LIBERALS DEFEND THEIR $50M GIFT TO MASTERCARD

   The federal minister of economic development has attempted to “set the record straight” about an almost $50-million investment the government is making to help MasterCard develop a cybersecurity centre in Vancouver.
   “This new investment made by the government will create hundreds of jobs across the country, in particular in British Columbia,” Mélanie Joly said in the House of Commons Thursday.

  Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen noted that since MasterCard’s revenue last year was reported as more than $16 billion, they can afford to develop “their own cybersecurity.”

$18OK SPENT IN COURT BATTLE AGAINST VETERAN

The Conservatives say it is “outrageous” the federal government has spent more than $180,000 fighting a veteran in small claims court.

The party’s veterans affairs critic, Phil McColeman, had submitted a written request in the House of Commons to determine how much the government has spent on the case involving veterans advocate Sean Bruyea and Seamus O’Regan, the former veteran affairs minister who is now Minister of Natural Resources.

Mr. Bruyea is seeking $25,000 in compensation for damage he says was done to his reputation in a 2018 column written by Mr. O’Regan when he held the veterans portfolio that was published in The Hill Times, an Ottawa-based newspaper that covers Parliament.

CELEBRATING BREXIT

Breitbart’s James Delingpole attended an all-star party of top Brexiteers in London ahead of Brexit Hour at 11 p.m. on January 31st.

NO CASH OUT FOR TERRORIST'S WIFE

The wife of a Palestinian terrorist cannot collect life insurance following her husband’s death because he lied about his past when he purchased the policy, the Ontario appeals court has ruled.

Fadia Khalil Mohammad sought $75,000 from Manulife when her husband, who had fled to Canada after hijacking a plane for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), died of lung cancer.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered Manulife to pay up, but the decision was overturned in a Jan. 29 ruling that found her husband had fraudulently failed to disclose his terrorist past.

LIBERALS GIVE $50M TO MASTERCARD

The Trudeau government is actually giving a handout to a major financial company that makes billions each year: last week Industry Minister Navdeep Bains announced a gift of $50 million to MasterCard to help them set up shop in Vancouver.

“Why did the prime minister make taxpayers so sad by giving $50 million to a company that made $16 billion last year off the backs of hard-working Canadians who can’t afford to pay their full balances?” Scheer asked.

Trudeau mumbled on about his government being focused on “growing the middle class and those working hard to join it.” Nothing says middle class like giving a profitable multibillion-dollar company $50 million from taxpayers.

CHINA'S BEST CANADIAN SENATOR

   It is almost certain, however, that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heard of Yuen Pau Woo’s moving and shaking and his potential to perhaps coordinate party fundraisers among Chinese millionaires and billionaires because Trudeau almost immediately recommended Woo’s appointment to the Senate.
   When the Trudeau Liberals’ 2019 election platform promised the introduction of a 1% equity tax on property owned by non-resident foreigners, Woo was soon giving interviews to news agencies like Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, wherein Woo complained upfront that Canadians didn’t particularly like rich Asians.
   Two weeks after his Hong Kong interview, Woo told reporters here that he had no comment on the equity tax and its annual potential to raise $217-million in revenues.
  Then, when Blacklock’s Reporter dove into Woo’s Twitter account, it found him ridiculing claims that wealthy Chinese speculators were driving up Vancouver’s housing prices.

QUESTIONABLE GOV'T SPENDING

The Liberal commitment to open government remains an empty promise – for confirmation, watch question period on any given day or, worse, file an Access to Information request.

However, a slew of ministerial answers was tabled this week, offering a less than reassuring picture of the way taxpayers’ money is being spent and their affairs conducted.

Perhaps the most concerning, though not surprising, revelation was on the number of irregular migrants who have been deported. It emerged that 55,025 removal orders have been issued to foreign nationals in the last three years but only 1,310 have been removed. The reason is that, even after being found ineligible to settle in Canada, claimants are allowed to remain in this country while seeking a judicial or administrative review.

ARABS LOSING INTEREST IN PALESTINIANS

To top it off, many Arab countries are fed up with Palestinian extremism, which has yielded nothing positive for more than 70 years.

Sitting in the room while Trump and Netanyahu made their announcements were the ambassadors of the UAE, Oman and Bahrain. This, a day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas implored the Arabs to boycott the event, just as he had refused to take Trump’s phone call a day earlier. Immediately following the announcement, Egyptian, Saudi, Emirati, Omani and Bahraini press all urged the Palestinians to seize this opportunity to engage meaningfully with the Israelis. This public rebuke of the Palestinians by their Arab cousins is momentous. Beyond huge. Cosmically game-changing.

Not at all surprising, but disappointing nevertheless, is Abbas’s unequivocal rejection of the American-Israeli overture to negotiate. As have all Palestinian leaders, he continues to tow an absolutist, obstructionist line. Even Yasser Arafat was prepared to pretend to accede to negotiations with the Israelis. Abbas has done nothing to indicate a true interest in negotiating peace.

BIDEN FAMILY'S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

  With less than one week before the Iowa caucuses, the establishment media is zeroing in on former Vice President Joe Biden and the culture of corruption that has permeated his immediate family for decades.
   On Tuesday, Politico published an in-depth exposé on the financial ties between the former vice president’s younger brother, James, and a high-powered Washington, D.C., lobbyist. According to Politico, James and his wife purchased an acre of land in the U.S. Virgin Islands for $150,000 in May 2005. A year later, James resold a third of that acre to Scott Green, a national security lobbyist who previously served as a Senate staffer for Joe Biden. Green paid $150,000 for the land, even though the tax assessed value was only $38,000.
   “In effect, James and [his wife] had gotten their money back while keeping most of the land—recouping their investment in just 12 months,” the outlet reported.

UK PM ALLOWS HUAWEI IN 5G NETWORKS

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has expressed his shock that the Conservative government has decided to allow Chinese-owned Huawei involvement in British 5G networks, despite warnings from intelligence allies Australia and the United States.

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson’s government announced that Huawei would be involved in the development of Britain’s 5G networks, with a so-called limited access.
Critics say that the company is controlled by the Communist Chinese government, and allowing Huawei access could leave British communications networks vulnerable to hacking or spying by foreign powers.

Australia, New Zealand, and the United States — three of the Five Eyes — have warned the UK against allowing Huawei even limited access to “periphery” technologies, with American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set to fly to the UK on Wednesday to discuss the Trump administration’s concerns over Prime Minister Johnson’s decision.

USA BLOCKING CHINA'S THIEVING

A Harvard University department chair and two Chinese nationals who were researchers at Boston University and a Boston hospital were charged on Tuesday with lying about their alleged links to the Chinese government.

The charges are part of an aggressive effort by U.S. authorities to block what they say are Chinese attempts to steal American scientific and technological advances.

Prosecutors charged Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, with lying about participating in China’s Thousand Talents Plan, which aims to attract research specialists working overseas.

Two Chinese researchers were charged with being agents of a foreign government. They were Yanqing Ye, a Boston University robotics researcher who prosecutors said lied about being in the Chinese army, and Zaosong Zheng, a cancer researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who was arrested last month allegedly trying to smuggle research samples out of the country.

KENNEY: SCOC RULING A MESSAGE TO QUEBEC

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says the Supreme Court of Canada’s “unprecedented” dismissal of British Columbia’s move to stop Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project should “send a message” to Quebec that it can’t block the Energy East pipeline project.

During a Global News Radio interview over the weekend, Kenney bluntly criticized the federal government and federal regulatory processes for major projects such as pipelines and oilsands developments. Asked about the proposed-then-withdrawn Energy East pipeline project, the premier quipped that it’s been easier for Russia to build a pipeline through Europe than for a pipeline company to build a project across Canada.

“They’re having an easier job building a similar pipeline across the 28 member states of the European Union than we can in Canada. This is just bizarre,” Kenney said.

HE'S TOO BUSY CHECKING HIS HAIRY REFLECTION

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been warned that more than 200 senior jobs need filling across the federal government, including dozens in key leadership and oversight roles in different Crown corporations, commissions, agencies and embassies.

In a memo to Trudeau shortly after the Liberals won re-election last fall, government officials said there were 220 so-called governor-in-council appointments that needed to be made immediately and another 360 that are set to expire by the end of 2020.

The federal government has about 3,600 governor-in-council positions, including nearly 2,000 that are full-time jobs. They are, for all intents and purposes, appointed by either the prime minister or his cabinet.

LIBERALS P!SSING AWAY TAXPAYERS' MONEY

The federal government rang up more than $1.4 million in legal costs during the failed prosecution of retired vice-admiral Mark Norman.

Revealed this week by Justice Minister David Lametti in a written response to a question from the official Opposition Conservatives, the figure is the first indication of the financial price of the high-profile and politically charged case.

Lametti did not provide any further details about the costs — including whether the figure included Norman's legal fees, which the government has said it would pay.

EXPLAINING CRONYISM TO ALLAN ROCK

   Former Liberal cabinet minister Allan Rock says Conservatives are off base to claim “blatant” cronyism is behind a sole-sourced contract the federal government is looking to award the non-profit he chairs.
   Conservative MPs Michael Barrett and Jacques Gourde, their party’s ethics critics, rose during question period Monday to draw attention to a tender notice suggesting the government is moving to award a $120,000 contract to Security Council Report (SCR).
   Rock, a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and UN ambassador, is chair of the New York-based organization that monitors United Nations Security Council activities and provides training for member states to navigate its specialized rules.

RIDICULOUS MINISTER OF THE NEBULOUS

Canada has no official way of measuring who is and isn't a member of the middle class, Minister of Middle Class Prosperity Mona Fortier said Monday.

Conservative MP Pat Kelly asked Fortier in the House of Commons to provide the number and percentage of individuals who she considers to belong to the middle class.

"The income required to attain a middle-class lifestyle can vary greatly based on Canadians’ specific situation," Fortier replied.

"Canada has no official statistical measure of what constitutes the middle class."

POINTING OUT THE SYSTEM FAILURE

   The actual information presented at the conference, featuring Health Minister Patty Hadju and Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, can be summed up concisely. The patient, a man in his 50s, had recently returned to Toronto from China. He was showing symptoms while on the flight to North America, but still got through the enhanced screening in place at Pearson International Airport. He went home and, a day later, to hospital, where he was immediately isolated. The various public health agencies have been communicating well, the patient is isolated at Toronto’s excellent Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, biological samples from the patient are being immediately analyzed, with results expected by Monday, and public health officials are working quickly to identify and contact anyone who was sitting near the man on the transoceanic flight. The patient is, by all accounts, doing well in hospital. His family members are being monitored.
   It all sounds reassuring. That was certainly the point of the entire exercise. “The risk (to the broader public) is low,” was the unofficial slogan of the entire event. But the reassuring words about co-ordination and communication can’t hide the awkward truth — the “system” the officials were so cheerfully describing didn’t work. A man flying back from an epidemic hot zone — and who was actively symptomatic upon arrival at an airport that was on the alert — was screened by officials who were fully aware of the danger … and who then let him into the country.
   That’s the failure here. That’s the issue of concern. Everything else that happens afterward — the immediate isolation of the patient, the rapid testing of his samples, the strong communication among health agencies — is nice but not the point. Lauding the emergency response after a preventable incident rings hollow when the point is to avoid the emergency in the first place.

LIBERATING RAVENSBRUCK CONCENTRATION CAMP

They were marched through the gates in ranks of five. Three hundred women, all of them starving, beaten, barely alive. They were spies and resistance fighters. Doctors, nurses. An art historian. One old woman, clinging to life, whose last and only wish was to die in France.

They wore a strange pastiche of civilian clothes — prisoners pushed out a death camp in mouldering frocks and at least one gown.

For days they’d been culled. Culled for swollen legs. Culled for noble names. Culled if their heads had been too recently shaved. They had been lined up and winnowed. Stripped, showered, left waiting for two days and nights in the cold. Then winnowed again. Lined up again. Stripped again. Showered. And now here they were, outside the gates.

Behind them they left only death. By starvation. By cold. By beating, neglect and medical torture. In the last months, there had been death by gas, too — in the chamber and in the van. And death by marching — to other camps in a collapsing Reich, pitted by madness and craters, and to nowhere at all.

WHEN JOURNALISTS WON'T ADMIT THEY'RE WRONG

Following the disclosure of the new evidence on Jan. 20 of last year, journalists and politicians rushed to delete tweets that cast the high school students as the face of American racism. And earlier this month, Nick Sandmann, the student whose alleged “smirk” was seen in a widely publicized photo of the incident, settled a defamation lawsuit against CNN. Sandmann’s lawyer says more lawsuits are on the way.

But as Soave reports this week in Reason, there are some journalists who refused to acknowledge how badly the story had been botched. This included Ruth Graham of Slate and Laura Wagner (then of Deadspin, now with Vice). The latter claimed that morally re-evaluating the events in light of new evidence should be avoided, since it would confer “undeserved sympathy to the privileged.” Other media, including the New York Daily News and NBC News, dug up non-sequitur claims about Covington as an apparent means to prop up the original suggestion that the school was a den of bigotry.

THE DESPERATION OF THE CBC

In mid-month, colleague Brian Lilley wrote a column on the CBC’s dreadful news ratings, despite taxpayers being forced to give the broadcaster a whopping annual welfare cheque of $1.2 billion.

Lilley put this to readers: “Did you know that across Canada, over a total of 27 stations coast-to-coast, the average audience for CBC’s supper hour newscast was 329,000 people? That’s not 329,000 people per market, that’s across the country.”

He compared it to one of CTV’s local supper hour newscasts, CFTO in Toronto, which is averaging 1.4 million viewers per night.

EU THREATENS CHINA WITH IMPORT DUTIES

The new President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has threatened to impose import duties on China unless they implement a domestic Chinese carbon tax.

Ursula von der Leyen has warned China and other large fossil fuel producers to find a way to price carbon at home or risk being hit by the EU with a planned CO2 tax on imports.

DID CHINA STEAL CORONAVIRUS FROM CANADA?

In March 2019, in mysterious event a shipment of exceptionally virulent viruses from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory ended up in China. The event caused a major scandal with Bio-warfare experts questioning why Canada was sending lethal viruses to China. Scientists from NML said the highly lethal viruses were a potential bio-weapon.

Following investigation, the incident was traced to Chinese agents working at NML. Four months later in July 2019, a group of Chinese virologists were forcibly dispatched from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML). The NML is Canada’s only level-4 facility and one of only a few in North America equipped to handle the world’s deadliest diseases, including Ebola, SARS, Coronavirus, etc.

That could mean an offensive agent, or a modified germ let loose by proxies, for which only China has the treatment or vaccine. “This is not warfare, per se,” he said. “But what it’s doing is leveraging the capability to act as global saviour, which then creates various levels of macro and micro economic and bio-power dependencies.”

China’s Biological Warfare Program is believed to be in an advanced stage that includes research and development, production and weaponization capabilities. Its current inventory is believed to include the full range of traditional chemical and biological agents with a wide variety of delivery systems including artillery rockets, aerial bombs, sprayers, and short-range ballistic missiles.

ERDOGAN'S MARRY-YOUR-RAPIST LAW

Turkey under Erdogan has already rolled back on protections for girls and women in abuse cases.

Now the country is considering a horrific law aptly called the “marry-your-rapist” bill.

Under this legislation, men accused of having sex with underaged girls could avoid punishment if they marry their victims.

THE STENCH GETS STRONGER AT OTTAWA CITY

The legal opinion that compelled city executives to keep SNC-Lavalin alive in the bidding war for the Trillium Line expansion is being kept under lock and key as newly released documents raise more questions about the winning company’s project proposal.

The city last August received an access request, filed by this newspaper, for records explaining the legal opinion or case law used to allow a bid team with a sub-threshold technical score to stay in the Stage 2 contract competition for the Trillium Line.

In a letter dated Jan. 15, city clerk Rick O’Connor said this newspaper’s access request was denied.

APOCALYPTIC SCENES IN CHINA

China is struggling to contain rising public anger over its response to a spreading coronavirus even as it took unprecedented steps to slow the outbreak, restricting travel for 40 million people on the eve of Lunar New Year.

The government ordered travel agencies to suspend sales of domestic and international package tours after imposing transport curbs on cities near the centre of the outbreak.

The turmoil comes as the virus stymies efforts to track infected patients. While the death toll continues to rise — and now includes someone as young as 36 — some infected patients aren’t showing a fever, a symptom governments around the world have been using to screen for the pathogen.

OIL & GAS CO's NOT HONOURING LEASES IN AB

  A group of Alberta landowners is asking farmers and ranchers to fight back against unpaid debts and unreclaimed oil and gas wells by closing valves and cutting power to energy company sites.
   “The landowners need to safely shut down those surface leases, whether it’s safely turning off the power or safely shutting off the valve,” Daryl Bennett of the Action Surface Rights Association said Thursday.
   “They need to let these companies know that they’ve defaulted on the leases and there are consequences.”
   Most of Alberta’s roughly 400,000 wells are on private property. Provincial law forbids owners to deny access to energy companies and the industry is required to pay compensation. The deals are regulated by the Alberta Surface Rights Board.

THE RESULTS OF TRUDEAU'S MEDDLING

A convicted killer has had his verdict overturned and a new trial ordered on what amounts to a technicality in how a new law was interpreted by the trial judge.

The scary part is, this isn’t the only case that this ruling may overturn — there are dozens of cases that could see legitimate verdicts thrown out.

And it’s all because the Trudeau government decided to mess with centuries of legal practice.

THE USELESS UN

UNHCR Canada has told National Observer the Trudeau government needs to examine the domestic implications of a recent ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee, that found countries can't deport people seeking asylum as a result of threats related to the climate emergency.

It’s the first time a UN body has made this type of determination with respect to climate change. But the ruling by the 18-member committee, released Tuesday, is non-binding on Canada, and raises many complex questions as to how it will ultimately factor into Canada’s refugee system.

“In its decision, the UN Human Rights Committee has made clear that returning a person to a country where they face a risk to their life, or a risk of serious mistreatment, as a result of climate change-related environmental degradation would violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” said Melanie Gallant, head of communications for UNHCR Canada.

SNC-LAVALIN BID SHOULD HAVE BEEN TOSSED

SNC-Lavalin was awarded the $1.6-billion contract to extend Ottawa's north-south Trillium Line last March even though the team assembled to assess the bids reached a "unanimous consensus that the proposal should not be considered further in the evaluation process," according to documents released by the city Thursday night.

The SNC-Lavalin bid failed to include a signalling or train control system, had no plan for snow removal and, at one point, appeared to believe the trains that run on the Trillium Line were electric, not diesel.

The evaluation team concluded the bid was a "poor technical submission throughout," and that "resolving all of the major issues identified in the submission would be a lengthy and likely impractical process."

GABBARD SUING HILLARY CLINTON

Democratic presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard sued Hillary Clinton for defamation on Wednesday, seeking at least $50 million in damages for harming her reputation by suggesting last year that one of the party’s White House contenders was a “Russian asset.”

The lawsuit said Clinton’s comments had damaged the presidential candidacy of Gabbard, a U.S. representative from Hawaii, and were motivated by anger over Gabbard’s endorsement in 2016 of Clinton’s Democratic nominating contest rival, Bernie Sanders.

“Clinton got exactly what she wanted by lying about Tulsi – she harmed her political and personal rival’s reputation and ongoing presidential campaign, and started a damaging whisper campaign based on baseless, but vicious, untruths,” said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MENG WANZHOU IS UGLY

   Terry Glavin:  Among the many sleights of hand in the prisoner-exchange formulation is the absurd proposition that the United States has failed to honour some sort of gentlemanly obligation to somehow intervene with Xi Jinping on Canada’s behalf in order to extricate Canada from its own self-inflicted Huawei troubles. A decade ago, the Obama administration was warning Canada to stay away from Huawei. We didn’t listen. And now look where we are.

  And why is it that Huawei and Chrétien and Manley and Goldenberg and the rest of the China lobby aren’t proposing that Meng simply call it a day, dismiss her lawyers, and have her chauffeur drive her to the Peace Arch crossing so she can turn herself in, present herself for trial, and fight the charges against her where they were filed?

   A reasonable person would conclude that she won’t because she’s guilty as sin, and she knows it, and Chrétien and Manley and Goldenberg and the rest know it, too.

WESTERN RELATIONSHIPS ARE SCREWED

Western masculinity has become a total dumpster fire.  Disappointing simping.
Language warning.

INCREASE IN STUPID GOV'T REGULATIONS

   I’m not sure how they do it each year? How do the folks at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business pick the dumbest, most ridiculous examples for their annual Paperweight Awards for stupid government regulation?
   I mean, competition is tough.
   Last year, the CFIB cited Quebec regulations which prohibited an existing beer from a craft brewer from including the word cannabis on their label while Quebec’s liquor regulations required them to include it.
  The year before, there was the business owner told they had to buy a new ladder because their existing ladder’s certification stickers were worn out and tough to read.

OTTAWA'S FIASCO: FLAT SIDES ON TRAIN WHEELS

On Thursday a wire above a train broke and damaged the train as it entered St. Laurent station, one train is out of service with a compressor issue and a few other trains are experiencing wheel flats, said OC Transpo operations director Troy Charter Monday afternoon.

Wheel flats mean part of the wheel is dragging on the track instead of turning.

That issue is "a main contributor to the inability to have 13 trains at peak period right now," he said.

NEWFOUNDLAND'S WHOPPER SNOW STORM

Photos from the snowbound island.

OTTAWA IGNORES NORTH WARNING SYSTEM

   In a scathing article published on Jan. 14, James Fergusson, a defence expert, says the federal government is dodging the need to replace the aging North Warning System, which is near the end of its lifespan.
    “A failure on Canada’s part to move forward relatively quickly could prove disastrous,” said Fergusson, the deputy director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.
   It appears as if the Department of National Defence has not provided for the replacement of the NWS in its spending plans for the future.

CARBON TAX MUST BE WORKING

Rex Murphy:

     It’s good to see the carbon (dioxide) tax is working so effectually. Especially in areas out West, where it is most critically needed. The Prairie provinces in particular have for years, decades, even earlier been plagued by severely milquetoast weather during the winter season — weather described by more than one hardy farmer as “one parka, no mittens” days.
    If you live in the tough northern regions of any of those provinces, a single parka is known as the Prairie swimsuit. “What’s the point of winter without icicles from your eyebrows and hoarfrost on the morning cornflakes?” asks more than one disappointed Westerner.
    Fortunately, as the folks out West say more and more these days, “we have government in Ottawa that cares.” They are all onside with Ottawa’s great crusade against unseasonable warmth. In Alberta they are especially thankful. Ex-premier Rachel Notley and PM Justin Trudeau brought the carbon tax here early, and this year we get the benefits. We see now that jacking up the price of oil, gas and home fuel is the sure path to stronger, longer, colder and more bitter winters to our beloved province. No one now denies taxation has a direct link with temperature reduction. How could it ever have been doubted?

KILLER WANTS TRANSFER TO WOMEN'S PRISON

Jamie Boulachanis, a murderer who recently became a woman in the definition under Canadian law, will make her second request on Monday to be transferred to a federal penitentiary for women to continue serving a life sentence.

The case, to be heard at the Montreal courthouse, pits Boulachanis’s rights to equality versus Correctional Service Canada’s concerns for public safety.

CSC has argued in the past that Boulachanis poses a serious risk of escaping and a threat to public safety if she gets out.

INFERNO OF INCOMPETENCE IN AUSTRALIA

   Of all the things that perplex me about the current mess the most significant is this: the blatant ignoring by premiers, ministers and agency bureaucrats of the warnings of bushfire scientists that a disaster was imminent and, on top of that, their failure to study bushfire history. Our climate, even the ‘pre-climate-change climate’, our vegetation and the abundant sources of ignition mean that we are inherently a bushfire-prone country. And even on top of all that, our governments and bureaucrats have been provided, over and over and over again, with evidence that killer bushfires will occur in Australia unless pre-emptive action is taken. Not just here, but in California, Canada, Greece and Portugal — anywhere in the world with hot dry summers, periodic droughts and flammable vegetation.
    Yet despite the science, the evidence presented by bushmen, the dramatic history of this contininent’s relationship with fire, and the findings of numerous inquiries, successive governments in Qld, NSW and Victoria over the last 25 years have consistently failed to prepare potential firegrounds in the expectation of the inevitable. Not only this, they seem to have actually go out of their way to make things worse: the cut-backs to fuel reduction burning, the closure of access roads and trails in national parks, the decimation of professional forestry and fire management expertise, the turning of the blind eye to the creation of residential subdivisions in capable of being defended, the funding of “research” in the universities that is aimed at making the job of the firefighter more difficult, and the erection of a complex bureaucratic edifices that hinder sensible bushfire preparedness and make fuel-reduction burning almost impossible.

HORGAN'S COSTLY VIRTUE-SIGNALLING

  It took barely half an hour for the Supreme Court to reach a decision in the case of John Horgan versus the interests of Canada.
   Its unanimous conclusion was the one that’s been obvious since the British Columbia premier began his costly and doomed waste of court time: the shipment of oil across provincial lines comes under federal jurisdiction, therefore the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline is a matter for Ottawa to decide.
  In stating the obvious, the court also exposed the ugly reality of the B.C. government’s campaign against the Trans Mountain project: this was never really about the constitutionality of a pipeline, but about the need of Horgan’s New Democrats to win votes, and its willingness to work against the interests of the majority of the country to get them.

FLASH FLOODS IN AUSTRALIA

MELBOURNE — Thunderstorms lashed parts of Australia’s east coast early on Saturday, causing road closures and flash flooding, but the country was still battling nearly 100 bushfires and some of the affected areas remained dry.

Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, states hit badly by the bushfires that have so far killed 29 people, destroyed more than 2,500 homes and scorched millions of acres of land, are now dealing with rain bucketing down.

THE USELESS UN

   A Canadian First Nations chief is slamming a recent directive from a United Nations anti-racism committee after the organization called for the shutdown of an Indigenous-backed pipeline only to later admit that it did not seek Aboriginal views toward the project.
    In December, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released a directive calling for three large-scale natural resource projects in British Columbia to be “immediately” shut down, including the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline that would feed into a massive export facility along the West coast. The project has signed benefit agreements with 20 Indigenous communities along its 670-kilometre route.
   But in an interview with Reuters published Thursday, CERD chair Noureddine Amir admitted that the committee did not study First Nations views toward the project, saying he “did not know” that most communities supported it.

CHINA'S ECONOMIC MIRACLE ENDING

In emulating the American economic raison d’etre, China has attempted to develop its unique capitalist model while ignoring that it too will soon suffer the same fate for the same reason: Unsustainable debt. When examining the recent realities of Chinese banking and finance over the past year it seems the steam that president Xi Jinping touts as powering the engine of his purported economic miracle of a master-planned economy is only a mirage, now almost completely evaporated before his eyes.

SENATOR MIKE DUFFY APPEALS RULING

The P.E.I. senator was ultimately acquitted in 2016 of 31 criminal charges in a ruling that slammed the conduct of Harper's office in what was one of the biggest political scandals of his government. Despite Duffy's exoneration, the Senate refused to repay the hundreds of thousands of dollars he lost in pay and pension, court heard.

Duffy now wants $7.8 million in reimbursement and damages from the Senate, RCMP and federal government. However, a lower court in December 2018 sided with the Senate that parliamentary privilege made it immune to lawsuits, prompting Duffy's appeal.

Greenspon told the three-judge panel that immunity — designed to separate parliamentary and executive powers — should not apply in this case. The Senate's actions against Duffy, he said, were carried out on behalf of what he called misconduct in the Prime Minister's Office.

TRESPASSER'S SUIT AGAINST RANCHER DISMISSED

“There is no civil claim, it is dead and can’t be revived . . . we won.”

The lawyer said the Maurices decided to drop their counterclaim against Watson at the same time to move on with their lives.

“The Maurices decided to walk away after all the trauma they’ve dealt with over the past couple years,” Chimuk said.

“They never wanted this, they didn’t ask for this. They didn’t ask to be sued by the criminal who tried to violate their home and their family.”

OTTAWA IS BIGGEST CELLPHONE PRICE GOUGER

   Corcoran:  Maybe Bains could explain how $21.7 billion in spectrum costs — money that is paid by consumers and flowed into general federal revenue and then budgetary spending — spurs innovation, competition and more affordable wireless. European wireless operators, with which Canada is often compared on price, have much lower spectrum costs to carry.
   Crandall in an interview said that in 2018, the major Canadian telcos reported spectrum carrying costs on their financial statements averaging $470 per wireless subscriber, with Telus at $694. That compares with $178 for Orange in France, $102 in Poland and $74 in Italy. Europe did not attempt to rig its auctions. In Canada, said Crandall, “the government thinks it can promote competition by giving spectrum to the smaller companies who don’t use it as intensely. Thus it ends up costing Canadians more because the big guys have less spectrum and therefore charge more for their services.” If Canada followed the European spectrum model, he estimates, Canadian wireless costs would be 12 per cent lower.

  According to research by Robert Crandall, a Washington technology consultant to Telus, Ottawa has collected $21.7 billion since 2008 through its manipulated auctions of the great invisible ocean of airwaves that the federal government controls.

SCRUTINIZING CHAREST's RECORD

  While the rest of the country may think of Charest, if they think of him at all, as federalist crusader and longtime grand poobah of Quebec, for many in Quebec, he’s remembered more for the swirling corruption allegations and his anti-democratic hue.
   Why Charest would invite the scrutiny of his record now, some eight years after he lost his own seat in a bruising provincial election, escapes me.

SCOC SAYS NO TO APPEAL OF TM EXPANSION

The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed B.C.'s appeal of a lower court decision that quashed provincial legislation designed to block the Trans Mountain expansion project.

In a unanimous decision, Chief Justice Richard Wagner said the court will let the B.C. Court of Appeal decision stand.

The decision clears yet another legal hurdle for the long-delayed pipeline project. A separate Federal Court of Appeals case on the project, which considers Indigenous issues, is still pending.

SEEKING A SEAT AT THE USELESS UN

 Canada is still vying for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, but it's already warming up the chair with a plan to hire trainers for Canadian officials.

The federal government issued a notice today saying it intends to award a contract worth an estimated $120,000 to New York-based organization Security Council Report to train Canadian personnel.  

Canada is seeking a non-permanent seat on the security council for two years beginning Jan. 1, 2021.

IMAGINE IF CONSERVATIVES HAD DONE THIS

   Concerns are mounting over added powers Ottawa has granted U.S. customs officers to strip-search, question and detain U.S.-bound travellers — on Canadian soil.
   The big concern is that American preclearance officers could now further interrogate Canadians who withdraw their application to enter the U.S., perhaps because they feel uncomfortable during a customs inspection.
  Previously, law-abiding travellers could simply leave and return home, because they were still on Canadian soil.
  Now they could be detained — even handed over to Canadian authorities to face charges — for refusing to answer questions about why they're withdrawing.

RAIN BRINGS FIRE RELIEF IN AUSTRALIA

The rain has offered some relief for fire crews, but there are concerns the wet weather could cause landslides, flash flooding and contaminate water.

Cool, wet conditions are good news for firefighters who have been battling hundreds of blazes across the state since September.

A Rural Fire Service (RFS) spokesperson said despite the rain a number of fires continued to burn.

IRAN HARASSING FAMILIES OF CRASH VICTIMS

   One Iranian family of Canadian victims arrived at a government office to provide a DNA sample as part of the process to claim the remains and were taken into a separate room by security officers, says an Ontario-based Iranian-Canadian briefed by a close family friend.
   “They said if you discuss with any other media, especially outside media … you won’t get the body or the process will be delayed or you will face the consequences,” said the person, who asked not to be named to avoid repercussions for family in Iran. “Consequences … can mean sending them to jail.”
    The person said the officials told the family they should not invite a lot of people to the mourning ceremony in their house, and that two government representatives would attend “to make sure everything is going on according to our scenario.”

WORK RESUMED ON KEYSTONE XL BORDER CROSSING

CALGARY – Work on the long-delayed, hotly debated Keystone XL project will re-start as early as next month, TC Energy Corp. said in a court filing Tuesday.

The Calgary-based pipeline giant filed a status report in the United States District Court of Montana on Tuesday that outlined “presently planned work for 2020 involving both pre-construction activities and construction of the pipeline.”

The company has been looking to build the 830,000-barrels-per-day pipeline – which was rejected by former U.S. president Barack Obama then approved by President Donald Trump – for more than 10 years. The company indicated in the court filing that it would build the 1.2-mile border crossing between Canada and the U.S. in April.

IF THE MOCCASIN FITS

   Elizabeth Warren accused Bernie Sanders of calling her a liar during a confrontation after the Democratic debate on Tuesday, breaching a longstanding nonaggression pact between the two progressive candidates.
   Audio released Wednesday by CNN, which co-hosted the debate in Des Moines, Iowa, revealed that Sanders and Warren were continuing a dispute that began even before the debate after she said he had told her that a woman could not be elected president in 2020.

SCHOLARSHIPS IN MEMORY OF VICTIMS

Ontario is creating 57 new post-secondary scholarships to honour the victims of the Iran plane crash that left no survivors last week.

Premier Doug Ford says in a statement that a new government fund will disperse $10,000 scholarships in memory of each of the 57 Canadian victims of the Ukraine International Airlines crash.

ONCE A DICTATOR, ALWAYS A DICTATOR

OSCOW — Russia’s government unexpectedly resigned on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping constitutional changes that could allow him to extend his rule.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he was stepping down to give Putin room to carry out the changes, which, if implemented, would shift power to parliament and the prime minister – and might thus allow Putin, 67, to rule on in another capacity after his current term ends in 2024.

THE EU GREEN DEAL: AS BAD AS EXPECTED

     The European Commission has unveiled its “European Green Deal,” after taking hints on denomination from its American counterpart, the “Green New Deal.” While the legislation introduced in the US Congress remains fiction under a Republican executive and senate, the Brussels initiative will become law unless there is considerable opposition from EU member states.
   The New Green Deal contains major implications for industry and consumers, including higher energy taxation, higher levies on shipping and aviation, higher road emissions duties, forcing companies to rethink recycling and repairing electronics, and making free trade deals more difficult to conclude.

PROTECTING RANDY ANDY

   British cops have thrown up a brick wall to protect Prince Andrew against allegations he had sex with an underage girl.
   The Royal has been tied to the sickening antics of his pal, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein’s alleged pimp and longtime Andrew confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell.
   Now, the UK establishment is circling the wagons around the beleaguered prince.

ONTARIO FUNDS STUDENTS' PARENTS

  Ontario families can claim up to $60 a day to help cover their expenses if teacher strikes close their child’s school or school-based child care, Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Wednesday.
  The move comes as the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) said its members will conduct a one-day strike on Monday at the Toronto, York and Ottawa-Carleton district school boards.
  And the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) said it would conduct a one-day strike next Tuesday at a number of boards, including the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).

VOTE TO SEND IMPEACHMENT CHARGES TO SENATE

WASHINGTON — The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to send two formal charges against President Donald Trump to the Senate, clearing the way for only the third impeachment trial of a U.S. president to begin in earnest next week.

CORRUPTION OF BC GOV'T CASINOS

   The explosive accusation is just one example of organized crime’s alleged infiltration and corruption of B.C. government casinos, according to a January 2009 RCMP anti-illegal gaming unit report.
   “It is stunning to me that any government official would be provided this information, and the Solicitor General’s response was, rather than to grant police the resources they were seeking, to do the reverse, and disband this unit,” she said.
   “You have every appearance of human trafficking and women forced into prostitution. It’s not just that they did nothing, but they actively disbanded this unit. So it is as if that is an intervention in making the police stop, from looking at the corruption they wanted to probe.”

PEDOPHILE BACK ON HAMILTON STREETS

   Notorious Maple Leaf Gardens pedophile Gordon Stuckless whose twisted antics shattered scores of young boys’ lives is back on the street.
   Sources told the Toronto Sun that the 70-year-old former assistant equipment manager and Gardens flunkie was released on parole on Dec. 12, 2019.
   Last June, Stuckless was locked up for 10 years. A previous sentence of 61/2 years imposed in 2016 was tossed on appeal.  He served 6 months before his release.

CEO MCCAIN, "DON'T SANCTION CHINESE OFFICIALS

The CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, Michael McCain, called on parliamentarians to back off on calling for sanctions for Chinese officials last month, according to a copy of a letter obtained by CTV News.

The letter was sent last month from McCain to Senators Leo Housakos and Than Hai Ngo. It was in reference to a motion introduced in the Senate by the pair that called for Magnitsky Act sanctions for human rights abuses against Chinese and Hong Kong government officials in relation to the ongoing protests and treatment of Muslims in China.

“On behalf of Maple Leaf Foods and the entire Canadian livestock and meat industry I appeal to you to withdraw this initiative. In making this request, I am not making any judgment on the issue of human rights abuses in Hong Kong or in China. But the simple fact is that Canada acting alone on this ensures two certain consequences: (i) Chinese human rights policies will not change and (ii) Chinese retaliation will be uniquely directed to Canada,” McCain wrote.

TRUDEAU BLAMES TRUMP

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the 57 Canadians killed when Iran shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 would be alive if not for recent escalations in tensions in the region.

Trudeau spoke on Monday about the Canadian response to the plane crash and the ongoing work happening to support the families, identify the victims, and hold Iran to account in the investigation into how the missile that took down the plane was fired.

“If there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” said Trudeau.

DUKE & DUCHESS OF WOKE

Mark Steyn:  On Thursday's "Tucker" he and I considered "the decision of TRH The Duke and Duchess of Sussex to quit the Royal Family in order to spend more time with their self-absorption".

JESSICA YANIV: SUCH A LADY

Tumultuous trans troublemaker Jessica Yaniv was caught on camera pummeling a reporter Monday in B.C..

In a widely circulated video, Yaniv, 32, is captured battering Rebel Media reporter Keean Bexte outside a Surrey courthouse.

USA TO EXPEL SAUDI MILITARY TRAINEES

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia will withdraw 21 cadets receiving military training in the United States following a U.S. investigation into a Saudi officer’s fatal shooting of three Americans at a Florida naval base that U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Monday branded an act of terrorism.

The Dec. 6 attack further complicated U.S.-Saudi relations at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival. A deputy sheriff shot dead the gunman, Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, in the Pensacola, Florida, incident.

Barr said 21 Saudi cadets were “disenrolled from their training curriculum” in the U.S. military and would leave the United States later on Monday after an investigation showed they either had child pornography or social media accounts containing Islamic extremist or anti-American content.

DEMOCRATS REFUSING TO PURGE VOTER ROLLS

Across America, there is a constant war being waged over voter rolls. Democrats resist any effort to purge the rolls, contending that any diminution of names on the rolls constitutes voter suppression and is manifestly intended to keep minorities from voting. Conservatives strongly support existing laws to purge from voter rolls names associated with people who have passed away or moved on. They argue that doing so preserves voting integrity by making it more difficult for the cemetery vote to affect election outcomes.

In Wisconsin, a battle is being waged before an Ozaukee County judge who has reached the end of his patience with the Elections Commission and three of its members because they refuse to abide by his December order that they remove thousands of non-viable names from the state's voting records:

CORRECTIONAL OFFICER SPEAKS OUT

Alex Handforth, a former federal correctional service officer who suffered serious injuries when he was assaulted by an inmate in 2018, is disappointed with the way he has been treated by Correctional Service Canada management since the attack.

He flatly blames the recently revamped restraint policy for affording the inmate the opportunity to inflict the severe injuries that led to Handforth’s subsequent resignation.

PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF PEDOPHILES

   David Donald Shumey did a 20-year jolt in an American prison for a slew of child sex offences.

   The U.S. gave the Canadian citizen the boot after he was sprung in 2018 and he came home to Regina where he was able to change his name on Dec. 20, 2019 to David Donald Stryker.

      His name change was too soon for a new law that Saskatchewan Justice Minister Don Morgan says will prevent many sex offenders from changing their names then slithering under the rock from whence they came.

PULLING GRETA'S STRINGS

On Facebook no one knows you are a puppet — until a bug reveals who edits your posts. Such a bug happened on Thursday and by Friday people on 4chan had pointed out that Greta Thunberg's facebook posts were being done by her father and some guy in India called Adarsh Prathap.

GraniteGrok (or someone else?) revealed Adarsh is a UN climate official.

There is nothing either wrong or surprising about this. Only an idiot would believe (then or still) that she is writing her public remarks for delivery to social media or the UN. She’s a Muppet. A child trafficked in socialist environmental doomsaying. A prop. But who the heck is Adarsh Prathap?

$62M COMPENSATION TO FIRED BOEING CEO

  Boeing Co’s ousted chief executive officer, Dennis Muilenburg, is leaving the company with $62 million in compensation and pension benefits but will receive no severance pay in the wake of the 737 MAX crisis.
   Muilenburg was fired from the job in December as Boeing failed to contain the fallout from a pair of fatal crashes that halted output of the company’s bestselling 737 MAX jetliner and tarnished its reputation with airlines and regulators.
   The compensation figures were disclosed in a regulatory filing late on Friday during a difficult week for Boeing when it also released hundreds of internal messages that were harshly critical comments about the development of the 737 MAX, including one that said the plane was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.

PLENTY OF SCANDAL IN OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION

During an interview on CNN on Friday, former Secretary of State John Kerry, who's in Iowa campaigning with Joe Biden, echoed the oft-repeated claim that the Obama-Biden administration lacked scandals.

"I believe Joe Biden is the only person who has the set of relationships around the world, who has had this unbelievable breadth of experience as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and then as vice president for eight years — and in an administration, by the way, which never had a whiff of scandal," Kerry said.

I can't be silent, so once again I must list a bunch of Obama/Biden scandals so that the truth about the Obama-Biden administration's corruption doesn't get erased. Here are ten very real and very serious scandals that are far more than "a whiff."

ANTI GOVERNMENT PROTESTS IN IRAN

Iranians have gathered in the streets of Tehran to demand the resignation of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei after the regime admitted it had mistakenly shot down a civilian passenger plane.

Angry crowds gathered on Saturday night in at least four locations in Tehran, chanting 'death to liars' and calling for the country's supreme leader to step down over the tragic military blunder, video from the scene shows.

'Death to the Islamic Republic' protesters chanted, as the regime's security forces allegedly used ambulances to sneak heavily armed paramilitary police into the middle of crowds to disperse the demonstration.

BEST WAY TO HURT IRAN IS TO LEAVE IRAQ

Smith said, “The United States has been bizarrely carrying a very heavy burden, which, ultimately is on behalf of the Iranians. So it’s not clear to me the Iranians will be happy if we go. One of the main reasons they’ve been firing at U.S. troops and targeting American facilities — it’s not to make us go — they’re negotiating the Iran deal. They want money. They want Trump to relieve sanctions. President Trump has reimposed sanctions on the Iranians, that’s why they’re targeting American troops, American allies, and American facilities, not to make us go. They’re negotiating to get us to relieve sanctions. They want the money.”

Mansour said, “It’s an amazingly stupid way to do it, by the way.”

Smith concurred, “You and I agree on that. President Donald Trump agrees, it’s a really stupid thing. You know who doesn’t agree? Forty years of American policy makers who thought that made sense. That’s what the Iran deal is all about. It’s an enormous bribe, right? To keep a bad group of actors from firing on us. So everyone has thought that that’s a reasonable thing to do, to pay the Iranians to not shoot at us. We agree it’s dumb. Thank goodness Donald Trump thinks it’s dumb, too, and he stopped paying them.”

PASSED A TIPPING POINT. AGAIN

According to an outpouring of ecological grief from Inside Climate News, the Aussie bushfires are a sign all the trees in the world are about to die from heat stress and fire.

TAIWAN's PRO-INDEPENDANCE LEADER RE-ELECTED

All of that paranoia about Beijing's meddling in the Taiwanese federal election was apparently for nought. Because Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has officially secured re-election to a second term in office, sending a clear signal to the mainland that voters have endorsed her confrontational approach to dealing with Beijing.

President Xi and his fellow Communist leaders have taken an especially hard line against Tsai since her 2016 inauguration. Her refusal to endorse China's claim that Taiwan is merely a renegade province have infuriated them, prompting Xi to suggest that the mainland could coerce Taiwan's reunification by force if necessary.

Though, to be sure, the US has a treaty with Taiwan promising aid should such an invasion occur. Beijing has warned foreign powers that if they interfere in its relationship with Taiwan, they, too, will face Beijing's wrath.

LIERAN

   A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Saturday he knew a missile had brought down a Ukrainian plane the same day it happened and accepted full responsibility, saying his force had acted in error while on alert for “all-out war.”
   Iran had for days denied a missile hit the Boeing 737-800 on Wednesday shortly after taking off from Tehran, sending it crashing to the ground and killing all 176 people aboard.
   As recently as Friday, Iranian officials had rigorously denied accusations by Canada, the United States and others that Iran shot the plane down albeit by mistake. One Iranian official had said such an explanation was “scientifically” impossible. The Guards commander defended those Iranian officials, saying they were only commenting based on information they were given.

FN IN BC TO PAY $30K FOR CHIEF'S RACIST COMMENT

A First Nation Band in British Columbia has been ordered by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to pay $30,000 including compensation for pain and suffering to a former Band council member after the Band’s longtime chief called her a “white bastard” in an email, as reported first by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“I resign. F—ing white bastards run it,” Raymond Morris, chief of the Nee Tahi Buhn Indian Band of Burns Lake, B.C., wrote in a 2014 email to a colleague.

The email addressed female Band council member Hayley Nielsen, who has status under the Indian Act but also has a caucasian father.

LIBERALS AWARD $7M TO $BILLION CORP. SAPUTO

The Dairy Processing Investment Fund, a federal program to compensate the dairy industry for free trade impacts, awarded a $7-million grant to a multibillion-dollar corporation — Montreal’s Saputo Foods Ltd.

Citing Access To Information records, Blacklock’s Reporter found the fund’s largest grant went to the company, which had $13.5 billion in revenues and paid $254.6 million in dividends to shareholders last year.

Saputo has 21 plants in Canada along with dairy and cheese operations around the world.

EMISSIONS DOWN; ADMISSIONS UP

There were nearly 40,000 electric scooter injuries in the United States between 2014 and 2018, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Surgery on Wednesday.

Specifically, in 2014, there were 4,582 injuries, and by 2018, that annual figure stood at 14,651 – that’s a 222 per cent surge over the four-year period.

The number of hospital admissions from accidents also skyrocketed to almost 3,300, a surge of 365 per cent, over the same period. The survey, conducted by researchers at UC San Francisco, analyzed data taken from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a project led by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to monitor the safety of consumer gizmos.

IRAN HAS SCRUBBED PLANE CRASH SITE

CBS News reported on Friday that Iranian “scavengers” have “scrubbed” the site where a Ukrainian passenger jet came down outside Tehran before outside investigators could examine the evidence. “Virtually all debris” was removed before outsiders were allowed on the scene.

RCMP INVESTIGATING TRAPS AT BC ROAD BLOCK

Tensions are rising further in northern British Columbia after the RCMP opened a criminal investigation after discovering “traps” and gasoline-soaked rags in the blockade by a breakaway First Nations group against the $6.6-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline.

RCMP officers on patrol this week along the pipeline blockade found three stacks of tires covered by tarps and trees and were staged along with multiple jugs of gasoline, diesel, oil and kindling as well as “bags full of fuel-soaked rags.”

In a release late Wednesday, the police said they had found the tires and fire-starting equipment on the Morice West Forest Service Road, which leads into a Coastal GasLink pipeline work camp. Dozens of trees had also been felled along the road and other trees were partially cut, in preparation for felling, which the RCMP said created a dangerous hazard.

VIRTUE-SIGNALLING PM CAUSED UN INTERFERENCE

Not that it will come as much of a surprise to folk here in Alberta, but the United Nations has stuck its well-manicured fingers into the very future of Canada’s major energy projects.

We invited them in. Yes, we Canadians. Or rather the fellow who represents us: that would be the one known far and wide as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

And why would that be? Because it was all flimflam from the prime minister. He couldn’t stop himself. He simply had to agree with the accusation that Canadians are involved in the systematic and deliberate annihilation of Indigenous people across this land.

SNC-LAVALIN EXEC GETS 8 1/2 YEARS SENTENCE

MONTREAL — Former SNC-Lavalin executive Sami Bebawi has been sentenced to eight years and six months in prison on fraud and corruption charges stemming from construction deals in Libya.

A jury last month found the former head of SNC-Lavalin's construction division guilty of paying off foreign officials and pocketing millions as he worked to secure contracts for the company in Libya.

The case centred on several major infrastructure projects and dealings with Saadi Gadhafi, a son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

END OF RED/WHITE HEALTH CARDS IN ONTARIO

   The Ontario government has set July 1 as the date the red and white health cards will no longer be accepted — more than 25 years after the province first announced those cards would be phased out.
   There are still about 300,000 red-and-white health cards in circulation, representing about two per cent of all Ontario health cards.

   When the photo ID cards were first announced in 1995, the government estimated the red-and-white cards were being used for $65 million in fraudulent claims a year.

LIBERAL ARSEHOLERY

   The Trudeau government subsidized a private cannabis store with $100,000 of taxpayer money in Carmacks, Yukon, that only has one employee.
   Carmacks is a remote Aboriginal community and the decision is an effort to “benefit Aboriginal people” with the promise of one job being created. A subsidy of $100,000 was given to bankroll the the facility although some residents are frustrated as it is located two hundred metres from the local kindergarten
   The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency defended their actions in a statement, “The fund is also intended to provide project-based support for activities that help to establish or grow Aboriginal businesses.” The statement went on to read, “It helps applicants pursue economic opportunities that benefit Aboriginal people."

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG

   Wednesday’s Globe and Mail report that potential Conservative leadership contender Jean Charest is giving legal advice to Huawei Technologies on the Meng Wanzhou extradition case and its campaign to participate in developing Canada’s 5G wireless network raises an obvious question.

   There’s nothing improper about Charest, a former Quebec Liberal premier and a former federal Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, working for Huawei as part of a legal team at McCarthy Tetrault.
    But it’s a big political problem if Charest hopes to become the next Conservative leader, given that the Conservatives oppose allowing Huawei to bid on developing 5G wireless technology, over cyber security concerns.

TRUMP BLAMES OBAMA FOR IRAN MISSILE FUNDING

President Donald Trump blamed his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, on Wednesday for funding the missiles Iran launched against the United States.

“The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration,” Trump said, referring to the $150 billion returned to the Tehran regime under Obama as part of the Iran nuclear deal.

CNN SETTLES LAWSUIT WITH SANDMANN

CNN has agreed to settle a $275 million lawsuit brought by Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann over the network’s coverage of a confrontation involving himself and his classmates and a Native American man during a school trip to Washington, DC, last year, FOX 19 reported Tuesday.

PIPELINE INDUSTRY CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC

It’s already never been harder to build a pipeline in Canada. From 2009 to 2016, the time it took to get a permit for an oil or gas pipeline increased here to 681 days from 357 days. In Trump’s America, however, the time it took peaked at 561 days in 2015 and dropped to as low as 336 days by 2017, says the Canadian Energy pipeline association.

But now Trump wants more pipelines and less successful legal challenges opposing them. The New York Times and Washington Post report that the Trump administration will instruct federal agencies to no longer take climate change into account when measuring the impact of major infrastructure projects.

The Trudeau Liberals, meanwhile, regularly preach we have a catastrophic global climate crises, so much so that a clause stipulating consideration of greenhouse gas emissions is a major piece of its new industrial project approval process, Bill C-69.

63 CANADIANS DEAD IN PLANE CRASH IN IRAN

Sixty-three Canadians are among the dead after a Ukraine International Airlines plane crashed near Iran's capital, killing all 176 passengers and crew, Ukraine's foreign minister says.

The passenger jet, Flight PS752, crashed on Wednesday just minutes after taking off from Tehran's main airport, turning farmland into fields of flaming debris.

Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Vadym Prystaiko said 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians were on board — the Ukrainian nationals included two passengers and the nine crew. There were also 10 Swedish, four Afghan, three German and three British nationals, he said.

BLAMING FIRES ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
   This will be a long posting, because it is necessary to nail the childish myth that global warming caused the bushfires in Australia. The long, severe drought in Australia, culminating in the most extensive bushfires in recent history, ought to have aroused sympathy for the cattle-ranchers who have lost their livestock and the citizens who have lost their homes. But no. Instead, those who profiteer by asserting that global warming is the cause of every extreme-weather event have rushed to state – falsely – that an “overwhelming scientific consensus” (to cite the Greens’ website) blames the incidence, extent, duration and severity of the drought and bushfires on the somewhat warmer weather caused by our having increased the atmospheric CO2 concentration by about 1 part in 10,000 from 0.03% to 0.04% by volume.

CHINA'S PREDATORY LENDING IN CHINA

  Some African countries are beginning to push back against China’s predatory strategy.
  In mid-2019, Tanzania suspended plans to team up with China to construct East   Africa’s biggest port in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. China Merchant Holding International was slated to be the sole port operator.
   Citing disagreements with Chinese investors over “exploitative and awkward” demands, Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli called off the project.
   “They want us to give them a guarantee of 33 years and a lease of 99 years, and we should not question whoever comes to invest there once the port is operational. They want to take the land as their own but we have to compensate them for drilling construction of that port,” Magufuli told The Economic Times of India last year.