” by the bureaucrats in her department who had released this change without her say-so.

QUELLE SURPRISE!

"Cage-free" eggs were supposed to be the next big thing in America.  Over the past several years everyone from McDonalds to Wal-Mart has promised to convert to cage-free eggs on the premise that millennial consumers would demand at least 144 square inches of space for the layers of their morning omelettes to frolic in freedom. As it turns out, Americans couldn't seem to care less whether chickens have 144 square inches of freedom or the hisotrical 67 square inches...they just want cheap eggs, hold the bullshit. 

A FOOL'S HOMECOMING

If we are expected to express joy at the release of Canadian Joshua Boyle who was held hostage five years by Taliban-linked extremists, excuse us if we take a pass.
He’s both an idiot and a fool.
He’s such an idiot that the much-married backpacker was once married to Omar Khadr’s al-Qaeda-loving sister, and we are firm believers in being judged by the company one keeps.

THE PANAMA PAPERS

Some familiar Canadian names.

CONTRADICTIONS & CONDESCENSION

Steyn:  When a decent old stiff such as Mitt Romney talks earnestly about looking for suitable female job candidates and clumsily distills the effort into the phrase "binders full of women", all the smart sophisticated types jump on it and make it a punchline for an antiquated condescension that only confirms how irredeemably misogynist the GOP is.
By contrast, when Harvey Weinstein corners a TV reporter in the corridor of his restaurant and forces her to watch as he unzips his pants, masturbates, and finally concludes the performance by ejaculating into a pot plant, all you hear, from a couple of larger leaves round the back of the plant, are drenched crickets chirping. Three decades of crickets chirping.

ONTARIO'S NEW SMART METERS

Pre-pay. Or we will SHUT YOU OFF.