THE BLESSING OF THE BOSS

There is an old expression, "a fish rots from the head down," meaning that in any organization, leadership sets the tone.  For better or for worse.  Where does the DOJ-FBI rot begin?

ONTARIANS PAYING FOR POINTLESS FUEL STANDARDS

McKittrick & Auld, FP: Ontario has announced plans to double the required content of ethanol in our gasoline, from five per cent to 10 per cent. This regrettable decision will have harmful effects on everyone. It will worsen the mileage of gasoline, raise food and fuel costs and yield minuscule environmental gains at best.
Ratcheting up the ethanol mandate also defeats the purpose of Ontario’s new cap-and-trade system. The logic of carbon pricing through permit trading is that it leads the market to identify and implement the lowest-cost ways of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If ethanol blending was cost-effective then, under cap and trade, fuel producers would do it automatically.

FORCING TECH GIANTS TO FIGHT EXTREMISM

     Britain may impose new taxes on tech giants like Google and Facebook unless they do more to combat online extremism by taking down material aimed at radicalizing people or helping them to prepare attacks, the country’s security minister said.
    Ben Wallace accused tech firms of being happy to sell people’s data but not to give it to the government which was being forced to spend vast sums on de-radicalization programs, surveillance and other counter-terrorism measures.

IRAN CRACKS DOWN ON DEMONSTRATORS

   Iran warned of a crackdown on Sunday against demonstrators who pose one of the biggest challenges to the government and clerical leadership since a revolution in 1979.

    Tens of thousands of Iranians have protested across the country since Thursday against the Islamic Republic’s unelected clerical elite and Iranian foreign policy in the region. They have also chanted slogans in support of political prisoners.

   Demonstrators initially vented their anger over economic hardships and alleged corruption but they have also begun to call on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to step down.

 

WYNNE'S DISASTROUS HYDRO LEGACY

As we enter 2018, here’s a legacy from her past four years as Ontario’s premier that Kathleen Wynne would prefer no one talk about.
  It’s that since she became premier in February, 2013,  there’s been a 19% increase in residential hydro disconnections, a 28% increase in hydro accounts in arrears and a 40% hike in customer debt owed to provincial electricity distributors.
This is what happens when, as two Ontario auditors general warned for years, a government ignores the advice of its own energy experts in its mad pursuit of so-called “green energy,” without doing a proper cost-benefit analysis or developing a meaningful business plan.

FRAU MERKEL'S GERMANY

Organisers of Berlin's New Year's Eve celebrations are to set up a "safe zone" for women for the first time.

2017, A BANNER YEAR OF STUPIDITY

It was another year of living stupidly.
In the great big world outside Toronto and in the centre of the universe that is Toronto.

COMPLAINTS AGAINST TORONTO POLICE SERVICE

A police sergeant with nearly 20 years on the force is coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination within the Toronto Police Service in a recent complaint to Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal.

REBECCA POWLEY IN ACTION

Rebecca Powley hopped on a bus for the first time in 25 years on Thursday. She ended the trip a hero.
The Orillia woman says she was forced to take action after she noticed something unusual about the driver on her Ontario Northland bus trip to Toronto on Highway 401 eastbound near Keele Street.

RUSSIAN TANKERS SUPPLYING NORTH KOREA

LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian tankers have supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in recent months by transferring cargoes at sea, according to two senior Western European security sources, providing an economic lifeline to the secretive Communist state.

WORLD ENERGY CONSUMPTION PROJECTIONS

The latest EIA 2017 IEO report projects world energy consumption to increase by 28% from 2015 through 2040.
Despite ‘green dreams’, the EIA report projects fossil and nuclear fuels will provide 83% of total world energy in 2040.

TREACHEROUS BASHAR AL-ASSAD

ARLINGTON, Va. -- A deputy commander for Operation Inherent Resolve said today that ISIS fighters are moving "with impunity" in areas held by Bashar al-Assad's regime, but the coalition does not intend to strike at ISIS as they take haven in these regions.

At the beginning of the year, oil deals between Assad and ISIS constituted one of the largest revenue sources for the terror group, according to U.S. and European officials, even as Assad claimed his regime fought ISIS. The "millions and millions of dollars of trade," as noted by a Treasury official in 2015, between Assad and ISIS was detected from the early days of the caliphate.

THINGS THAT BECAME RACIST IN 2017

Whatever else 2017 is remembered for, there’s no doubt it was a banner year for people accusing others of racism. Left, right, black, white or brown; the only thing people seemed to agree on in 2017 was that everyone was racist except them. And we don’t want to alarm you, but sometimes those accusations had a tendency to be a bit overblown. Below, a shortlist of all the things that suddenly became “racist” in 2017

THE RIDICULOUS FEDERAL BENEFITS TRIBUNAL

OTTAWA — Some disabled Canadians fighting for government benefits are being forced by a federal tribunal to hire lawyers, a move that has baffled advocates and appears to fly in the face of Liberal plans for the appeals body.
"How are they supposed to afford a lawyer? It's just ridiculous," said James Hicks, national co-ordinator of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.
"If you don't have to bring lawyers to the first two levels of appeal, why would you have to bring one to the last? It's not a legal issue, it's a qualification issue."

FUN FACTS ABOUT THE USA FEDERAL WORKFORCE

The folks at Open The Books decided to take a deep dive into the salaries of 1.97 million federal employees, using data collected from the Office Of Personnel Management and the USPS via FOIA requests, and the endless examples of excessive pay and pure waste are sure to make you sick, if not downright suicidal.

NEW CIVIL WAR IN USA

From the Mueller investigation to Federal judges declaring that President Trump doesn’t have the right to control immigration policy or command the military, from political sabotage at the DOJ by Obama appointees like Sally Yates to Patagonia’s lawsuit over national monuments, the cold civil war set off by the left’s rejection of the 2016 election results has been a paper war largely waged by lawyers.

RUSSIAGATE SKEPTIC DEBATES PROFESSIONAL RUSSIAGATER

Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.

GLOBAL PETROLEUM SURVEY 2017

This report presents the results of the Fraser Institute’s 11th annual survey of petroleum industry executives and managers regarding barriers to investment in oil and gas exploration and production facilities in various jurisdictions around the globe. The survey responses have been tallied to rank provinces, states, other geographical regions (e.g., offshore areas), and countries according to the extent of such barriers. Those barriers, as assessed by the survey respondents, include high tax rates, costly regulatory obligations, uncertainty over environmental regulations and the interpretation and administration of regulations governing the “upstream” petroleum industry, and concerns over political stability and security of personnel and equipment.

TRUMP COLLUDES WITH RUSSIA BY ARMING UKRAINE

President Trump is colluding with Russia he has an odd way of showing it. He unleashed America’s energy resources, most recently in Alaska’s ANWR, which puts downward pressure on oil prices, which is the only thing Putin’s Russia has to sell. Then he revives missile defense including a pledge to Poland to deploy missile defenses there.
Now he has announced plans to reverse the policy of the Obama administration, which stood silently when Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea and attacked Ukraine, and sell the Ukrainians lethal defensive weaponry, including anti-tank missiles designed to destroy Putin’s Russian tanks in the hands of separatist rebels

DARING TO CRITICIZE ISLAM

Note from Robert Spencer: It is unconscionable that Christine Douglass-Williams has been dismissed from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for calling attention to the reality of jihad terror. Whether the Canadian government likes it or not, and however it stigmatizes and attempts to marginalize honest discussion of these issues, jihad terror is a grim reality and they will not be able to avoid it or den it forever. Canada, by dismissing Ms. Douglass-Williams for writing for Jihad Watch, is buying into the notion that it is offensive and wrong to track, publicize, and oppose jihad terror and Sharia supremacist activity. Once we are all silenced, the jihad will be able to advance unopposed and unimpeded. Apparently that is what Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Joly want.

FUND RAISING, ISIS STYLE

Iraqi officials reported that the Islamic State, which lost their physical caliphate territory in Iraq this year, raked in half a million U.S. dollars from kidnappings in 2017 in one governorate alone.

OIL PRICE HIGHEST SINCE 2015

Oil is poised for a fourth straight monthly advance as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners including Russia cut output and promise to continue doing so through the end of next year. In the U.S., a rising rig count has slowed. Oil rigs are holding at 747 with no rigs added last week, according to Baker Hughes data Friday.
West Texas Intermediate crude neared $60 a barrel as futures in New York and London reached the highest in more than two years.

NOTLEY'S FAIRY TALES

Nearly two years after being laid off as an electrician in Alberta’s flailing oil and gas sector, the 42-year-old is training to become a wind turbine technician.
“It is tough to find work right now. It’s not like it was before,” said Kokas in a class at Lethbridge College, one of two institutions in Western Canada that offers training and the only one with a one-year certificate program.
“Oil and gas used to be our bread and butter, but it isn’t any more.

IT'S A GOOD START

Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.), announced Sunday night that the federal government has reduced its contribution to the U.N.’s annual budget by 285 million dollars.

DRUG VIOLENCE IN MEXICO

It is 11 years since the then president Felipe Calderón launched a militarised crackdown on drug cartels deploying thousands of soldiers and promising an end to the violence and impunity. But the bloodletting continues, the rule of law remains elusive and accusations of human rights abuses by state security forces abound.
All the while, Mexico continues to race past a series a grim milestones: more than 200,000 dead and an estimated 30,000 missing, more than 850 clandestine graves unearthed. This year is set to be the country’s bloodiest since the government started releasing crime figures in 1997, with about 27,000 murders in the past 12 months.

EXTREME COLD WARNINGS ACROSS CANADA

In British Columbia, the agency warned that the Yoho Park and Kootenay Park region could see wind chills as low as -40 C due to a cold arctic ridge of high pressure that it predicts will remain over the region for several days.
Much of Alberta, Manitoba and the entirety of Saskatchewan were also subject to the warnings, and Environment Canada says the frigid temperatures are expected to continue through the end of the week.
Environment Canada issued the warning for parts of northern Ontario too, along with a snow squall warning for Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

ATLANTIC CANADA STORM HAMMERED

Hundreds of Nova Scotia Power crews will spend Boxing Day stitching together power lines snapped by a winter storm that brought damaging winds to Atlantic Canada on Christmas Day.
Just over 47,000 homes and businesses in Nova Scotia remained without electricity as of about 10:30 a.m. Around 58,000 customers who were blacked out had their power returned by late Monday night.

THE ORNAMENTAL PRIME MINISTER

Dawson described how Trudeau sees meetings as a way "to further develop a relationship between the individual and Canada" and his role in those meetings "as ceremonial in nature."
While the role of prime minister is often as facilitator, the prime minister is always on government business, said Alex Marland, a professor of political science at Memorial University in St. John's, N.L.
"The prime minister is always operating in a business environment the moment that person becomes prime minister. It is totally ridiculous to me that you could somehow say no, I'm not doing this as prime minister."

CHRISTIAN REFUGEES RETURN TO IRAQ

   Since Obama’s Arab Spring, over a million Christians have fled Iraq and Syria. The number of Iraqi Christians fell by two thirds. Obama wouldn’t call it genocide. He wouldn’t hammer ISIS.
 And so the people of this country elected a president who would do the job that Obama wouldn’t do. 
   After the liberation of Mosul, President Trump declared that, “The victory in Mosul, a city where ISIS once proclaimed its so-called “caliphate,” signals that its days in Iraq and Syria are numbered. “ And since then the Islamic rulers who once threatened to put Trump and the Christians of Iraq to the sword have instead become refugees. And in Mosul and across Iraq, the Christian refugees are coming home.

CANADA'S REAL ESTATE MARKET PREDICTIONS 2018

Canadian home prices are expected to cool significantly next year as tighter mortgage rules come into effect and as further expected interest rate hikes are likely to dampen a market that has been stoked by cheap borrowing, a Reuters poll found.

ONTARIANS STRUGGLING TO PAY HYDRO BILLS

During the past four years, under Wynne’s watch, there’s been a 19% increase in residential hydro disconnections, a 28% increase in arrears and a 40% increase in customer debt owed to provincial electricity distributors.
Over the same time period, those utilities saw just a 4% increase in new customers.

THE WORLD'S PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

This Christmas, we should pray for the safety and survival of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, and we should demand that our politicians provide aid and protection to the world’s persecuted Christians.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Five-year-old Logan’s eyes were as big as  mince tarts  when he saw Toronto’s finest coming through his door with armfuls of Christmas gifts on Sunday.
Members of the Toronto Police Service spent the day delivering van-loads of gifts and enough fresh food to last the holidays to families who suffered a traumatic event this year.

MACRON'S PROPOSAL BEGGARS BELIEF

   Fighting terrorism is now morphing into clamping down on human migration, as far as the European Union is concerned.
   France’s President Emmanuel Macron is leading the charge, claiming at a conference in Paris last week that terrorism and human trafficking are part of the same problem, requiring the deployment of a military force spread across Africa.
   Rather than sniffing at “populist” politics in Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands and Germany – and denigrating it as “fascist” – European leaders need to question their own responsibility.

WARRANTLESS ENTRY BY MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES

QUEEN’S PARK — Warrantless entry by municipal authorities is the new normal, according to Municipal Affairs Critic Ernie Hardeman (PC – Oxford).
Hardeman told Farmers Forum that Bill 139 will allow officers of a conservation authority and members or employees of the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, which will replace the Ontario Municipal Board, to enter private land in their jurisdiction without a warrant. The bill passed its final vote Dec. 12.

CHRISTMAS IN FRANCE

PARIS — France’s government is deploying nearly 100,000 police and soldiers for the holiday season as fears of extremist attacks remain high.

YEAR 1 LIST: TRUMP'S 81 MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS

With the passage of the GOP tax bill this week, the Trump administration has scored 81 major achievements in its first year, making good on campaign promises to provide significant tax cuts, boost U.S. energy production, and restore respect to the United States, according to the White House.
And along the way, President Trump even outdid his own expectations and slashed at least 11 major legacy items of former President Barack Obama, including cracking down on the open border, slowing recognition of communist Cuba and effectively killing Obamacare by ending the mandate that everyone have health insurance or face a tax.

FRAUD DRIVING UP AUTO INSURANCE COSTS

 Fraudulent claims related to car accidents will hit $2billion in Ontario in 2018.  

THE CHINESE DRAGON INCINERATES THE CANADIAN SJW's

Ottawa's cynical hypocrisy with regard to appeasing Canadians on Chinese rights and freedoms played out again during Trudeau's visit to China. One would have to be naive to believe that genuine labour, gender or environmental reforms could be incorporated into a trade deal with a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship.

WYNNE IGNORING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

The Muslim community has had a challenging year with rising Islamophobia in Canada and the world, Premier Kathleen Wynne told the 2017 Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference
The Ontario Legislature passed a motion to condemn Islamophobia in all its forms, and her government is creating an anti-racism directorate and released an action plan, she said.
Ontario is building a society that is based on tolerance and acceptance, and awareness that everyone other than indigenous people, came from somewhere else, she said.

DEFICITS UNTIL AT LEAST 2040

The federal government is projecting deficits until at least 2040, a finance report quietly released Friday reveals. The federal debt is also set to hit $1 trillion for the first time in 2035.
These shocking figures are actually an improvement upon the long-term economic and fiscal projections released this time last year.

WARNING CANADA OF RUSSIAN MEDDLING

Boudreau said Canada's current foreign policy doesn't appear ready to meet the Russian threat.
"This focused and disciplined approach to realizing Russian national interests -- often based on calculations looking through the prism of national security -- is pretty much the antithesis of Canada's Charmin-like soft power priorities like gender equality, protection of civilians in conflict, UN peacekeeping conferences (and) environmental protection."

NOTLEY BORROWS $37BILLION; BUSINESS AS USUAL

Finance department spokesman Mike Berezowsky said the order simply gives authority to the borrowing plans running through the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year that were laid out in the spring budget.
“It’s not like we’re borrowing $37 billion tomorrow,” said Berezowsky.
“What this $37 billion represents is … the next two fiscal years as published in the budget 2017 fiscal plan.”
That borrowing, and total debt projected to sit at $71.1 billion by the end of 2019-20, has prompted fierce criticism from opposition parties.

LIBERALS

Are Grinches.

A LUMP OF COAL

For Catherine McKenna.

EUROPE'S TOLERANCE FOR TERRORISTS

   The Netherlands, like many European countries, has welcomed in Syrian refugees and other Muslim migrants. And then it’s done its best to cover up the violence that they brought with them.
Amsterdam’s authorities have behaved the way that the Cologne police did after the mass migrant sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve. The police did little to stop them and the authorities denied everything. It was only when police sources leaked the truth about the assaults that the authorities were forced to put on a show of doing something. And that’s just as true in Amsterdam and across Europe.
  European governments would rather tolerate terrorists than fight them. The No-Go Zone isn’t just a place; it’s a state of mind. The No-Go Zone is anywhere that Islamic supremacism is asserted with no meaningful resistance from law enforcement. The No-Go Zone can appear at any moment near you.

AS THE UN CONDEMNS RECOGNITION OF JERUSALEM

   U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned that America would be "taking names" of countries who voted against the United States. President Trump said Wednesday, "They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."
   The final vote was 128 in favor of the resolution, nine against and 35 abstentions. The "no" votes came from the U.S., Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, Honduras, and Guatemala. Britain voted in favor of the resolution, while Canada and Mexico abstained.

TRUDEAU MUST THINK IT'S POSITIVE OPTICS

After all, what prime minister in his right mind would meet in his parliamentary office with a man who was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the infamous, jihad-endorsing sister of Guantanamo Bay poster boy and terrorist, Omar Khadr, now a rich former al-Qaeda bombmaker thanks to $10-plus million in taxpayers’ money for Canada not riding to his rescue soon enough?
Yet, there was Trudeau, sitting with the Canadian convert to Islam who was captured and held hostage by a Taliban-linked group while traipsing through Afghanistan with his pregnant wife.

DRUGGED-DRIVING IN CANADA

A survey done for Health Canada suggests that 39 per cent of people who admitted to smoking pot say they've driven within two hours of smoking up.
The survey was conducted last spring when the government was preparing to table legislation not only to regulate the sale of legal marijuana but also toughen up Canada's impaired driving laws.

TRUDEAU'S ELUSIVE POSITION ON TPP

   Japan’s former ambassador to Canada has added his voice to those concerned that confusion over Ottawa’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership could affect the relationship between the two countries.
At last month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, Trudeau’s decision not to attend a meeting of leaders of the 11 countries negotiating the trade deal — a meeting which the other countries expected would finalize an agreement in principle — “grated on Japanese sensitivities,”
   The 11 countries still walked away from Vietnam with an agreement in principle on a Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership — the deal renamed per a request from Canada.

MORE STUPIDITY FROM PM TRUDEAU

Justin Trudeau says a lot of stupid things, but this week, the Prime Minister has outdone himself.
According to Trudeau, ISIS fighters can be “an extraordinarily powerful voice” in Canada. 
In a year-end interview with CTV, Trudeau was asked several questions about national security – revealing the Liberal government’s various blind spots when it comes to combatting Islamist terrorism.

GROCERY CHAINS FIXING PRICE OF BAKED GOODS

Two of Loblaws' biggest rivals in the grocery business say they are fully co-operating with an investigation by Canada's Competition Bureau into allegations of fixing prices for baked goods, and add that they don't believe they have run afoul of Canada's competition rules.
On Tuesday, Loblaws said it had participated in a scheme to set the price for certain baked goods for more than a decade, but would avoid punishment in the case because it had tipped off the competition watchdog once upper management became aware of it.

NO CANADIAN TERRORISTS ON UN LIST

The Canadian government insists it's using "all available tools" to find, detain and convict citizens who have travelled overseas for the purposes of terrorism, but it hasn't submitted a single name to the UN committee that maintains a sanctions list of international jihadists.
UN Resolution 2253 encourages all member states to actively submit the names of individuals and entities that support ISIS and al-Qaeda.

YA GOT SOCKS FOR THAT?

Justin Trudeau, who came into office vowing to set the gold standard for transparency and ethical behaviour, became Wednesday the first prime minister found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules.
Federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson concluded Trudeau violated the rules when he vacationed last Christmas at the private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan and when his wife and children vacationed on the same island months earlier in March 2016.

POLITICIANS IGNORING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

What becomes of this optimism if it turns out that IQs are now falling across the developed world..? Something has happened in the last decade or so that has put progress into reverse in some countries and failed gifted children in others. We need to find out why and what to do to make sure its upward trajectory is restored.
  "Something" has "happened", eh? In 1900 Sweden's foreign-born population was 0.07 per cent - or 35, 627, of whom all but 300 were from Europe or North America. By 2010 Sweden's foreign-born population was just under 15 per cent - or 1.33 million, of whom two-thirds were born outside the EU. In 2015, they admitted so many Muslim "refugees" that in the space of a single year they overtook China's "one child"-policy sex imbalance (119 boys for every 100 girls) and in their late-teen cohort now have 123 boys for every 100 girls. In the space of a century, from 1950 to 2050, Sweden will have gone from an homogeneous ethnic state with barely any visible minority population to a land in which ethnic Swedes will themselves be the minority.

INVESTIGATING THE AWANS

Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller is out with a follow-up to a report on the Awan Pakistani IT family who had access to highly sensitive Congressional networks, both on-site and from Pakistan, where they are suspected of a variety of crimes -including brokering classified information to hostile foreign governments. Of note, they had access to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - whose members have top secret clearance and are looking into Russian election interference.

TAX CUTS; STOP CORPORATE WELFARE

And it’s not just the automobile industry that the Ontario taxpayer subsidizes. Numerous companies in the software business, gas and mining, paper production, and gold and diamonds all received millions of dollars each as part of last year’s corporate welfare spending.

EDUCATING PM TRUDEAU

Canada needs to immediately join a revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership that does not include the United States or it will miss its chance to deepen trade links with Asia, warns ex-Liberal cabinet minister, John Manley.
Canada needs to forge ahead with the revamped TPP because that will deliver a multilateral free trade agreement with Japan, its fourth largest trading partner, he said.

75,000 WITHOUT POWER IN BC

VICTORIA -- A winter storm left 75,000 customers without power along British Columbia's South Coast on Tuesday.
BC Hydro says the hardest hit areas were the Vancouver Island communities of Victoria, Nanaimo and Duncan.

ELECTRICITY COSTS CLIMBING FOR ONTARIO HOSPITALS

  Hospitals in eastern Ontario (including Ottawa, Napanee, Cornwall and Kingston) that have reported data show an average 28 per cent increase in electricity bills
   Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) reveal that the electricity bills for hospitals in eastern Ontario have been increasing dramatically over the last five to six years.

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH BICYCLES?

Virtue signalling from Parliament Hill.

FRENCH CITIES OVERWHELMED BY MIGRANTS

Mayors from seven major French cities overwhelmed by the flow of migrants, have written a joint letter to Paris published in LeMonde on Saturday, begging the government to step in and help.
According to the letter, the cities of Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Toulousa and Nantes are taking in "several thousand" refugees per month, which the mayors say is causing a social emergency as they are "backed up against a wall" and "completely saturated" by a seemingly endless flood of asylum seekers.

LINDSAY SHEPHERD EXONERATED

Wilfrid Laurier University has completely exonerated Lindsay Shepherd, after a report from an independent investigator found that no student ever complained formally or informally about a video the teaching assistant screened in class earlier this fall.

The findings from the report by lawyer Robert Centa clear Ms. Shepherd, but will lead to renewed questions about why a group of three university staff repeatedly told Ms. Shepherd that complaints had been made. 

A BOOST TO THE CANADIAN OIL PATCH

CALGARY – In a boost to Alberta’s beleaguered energy industry, Inter Pipeline Ltd. said it will spend $3.5-billion on Canada’s first-ever propane-to-plastics petrochemical plant.
The announcement that a major new energy project will be built is welcome news in Alberta, which has seen a raft of pipelines and natural gas export plants delayed or cancelled, amid a three-year long downturn in oil prices.

ANOTHER $BILLION LIBERAL GOV'T BOONDOGGLE?

Another billion-dollar Liberal government boondoggle might be in the works. Think e-health and gas plants. The problem is, we might never find out about this one.

Fears are starting to emerge regarding business and residence green energy producers who feed Ontario’s hydro grid. It’s just another sad chapter in the incompetence of the provincial government in managing the energy portfolio.
Producers are being paid between 20 and just over 80 cents per kilowatt hour. With new technology emerging, they can increase their output by an extra 40% whether the grid needs it or not. How do we know they are not abusing the system? Well, we don’t.

NOT EXACTLY THE CREAM OF THE CROP

While some members of the Liberal government’s front bench soared this year, others sank, and strategists say Finance Minister Bill Morneau,  Disabilities Minister Kent Hehr, and Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly were among cabinet’s worst performers in 2017.

HOW OBAMA LET HEZBOLLAH OFF THE HOOK

   In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

AUSTRIAN COALITION GOV'T TO RESIST MASS MUSLIM MIGRATION

The anti-immigration Austrian People's Party and the anti-establishment Austrian Freedom Party have reached a deal, creating a new coalition to govern Austria for the next five years. The ground-breaking political alliance, which will be sworn into office on December 18, is poised to catapult Austria to the vanguard of Western Europe's resistance to mass migration from the Muslim world.

CALLING BULLSH!T ON LEBOUTHILLIER

Sen. Percy Downe, who has been calling on the government to do a better job fighting offshore tax evasion, said Lebouthillier's answer initially led him to believe there had been 78 convictions for offshore tax evasion. He began to wonder when questions emerged about her claim that CRA had recovered $25 billion in unpaid taxes.
"The CRA is terribly ineffective in overseas tax evasion and they have become very misleading to Canadians — trying to create the impression that they're doing something that they're not doing."
  Few, if any, of the court cases that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has cited in Parliament to defend its record on cracking down on offshore tax evasion have anything to do with millionaires hiding money in overseas tax havens, a review by CBC News has found.

APPARENTLY, IT'S COMPLICATED

  Mario Dion says it could take him a few months to decide what to do with investigations into the prime minister and finance minister, if outgoing ethics commissioner Mary Dawson doesn't wrap them up before she leaves next month.
   Mr. Dion’s appointment has been harshly criticized by some, thanks in part to a searing review he received from Canada’s auditor general when he was serving as the federal public sector integrity commissioner, his role prior to leading the Immigration and Refugee Board for the last three years

EUROPE'S CIVILIZATION SUICIDE

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved.  In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population.  This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades.  And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway.  So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society.  Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain.  A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation.

PUTTING THE BOOTS TO ONTARIO BUSINESSES

Vancouver-based think-tank Fraser Institute’s study in October said Ontario electricity rates are among the fastest growing in North America and have cost Ontario more than 74,000 manufacturing jobs since 2008. The report said large industrial consumers in Toronto and Ottawa pay almost three times more than consumers in Montreal and Calgary and almost twice as much as those in Vancouver.

SECURITY ROBOT FIRED

In the past month, his first on the job, “K-9″ — a 5-foot-tall, 3-foot-wide K5 Autonomous Data Machine that can be rented for $6 an hour from Silicon Valley start-up Knightscope — was battered with barbecue sauce, allegedly smeared with feces, covered by a tarp and nearly toppled by an attacker.

As if those incidents weren’t bad enough, K-9 was also accused of discriminating against homeless people who had taken up refuge on the sidewalks he was assigned to patrol. It was those troubling allegations, which went viral this week, that sparked public outrage and prompted K-9’s employers — the San Francisco chapter of the animal rescue group SPCA — to pull the plug on their newly minted robot security pilot program.

MEDIA'S REIGN OF ERROR EXPOSED

But flawed reporting in the Trump era is becoming more the norm than the exception, suggesting the media have become far too willing to abandon some pretty basic journalistic standards.

  It understandably infuriates the media that President Trump remains unwilling to own up to his own glaring errors and untruths, while news organizations run correction after correction. And it also understandably upsets the media to watch the president actively attack and seek to undermine their work, which remains vital to ensuring accountability in American governance.

   What they haven’t grasped is how perversely helpful to him they are being: On a very basic level, President Trump’s repeated salvos against “fake news” have resonance because, well, there does indeed appear to be a lot of fake news.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE ETHICS COMMISSIONER?

  The main item that emerged was, in itself, trivial: the prime minister’s travel on the Aga Khan’s private helicopter to get to the latter’s hideaway private island.
We may summarize the mandate: helicopter—it was alright to use; or helicopter—it was not alright to use. A telephone, an internet search or two, and an office assistant to make the call, and it should be done with in an afternoon
  What is the point of a parliamentary office that is hesitant, tentative, and equivocal in its rulings and semi-rulings? What is the point of a parliamentary office that leaves a charge over a prime minister’s ethical reputation unsettled for a whole year? Especially on one bearing no marks of complexity in the material to be investigated?

THE HIDEOUSLY CORRUPTED "RUSSIA INVESTIGATION"

STEYN:  The above text explains why Mueller hired the same-old-same-old Hillary crowd for his supposed "independent" investigation into Trump: The same people had to run both investigations because otherwise the new investigators would discover the shenanigans of the old investigators. Putting Strzok and Page on the team was the FBI's way of protecting itself.
 Nobody should accord this wretched and corrupted pseudo-investigation the figleaf of respectability. Even in the federal justice system, no successful prosecution by this conflicted team would withstand appeal.

THE FBI'S SHIP OF FOOLS

Of the many astonishing revelations now emerging from the Russia investigation, not enough has been made of the fact that Peter Strzok -- that Zelig of the FBI who mysteriously appeared at every controversial moment -- was second in command for counterintelligence.

That's right, counterintelligence -- that activity "designed to prevent or thwart spying, intelligence gathering, and sabotage by an enemy or other foreign entity."

And yet that same Mr. Strzok was conducting a clandestine extra-marital affair with an FBI colleague over thousands of text messages that could be and likely were (more of that in a moment) intercepted by those same foreign intelligence agencies -- or were, at the very least, recklessly exposed to them.

Now you don't have to be James Jesus Angleton or even have read a novel by John le Carré to know one of the most important vulnerabilities in the intel world is just such dangerous liaisons, frequently used for blackmail of all sorts.

CANADIAN FIRMS DEAL WITH NAFTA UNPREDICTABILITY

  More than a quarter of Canadian firms could move part of their operations to the United States amid uncertainty over the future of the NAFTA trade pact, the nation’s export credit agency said on Friday.
   Canada sends 75 per cent of all goods exports to the United States and could be badly hit if Washington walks away from the North American Free Trade Agreement. One way to cushion the potential blow is to set up shop in the United States.

SPECTACULAR PUBLIC RELATIONS FAIL AT TD CANADA TRUST

  TD Canada Trust has apologized to an Ontario family and released more than $846,000, hours after CBC News reported that their original bank draft had been lost by UPS.
  Taylor and her husband John had been involved in a lengthy, three-way David vs. Goliaths battle after courier company UPS lost the first draft and TD — which had issued it — appeared to be in no rush to issue a new one.

SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES NEEDED FOR DANGEROUS DRIVING

A careless driving conviction under the provincial Highway Traffic Act carries the risk of six months in jail, a $2,000 fine and — which has always struck me as most absurd — a paltry two-year driving prohibition, with reinstatement not even subject to recertification under Ontario’s demonstrably ineffective driver training and testing regime.
And that doesn’t happen often. Only about 20 per cent of those charged with careless driving in Ontario are convicted — 6,700 out of 34,084 in 2016. Just 16 were sentenced to jail time. Most people head into traffic court to fight a careless driving charge just as they would had they been caught speeding or running a red light, hoping to beg and plead their way down to something less ruinous to their insurance bill. Most succeed. It’s no different in cases when someone dies.

ELECTRIC CAR PROPAGANDA

Clean Energy Canada says electric vehicles represent a number of economic opportunities for Canada, including for auto parts manufacturers and the mining sector, spurred on by demand for the minerals and metals needed to make the lithium-ion batteries.
If Canada doesn't jump on board more quickly, the rest of the world is going to snap up those opportunities and we'll lose out, says the report.
In addition to addressing price gaps, a national strategy could also make policy recommendations or provide funding for additional charging networks, and encourage municipalities and provinces to break down barriers for people to charge their cars at home and at work.

OUTBURST OF DEMOCRACY AT OTTAWA CITY COUNCIL

Mayor Jim Watson rightly acceded to the demands of those who believe the city should do more to fix up what we own by proposing that the one-time windfall be applied to help repair our roads, buildings, sidewalks and so on.
Pity he couldn’t have done it with a modicum of grace.
Instead, Watson launched into an ill-considered attack on councillors who had the temerity to criticize his budget. What they were really doing was attacking the professional integrity of the staff that put the budget together, Watson said.
A stinging criticism, but miles off base. Councillors were proposing a different approach, not attacking staff. Besides, the big decisions on the budget are made in the mayor’s office, not by city staff.

SWINDLING $MILLIONS IN IMMIGRATION SCHEME

In the tightly-knit world of Vancouver’s wealthy Chinese immigrants, Paul Se Hui Oei stood out for his ties to some of Canada’s most powerful politicians and his mastery of cultivating guanxi, or personal relationships, that attracted legions of Chinese clients eager for his assistance in gaining a legal foothold in Canada.
But behind closed doors, the authorities say, Oei, a prominent immigration consultant and philanthropist, ran an elaborate fraud scheme, pocketing millions from investors, including many Chinese citizens led to believe their investment would help them secure permanent residency in Canada. Instead, the authorities say, he spent the money on luxury cars, beauty pageants and donations to political parties.

CANADA'S PROBLEM-PLAGUED SHIP BUILDING PROGRAM

Canada should scuttle its problem-plagued shipbuilding program and instead launch a series of fixed-cost competitions to ensure it quickly obtains icebreakers, supply ships and frigates, a new report argues.
The study warns that the federal government’s efforts to build new ships are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The report’s author, Prof. Michael Byers, recommends dumping the current process and re-launching an expedited procurement that would save money by using only fixed-price competitions and off-the-shelf ship designs.
In addition, the report proposes shelving the plan to build a heavy polar icebreaker in Vancouver, recommending instead an expedited fixed-price competition for the conversion or construction of four to five medium icebreakers. With climate change reducing the severity of ice conditions in the north, Byers argues, the project to build a ship of the size and ice-breaking capacity of the planned polar icebreaker is excessive and overly expensive.

KENNEY WINS BY-ELECTION

CALGARY — Former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney has won a seat in the Alberta legislature.
The leader of the United Conservative Party is the victor of a by-election in Calgary Lougheed, easily beating out six other candidates, including provincial Liberal Leader David Khan.

GENEROUS ONTARIO TAXPAYERS

TORONTO — Ontario is offering businesses rebates of up to $75,000 for buying electric and other low-carbon vehicles.

Ontario already offers rebates for individual drivers of up to $14,000 for electric vehicles that cost up to $150,000.

The Liberal government has so far doled out $75 million of those rebates to vehicle owners, but that so far hasn't translated into vast numbers of vehicles. The official data for 2017 isn't yet available, but at the end of last year, electric vehicles represented less than one per cent of all passenger vehicle sales in Ontario.

DEADLY DIVERSITY VISAS

MALKIN:  Capitol Hill’s national security priorities are screwier than a Six Flags roller-coaster.
Instead of immediately shutting down one of America’s stupidest visa programs, which helped bring us yet another murder-minded jihadist this week, bipartisan Beltway politicians are pushing to preserve and expand the illegal immigration pipeline. Republicans and Democrats in Congress want a “fix” for the Obama administration’s executive amnesty covering nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants — and they want it pronto.
Translation: Protecting border-hopping “DREAMers” is a more important priority in Washington than protecting Americans from infiltrators exploiting the diversity visa lottery.

MUELLER'S WITCH HUNT

If there is any remaining doubt in your mind that Special Counsel Mueller's probe is anything but a farcical, politically-motivated witch hunt, then you'll be summarily relieved of those doubts after watching the following exchange from earlier this morning between Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

"GREEN" POWER BOONDOGGLES SCREWING TAXPAYERS

NP:   From Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters, this land really belongs to electric-power monopolies and politicians who routinely bulldoze property rights, ratepayers, taxpayers and the regulators that have become puppets of governing political string-pullers.
They promised green and clean. What they deliver to Canadians instead is expensive and in the red. From coast to coast, provincial governments continue to plow ahead with power-generating mega-projects and green-power schemes whose only certain output is massive debts and soaring costs to deliver electricity that may never be needed.

IGNORE THE $500MILLION IN GST REVENUE

The Liberals are expected to introduce legislation next year to allow the federal government to impose a carbon price on provinces that don't meet the federal standard on their own.
The Liberals have said any revenues generated from the system would stay in the province or territory where they are generated — a stance provinces have questioned, since the federal government earns money through the five per cent tax charged in the final cost of a good or service.

INVESTIGATING BEIJING'S SUBTERFUGE IN CANADA

As Australia continues to reel from lurid revelations about the extent of Beijing’s influence-peddling, espionage and propaganda operations in that country, Conservative Senator Linda Frum says Ottawa should follow Canberra’s example by launching an inquiry into the extent of Beijing’s subterfuge in Canada, and by tightening laws to prevent Beijing from meddling in Canadian political processes.

AUSSIE F-18s NEED A LITTLE WORK

   Australia spent over $1 billion on its fleet of aging F-18 fighter jets over the past 10 years — before the Canadian government decided to buy 18 of the vintage Australian aircraft as a stopgap until Canada begins acquiring a new fighter fleet in 2025.    
   In a statement released by the Department of National Defence, the government said the Australian planes will undergo more technical work to bring the squadron to a “similar configuration” as Canada’s current fleet of CF-18s, which also date back to the 1980s.

PREDICTING OIL PRODUCTION AND DEMAND

True to its perpetually optimistic form, OPEC, which last month for the first time conceded the threat posed by rising US shale production, sharply raised its demand forecast for cartel oil in 2018, ahead of the OPEC meeting at the end of November.
And, according to OPEC's latest market report for the month of December, demand is set to continue rising, with global oil demand projected to grow at around 1.53 mb/d in 2017, in line with last month’s forecast. China is projected to lead oil demand growth in the non-OECD, followed by Other Asia – which includes India – and OECD Americas.  Which means that an unexpected Chinese landing, whether hard or soft, will have an adverse impact on oil in addition to all other commodities.

TOO MUCH OIL, NOT ENOUGH CAPACITY

Heavy Canadian crude fell to a three-year low against benchmark prices Tuesday as bottlenecks on pipelines and rail networks crimped exports.
Canadian crude’s discount to West Texas Intermediate futures has widened more than US$10 since August as pipeline companies including Enbridge Inc. rationed space amid high Western Canadian inventories. Rail cars struggled to catch up on deliveries after line disruptions over the past two months.

LIBERAL ETHICS ON DISPLAY

OTTAWA — Liberals followed a secretive, unethical process to nominate a new ethics commissioner and force a decision before a long winter break, opposition parties say.
He wondered if Mario Dion, whose work as Public Service Integrity Commissioner was panned by Canada’s auditor general, was fit for the job. But “it’s impossible,” he said, to figure that out in his allotted seven-minute question-and-answer period during a last-minute, one-hour committee meeting the day after Dion’s nomination was announced.
During the hastily-convened committee, Dion would not commit to completing ongoing investigations into the prime minister and finance minister if he got the job.

REPLACING OLD JETS WITH OLD JETS

Liberals say the 30-year-old Aussie jets are needed in the interim to address a "capability gap" keeping Canada from fulfilling its commitments to NATO and NORAD. Some defence experts have told HuffPost, however, that no such gap exists, with one retired colonel calling it a "figment" of the government's imagination.
When Scheer questioned the wisdom in "replacing" decades-old jets with more decades-old jets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shot back that while new planes were needed "many, many years ago, the previous Conservative government dropped the ball.

HISTORY OF HYPOCRACY ABOUT JERUSALEM

President Donald Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel had barely sunk in when predictions of a looming catastrophe started to make waves in the mainstream liberal media.
The fact Turkey has now taken the lead to speak for the Palestinians is rich with irony considering the Ottoman Turks colonized the Arabs for over 600 years and Jerusalem was kept a backwater city of no significance. As the Pakistani historian Mobarak Haidar recently wrote, “Muslims of the world have no religious basis to rule Jerusalem.”

PRAISING POLICE OFFICERS

Four Port Authority police officers ran towards the explosion triggered by Monday’s failed terrorist attack in Port Authority Bus Terminal, risking their lives and subduing the jihadist responsible.

Officers Drew Preston, Jack Collins, Sean Gallagher, and Anthony Manfredini successfully subdued terror suspect Akayed Ullah as he tried to detonate a “low-tech explosive device” in a subway corridor near the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Monday morning.

$7.8MILLION SETTLEMENT FROM COMPANIES SELLING FETAL TISSUES

Two Yorba Linda biomedical procurement companies have reached a $7.8 million settlement with the Orange County, California, district attorney’s office following allegations they illegally profited from the sale of fetal tissue.

The settlement requires DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics — a sister company — to permanently close its operations in California and pay $7.8 million through donations and biological materials to a medical school, reports the Orange County Register.

TERRORIST'S WAR ON CHRISTMAS

On Monday, a would-be suicide bomber caused injuries to himself and three others when he set off a pipe bomb that blew up near New York City's Port Authority bus terminal. After the incident, authorities said 27-year-old Akayed Ullah was inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS) and planned to detonate the bomb right in front of Christmas posters.

Ullah, an immigrant from Bangladesh, reportedly chose the site due to the Christmas theme, and aimed to remind Americans of the ISIS attacks to European Christmas markets.

THE SCOURGE OF FENTANYL

Illicit overdoses claimed 1,208 lives in British Columbia between January and October of this year, according to the B.C. Coroners Service.
It says the latest figure compares with 683 deaths during the same period last year.
The service says fentanyl was detected in 999 of the confirmed and suspected deaths so far in 2017, an increase of 136 per cent from the same period last year.

ONTARIO LIBERALS ON TRACK FOR $4BILLION DEFICIT

TORONTO – Ontario’s fiscal watchdog says the Liberal government will run a deficit this fiscal year, despite claims it has balanced the budget.
In a new report Monday, the Financial Accountability Office said the Liberals will run a $4 billion deficit in 2017-2018, and will continue to be in the red over the next few years.

POLAR BEAR TRAGEDY PORN

For example, that bit where the emaciated bear reaches with his sad paw into that rusting trash can in search of something, anything, to eat. As you watch, you want so desperately to help him….
The footage was filmed on Baffin Island in Canada. Surely, if you or I had been there, we could have found something edible to push that stricken bear’s way: maybe a visiting delegation of performance poets, abstract artists and avant-garde musicians who arrived by antique sailing ship on a Rockefeller-Foundation-funded arts project to “raise awareness” of melting icecaps; or a group of Greenpeace activists(aren’t bears attracted by strong smells?) on a No To Arctic Drilling protest; or one of the plethora of explorers on another of those deep and meaningful eco-expeditions, sponsored by one of those big reinsurance companies whose business model largely depends on scaring potential clients into thinking global warming is a serious problem.

CHINESE TAKEOVER OF CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION GIANT

When Canada’s largest construction group signed a $1.5 billion deal to be acquired by state-owned CCC International of China in late October, the company’s chairman, Brian Tobin, called it “a very positive outcome”.
It remains to be seen whether the merger will be equally positive for other Canadians.

REVEALING THE MONEY LOST TO TAX AVOIDANCE

A Liberal senator is asking the government's budget watchdog to flex his legislative muscles and take the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to court to reveal how much money is lost to tax avoidance.

The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has been fighting with the CRA for five years for information to evaluate Canada's "tax gap," the difference between taxes that should be received and the amount that actually end up being collected.

CONTINUE CONSTRUCTION FOR SITE C DAM

VICTORIA — B.C.’s New Democrat government will continue building the Site C dam, choosing to finish the contentious project started by the previous Liberal government rather than pull the plug during mid-construction.
B.C.’s business community and trades groups celebrated the move, while environmental organizations and First Nations called it an appalling betrayal of the NDP’s past promises.

A GUIDE TO PANTS-DROPPING FOR THE NEW MAN

STEYN:  For years, the more straightforward feminists have stomped around in fierce T-shirts demanding, "What Part of NO Don't You Understand?" Quite a big part, it seems. I didn't realize "No" includes one complimentary grope with optional pants-drop and positioning of feminist hand on aroused male genital area. If she doesn't go for it, well, no hard feelings (except on your part): just extricate your fingers from her underwiring and move on to the next broad. Your feminist credentials are impeccable: you didn't rape her, so give yourself a pat on the back and the next one a pat on the butt.

ALL-POWERFUL KIM JONG UN

PYONGYANG, North Korea – Making a bizarre claim, the North Korean media claimed that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un can control the weather.
According to North Korea’s state media, Kim Jong Un controlled the weather when he scaled a sacred mountain. The dictator is said to have dressed in smart leather shoes and climbed the 2,744m high Mount Paektu.

EU INCREASINGLY UPSET BY POLAND IGNORING THE RULES

  Behind the noise of Brexit negotiations, the talk in the European Union this year has been that there’s potentially a bigger problem in the east. And the prospect of another rupture looks to be increasing.
   The mood in Brussels is that EU institutions can no longer stand by and watch a country that’s the biggest net recipient of European aid thumb its nose without paying some sort of price. Few people are discussing Poland following Britain out of the bloc, but a protracted conflict is getting more likely.

  This week, Poland's refusal to take in mainly muslim refugees was referred to the European Court of Justice along with Hungary and the Czech Republic.

THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND....

Sunday on CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources,” while discussing the network misreporting on alleged contacts between Donald Trump Jr. and Wikileaks, The Atlantic senior editor David Frum said the worst mistakes press organizations have made has occurred during an “overzealous effort to be fair to the president.”

SEND THE ROHINGYA REFUGEES HOME

The Rohingya refugee problem isn’t going away until the Rohingya insurgency is over. It started just three short months after Burma’s independence in January 1948, and it has churned more or less continuously in Rakhine state for the last 70 years. The latest insurgent attacks precipitated what is now the seventh major flood of refugees to Bangladesh, totaling some 1.3 million Rohingya.
   What is needed is for the U.N. and other bilateral, regional and non-state actors to start planning for permanent resettlement of the refugees in Muslim countries that already host large Rohingya populations.

MISSING $TRILLIONS; AUDITING THE PENTAGON

The Pentagon is no stranger to criticism over serious waste and purposefully sloppy accounting.  A DoD Inspector General's report from 2016 - which appears to be unavailable on the DoD website (but fortunately WAS archived)- found that in 2015 alone a staggering $6.5 trillion in funds was unaccounted for out of the Army's budget, with $2.8 trillion in "wrongful adjustments" occurring in just one quarter.
In 2015, the Pentagon denied trying to shelve a study detailing $125 billion in waste created by a bloated employee counts for noncombat related work such as human resources, finance, health care management and property management. The report concluded that $125 billion could be saved by making those operations more efficient.

NO ONE DIES ALONE

The nurse contacted members of Calgary’s military community asking for veterans to sit with him so he wouldn’t die alone of throat cancer
“At the end of my shift I posted ‘he’s got nobody’ and by the time I woke up it had gone to Newfoundland and back and someone was at his bedside.”
That same group arranged a memorial for McKenzie at the Kinsmen pavilion in Strathmore on Saturday.

OWLS VS RATS IN VANCOUVER

A spike in owl sightings in downtown Vancouver could be good news for ridding the city of pesky rodents, a wildlife group says, but there’s a downside for the birds.

JUDGE: SUPREME COURT RULING PROTECTS PREDATORS

NP, BLATCHFORD:  The Marakah case revolves around text messages, and whether it’s reasonable for a sender to have a reasonable expectation of privacy over messages once they land in a recipient’s phone.
McLachlin in effect said that it is; Moldaver said that’s absurd.
In a savage dissent, Moldaver says McLachlin’s decision will add to “the complexity and length of criminal trial proceedings” in a system already stressed to breaking, overburden police and prosecutors and “leads inexorably” to the conclusion that sexual predators who send explicit or threatening messages to a child may be able to prevent those messages being seized by police without a warrant – even if the child herself or a parent hands over the phone with the messages

REMEMBERING THE HALIFAX EXPLOSION

In a city of almost 60,000, a number greatly inflated from the projected census of 50,000, due to the hundreds of soldiers and sailors and war workers that had taken up residence in Nova Scotia’s capital city, nearly 2,000 had died as a result of the explosion that followed the collision of the overloaded munitions ship SS Mont Blanc and the Belgian relief ship SS Imo in the tricky shipping channel called, The Narrows, located between the two communities.

WHO CARES? IT'S JUST TAXPAYERS' MONEY

While Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s annual report on Ontario government blunders in the electricity sector uncovered millions of dollars of waste this year instead of billions, it also revealed something especially disturbing.
That is that electricity regulators haven’t fixed easily correctable problems they’ve known about for up to 15 years, that could have saved Ontarians at least $100 million on their hydro bills and probably more.

VENEZUELA'S FINAL CHAPTER

Venezuela’s oil production is falling precipitously despite increased demand and rising prices. Quality is dropping. The market for their heavy crude production is diminishing and won’t rebound anytime soon.
    The regime won’t pay their bills or invest in their own infrastructure or maintenance. They have chased away international business by seizing assets or demanding services they won’t pay for. The Maduro regime has run out of “Other People’s Money.”
   Their population is suffering horribly from shortages of food, medicine, and human rights. There has been no uprising only because the regime has so far treated the military better than the general population

WHY JERUSALEM MATTERS

For nearly two millennia following Jerusalem's destruction in antiquity the yearning for their sacred city was so intense that Jews everywhere would conclude their Passover with "Next year in Jerusalem."

In the darkest hours of the Russian pogroms Jews would pray for Jerusalem.

As they were led to the gas chambers in the Holocaust Jews would cry out for Jerusalem.

During the Six Day War when the first Jewish soldiers reached Jerusalem's Western Wall they bowed and wept in prayer. After so many centuries, they had at last returned to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem meant redemption. The end of exile. The return to their ancient homeland. Nationhood.

CHRISTMAS DECORATION FAILS

Pitiful attempts at Christmas décor.

ACADIAN FRENCH LANGUAGE LESSONS

The French spoken by some Acadians in New Brunswick is sometimes called Chiac.  It's a version of the language that is sprinkled with English words.
Halle ta frame: ” ‘Halle ta frame’ is like ‘hurry up.’ It’s like, ‘Get going. Halle ta frame. C’mon.’ ”
Tcheu dose: “Basically it’s like, ‘What a d–k.’ I say that all the time.”
Tcheu plaise: “What a useless d–k.”
Baye d’la gas: “It’s like, ‘Go for it.’ ”

FLYING CARIBOU IN ONTARIO

The Ontario government plans to move endangered caribou off an island in Lake Superior by helicopter to save the animals from a pack of wolves.

NEB RULES IN FAVOUR OF TRANS MOUNTAIN PIPELINE

B.C.’s Environment Minister is sharply criticizing a National Energy Board ruling in favour of Kinder Morgan Canada’s efforts to bypass Burnaby bylaws that stand in the way of its Trans Mountain expansion project.
“I’m shocked at the ruling and frankly I’m angry on behalf of British Columbians,” George Heyman said in an interview Thursday. “We’re reviewing the decision and exploring any options we have to appeal this decision. This is exactly why we’re fighting this project in Federal Court.”

Gregory McDade, Burnaby’s lawyer, said the municipality will consider an appeal.

“We think the evidence was clear the municipality was regulating in good faith,” he said in an interview. “The NEB has ruled yet again in favour of the company, against  the interest of the municipality, and that is a great concern to us.”

SUPREME COURT RULING ON TEXT MESSAGES

Canadians sending texts can expect that those will remain private even when they land in the recipient’s inbox – but that right is not absolute.
In a significant but nuanced ruling Friday morning, the Supreme Court of Canada acquitted a Toronto man whose text messages to an alleged accomplice were used by police to secure seven convictions for trafficking illegal firearms, ruling that the man had expected the texts to remain private.

LIBERALS' PROBLEMATIC BORDER SCREENING BILL

A contentious Liberal bill that would give U.S. border agents authority to conduct extreme pre-screening of people and goods going from Canada into the U.S. won overwhelming support in one of its final tests in the Senate today.
The proposed amendments from Liberal Senator Serge Joyal were centred on objections to the legislation from multiple human rights and civil liberties advocates who opposed the sweeping powers that would be given to U.S. border agents to frisk, screen and question travellers before they leave Canadian territory.
As part of reciprocal arrangements inside the U.S., Canadian border agents would be allowed to do the same kind of clearance screening south of the border, for travellers and cargo heading into Canada.

STOP CHINA'S TAKEOVER OF AECON

When it comes to foreign governments and domestic assets that have a strategic sensitivity, Canada needs to be clear and consistent about its investment boundaries with other countries. This is particularly true when the investment has a national security component.
There is no clearer example of the need for urgent action on this front than the pending $1.45 billion sale of construction giant Aecon to China’s state-owned construction giant, CCCI. Even if you don’t know Aecon by name, you almost certainly have used an Aecon-built road, bridge, airport or power plant. Aecon built the CN Tower, Vancouver’s SkyTrain and the Halifax Shipyards.
   "China’s track record in Canada is abysmal and includes a request to the Supreme Court of Canada, by a Chinese engineering giant a handful of years ago, to exempt it from our laws after it breached safety violations and ignored our courts following workers’ deaths. The Court refused to hear the case. Fines were never paid.”

CHINA'S VIEW ON TRUDEAU'S PROGRESSIVE AGENDA

"I'm a huge supporter of progressive views on gender equality, human rights, environmental protections and labour conditions, but despite the nice-sounding rhetoric, trade agreements are just not effective in pushing that agenda forward," says Martha Hall Findlay, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a think-tank that looks at Western Canadian issues.
She says trade agreements turn potential trade partners away.
"We like to think of ourselves as being nice and the rest of the world likes us. But when it comes to these trade agreements ... we're coming across as being patronizing, we're coming across as arrogant and frankly, we're coming across as being naive," Hall Findlay tells The Current's Friday host Piya Chattopadhyay.
"The rest of the world is playing chess and we're coming with our checkers."