PBO EXPOSING JUST HOW SYSTEM IS WORKING

  Bill Blair, the newly minted minister for border security, made a claim about the refugee system in question period Thursday that cannot be supported by the available facts.
  “The system is working,” he said.
  But the Parliamentary Budget Officer report gives lie to Blair’s claim the “system is working.”
In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the Immigration and Refugee Board had capacity to hear 24,000 claims. During that period there were 52,142 new asylum claims, of which illegal migrants represented 23,215. The system was flooded with claims beyond its capacity, creating a backlog of 64,929 cases.

ALBERTA SCHOOLS PAY $MILLIONS IN CARBON TAX

   The carbon tax will cost Alberta school boards an extra $8 million to $12 million this year, and as much as $18 million next year, according to a government briefing note obtained by the official Opposition.
   The May 2016 briefing note to Education Minister David Eggen, released Friday by the Wildrose, estimates transportation will cost the province’s 61 school boards an additional $1.8 million in the 2017 calendar year, and $2.7 million more in 2018 compared to 2016, before the levy took effect.
   The tax, intended to encourage a reduction in fuel consumption, is an environmentally responsible step students expect from government, said Eggen’s spokeswoman, Lindsay Harvey

PMO STICKING TO ITS STORY

   A Conservative senator and his aide say they were told 18 months ago that Liberal MP Raj Grewal was under investigation for his prodigious casino gambling, and argue it is “unbelievable” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office didn’t know at the same time.
    And if the PMO knew then, they say, it should not have taken until last week for Grewal to resign his Toronto-area seat — and until this September for him to be shifted off the Commons finance committee.
   Quebec Sen. Jean-Guy Dagenais and assistant Richard Desmarais say they were at an Ottawa reception in May of 2017 when a retired RCMP officer told them he had been informed about a probe of Grewal.
    “(He) told us, ‘Just check this guy at the casino. He is spending a lot, he’s under inquiry, and something will happen,’“ Desmarais said in an interview Thursday. “He said, ‘You can go, you will see him, spending his money, he is under an inquiry’ … If the prime minister’s office didn’t know that, it’s unbelievable.”

ALBERTA BUYING RAIL CARS TO TRANSPORT OIL

Alberta needs to buy as many as 7,000 rail cars if it wants to meet its goal of shipping an additional 120,000 barrels of oil a day, says Premier Rachel Notley.

In a speech to the Toronto Board of Trade Thursday, Notley said her province is prepared to buy roughly 80 locomotives, with each train pulling 100 to 120 cars.

This extra capacity will allow the province to transport 30 per cent more crude-by-rail than current levels, and would help narrow the price gap by $4 a barrel and generate an additional $1 million a day for Ottawa.

CARAVAN MIGRANTS ARE ECONOMIC MIGRANTS

The establishment media are admitting in multiple reports that Central Americans with a caravan of 7,000 to 10,000 migrants are not eligible asylum-seekers, but rather looking for jobs and escaping violence.

DEFENDING VICE ADMIRAL MARK NORMAN

   At 2:07 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2015, a public servant named Matthew Matchett emailed a prominent Ottawa lobbyist to relay some exciting news.
   “I got everything — the motherload,” Matchett’s email said. But it also said his BlackBerry phone was “caput,” and he needed to know where to drop off the material.
   One minute later came the response: “Here if ok,” wrote Brian Mersereau of the public relations and lobbying firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies, which had Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding as a major client. “Just leave it at front. Lots of funny folks wandering around.”
   Mersereau would later tell an RCMP investigator that when he arrived the next day at his office on Metcalfe Street, there was a package in a brown envelope waiting for him. Inside were documents that were to be presented at a meeting on Nov. 19, 2015, where a federal cabinet committee would debate the future of a $700-million project to acquire a supply ship for the navy from Davie. The RCMP would seize the documents, including a PowerPoint presentation deck and a memorandum to cabinet, in a raid of Mersereau’s office six months later.

CANADIANS SUFFER FROM ECOLOGICAL GRIEF

   Canadians are increasingly showing symptoms of anxiety, “ecological grief” and even post-traumatic stress related to the effects of climate change, according to a new report.
   The impact of climate change on mental health is something researchers have only recently begun to study and evidence is beginning to mount. It is part of understanding a changing climate as a looming public health crisis.
   Dr. Courtney Howard, lead author of the Lancet Countdown report on Canada released Wednesday said carbon pricing, is the best tool available for tackling the public health issues resulting from climate change.

LA PRINCESSE STAMPS HER FOOT, RESIGNS

   Eastern Ontario MPP Amanda Simard is leaving the Progressive Conservative caucus and will sit as an independent.
   The representative for ​Glengarry–Prescott–Russell, which includes the eastern fringe of Ottawa and communities east of the city, gave no reason in her Thursday letter to the speaker's office.

   Check out the conduct of La Princesse Simard before she made her decision to resign:

“I want her part of my team,” Premier Ford told reporters after Simard (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell) spoke in favour of a non-binding New Democrat motion to reinstate the French services and voted against the government’s fall economic statement in a double-edged show of defiance.

As it turned out, Simard missed her chance to vote for the NDP motion by standing up a “split second” too late and blamed the Conservatives for not allowing a re-vote so her view could be counted.

  Patrick Brown's choice for the riding......

TRUDEAU & MCKENNA MAINTAIN THE GREEN FRAUD

   When will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna end the fiction that Canada is meeting its commitments to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions they made to the United Nations?
    The UN’s ninth annual emissions gap report released Tuesday says Canada, responsible for 1.6% of global emissions, isn’t on track to meet its 2020 or 2030 targets.

REDUCE OIL PRODUCTION IN ALBERTA

    If Premier Notley mandated a 10-per-cent across-the-board cut in oil production, it would take approximately 45 days to see the price differential change in favour of Alberta taxpayers. That means that, in a matter of weeks, the price of Alberta oil could almost double.
   Importantly, Alberta’s Opposition Leader Jason Kenney, of the United Conservative Party, is offering his support to Premier Notley as she considers how to end the massive discount on Alberta oil. Kenney notes that “these resources belong to all Albertans.” He is right. It is time for all Albertans to come together and do what is best for the entire industry, our province and our country.

NO POINTS FOR CLEVERNESS MR. GREWEL

   Liberal MP Raj Grewal publicly questioned senior officials in the RCMP and other law-enforcement agencies about the way they investigate money laundering earlier this year, at the same time as the Mounties were probing his multimillion-dollar gambling activities and sought to determine the origin of the funds, records and sources say.

    Until Sept. 19, Mr. Grewal was a member of the House of Commons finance committee, which conducted a review of Canada’s regime against money-laundering this year. Transcripts of the committee’s hearings show that he was particularly interested in the testimony of members of law-enforcement agencies such as the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency or the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), which collects data on financial transactions of more than $10,000 at financial institutions and casinos.
Mr. Grewal’s questions piqued the interest of members of the RCMP, given that FINTRAC had already alerted the Mounties at that point to Mr. Grewal’s gambling activities, sources said. The RCMP is still investigating Mr. Grewal, said the sources, who were granted anonymity by The Globe and Mail to discuss confidential information they are not permitted to disclose. The sources have direct knowledge of the investigation.

LIBERALS' ATTENTION ON ONTARIO VOTES

   There is no comparison between what happened in Ontario on Monday — the announced closing of a General Motors assembly plant — and the massive pain in Alberta’s oilpatch since 2014.
   Before getting into it, let’s be clear that Albertans take no joy in other Canadians losing their jobs.
  Albertans often ask themselves how Ottawa would react if our provincial crisis suddenly hit Ontario. Reporters and politicians would probably collapse, frothing in hysteria.
By some estimates, more than 40,000 workers lost their jobs after the 2014 oil price crash began. Up to 100,000 people may have lost direct and related work in Alberta and other provinces.

NEPOTISM ALIVE & WELL AT OPG

   The head of the Canadian nuclear watchdog has put up a “conflict of interest screen” after her son assumed an executive position at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) less than a month after her five-year appointment was announced.

    Alykhan Velshi, the chief of staff for former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown, landed a vice-president’s position this year at OPG – an electricity generator company that runs both the Darlington and Pickering nuclear facilities – and his start date was Sept. 18, 2018.
   His mother, Rumina Velshi, a former OPG and Ontario Hydro employee, was appointed president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) on Aug. 22, 2018.

CUPW LEGISLATED BACK TO WORK

Federal legislation to put Canada Post workers back on the job officially passed Monday and will take effect at noon ET on Tuesday, forcing an end to rotating strikes.

FORMER LIBERAL MP GREWEL SPENT $MILLIONS

   The RCMP have been investigating former Liberal MP Raj Grewal for months, closely analyzing millions of dollars in transactions, including at a casino near Parliament Hill, and occasionally tracking his movements, federal sources say.
    There has been growing interest by law-enforcement authorities into Mr. Grewal’s gambling activities. The information sources said Mr. Grewal spent millions of dollars in total in the past three years, including at the Casino du Lac-Leamy, which Loto-Québec runs across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill.

TRUMP BLASTS MUELLER

   In a trio of increasingly angry tweets this morning, President Trump raged at special counsel Robert Mueller as "a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue" lambasting him for "doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System" because of his one-sided investigation.
   "The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue...

RUSSIA & UKRAINE NAVAL BATTLES

 Following reports from the Ukraine navy that Russian ships had fired on Ukraine vessels near the Kerch Strait, Ukraine accused Moscow of also illegally seizing three of its naval ships - the “Berdyansʹk” and “Nikopolʹ” Gurza-class small armored artillery boats and a raid tug A-947 “Jani Kapu” - off Crimea on Sunday after opening fire on them, a charge that if confirmed could ignite a dangerous new crisis between the two countries.

As reported earlier, Russia did not immediately respond to the allegation, but Russian news agencies cited the FSB security service as saying it had incontrovertible proof that Ukraine had orchestrated what it called “a provocation” and would make its evidence public soon. According to media reports, Russia said it has "impounded" three Ukrainian naval ships after they crossed the border with Russia

MEXICO TO DEPORT VIOLENT MIGRANTS

    Mexico will deport approximately 500 migrants who "violently" tried to cross into the United States, according to Reuters.
   Officials closed the largest land crossing in North America on Sunday at San Ysidro as hundreds of migrants rushed the US border in an attempt to cross into the United States. 

THE GLOATING MACRON

  EU leaders have wasted little time in gloating over “the worst deal in history” negotiated by Theresa May, with French president Emmanuel Macron gloating he can blackmail Britain into surrendering its fishing waters or force it into the humiliating “backstop”.
   The European Union controls its member-states territorial fishing waters centrally, sharing them out via a controversial quota system which grants British fishermen less than half the stocks in their own waters, destroying tens of thousands of jobs.
  Brussels negotiators have been keen to maintain or duplicate this Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) beyond Brexit Day in March 2019, despite Theresa May’s repeated assurances that she will restore Britain’s status as an “independent coastal state” — and May’s withdrawal agreement could well allow the bloc to do so.

EXAGGERATION, BAD SCIENCE, FALSE CONCLUSIONS

   The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, has gained praise from leftists and left-wing environmental groups as a dire warning of the coming death and destruction in the United States if we don’t stop global warming.
   But critics of the report, including scientists, have slammed it as “exaggeration,” bad science and even said its conclusions are “false.”
   “This latest climate report is just more of the same – except for even greater exaggeration, worse science, and added interference in the political process by unelected, self-serving bureaucrats,” Tim Huelskamp, president of the Heartland Institute said in statements released by the free-market think tank following the report’s release.

CAVING TO THE SAUDIS

   “The Saudis can use the economy as a blackmail tool,” he said, noting similar pressure tactics around the migration issue have been used by the Turkish government to avoid punishment for their human rights abuses.
   “It’s being used in a very nasty way to tell the West: don’t truly try to hold us accountable, don’t try to investigate, don’t try to push hard. Otherwise, we’ll open the migration wave, otherwise we can impose sanctions on your economic interests, otherwise we can let some of the more radical Islamist groups operate more freely.”

GM CLOSURE IN OSHAWA ONTARIO

    Numerous sources have told CTV Toronto that General Motors is planning to close all operations in Oshawa, Ont., affecting thousands of high-paying jobs.
   The announcement is expected to be made on Monday, in the city of about 159,000 people located roughly 60 kilometres east of Toronto.
    Sources say the Oshawa closures are part of a global restructuring aimed at moving toward lower-emission vehicles. Plants in the United States are also expected to close, although other GM operations in Ontario appear to be safe.

INCOMPETENCE LAYERED ATOP MISMANAGEMENT

Canada is a country blessed — or, make that cursed — with a long history of utterly catastrophic military procurement failures. The multi-decade Sea King helicopter replacement escapade springs immediately to mind (and it will endure for at least a few weeks longer before the last Sea King is retired). As does the disastrous purchase of rusted-out British submarines to replace Canada’s elderly sub-surface fleet; only in recent years has that 1990s-era procurement actually begun producing functioning warships. The pathetic end of service for our last two supply ships, retired without replacement because they were simply unsafe to operate any longer at their advanced age, must surely also make the list.

But even against that history of spectacular disgrace, the Liberal government’s handling of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s CF-18 fighter jet replacement still stands out as an especially shameful display. Although it’s too soon to say for certain, future historians may well come to regard this slow-motion train wreck as the defining Canadian military procurement embarrassment.

MACLEOD REFORMING ONTARIO WELFARE SYSTEM

The number of people on ODSP is growing by 3.5% annually, much faster than population growth.

Meanwhile, Ontario’s social assistance system is a bureaucratic nightmare and a bureaucrat’s dream.

There are 240 different income support rates and more than 800 rules governing social assistance.

PIPELINE KILLER PM LAMENTS OIL INDUSTRY CRISIS

Lilley:  The Trudeau government has put forward Bill C-69, a complete overhaul of the regulatory process for major project from forestry to mining and the oil and gas sector.

“It is difficult to imagine that a new major pipeline could be built in Canada under the Impact Assessment Act,” said Chris Bloomer of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association before committee this year.

And maybe that is what Trudeau and his team want, deep down.

NORMAN'S LAWYERS EXPOSING BRISON/IRVING LINK

   Lawyers for Vice-Admiral Mark Norman have taken aim at a key federal cabinet minister with new allegations about Treasury Board President Scott Brison’s links to the powerful Irving family and Brison’s role in the government’s plan to delay a supply-ship contract awarded to an Irving rival.
   In court documents released Friday, Norman’s legal team alleges that witnesses have contradicted Brison’s claim a leak of information about a plan to delay the contract with Davie Shipbuilding hurt the government’s ability to review the deal. Norman’s lawyers are also challenging Brison’s claim that an ad hoc government committee meeting convened at the time was examining the integrity of the contracting process.
  Norman’s lawyers have requested through the court any communications between Brison and Irving in November 2015. Henein argues that such a request is valid “given Minister Brison’s inconsistent accounts of his handling of the Irving letter and his close relationship with the Irving family.”
“Lobbying records show that Minister Brison has been lobbied by Jim Irving on numerous occasions since he became Minister,” Henein claimed.

LIBERAL GREWEL RESIGNS OVER GAMBLING PROBLEM

On Friday, the PMO issued a statement saying that Liberal MP Raj Grewal had informed the office earlier this week “that he is undergoing serious personal challenges and that he is receiving treatment from a health professional related to a gambling problem that led him to incur significant personal debts.
The statement, issued in response to numerous media inquiries, went on to say: “We are not aware of an investigation by the Peel Regional Police. We are aware of inquiries by the RCMP regarding the circumstances that were the subject of a complaint to the ethics commissioner about Mr. Grewal earlier this year.”

LIBERALS ALLEVIATING POVERTY

   The Liberal government spent $500,000 on outside advisers to come up with a logo, name and branding for a new agency that promises to alleviate poverty in developing countries, internal documents reveal.
   Its 2017 budget announced $300-million toward developing an institution that would support sustainable development and poverty reduction in developing countries by aiming to attract private investors – such as pension funds – as investment partners in private projects that serve a public good.

   Angela Rodriguez, a spokesperson for FinDev Canada said the agency is dedicated to “ensuring value for money, and the careful stewardship of FinDev Canada’s funds are priorities we take extremely seriously.”

LESSONS FOR USA LAWMAKERS RE FGM

   France introduced an anti-FGM law in 1983 with the threat of 10 years in prison, or up to 20 years for cutting a girl under the age of 15, and with parents considered accomplices to the crime.
Hundreds of parents and “cutters” have been jailed.
   Dr Emmanuelle Piet, a physician who works in the heavily-migrant populated Seine-Saint-Denis region, says that he does not “give a damn about cultural sensibilities. It’s more important to prevent a violent crime being committed against a child or woman.
  “People talk of culture and tradition, but children have a fundamental human right not to be mutilated,” he added.

MERKEL: MEMBERS HAND OVER SOVEREIGNTY TO EU

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that European Union (EU) member states must be prepared to transfer powers over to Brussels at a debate on the ‘tensions’ between globalisation and national sovereignty.
   “Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty,” Merkel said, speaking at an event organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin on Wednesday.

   Merkel condemned the fact that, in discussions over whether Germany should join a fast-growing number of nations pulling out of the agreement, “there were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People”.
  

THE TWISTED THOUGHT PROCESS OF H CLINTON

   People with patriotic political views are marked by their rejection of “freedom and responsibility”, the former first lady claimed, going on to characterize national conservatives as having “a psychological … yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.”
    While acknowledging that she lacked the ability to “fully understand” why right-wingers have been abandoning centrist politics, Clinton suggested they were attracted to “strength”, opining that there are not enough “awareness or reminders … about what that can lead to” currently in place.
   She told The Guardian: “I think it’s as much psychological, maybe more than political, as to what people are yearning for. I mean, freedom is burdensome. It’s hard getting up and taking responsibility for yourself and trying to make all these decisions.”

BIRTH TOURISM NUMBERS RISING

With new research showing that more babies are born in Canada to foreign residents than Statistics Canada realized, the federal government is studying the issue of "birth tourism" in the hope of better understanding how many women travel to Canada to have babies who are born Canadian citizens.

Using numbers from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which captures billing information directly from hospitals, researcher Andrew Griffith found over 3,200 babies were born here to women who weren't Canadian residents in 2016 — compared with the 313 babies recorded by Statistics Canada.

BAD TIMING, JAGMEET

     NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh learned he'll get his chance in early February to win a British Columbia seat in the House of Commons — just as a friendlier riding on his home turf of Brampton, Ont., became available.
    Liberal Raj Grewal announced Thursday that he is resigning as MP for Brampton East for unspecified "personal and medical reasons." Party whip Mark Holland said Grewal's resignation is effective immediately.
     Singh faces a much stiffer fight in the B.C. riding, where Stewart took just 547 more votes than the Liberal contender in 2015, than he would in his hometown of Brampton. Indeed, Liberals are privately concerned that Singh could lose the Burnaby South byelection, prompting the NDP to dump him and choose a potentially more appealing leader before next fall’s general election.

MENSA CANDIDATES MEET IN CALGARY

   Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi says he "hugged it out" with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when the two met Thursday, days after Nenshi issued a stern rebuke of his provincial and federal counterparts over their handling of the city's potential Olympic bid.
   There was no apology forthcoming from Trudeau on Thursday, however.
   "I didn't ask for it and it wasn't received because really, it wasn't our place to lay blame or have it out on what happened," said Nenshi. "It was really our place to say 'alright, as we work together for Calgary, as we work together to figure out what's right for Calgary, what did we learn and how are we moving forward together?'"

   Makes you want to weep.....

   

STRANGE GOINGS ON IN BC LEGISLATURE

 Embattled Speaker of the Legislature Darryl Plecas has sought to provide himself legal cover at the centre of a worsening scandal, amid allegations he asked a friend to conduct a secret investigation into two senior officials, spear-headed the suspension of the men and then tried to install his friend into one of their vacant positions.

SOROS: "FACEBOOK IS A MENACE TO SOCIETY"

   Liberal financier George Soros sold off his stake in Facebook earlier this year, before the social media giant’s stocks tumbled drastically. Documents also show that Soros dumped some Netflix and Goldman Sachs shares.
    Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show that the Soros Fund Management sold off all of its Facebook holdings, and cut back on holdings in Netflix and Goldman Sachs in the third quarter of 2018. All three have dropped drastically since September, with Netflix tumbling 29 percent, Facebook down 20 percent, and Goldman Sachs losing 15 percent.
   The controversial billionaire’s hedge fund has had an up and down relationship with Facebook, reportedly selling off 300,000 shares in November 2017, then buying back in over the summer of 2018, even as Soros denounced social media as a “menace to society.”

INVESTIGATING THE CLINTON FOUNDATION

  Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said Tuesday that House Republicans plan to hear testimony on Dec. 5 from the prosecutor appointed by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to probe alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation.
  Meadows, who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, told Hill.TV’s “Rising” that it’s time to “circle back” to U.S. Attorney John Huber’s investigation with the Justice Department into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged any improper activities.
   “Mr. Huber with the Department of Justice and FBI has been having an investigation — at least part of his task was to look at the Clinton Foundation and what may or may not have happened as it relates to improper activity with that charitable foundation, so we’ve set a hearing date for December the 5th,” he told Hill.TV during an interview on Wednesday.

LIBERALS' INCREDIBLE FEATS OF ECONOMIC ALCHEMY

But there is none of this nuance in the sunny days fiscal update tabled by the government. In a self-assessment of their own brilliance, the Liberals judged their commitment to balance the budget by 2019-20 as a measure where action has been taken and “progress made”, even if, sadly, it is “facing challenges”.

That blatant nose-stretcher comes just 25 pages after the summary statement of transactions that says the deficit in 2019-20 will be $19.6 billion. Some progress, some challenge.

The entire document should come with a warning sticker: “Caution — stormy objects in your mirror are closer than they appear.”

TRUDEAU'S FLAWED APPROACH TO BUDGETING

Experts, academics and economists argued over the past couple of years that now was not the time to balloon the deficit and add to the debt. You only do that when you’re in genuinely bad economic times and there is an emergency situation to contend with. You don’t do it just for some vague notion about growing the economy or supporting the middle-class. Because there could soon come a time when there really are troubles afoot and you need to act to deal with them. Like a recession. Or like the very issue Trump placed on our lap.
    This is really the basics of what’s called Keynesian economics, named after the godfather of liberal deficit spending. Trudeau didn’t follow these rules though. He keep hiking the deficits. And now we finally find ourselves in a situation where we arguably do need to engage in a bit of deficit spending – to get competitive with the U.S. – but because we were so loose with our budgeting in the years beforehand the measures undertaken now will have a disproportionately larger negative effect on our budget. We’ve got less room to absorb these expenses because we’re already more leveraged than we need to be.
    This is the original flaw to Trudeau’s approach to budgeting. Prepare for bad times while times are good. We never did that. And we’re in a worse off situation because of it.

HONDA'S BREATH OF FRESH AIR

The sliding doors on some 2018 and 2019 model year Honda Odyssey minivans can malfunction and open while driving, which has lead Honda to issue a recall for 11,252 of the vehicles in Canada.

TAXPAYERS FORK OVER $600M TO MEDIA

The full details of the program won't be available until the next federal budget, after the government receives advice from an independent panel from the news industry.

The goal is for the program to be funded by the government but have no role for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. That way, the government hopes to avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence.

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his party would never endorse assistance for journalism. The Conservatives believe government help for journalists interferes with press freedom and Poilievre said the government is choosing who gets to sit on a panel that will ultimately decide which news organizations survive and which don't.

INCONVENIENT REPORT: GREEN ENERGY A FLOP

  The WEO report, yet again, projects that global fossil fuel use — and related emissions — will grow out to 2040, as oil, gas and coal continue to dominate the energy picture. But it is also struggles to put a positive spin on wind and solar. Solar had a “record-setting” year in 2017. The Chinese solar business is “booming.” New wind and solar additions “outpaced those of fossil fuels in 2017, driven by policy support and declining costs.
   “Policy support” means subsidies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As for declining costs, solar is at least twice as expensive a generator as coal and almost twice as expensive as gas.
   Finally, and most significantly, the report confirms what should have been obvious from the start: the more “variable” wind and solar are introduced into any electricity system, the more they make it both more expensive and less reliable.

DON'T MEET THE REQUIREMENTS? YOU WIN!

 The $60-billion effort to build new warships for Canada's navy has hit another snag, this time in the form of a legal challenge by one of three companies in the competition to design the vessels.

Canada's Liberal government announced last month that U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin beat out two rivals in the long and extremely sensitive competition to design replacements for the navy's frigates and destroyers.

But one of the other two bidders, Alion Science and Technology, has asked the Federal Court to quash the government's decision, saying Lockheed's design did not meet the navy's stated requirements and should have been disqualified.

PUTIN FOILED BY INTERPOL ELECTION

  Interpol has elected South Korean Kim Jong-yang as its president, rejecting the controversial Russian frontrunner.
   He beat Russia's Alexander Prokopchuk, who has been accused of using Interpol's arrest warrant system to target critics of the Kremlin.
  A bipartisan group of US senators said electing Mr Prokopchuk would be "akin to putting a fox in charge of the henhouse", while a prominent Kremlin critic said it would be like "putting the mafia in charge".
   This prompted a furious response from Moscow, who said such comments amounted to a "certain kind of interference in the electoral process of an international organisation".

GRASPING,GREEDY NENSHI

  The premier was answering questions about Calgary council’s bizarre attempt to keep leftover Olympic money already paid by Ottawa and the province, and also get cash promised for the actual Games.
  At Monday's council meeting in Calgary, Nenshi said Calgary should get to keep the $10.5 million from Ottawa and $10 million from the province.
  That was nervy enough. But immediately after, council voted to approve Nenshi asking both governments for much of the $2.1 billion promised for the actual Games.

SPREADING THE FAUX NARRATIVE

Lilley:   So Francophone voters, people that almost always vote Liberal, are being ginned up by columnists and politicians that are Liberal in order to attack Doug Ford and his PC government.
   Some are even trying to extend this outrage to Andrew Scheer and the federal Conservatives.
Why the outrage?
  Well according to the faux narrative, Ford has targeted Ontario’s Francophone population and gutted services.

  By the way, there are already colleges and universities in Ontario that offer studies in French.

LIBERAL GOAL: PHASING OUT ALBERTA'S OIL SANDS

  There’s long been a view in Alberta that the Trudeau government is intentionally winding down Alberta’s oilsands, and ultimately the entire fossil fuel industry.
   This belief has a basis in fact. Indeed, you could say it’s not a fake fact, but an honest-to-goodness fact fact.
   It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself who said in January 2017: “We can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.

PROTECTING THE BRAND AT ST. MICHAEL'S

   A group of irate parents associated with St. Michael’s College School want the principal and president to resign.
   In the current debacle over sexual assault and bullying at the school, Principal Gregory Reeves and President Jefferson Thompson, a Basilian priest, are being singled out.
   Said one parent, who asked not to be named: “This administration is too arrogant to accept any responsibility for what has happened. The principal waited 48 hours to inform police of what he knew? Nothing precluded his telling the police and asking their help to talk to the victim and his parents. This is all about protecting the brand and the school. It’s big money.”

IRRITATING SPEECH HABITS

I don’t listen to news talk radio and I seldom watch Question Period on television. When I do watch talk shows, I get turned off by the filler words that are used over and over. There are certain words and phrases that drive me nuts. They’re overused, they’re often grammatically incorrect thanks to text speak, and sometimes they are just completely paradoxical or make no sense. But people continue to use them over and over again.

Why can’t people who work in radio and television learn to speak properly? It’s bad enough when popular sports figures are interviewed. Many of these highly paid stars mumble away in a monotonous tone and can’t seem to see beyond the game and winning.

THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENT

    Remember the travel cases? At issue was whether Trump had the power to issue his Proclamation suspending the entry of aliens from several Muslim-majority countries. The Supreme Court held that he did have that power – a federal law clearly gave him authority to suspend the entry of any class of aliens, or even all aliens, into the country if he deemed doing so in the “national interest.” At most, Trump would need a rational basis for his restrictions – but the Court didn’t even find (as opposed to assume for the sake of argument) that he needed that.
    Sit quietly for a while and let that sink in. All by himself, Trump can bar any group of aliens he wants from entering the country, as long as he rationally believes that doing so is in the national interest. He can bar all those who lack a certain level of skills, or education, to protect the jobs and wages of the most vulnerable Americans. He can bar all those who do not have a job lined up in this country that cannot be filled by an American. He can bar all those likely to receive public assistance (in fact, he is already doing that, not by proclamation, but by regulation).

NOTE TO JUDGE: PUNISHMENT MUST FIT THE CRIME

   The Manitoba Court of Appeal has ruled a judge gave an excessively light sentence to a 23-year-old Somalian refugee to prevent him from being deported, after the man rammed his car into a police vehicle and threatened to kill the officers who arrested him.
   The court ruling Oct. 31 increased Mustaf Ahmed Yare’s sentence to more than 13 months, from five months and 25 days. In their decision, the judges found the longer sentence “may result in his deportation,” but was necessary because the sentencing judge “failed to impose a sentence that was proportionate to the gravity of the offences.”

    The case sheds light on how judges weigh the severity of crimes committed by non-citizens against the consequences of jail time for those who could be deported, after Harper-era changes to immigration rules attempted to make it easier to remove criminals.

NAVDEEP BAINS HAS FULL FAITH IN CRA

   Navdeep Bains, the Trudeau cabinet minister responsible for Statistics Canada, said he first learned of the federal agency’s controversial plan to harvest the financial transaction data of potentially millions of Canadians as a result of media reports and not, as the law requires, in a written notification from the country’s chief statistician.
   Bains’ revelation, made Monday at a House of Commons committee, follows a similar revelation earlier this month made by Canada’s privacy commissioner testifying at a Senate committee that, he, too, did not learn of the scope of the StatCan project until reading about it.
   Nonetheless, Bains, whose title is Minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, told a Commons committee Monday he has full faith in chief statistician Anil Arora and the agency he heads, Statistics Canada.

ITALY SEIZES MIGRANT RESCUE SHIP

  ROME — Italian prosecutors have ordered the seizure of a migrant rescue ship and accused the aid group Doctors Without Borders of illegally disposing of 24 metric tons (26.5 tons) of medical and contaminated waste accumulated during nearly 50 rescues.
   Catania prosecutors said Tuesday that 24 people are under investigation, including the aid group’s Italy personnel and the crew of the Aquarius. Prosecutors accused them of working with a Sicily-based shipping company to mix medical and “contaminated” waste, like migrants’ clothing, with other garbage to save money.
  Prosecutors ordered the sequester of the Aquarius, which is currently moored in Marseille, France, as well as the seizure of 460,000 euros ($526,000), which prosecutors said was the amount saved by the group by not properly disposing of the material.

EXPLAINING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PILOT

   Auditor general Michael Ferguson fired a bullet at the Trudeau government’s plan to buy second-hand Australian fighter jets on Tuesday, revealing the air force doesn’t have enough people to fly the planes it already has.
   Ferguson said military commanders first alerted the government to the personnel shortage in 2016, when the Liberals were planning to spend billions of dollars on 18 new Super Hornet jets to supplement Canada’s aging CF-18 fleet.
   But the government brushed aside those concerns and pressed ahead with the purchase while providing only minimal increases to training and other measures to make sure the Canadian Forces had the pilots and technicians to use the new planes, Ferguson said.

AUDITOR GENERAL REPORTS ON CRA

   The auditor general says the treatment you get from the Canada Revenue Agency depends on where in Canada you live and how friendly your tax man is.
   This violates the agency’s “taxpayer bill of rights,” which says every taxpayer deserves the same service as every other taxpayer in the same situation.
   Auditor Michael Ferguson reports Tuesday that audits of some of the more difficult files in one regional office take about 320 days. In another, they take eight months longer. When taxpayers file new information that could change their tax bills in one region, getting an answer takes about three months. In another, it’s more like nine. And CRA can’t really explain why.

SNIPES RESIGNS, CLAIMS CREDIBLE ELECTIONS

   Brenda Snipes submitted her resignation as the elections supervisor of Broward County, Florida. Her decision came one day after Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum offered his second concession to Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the Sunshine State’s gubernatorial election.
   “I think I have served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our voters,” said Snipes last week during a press conference.

CRIMINALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS

  A judge has ruled that a Brockville truck driver was badly impaired by alcohol — not suffering the effects of a sleep disorder — when he sexually assaulted a woman at a party seven years ago.
   Judge Kimberly Moore rejected Ryan Hartman’s defence of sexsomnia, ruling that he was “awake and aware” when he anally penetrated the woman as she slept on an air mattress with her boyfriend after an Oxford Mills house party in February 2011.
   “His actions were not involuntary,” Moore concluded in her ruling delivered on Monday. ”Mr. Hartman is criminally responsible for his actions.”

NONEXISTENT CAPABILITY GAP REVEALS CREDIBILITY GAP

    Neither Canada’s top soldier nor the commander of the air force had or produced any records about a fighter jet “capability gap” in the year leading up to the Liberal government’s announcement that such a critical issue had to be dealt with by spending billions to buy aircraft.
   Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan used the capability gap argument in November 2016 to justify a $5-billion program to buy new Super Hornet jets, a deal since scuttled, and later a $500-million program to purchase used F-18 planes from Australia.
   But in the year leading up to Sajjan’s announcement about the urgent need to acquire such planes, neither Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance nor Lt.-Gen. Mike Hood, then head of the Royal Canadian Air Force, produced any documentation indicating there was ever a capability gap, according to Department of National Defence’s Access to Information branch. In addition, no such documents exist among the records of various members of Sajjan’s staff, according to the department.

THE RED INK OF SUNNY WAYS

    We assume Finance Minister Bill Morneau will assure Canadians the federal Liberal’s track record of rising debt, massive deficits, tax hikes and growing government red tape were part of a proven plan to modestly grow Canada’s economy over the past three years.
    That adding a national carbon tax that will hike the cost of gas, groceries and cost of living will magically put more money into everyone’s pockets.
    That following his government’s taxpayer credit-card fueled spending spree, that saw government spending top $300 billion annually for the first time ever, fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets are on the horizon.

SAVE SOME TREES; KILL A MOOSE; SPEND $7900

    Some citizens question whether an average taxpayer price tag of slightly over $7,900 per animal has been justified.

More than 120 moose have been killed since the program was introduced three years ago. Ottawa flies in Aboriginal hunters into the park, and helps them remove the carcass, with the food distributed to Mi’kmaq communities and food banks across Nova Scotia.

The five-year “Bring Back The Boreal Forest” reforestation and hunting pilot program saw its budget double from $1 million to $2.1 million, Parks Canada says.

FOREIGN INVESTORS LECTURING TRUDEAU

   “If the people of Canada think for one moment that we can only have Canadian investors and hope to drive any type of business going forward, they are absolutely, massively mistaken,” Grant Fagerheim. president and CEO of Whitecap Resources Inc., said in in an interview about the exodus of foreign investors in the domestic oil and gas industry.
    Their concerns were echoed by a foreign institutional investor in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that was shared with the Financial Post. The letter marks the second time in recent weeks a fund manager outside of Canada has directed their concerns to Trudeau.
   “Moving forward, I hope your government will start to recognize the numerous issues that are affecting Canada’s energy sector, and do everything in its power to support an industry which has benefited Canadian prosperity for a long period of time,” Susan Johns, a U.K.-based fund manager, said in the letter, dated Nov. 7.
 

PM TRUDEAU, THE SANCTIMONIOUS HYPOCRITE

   Lilley:  It is fashionable to stand up to that dictatorial regime but if standing up to dictators that oppress people, women, minorities is so central to the government’s foreign policy, then why is Canada sucking up to Iran and China?
  Trudeau signed off on the federal government financing Iran’s purchase of jets from Bombardier. Has he looked at the human rights record of the Saudi’s biggest rival in the Middle East?
   Has he looked at the human rights record of China?

CANADA POST & CUPW WRITING THEIR OWN OBITS

   Canada Post has asked its international partners to halt mail and parcel shipments to Canada as it reels under the weight of a 30-day delivery backlog resulting from a labour dispute with its employees.
   The Crown corporation said Friday that its domestic customers are also backed up with packages waiting for delivery as rotating strikes that began Oct. 22 continue across the country.  “The backlogs are also extending to international mail and parcels entering the country,” Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said in an email.
   “As a result, we have been forced to request that international posts, including the United States Postal Service, refrain from shipping items until we can clear the backlog.”

QUEBEC STOPS BOMBARDIER EXEC's STOCK SALES

   Bombardier shares plummeted amid a Quebec watchdog probe of executive stock trades.
Quebec’s financial markets regulator said Bombardier’s executive stock-sale program is under review and ordered all such transactions to be suspended.

   Quebec’s scrutiny piles pressure on Bombardier a week after the company lost a quarter of its value following a weak cash-flow forecast and rising doubts on a turnaround plan. Bombardier announced the stock-sale plan in August, saying transactions would take place over two years. The Ontario Securities Commission said the next month that top executives including Chief Executive Officer Alain Bellemare were aiming to sell millions of shares.

USING CANADIAN WATERWAYS AS TOILETS

   Federal and provincial governments of all political stripes have been passing the buck on using Canada’s rivers, lakes and oceans as toilets for generations.
   In 2017 alone, according to figures compiled by The Canadian Press, we dumped 215 billion litres of raw sewage and untreated storm water, including industrial toxic wastes, fertilizer runoff and road salt, into the same waters we drink from, swim in and fish in.

THE CLIMATE DECEPTION GAME; GRAB THE HEADLINE

  World’s oceans have absorbed 60% more heat than previously thought, study finds.”

   Dr. Tim Ball:  They were referring to a Letter published in Nature by Resplandy et al., with 9 other authors. I am automatically wary when there is a multitude of authors. My second wariness was the 60% figure. I am aware of the preposterous and extreme claims made in the exploitation of the environment and climate, but 60% is eye-catching. For me, it signaled something wrong with the science, but for those who produced the number, the headline was all that mattered. Finally, there is the fact that they published the article as a Letter. This format appeared several years ago as a way of floating an idea quickly, establishing proprietary credit, or responding to criticism
   Everything is on the line. Polls show the public is not concerned, money is not going into the Green Climate Fund, and Trump pulled US support for the Paris Agreement. Drastic times require drastic actions. This is the science of emotion and politics which justifies the ‘by any means possible’ mentality that drives proponents of AGW.
   If skepticism is the highest duty of a scientist, then it applies to all research, including a scientist’s own work. My father taught me the important lesson of being my own hardest critic. Sadly, the misuse of climate for a political agenda makes me cynical. I am now a self-appointed global warming cynic, especially about work produced by scientific bureaucrats and those funded by a government.

$6 FISH NETS A &500 FINE FOR VEGAN DRAMA QUEEN

  At Crescent Lake Park, Bob Hope was fishing with his parents when his father caught a tilapia and set it on the concrete. Hope said his mother was preparing to put the fish on a stringer and put it back in the water until they brought it home to eat.
   Video of the incident Leaming posted online shows her young son approaching the group.
   "Did you know that fish feel pain?" the boy said.
   Seconds later, the boy's father, Mike Leaming, confronted the fishermen over their catch, asking what if it was a dog, or a human child on the concrete. Eventually Leaming grabbed the fish and launched it back into the water, shouting, "Call the police! I just saved a fish's life, how about that? How about that?"

CHAOS AT ASIA-PACIFIC ECONOMIC SUMMIT

  One day after vice president Mike Pence and China's president Xi Jinping clashed after exchanging sharply worded barbs in a showdown between the two superpowers, on Sunday the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit ended in unprecedented chaos and disarray, without agreement on a joint communique for the first time in its history as the escalating rivalry between the United States and China dominated proceedings and reflected escalating trade tensions.
   Pence, who left Papua New Guinea on Sunday afternoon along with Xi, said there had been major differences between his country and China.
  “They begin with trade practices, with tariffs and quotas, forced technology transfers, the theft of intellectual property. It goes beyond that to freedom of navigation in the seas [and] concerns about human rights,” he said.
   As Bloomberg summarizes and as discussed yesterday, Pence sharpened U.S. attacks on China during a week of summits that ended Sunday, most notably with a call for nations to avoid loans that would leave them indebted to Beijing. He said the U.S. wasn’t in a rush to end the trade war and would “not change course until China changes its ways” -- a worrying prospect for a region heavily reliant on exports.

ABRAMS FINALLY ADMITS DEFEAT IN GEORGIA

   Democrat Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams admitted Friday that she cannot win against Republican opponent Brian Kemp and vowed to file a federal lawsuit challenging the “gross mismanagement” of the state’s elections.
   Abrams told supporters that Kemp placed “his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote.”
   “Concession means to acknowledge an act is right, true or proper…I cannot concede that,” she added.

SERIAL CHILD SEX OFFENDERS SET FREE

Last week, Hopley was freed from prison into the Vancouver area, his precise whereabouts concealed for “privacy reasons.” A parole board decision precipitating the release noted Hopley still had little appreciation of the harm he had caused and was unable to “manage” his risk to others.

It would be comforting to think that Hopley’s case is a disturbing anomaly, but it’s not. Serial molesters, child torturers, child rapists, child pornographers and even child murderers are regularly freed from Canadian jails or spared prison time, despite real fears that they will offend again.

Last month, the National Post published a list of particularly brutal murderers who have been released from Canadian jails. Below, a not-at-all-comprehensive list of repeat child sex offenders set loose by the Canadian justice system, often with horrific consequences.

O'REGAN HIDES BEHIND ANTI-SLAPP LAW, APPEAL COMING

  Even though Veterans Affairs bureaucrats told Mr. O’Regan’s office that Mr. Bruyea’s numbers were largely correct, the minister in a column in the Hill Times accused his critic of “stating mistruths,” making “numerous other errors” and writing to suit his “own agenda.”
    Mr. Bruyea sued Mr. O’Regan for defamation and opted to press the matter in small-claims court so he could mount his own defence without the aid of a lawyer.
   But government lawyers acting on behalf of Mr. O’Regan convinced Deputy Judge David Dwoskin to throw out the case on the basis of Ontario’s Protection of Public Participation Act, an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) law, which was created to discourage the use of litigation to stifle debate in the public interest.
    But Mr. Bruyea says the government’s use of the anti-SLAPP law to halt his suit is a “novel and troubling application” of that legislation.

POSTAL WORKERS' UNION CALLING THE SHOTS

   Striking Canada Post workers will not get to vote on a pair of offers put forward by the Crown corporation this week before the deadline on them expires because the union representing striking postal workers will not take the latest offers to the membership for a vote amid mounting pressure on the government to intervene.
    That $650-million offer includes a four-year contract, annual two-per-cent wage hikes, signing bonuses of up to $1,000 per employee, more job security and a $10-million health and safety fund for workers.

    But the union says the offer still isn’t good enough and fails to prevent those working less than 12 hours a week or those who have been working for less than 10 years from being laid off.

CIA HOLDS SAUDI CROWN PRINCE RESPONSIBLE

   The CIA believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, complicating President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve ties with a key U.S. ally.
    The Saudi Embassy in Washington rejected the CIA assessment.
   “The claims in this purported assessment is false,” a spokeswoman for the embassy said in a statement. “We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.”

OFFENDING A SNOWFLAKE

   Blatchford:   It escaped my notice at first so I am late to the party, but I see that in Edmonton last week, a law student filed a complaint about a homicide detective who had spoken to her law class and, o the shame!, allegedly said “inappropriate” things.
   The student, the felicitously named Caitlin Dick, filed the complaint with the Edmonton Police Service and asked that Staff-Sergeant Bill Clark, a veteran of 30 years on the job, be suspended.
   As per the force’s usual procedure on complaints from the public, the matter has been passed onto the professional standards unit for investigation, but Clark remains on the job.

IT'S A MURDER INVESTIGATION; CUE THE OUTRAGE

Civil liberties watchdogs say they’re troubled by a recent media report that suggested homicide investigators in B.C. targeted numerous Middle Eastern men in a voluntary DNA collection “sweep” as part of their investigation into the killing of a teenager.

The use of a DNA dragnet, they say, raises immediate concerns about racial profiling, coercion and the targeting of vulnerable populations, as well as questions about what’s done with DNA samples after they’ve been collected.

POVERTY SHAMING CANADA GOOSE COATS

Britain:  A secondary school in Merseyside has banned pupils from wearing expensive designer coats in an attempt to stop “poverty shaming”.

After the Christmas break, students at Woodchurch High School in Birkenhead will not be allowed to wear brands including Canada Goose, Moncler and Pyrenex.

Canada Goose coats range in price from about £275 to £1,400, while Pyrex and Moncler coats cost up to £650 and £9,175 respectively.

MANUAL VOTE RECOUNT IN FLORIDA SENATE RACE

Florida’s acrimonious U.S. Senate contest is headed to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by less than 13,000 votes.

CALGARIANS VOTE NO; NENSHI POUTS, BLAMES

   Nenshi blasted both the federal and provincial governments, and the responsible ministers, for treating Calgary’s Olympic bid like some small irritant on a distant planet.
   Without doubt, a major reason for the fatal credibility gap of the 2026 bid was this toxic mix of provincial indifference and federal incompetence.

FORD GOV'T's FALL ECONOMIC STATEMENT

   The Ontario Progressive Conservative government’s fall fiscal statement provides tax breaks for minimum wage workers while projecting a deficit this year of $14.5 billion.
   The Fall Economic Statement (FES) begins what the government promises is a tempered reduction in government spending to eventually balance the books, although it offers no specific year for when the red ink is to come to an end.
   “Due to swift action taken by our government, we are pleased to report that $3.2 billion in savings have already been generated,” Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said. “But even better, we have acted immediately and are delivering $2.7 billion in tax relief for Ontario families, individuals and businesses.

A FALLING-OUT AMONG THIEVES

   Kate McClure, 28, Mark D'Amico, 39, and drug-addicted homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt, 35, were charged with theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft by deception, after the three concocted a story that Bobbitt had given McClure his last $20 after her car ran out of fuel, leaving her stranded on the side of I-95 in a dangerous Philadelphia neighborhood.
   "The entire campaign was predicated on a lie," said Coffina during a Thursday news conference. "Less than an hour after the GoFundMe campaign went live McClure, in a text exchange with a friend, stated that the story about Bobbitt assisting her was fake," he said.
   In one of the texts read by Coffina, McClure allegedly wrote to a friend, "Ok, so wait, the gas part is completely made up but the guy isn't. I had to make something up to make people feel bad. So, shush about the made up stuff." -ABC

CARAVAN MIGRANTS ADMIT THEY ARE JOB-SEEKERS

  One caravan migrant told the Guardian that he fully understands that he is not eligible for asylum in the U.S., but has continued the trek to the U.S.-Mexico border anyway:
   “We came to work. I know I’m not getting asylum because they don’t give you asylum for hunger,” said Carlos José Romero, 20, from Santa Rosa, in Honduras, who arrived on Tuesday night. “But us on the caravan would rather die fighting than sitting in Honduras waiting to starve or be killed. If they deport us we’ll come right back.”
   Many of the caravan migrants are looking for jobs, crime-free communities, and many are previously deported illegal aliens who are looking to go back to their former, illegal life in the U.S. None of these cases is eligible as an asylum claim.

100's OF ROCKETS RAIN DOWN ON ISRAEL

   As Israelis are quick to note, they are the only developed country where waves of hostile rockets falling on their soil can routinely fail to become front page news in the likes of London and New York. This week, rocket attacks on Israel took on a new and unprecedented character. Below, a few details on the attacks, the response and why this is happening.
    The Israeli military said some 460 rockets were launched into Israel over a period of about 24 hours. Video shot by Israelis in targeted cities show skies filled with streaking points of light, followed by scattered explosions as the rockets fall to earth.
    Who’s launching them?   Two Gaza-based groups both listed as terrorist groups by Canada and others: Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Since its founding in the 1980s, Hamas has never wavered from a stated commitment to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic state on its territory.

JUST ANOTHER INNOCENT MECHANIC

    A man facing trial in Lebanon for being an alleged ISIL fighter said he wanted to move to Canada to be with his Canadian wife but was denied a visa — so he went to Syria instead.
    Rather than remaining in Toronto, his wife then joined him in Raqqah, ISIL’s central city during its war in Syria and Iraq, where she had three children, who are now with her in a Syrian refugee camp, according to a report of the man’s testimony.

STRICTER TRANSFER POLICY FOR HEALING LODGES

   Two former top Tory cabinet ministers said Wednesday they simply didn't know so many child killers had been transferred to Indigenous healing lodges to serve out their sentences — even though some of those transfers happened on their watch while in government.
   "It's totally inappropriate and clearly the criteria at Correctional Services Canada was inappropriate then and inappropriate now, and further changes have to be made going forward to ensure the protection of the public," former justice minister Peter MacKay said in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics Wednesday. "I would suggest there is a blazing red line when it comes to the transfer of a child killer.
    "I only wish that we had known this 10 years ago and taken proper steps to make those changes maybe this entire situation and the trauma for the Stafford family and others could have been avoided."

SIGNIFICANT GRANULARITY AT TREASURY BOARD

   The Liberals have allocated less than half of the budget spending from a controversial $7-billion fund that outraged opposition MPs, who argued it fundamentally undermined how Parliament scrutinizes government spending. They say the pace of the roll-out shows the revamped system didn’t justify the lost oversight.
   The government transferred $2.89-billion, or 41 per cent, to departments since the $7.04-billion fund passed the House in June as part a process to reform the main spending estimates to get them aligned with the budget for the first time. Vote 40 created a central fund for the Treasury Board to manage programs identified in the budget that weren’t yet fleshed out, but given the amount spent to date critics say there’s no reason the government couldn’t have asked for the bulk of funding the traditional way: through supplementary estimates. The first of two this year were tabled Oct. 24.
   “What that number shows is that there really wasn’t any good reason to ask Parliament to authorize that spending because those projects aren’t ready to go,” said NDP MP Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona, Man.).

PM MAY WINS HER CABINET'S SUPPORT

  British Prime Minister Theresa May said that she won her Cabinet’s backing for a draft divorce deal with the European Union after a “long, detailed and impassioned” marathon meeting Wednesday.
  The breakthrough came as pro-Brexit lawmakers raged against a draft agreement they said would make the U.K. subservient to the bloc indefinitely.
   May’s Cabinet debated whether to support the deal after negotiators from Britain and the European Union broke a months-long logjam and reached agreement on divorce terms.

CANADA'S DOMESTIC & FOREIGN OIL SOURCES

  The supply of oil going to Quebec refineries has undergone a dramatic transformation in less than six years.
   While the province got most of its oil from overseas in 2012, the situation had flipped by 2017, with most of the supply now coming from North American producers. On top of that, Western Canada is now the Central Canadian province's top source of crude.
    The shift away from overseas imports is partly due to a 2015 reversal in the direction oil is delivered through Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline, according to a new analysis by the National Bank of Canada. The analysis, first reported by Radio-Canada, also attributed the shift to increased production of U.S. shale oil.
  For those of you that want to see pipeline maps, have at 'er.

COAST GUARD SHIPS "INDUSTRY'S CASTOFFS"

  Three used icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard will cost 30 per cent more than the federal government previously said — an increase that officials have blamed on tariffs and fees, but one expert says is proof of a lack of planning.
   In August, the government gave the cost of the three icebreakers as $610 million when it announced its plan to buy them from Quebec-based Davie Shipyard without a competition to temporarily augment the coast guard's aging fleet.
  The additional $217 million is needed to cover tariffs for importing the Norwegian-made ships as well as brokerage fees, engineering work and other costs to get them up and running, said coast-guard spokesman Benoit Mayrand.
   For its part, Davie welcomed news of the additional funds on Tuesday.
Sans aucun doute.

ONTARIO: 12 SEATS FOR OFFICIAL PARTY STATUS

   The Ontario government is raising the number of seats in the legislature required to achieve official party status, just months after the provincial election that saw the Liberals slip below the current threshold.
  Progressive Conservative House Leader Todd Smith said Tuesday the new minimum — to be laid out in the fall economic statement later this week — will be 10 per cent of the house, or 12 seats, up from eight.
  "When we saw the legislature shrink in size in 1999, the number of seats needed for official party status shrunk as well. We saw the size of the legislature increase from 107 seats to 124 seats for the last election and the number didn't change, so what we're doing is making it clear to all involved that 10 per cent is the number from here on out," he said.
   "It'll take the politics out of this."

CHINA IGNORES LITTLE POTATO'S PREACHING

  Just a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke out in Paris in support of a free press — an institution he said needs to be "free-thinking, independent, rigorous, robust, respected" — Canada's finance minister gave a key speech in Beijing behind closed doors.
   Journalists were barred from listening to Finance Minister Bill Morneau's speech Monday because "the Chinese officials speaking at the dinner have asked that it not be open to media," said Sarah Kutulakos, executive director of the Canada China Business Council (CCBC), the host organization for the event.

ESCAPEE DANGEROUS BUT UNARMED

    A Newfoundland farmer is on the lookout for an escaped cow that hopped his farm’s fence last Thursday.
    He is asking the public not to approach the 450-kilogram black cow as the search continues.
  “She’s not a little pup or anything, she’s a fairly big animal,” Scott said. One man was hurt in a tussle with Coco on Saturday afternoon as he tried to catch her.

CALGARIANS VOTE NO TO 2026 OLYMPICS

   CALGARY — The results are in, and a majority of Calgarians are saying “no thanks” to a potential bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
   The city conducted a non-binding plebiscite today to gauge public opinion on whether or not there is sufficient interest to submit a bid. Out of 767,734 eligible voters in Calgary, 56 per cent (171,750 of 304,774 total votes) said they don’t want the city to throw in its hat for the games.
    The plebiscite’s result is non-binding on city council, which has the final say on whether Calgary will proceed with a bid.

INVESTORS AVOIDING CANADIAN ENERGY STOCKS

   One of the largest foreign holders of Canadian energy stocks says investors are turning away from the country, frustrated over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failure to get pipelines built to ease a record discount for oil-sands crude.
   In a letter to the prime minister, Darren Peers, an analyst and investor at Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos., warns investors and companies will continue to avoid the Canadian energy sector unless more is done to improve market access.
   “Capital Group’s energy investments are increasingly shifting to other jurisdictions and that is likely to continue without strong government action,” Peers wrote in a letter dated Oct. 19. “I hope that your government will be even more proactive in securing market access which will assure the competitiveness of Canadian energy companies.”

LIBERAL PARTISAN INTERESTS COME FIRST

   Over the past several weeks, Canadians have been treated to the spectacle of the Government of Canada in a legal sparring match with the counsel for Admiral Mark Norman over his charges on breach of trust. He is accused of passing cabinet confidences to reporters in order to shape government decision-making over the lease of a naval supply ship from Davie Shipbuilding. The admiral’s court filings suggest that some Liberal cabinet members attempted to reopen the contract to support the politically well-connected Irving Shipyards.
   Boiled down to their essence, Norman’s legal counsel is alleging the Liberal government has put their partisan interests in front of Canada’s national security, and the charges are an effort to punish him for revealing this uncomfortable fact.
   While these counter-accusations are yet to be tested in court, an appraisal of the government’s relationship with Canada’s military shows a pattern of similar behaviour