TRUMP PUSHES TO COMPLETE KEYSTONE PIPELINE

  Fourteen years after TransCanada Corporation first proposed the construction of the Keystone Pipeline System to transport crude oil from Canada through points in the United States to the Gulf Coast, President Donald Trump issued a presidential permit on Friday in the hopes of finally getting the job-creating, energy-producing project finished.
   Because the pipeline traverses an international border, the project has been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. State Department, which has issued several environmental impact statements, all of which concluded: “Keystone XL will have a limited effect on the environment.”
  And although key portions of the pipeline have already been completed, the final construction of the Keystone XL part of the remaining pipeline has been held up in lawsuits brought by environmental activists and some Native American tribes.

   President Donald Trump first issued a presidential permit to allow TransCanada to complete Keystone XL in March of 2017, which resulted in more lawsuits.

USA HALTS FOREIGN AID TO CENTRAL AMERICA

  President Donald Trump on Friday night halted all direct foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, fulfilling a longstanding threat to end payments to so-called “Northern Triangle” countries if they failed to halt migrant caravans headed for the United States.
  Trump’s most recent threats to cut off aid was in December when he said the Northern Triangle countries were “doing nothing for the United States but taking our money.” Reports last week indicated a new migrant caravan is forming in Honduras, possibly the largest one to date. Honduran officials disputed these reports.
   Border Patrol officials have said they are overwhelmed by the number of migrants illegally crossing the border this year, forcing them to release thousands of illegal aliens who could not be held or returned to their home countries. The migrants have cannily exploited U.S. political arguments by bringing children with them, making detention and deportation much more problematic.

MIGRANTS OVERWHELM TEXAS BORDER CITY

  Democrats like to deride President Trump's warnings about a crisis at the southern border as a "fake emergency" reliant on "nonsensical" numbers about the flow of migrants. They even tried, and failed, to terminate his emergency declaration, which has also triggered a flurry of lawsuits, but that won't change the fact that the first tranche of money from Trump's expanded border wall has already been approved by the DoJ.
   And the timing couldn't have been better, because over the past month, as reports about the number of migrant families declaring asylum between border checkpoints climbing to an all-time high were picked up by the mainstream press, the true weight of the ongoing disaster at the border has suddenly become difficult to ignore. Even the peso, which had mostly shrugged off his prior threats, tumbled when Trump warned that he would close the border next week if Mexico doesn't try to stop illegals from entering the US.
   The city is McAllen, Texas, which has seen a surge of migrants crowding church shelters and other resources in the community as ICE has been forced to release more asylum seekers as they await their immigration hearings. ICE shelters have simply become too overcrowded, and the agency, which can hold migrants for up to 20 days, longer than the 72 hours for the border patrol, has few alternatives.

LIBERAL THUGS ON PARLIAMENT HILL

   Blatchford: They’re thugs — the senior people in the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the clerk of the privy council and the nation’s top bureaucrat, the people in the office of Finance Minister Bill Morneau — or so close as to be indistinguishable from them.
   I refer to their collective behaviour around the SNC-Lavalin imbroglio, in particular their relentless effort to strong-arm the deposed attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould into finding a way (a “solution,” they called it) to give the big Quebec-based engineering and construction giant what’s called a DPA, or deferred prosecution agreement.
   As is now clear, both from the written submissions, including text messages and a surreptitiously recorded phone conversation with the aforementioned privy council clerk Michael Wernick, that JWR sent the parliamentary justice committee this week, some of those people threatened the former AG herself.
   Some of them threatened her staff, notably Jessica Prince, also an accomplished lawyer.

WERNICK'S LAWYER "SNC NOT A PRIORITY FOR PMO"

Canada's top civil servant didn't brief Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a secretly recorded phone conversation with then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould about SNC-Lavalin because everyone "went on holidays the next day," according to his lawyer.

A statement released on Saturday by the lawyer for Michael Wernick, the clerk of the Privy Council, comes a day after the House of Commons justice committee released an audio recording made by Wilson-Raybould of a Dec. 19 call between herself and Wernick.

In contrast to Wilson-Raybould's testimony released on Friday where she alleged Trudeau was set on stopping the criminal prosecution, Wernick's lawyer said the PM was not aware of her concerns, and the SNC case was not a priority for the PMO.

CAUSES OF POVERTY; FRASER INSTITUTE

   In a follow-up policy paper, the Brookings Institution assembled a panel of experts representing various perspectives to outline the principal causes of and solutions to poverty. It lays out a plan of action that is broadly similar to the Sawhill-Haskins proposals and clearly implies that behavioural factors (i.e., choices) are the primary cause of poverty and that with the right policies and incentives as well as the expectation of personal responsibility, behaviours can change. Specifically, the experts suggest policies that promote cultural norms relating to parenthood and marriage, promote delayed, responsible childbearing, increase access to effective parenting education, improve skills and make work pay for the less educated, and increase public investments in early childhood education.
   The Canadian evidence is similar to that presented for the United States. When social norms like finishing high school, getting a full-time job, and having children only after getting married are followed, poverty rates are extremely low (less than 1%) using 2015 data. Single-parent families, especially in those cases where the parent was never married, have among the highest incidence of poverty in Canada, as is the case in the US. Yet, single parent families where the parent is employed full-time reduce their risk of poverty more than four-fold.
    Unless poverty is “enabled,” most people, regardless of their disadvantage, manage to escape poverty. So, bad choices and bad luck are not destiny. Enablement effectively reduces the cost of bad choices and makes them more likely. Bad choices can be enabled by ineffective and counterproductive policy. For example, the existing welfare system, undoubtedly developed with good intentions to help the poor, turns out to be the key enabler of poverty. In practice, a system that has no employment strategy for clients, has no requirements of them, and expects nothing from them, is simply unhelpful. It slowly traps some people, especially those with low self-esteem and little confidence, into a child-like state of dependency and permanent low income.

MEDIA MUST FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR RUSSIA HOAX

There have to be very serious consequences for this. In a just world, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and just about every host at CNN and MSNBC would be fired immediately and their accounts censored off of social media for pushing divisive fake news and damaging conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, that world doesn’t exist.

Still, this is a “never forget” moment. The blinding trust in these liberal “defenders of democracy” must be eroded. Never again can we take their word for what is “fake news” and what is not. Never again can we allow them to dictate who should be on social media and should not be.

The mainstream liberal press has betrayed the trust of the American people in a cynical ploy to try to remove a President they openly hate while lining their own pockets. Don’t allow them to move on to the next topic as if nothing happened. Their credibility is gone. Don’t let them forget it.

PROF RIDD VS JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY

   Professor Peter Ridd’s trial in the Brisbane Federal Circuit Court has just wrapped-up after three days. With Judge Salvadore Vasta presiding, Stuart Wood QC acting for Peter Ridd (the applicant) argued the case with great skill. However, on the most critical of issues the university (the defendant), and important media, refused to engage at all. Specifically, Chris Murdoch QC, acting for James Cook University, refused to outline to Judge Vasta what processes it has in place for quality assurance of scientific research, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) simply didn’t attend or report.
   At the heart of this court case is the matter of Peter Ridd disputing media’s reporting of the health of the Great Barrier Reef back in 2015 and 2016. Specifically, Peter Ridd was first censured for proposing to a journalist in April 2016 that he investigate the state of the fringing coral reefs around Stone Island, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef.
  Instead of investigating, the journalist sent Dr Ridd’s evidence that the reefs were in good health with spectacular coral, to his arch adversary at the university, Terry Hughes, who was claiming the exact opposite, and who promptly forwarded the evidence from Dr Ridd to university management. This began a disciplinary procedure that would eventually result in Peter Ridd’s sacking.
 
 
Blowing the whistle on the climate of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

TIME FOR CREEPY JOE TO GO

Former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, now a Social Justice Activist, revealed that Vice President Joe Biden was “creepy” with her during a campaign event.

She said in an essay for The Cut that the incident occurred during her campaign for lieutenant governor in Nevada in 2014, when Biden came to the state to help the campaign.

But before the campaign rally, he touched her in a way that she felt was inappropriate:

CRYBABY MELTDOWN OF OCASIO-CORTEZ

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has entered week two of her crybaby meltdown over disastrous poll numbers and now she’s blaming Fox News and Breitbart News for her unpopularity.

Quinnipiac is one of the most unreliable left-wing pollsters out there (not named Marist or CNN), so when the Q-poll has bad news for America’s Socialist “It Girl,” it is worth taking notice.

Quinnipiac found Ocasio-Crazy’s national favorability rating sits at a pathetic 23 percent; her unfavorable is 36 percent, which means she is upside down by double digits — 13 whole points.

1.5M ILLEGAL ALIENS ADDED TO USA POPULATION

  The United States is projected to add about 1.5 million illegal aliens to the American population by the end of the year, should current rates of Catch and Release, border crossings, and visa overstays pan out.
    This year, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Catch and Release policy — whereby border crossers and illegal aliens are readily released from federal custody into the interior of the U.S. — is on track to release roughly 434,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the country by the end of the year. This projection is based on current estimates that more than 36,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have been released from DHS custody every month since the beginning of the year.

DEMENTED ANTI-TRUMP PRESS

  Rex Murphy: Remember Michael Avenatti? He’s the lawyer (I’m not being kind — I may need “weasel” further down the column) who unleashed the outrageous allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Donald Trump nominee for the Supreme Court, claiming Kavanaugh organized and participated in “gang rapes” of Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick. The charges were as preposterous as they were savage.
  Of course the whole buzzing hive of the dementedly anti-Trump press not only received those charges, and gave them air and headline, but because the allegations gave fresh oxygen to their calumnies against Trump, they — the stalwart guardians of the First Amendment, the press — upgraded Avenatti in a flash to Truth-teller, warrior-priest against the dark lord of the Trump Tower.
  Kavanaugh’s spotless reputation — to hell with that. The mortification of his wife and children — who cares? The truth? Hey, we might bring down Trump, what’s truth if it impedes the takedown?

DEATHBED LINK TO DINOSAUR-KILLING METEOR

   In a paper to be published next week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and his American and European colleagues, including two University of California, Berkeley, geologists, describe the site, dubbed Tanis, and the evidence connecting it with the asteroid or comet strike off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. That impact created a huge crater, called Chicxulub, in the ocean floor and sent vaporized rock and cubic miles of asteroid dust into the atmosphere. The cloud eventually enveloped Earth, setting the stage for Earth’s last mass extinction.
   “It’s like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick,” said Mark Richards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of earth and planetary science who is now provost and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington.

COLEMAN FEARED BOYLE WOULD KILL HER

  By then, according to her testimony, he was regularly slapping or punching her in the face. He occasionally choked her. He had a “bag of BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, masochism) equipment,” which he kept in the bedside table and from which he frequently withdrew ropes to bind her ankles and wrists together. He routinely threatened her, she said, sometimes with how he’d like to kill her, or with anal sex. He had forced sex upon her, preferably so that he didn’t have to see her face. He would either discipline her formally — he called this “chastisement” — and spank her, once with a broom handle, or he would spontaneously whack her, because he was angry.
   And then, in December of 2017, there came the Rules, a written list of what he expected of Coleman, and a separate regime of “heavy exercise” for her because he wanted her thinner, down from her weight that month, 137 pounds, to 115 by the end of February.
   Among the Rules: “You must plan interesting sex minimum twice a week”; “You must take only cold showers” for improved “stamina” and “self-control”; “You must ask for chastising every time you think you have failed.”

LIBERALS LOOKING TO BOOT OUT JWR & PHILPOTT

   A growing number of Liberal MPs say they're prepared to boot Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from caucus next week, according to a survey of dozens of Liberal MPs by CBC News.
   CBC News has learned that MPs will discuss expelling the two women when they return to Parliament from their ridings next week.
   Some MPs who don't want to be identified say that if the matter of the two MPs' caucus status isn't on Wednesday's caucus agenda, they'll stand up at the meeting and ask their colleagues to vote on ejecting Wilson-Raybould and Philpott.

WERNICK GIVES VEILED THREATS ON TAPE RE SNC

An audio recording of a conversation that former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould had with outgoing Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick has been made public, in addition to new and supplementary evidence related to the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

The 17-minute audio file has been provided to all members of the House Justice Committee, in addition to translated versions of the documents that Wilson-Raybould had handed over days ago.

The additional material also includes a written statement, as well as well as screen shots of text messages and copies of emails that she referenced during her initial testimony.

Audio file is available in the article.

SNC WARNED OF MOVE TO USA IF NO DPA DEAL

OTTAWA — SNC-Lavalin warned federal prosecutors last fall about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn’t get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, newly obtained documents show.
  The documents, part of a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Canadian Press, describe something called “Plan B” — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can’t convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.
   Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.
  “The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” the presentation reads.

LIBERAL OINKER AT THE TROUGH IS CULLED

  After dinging taxpayers for the cost of his high-flying commute from Ottawa to Toronto, Ontario’s fairness commissioner will not get a second term.
  “This is an example of the Liberal’s egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and shows no respect to the hard-working moms and dads who drive or take transit to work every single day and pay their own way,” Premier Doug Ford said in a statement to the Toronto Sun.
  For all their chest thumping on this issue, the Ford government is vulnerable to claims of hypocrisy on this issue. Many appointments made by this government have not only gone to friends of those in power — something normal in politics — but have also come with big salary bumps.
  The political class, regardless of party, needs to remember that they are in their jobs to serve us, not rob us.

QUEBEC AXING SUPPLY MANAGEMENT OF TAXI INDUSTRY

  So it is a rare and genuine pleasure to be able to write in enthusiastic support of a new piece of legislation from the recently elected Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government: the abolition of supply management (“gestion d’offre”) in the province’s taxi industry. After the government’s Bill 17 is passed there won’t be any limits on who can sell rides for money in Quebec or on where in the province they can operate. You’ll still need to get a license for providing such services but the number of licenses won’t be limited, the bar for getting one won’t be artificially high, and it won’t cost you upwards of $200,000, which until the last couple of years was the going rate for what will soon be the old-fashioned, supply-restricted licences. (In fact, the government’s economic analysis suggests $4.80 would be a suitable administrative charge.
   Change often hurts established interests, thus leading to the “tyranny of the status quo” as these interests resist change. How do you get around that problem? Economists’ classic recommendation is: don’t restrict competition in the first place but if it’s too late for that, free up competition while compensating the losers from change. The Quebec government is following that advice to a tee. Much as I’m unaccustomed to saying so: Good for them!
  Next up: Bills 18, 19 and 20 should take the same wrecking ball to supply management in dairy, poultry and maple syrup.

PLAYING FAST & LOOSE WITH CARBON TAX FACTS

  Conservatives, both federal and provincial, tell us the carbon tax will increase the cost of everything. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has predicted a recession. The federal Liberals say most Ontarians will come out ahead because of the carbon tax rebate program. Plus, big environmental improvements are sure to follow.

   Economists from Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission argue that the climate change debate must be based on facts, a reasonable proposition. They then go on to explore 10 popular arguments against carbon taxes and describe them as “myths,” always a sure sign of an even-handed approach. Try as they might, the economists can’t find a single valid criticism of carbon taxes.

   The carbon tax is not a cash grab, the commission assures us, because government will rebate 90 per cent of the money to families and spend the rest on environmental stuff. It fails to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in HST on the carbon tax, which the government will keep. It also fails to consider the concerns of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has pointed out the small businesses, municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals will pay almost 50 per cent of carbon tax costs, but get back only seven per cent as rebates and grants.
   The economists say businesses won’t pass on carbon tax costs because “businesses are always looking for ways to make their products less expensive.” Someone please tell Enbridge.

CATCH & RELEASE CYCLE OF HIGH RISK SEX OFFENDERS

Having a serial pedophile dumped into their midst may be new to Brampton, but it’s certainly not unusual in Canada. Below, a not-at-all-comprehensive summary of serial sex offenders who have been freed from Canadian jails in just the past 12 months. Each of the men on this list were considered dangerous enough to prompt police warnings that they were likely to strike again.

LIBERAL TYPING ERROR OF $2.2BILLION IN BUDGET

  The Department of Finance has quietly updated the online version of this year’s federal budget after several mistakes were found in the original tabled in Parliament last week — including a discrepancy of $2.2 billion.
  The department chalks them up to “typing errors,” but Conservatives warn they undermine trust in the entire document.
  About a dozen pages of tables listing total spending on 2019 budget initiatives have been updated online to include a handful of corrections in red text.

   Conservative MP Kelly McCauley said he discovered the “serious errors” while doing a deep dive into the budget and brought them to the Parliamentary Budget Office, which then alerted the Finance Department. The PBO declined comment. A spokesman for the department denied that that is how it happened, saying the errors “were found following internal review.”

V-A NORMAN'S LAWYER STILL HUNTING DOCUMENTS

  The next battle in the criminal case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman will be over redactions to memos written by senior government bureaucrats — especially a 60-page memo from Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that has been entirely blacked out.
  Norman’s lawyer, Marie Henein, told an Ottawa court Thursday that the government redacted the memo claiming solicitor-client privilege, prompting the judge to point out that Wernick is not a lawyer.
  Most of the case so far has been consumed by a fight over disclosure of documents, and Norman’s lawyers have been focused recently on a circle of senior government officials including Wernick and Trudeau. Justice Department lawyers told the court on Thursday they have now provided the judge with about 7,000 documents for her to review, and have about 1,000 documents still to go.

ALBERTA SEPARATIST MOVEMENT BURNS HOT

   More than three-quarters of Albertans believe they give more than they get in confederation, and nearly one-third of Canadians agree with them. Those polled offered “excessive bureaucracy and regulation for resource projects and unfair equalization formulas” as the primary reasons.
   If Alberta thinks they’re losing, who do they think is winning? A remarkable 88 percent of Albertans believe Quebec gets more than their fair share. So do a majority of Canadians in every province or region outside of Quebec. Even Quebecers are more likely to name themselves (21 percent) than any other province as the biggest beneficiaries of confederation. Overall, 53 percent of Canadians would agree, though 24 percent would choose Ontario and 17 percent think Atlantic Canada rides a federal gravy train.
   Perception is one thing, but reality is…the same, at least in this case. Consider, in 2016, Alberta sent $49 billion of taxes to Ottawa, but received just $27.2 billion back in federal spending. This gap of $21.8 billion was $5,265 per Albertan. Meanwhile, Quebec paid $50.3 billion in federal taxes but received $66.4 billion. That’s a $16.1 billion boon!

STUDENTS KNOW TO EXPRESS LEFTIST VIEWS

   The political bias in our universities is structural. As has been documented repeatedly, the political leaning of North American professors and administrators is firmly left, far left, and extreme left. The numbers are remarkable: “Published in Econ Journal Watch last month, the study looks at faculty voter registration at 40 leading universities and finds that, out of 7,243 professors, Democrats outnumber Republicans 3,623 to 314, or by a ratio of 11 1/2 to 1.” Other studies show similar results: “Focusing specifically on social psychology academics, a 2014 study found that “[b]y 2006 … the ratio of Democrats to Republicans had climbed to more than 11:1.” The six authors, all from different universities and members of the Heterodox Academy, also said, by 2012, “that for every politically conservative social psychologist in academia there are about 14 liberal psychologists” according to Arthur C. Brooks. Academy member Steven Pinker described the study as “one of the most important papers in the recent history of the social sciences.”
    This structural bias is not an accident. As I have seen first hand, candidates applying for jobs are vetted subtly or overtly for their political views, and anyone not holding strong leftist views, radical feminist views, and anti-capitalist, anti-West views, is not hired. Not only must candidates hold these views, but must engage in activism on their behalf, a requirement that has now become formalized as a necessity for being hired. At UCLA, applicants for faculty posts “must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” For decades American universities have advantaged minority candidates for faculty posts on the basis of a motivated misreading of “affirmative action,” and Canadian universities now favor minority candidates on the basis of “diversity.” Students know that they must express leftist views in their essays, or risk getting poor grades and letters of reference. Everyone knows what is acceptable and what is not.

MACRON DEPLOYS ARMED SOLDIERS AT PROTESTS

There are few people in this world more odious than French President Emmanuel Macron after his behavior this week.  I’m sure there are child molesters who are worse. But as a man who is pivotal in the future of hundreds of millions of people, his decision to order the French military to quell the Yellow Vests protests with live ammunition is simply vile.
   Macron outed himself as the very symbol of what animates the globalist elite he represents.
Disdain.
   The disdain he holds for the people he leads is palpable. It’s as palpable for his disdain for the British who voted for Brexit. To him the EU is all, the EU is inevitable and when faced with the choice of serving France or serving the EU, he chooses the EU every time.
   That is what led him to this disastrous decision to deploy the French military to the streets for the first time since 1948 with orders to shoot protesters.

   More here.

FBI & DOJ TO INVESTIGATE SMOLLETT DROPPED CHARGES

President Trump says the FBI and Justice Department will investigate the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of 16 felony charges against Empire star Jussie Smollett, who Chicago PD accused of staging his own hate crime. 

After Michelle Obama's former Chief of Staff, Tina Tchen contacted State's Attorney Kim Foxx, however, charges against Smollett were dropped. Prosecutors said that Smollett's debt to society had been paid in the form of $10,000 and 16 hours of community service he had already performed over two days at Rev. Jesse Jackson's human rights coalition. 

The sudden dismissal enraged Chicago PD, while drawing a harsh rebuke from Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel - who called it a "whitewash of justice." 

A COURSE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

An Ontario town has rejected a motion to open all its council meetings with an acknowledgment that the proceedings are taking place on lands held by Canada’s Indigenous people.

A councilor in the town of Richmond Hill, Ont., first tabled the idea at a meeting in February, only to encounter pushback from councilors and see the motion deferred to a later date.

This week, when the motion came up for debate once again, dozens of residents of the town north of Toronto voiced support for the idea of showing respect to Indigenous people by acknowledging that they were the first occupiers of the land on which the town now stands.

But another councilor tabled an amendment to the land acknowledgment motion, essentially scrapping it and replacing it with a proposal to offer training on Indigenous issues to city staff.

BRITISH PM THERESA MAY TO STEP DOWN

When Theresa May became prime minister, she had grand designs. Her premiership wouldn't just be about taking Britain out of the European Union, it would be about fighting "the burning injustice" within the country.

But on Wednesday night, broken by Brexit like her predecessor, May effectively conceded that she won't be able to do anything more to battle injustice, empower women, and build a more equal society.

May told lawmakers from her Conservative Party that she will move out of 10 Downing Street as soon as Brexit is delivered, leaving the messy business of building a future relationship with Europe to another leader. That paves the way for what will likely be a fierce succession battle in the Conservative Party.

ALARMIST ONTARIO ENVIRONMENT COMM. GONE

  Ontario’s last independent environment commissioner will pack up her Bay Street office on Friday and leave to start a small business focused on climate advocacy.
   Forced out along with two other watchdogs by Doug Ford’s spending cuts, Dianne Saxe is not leaving quietly. She was in the provincial legislature Wednesday to deliver a final report about the state of energy conservation and climate policies in Ontario. She was blunt: “very frightening” and “very inadequate.”
  In response to questions from reporters, Saxe said that she was unable to find "common ground” with Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk on “climate science and climate policy” to continue on in her role. She added that she believes that Lysyk will not be "an advocate for the environment" the way she was.
  Lysyk told National Observer that “it was probably for the best” that Saxe did not continue as environmental commissioner in the auditor general’s office because they are not “an advocacy office” and “can’t be seen as taking sides on government policy.”

DOUG FORD SUED BY FORMER OPP BLAIR

A former high-ranking Ontario Provincial Police officer is suing Doug Ford for defamation, alleging the premier smeared his reputation for political gain.

Former deputy commissioner Brad Blair filed the $5 million lawsuit over comments made by the premier that Blair had violated the Police Services Act.

Ford's comments came after Blair asked the courts to force the provincial ombudsman to investigate the appointment of a long-time friend of the premier as OPP commissioner, raising concerns about political interference.

ANTI-VAX GROUP RAKED IN $428K FROM BC GOV'T

   Over the last 12 years, a Vancouver group has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from the B.C. government, while screening anti-vaccination movies, sharing content from anti-vaccination websites and complaining about "censorship" from a social media company that blocked anti-vaccination propaganda.
   Federal records show about one-third of the Health Action Network Society's revenue last year came from the B.C. government — a $40,000 Community Gaming Grant taken from provincial gambling revenues.
   Since 2007, the group has received $428,500 worth of these grants.

BRITAIN: SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS IN HUAWEI SOFTWARE

   British cybersecurity inspectors said Thursday they found significant technical issues in Chinese telecom supplier Huawei's software that pose risks for the country's mobile networks.
   The oversight's board annual report also criticized Huawei for making "no material progress" in fixing technical shortcomings noted in last year's report.
   It's the latest salvo in a global battle over Huawei, which the U.S. says could give the Chinese government backdoor access to sensitive data worldwide.
   The report said it's only possible to give "limited assurance" that long-term national security risks from Huawei's involvement in critical British telecom networks can be adequately managed.

THE INTELLIGENT, ARTICULATE PM

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was confronted by protesters who hoped to draw his attention to mercury contamination in the First Nation communities of Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong during a Liberal fundraiser in Toronto on Wednesday night.

The prime minister’s response?

“Thank you for your donation.”

WILSON-RAYBOULD CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION

   Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould is condemning leaks to reporters this week about confidential deliberations in 2017 to appoint a new chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and she says the government should consider an investigation.
“I strongly condemn anyone who would speak about or provide information on such sensitive matters,” she said in an emailed statement. “This has to stop and given the seriousness of this matter I feel that there should be consideration of having some sort of investigation as to the source of this information.”
   David Lametti, Wilson-Raybould’s successor as justice minister and attorney general, posted a statement on Wednesday saying he’s “concerned” by the publication of details of the Supreme Court selection process, but did not address whether an investigation should be launched.

WORLD'S LARGEST T. REX FOUND IN SASKATCHEWAN

   No big deal or anything, but Canada, the world’s largest T. rex was discovered in Saskatchewan. Yep, you read that right: Saskatchewan!
   The behemoth weighed a whopping 19,500 pounds, according to National Geographic, and was found near Eastend, about 380 km southwest from Regina.
  Nicknamed “Scotty,” the dinosaur is much bigger and older than what paleontologists previously believed the species could grow. Of all recovered T. rex skeletons, Scotty is the most mature.

$75B VANCOUVER REAL ESTATE FOREIGN-OWNED

   As the picture of foreign property ownership in Vancouver comes into clearer focus, new analysis shows non-residents of Canada own a much bigger proportion of local housing than previous official reports, with at least $75-billion worth of Vancouver-area residential real estate tied to offshore owners.
   It wasn’t long ago that high-profile figures, in both industry and government, played down the role of foreign homebuyers in Vancouver’s housing market, using the information available at that time. Addressing the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade in November 2016, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. president Evan Siddall said it would be “convenient” but divisive and wrong to blame foreign buyers for skyrocketing prices, and, to bolster his point, cited recent CMHC data showing offshore buyers owned only 2.2 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s condos.
   Now, using new methodology and more data, a report this month from the CMHC shows about 11 per cent of Metro condos are owned, at least in part, by people living outside Canada. Drilling further into this month’s data release, Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, found the percentage is higher still in certain segments of the market: Of recently built condos in Richmond, for example, one-in-four has a non-resident owner.

IF ONLY CANOLA WERE GROWN IN QUEBEC

   Bonokoski:  The Trudeau Liberals, having done zip for the West when it comes to the oil sector, have put similar effort in coming to the rescue of the canola industry after China mysteriously went into full boycott.
    China claimed its last imports of canola from Canada were of poor quality, despite strict quality controls that has the crop annually contributing $26.7 billion to the Canadian economy and supporting more than 250,000 overall jobs.
   Admittedly, canola is not as politically sexy as the SNC-Lavalin scandal, or the political chicanery of buying a $5-billion pipeline with taxpayers’ money so that it can remain idle, but there are nonetheless 45,000 Canadian farmers who directly grow canola for their livelihoods, a crop that represents one out of every four dollars harvested in our country’s agricultural sector.

OUTRAGEOUS PAY OF FORMER ONT LIBERAL STAFF

   Lilley:  Wanna get rich?
   Forget online day trading or multi-level marketing, find a way to become a former Liberal staffer.
   One of the most outrageous findings from the 2018 Sunshine List would be the number of former Liberal political staffers that made out like bandits on the way out the door.

   Sunshine list.

CANADA'S MILITARY IGNORED IN BUDGET

   Last week’s federal budget offered relatively modest spending with targeted funding after years of spending from a government that seemed to believe the deficit will solve itself. Unfortunately, the Canadian Armed Forces again escaped the finance minister’s gaze and for the second consecutive year, national defense is conspicuous by its absence from the budget.
   You might recall the fanfare when Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan released the Liberals’ defense policy review in 2017: “Strong, Secure, Engaged.” It was already more than six months overdue and there was a feeling among defense analysts and most journalists that the Liberals had to deliver a document that suggested serious resolve.

   In any case, we’ve yet to see any indication that the Liberals were serious about the plan. They cut defense spending in 2018 and have ignored it in 2019.

COLEMAN TESTIFIES AGAINST BOYLE

  The blackest period of Caitlan Coleman’s curious life, spent largely in the immense shadows cast by Joshua Boyle, came when she was living in the rudimentary toilet room of the couple’s quarters in Afghanistan.
  The pair were kidnapped by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network about a week after they had entered the war-torn country in 2012, an “adventure” driven by Boyle’s belief that “the better cultures are Indigenous cultures, poor cultures” and that there they would live among the gentle Pashtun people.
  “He (Boyle) told me I had to stay in the bathroom stall,” Coleman told Ontario Court Judge Peter Doody Wednesday as she began testifying at Boyle’s trial on 19 criminal charges, most of which relate to alleged physical abuse of her. 

   Within weeks of arriving back in Canada, they were staying at the Embassy Hotel in Ottawa, and the old familiar cycle began again: verbal abuse, then physical abuse that allegedly included punches, slaps, spanking, choking and even biting.

CLINTON DESPERATE TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT

  Mueller’s report collapsed Hillary Clinton’s BIG LIE, wrote Michael Goodwin.
   For over 2 years Hillary claimed she lost the 2016 election because Trump colluded with the Russians to hack her campaign emails.
  This nightmare was all because of Hillary Clinton’s BIG LIE and instead of addressing it and apologizing to Trump, she tweeted about another BIG LIE: Climate Change.
   That’s right. Hillary Clinton swapped one hoax for another and tweeted about the Climate Change hoax on Monday, acting like nothing ever happened.

DEMOCRATS WON'T COMMIT TO NEW GREEN DEAL

How embarrassing is the green new deal?

So embarrassing that when Senate majority leader McConnell tried to force the Democratic party’s presidential contenders into an embarrassing vote over the berserk, MMT-inducing climate-change proposal (which Republicans are confident that even sober liberal will oppose), not a single Democrat voted for it. Instead, in the vote which was blocked late on Tuesday with a vote of 0-57, 43 Democrats voted merely "present", including the Senate’s half-dozen presidential candidates, to sidestep the GOP maneuver and, as Bloomberg put it, "buy time to build their campaign positions."

The vote was the first of many attempts by Republicans to force supporters of the Green New Deal to come into the spotlight and suffer the public scrutiny. The proposal - mostly a collection of goals for mitigating climate change rather than a fully formed plan of action - which according to some would cost north of $100 trillion and would require the launch of helicopter money, also known as "MMT", has been a favorite target for criticism by McConnell and Republicans ever since freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts rolled it out in February.

“I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity to learn precisely where each one of their senators stand on this radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy,” McConnell said before the vote.

UNVACCINATED KIDS BARRED FROM PUBLIC SPACES

    A New York county has banned unvaccinated children from all public spaces as the state battles its largest measles outbreak in decades.
    Officials in Rockland County declared a countywide state of emergency Tuesday, announcing that the ban will begin at midnight and remain in place for 30 days or until unvaccinated minors receive the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Officials said minors who are unvaccinated will not be permitted in public places, such as churches, schools and shopping centers, though outdoors spaces such as playgrounds are not included in the ban.
   “We must not allow this outbreak to continue,” County Executive Ed Day said during a news conference. “We will not sit idly by while children in our community are at risk.”

CARBON TAX GOUGE BEGINS

   Enbridge Gas has applied for a rate increase that could drive up the average customer’s bill by as much as $94 a year — and the company is blaming the looming carbon tax.
   The increase marks about an 11-per-cent jump. That’s based on what the company said in September was a typical residential customer’s annual bill: $873.
   The natural gas distributor filed its application for an increase in January, saying higher costs associated with the federal government’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (more commonly known as the carbon tax) would add increased costs that the company will need to recoup from customers.

ONTARIO'S HEALTH CARE EXEC's PRICEY SALARIES

  Pricey health care executives drew six-figure salaries of up to $500,000 last year while patients lined the hallways of overcapacity hospitals.
   Documents obtained by the Toronto Sun show the 1,460 staff at seven health care agencies, including Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and eHealth, drew a combined $187.9 million in salary.
   Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott announced last month that the seven agencies — LHINs, CCO, eHealth Ontario, the Ontario Health Quality Council (HQO), Trillium Gift of Life Network, HealthForceOntario Marketing and Recruitment and Health Shared Services — will be consolidated into one super health agency which she said would reduce duplication in infrastructure and administration.

ANOTHER ENTITLED LIBERAL OINKER

   Ontario’s fairness commissioner has billed taxpayers for almost $89,000 in commuting expenses between Ottawa and Toronto.
    Despite his job being in Toronto, Grant Jameson continues to live in Ottawa and bill taxpayers for his flights, taxis and hotels, totalling $88,721 between his appointment in April 2017 and the end of December 2018.
   Jameson was appointed to the job in April 2017 by former premier Kathleen Wynne and is up for renewal next month.

CARBON TAX HAS LEFT BUSINESSES ON EDGE

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said "small firms are still very freaked out" by the coming carbon price, with a lot of unanswered questions about how it will work, who might get an exemption and what documents will be required to prove payment or exemptions. Operators are also wondering who is required to register with the Canada Revenue Agency to collect or apply the charge, and for whom registration is optional.

"There is a dearth of information out there about how this is going to work," he said. "There's a whole bunch of technical questions and we've gone to the feds with these questions and they've come up short in terms of answers. Yet we're a week away from the tax being in place."

Kelly said businesses expect to shoulder the weight of about 50 per cent of the burden of the carbon price, but are only getting seven per cent of the rebates — an imbalance he called "grossly inadequate."

CHINA: CANADA HAS MISTAKES TO CORRECT

China says Canada should " take practical measures to correct the mistakes it made earlier" amid a brewing diplomatic and trade row following the detention of a top Chinese telecom executive.

China said Wednesday its suspension this week of the licence of a second major Canadian canola exporter — Viterra Inc. — is justified by safety concerns.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said China's actions are "scientific and reasonable."

HILLIER CONTACTS ONTARIO'S INTEGRITY WATCHDOG

- A former Progressive Conservative legislator said Tuesday that he's taken his concerns about alleged unregistered lobbying by some of Premier Doug Ford's friends and advisers to Ontario's integrity watchdog.

Randy Hillier, a veteran politician who represents the eastern Ontario riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, made his comments upon his return to the provincial legislature for the first time since he was ejected from Tory caucus earlier this month.

Hillier said he has spoken with Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake about allegations he raised recently regarding some of Ford's top staffers and campaign advisers but said he could not discuss specifics for fear of impacting any potential investigation.

OXYCONTIN MAKER TO PAY $270M TO OKLAHOMA

“The addiction crisis facing our state and nation is a clear and present danger,” Hunter said. Of more than 3,000 Oklahomans admitted to hospitals last year for drug overdoses that they survived, 80 percent involved prescription opioids, he said.

The companies deny wrongdoing. Purdue has argued that U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved labels for its opioids carried warnings about the risk of abuse and misuse associated with them.

The settlement came after Purdue’s chief executive this month said the company was weighing filing for bankruptcy protection to address potential liabilities from the lawsuits, a move that Reuters had reported earlier.

MANITOBA BAR ASSOCIATION'S BLISTERING REPORT

The Manitoba Bar Association (MBA) has issued a blistering statement in support of a top judge after reports relayed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s concerns about him when Trudeau’s ex-attorney general recommended the judge be elevated to Canada’s highest court.

“Chief Justice Joyal is a highly respected jurist who has defended Canada’s political legal culture and has spoken out in favour of both a strong judiciary and, equally, a strong legislative branch,” the statement from MBA president Mark Toews said.

“Nothing in what he has done throughout his judicial career, nor in the publicized comments he has made, could suggest that he is against a woman’s right to choose, same-sex marriage or LGBTQ2S rights generally. It is most appalling that such an inaccurate description has been suggested or implied.”

LIBERALS CONTINUE COVERUP

Liberal MPs have blocked the latest attempt to provide a venue for former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott to testify on the SNC-Lavalin affair.

On Tuesday, the battleground moved to the Commons ethics committee, which considered a Conservative motion to launch a study after the Liberal-dominated justice committee voted to conclude its investigation without calling more witnesses.

But the six Liberals on the ethics committee out-voted the Conservatives, who had two votes, and the NDP, who had one, and the motion failed.

OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS BROKEN

 The first time police caught serial pedophile Madilyn Harks, a string of sexual assaults against preschool-aged girls in B.C. yielded only a few months of house arrest.

After being given parole, Harks quickly victimized another young girl by befriending her mom and grooming her with candy. Harks was freed again three years after that, only to be rejailed within a week after being caught with pornography.

Now, the city of Brampton, Ont., is in uproar after learning that Harks — who since her most recent conviction has changed her name from Matthew and transitioned to the female gender — will be living among them.

CARBON TAX IS COMING

It’s one more example of why government should stick to making the rules and avoid running things as much as possible. But even when it comes to making the rules, farmers and small business operators are frustrated. The problem is red tape and taxes. Survey after survey in Ontario lists bureaucracy and taxes as the biggest small-business headaches.

No matter how you stab it, an increase in bureaucracy and taxes almost always leads to less productive businesses. The more money you take away from businesses and the more burdens you put on them, the fewer resources they have for investing and expanding and hiring.

Now the federal government is on the verge of introducing the carbon tax on April 1, another job-killing idea that was already tried in Australia. After two years they dumped it. Earlier this year, the French went wild over a carbon tax and President Macron backed down.

WE ARE NOT INVESTIGATORS. WE ARE JOURNALISTS

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker is pushing back against critics accusing the news network of being one of the chief propagators of a debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theory after special counsel Robert Mueller cleared the president’s 2016 campaign of alleged collusion with the Kremlin.

In an interview with the New York Times, Zucker said he was “entirely comfortable” with CNN’s Trump-Russia coverage and suggested it was entirely appropriate to give near around-the-clock-coverage due to the story’s magnitude. “We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,” the CNN chief wrote in an email. “A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”

SMOLLETT'S RECORD WIPED CLEAN

  Attorneys for Empire actor Jussie Smollett announced Tuesday morning that charges alleging he filed a false report with Chicago police regarding a hate crime against himself have been dropped.
  Smollett attorneys Tina Glandian and Patricia Brown Holmes said in a statement that the actor’s record “has been wiped clean.” Smollett was indicted on 16 felony counts related to making a false report that he was attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs in downtown Chicago on January 29. Police and prosecutors have said the black and gay actor falsely reported to authorities that he was attacked because he was unhappy with his pay on the Fox show and to promote his career.

OTTAWA POLICE CHIEF SUED BY POLICE ASSOCIATION

   Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau calculated to harm the police association and undermine Matt Skof’s leadership and reputation when he suspended the union president and banned him from all police buildings and public board meetings, according to a lawsuit filed Friday.
   Skof, and the Ottawa Police Association acting on behalf of “its members and in the public interest,” are suing Bordeleau and the police board for $500,000. The lawsuit also seeks a declaration that Bordeleau “abused his office as Chief of the Ottawa Police Service and engaged in misfeasance in public office,” as well as a declaration that the chief infringed Skof’s charter rights to freedom of expression and association and an order suspending the restrictions imposed on Skof as association president.
   The statement of claim was served to Bordeleau at Monday’s public police board meeting, where Skof is banned from attending.

JOSHUA BOYLE TRIAL

  According to Henderson, Boyle said Coleman was particularly stressed because her mother was in town, and she was worried about the state of their apartment. They had also argued, Boyle told Henderson, about drawing on walls and “Caitlan, as a wife, not performing her roles and responsibilities as a mother.”
   Boyle told Henderson that he wanted Coleman to stay in her room and calm down. “He told me he kept the door open and at no time prevented her from leaving,” Henderson testified.
  “He said he offered to have sex with Caitlan if she wanted to.”
 Christie Blatchford reports.

CHILE CANCELS SNC-LAVALIN MINING CONTRACT

  SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., the embattled engineering firm at the heart of Canada’s biggest political crisis in years, has been dealt another blow in Chile.
  Copper producer Codelco said Monday that it canceled a contract worth US$260 million to build two new acid plants in the Chuquicamata mine. Montreal-based SNC has “seriously” and “repeatedly” breached aspects of its contracts, according to Codelco, which cited delays in construction and in payments to subcontractors, as well as quality issues.
  “Codelco made several attempts to resolve the problems facing the project, with the last attempt in February,” according to the statement from the Santiago-based company.

JODY & JANE, vs JUSTIN; A CBC CONSPIRACY THEORY

  Neil Macdonald:  Perhaps Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott are acting entirely on principle, laying their bodies across the tracks to protect our democracy and rule of law. Perhaps.
   That's their story, anyway. And it's a good one, too, no denying that. A politician cannot buy the kind of hagiography Philpott has enjoyed since she quit Justin Trudeau's cabinet in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould, who is herself now portrayed as single-handedly protecting the justice system's integrity from attacks by crude ward heelers in the PMO. A fellow political columnist suggested last week that Philpott should resign as a Liberal because she is so immensely competent, so strong, and so principled that her fellow party members simply aren't worthy of being in caucus with her.
  Mmm-hmm.
   In any case, Philpott and Wilson-Raybould are politicians who are being treated as though they aren't politicians, which is every politician's lustiest dream.
   Certainly, the two of them have co-ordinated a most politician-like attack on their party leader. I've been in this dodge 43 years now, and I have never seen such exquisite destruction and perfectly timed execution.

 "When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of his way."

HEZBOLLAH'S CANADIAN MONEY LAUNDERING OPS

Professional money laundering networks are growing in Canada, washing vast sums of cocaine and fentanyl cash, and helping to drive up prices in Vancouver and Toronto real estate. Canada’s federal government proposed a new federal anti-money laundering task force last week, specifically to tackle these concerns. But according to U.S. law enforcement sources, Canada has been aware of this for over a decade. This story explains untold international details behind recent RCMP investigations, missed early warnings, and lessons from Australian police, that could jump-start Canada’s late response to these growing risks, sources say.

In January 2008, a team of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents travelled to Ottawa to meet with RCMP leaders. They had stunning news. The DEA said an elite group of Middle East narco-terrorists in Colombia was using Canada as a key money laundering hub.

According to a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the meeting, the DEA had “dirty calls” — meaning calls providing criminal evidence of cocaine shipments and cash movements in Canada — from narco-kingpins in Colombia to a network of operatives in Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and London, Ont.

INCOME TAX EVASION & INVESTIGATION

Bitter exes. Jealous neighbours. Scofflaws who aren’t nearly as smart as they believe. Targeted prosecutions. And, for those convicted, a good old public shaming.

Welcome to the wild world of Canadian income tax evasion and investigation – which is thrust into the spotlight during spring tax season but hums along with a mix of deception and punishment all year long.

The federal taxman – formally known as the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) – has a number of tools at its disposal to catch tax cheats. But often, it’s basic human nature that does much of the work for them, one expert says.

The Canada Revenue Agency advises the media of cases of people, corporations, and trusts convicted in the courts for tax evasion or for failing to file income tax returns when required.

LIBERALS' LATEST RED HERRING

   The usual anonymous sources are now whispering to reporters that the reason Jody Wilson-Raybould was fired as minister of justice and attorney general in January had nothing to do with her refusal to kill the prosecution of a Liberal-friendly firm in a province critical to the party’s election chances, as the prime minister and a phalanx of top officials had pressured her to do. No, according to reports by Canadian Press and CTV, it was because of her pick for a judicial appointment.

  Auntie Sheila takes another swing at Philpott and Wilson-Raybould, protecting widdle Justin.

ISIS COMMANDER HAD UNRESTRICTED TRAVEL PASSPORT

BUDAPEST, Hungary – The alleged ISIS commander charged here last week with taking part in 20 beheadings obtained a special refugee passport in Greece that gave him air travel access to much of Europe, according to Gyorgy Bakondi, a senior advisor to Hungary’s prime minister’s office.

The revelation about the bestowal of such refugee benefits on an accused ISIS commander raises questions about terrorist exploitation of the so-called refugee “right to travel” embossed in a 1951 international treaty, allowing those approved for refugee status to move about freely in Europe and elsewhere.

BOYLE ON TRIAL

     A Crown attorney says she expects lawyers for former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle to vigorously challenge the credibility of his spouse as they argue Boyle is innocent of charges he assaulted her.
   Crown lawyer Meaghan Cunningham opened Boyle’s trial in Ontario court Monday by saying that given the unusual and difficult experiences Caitlan Coleman has endured, it would be a mistake to conclude she was a willing participant in her husband’s physical and sexual abuse.
  Boyle was arrested by Ottawa police and charged with offences including assault, sexual assault, unlawful confinement and causing someone to take a noxious substance.
  All but one of 19 counts against Boyle relate to Coleman. A publication ban was partially lifted Monday to reveal that she is one of the alleged victims after she consented to being named. A ban remains in place on identifying the second alleged victim.

IF THERE'S NOTHING TO HIDE, LET THEM SPEAK

  McParland: Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are acting like someone caught in an ice storm who won’t admit it’s cold. The more the country raises questions, the harder they insist there’s nothing to answer. They’ve turned the SNC-Lavalin affair into a scandal about a scandal: they simply refuse to admit a scandal exists.
   Even as the story of former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould and her treatment by the prime minister lumbers through its second month, they continue to insist there is nothing to discuss. The supposed non-story has divided the caucus, turned Liberals on Liberals, sent Justin Trudeau’s reputation tumbling and dominated every news cycle, with no hint the prime minister comprehends what he’s unleashed.

AVENATTI CHARGED WITH EXTORTION

Attorney Michael Avenatti, one of President Donald Trump’s most determined antagonists and the former lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, has reportedly been charged by federal prosecutors with extortion.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York reportedly believe that Avenatti threatened the Nike footwear company, saying he could inflict harm on the company’s reputation unless he was paid $20 million.

ONTARIO'S LONG-TERM CARE PROJECTS

   Ontario’s health minister has announced new long-term care projects that will add 1,157 beds in facilities across the province.
  The Progressive Conservative government has promised to add 15,000 long-term care beds over five years.
  Friday’s announcement brings the total of beds announced to 7,232.
   Christine Elliott says it will likely take one to two years for them to become available.

TIME TO SHRINK ENVIRONMENT CANADA'S MANDATE

By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris
  Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) should get out of the climate research and forecasting business entirely. Instead, it should be relegated to merely collecting data to be used by more effective and less partisan entities. Climate research is far too political for ECCC to be involved in and recent developments shows that they are absolutely hopeless at forecasting.
   In the modern era, and especially after the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) deception appeared on the scene in the 1980s, all normal meteorology and climatology effectively ended. The deliberately narrow and premeditated science of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses only on human causes of change. This eliminated natural causes, including solar and major planetary mechanisms.
   Most of the people now working at weather agencies throughout the world were educated during the post-IPCC era of the last 30 years. Worse, they all work for government agencies that comprise and appoint the IPCC. It is a truly incestuous system. Environment Canada is a member of the IPCC and contributed to the assembly of 100-plus computer models that make the IPCC forecasts. All the forecasts are wrong and the Canadian model forecasts are the worst.

EXPOSING THE RUSSIAGATE CRIMINALS

   Nunes earlier tweeted: "The Russia investigation was based on false pretenses, false intel, and false media reports. House Intel found a yr ago there was no evidence of collusion, and Democrats who falsely claim to have such evidence have needlessly provoked a terrible, more than two-year-long crisis."
  And now Sperry is reporting that Nunes is preparing criminal referrals: "House Intel has evidence Clinton operatives & hi-level FBI & DOJ officials started Trump-Russia investigation in "late 2015/early 2016" &that House GOP will be making criminal referrals to AG"
  More on the story.

ANALYSIS & RIDICULE OF GREEN NEW DEAL

   In the energy arena, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal requires that fossil fuels, nuclear power and even waste-to-energy and large-scale hydroelectric facilities be eliminated from the US energy mix. Coal, oil and natural gas leasing and development on federally controlled Western lands would be banned, as would exports of those fuels.
  Internal combustion cars, trucks, buses, trains and boats would be replaced with electric versions, or eradicated. Airplanes would be replaced by high-speed rail. And every house and building in America would be gutted, rebuilt or retrofitted with “state of the art efficiency” technologies. That’s for starters.
   In the “social justice and fairness” arena, the Cortez-Markey GND provides that every American would get government-guaranteed jobs, with “family-sustaining” wages and pensions; free college or trade school; “healthy organic” food; “safe, affordable, adequate” and energy-efficient homes; and support for ethnic and economic “communities” that “historically” were harmed “first and most” by “dirty energy.”

Saturday Night Live could not have crafted a better parody of energy, economic and scientific reality.

RUSSIA: MUELLER INVESTIGATION A DISGRACE

   Thirty-four people, including six Trump aides and advisers, were charged in the investigation. Twenty-five are Russians accused of election interference either through hacking into Democratic accounts or orchestrating a social media campaign to spread disinformation on the internet.
   Russian authorities over the past months portrayed the Mueller probe as a witch hunt against Trump and a tool of the Democratic Party to fan the flames of the anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S.
    Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the Federation Council, on Monday described the probe and the discussions around it as “two years of incessant lies.”

DALTON MCGUINTY: CLIMATE CHANGE WARRIOR

Six years removed from his decade-long tenure as premier, McGuinty is dipping his toe back into the public waters — but this time he’s laser-focused on the one issue that will either make or break the entire planet: climate change.
Since leaving Ontario’s political arena, the 63-year-old McGuinty has focused on teaching public policy and governance, first at Harvard, and currently at the University of Toronto and Carleton University. He is also on the on the board of directors for Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.
   Yah, no vested interest, at all, in passing around the green kool-aid.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, DISSENT IS STALINIST

   In an op-ed published Wednesday in the UK Guardian, Michael Mann and Bob Ward warn Americans not to be “fooled by the Stalinist tactics being used by the White House to try to discredit the findings of mainstream climate science.”
   Mann and Ward are upset that “a group of hardcore climate change deniers and contrarians linked to the administration is organizing a petition in support of a new panel being set up by the National Security Council to promote an alternative official explanation for climate change.”

MOCK THE RUSSIAGATERS

   The Robert Mueller investigation which monopolized political discourse for two years has finally concluded, and his anxiously awaited report has been submitted to Attorney General William Barr. The results are in and the debate is over: those advancing the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government were wrong, and those of us voicing skepticism of this were right.
   Never stop reminding them of this. Never stop mocking them for it. Never stop mocking their idiotic Rachel Maddow worship. Never stop mocking the Robert Mueller prayer candles. Never stop making fun of the way they blamed all their problems on Susan Sarandon. Never stop reminding them of those stupid pink vagina hats. Never stop mocking them for elevating Louise Mensch and Eric Garland. Never stop mocking them for creating the Krassenstein brothers.
   Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life. Going forward, authority and credibility rests solely with those who kept clear eyes and clear heads during the mass media propaganda blitzkrieg, not with those who were stupid enough to believe what they were told about the behaviors of a noncompliant government in a post-Iraq invasion world. The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.

LIBERALS ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF

Rex Murphy:  The Liberals must surely understand where the standoff between Mr. Justin Trudeau, and ex-ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould (JWR) and Jane Philpott has brought them. They are on the edge of a cliff, and after the detonations set off by Dr. Philpott in her plain-spoken, urgent, and unignorable interview with Maclean’s Paul Wells, they have little ground left to balance on. One more bomblet on the issue of SNC-Lavalin — it doesn’t have to be much — and the valley and all its sharp stones will rush up to meet them

SGRO REVEALS IT'S ALL ABOUT THE VOTES

   Long-time Liberal MP Judy Sgro said she thinks Wilson-Raybould and Philpott are providing fodder to the opposition and challenged them to use their parliamentary privilege to air whatever they have to say on the SNC-Lavalin affair.
  "It's either put up or shut up,"
  Sgro said she thinks the ongoing affair is hurting the Liberal government's chance of re-election this year and some of her fellow MPs are worried.
  "It affects all of us when one of our members of the team decides to go out and speak against the rest of us, or unnerve the rest of us," she said. "You can't keep dropping innuendo every day and expect that all of us from the prime minister down are hopeless to stand back and do anything about this."

BC FORFEITURE OFFICE TARGETS ASSETS OF CRIME

  B.C.’s civil forfeiture office is suing to seize more than $5.3 million in cash and assets from a Richmond man who was a key target of an RCMP investigation into the biggest money laundering case in B.C. history.

Named in the suit filed in B.C. Supreme Court last week are Paul King Jin, his wife Xiaoqi Wei, and several others, including Jin’s niece, Yuanyuan Jia, who is alleged to own a condo on Jin’s behalf.

The civil forfeiture office is seeking $4.86 million in cash and assets including a mortgaged Richmond condo on Jones Road valued at $764,000; a 2011 Porsche 911 the office says is owned in someone else’s name but beneficially belonging to Jin; $45,000 in chips from the River Rock and Edgewater casinos; and various other items including computers, cellphones, gambling equipment and jewelry.

The cash and assets, except the condo, were all seized during police raids in 2015 during the RCMP’s E-Pirate investigation that uncovered an underground bank, Silver International, that allegedly laundered as much as $220 million a year, and possibly as much as $1 billion. Police allege clients of the bank included local drug traffickers, high-roller Chinese gamblers and members of Mexican drug cartels.

SNC-LAVALIN WINS CONTRACT W/O REQUIRED SCORE

  SNC-Lavalin won the $1.6-billion contract to extend and maintain Ottawa's north-south LRT line even though it didn't achieve the minimum technical score to qualify for the project — a threshold its competitors met easily, CBC News has learned.
  The Montreal-based company beat out two other consortia to extend the Trillium Line from Greenboro into Riverside South, a decision cemented with a 19-3 vote by Ottawa city council on March 6.
  However, sources with direct knowledge of the Stage 2 evaluation process told CBC that SNC-Lavalin failed to achieve the minimum technical score of 70 per cent, a requirement set out in publicly available documents.

WHAT WILL FOLLOW THE BREXIT MESS

  Black:    I had assumed that May was, as she claimed, basically a leaver, and had set it up to go without a deal and straight into the arms of the U.S. and blame the failure to reach a deal on the intransigence of Brussels, Corbyn, and some of her own MP’s. It now emerges that she is a spavined pantomime horse of releave and lemain, trying to muddle through ambiguously until either Britain is forced out by the clock or there is a second referendum that cancels the first. She seems incapable of leading and wants events to lead.

I predict that there will be no agreement in Parliament next week, nor prior to April 12, and that crashing out will be almost completely painless and imperceptible, and May will either take the hint that she has a serious confidence-problem and go, or fumble along until November and be handed a bus ticket. In either case, the new prime minister will be a compromise candidate but a leaver, such as the former Brexit ministers, Dominic Raab and David Davis (both of whom quit in disagreement with May’s concessions to Brussels). The British will be much happier with the Americans and ourselves than they have been with Brussels, and will negotiate trade arrangements with the EU similar to those of Norway and Switzerland. As in many things, the imagination of Brexit will be more torturing than the reality.

TRUMP DEFENDING FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS

President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting free speech on university campuses on Wednesday at the White House in front of conservative student activists.

“Today, we are delivering a clear message to the professors and power structures trying to suppress, to keep young Americans and all Americans from challenging ridged far left ideology,” Trump said. “People who are confident in their beliefs cannot censor others.”

The executive order signed by the president requires universities to certify that they support free speech on campus in order to receive federal research grants.

CANADA'S LARGEST INFLUX OF IMMIGRANTS SINCE 1913

And as it turns out, migration is surging north of the border as well, as Canada's statistics agency reported on Thursday that the country experienced the largest inflow of migrants in more than a century last year. Though the figures excluded illegal migrants (who have also reportedly been entering the country in record numbers), more than 320,000 people migrated to Canada last year, with more than 71,000 arriving in the final quarter - including legal refugees attracted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's "open door" policy.