GORE WINS TOP CLIMATE HYPOCRITE AWARD

It was close, but in the end, Al Gore edged out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the top Climate Hypocrite Award.

The award is the brainchild of Senator Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, who has led pushback against climate hysterics in the Senate.

“Climate alarmists are eager to tell Americans that they need to take radical action, including going vegan, ending air travel, not having children and eliminating fossil fuels and nuclear energy, but they aren’t willing to back up their data or take the actions they prescribe to everyone else,” he said in a press release.

SAUDI ARABIA OFFERS TOURIST VISAS

It's 2019, and a mere couple months after lifting travel restrictions on their own women within the country, Saudi Arabia announced Friday it will offer tourist visas for the first time.

It's part of broader efforts to diversity its economy away from oil, and interestingly comes at a time when tourism in the strict Wahhabi Islamic kingdom is no doubt the last thing on holidaymakers' minds, given the Sept. 14 attack on Aramco facilities, and given there's still a war raging across the southern border in Yemen.

Though part of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 reform program to take the Saudi economy in a post-oil direction, we doubt there will be an influx of tourism anytime soon.

LIBERAL RIDING ASSOC. WITHHOLDING FUNDS

The candidate who replaced Eva Nassif for the Liberals in the Montreal-area riding of Vimy is being forced to rely on money from Ottawa to run her campaign.

The Liberal riding association is refusing to transfer its funds to the new candidate, Annie Koutrakis, because members are furious with the party for dropping Nassif fewer than three weeks before the start of the election campaign and for parachuting in another person.

Nassif had told the Globe and Mail she was not nominated to run in the Vimy riding because she did not publicly support Trudeau as a feminist following the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which led to the resignation of two female cabinet ministers.

Trudeau denied the accusation. He told reporters last Wednesday Nassif didn’t meet the standards of the Liberal party’s protocol for vetting candidates — but he did not elaborate.

GREEN PARTY'S ROBOT TAX

The Green party is proposing a “robot tax.”

Green Leader Elizabeth May says that every time a company replaces a worker with a machine, a Green government would make that company pay a tax equivalent to the income tax paid by that laid-off employee.

CHINA IS NO FRIEND TO CANADIAN FARMERS

Canada’s agriculture industry needs to recognize it is “not dealing with a friendly regime” when it comes to China and should focus its Asian growth ambitions on countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea instead.

That’s according to B.C.-based international affairs commentator Jonathan Manthorpe, who was part of a panel discussion on China at the 20th annual Global Business Forum in Banff on Friday. Manthorpe, the author of Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada, said China’s decision to block imports of Canadian canola, pork and beef in the wake of Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou last December is proof Canada has overestimated the strength of its relationship with China.

“I think this has to be a lesson that you can’t deal with China like any other country that abides by the law and diplomatic norms. And in that respect, we’ve been a bit naive in the past,” Manthorpe said in an interview. “Canadian farmers are in a difficult position because they are collateral damage on this.”

HOW'S THAT SANCTIMONY WORKING PM BLACKFACE?

In August 2018, Trudeau made headlines when he called out a woman for “intolerance” and “racism” after she heckled him at a rally in Quebec and asked him about “illegal immigrants.”

That incident led to an ongoing lawsuit that has received little public attention since it was filed by the heckler last December. In July, Trudeau was questioned in Montreal as part of the lawsuit.

In videos that circulated widely of the altercation — during a speech Trudeau gave to Liberal supporters at an event in Sabrevois, Que. — the prime minister can be seen telling the heckler that “this intolerance regarding immigrants does not have a place in Canada,” and later that “your racism has no place here.”

UKRAINE'S EX-PM SAYS INVESTIGATE H. BIDEN

Vice President Biden was the Obama’s administration’s point man in Ukraine and told the government that the prosecutor was corrupt and that he must be fired or it would lose a billion-dollar loan promised by the United States. Ukraine is poor and has been fighting Russian separatists, and so the man was fired.

The action may have been justified, but consider that this lawyer-son had built his career on his daddy’s influence, representing foreign and domestic companies dependent on the U.S. government’s whims and deliberations, and was making $50,000 a month as a director doing what? It is unclear because, as others have noted, he had no background in energy or anything else that would matter, just an interesting last name.

So one of the most corrupt companies in one of the most corrupt countries hires a neophyte for its board of directors whose only apparent qualification is his last name. And his father, looking to protect his son, gets the prosecutor investigating his offspring fired.

MCMASTER U BANS CHINA'S INFLUENCE ON CAMPUS

The student union at McMaster University, which shut down China’s Confucius Institute years ago, has banned a club with close links to Beijing.
The student union’s governing body made the decision this week to strip the student club status of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), citing a rule against conduct that would “endanger the safety or security of any person or property,” the Globe and Mail reported.

The sections of many CSSAs—which are on numerous university campuses around the world including in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia—say the clubs were founded or supported by the Chinese consulates or embassies. The groups often organize campaigns and events in line with Beijing’s policies, including protests against human rights events related to China on campus and objecting to visits by figures from communities persecuted by the regime, such as Tibet’s spiritual leader Dalai Lama.

FACTS CONFLICT WITH BIDEN'S NARRATIVE

   Hundreds of documents obtained by The Hill's John Solomon contradict Joe Biden's claim that a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son's employer was corrupt and inept.
    Biden infamously bragged about threatening to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees unless Ukraine's previous government immediately fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin - who was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings; a Ukrainian oil and gas firm which paid Hunter Biden $50,000 per month to sit on its board.
   In a sworn affidavit, Shokin says "I was forced out because I was leading a wide-range corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was a member of the board of directors."
   And according to Solomon, "Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative."

TRUDEAU'S PANTS ON FIRE

Justin Trudeau has spent a lot of time talking about positive politics and against the politics of fear. He’s spoken out against politicians who distort the truth to make their point and he even passed legislation to try to deal with misinformation being spread during elections.

Yet at stop after stop, he tells outright lies about his opponents. He doesn’t just torque or twist the truth to make him look better than his opponents — he lies.

TRUDEAU MARCHES AGAINST HIMSELF

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marching in Friday’s Global Climate Strike in Montreal was yet another example of his hypocrisy — on steroids.

Because if Trudeau was marching to protest global inaction on human-induced climate change, he was in fact marching against himself, and protesting his own record on the issue.

When Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna pledged this week to cut Canada’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050 — which is both unachievable and absurd — they failed to mention they’ve already broken the pledge they made four years ago to reduce Canada’s emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020

OF CANOES, CAMPING & LIBERAL STUPIDITY

   Ivison:  Not to be outdone in the stupidity stakes, the Liberals have come up with a Canadian contender for the 21st century. Justin Trudeau made land in a canoe in Sudbury, Ont., after paddling round a lake for the cameras, to announce a re-elected Liberal government will create $2,000 travel bursaries to send 75,000 families camping for up to four days in a national or provincial park.

The program – officially, “A Camping Experience for Every Kid in Canada” – sounds like a dodgy holiday scam but it’s all too real and will add another $150 million to the deficit when fully implemented.

But handing over public money to fund camping holidays for low-income and new Canadian families takes nannyism to heights not even the Trudeau Liberals have reached hitherto.

SWEDEN SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL

  "Last year, 306 shootings occurred and 45 people were shot dead. According to the police, the number of people killed has doubled since 2014. During the same period, the number of people who have been subjected to sexual abuse has tripled according to BRÅ [the Swedish Crime Prevention Council]...
   "Concrete reforms are necessary. We have proposed them - the Social Democrats say no...
   At the same time, we have an integration crisis: More than half of all the unemployed are born outside of Sweden. In our exclusion areas, there are schools where not even half of the students pass all subjects... Many children born in Sweden hardly speak Swedish, and there is extensive repression [in the name of] honor culture. Here too we have called for reforms, but the Social Democrats say no

SEIZED BRITISH TANKER ON THE MOVE

The British-flagged Stena Impero tanker was released Friday after more than two months of being moored outside Iran's Bandar Abbas port. 
Stena Impero was seized in July by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz for alleged marine violations two weeks after British naval forces detained an Iranian tanker off the territory of Gibraltar.

LIBERALS DELETE ASSAD SUPPORTER FROM CONTACT LIST

  That creepy fella who’s been driving around the streets of Montreal in a gigantic bright red Humvee with a 1Syria custom licence plate and a portrait of Syrian mass murderer Bashar al-Assad on a side window has finally fallen out of favour with the Liberal Party of Canada.
    Waseem Ramli is now expunged from the party’s digital fundraising rolodexes. Banned from further photo opportunities with the dashing Justin Trudeau, and struck from the first-class invitation lists maintained by the embarrassed staffers who toil for Marc Miller, Liberal MP for Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs.
    And thanks to the exasperated last-minute interventions of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland — who is ordinarily smart enough not to get caught up in this kind of thing — the Baathist fanboy proprietor of the Cocktail Hawaii restaurant over on Rue Maisonneuve will not be entrusted, after all, with the delicate and confidential consular affairs of tens of thousands of Syrian immigrants and refugees who have fled Assad’s bloody nightmare state and ended up refugees, something like 60,000 of them, in Canada.

RURAL CRIMINAL SUING LANDOWNER

Eddie Maurice is being sued for more than $100,000. An intruder hit by the ricocheting bullet of a warning shot is doing the suing.

But that’s only the beginning.

Eddie was also going to be sued by the Government of Alberta until Monday afternoon, when that bureaucratic stupidity got put to bed right quick.

OPP BECOMES POLITICALLY CORRECT POLICE

Since the beginning of peoplekind, this might take the, you know, dessert with frosting.

“OPP no longer identifying gender of victims and accused involved in crimes” was the headline on a CBC story Monday.

I had to read it twice, too.

TRUDEAU IS NOT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Blatchford:  And why do you keep saying you “take responsibility” for your pattern of blackface wearing?

Taking responsibility for bad behaviour or errors in judgment, in the traditional sense, means owning up to something and accepting the consequences. In the political sense, in days gone by, it also usually meant resigning.

What are your consequences, sir?

CHINA'S CRACKDOWN ON ISLAM

In China s northwest, the government is stripping the most overt expressions of the Islamic faith from a picturesque valley where most residents are devout Muslims. Authorities have destroyed domes and minarets on mosques, including one in a small village near Linxia, a city known as Little Mecca.

Similar demolitions have been carried out in Inner Mongolia, Henan and Ningxia, the homeland of China s largest Muslim ethnic minority, the Hui. In the southern province of Yunnan, three mosques were closed. From Beijing to Ningxia, officials have banned the public use of Arabic script.

This campaign represents the newest front in the Chinese Communist Party s sweeping rollback of individual religious freedoms, after decades of relative openness that allowed more moderate forms of Islam to blossom. The harsh crackdown on Muslims that began with the Uighurs in Xinjiang is spreading to more regions and more groups.

1000 PARACHUTISTS JUMP IN HOLLAND

  On September 17, 1944, the Allies undertook a bold but risky operation to establish a bridgehead over the Rhine River, opening the way into northern Germany.

  The operation was called "Market Garden" -- "Market" was the airborne assault while "Garden" was the ground operation. More than 20,000 men would parachute 60 miles behind the German lines. They were augmented by nearly 15,000 men in gliders. The goal of the airborne operation was to secure a series of nine bridges to allow British XXX Corp to race across the country and, theoretically, drive into northern Germany.

  On Sunday, more than 1,000 parachutists from the countries that participated in the operation 75 years ago commemorated the event by jumping into Holland.

USA IS NOT THE WORLD PEACEKEEPER

   The BBC headline on September 15 was "US blames Iran for drone strikes on two sites," and Saudi Arabia's energy minister reported that the attack affected about half their oil production. The bad guys, the "purveyors of peace" in the Middle East, are at it again, and the U.S. and President Trump "spoke with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to offer U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's defense." Trump says America is "locked and loaded" to come to Saudi Arabia's aid.

While all people of goodwill want to see tyrants assume room temperature as they go into eternity to be greeted by whomever, it is not wise for the U.S. to assume the role of peacekeeper of the world. I believe there is another organization with that mandate that meets on the East River in New York City. Let Muslims fight their own battles. The choice between the two sides is a choice between not good and evil, but much evil and more evil.

I will not be angry, agitated, or alarmed if Saudi Arabia's oil wells become dry holes in the desert. Neither do I care if the price of oil drops to $10.00 a barrel and they end up pouring it on their breakfast pancakes. Neither do I care if a regime change takes place in Iran, but it is not America's responsibility to effect that change. It is time for Muslim nations to settle their own problems. No one made America the paladin of peace or the world's banker.

UNI's WHITE PRIVILEGE WORKSHOP IGNORED

Only nine students (the campus has 30,000 students) showed up to take part in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s workshop series focused on teaching students about white privilege and related topics. The total number of students in the audience for the first “White Consciousness Conversation,” held Sept. 10, was nine — but two were students there not as participants but as journalists mainly to observe. One was from The College Fix and another from the Niner Times campus newspaper.

Of the remaining seven students, five are members of the university’s conservative Young Americans for Freedom chapter, who were there more out of curiosity and concern about the nature of the seminar and its taxpayer-funded narrative as opposed to learning about how they allegedly perpetuate racism and inequality as Americans with white skin.

Finally, the other two students attended because their professors offered them extra credit to do so, they told The Fix.

ALARMIST OUTRAGED BY QUEBEC's INACTION

The spokesperson for the Pacte pour la transition, a pledge for citizens to reduce their carbon footprint and a demand that the Quebec government fight climate change, says he’s outraged by the Coalition Avenir Québec’s lack of action after a year of being in power.

“The Legault government is staying in the camp of climate-change skeptics, those who refute the scientific consensus on climate change,” Champagne said.

“It’s legitimate to ask whether the CAQ government are climate-change skeptics, because right now they’re acting and governing like climate skeptics,” he said. “What actions have they taken in the last year? Almost nothing. The government is out of date, out of step with the emergency.”

GRIZZLY BEAR RUMBLE

Rare footage of grizzly bears fighting on B.C. highway.

ARCTIC EXPEDITION EXPLORING CLIMATE CHANGE

Hundreds of scientists are about to strand themselves in sea ice in the North Pole – an ambitious effort to understand the consequences of a changing climate in the fastest-warming part of the globe.

The effort begins Friday, when the German icebreaker RV Polarstern sets sail from the Norwegian port of Tromso with scores of researchers and hundreds of tons of scientific equipment onboard. As winter darkness descends on the Arctic, the adventurers will allow the sea to freeze around their vessel, trapping them. The Polarstern will spend the next 12 months drifting slowly across the pole as scientists collect crucial observations on the water, the ice, the air and the living inhabitants, until summer melting finally sets the ship free.

The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) is the largest Arctic research project in history and one of humanity’s greatest efforts to understand how melting at the pole will affect the rest of the planet.

"LIBERALS ARE LYING ABOUT THIS ONE"

The Liberal Party of Canada has again denied its leader Justin Trudeau ever had drinks with the controversial Faith Goldy, after another woman told the National Post she was with them at the Château Laurier in Ottawa one festive night in the winter of 2012.

The second woman, who has since fallen out of touch with Goldy, told the National Post she was with her when Trudeau invited them both for several rounds of drinks over more than hour at a table in the middle of Zoe’s Lounge, the main bar of the Fairmont Château Laurier hotel, during a Liberal convention.

“The Liberals are lying about this one,” she said in an interview. Told of the party’s blanket denial, she said she was shocked.

STEYN: MICHAEL E MANN, LOSER

  Mark Steyn:  Which is to say it's over and Mann lost. Whatever the floundering Fraudpants regards in the fevers of his brain as "the real issues", this judgment is binding on them as it is on all other aspects of his complaint: The Court has found that Mann's inexcusable behavior prejudiced the defendant, and therefore the case is dismissed. As a point of law, that is a dismissal on the merits: Whatever his "real issues" with Ball, they're over and done, forever. Tim Ball can declare that Mann belongs in the state pen every day of the week for the next thirty years - because that vital legal question has been adjudicated, and Mann blew it. I'm not surprised none of his lawyers, Canadian or American, want to put their names to Mann's tosspottery above - because you'd get disbarred if you argued as insanely as this before a judge.

PROTECTING ONTARIO'S FARMERS

   Ontario’s agriculture minister says he has not ruled out introducing new legislation to protect farmers from animal rights activists who trespass on their property.
  A spokesman for Ernie Hardeman could not provide specific measures the government is considering but says in a statement that “nothing is off the table”.
   The minister says he will meet with agriculture stakeholders and people impacted by on-farm trespassing in the coming weeks.

ALLOWING TRANSGENDERS IN GIRLS' CHANGE ROOM

Palatine High School, outside of Chicago, has been battling parents for the last four years to put boys in the girls' locker room. The school board held the first of several readings of a new policy Thursday evening and listened to public comment, which was overwhelmingly against allowing transgender students unfettered access to sex-specific spaces. Parent after parent told the board that their students are uncomfortable undressing in front of the opposite sex. But these days, only the comfort and privacy of transgender children counts, as the ACLU of Illinois confirms in a statement they gave to the Chicago Tribune.

HOLDING CHINA & INDIA RESPONSIBLE

    Out of the top ten rivers that produce the most pollution, eight are in Asia and two are in Africa. The Yangtze River in China and the Ganges River in India were responsible for the most plastic pollution.
    While westerners are being told to alter their lifestyles and have fewer children to save the planet, virtually nothing is being said about or to the people in the countries responsible for the vast majority of pollution.

THE RISE OF MESSIANIC POLITICS

  Joseph Brean explored in Saturday’s National Post the role of religion in our current political moment. That was prompted in part by Elizabeth May’s confession in a political interview that Jesus Christ is her “personal hero,” an admission for which she immediately added “sorry.” She had answered too “quickly and honestly.”

My colleague Matt Gurney wrote about the political problems with the Green party’s understanding of tolerance, which tolerates every green view except the environmentalism motivated by explicit Christian faith.

I wrote elsewhere about the theological problems with the May interview.

But there is another important dimension to May’s discussion of her faith and her politics. It’s an example of the rise of messianic politics on the left. The world needs saving, but Jesus won’t do it. Progressive politics will.

TRUDEAU, THE MORAL STEWARD IN BLACKFACE

    Urback: It follows that the politician who preaches most about loving his wife probably loves his mistress more, and the one who rails against gay marriage would never do so in front of his secret male lover. The most sanctimonious of leaders are so often the sinners.
    And Justin Trudeau is a perfect example: a self-appointed moral steward in a turban and dark makeup.
    When you run on sanctimony, govern on arrogance and expect perfection, you find yourself in an awful quandary when you fall short of your own standards.
   Each Canadian will decide for themselves whether Trudeau's actions — and failure to disclose those actions — warrant forgiveness. But his days as a progressive icon — the one who quipped "Because it's 2015" when asked why he prioritized gender parity in his cabinet, and boasted that "Canada is back" after his election — are over.

GENETIC MODIFICATION OF CROPS IS RAPE

  Last week, a Native American botanist argued that the genetic modification of crops is a form of rape. Perhaps the next step in the #MeToo movement involves returning to the low crop yields before the Green Revolution, which saved billions of lives by making food more available through genetic modification, among other things.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY-Syracuse, called corn "one of our deepest and oldest relatives." In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, she humanized corn as the "Corn Mother," saying, "Corn is sacred because she gives us her children in return for protecting us."

Kimmerer wasn't talking about the sweet corn Americans love to eat today, but rather the Native corn that comes in hundreds of varieties. She contrasted this wild corn with the genetically modified corn her neighbor grows.

"There’s a word for forcible injection of unwanted genes," Kimmerer said. "Rape."

RULES FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME

    Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has asked Canadian voters for forgiveness after being exposed for wearing blackface makeup on at least three separate occasions.   
    But have other Liberals under his leadership received the same benefit of the doubt?
    Since becoming Liberal leader in 2013, Trudeau has had a track record of being decisive when members of his team have been caught on the wrong side of a scandal. But facing one of the largest controversies of his own making Wednesday, Trudeau appealed to Canadians’ for forgiveness.

    Here’s a look at some of his case-by-case decisions as Liberal leader.

TWO MORE OF PM'S BLACKFACE TENDENCIES

Justin Trudeau in blackface at Jean Brebeuf high school.



   Global News initially obtained the video from a source earlier this week but had been attempting to verify it before publishing. A senior member of the Liberal campaign confirmed it was Trudeau early Thursday morning but would not comment further, simply referring Global News back to Trudeau’s comments on the matter from Wednesday evening.  

GALLING HYPOCRISY OF PM BLACKFACE

   Blatchford:   But this is not how Trudeau has acted to the gaffes and mistakes of others.
   When he was informed of alleged misdeeds by two of his MPs, Massimo Pacetti and Scott Andrews, Trudeau temporarily suspended them for “serious personal misconduct.” There never was a real investigation into the complaints, rather a secret review by a lawyer. And then they were permanently expelled from the Liberal caucus.
    Even last week, when Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer refused to walk back comments he’d made about how “a single group of people” or one Indigenous group could “hold hostage” a pipeline that would greatly benefit many Indigenous groups, Trudeau was there to soberly shake his head in sadness and “deplore his perspective and the language he used.”
   He is always quick to judge others, condemn them, and always with that rich Trudeau smarminess.
  In other words, it’s his hypocrisy that is so galling.

FARAGE KICKS EU ASS

Nigel Farage delivered an excoriating barrage at EU 'pipsqueaks' trying to humiliate Britain today during a stormy battle in the European Parliament. 

The Brexit Party leader condemned the behaviour of Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel and warned that the UK must go for a 'clean break' from the bloc.

The stinging assault came as Brexit Party MEPs were ordered to shut up by the chair of the debate as they heckled opponents.

GENEROUS CANADIAN TAXPAYERS

Dairy farmers now know that all-important date upon which their compensation will be based under the new federal dairy direct payment program.

Compensation will be distributed to all licensed dairy farmers, based on their Aug. 31, 2019 quota holdings, in proportion to the national quota total as of the same date. A notice was sent to producers last week.

A website was being launched last week to answer producer questions on next steps to receiving their first payment.

MCKENNA'S MAGIC WAND MAKES DATA DISAPPEAR

  Canadians already suspicious of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax are likely be even more suspicious given a report by Ottawa-based Blacklock’s Reporter that Environment Canada omitted a century’s worth of observed weather data in developing its computer models on the impacts of climate change.

The scrapping of all observed weather data from 1850 to 1949 was necessary, a spokesman for Environment Canada told Blacklock’s Reporter, after researchers concluded that historically, there weren’t enough weather stations to create a reliable data set for that 100-year period.

“The historical data is not observed historical data,” the spokesman said. “It is modelled historical data … 24 models from historical simulations spanning 1950 to 2005 were used.”

QUESTIONS FEDERAL LEADERS SHOULD BE ASKED

John Robson's list of questions for the political leaders includes the following:

Is government in Canada too big? If so, what would you get rid of? If not, how would you pay for it?

Is China friend, foe or simply a foreign entity pursuing its own national interest?

Why do we deliberately raise the price of food for the poor through supply management? (Maxime Bernier can just sit and smirk during this one. Andrew Scheer can’t.)

TORONTO'S GENDER EQUITY UNIT

The City of Toronto’s “chief people officer” is asking for $283,132 to hire two permanent full-time staffers for a gender equity unit.

Another $50,000 is needed to do community consultation on gender equity for a total of $333,132, a report to next week’s executive committee says.

“Women, girls, trans and non-binary individuals make up more than 52% of Toronto’s population,” Chief People Officer Omo Akintan says in a report. “Yet they face disproportionately higher rates of violence, greater poverty including more precarious employment, lower wages, religious discrimination based on attire, and are underrepresented in political and professional leadership positions.

WILSON-RAYBOULD REDESIGNS OF JUSTICE SYSTEM

But the most radical of Wilson-Raybould’s redesigns of the Canadian justice system has received very little attention. During her final days as justice minister in January of this year, Wilson-Raybould sent out a document entitled Directive on Civil Litigation Involving Indigenous Peoples.

The directive compels government lawyers to avoid going to court against First Nations and Indigenous organizations whenever possible. Negotiation should be the first option, always.

That’s not a bad policy, per se, although most often the reason Indigenous lawsuits go to court is that taxpayers pay First Nations’ legal bills, even when their lawsuit is against the government. First Nations, therefore, have little incentive to settle.

The real controversy arises from the instructions Wilson-Raybould gave to justice lawyers when a lawsuit cannot be settled out of court. Where government lawyers cannot come to terms with First Nations, her directive all but prohibits an “adversarial” approach in court. The lawyers who are supposed to be protecting the interests of the nation, of citizens or even of taxpayers are prevented from offering a spirited defence or even any defence at all.

QUEBEC PREMIER'S LIST OF DEMANDS

Quebec Premier François Legault flexed his nationalist muscles before the federal party leaders Tuesday, laying out a list of demands to boost the province’s power at the expense of Ottawa.

Mr. Legault asked for more power over immigration, language and tax collection, one week after telling federal leaders to stay out of any court cases contesting Quebec’s controversial ban on the wearing of religious symbols in some public service jobs.

Mr. Legault wants Ottawa to enable Quebec to give a language and values test to potential immigrants, along with the power to set quotas for all categories of immigrants, including the refugee and family reunification cases currently determined by Ottawa.

BIRTH TOURISM UP 13% IN CANADA

   The 13 per cent increase was found in data Griffith collected from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which based it on information from hospitals across the country, excluding Quebec.

    Their research shows a steady increase in births to non-residents from 2008 to 2017-18, and then a 13 per cent jump after that. According to CIHI, there were 1,354 non-resident births in 2010 and 4,099 in the 12-month period ending March 2019 – representing 1.4 per cent of all births in Canada during that time.
   “It’s going up faster than immigration rates, faster than the overall population of Canada,” Andrew Griffith, a fellow at the Environics Institute and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

IRAN THREATENS SEIZURE OF CANADIAN SHIPS

The Iranian regime threatened Monday to retaliate against Canada after Global News reported that Tehran’s assets in Toronto and Ottawa had been sold to compensate terrorism victims.

The head of Iran’s judiciary said the Islamic republic would “impound and confiscate Canada’s assets,” while a hardline legislator reportedly called for the seizure of Canadian ships.

The Iranian military should “seize all vessels carrying goods and products to or from Canada as soon as possible,” said Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a national security council member, Radio Farda reported.

LEADERS' DEBATE JUST BECAME INTERESTING

The stage is set for Maxime Bernier. His challenge now is to perform.

The leader of the nascent People's Party of Canada (PPC) yesterday got his coveted invitation to take part in the two televised debates organized by the independent Leaders' Debate Commission. The debates — one in English and the other in French — will be held on Oct. 7 and Oct 10.

The invitation extended by debates Commissioner David Johnston reverses a preliminary ruling last month that found Bernier didn't meet two of the commission's three criteria to qualify.

SNARING RCMP OFFICIAL ORTIS

Bill Majcher, a former RCMP officer with years of experience in undercover work targeting transnational drug traffickers, said he never worked with Ortis, but had watched him rise quickly through the ranks at B.C. RCMP’s E-Division headquarters.

From his position as director general of intelligence in Ottawa, Ortis would have been able to access almost any sensitive information he wanted, Majcher said.

This could include the force’s blueprints for covert operations worldwide, as well as the identities of undercover officers, police agents working within transnational crime groups, officers from Five Eyes partners used in RCMP probes, and even witnesses relocated to other countries.

OXYCONTIN MAKERS FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY

Just hours after the company's board signed off on a proposed settlement with more than 2,000 litigants, including dozens of US states, the embattled US drugmaker Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a long-anticipated move aimed at shielding the company and its owners, the Sackler family, from financial ruin as they shoulder the brunt of the blame for igniting the opioid crisis with their aggressive marketing tactics of OxyContin.

MUGABE'S RULE OF FEAR & TERROR

  Mugabe ruled by fear and terror, impoverishing his people even as he and his cronies looted the national exchequer.
  Apologists for Mugabe would argue that the fear and terror came later, after an initial blessed period of harmony in the newly independent Zimbabwe. Not so. Mugabe fought for the independence of his people, but not for their welfare. He did not become a tyrant after achieving power; he was a tyrant already.
In that, Canada has a particularly shameful role. In 1983, the Trudeau government was advised repeatedly by its own diplomats about Mugabe’s massacres in Matabeleland. Like most Western countries at the time, Canada could not be bothered. But Trudeau went a step further, inviting Mugabe to visit Canada even as the massacres were ongoing. And not just for diplomatic niceties and a quick greeting in Ottawa. Trudeau laid on a cross-country tour for Mugabe to be greeted by first ministers across the land. Not a word was spoken about the ruthless repression.

WILL DRONE ATTACK IN SA AFFECT CANADA'S GAS PRICE

   More than five per cent of the global oil production capacity was taken offline following a drone attack in Saudi Arabia.
   Saturday's attack resulted in a temporary cut to Saudi Arabia's oil production output of an estimated 5.7 million barrels – or about half of its total capacity.
   That large of a hit could provide a significant jolt to oil prices around the world – but one analyst says Canadian drivers are well-positioned to avoid sticker shock at the pumps.

VIVE LA FRANCE!

New statistics have revealed that France is now tied with Germany for new asylum applications this year, with over 90,000 migrants attempting to claim asylum in France.

A document from the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) claims that France has seen a total of 91,372 asylum applications so far in 2019, just 767 less than Germany over the same period, French newspaper Le Bien Publique reports.

France and Germany combined have taken in roughly 40 per cent of all asylum seekers in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland in 2019.

EDUCATING THE IGNORANT ILHAN OMAR

Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, criticized freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for her past remarks about 9/11.

"'Some people did something,' said a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota, to support and justify the creation of CAIR. Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom," Haros said.

   Omar makes herself the victim in her response to Mr. Haros:  “It’s important for us to make sure that we are not forgetting the aftermath of 9/11, [when] many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them, and so what I was speaking to was that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as suspect,” she added.

TRUDEAU MISLEADS ON RCMP AND SNC-LAVALIN

   Lilley:  Trudeau wants the public to believe three main things about this issue that are false, and is hoping to confuse the issue so voters dismiss it as too complex and move on.
     He wants you to believe he can’t waive cabinet confidence because the clerk made his decision. That’s not true, he can and he can do it easily.
   He wants you to believe that he has already granted an “unprecedented” waiver to allow people to speak freely. This is false as well. In both the Mike Duffy trial and the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, the waiver granted by PMs Harper, Martin and Chretien were more expansive.

    Finally, Trudeau wants you to believe the police are not and were not investigating the actions of his office.

SNC LAVALIN SCANDAL ENDEARS PM TO QUEBEC

Such was the Conservative Party fever dream circa February 2019, in those few bonkers weeks after the Globe and Mail birthed the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Having Liberal cabinet ministers and poohbahs lean on the attorney general, at the apparent behest of the prime minister, to secure a stay out of jail free card for SNC-Lavalin exposed the juiciest of Liberal Party clichés.

For Conservatives, the parallels to another Liberal cockup, the sponsorship scandal, were undeniable and eminently exploitable. Once again, the Liberal Party had demonstrated its bloated sense of entitlement and tendency to flout the rules in order to placate Quebec. LavScam was the new AdScam.

Alas for Conservatives, it hasn't come to pass. Six months later, the biggest scandal to rock Justin Trudeau's government has failed to slacken his party's grip on Quebec. In fact, the Trudeau government's shabby attempts to shield SNC-Lavalin from the wrath of the justice system, rule of law be damned, has probably helped its chances of re-election — in Quebec at the very least.

FIVE EYES ALLIES WATCHING ORTIS CASE

   Members of the Five Eyes intelligence bloc are already raising questions about the type of information accessible to Cameron Ortis as the director of an intelligence unit within the RCMP.  Ortis — a 47-year-old senior intelligence official at the RCMP — was arrested Thursday and appeared in an Ottawa court Friday, facing five counts under the Security of Information Act.
   Little is known about what information he was gathering and to whom he allegedly was preparing to pass it, but sources who knew of Ortis's work said he likely had access to Mountie operations, intelligence dossiers and information from Canada's allies.
   Diplomatic sources said the Five Eyes alliance is waiting for a formal damage assessment from the public safety minister's office, and said some members are already questioning how Ortis was able to hoard information within the RCMP.

LIBERALS BOASTING TRUDEAU STOOD UP TO TRUMP

   The Liberals are boasting that they stood up to U.S. President Donald Trump in new television ads released Saturday, touting a North American free trade deal that remains in limbo, as a multinational chief executive took credit for a breakthrough in the talks.

Stephen Schwarzman, head of the Blackstone Group, has penned a book in which he says he brokered a deal between Trudeau and Trump that saw the Canadian prime minister make concessions on dairy, according to a report in The Globe and Mail about the book, to be published next week.

Schwarzman claims that Trump had refused to meet with Trudeau while they were both at the UN in New York in September 2018, ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline, and that Trudeau asked him to intervene as NAFTA talks had stalled.

IRANIANS TARGET SAUDI PETROLEUM PROCESSOR

 Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group on Saturday attacked two Saudi Aramco plants at the heart of the kingdom’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility, sparking fires in the latest violent flare-up in the Gulf.

APPEALING QUEBEC'S RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS BAN

As the application of Bill 21, Quebec’s religious symbols ban, comes into sharper focus, a coalition of religious and civil liberties groups is waging a court battle to have the law thrown out.

Ordinarily, the law could be challenged on the grounds that it violates a person’s constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion. But the Coalition Avenir Québec government built the notwithstanding clause into Bill 21, nullifying entire sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Without the Charter to fall back on, the groups are arguing that the religious symbols ban is impermissibly vague, that it infringes on federal jurisdiction, and that it prevents groups of people from participating in democratic institutions.

The groups’ attempt to have the bill suspended was rejected in Superior Court in July, but an appeal is to be heard in November.

HEALTH EMERGENCY: FENTANYL OVERDOSE CRISIS

Local governments across Canada will press the federal government to increase access to safer drugs, and declare a national health emergency in response to the fentanyl-driven overdose crisis, after a motion by Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart was passed Friday.

The motion requires the federation to call on Ottawa to support health authorities, doctors, their professional colleges and provinces to “safely provide regulated opioids and other substances through a free and federally available Pharmacare program.”

The federation will also demand that the federal government declares a national public health emergency and provides exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, so that cities and towns can run pilot programs which prioritize a move toward a “safe” drug supply.

KENNEY'S RESPONSE TO AMNESTY INT'L's ACCUSATIONS

     Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has responded to an open letter from Amnesty International that criticized his government’s aggressive approach in defending the oil and gas industry. The head of Amnesty’s Canadian branch warned that the premier’s efforts have put human rights at risk.

   Kenney writes:  Before responding to your open letter, titled Human rights concerns regarding the Government of Alberta’s “Fight Back Strategy,” I would like to offer a note of sympathy. Honestly, it can’t be easy being the long-time head of Amnesty International Canada (AI), stuck in annoyingly free and peaceful Canada, having to work yourself up into high dudgeon to denounce a democratically-elected government peacefully standing up for its citizens.

   On the other hand, your insistence that the burning human rights threat in Canada right now is – to use your description – the “establishment of an energy ‘war room’ devoted to defending the oil and gas industry in Alberta and a public inquiry into the foreign funding of groups who oppose or criticize energy developments in the province” can hardly pass unchallenged. Relentless misinformed attacks against our oil and gas industry have cost us thousands of jobs and hurt families from every region of our province. The cost in investment and jobs has been incalculable. Our government won the largest democratic mandate in Alberta history in part on a promise to stand up to those attacks. I will not apologize for keeping that promise.

A MIRACLE IN OUR TIME

    Rex Murphy:  Government communication is mostly a contradiction in terms. Leaders have abandoned anything like straight declarations of their opinions or their policies. They hose their replies to questions with torrents of ambiguity. When not deliberately ambiguous and slippery in reply, they adopt an even more callous manner when faced with questions they cannot furnish with glib reply.
However a light flickers; out of this Stygian pit of dead English and greasy equivocation comes a singular government communication — a letter from a leader — that says what it means, says it with clarity and force, and even — this may be unlawful in political communications — has some fun in doing so.
I refer to Jason Kenney’s recent reply to a certain confused and apparently under-worked nuisance at Amnesty International Canada. Said nuisance raised the fraught charge that the Alberta government, in setting up a fund to research the voluminous alarms, thunderbolts, lies and slanders that have for three decades now been hurled upon the workers and industry of Canada’s oilsands by huffy NGOs, various self-declared environmentalists and busybodies of the global warming establishment, is violating “human rights.”

EX-OPP OFFICER SUING FORD GOVERNMENT

A former high-ranking provincial police officer is suing the Ontario government for wrongful dismissal, alleging he was fired for speaking out against attempts to hire a friend of Premier Doug Ford's family as the province's top cop.

Brad Blair also called for a public inquiry into what he alleged was a string of "corrupt" appointments in the Progressive Conservative government.

In his lawsuit, the former deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police also accuses Ford, his former chief of staff and other government bureaucrats of breaching his charter rights and abuse of public office -- allegations that have not been proven in court.

OXYCONTIN BILLIONAIRES HIDING FUNDS

The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss and other hidden accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves, New York's attorney general contends in court papers filed Friday.

New York -- asking a judge to enforce subpoenas of companies, banks and advisers to Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family -- said it has uncovered the previously unknown wire transfers among family members, entities they control and several financial institutions.

The transfers bolster allegations by New York and other states that the Sacklers worked to shield their wealth in recent years because of mounting worries about legal threats.

TRUDEAU DEFENDING HIS INACTION

The weasel word from week one of the campaign was 'counterproductive'.

It would be, as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has put it every day on the hustings, 'counterproductive' for his government to actively defend Quebecers who are denied the right to wear religious symbols and clothing in public service jobs.

It's far more productive to wait until the votes are counted before deciding if it's safe to challenge Bill 21 legislation in a province where the ban is popular.

TOMMY ROBINSON RELEASED FROM PRISON

Robinson’s imprisonment dates back to a 2018 child rape gang case, which saw Robinson arrested, processed through the courts, and thrown in jail over a matter of just hours for filming and broadcasting images of the defendants on Facebook as they arrived at the building. The judge also imposed reporting restrictions, meaning details of Robinson’s incarceration were kept from the public.

The case was later appealed, with Robinson’s lawyers arguing that the prison sentence for a crime which is normally punished with fines was excessive, and citing procedural deficiencies in the abnormally hastily concluded trial. An appeal court sent Robinson back to jail, the judge remarking the purpose of the incarceration was “the main purpose of the penalty is punishment and deterrence”.

The child rape gang Mr Robinson filmed were subsequently jailed for their “campaign of rape and other sexual abuse” against vulnerable young people.

MAKE TRUDEAU A DRAMA TEACHER AGAIN

   The prime minister has nothing to gain by letting his opponents batter him senseless over the SNC-Lavalin affair. He knew full well that in Toronto on Thursday evening at the leaders' debate they would dredge up all those inconvenient truths that have emerged over the past few months: the unethical pressure on an attorney general; the firing of the same AG and another minister for standing up for the rule of law, an ethics report so damning that the prime minister can’t acknowledge it in full, certainly not to the extent that it warrants an apology. And now reports that the RCMP are investigating possible obstruction of justice charges.

To a question whether pressure had been “applied” to the attorney general Trudeau used the old strawman argument — refute something that had never been alleged. What’s more, he did it three times in almost exactly the same language when pressed on the matter.

But it was hardly likely to get him through a grueling, two-hour debate facing an opposition that would have been delighted to pepper him with question after question on those issues.

ANGRY SEAL AIDS IN $1BILLION DRUG BUST

Australian police busted an international drug smuggling ring, arresting five people in connection with a billion-dollar haul discovered on a tiny Western Australian island. 

And they owe it all to a giant, angry seal. 

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, police found Frenchman Antonine Robert Dicenta, 51, and Briton Kurt Palmer, 34, crouching on Burton Island with over 900 kilograms of crystal meth, cocaine and ecstasy, hidden in bags under a mass of seaweed. 

TRUDEAU HIDING BEHIND OATH OF SECRECY

Did Justin Trudeau threaten to demote Jody Wilson-Raybould from the role of attorney-general unless she intervened to protect SNC-Lavalin from prosecution on corruption charges? The RCMP would like to know, and so would every Canadian.

But this government refuses to release those involved from their oath of secrecy, frustrating the police inquiry and the public will. And so the time has come for Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, her friend and former cabinet colleague, to tell Canadians what they know about the cabinet shuffle that eventually led to their resignations.

Mr. Trudeau and his advisers are hiding behind the convention of protecting cabinet confidences. They must not hide any longer. The national interest dictates that Canadians cast their ballots in this election with full knowledge of what happened behind those very closed doors. It is time for everyone to speak their truth.

ONTARIO LAW SOCIETY REVOKES DIVERSITY RULE

The Law Society of Ontario revoked a rule Wednesday that required its members to spell out their commitment to promoting diversity, but the decision did not quell debate over what the organization can and should do to tackle discrimination.

Those opposed to the rule argued it amounted to unconstitutional, compelled speech, and was beyond the jurisdiction of the regulator.

Supporters, meanwhile, said it was a small but significant step towards eradicating systemic barriers within the profession.

VIOLENCE IN ONTARIO ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

A study from the University of Ottawa suggests there has been a sharp increase in the level of violence teachers face while working in Ontario’s elementary schools.

A team of researchers surveyed more than 1,600 educators last year to gauge the number of times they encountered violence from students, parents or administrators during the 2017-18 school year.

The researchers found that number had surged nearly seven-fold in the intervening years, with 54 per cent of respondents saying they had experienced physical violence such as punching, kicking or biting — primarily at the hands of students.

The survey found 72 per cent of participants reported explicit verbal insults or obscene gestures from a student, with 41 per cent saying they’d had similar encounters with a parent.

EMPTY CHAIR AT MUNK DEBATE

    In the customarily cynical way that federal election campaigns are orchestrated, it makes perfectly good political sense, from a Liberal party point of view, that Justin Trudeau has refused to participate in Thursday evening’s Maclean’s-Citytv federal leaders’ debate. It isn’t in the public interest to behave this way, of course, but the Liberals aren’t keen on exposing their incumbent prime minister to any campaign milieu, if they don’t have to, that they aren’t effectively stage-managing.
   It makes even better sense, cynically speaking, that Trudeau is refusing to subject himself to the rigour of the Munk Debate on Foreign Policy that the other leaders are attending Oct. 1 at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. There will be an empty chair in the place where Trudeau should be. This will make him look bad enough, but almost certainly not as bad as Trudeau would make himself look in the attempt to defend his foreign policy record, let alone articulate his plans ahead. Foreign policy is a subject the Liberals would rather we not be thinking about at all.

NEW BRUNSWICK NDP DEFECTION FARCE

All week, meanwhile, all across Twitter, in press releases and media appearances, Canada’s fractious left was, as usual, tearing itself apart. New Democrats were accusing Greens of racism. Greens were calling New Democrats bullies. Actual federal leaders were fighting over the fate of former no-hope candidates for the fifth most popular party in a province roughly as large, by population, as the City of Mississauga.

It was the great defection that was, then wasn’t, then was again, sort of. It was the first real bun fight in a federal campaign that had almost officially begun and it was fought between two progressive parties in a place where between them they’d be blessed to win a single seat.

But the real story of the New Brunswick 14 is even stranger and smaller and more personal than the one that leaked out last week in dribs and drabs. It features a spurned leadership, a mother-son political duo, some late-night texting and the final proof, in case any more was needed, that all politics really is incredibly, minutely, mind-numbingly, local in the end.

CONSERVATIVES WIN MANITOBA ELECTION

 Brian Pallister and his Progressive Conservatives went early and won big.

Pallister called an election more than a year before it was scheduled and the vote Tuesday ended with a second consecutive majority government for the Tories.

The party was projected to capture 30-plus seats in the 57-seat legislature with an agenda to continue cutting costs, streamlining health care and reducing taxes.

SELF-AGGRANDIZING ELIZABETH MAY

   Green Party Leader Elizabeth May doesn't much like politics. She says, in fact, that there are many other jobs she'd rather have.
   So why does she stay in it?
   "Because I have to save the whole world and we're running out of time," she told Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos over lunch last week. "I loved practising law when I practiced law. But I think my job would be the one I was on a path to do before I got involved in politics, which is to be an Anglican priest."

ON THE HUNT FOR IRAN'S OIL TANKERS

While one Iranian tanker is attracting global attention, serious oil watchers remain absorbed by a bigger mystery: the hunt for the rest of Iran’s fleet.

The quest has led to ever more inventive methods of tracking ships, and divergent views on the amounts of crude secretly slipping into world markets. That’s because the vessels have mostly “gone dark” since sanctions were tightened this year, switching off transponders that would reveal their location

OIL CONSUMPTION ON DECLINE

John Kemp, senior market analyst of commodities at Reuters, cites a new report via B.P.'s finance chief that indicates global oil consumption will be less than 1 million barrels per day this year, an ominous sign that the global economy is quickly deteriorating.

Kemp said growth is expected to be less than one million barrels per day (bpd) would represent an increase of less than 1% in global oil consumption and the lowest level of growth since 2014 and before that 2012.

Back then, declining demand was due to elevated oil prices averaging above $100 per barrel in real terms. Now prices trend in the $50-$60 range for WTI, confirming that even with low oil prices, demand is nowhere to be seen.

CHINA HAS LABOUR RULES?

   If the US-China trade war is supposed to be in a ceasefire phase following last week's main news that trade talks will resume in October, Beijing may not have gotten the memo, because late on Sunday futures slipped and Treasury futures jumped after a Bloomberg report that Apple, and its Taiwanese manufacturing partner, Foxconn, had violated a Chinese labor rule by using too many temporary staff in the world’s largest iPhone factory; the Chinese report also alleged - wait for it - harsh working conditions.
   For all those whose heads are shaking, stunning if what they read is true, let us help you - yes, China - that global paragon of equitable labor laws - is accusing the US and Taiwan of substandard labor practices. The claims came from China Labor Watch, which picked a great time to issued its report: just ahead of Apple's upcoming iPhone reveal slated for Tuesday. The non-profit advocacy group investigates conditions in Chinese factories, and says it has uncovered other alleged labor rights violations by Apple partners in the past.

JUST DECLARE TRANS MOUNTAIN CHARADE OVER

    Murphy: Were you to suppose that the purpose of current national energy policy was to chase Alberta out of Confederation (with a big knotty stick), you would have hit up a dismayingly plausible, perhaps the only plausible, explanation for the remorseless stream of blunders, stumbles, harassments, blockades, protests and court rulings that have constituted said “policy” over recent years.
  Certainly more plausible than anything that has escaped the lips of Justin Trudeau recently, anything to be found in the endless tweets of climate crusader Catherine McKenna over the past four years, or in the vapid pronunciamentos, post-Trans Mountain appeals case, of Minister Sohi in the past four days.
   The government has scotched every pipeline, proposed or considered, East or West, with the dispatch and efficiency of the better assassins (i.e., unlike the “hitchhiker” would-be assassin someone took to India). It has super-glued the one pipeline it has vaguely signalled it favours to a trial by combat against triumphalist environmentalism, a labyrinth of judicial reviews, hearings, morbid consultation-itis, jimmied-up protests, useless carbon taxes, the Fata Morgana of social licence, and endless water-torture excruciations of the famed “review process.”

DESPERATE FOR ATTENTION IN TORONTO

Watch some crazed vegans and transvestites protest the new Toronto Chick-fil-A.

HURRICANE DORIAN LASHES MARITIMES

The Maritimes are recovering from Hurricane Dorian on Sunday, which hit as a strong Category 1 hurricane between Sambro and Terence Bay, N.S., on Saturday, downing trees, power lines and crane in Halifax. 

Over 390,000 Nova Scotia Power customers are still without electricity after Dorian swept through the region with winds up to 140 km/h. Over 55,000 customers in New Brunswick and 50,000 in Prince Edward Island are without power.

The storm is now classified as a post-tropical cyclone and centred near Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as of 6 a.m. local time.

CANADA PUSHES CHINA ON CANOLA AT WTO

   Canada has requested a formal meeting with China at the World Trade Organization to resolve a Chinese ban on Canadian canola shipments.
    Saskatchewan's Trade and Export Development Minister Jeremy Harrison said Friday the federal move was months overdue.  "We'd been calling for the national government to initiate the WTO challenge from virtually Day 1 of the Chinese decision to exclude canola into their market," said Harrison.   "If they had initiated it in April, when I think was when we first asked them to do that, that would have been six months further along in this process than we are right now."

   

LAWSUIT AGAINST MUELLER RE 9/11 SA INVOLVEMENT

   Robert Mueller - pitched as an incorruptible beacon of justice when he was tasked with (unsuccessfully) hunting down ties between Donald Trump and Russia - was nothing more than a hatchet man for the deep state, who participated in a coverup of Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11 according to a new report by the New York Post's Paul Sperry - citing former FBI investigators and a new lawsuit by 9/11 victims.
  According to Sperry, Mueller stonewalled after FBI agents discovered evidence of "multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks," while the former FBI director allegedly "covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh — and may have even misled Congress about what he knew."

GOVERNMENT SECTOR SICK DAYS

 The Canadian Taxpayers Federation today released an analysis comparing days lost to sickness or disability in the government and private sectors, showing that bureaucrats take far more sick days than their counterparts outside of government.

“The discrepancy is consistent and clear: for some reason, government bureaucrats are taking far more sick days than the rest of us,” said CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick.

Data from Statistics Canada shows that in 2018, federal government employees took an average of 12.2 sick days per year, compared to the national private sector average of just 6.9 days, a difference of 77 per cent. 

“Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for government employee salaries,” said Wudrick. “So the fact illness appears to be striking bureaucrats with such frequency, preventing them from doing the jobs they are paid to do, seems worth looking into.”