$208M TO IRB TO DEAL WITH 41,000 ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

   "The past 24 months have seen the highest volumes of refugee protection claims in the IRB's history," the departmental plan document states. "As a result, an inventory of more than 75,000 claims has accumulated, representing more than two years of work at the current funding levels."
  In the 2017-18 fiscal year, the number of new claims began exceeding the board’s capacity to process them by an average of about 2,300 cases a month. This new backlog was created in part by an influx of over 41,000 "irregular" migrants who have crossed into Canada since 2017 by avoiding official border checkpoints. Canada has also seen a rise in the number of refugees entering the country through regular, legal channels.

Hussen says the government is responding to this increased pressure, pointing to new investments contained in this year's federal budget that promise $208 million in new money for the IRB to tackle refugee claims. This money go toward hiring 130 new staff, including 85 new decision-makers.

CHINA ESCALATING DISPUTE WITH CANADA

   China has asked its regional governments to draw up a list of business dealings they have with Canadian firms in order to widen the scope of ways the superpower can strike back against Canada in the ongoing dispute over the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive, said former Canadian ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques.
   "The central government of China has asked all provinces to make a list of all the ongoing transactions with Canadian companies and I think it's just another example that they want to build up an inventory of possible targets for future measures directed at Canada," Guy Saint-Jacques told CBC News Network's Power & Politics.
   "We know it's the usual playbook of China when they are angry at a country they will take all kinds of measures to penalize this country, and of course, it's very easy for them to request such information from companies," he told host Vassy Kapelos.

SNC-LAVALIN LIBERAL DONORS LIST REVEALED

  A confidential document sent to the Liberal Party of Canada in 2016, and obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada, reveals how top officials at the embattled engineering firm SNC-Lavalin were named in a scheme to illegally influence Canadian elections.
  The list of names, compiled in 2016 by federal investigators probing political party donations and leaked to CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête, raises new questions about an agreement by the Commissioner of Canada Elections not to prosecute the company.
  The federal Liberals were sent the list in a letter marked "confidential" from the Commissioner of Canada Elections — the investigative branch of Elections Canada — on Aug. 5, 2016. But for nearly three years, neither Elections Canada nor the Liberal Party shared that information publicly.

RECYCLING INDUSTRY IS NO LONGER VIABLE

   In a months-long investigation, Global News spoke with dozens of communities, companies and industry leaders across the country about the mounting challenges faced by Canada’s recycling industry. The result is dire: with few exceptions, more recycling is being sent to landfill, fewer items are being accepted in the blue bin and the financial toll of running these programs has become a burden for some municipalities.
   While recycling has never been a money-making venture, cities and recycling companies rely on the revenue from the products they collect at the curb — things like plastic, paper, aluminum and cardboard — to offset the cost of sorting and processing.
  Everything had a value — for a time.
  Now, commodity prices have crashed. Some products have no buyers, and recyclers are paying to get rid of some things.

ANOTHER CRINGE-WORTHY GAFFE FROM TRUDEAU

PM Trudeau confuses China with Japan in front of the Japanese Prime Minister

BIDDING FOR A SEAT ON THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL

  The vote to send a new country to the Security Council table at the United Nations is creeping up, and so is Canada's spending to secure a seat around that table.

Canada has been campaigning for one of the rotating slots on the UN Security Council for three years. There's one year left until that 2021 spot is decided, and the spending isn't slowing down.

Documents obtained by CBC News under Access to Information law show the government has ramped up spending as the clock ticks down. Since 2016, $1.5 million has been spent on the campaign — $1 million in the last 10 months alone.

UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE FACTS

  Forcing gas station operators to display Ontario government stickers on the federal carbon tax violates their rights and freedoms, the province’s chamber of commerce said Thursday as it asked the Progressive Conservatives to reverse their decision.
   In a letter Thursday to the Energy Minister Greg Rickford, chamber president Rocco Rossi said the group’s members are concerned about the “political nature” of the decals, which were unveiled earlier this month as part of the Tory government’s fight against the federal levy.
   “Our members — including gas station operators — have expressed concerns regarding the political nature of the stickers, viewing them as a violation of their rights and freedoms,” Rossi said.

LIBERALS' REVENUE NEUTRAL CARBON TAX OMITS GST

   Before you accept Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim his carbon tax is going to make almost everyone richer, you might want to factor in that you’ll be paying the federal goods and services tax (GST) on top of it.
   And that this will pour hundreds of millions of additional dollars into federal coffers from Canadian taxpayers annually, despite Trudeau’s claim his carbon tax is “revenue neutral” for his government.
  It isn’t, as the federal Conservatives have pointed out.

WYNNE STILL IN DENIAL OF LIBERAL INCOMPETENCE

   Based on her twitter feed these days, former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne believes Ontario’s books were in great shape up to June of last year, when she lost power to Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives.
   Because no matter where Ford looks to reduce the size and cost of government these days in order to address the fiscal train wreck the Liberals left the province in, Wynne is now front and centre claiming his government’s actions are misguided, illogical, cruel and dangerous.
  In other words, Wynne is essentially arguing any reduction to 15 years of Liberal overspending that reduced the Ontario government to one of the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign borrowers isn’t justified.

OIL IMPORTS FROM SAUDI ARABIA RISING

  Canada's oil imports from Saudi Arabia have been rising steadily for the past five years, according to Statistics Canada trade data reviewed by CBC News, and a festering diplomatic spat with the kingdom appears not to have had any significant impact on Canada's appetite for Riyadh's crude.
  The total volume of Canadian imports from Saudi Arabia has increased by 66 per cent since 2014, with imports rising every year during that period.
  Last year, Canadian companies spent $3.54 billion importing 6.4 million cubic metres of Saudi oil, up from 5.9 million cubic metres worth $2.5 billion in 2017, before the dispute started in August 2018.

CALLING OUT THE VIRTUE SIGNALLING POSEUR PM

“I’ve been waiting in line down the road for 30 minutes while you've been here soaking up the rays,” the unidentified man in a baseball cap yelled at Trudeau.

Trudeau responded that he was “sorry” for the man’s “challenge.”

“It’s not my challenge,” the man said. “I’m a volunteer trying to help someone save their home.”

Trudeau said that his family had spent 15 minutes filling up sandbags and that he was there to draw attention to the flooding.

“I was in truck for an hour waiting while you were here for the photo op” the man retorted.

“That’s unfriendly and unneighbourly today,” Trudeau shot back. “We’re here to help.”

LAUGHING AT THE USELESS UN

  In April 2018, a ship carrying $3 million worth of coal slipped into Indonesian waters with its identification transmitter switched off and its flag hidden from view.
  Acting on a tip, Indonesia’s Navy detained the vessel, which identified itself as the “Wise Honest” from Sierra Leone. But when inspectors went aboard, they found two dozen crew members and registration documents indicating a different country of origin — North Korea.
  The interdiction, detailed in a March 5 report by U.N. sanctions monitors, is part of a worrying rise in coal exports from the hermit kingdom — exports that violate U.N. sanctions and help finance Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program, the monitors said.

THE SAD STATE OF HIGHER LEARNING

    Rex Murphy: That’s not the real story here though by a long shot. Nor is the bribery — though that is a full scandal. It is that a university was willing to harlotize itself, admit an incompetent brainless internet hobbit, knowing that she and her mother only wanted university to wear as a logo, a status tag, a prestige trinket.
   Universities are not like other institutions — corporations, government. They don’t just have ethical boundaries, ethical codes. They are the expositors of ethics. They instruct in why ethics are necessary. They are in the best and true understanding of them, the source pool of all secular thought on why morality and ethics are both necessary and foundational for every given society. Or at least they were. But here — and elsewhere — it has been shown that giddy Hollywoodites, millionaires of any provenance, anxious to add a BA to some mulish offspring, can purchase a university’s stamp and prestige in much the same kind of exchange in which Ms. Giannulli and her mother can purchase some upscale brand of shoes.

MCKENNA DEMONIZING OIL

   The federal Liberals are starting to reveal what they really think. And they think demon oil is the perfect foil for October’s federal election.
   Take this remarkable tweet from Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who was reacting to news that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer met privately with oil executives at an Alberta lodge to talk about election campaigns, among other things.
  “Straight from Harper’s playbook,” she wrote. “Andrew Scheer has been caught scheming behind closed doors with wealthy executives to gut environmental protection laws, silence critics, and make pollution free again.”
  The zealous minister misses her own irony. “Scheming behind closed doors with wealthy executives” is an exact description of Liberal behaviour in the SNC-Lavalin case.

BATTLING THE DELUGE

Photos of widespread flooding in parts of eastern Canada

BEING LECTURED BY AN IDIOT

Sitting opposite the prime minister on stage, Guilbeault said most Canadians don't know how "entrenched" Trudeau's desire to protect nature is.

"I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about where this passion for nature protection comes from," the environmental activist said to Trudeau.

The prime minister said it came from playing outside as a child.

THE DESPERATION OF LIBERALS

  Now we have another example of the Liberals adjusting national security priorities for what may prove to be solely partisan reasons. This time they’re doing it on an international scale.
   It was recently revealed by the Canadian Press that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland attempted to coerce her counterparts at the G7 to send out a joint communique that claimed white supremacy at home and abroad posed a major global threat. The other countries were reluctant to go along with it.
   Why, though, is Freeland torquing the threat? What is the point of trying to pressure other countries on this issue?

THE ORNERY CANADIAN VOTER

Ivison:  Emotions are running high in the country, with broad dissatisfaction at the direction in which Canada is heading and the leadership being provided by Trudeau and his government. Pollster Darrell Bricker said in a speech earlier this month he believes the Liberals felt they had more support for their agenda than proved to be the case. He said the public is “ornery” over the “misalignment” of Liberal priorities — the identity politics issues dear to Trudeau’s heart — with the more hard-boiled concerns of many voters.

UNSUBTLE CHINESE PROPAGANDA

The new group emerged just two months after Tibetan Chemi Lhamo faced an organized campaign of opposition from thousands of Chinese students at the University of Toronto, where she was elected president of the Scarborough campus’s students union.

Toronto police are investigating the deluge of abusive texts she received, some of which threatened violence against Lhamo.

“This is definitely another propaganda tool by the Chinese state,” she said in an interview about the new association. “I see it as a threat to me personally. I will not know about my Tibetan history if these entities gain power and start to influence our academic institutions and other cultural spaces.”

Representatives of the organization — also referred to on Chinese-language websites as the Tibetan Canadian Friendship Association — could not be reached for comment.

"OPEN & TRANSPARENT" LIBERALS GAG BIDDERS

Companies interested in providing a new icebreaker to the coast guard have been threatened by the Liberal government which is increasingly using gag orders to prevent details about proposed federal procurements from being reported on.
   But the media ban and threat in March to punish companies that violate that gag order significantly ups the ante in ongoing attempts by Public Services and Procurement Canada to control what the media finds out about the billions of tax dollars being spent on new ships and military equipment.
  Postmedia has determined the department has put in place gag orders on at least three other military equipment projects worth tens of billions of dollars.

PRESIDENT DUTERTE ISSUES ULTIMATUM

  The president of the Philippines says if Canada doesn't take back tons of trash within the next week he will "declare war" and ship the containers back himself.
   Filipino media outlets report that Rodrigo Duterte made threats Tuesday about dozens of shipping containers filled with Canadian household and electronic garbage that has been rotting in a port near Manila for nearly six years.
   "I want a boat prepared," Duterte said. "I’ll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that thing out or I will set sail."

BILL "NO REGRETS" MORNEAU

At a media availability in downtown Toronto, Morneau defended his government’s handling of a controversy, which led to the resignation of two cabinet ministers (Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott) and two of the most powerful unelected figures in Canadian politics (Gerry Butts and Michael Wernick).

“We’ve been pretty clear all the way through this discussion that it’s important that we have a robust discussion within our government to protect Canadians’ futures, to think about Canadian jobs, to think about pensioners’ rights, this will continue to be important,” Morneau said.

“It’s also important that we live by the rule of law. The prime minister has been very clear that we have robust discussions and we’ve always ensured to act appropriately. No regrets.”

KHADR's SETTLEMENT "IS FOR EVERY CANADIAN"

On the government settlement:

Lepage asked how Khadr reacts to many people believing him to be a terrorist who should never have received money from the government. “Well, I can’t influence, or I can’t change people’s opinions about me,” he said. “I think this settlement is not only for me, it’s for every Canadian, to a degree, to ensure that our government does not participate in torturing its citizens. So I know some people might be offended by it but I think it’s for all of us.”

CANADA RUN BY LIBERAL CABAL

It was no coincidence that the current unravelling of the Liberal party was caused by the principled objections regarding SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. by two political newcomers against a concerted attempt to subvert justice.

It is also no coincidence that both were female and both from outside the Quebec-Ottawa power centre that has controlled postwar Canada for generations.

Clearly, they failed to realize the party’s lengthy tenure in Ottawa is based on putting all things Quebec or Liberal above everything else. Instead, they collided with this coven of Liberal civil servants, corporations, media sympathizers, law firms, lobbyists, and caucus colleagues who salute first and never ask questions.

BUCKY MAY

Got married.

CRUSHING ALBERTA'S ENEMIES

  Corbella:  Kenney told the ecstatic Calgary crowd he would use every means at his disposal — which likely means legal action — as well as launching “a public inquiry into the foreign source of funds behind the campaign to landlock Alberta energy.”
“And now I have a message to those foreign-funded special interests who have been leading a campaign of economic sabotage against this great province,” he said.
“To the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Tides Foundation, Lead Now, the David Suzuki Foundation and all of the others — your days of pushing around Albertans with impunity just ended.”
“We Albertans are patient and fair minded, but we have had enough of your campaign of defamation and double standards. Today, we begin to stand up for ourselves, for our jobs, for our future. Today we begin to fight back.
“From this point forward, when you lie about how we produce energy, we will tell the truth assertively, and we will use every means at our disposal to hold you to account.

CARBON TAX COURT BATTLE, ADVANTAGE ONTARIO

   Lilley:The federal act imposing a carbon tax on some provinces and not others is a violation of our federal system, as well as an attempt by the federal government to encroach on provincial jurisdiction and, effectively, a violation of the “no taxation without representation” concept that has been part of our system dating back to Magna Carta.

Did you know the act setting up this system grants to cabinet and cabinet alone the ability to set the rate of the carbon tax and to adjust it as they see fit without passing another vote in Parliament?

Whatever you think of the carbon tax or climate change, that should be enough to have this act and the tax that goes with it declared unconstitutional.

THE LIES OF CLIMATE WARRIORS

  But why are Borneo’s forests being cut down? The reason, as Attenborough said, is palm oil, a lucrative crop used in products ranging from soap to biscuits. Unfortunately, he left out the final stage of the argument.
   Half of all the millions of tons of palm oil sent to Europe is used to make ‘biofuel’, thanks to an EU directive stating that, by 2020, ten per cent of forecourt fuel must come from ‘renewable’ biological sources. Malaysia says this has ‘created an unprecedented demand’.
  To put it another way: misguided ‘action’ designed to save the planet is actually helping to damage it – although the EU has pledged to phase out palm oil biofuel by 2030.
  Another example of a misconceived effort to save the planet is Drax power plant in Yorkshire which is fed, thanks to £700 million of annual subsidy, by ‘renewable’ wood pellets made from chopped-down American trees – while pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than when it burnt only coal.

SUSTAINABLE SCHEME TO DISMANTLE CANADA'S ECONOMY

Peter Foster: Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg have a 'sustainable' scheme to dismantle Canada's economy.
It is a key weapon in the supposedly inevitable 'transition to a low-carbon economy.' As such it represents a particular threat to Canada.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS HOWLING

The Ontario government is overhauling the Endangered Species Act and some environmental activists are howling.

One of the changes is a rethink of how species are listed.

“By considering the species condition both inside and outside Ontario, a species that has a smaller population in Ontario but is common in other parts of North America, like the Gray Fox, would not be classified as threatened,” documents handed out by ministry staff say.

KENNEY'S ELECTION SPURS OILPATCH REJOICING

  Canadian oil and gas executives were in a celebratory mood at an investor conference Wednesday following the United Conservative Party’s election win in Alberta, though many acknowledged that premier-designate Jason Kenney’s power is limited in fixing the industry’s most entrenched problem.
   Pressed for details on how Kenney’s UCP would help their industry solve its most acute problem — getting new pipelines built to export markets – some oil and gas CEOs pointed specifically to Kenney’s “fight-back strategy” to confront environmental groups opposed to new pipelines.

ARABS READY FOR PEACE WITH ISRAEL

For a long time the Arab states appeared permanently tied to the Palestinians. They felt guilty because they were relatively prosperous and the Palestinians were not. In the struggle between Arabs and Jews, they felt constrained to take the Arab side. But that kind of guilty conscience can fade, making room for self-assertion.

In this way, the Arab states have changed. They are said to be wearied by Palestinian intransigence and refusal to negotiate publicly. By moving the U.S. embassy to western Jerusalem and calling for Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, President Donald Trump has strengthened America’s sympathy with Israel’s cause and legitimacy. And the Arab states know (this could be the deciding point) that they will certainly benefit economically from a connection with Israel, which in recent times has notably expanded its industrial position. These days just about every economist seems anxious to praise Israel’s corporate achievements.

WHY NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL MATTERS

Rex Murphy:  We in the West are obliging amnesiacs of our greatest achievements. And it takes something like the jeopardy to Notre Dame to remind us of our common cultural and artistic heritage. That through literature, painting, sculpture, music and all the attendant arts the West has brightened and deepened the experience of life, and put in possession for generations past and to come creations that widen our souls. It is good, too, and of the essence of the near tragedy in Paris, to be reminded that from the power of religion in the so-called dim light of the Middle Ages, by the labour of hands and minds of a whole people, something as transcendent as the great vaults and towers of Notre Dame was given over to the world.

REALITY CHECK FOR POST-SECONDARY INSTITUTIONS IN ONTARIO

Successive generations of university presidents, who typically have a lot more letters after their names than the average politician, have managed to protect their sector from the kind of government scrutiny that has been applied to every other publicly-funded service. No government has had the nerve to give the universities a blunt message, which boils down to “It’s about jobs.”

It’s about time, too. Ontario has a significant misfit between people’s skills and the jobs available. There are 160,000 jobs in the province that have been vacant for three months or more. Employers have a hard time finding skilled workers and it’s really up to college and universities, working with government, to close that gap.

Ontario’s new funding plan will certainly focus universities’ attention on that goal.

SHAMELESS CRIMINAL CRIES RACISM

An Ottawa landscaper who covered his tracks and hid from police after a deadly hit-and-run has been spared jail time by a judge who accepted his explanation that a fear of turning himself in was heightened because he’s a “man of colour” afraid of racist police.

In 2015, Andy Nevin, 39, was cycling along Leitrim Road when Deinsberg St-Hilaire’s pickup truck smashed into him. St-Hilaire was found not guilty of dangerous driving causing death in 2018, but pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

During his trial, court heard that St-Hilaire went to substantive lengths to hide his involvement in Nevin’s death.

TRUDEAU'S HYPOCRISY HELPED KENNEY WIN

  Rex Murphy: Trudeau damned Notley. He was Kenney’s strongest argument against her. If the PM had worked with the same zeal he exerts on “global warming” for Alberta jobs and a pipeline she would have had more than a chance.

Early on in her tenure she entered a “grand bargain” with Trudeau. She worked with him. She gave the illusory “social licence” deal — backed the dread carbon tax, tightened environmental oversight — on the promise of vigorous leadership on a pipeline to the coast and real attention to Alberta’s hard times in the downturn. The deal was pure vapour; call it a downstream emission. Alberta oil is still landlocked, and “social licence’ is now a phrase you have to look up in the newspaper files.

And then, with Alberta’s election just about to begin, there was the political fury over the prime minister’s attempted interference on behalf of SNC-Lavalin. He, in effect, was risking his government to protect “9,000 jobs in Quebec” (an incorrect number as it turned out). The furious irony of this claim — that he was endangering his own government over Quebec jobs, in contrast to virtual somnambulism over Alberta’s massive losses for the full three years of his government — was a whole lot of salt in a very big wound.

ANOTHER UNBIASED ANALYSIS FROM CBC

There's a chance that construction of the Trans Mountain expansion will now be cleared to continue later this spring or summer, sometime shortly after Jason Kenney is sworn in as Alberta's 18th premier. (It's a little like how the Iran hostage crisis came to an end just as Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the American president in 1981.) But Kenney is also promising to make it harder for Trudeau to justify that pipeline — by promising to repeal the carbon tax and cancel plans for a cap on emissions from the oilsands.

Trudeau can use the federal backstop to fill the carbon pricing gap. The cap is trickier to replace. Might Trudeau use the pipeline (a pipeline Ottawa now owns, mind you) as leverage to negotiate a commitment to the cap? Could he? Could Trudeau rally the senior oil executives and companies who stood behind Notley in 2015 to call on Kenney to follow through now?

About that decision on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion......     Yah, shocker.

PERPETUAL WHINE FROM TEACHERS' UNIONS

“I think it’s a pretty, pretty good deal that they have right now,” Ford told reporters on Tuesday.

“They get their three month holiday. They have the best benefit package in the entire country, the best pension in the entire country. The health plan – they have a great gig.”

It is a good gig.

The average teacher salary in Ontario according to Ministry of Education figures is $90,500 — that works out to $89,300 for elementary teachers and $92,900 for secondary.

MORE NIGHTMARES FOR JUSTIN

  Kenney obviously has two distinct enemies in Ottawa. The first, of course, is Trudeau, unaided by the long memories of Albertans who will never forget the hell inflicted on them by his father’s National Energy Program.

Trudeau is already condemning Kenney and the UCP for not making the fight against climate change “a priority,” and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has yet to fully unleash her lecture in Alberta that we are all doomed to die in 12 years unless pollution is somehow taxed out of existence.

Kenney’s priority, however, is restoring Alberta’s once-booming economy and quashing the Notley-imposed carbon tax on pollution.

GREEN WARRIORS: INCOMPETENT, MIDDLE-CLASS, SELF-INDULGENT

  Londoners blasted climate change protesters for 'making things worse' today as they faced further chaos on the capital's transport network on the third day of mayhem across London, England.
   Commuters and businesses are raging at the major disruption to at least 500,000 people as a boat continues to block Oxford Circus, activists dance on Waterloo Bridge and rows of tents cover key routes through the capital.
   Despite police shutting Transport for London's public wifi to stop activists co-ordinating protests underground, Extinction Rebellion protesters clambered on Docklands Light Railway carriages overground at Canary Wharf.

BIZARRE EASTER CARDS OF EDWARDIAN ERA

  A murderous rabbit, terrifying children with egg-shaped heads and a woman being whipped - these are the very creepy Easter cards beloved by the Edwardians.
  While Easter today features heart-warming imagery of fluffy bunnies and smiling chicks, the Edwardians adored sending cards with bizarre and often sinister oddities to celebrate the holiday.

V-A NORMAN'S LAWYER "LIFT REDACTIONS ON DOCUMENTS"

   Two days have been scheduled this week for arguments around solicitor-client privilege. Norman’s lawyers argue it has been improperly applied on some documents and should be lifted by the judge. If the privilege is found to be legitimate, they argue the judge should order it waived to allow Norman to fully defend himself.
   In their application, Norman’s lawyers included a chart outlining 36 documents on which they’re seeking to lift the redactions. Federal justice department lawyers have conceded on seven documents, including four that were already inadvertently released to the defence, leaving 29 documents for the judge to consider.

EARTH WARRIORS TURNING ON PM TRUDEAU

  As Alberta faces an election that’s been heavily focused on the oil and gas industry, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced hecklers and tough questions on his policies around oil.
   At a town hall in Cambridge, Ont., a young woman named Kira asked Trudeau to reconcile the Liberal government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline with the government’s climate plan to reduce carbon emissions.

BEHOLD THE SH!T MAP OF SAN FRANCISCO

  By many measures, San Francisco is a world-class city. It’s a tourist mecca that boasts 25 million visitors each year. It’s home to wonders of the modern world – the Golden Gate Bridge and its iconic cable cars – as well as powerful progressive politicians, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Governor Gavin Newsom, and U.S. Senator (and presidential hopeful) Kamala Harris.
  The broader San Francisco Bay Area can also claim Silicon Valley and its booming economy.
  But the city itself is in trouble. Today, San Francisco hosts an estimated homeless population of 7,500 people. Affluent sections of the city have become dangerous with open-air drug use, tens of thousands of discarded needles, and, sadly, human feces.

PM MAY SINKS AS FARAGE ON THE RISE IN UK

The bitter fallout from Brexit is threatening to break the Tory party apart, as a Europhile former cabinet minister Stephen Dorrell on Sunday announces he is defecting to the independent MPs’ group Change UK, and a new opinion poll shows Conservative support plummeting to a five-year low as anti-EU parties surge.

PELOSI ON RISE OF OCASIO-CORTEZ

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Monday that while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is a “wonderful member of Congress,” a “glass of water” could win in her solidly Democrat district.

BAMBI GOES ROGUE

MELBOURNE, Australia — A man was killed and his wife critically injured on Wednesday when they were attacked by their pet deer on a rural Australian property, police said.

COURT REOPENS TRUDEAU/AGA KHAN CASE

  A federal judge has ordered the Commissioner of Lobbying to reopen an investigation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s dealings with the Aga Khan. The ruling follows multiple trips by the Trudeau Family to the Aga Khan’s private Bahamian isle.
  The Commissioner of Ethics in a separate 2017 Trudeau Report concluded the Prime Minister’s acceptance of a $215,000 sun holiday was a breach of the Conflict Of Interest Act. Trudeau claimed had a personal friendship with the Aga Khan, an argument dismissed by the Commissioner. Under the Conflict Of Interest Act, legislators do not have to report gifts over $200 “from a relative or friend”.
  In the Aga Khan case, the Commissioner, Mary Dawson, said she could find no evidence of any actual friendship with the Prime Minister. The two met once in a thirty-year period, at a 2000 funeral for Pierre Trudeau.

KENNEY CONSERVATIVES WIN ALBERTA

  They arrived on a wind of change in 2015, only to be blown out of office four years later by an even more powerful gale.
  Rachel Notley’s New Democrats, with all their dreams and hopes and agonies, succumbed exactly as UCP Leader Jason Kenney said they would, overwhelmed by a united conservative bloc that is once again Alberta’s dominant political force.
  It was a genuine thumping, with the UCP winning more than 60 seats, and the New Democrats largely cornered in their Edmonton stronghold. The Alberta Party and Liberals were shut out.

MAKING YOUR PARENTS PROUD

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — An Indiana man is suing his parents for getting rid of his vast pornography collection, which he estimates is worth US$29,000.

The 40-year-old man last week filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan, where he moved in with his parents in 2016 following a divorce.

He says that when he moved out 10 months later, they delivered his things to his new home in Muncie, Ind., but that his 12 boxes of pornographic films and magazines were missing. His parents admit they dumped the porn, which included titles such as Frisky Business and Big Bad Grannys.

ANNUAL TREK OF KASHECHEWAN FIRST NATION

  To paraphrase the immortal words of my late mother, who always said she was quoting Ogden Nash but in fact wasn’t (she had a gift for malapropism that extended to mal-attribution), “Spring is here, the grass is riz; I wonder where the people of Kashechewan is?”

Why they, of course, are on the move again, as indeed they are most springs, when the Albany River in northern Ontario floods.

It is beyond bearing that this is an annual trek, that everyone in this First Nation — about 2,500 beleaguered people — is flown out of the remote community on the south side of the river and moved to motels and hotels in towns such as Kapuskasing, at a reported cost to the public of between $15 and $20 million every time.

OPP INVESTIGATION IN COLLINGWOOD

  Bonwick, MP for Simcoe-Grey from 1997 until 2004, is one of the key subjects of the inquiry over his roles as both a consultant — and as brother to former mayor Sandra Cooper.
  Bonwick was a paid consultant for PowerStream, which in 2012 bought a 50-per-cent stake in Collingwood's power utility, Collus, despite the town receiving a much higher bid from another potential buyer.
   The public was never told — and the then-mayor never disclosed — that her brother was involved in the multimillion-dollar sell-off.
  Inquiry records released last week revealed for the first time that a number of utility insiders were paid bonuses, and that Bonwick — who worked closely with them and his sister in the mayor's office to help PowerStream clinch the deal — made $323,000 in fees.

BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON CHINA'S INFLUENCE ON CANADA

Silent Invasion, Clive Hamilton’s ground-breaking book about China’s covert influence on Australian society, has been both applauded as an overdue exposé and criticized as an exaggeration of the problem. But when he finished the book, he received some unwanted validation of its central thesis: three Australian publishers declined to publish it, citing fear of retribution from Beijing or its allies.

Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Canberra’s Charles Sturt University and former executive director of progressive think-tank The Australia Institute, eventually found a willing publisher, and now is working on a sequel dealing with similar issues in North America. What he’s discovered so far makes him very concerned for Canada. 

WASHINGTON BACKTRACKS ON CHINA TRADE DEAL

   Despite Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer's insistence that Washington leverage its position of advantage - i.e. the unassailable fact that its tariffs had contributed to a precarious deceleration in Chinese economic growth - the Trump Administration's trade team has repeatedly caved to Beijing. First, the administration compromised on enforcement (the administration has reportedly punted it to 2025) to the currency manipulation. And now it has reportedly softened its demands for the 'structural economic reforms' that Trump had insisted on as part of the final deal.
  According to Reuters, US negotiators have 'tempered' their demands that Beijing roll back some of its industrial state subsidies as part of the trade deal. Washington's demands were reportedly met with 'strong resistance' from Beijing.
  The issue is a thorny one because China's brand of state-directed capitalism is deeply tied up with the tax breaks and other advantages that Beijing bestows on state-owned firms, and it's possible that many of these firms could fail without the government's support, potentially setting off a destabilizing chain reaction.

AGGRESSIVE PAINT JOB ON POLICE CRUISERS

   Liberals in a Southern California town are criticizing their local police department for launching a fleet of squad cars with the word “police” painted in patriotic, red, white, and blue lettering on the sides.
   The Laguna Beach Police Department recently fielded the fleet of cars, but some local liberals protested the markings saying the patriotic colors are not inclusive enough, according to Fox News.
   Resident Carrie Woodburn, for one, attacked the police department saying that the red, white, and blue stars and stripes in the logo are “too aggressive,” and don’t “represent” the whole population of Laguna Beach.

REALITY OF BEING A SANCTUARY CITY IN USA

  Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants.
  Cher said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and poverty-stricken Americans.
  While left-wing mayors say they will continue to admit any and all illegal and legal immigrants, Los Angeles is home to the second largest homeless population in the country, second to only New York City. About 50,000 residents of Los Angeles are homeless and about 7.5 percent of California’s American Veteran population is homeless.

CANADIAN HIGH TECH BATTLING CHILD EXPLOITATION

Innovation Nation: How a Canadian tech firm is assisting police in the fight against child exploitation.
Magnet Forensics, a Waterloo tech firm, helps police bring the criminal elements inhabiting the web to light.

TRUDEAU PLAYS POLITICS WITH TERRORISM

  Lilley:  For Justin Trudeau, the problems of terrorism and extremism in Canada appear to be nothing more than partisan political issues.

   Trudeau spent most of last week trying to link his Conservative opponents to white supremacist extremism. It’s a ploy he’s been using since the heinous shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, last month.
  Meanwhile, he pushed through a removal of any reference to Sikh extremism from an intelligence report just before he visited one of the largest Sikh temples in Canada on Saturday.

LIBERALS & FORD IN COURT RE CARBON TAX

The federal and Ontario governments are set to square off in the province's top court this week over Ottawa's climate change law in a fight experts say is as much political and ideological as it is legal.

At issue is the validity of Liberal government legislation that kicked in on April 1 and imposed a charge on gasoline and other fossil fuels as well as on industrial polluters. The law applies in those provinces that have no carbon-pricing regime of their own that meets national standards.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government under Premier Doug Ford — supported by like-minded premiers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick — has denounced the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act as an illegal tax grab that will force up the price of gasoline and heating fuel.

WHAT DID SNC BOARD MEMBERS KNOW?

   The SNC-Lavalin case is the biggest corporate corruption proceeding in Canadian history, and raises questions about corporate governance and responsibility.
The firm's former board members, with deep corporate experience, collectively received millions of dollars in compensation, and were responsible for overseeing one of the largest companies in the country.
"Is a member of the board of directors not going to ask the question, 'How are we getting all of these contracts in Libya?' I mean really!" said Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a government and corporate watchdog group based in Toronto.
"What's your role on the board if not to protect the corporation from acts of bribery and from doing things that are illegal?"

KENNEY RENEWS PLEDGE TO TURN OFF TAPS TO BC

   With just three days to go before Alberta goes to the polls, United Conservative Leader (UCP) Jason Kenney is ramping up his threats towards B.C.
  At a campaign rally in Edmonton Friday night, Kenney renewed his pledge to “turn off the taps” of gasoline “within an hour” of being sworn in as premier — and singled out a promise made by Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

MANN WINS AWARD FOR PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

VILLANOVA, Pa. —The Villanova University Ethics Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has named atmospheric scientist and well-known climate change advocate Michael E. Mann, PhD the recipient of the 2019 Praxis Award in Professional Ethics. This year’s award will be presented at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 11 in the Villanova Room, Connelly Center, followed by a lecture by Dr. Mann.

SENDING ILLEGALS TO SANCTUARY CITIES

Must-see TV: Tucker Carlson’s epic takedown on Democratic hypocrisy on sending illegals to sanctuary cities.

SAVING THE PLANET IN THE GROCERY STORE

Murphy: Expect that, or a like alarm at your local food store, now that Global Warming and Big Grocery have mixed their fortunes. From here on in, they are as one. In what will surely be hailed as a masterstroke in the fight against climate change — perhaps sufficient to halt the calving of icebergs and all melt in the Himalayas — the Canadian government this week announced a $12-million grant to retrofit refrigerators for grocery chains owned by plutocratic billionaires.* (Actually, one grocery chain, one plutocratic billionaire.)

ENROLLMENT DECLINES, # OF TEACHERS HAS GROWN

  The list of things children need to get a good education is a long one.
  Defined benefit, fully indexed pensions with early retirement options top the list. To be clear, those would be pensions for the teachers, not the children who will be paying for them.
  Preparation time is another essential children just can’t do without. Ontario high school teachers spend about 25% of the school day out of class.
  They do it for the kids.

JULIAN ASSANGE, THE REPELLENT NARCISSIST

  Blatchford:  The problem with Assange is that the light he shone was so mercilessly and recklessly deployed and almost always ideologically driven by his loathing of America.
  As Nick Cohen wrote eight years ago in The Guardian, in a conversation with the journalists who wrote a history of WikiLeaks, Assange was asked over a meal about putting U.S. secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing the names of Afghans, who after all were fighting against the murderous Taliban and thus had co-operated with U.S. forces or spoken to U.S. diplomats.
  “Well, they’re informants,” Assange told the journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. “So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.”
   As Cohen wrote, “A silence fell on the table as the reporters realized that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths.”

LIBERALS' USEFUL PROPS GET THE HEAVE HO

  The refugees that made such useful props for Trudeau in the last election have become an obstacle to his chances in the next. So, over the side they go.  

   Ever since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1985 ruling in Singh v. Canada, refugee claimants under the protection of Canadian law cannot be deported without having their case heard before an independent tribunal — a recognition of the serious, possibly fatal consequences of sending a genuine refugee, with a “well-founded fear of persecution,” back to his country of origin. Under the new policy, the best that those affected could hope for would be an interview with an immigration official, as part of a “preremoval risk assessment.”
  This sort of draconian shift in policy would be shocking coming from any government; among other objections, the courts are almost certain to rule it is a violation of the Charter of Rights. But to find it proposed by the same Liberal government that had long congratulated itself for its commitment to refugee rights, while castigating critics as intolerant, racist and worse, is simply breathtaking.
  This is not just the most extraordinary about-face yet — from #WelcomeToCanada to deportations without hearings, in the space of two years — from a government that has made a habit of them. It is a fundamental breach of faith.

NOTLEY, ROCKEFELLERS, & ALBERTA'S LANDLOCKED OIL

   Krause:  Rockefeller-supported groups are helping defeat the UCP, the only party in the Alberta election committed to breaking the U.S. monopoly on Alberta’s overseas oil exports.

   Alberta is in the final days before an election and the backbone industry of its economy is practically broken because all pipeline projects out of the province have been stalled or ended. This didn’t happen for no reason. This was planned and is precisely what a Rockefeller Brothers Fund campaign was funded to bring about.
   The Tar Sands Campaign has been running for more than a decade with financial help from the US$870-million Rockefeller family philanthropic foundation. The goal of the campaign, as CBC reported in January, is to sabotage all pipeline projects that would export crude oil from Western Canada to lucrative overseas markets.
  Notley had a choice. She could have taken action against the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
  Notley could have defended Alberta and, indeed, all of Canada. She didn’t.
  Notley has rarely if ever mentioned the Rockefeller name in public even though it is their money, their campaign, that has sabotaged the backbone industry of Alberta’s economy.

FEDS TO REMOVE INTERPROVINCIAL ALCOHOL TRADE RULES

  A federal move to lift restrictions on interprovincial sales of liquor is a welcome step, but only one step on the way to true free trade in wine, spirits and beer in Canada, industry experts say.
   On Tuesday, the federal internal trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc, said he is introducing legislation to remove federal rules that require that alcohol being shipped from one province to another go through a provincial liquor authority.
  It is the latest step in a decade-long campaign waged by small wineries and craft distillers to break down interprovincial barriers that blocked direct sales to consumers in other provinces. But to take effect, the change still requires provinces to loosen their own restrictions.

TRIAL OF POLYGAMISTS OF BOUNTIFUL, BC

  A British Columbia court heard evidence from three former members of a polygamous religious group in the trial of a man charged with removing a 15-year-old girl from Canada to marry a man in the United States.
  They testified Thursday for the Crown in the case against James Marion Oler, a former leader of a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community in Bountiful, B.C.

KEEPING ANIMAL FUR OUT OF YOUR GRILL

  Moose are crazy dangerous to Canadians.
   Between 2000 and 2014, 236 Canadians were killed after their car smacked into a moose. Add in collisions with deer, elk, bears, cougars, bison and coyotes, and in the last nineteen years, we’ve lost about as many Canadians to wildlife crashes as died in the Korean War.
   If you don’t want to be the next driver killed by a wayward ungulate, follow the tips in the video above to avoid wildlife collisions and, if that fails, how to properly smash your car into majestic Canadian fauna.

THE SERGEANT SCHULTZ DEFENSE

  Republican Congressman Devin Nunes has forwarded a criminal referral notification to U.S. Attorney General William Barr alleging several “potential violations” of the law perpetrated during the Russia investigation.
  The ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said he is prepared to brief Barr on the alleged misconduct he feels occurred during the investigation into the Trump campaign during the 2016 campaign, Fox News reported.

   Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it was “stunning and scary” for Attorney General William Barr to testify that “spying” occurred on the 2016 Trump campaign.  

Fired FBI Director James Comey claimed Thursday that he has no clue what Attorney General William Barr meant when he testified this week that federal agents “spied” on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

IRAQ WAR LIARS PUSHED TRUMP-RUSSIA COLLUSION

  In between the two scandals was more than a decade of recriminations against once-trusted experts on the Right who led our nation into battle. The Iraq war cost the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. troops, maimed tens of thousands more and resulted in an unquantifiable amount of emotional, mental, and physical pain for untold numbers of American military families. Suicide rates for servicemen and veterans have exploded leaving thousands more dead and their families devastated. And it has cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion and counting.
  So, these discredited outcasts thought they found in the Trump-Russia collusion farce a way to redeem themselves in the news media and recover their lost prestige, power, and paychecks. After all, it cannot be a mere coincidence that a group of influencers on the Right who convinced Americans 16 years ago that we must invade Iraq based on false pretenses are nearly the identical group of people who tried to convince Americans that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians to rig the 2016 election, an allegation also based on hearsay and specious evidence.
  It cannot be an innocent mistake. It cannot be explained away as an example of ignorance in the defense of national security or democracy or human decency. It cannot be justified as a mere miscalculation based on the “best available information at the time” nor should we buy any of the numerous excuses that they offered up to rationalize the war.
  In fact, one can draw a straight line between the approach of neoconservative propagandists from the Iraq War travesty and the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The certainty with which they pronounced their dubious claims, their hyperbolic warnings about pending doom—all eerily similar:

THE RIGHTEOUS CERTITUDE OF A TRUTH TELLER

 “I think it’s important that all politicians be straight with Canadians in how they characterize their own actions and their own beliefs,” Trudeau said, with the righteous certitude of a truth teller in his own right.
  One who need not take any lessons from the Indigenous woman known as Puglaas on how to act honorably in putting words in other people’s mouths.
 “You can’t be inventing things. You can’t be lying to Canadians,” he admonished no one, specifically.
  “And I think highlighting that there are consequences, both short term and long term, when politicians choose to twist the truth and distort reality for Canadians. It’s not something we’re going to put up with.”

TIME TO OVERHAUL RCMP OPERATIONS

This week’s revelation that there are no federally funded officers in B.C. dedicated to criminal money-laundering investigations underscores a need for the RCMP to consider a drastic overhaul of its operations, experts say.

Some say the RCMP needs to get out of its municipal and provincial policing contracts so it can focus exclusively on federal policing and start rebuilding a reserve of investigative specialists with expertise in accounting and other areas, after years of churning out generalists.

“This is a good example of when chickens come home to roost,” said Robert Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, who has for years argued that the force is stretched thin.

ILLEGAL POT IMPORTS NOT SLOWING DOWN

The advent of legal recreational marijuana in Canada hasn't done much to stop people from trying to sneak the drug over the border — and supply shortages might be to blame, according to an internal report from the Canada Border Services Agency.

The agency's year-end drug analysis report says officers continued to seize large quantities of dried marijuana even after Canada legalized recreational use in October.

"This is likely partly due to domestic supply shortages," notes the intelligence assessment, obtained under access to information.

ILLEGAL POT 57% LOWER PRICE THAN LEGAL PRODUCT

  The legalization of marijuana in Canada has caused the price of the drug overall to increase by about 17 per cent, but people who are buying it legally are paying about 57 per cent more than black market buyers.
  That's one of the main takeaways of a new report from Statistics Canada on Wednesday, showing what the data agency has learned about changes happening in the market for cannabis before and after the drug became recreationally legal on Oct. 17 of last year.

NOTLEY: WHY I DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE

Only days before Albertans prepared to go to the polls, NDP leader Rachel Notley sat down with Jen Gerson to discuss pipelines, her political relationship with Justin Trudeau, and whether a province that has suffered four years of a stagnant economy under her government should give her party another chance. 

ASSANGE ARRESTED IN LONDON

  WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange was arrested in London on Thursday morning, after Ecuadorian diplomatic officials invited British police into the country’s embassy to apprehend the Australian.
  Assange had been living in the embassy of Ecuador in London under diplomatic asylum since 2012, and was granted citizenship by Ecuador in 2017.

LIBERALS' CRASS CHANGE TO ASYLUM LAWS

  Urback:  The Liberal caucus would have had a collective aneurysm just few months ago if a senior political opponent had talked about "asylum-shopping" when referring to refugees who cross illegally into Canada. The implication, they'd cry, is that those risking their lives to seek refuge in Canada are simply economic migrants — not families desperate to find a safe place to call home.
  The reality, of course, is that while many migrants might genuinely see Canada as the only safe place for them in North America — and perhaps that's true — many who have crossed into Canada at unofficial entry points have not met the criteria for refugee protection, for various reasons. Slightly more than half of finalized refugee claims from these applicants were rejected in the last quarter of 2018.

LIBERALS IGNORE FACTS ON CARBON TAX

  On Apr. 1, the federal carbon tax kicked in for Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan. The tax will add 4.4 cents per litre to the price of gasoline – rising to 11 cents by 2022 – and drive up the cost of everything from home heating to groceries.
  The rationale, the federal government says, is to incentivize behavioural changes by making prices higher, since it hopes you won’t be able to buy as much gas and thus you’ll drive less. Besides, with a plan to rebate the money via a tax credit, it insists you won’t actually be out of pocket. In fact, the politicians promise you’ll actually be better off!
  Set aside for a minute the magic math of collecting a new tax and redistributing it in such a way that everyone is somehow better off.  Ignore that fact that many essential goods – and especially the use of energy sources such as gasoline – are known as inelastic goods because demand remains relatively constant despite price changes. In other words, Canadians still need to drive to work and drop their kids off at school even if Ottawa pushes up the price at the pump. British Columbia has proven this point as its emissions are still rising, despite its carbon tax.

NOTLEY: OTTAWA SHOULD TOSS TANKER BILL

Alberta's two political heavyweights have renewed their challenge to Ottawa over legislation they call a gut punch to the province's oil industry.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party also found time Tuesday to accuse each other of grandstanding and blundering on the critical pipeline file.

Notley, via video link from Calgary, urged senators meeting in Ottawa to toss out a federal bill that proposes a ban on tankers off the northern British Columbia coast.

"Toss C-48 in the garbage where it belongs," Notley told a Senate committee.

FARMERS PAY PRICE FOR POLITICAL FAILINGS

   Canola farmers whose livelihoods have been targeted by China in its feud with Canada say it's time for the federal government to be aggressive at the political level in its fight against a growing number of agricultural trade barriers around the world.
   Several producers told two parliamentary committees Tuesday that China's recent rejection of Canadian canola-seed shipments is only the latest trade disruption that's hurt the country's agriculture sector.
  They reminded MPs in Ottawa about a number of major trade obstacles faced by Canadian agricultural exporters in faraway markets like India, Italy, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.

FOOT-DRAGGING OF SENATE'S OLD BOYS

  Former Conservative leader Rona Ambrose is decrying the Senate's foot-dragging on her private member's bill requiring sexual assault education for would-be judges, laying the blame at the feet of what she called a "group of old boys."
   By her count, her proposed legislation has languished in the Senate for 693 days, and the committee that was tapped to study it has cancelled Ambrose's schedule appearance to testify on her proposal five times.
  "I know for a fact that there are people in the Senate, literally a group of old boys who want to protect another group of old boys and this has got to stop… times have changed," Ambrose said.

WHY WOULD YOU BE A PROUD LIBERAL?

   Blatchford: For God’s sakes, why are those other people — the muscled-out and muzzled Jody Wilson-Raybould, the booted and betrayed Jane Philpott, the deeply confused members of Philpott’s riding association in Markham-Stouffville, Ont., — all still proclaiming themselves to be proud Liberals?
  From the moment Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet — because of the political pressure being applied to her by the PM, the PMO, the clerk of the Privy Council and anyone else they could draft in to give SNC-Lavalin a deal so the company could avoid prosecution on bribery and fraud charges for its alleged conduct in Libya — she announced her intentions to remain a Liberal, insisting she still “fundamentally” believed Trudeau shares her vision for the country and that she supports the Liberal platform.
  And when Philpott resigned as Treasury Board president — she made it crystal-clear she was bloody well resigning because she’d lost confidence in how the government dealt with SNC-Lavalin and how “it has responded to the issues raised” — she, too, pledged to continue on in the Liberal caucus.

RESIGNATIONS NOT A PROTEST AGAINST TRUDEAU

  Most board members of the federal Liberal riding association for Markham-Stouffville — represented by MP Jane Philpott — have stepped down in solidarity with the well-liked former cabinet minister, with the board's secretary saying she no longer has "the heart" to back a new candidate.
  In an exclusive interview with CBC News, an emotional Leea Nutson said she and nine other members of the association's 16-member board tendered their resignations following a meeting Monday night.
  Nutson said that the board members chose to resign independently and did not offer their resignations as "a protest" against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The volunteers simply "don't have the energy" to support another candidate, she said.

ELECTRIC BRAIN STIMULATION FOR ALZHEIMER PATIENTS

  The memory of older people has been returned to the state of someone in their 20s for the first time by applying electrical stimulation to the brain to reconnect faulty circuits. Scientists at Boston University have proven it is possible to restore working memory by “recoupling” areas of the brain that become out-of-sync as people grow older.
  Short-term working memory is crucial for everyday life, storing information for around 10-15 seconds to allow problem solving, reasoning, planning and decision making; for example, keeping the digits of a telephone number in mind while writing it down.
  Sometimes described as being “mentally online”, working memory forms the basis of consciousness, but declines with age and is the reason elderly people can struggle with basic tasks.
  Now scientists believe they have uncovered what causes the decline and how to reverse it.

NY ORDERS MANDATORY MEASLES VACCINATIONS

  New York City on Tuesday declared a public health emergency and ordered mandatory measles vaccinations amid an outbreak, becoming the latest national flashpoint over refusals to inoculate against dangerous diseases.
  At least 285 people have contracted measles in the city since September, and the order covers four Zip codes in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood where the vast majority have originated, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference.
  The mandate orders all unvaccinated people in the area, including a concentration of ultra-Orthodox Jews, to receive inoculations, including for children as young as six months old. Anyone who resists could be fined up to $1,000.

PHILPOTT CLAIMS HER RIGHTS WERE DENIED BY PM

  Former cabinet minister Jane Philpott rose in the House of Commons Tuesday morning to speak on a point of privilege, asking the Speaker of the House of Commons to consider whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated the law by “unilaterally” removing her and former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal Party caucus last week.
  She appealed to Speaker Geoff Regan to rule that their rights had been denied and their privileges as members of Parliament breached on the basis of the 2015 Reform Act, which set rules around the administration of party caucuses.
  “This matter is urgent. … Procedural fairness and the rule of law demand this. Secret in-camera meetings or private notices should not be a shield to prevent the upholding of the law and members’ rights,” Philpott told the Commons.

EUROSKEPTICS FORM ALLIANCE

  Euroskeptic populist parties formed a new and expanded right-wing alliance on Monday that aims to become the strongest faction in the European Parliament and seeks to radically transform European Union policies on migration, security, family and environment.
  Italy’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-migrant League party, told a news conference in Milan that the goal of the new movement in the EU-wide elections next month was to “win and change Europe.”
  He was joined by representatives of populist parties from Germany, Finland and Denmark.
   At the top of their common agenda, the right-wing euroskeptics demanded a halt to all illegal migration, stronger European borders, restoring political sovereignty to EU nations and protecting what they called “European culture.”

TRUDEAU'S NEW LEVEL OF DESPERATION

   Ibbiton:  Despite these obstacles, Mr. Trudeau triumphantly achieved a majority-government victory. Almost four years later, he remains the embodiment of the party, the essence of the Liberal brand. Polls show that he is also deeply unpopular, thanks to allegations by former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould that he and his advisers attempted to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
   The Grits are no doubt calculating that since this scandal isn’t going away any time soon, the threatened lawsuit will at least allow supporters to claim Mr. Trudeau is innocent, that he is being defamed by his opponents. In essence, the party is trying to repair the damage to Brand Trudeau, which remains the Liberal Party’s only asset. Unless it can repair that damage, it cannot win the next election.
   But oh my, it’s a high-stakes gamble.

CANADIAN TAXPAYERS FUNDING $12M TO LOBLAW

   OTTAWA, April 8, 2019 /CNW/ - Canadians are feeling the impacts and costs of climate change firsthand. By working together, we can take action on climate change in a way that benefits all Canadians. That's why the Government of Canada is working with businesses, cities and towns, Indigenous communities, universities, schools and hospitals to reduce pollution, improve our health, and make life more affordable.
  Today, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, announced funding from the Low Carbon Economy Challenge's Champions stream to Loblaw. The Government is investing up to $12 million, subject to a funding agreement, to help the company convert the refrigeration systems in approximately 370 stores across Canada over the next three years. This project will help reduce Loblaw's annual emissions by approximately 23 per cent. By leveraging up to $36 million in investments made by Loblaw, the Government is working together with Canadian business to support ingenuity and grow Canada's clean economy.

DEADLY FUNGUS SWEEPING GLOBE

  In May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious. Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit.
  The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe. Over the past five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical centre to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa.
   Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats."
  The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.
   "Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump," said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital's president. "The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive."

MORE BOEING BACKLASH

  Dealing another blow to public confidence in Boeing's ability to swiftly reassure regulators that its 737 MAX 8 can be made safe for passenger travel, the South China Post on Monday reported that China Aircraft Leasing Group Holdings has put an order for 100 new 737s on hold, until it can be assured of the aircraft's safety.
   This follows a decision by Indonesia's national carrier to cancel a $6 billion 737 MAX order. The airline had been planning to order 49 planes. Boeing last week said it would cut its pace of production by 20% to just 42 a month.
   China was the first country to ground the 737s after Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed just minutes after takeoff- the second deadly incident involving the planes in just 5 months. A preliminary report from investigators found that the pilots followed Boeing's safety procedures, but were still unable to right the plane.

CANADA'S MASSIVE MONEY LAUNDERING PROBLEM

   Ottawa’s budget earmarked about $200 million over the next five years to address Canada’s massive money laundering problem.
   This was promising news, but follows years of neglect resulting in the creation of gigantic laundering networks in Canada, the growth of criminal organizations, increased drug trafficking, housing unaffordability, and few prosecutions.
   The budget came on the heels of a critical report by the U.S. State Department in March stating Canada is a global problem and vulnerable to major laundering operations, along with nations such as Afghanistan, the British Virgin Islands, China, Macau and Colombia.

CURIOUSLY INCURIOUS SENATORS

  Conservative Senator Larry Smith first made notice back on Feb. 19 of a motion he was putting forward to call for a committee study of the whole SNC-Lavalin affair. This was less than two weeks after the first news story broke in The Globe & Mail.
  You would think that a chamber of sober second thought dominated by “independent” senators would be all over this issue. Lavscam is ultimately a question about the rule of law yet so far the quest for truth has been dominated by committees and Question Period exchanges between MPs treating it also like a political saga.
  Don’t the senators agree that they’d be well positioned to offer up the right environment to get to the bottom of this for the benefit of the whole country?
  Apparently not. Not only did the majority of senators fail to endorse Smith’s motion, but some of the words offered up against it smacked of a cover-up.

BRING IT ON JUSTIN

 Lilley:   Poor Justin Trudeau has hurt feelings.
  The PM is upset that he has been criticized over the SNC-Lavalin scandal and so he has threatened to sue Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
  “I look forward to Mr. Trudeau presenting his evidence to Canadians, under oath, in open court,” Scheer said on Sunday.
  “It deserves to be held in a setting where Liberals do not control the proceedings. I welcome the opportunity to examine Mr. Trudeau in pre-trial at the earliest date.”

CLIMATE SCIENCE IS A STATE OF MIND

Conservative author and commentator Mark Steyn reacted Thursday to a new climate change theory asserting that toxic masculinity is to blame for global warming.

CRYBABY OCASIO-CORTEZ

  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to criticism for her patronizing use of a fake accent in front of a black audience in the usual manner — crybabying.
   The not-terribly-bright socialist was caught on video Friday patronizing the mostly black audience with a fake southern drawl at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference.
   The humiliating video quickly made the rounds on social media, earning the criticism and ridicule it deserved.

SNC-LAVALIN WON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER

   In March, SNC-Lavalin lost its legal challenge to have a federal court overturn the DPP’s decision, refusing it a DPA. Judge Catherine Kane provided no opinion on whether a DPA was appropriate in the specific circumstances of SNC-Lavalin — instead noting that the decision of whether to cut the company a DPA deal was entirely within the scope of prosecutorial discretion.
   In other words, it’s not for judges to tell crown attorneys which cases to prosecute and which cases to resolve. Such decisions are equally not to be dictated by staffers in the PMO, the Clerk of the Privy Council, the PM’s principal secretary, the PM’s chief of staff, or indeed, the PM himself.
   Now SNC-Lavalin has kicked its lawsuit against the DPP up to the Federal Court of Appeal claiming new and troubling facts revealed at the parliamentary justice committee warrant a reconsideration.