GUIDELINE FROM WHO ON SEX EDUCATION

  The WHO advises that children aged 0-4 are given “information about enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s body… masturbation.”
   Toddlers are also to be encouraged to “gain an awareness of gender identity” and given “the right to explore gender identities.”
   In the ages 4-6 bracket, educators are urged to “give information about same-sex relationships” and “help children develop respect for different norms regarding sexuality.”

FBI TARGETTED FLYNN IN PERJURY TRAP

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes Wednesday, regarding former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, which allegedly reveal the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for prosecution, stated Flynn’s defense attorney Sidney Powell. Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to be set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with investigating the now-debunked allegations that President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.

LONG TERM COMPLICATIONS AFTER COVID-19

   Doctors in B.C. and across the globe are trying to understand why some people who require critical hospital treatment for COVID-19 are left with serious long-term side effects after they recover.
   Studies, mostly involving the early cases of people who survived serious cases in China, are pointing to COVID-19 sometimes causing blood clots or lingering damage to lungs, kidneys, heart, liver, brain or nervous system of people.
   The majority of people who catch COVID-19 experience mild symptoms and recover without problems. But B.C. is also experiencing the same types of complications reported elsewhere in the world for critical patients who end up in a hospital intensive care unit but eventually recover from the disease, said Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial public health officer.

LIBERALS IGNORED PLAN AS COVID HIT

It’s shockingly sensible to read: A document from 2014 on how Canada would deal with the Ebola outbreak that was ravaging parts of West Africa.

It seems from reading this document that we were better prepared for this than we were for the arrival of the coronavirus.

I wonder how many deaths we are now dealing with that could have been avoided if we had simply dusted off the old plans.

FORT MCMURRAY HIT WITH FLOOD

Fort McMurray is now dealing with 'two states of emergency' — the pandemic that has kept people in their homes and now the flood.

QUEBEC REOPENING BUSINESSES & SCHOOLS

   Quebec has seen the most COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other province, but it also plans to reopen businesses and schools faster than anywhere else.
    The province’s schedule stands in sharp contrast to Ontario and other provinces who are moving more slowly — even provinces where new cases have effectively disappeared. New Brunswick has reported zero new cases for ten days in a row, but is still taking more gradual steps than Quebec, which reported 775 new cases and 83 new deaths on Tuesday alone.
   On Tuesday, Quebec Premier François Legault announced that most retail stores will be able to reopen on May 4, except in Montreal, which will be a week later. The construction and the manufacturing sectors will be allowed to start reopening May 11. This follows Monday’s announcement that elementary schools and daycares will start reopening on May 11.

CHINA's GLOBAL INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN GROWS

Rather than being cowed into submission, Bild's editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt, countered with his own letter: "You Are Endangering the Entire World." It was published in German and English and addressed directly to President Xi Jinping. Reichelt wrote:

"You rule by surveillance. You wouldn't be president without surveillance. You monitor everything, every citizen, but you refuse to monitor the diseased wet markets in your country.

"You shut down every newspaper and website that is critical of your rule, but not the stalls where bat soup is sold. You are not only monitoring your people, you are endangering them — and with them, the rest of the world.

"Surveillance is a denial of freedom. And a nation that is not free, is not creative. A nation that is not innovative, does not invent anything. This is why you have made your country the world champion in intellectual property theft.

"China enriches itself with the inventions of others, instead of inventing on its own. The reason China does not innovate and invent is that you don't let the young people in your country think freely. China's greatest export hit (that nobody wanted to have, but which has nevertheless gone around the world) is Corona....

AUSTRALIA IS GUM STUCK ON CHINA's SHOE

Australia has been described as “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe,” by a Chinese state media editor as Beijing criticised calls for an inquiry into the coronavirus origin as “political manoeuvring,” further straining ties.

Australia has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of Beijing as it calls for an investigation into the origins and spread of the virus, which emerged in China late last year and has now killed more than 200,000 people around the world

FIVE EYES INVESTIGATING WUHAN VIROLOGIST

  Western intelligence agencies are "looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou," as part of a joint international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, according to the Daily Telegraph.
   In a stunning expose, the Australian newspaper reports that "the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US, are understood to be looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, as they examine whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether the naturally-­occurring virus may have been released from the level four laboratory in Wuhan that was studying deadly coronavirus pathogens from bats."

CYA INTERVIEW WITH DR. TAM

   Canada's top doctor told CBC News the federal government could have made earlier efforts to keep the COVID-19 pandemic from sweeping across the country — but moves to close borders and screen travellers for the illness sooner might not have made much of a difference.
   In a wide-ranging interview, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam told CBC News that simply shutting the border to travellers from China and other COVID-19 hotspots earlier wouldn't have stopped the virus from coming in from other countries — and that expecting officials to identify travellers at the border with virus symptoms was "unlikely."
   She also said the closure of the Canada/U.S. border did not happen sooner because it wasn't part of the government's pandemic preparedness plan.

PAYING 18% TARIFF ON PPE

    As a Canadian mayor desperately searches for suppliers to provide masks and other personal protective equipment for his town, he’s faced with a frustrating choice: pay an 18 per cent tariff or cut through a tangle of bureaucratic red tape to get a waiver.
   “So, I’ve been buying masks … and it included the customs excise tax, so I’ve already been a victim of it,” said Langford Mayor Stewart Young. The mayor has been trying to source personal protective equipment for his community on Vancouver Island since March, but bills and quotes he’s received include tens of thousands of dollars in import fees. “I could have bought a whole bunch more”
   The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has asked for comment from Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Department of Finance and Health Canada, but none of those organizations have provided answers.

MORE WITNESSES FOR BIDEN ACCUSER

Two more sources have come forward to corroborate sexual assault claims against Joe Biden by former staffer Tara Reade, who claims that in 1993 Biden forced himself upon her

DON'T LET THE FACTS GET IN THE WAY

Despite its complicity in helping China cover-up the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization today claimed “the world should have listened” to the WHO.

IMAGINE IF CANADA HAD A PARLIAMENT

  Rex Murphy:  This is worth an emphasis. The Chinese dictatorship not only lies to the world, it punishes those of its own citizens who tell the truth. This is speech-corruption that even Orwell never contemplated.
  The Chinese regime put the health of the world at risk. As a secondary consequence, its lies (the absolutely correct, even clinical term) and misdirections have wounded, to extremis, the economies of almost every country on the planet.
   So let us ask again, can it be true that our Canadian government, finding itself without the most basic medical protective devices, would (a) go to the source of the plague for them, (b) have any confidence that what came under the consent of its Communist government could be relied upon, and (c) should be in some state of surprise that what was sent, over one million were — this is a soft word — defective?

ALBERTA's CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADA

     Corbella:  The pure numbers of just how much Alberta has contributed to the country tell both a compelling and troubling story. If the patch dries up, this country is in serious trouble.
   The Canadian Energy Centre calculates that over the past 18 years the direct contributions Canada’s energy sector made to federal and provincial revenues between 2000 and 2018, is very conservatively estimated at $360 billion — more than any other sector by a long shot.
   That amount does not include income taxes paid by the more than 800,000 Canadians employed directly or indirectly by the energy sector, or provincial rents and royalties paid between 2000 and 2007. (It’s omitted due to a change in Statistics Canada reporting; so $166 billion paid in royalties and other payments applies to the 2008- 2020 period only).

ONTARIO's PLAN FOR RE-OPENING

  Phase One would allow some businesses ordered closed to get back to work if they can immediately modify operations, such as offering curbside pick up or delivery.
  Outdoor spaces like parks would be opened, and some larger gatherings permitted, such as funerals.
  Phase Two of the framework calls for the opening of more businesses including office and retail.
  Phase Three would allow the opening of all workplaces “responsibly” and more public gatherings.

OIL AT $12.57 US A BARREL

The price of oil slumped again on Monday as the imbalance between too much supply and not enough demand continues to grow.

The North American oil benchmark, known as West Texas Intermediate, lost more than a third of its value, falling to $12.57 US a barrel.

That's the going rate for a barrel of oil to be delivered in June, which is currently the most commonly traded contract on the futures market that serves as a proxy for the value of actual oil. 

GREENIES HAPPY ONLY $1.7B FOR WELL CLEANUP

  Pointing to the feds’ April 17 announcement that it will spend $1.7-billion to clean up orphan wells in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan—$1-billion of which will go to Alberta—Mr. Marshall, national climate program manager with Environmental Defence, noted that The Globe and Mail previously reported that the province expected the feds to provide $15-billion in relief to the industry.
   “The package we saw [on April 17] was somewhat of a relief for people who want to see action on climate change, because the demands were much higher; it could’ve been a $15-billion package that was focused on increased production, rather than environmental measures,” he said. “These are still subsidies that we don’t entirely support, but it was much smaller than we thought, and at least the focus is on environmental improvement.”
  “What worries me, is that there are still open doors for the government to shovel literally tens of billions of dollars into the oil and gas sector,” he said. Mr. Marshall said he would “reserve judgement” on the overall impact this will have on Ottawa’s climate change agenda, but said he doesn’t “trust” the government to ultimately “change course” and withdraw its financial support from the oil and gas industry.

WHO WILL SUCCEED ROCKET MAN?

  
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is dead, according to reports.
 SEOUL — North Korea has never publicized who would follow leader Kim Jong Un in the event he is incapacitated, and with no details known about his young children, analysts say his sister and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is old enough to take over.
    Speculation about Kim’s health first arose due to his absence from the anniversary of the birthday of North Korea’s founding father and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.

DOZENS OF TANKERS HOLDING EXCESS OIL

The U.S. Coast Guard is monitoring a situation in which dozens of oil tanker vessels are floating around the Southern California coast as they wait to dock while the country wrestles with what to do with the current glut in crude.

Oil companies are storing excess supplies on giant vessels as the country and industry ponder how and where to offload the oil. There were 27 oil vessels churning up waters just off the Southwest Pacific coast Thursday, according to a press statement from the USCG.

EU BOWS TO CHINA, REVISES COVID 19 REPORT

A spokesman for the EU, Peter Stano, denied that the report was modified as a result of pressure from the Chinese regime, but analysts that worked on the report say otherwise.

One analyst wrote that European Union diplomats were “self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party” and that “appeasement will set a terrible precedent and encourage similar coercion in the future.”

Jakub Janda, the executive director of the European Values Centre for Security Policy, said that the Chinese pressure campaign was being used as “a test” for the CCP to see what level of influence it has over the bloc.

FUNDING DRIVE FOR WHO; PM TRUDEAU ATTENDING

   The European Union is planning a major pledging conference early next month to help fill the World Health Organization's funding gaps, and it expects Canada to play a key role.
  Brice de Schietere, the EU's acting ambassador to Canada, says the event was being planned before U.S. President Donald Trump announced last week he would pause WHO funding because of concerns that it mismanaged the early outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Canada will participate in the conference on Saturday, saying the country will “always be there to support science and the work that is done internationally on keeping our planet and our citizens safe.”

TIME FOR AN OPEC-FREE MARKET

Canada and the United States should join forces by banning all oil imports from Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC countries and replace it with oil produced right here in North America.

The creation of an OPEC-free market would protect our two countries from price shocks and ensure our energy independence. Given OPEC’s ongoing sabotage of international oil markets, a bilateral energy pact will be essential going forward.

The U.S. and Canada produce as much oil as Saudi Arabia and Russia combined and can produce more than enough to meet our combined domestic needs

CONFESSION OF AN EARTH DAY SLACKER

   Rex Murphy:  Like so many others who are consumed by the threat of global warming, the imminent extinction of all life on the planet, a fate pursued with such fury by the oil cartels, I fear I have been a little slack, even lapsed, in my Greenitude this year. Stalwart warmist that I am, I believe all must play their part to put a stay to that dread event. Alas — this is confessional — I haven’t lived up to my own sultry beliefs.
   Most times I try my best to Live the Liturgy. This year in the morning I went out and had coffee and a chat with a couple of weeping willows. Tried to cheer ’em up. No go. Genuflected every time a Tesla swished by. Went by the vegan market and picked up some dried kelp. Mixed with a little grass (not that grass, from the lawn) it makes a great incense for meditation sessions, and offers an aromatherapeutic remedy for my many allergies and the onset of what I fear may be Climate PTSD. I did my yoga routine in front of a privately sculpted icon of the blessed David Attenborough, to the calming moans of a CD of whale music.

IGNORING LESSONS LEARNED FROM SARS OUTBREAK

  The SARS Commission report into the 2003 coronavirus outbreak in Toronto makes maddeningly familiar reading, from a lack of lab and testing capacity to shortages of personal protective equipment to debates over the efficacy of masks and methods of transmission — all of which could be avoided, the authors stressed, simply by employing the precautionary principle. All these lessons had been learned, we were assured.
   In a section titled “Improvements since SARS,” the commission reported that “a two-month stockpile of personal protective equipment, including masks, gloves, gowns, eye protection and other clinical supplies, for a community the size of Toronto is available and could be distributed quickly through a central distribution system.” Seventeen years later, it was a mad scramble all over again. It’s not surprising, sadly, that the most elderly and vulnerable Canadians are bearing the brunt of that colossal failure. Ideally the shame of it might finally get it through our thick skulls never to let complacency set in again.

PPE SUPPLY PLANES RETURN FROM CHINA EMPTY

   Two airplanes that returned to Canada from China minus a cargo of badly needed medical supplies were not the first jets to come back empty from the Asian country since the start of the Covid-19 crisis — and they are unlikely to be the last.
   Like for so many countries, including the United States, China has become a core source of PPE for Canada.
   The senior insider said Canada is getting about 70 percent of its imports of Covid-19 medical supplies from China, with much of the rest coming from the U.S., the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

MP QUESTIONS DR. TANG'S INTEGRITY

   The MP for Hastings-Lennox and Addington has stirred a firestorm of controversy over remarks made on Twitter and Facebook recently.

   Conservative Derek Sloan called for the removal of Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer.

Sloan said Dr. Theresa Tam, who was on the World Health Organization, initially simply repeated what the Organization said regarding the COVID-19 virus which was the same as what China was saying.

   Sloan maintains there is ample evidence that China was covering up the seriousness of the virus’ spread and that if it would have been open and honest the pandemic would have been much less dangerous.

  Sloan wonders if Dr. Tam is actually working for China instead of for Canada.  Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney has said much the same previously.

ONGOING INVESTIGATION OF NS MURDERS

   Nova Scotia’s police watchdog is investigating why two uniformed officers were shooting in the direction of a fire hall in Onslow being used as a place of refuge the morning of the shooting rampage.
    In a statement to Global News, Nova Scotia Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT) interim director Pat Curran said the team is investigating the discharge of firearms by two RCMP officers near the Onslow-Belmont Fire Hall about 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning.
    “At this point we don’t what they were shooting at,” Curran said. “We do know that the shooter was not in that area at that time.”

The murderer's list of targets.
 

REPLACING PARLIAMENT WITH PRESS CONFERENCES

   Andrew Scheer was right to call out the Liberals on their failure to respect Parliament.
   Watching Justin Trudeau’s Sunday news conference, it was striking how many times he took gratuitous shots at the Conservatives. In doing so, he proved Scheer’s point: Trudeau has replaced Parliament with press conferences.
   These virtual press conferences are stage-managed affairs. Trudeau is all alone and cannot really be challenged. He has the ice to himself and there’s no goalie.

NOVA SCOTIA DEATH TOLL AT 22

RCMP in Nova Scotia say they are now investigating whether others may have assisted the gunman in Canada’s deadliest mass shooting as the death toll rose Tuesday to 22 victims.

It is the first suggestion other suspects may have had some role in the devastating rampage across rural Nova Scotia last weekend, which police have previously said was committed by Gabriel Wortman alone.

CHINA CLAIMS USA IS PRIMITIVE SOCIETY

China’s state-run Global Times propaganda newspaper began the week on Monday with columns proclaiming the end of American democracy and declaring that Washington was “no match for China” in fighting diseases.

HOLLYWOOD'S $9BILLION SILENCE RE CHINA

Trump-bashing Hollywood figures, from film stars to studio executives, have been conspicuously silent when it comes to China as evidence mounts that Chinese dictators sought to hide the true gravity of the coronavirus outbreak and silence doctors who tried to speak out.

As Hollywood continues to shift to ever-more expensive tentpole movie releases, the major studios are relying on Chinese moviegoers to turn a profit. But to gain access to the world’s second largest movie market, they have to first play nice with China’s film officials who control which foreign titles get to play in the country’s more than 60,000 cinemas.

Movie stars looking to find work in Hollywood need only glance at the figures to know that staying quiet about China is good for their careers and their coffers. The Chinese box office has skyrocketed in the past ten years. Officials claim that Chinese cinemas brought in $9.2 billion last year, compared to just $910 million a decade ago.

SWEDEN'S RESPONSE TO COVID-19

Sweden versus Covid-19: Why "herd immunity" matters and why lockdown doesn't really work.

OIL PRICES GO NEGATIVE

  Oil prices crashed through zero, closing out the day at -$37 per barrel, an unprecedented meltdown (only to rip back to zero tonight)...
   The result is really ugly. Nobody wants physical delivery of WTI for May, and with storage options dwindling in some places, traders liquidated their positions, selling contracts at crazy discounts. With the contract expiring on Tuesday, nobody wanted to be left holding the bag. Unable to actually accept physical delivery, traders ended up paying someone to take oil off of their hands. Surely, some fascinating reportage will be written about the last guy that got stuck with an unwanted May contract.

OUR CONDOLENCES TO NOVA SCOTIANS

HALIFAX, N.S. — 

A teacher, health-care workers and an RCMP officer are among the 19 innocent people who lost their lives in a 12-hour rampage across several Nova Scotia communities, resulting in Canada’s deadliest mass shooting. 

At a news conference in Dartmouth on Monday afternoon, Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said there are now at least 19 victims. 

TURN ON YOUR SCOTTISH EARS

Have a laugh. Starts at the 5:16 time mark.

Satire Scottish PM telling people to stay inside.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would spend $1.7 billion to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells in oil-producing provinces as part of an effort cushion firms against the economic fallout from COVID-19. 

But several oil executives said the program falls woefully short of needs and expectations.

“This is not going to do anything,” said Grant Fagerheim, chief executive of Calgary-based Whitecap Resources. “If this is as good as it gets, it will do very little or nothing to assist with operations for companies.”

CHINA'S LYING, COERCIVE, MANIPULATIVE GOV'T

Mr. Bass: I just think it’s important for the press to really think about, and for the world to think about what really happened in a timeline, and not some conspiracy theory because China won’t allow us in, and won’t allow our scientists to try to find patient zero and origin of the virus. And in fact, you’ve probably seen recent communiques between the Chinese Communist Party and their labs that their lab output has to be censored by the CCP, or that has anything to do with the Wuhan virus, [has to be approved] before it goes to the rest of the world. So, they are very sensitive on this topic—number one.

And number two, if you look back to the timeline, and you understand what happened, China has an enormous culpability. They actually have a legal liability, and one that’s a financial liability. I don’t know if you’ve seen various interviews in the last few days of U.S. legislators but there is a growing tide, of not only resentment, but a growing tide of people in the legislative branch of the U.S. and the UK governments, and now it’s bleeding into Australia and Canada, where they’re starting to say that we need to use the rule of law, the U.S. rule of law, the British Common Law, to start talking about reparations and getting the Chinese government to pay for their malign actions

UK TO DROP HUAWEI DUE TO CCP LIES

The UK is moving to drop Huawei as a vendor for the country’s 5G cellphone network in a major blow to Communist China over poor coronavirus transparency.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, now recovering from COVID-19, gave the Chinese company a role in 5G infrastructure this year, squashing opposition last month by 24 votes in the 650-seat House of Commons.

But now, concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s inaccurate reporting on the coronavirus has lawmakers crafting plans for a retreat.

CHINA'S PULL ON AMERICAN BUSINESS

Many experts argue that China will become democratic as it adopts free-market policies. This transformation could still happen, but China has been gradually opening its economy for thirty years without significant political change. If anything, Xi Jinping is consolidating power and appears to have balanced aspects of an open economy with state control.

Instead of transforming China, businesses are being transformed by China as their executives submit to Chinese demands. Whitewashing the protests in Hong Kong or pretending that Taiwan is part of China on a map seem minor, but these actions show an alarming tendency to appease China’s authoritarian demands. Xi Jinping’s slow and secretive response to the coronavirus shows how devastating Chinese government malice and incompetence can be to the United States and the rest of the world.

CAPTAIN TOM'S FUNDRAISING AT £22MILLION

Captain Tom Moore's charity single has gone straight to the top of the UK iTunes chart as the hero's fundraising total passed a staggering £22million.

The 99-year-old war veteran collaborated with singer Michael Ball for a heartwarming version of You'll Never Walk Alone.

Not only is he the biggest single fundraiser in British history and a decorated war veteran, he is the most charming man you could ever wish to meet.

CHAOS AT THE HERRON RESIDENCE IN QUEBEC

As authorities continue to investigate the CHSLD Résidence Herron, the Montreal Gazette has obtained the complete records of all those who died at the Dorval long-term care centre from the beginning of March until the first two weeks it was placed under trusteeship.

Those records, along with other documents and interviews with those at the heart of the tragedy, provide new glimpses into the chaotic hours at the Herron before the staff deserted the nursing home en masse on March 29 in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak. The records also reveal a much different chronology than the version of events advanced by Quebec Premier François Legault and Health Minister Danielle McCann.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

   Samir Chowieri, the president of the company that owns the Résidence Herron in Dorval, also partly owns an office building in Gatineau that he and a partner bought for $1 from a man who was later alleged during the Charbonneau Commission to have acted as a front for Vito Rizzuto.
   The Place Vincent-Massey office building in Gatineau is almost completely leased to the federal government.
   Chowieri is the president of Katasa Groupe Inc. The company owns the Herron seniors’ home that is under trusteeship and being investigated by the Montreal police and provincial coroner Géhane Kamel following the revelation last weekend that 31 of its residents died there after March 13, when the coronavirus began to spread in Montreal-area CHSLDs.

  But wait, there's more.

CBC: THE ARBITER OF TRUTH

   A CBC News report gives kids advice on how to shut down “conspiracy theories” voiced by their parents about coronavirus being created by China in a lab.
   Because apparently that’s the media’s job now.
   The presenter laments how somebody’s Dad may drop a message into chat blaming China for “manufacturing the coronavirus” with a “link to a site you’ve never heard of” (translation – a link that’s not, God forbid, mainstream media).

WUHAN DEATH TOLL REVISED BY 50% INCREASE

   Shortly after 11pmET Thursday night, a headline came trundling across the wire that caught our eye: Health authorities in Wuhan raised the official death toll from the city's coronavirus outbreak by 50%, equivalent to 1,290 patients, to a still-too-low-to-be-believed 3,869.
   Why would China even bother with this latest 'revision' - it's at least the 4th time they've tweaked the numbers, and the first time in roughly 2 months - of the Wuhan numbers? Well, it just so happens that the official statistics agency also published the first reading of China's Q1 GDP, which confirmed a massive contraction, as was expected.
  But Wuhan is slightly larger than NYC population-wise, and the outbreak in Wuhan was even more vicious than the outbreak in NYC, which has reported more than 10k deaths. So imagine what that must mean for Wuhan, where the hospital system was completely overwhelmed during the early weeks of the outbreak, leaving some elderly patients to drop dead on the street (something that, as far as we know, hasn't happened in the US).

PREMIER FORD IN NO RUSH TO OPEN BORDER

   U.S. President Donald Trump indicated this week that he believes Canada is doing a good job with COVID-19, and suggested that he would be prepared to lighten some restrictions on cross-border travel at some point in the near future.
     Premier Doug Ford says he’s in no rush to open the border with the United States.
   Ontario public health officials have linked 393 confirmed COVID-19 cases to travel in the United States, with the second most common travel source the United Kingdom with 124 cases.

LIBERALS REFUSING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

Audette didn’t get the bid but as he read stories about the missing gear and saw the government claims, he reached out to CBC Regina and told them about the 2 million masks and 440,000 gloves disposed of just last year.

It was only after this story was published that the government admitted to closing five warehouses and throwing away equipment that had expired.

Strangely though, they used bureaucrats to make a very political point. They tried to blame the former Conservative government. Yet through discussions with members of the former government and a review of funding and internal government documents, a different picture emerges.

PREMIER KENNEY CALLS OUT DR. TAM

   Corbella:  Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s recent criticism of Canada’s top physician, Dr. Theresa Tam, was a much-needed dose of reality during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Kenney responded by questioning whether Tam was suggesting that the EU’s regulator of medications and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve things that are dangerous for public use.

“You know,” said Kenney, “this is the same Dr. Tam who was telling us that we shouldn’t close our borders to countries with high levels of infection and who in January was repeating talking points out of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) about no evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

IRAN'S CONCEPT OF JUSTICE

Canada and Ukraine flatly rejected a report suggesting the Iranian regime was seeking immunity from future legal action after shooting down a passenger jet in January.

The Iranian military shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8 shortly after it took off from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

Iran has yet to deliver on its promise to surrender the flight recorders from the downed airliner to the Ukrainian government, a pledge that came during the March 11 meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal.

LIBERALS GLOSS OVER CHINA'S AGGRESSION

  Two former diplomats are warning that the Liberal government’s recent silence on China could reinforce the country’s increasingly belligerent actions on the world stage, amid concerns Chinese officials actively misled the World Health Organization during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
   David Mulroney, who served as Canadian ambassador to China in Beijing between 2009 and 2012, said Ottawa’s “almost humiliating” posture toward China in recent weeks was a missed opportunity to acknowledge the country’s shortcomings during the viral outbreak.
  Mulroney said the recent silence by Ottawa is part of a long-standing instinct to gloss over Chinese aggressions, largely due to its tendency to retaliate and its growing economic heft. But an unwillingness to acknowledge even the possibility of Chinese misdeeds could sow public distrust.

FBI KNEW STEELE DOSSIER WAS RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION

Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.

CAPTAIN TOM FUNDRAISING UPDATE

World War II hero Captain Tom Moore has raised more than £7million for the 'brave nurses and doctors' of the NHS by marching around his garden on a zimmer frame. 

The 99-year-old had initially set out to raise £1,000 by walking 100 lengths of his 27-yard garden in Bedfordshire - but he has now smashed his target by 7,000 times in less than a week. 

USA's FUTURE WITH CHINA

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks to us about America's future with China and about the growing international sentiment that China was not transparent about Covid-19.

SCHEER DEFENDS FULL AIRPLANE

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer fended off criticism on Tuesday after his family of seven flew to Ottawa on a small government jet, saying the decision was not at odds with the advice of public health officials.

Speaking to reporters, Scheer said passengers aboard the nine-seat Challenger jet, which was taking Scheer and two other MPs back to Ottawa for the spring Parliamentary session, took every precaution to limit the potential spread of the COVID-19 virus, including avoiding “speaking moistly on each other.” The Conservative leader pushed back against criticism that he and his family put the small jet at full capacity, making social distancing impossible for other passengers.

TAIWAN CALLS OUT LIARS AT WHO

The government of Taiwan published a letter sent to officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) in December warning of “atypical pneumonia” in China – evidence, Taipei says, that the WHO had reason to believe the Chinese coronavirus was contagious.

Taiwanese Health Minister Chen Shih-Chung published the message his country sent to the WHO in December during a press conference Saturday, a response to the WHO denying that Taiwan had alerted it to a contagious disease.

On January 14, weeks after Taiwan’s health authorities sent the email, the WHO published a message on Twitter citing Communist Party officials claiming that the coronavirus was not transmissible among human beings.

CHINA LECTURES USA ABOUT RESPONSIBILITIES

“We urge the United States to earnestly fulfill their responsibilities and obligations, and support the WHO-led international action against the epidemic,” Zhao said, claiming the agency plays an “irreplaceable role” against the pandemic.

The U.S. is the biggest funder of the WHO, providing upwards of $400 million last year alone, roughly 15 percent of its budget.

Asked if China is prepared to contribute more to make up the shortfall,  Zhao said Beijing has provided $20 million to the U.N. body and remained noncommittal to the prospect of stepping forward with its own money to make up gap.

USA WHO FUNDING HALTED

   Just as he threatened last week, and was threatened back with "body bags," President Trump tonight confirmed he will halt US funding for The World Health Organization, while US reviews virus warnings regarding China.
   “Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said at a press conference.
   Additionally, Trump accused the world body of "mismanaging" and "covering up" the coronavirus, and failing to obtain timely information on the virus, causing a 20-fold increase in deaths around the world:

99 YO CAPTAIN TOM RAISES £1.2M FOR NHS

A Second World War captain has raised more than £1.2million for 'our brave nurses and doctors' in the NHS by walking in his garden.

Captain Tom Moore, 99, set out last Thursday to walk 100 lengths of his garden before he turned 100-years-old on April 30.  He originally hoped to raise £1,000 for NHS Charities Together, but smashed that total in less than a day.

In less than a week the Bedfordshire veteran has captured the nation's heart and raised more than £1.2million to support doctors and nurses as they battle on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic. 

CONFIRMATION OF CBC ASS-KISSING

“Oh, the political commissar did that,” Macdonald stated. ”At CBC, all on-air people have a commissar in their right ear. It’s a failsafe in case the journalist fails to recognize something that might harm the Liberal party. I probably shouldn’t be talking about this, but I was always uneasy with it.”

But he was not done.

“I remember the commissars telling us that our jobs depended on getting Liberals elected,” he tweeted. “When some of us protested that the Liberals under Paul Martin made the deepest cuts to CBC budgets ever, I had to take a series of classes and sign a revised NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement).”

RULES FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE

   “During the long weekend, we will all have to stay home. We cannot have gatherings for dinner and we’ll have to be creative to organize an Easter egg hunt inside the house,” Trudeau said.

    He got in his motorcade, with his full entourage, on Saturday afternoon and drove to the PM’s summer residence at Harrington Lake. From one cottage to the other, it is about 27 kilometers, it crosses a provincial boundary and goes through at least three municipalities.
   In other words, Trudeau did exactly the opposite of what he, his own medical experts and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec have been saying. Ontario’s Doug Ford and Quebec’s Francois Legault have told people not to go to the cottage and to stay in our primary residence.

PRECIOUS COTTAGE OWNERS

Residents in Clearview Township — about 145 kilometres north of Toronto — had to contend with a cleared out grocery store this long weekend, after visits by cottage-bound out-of-towners who disregarded pleas to stay home.

It was disappointing for Clearview Mayor Doug Measures, one of dozens of cottage country mayors who this year are dreading the return of cottage season.

The parking lot, he said, was full of SUVs from Toronto (dealership plate frames are often a dead-giveaway for cottage country residents.)

The situation is so dire that many municipalities are even disconnecting utilities for cottages.

CANADA MUST STOP THIS SELF-DESTRUCTION

Rex Murphy:  Canada has almost all it needs. But the country, or more properly its government, has disconnected from priority concerns to become preoccupied with issues over which it has no real influence. Drop the nonsense preoccupations that distract or supersede from our real interests, for example, that seat on the UN’s useless security council, and drop specifically this idle idea that we can change the planet’s climate in 2100.

    As said, we are providentially supplied with massive natural resources. Yet, we have hamstrung the most fundamental of our industries, put it under the most specious of restraints, collapsed a central sector, one absolutely vital to a modern economy. The energy industry has been made a pariah, and mining next to energy, absent both of which the world cannot function. The fact that the bountiful resources of a whole province are landlocked is and has been a true national scandal. It defies reason itself.

INEFFECTIVE, CLUELESS & DISHONEST

   The lying press, luxuriating in Prime Minister Trudeau's $600-million bribe, is almost universally on his side, and his inept and intellectually challenged ministers are ritually lionized. 600 mil clearly helps you get your priorities straight. The sheer amateurism of this government is evident in its policy initiatives.
   Tam is a typical Trudeau appointee: a feminist, a self-aggrandizing special pleader, and a gross incompetent in the office she is expected to manage. There are others like her in the Trudeau cabinet, for example, the lamentable Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland who nearly deep-sixed our NAFTA treaty talks with Donald Trump and has a tendency to tear up at critical moments, though as former NDP Premier Bob Rae tweeted in Freeland’s patronizing defense, “Crying is not a sign of weakness, it is a natural emotional response to a lot of different situations”; and the equally hapless Minister of Health, cultural anthropologist (!) Patti Hajdu with limited experience in medicine, repeatedly said, like Tam, that the risk of infection from the virus “is low,” but now projects that up to 70% of Canadians may be infected. Despite being stroked by a shameless love article in The Globe and Mail, Hajdu’s performance is frankly pathetic. And like both Tam and their boss, she seems to have a soft spot for China, insisting that “there’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way.” All these gender quota mermaids are swimming fathoms beyond their depth and I suspect their fealty is compromised.

HUAWEI'S CLAIMS OF INNOCENCE TO UK

Huawei has admitted "room for improvement" in its product design processes in an open letter to the UK Parliament – but strongly refuted allegations of spying.

The five-page letter (PDF) from Ryan Ding, Huawei's carrier business group (CBG) president, states that Huawei's commercial reputation would be destroyed if it was caught spying, or sending data back to China.

 Huawei's integrity:

Huawei Sting 

LONG DISTANCE VARMINT CONTROL

   This fearsome weapon is being hailed as a “game-changer” – the world’s most deadly sniper rifle.
   In the right hands the Russian-made Lobaev Arms SVLK-14S can achieve a kill at almost two miles.
   The 10kg, £30,000 weapon has a single-shot bolt action, meaning it fires only one round at at a time.
   But it is said to be accurate up to 2,000m or even 3,000m – compared to the 1,500m effective range of the L115A3, the sniper rifle used by the British Army.

FANTASY OF LIBERAL WORLD ORDER CRUMBLING

   Faced with an emergency the like of which has not been seen for generations, global organisations have proved to be unreliable. And the idea of globalisation peddled by elite opinion-formers and influencers has been exposed as unrealistic.
   A global free market was coming into being, they told us. National borders were fading away and, where they still existed, stood for nothing but racism. Nations themselves – those of Western countries, at any rate – were grubby relics of an imperial past.
   But it is international institutions that are now failing and nation-states that are responding effectively to the emergency. In the EU, national borders have been reinstated and free movement shut down. The chronically flawed single currency is coming under desperate strain. The inherent divisions are more exposed than ever.

NETHERLANDS REMEMBERS ITS CANADIAN LIBERATORS

April 13, 2020 marks 75 years since the Toronto Scottish Regiment rolled into the Meppel, Netherlands, after putting the occupying German forces on the run.

The townspeople emerged from their homes in great relief to cheer the Canadians and demonstrate their thanks.

That gratitude continues today, and this year the mayor and his people had something special planned.

PANDEMIC ECONOMICS 101

Canada, like many developed countries, is currently closed for business. Prime Minister Trudeau’s $82 billion COVID-19 Economic Response Plan to “help stabilize the economy”, representing more than 3% of national GDP, includes $55 billion in tax deferrals for businesses. The Trudeau government however, has failed to explain where the money will be coming from. While taxpayers will obviously be expected to pony up, taxes are derived from income. Unemployment is rapidly soaring as businesses are forced to close. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are losing their jobs. According to a report by The Conference Board of Canada, more than 330,000 taxpayers could lose their jobs during the second and third quarters this year, hiking unemployment to 7.7%. GDP is expected to decrease by 1.1% in 2020, further inflating the aid package.

Tax deferrals implies profits, which require revenue. No revenue = no profits = no taxes. Without revenue, tax deferrals will not keep businesses solvent. Businesses are going out of business, now.

Lending some objectivity to the magnitude of cost involved, the Liberal $82B bailout package exceeds the total value of Canada’s crude oil exports ($80.56B) in 2018. Mr. Trudeau will have to sell a lot of non-environmentally-friendly fossil fuels to pay for all this, not to mention the yet-to-be-tabulated economic devastation which looms currently just over the pandemic horizon beyond Parliament Hill.

AB DONATES PROTECTIVE GEAR TO ON, BC, & QUE.

Behind all the bickering, Canadian provinces have always been quick to help each other in a crisis.

But there has never, ever, been anything like the UCP government’s donation of vast amounts of protective equipment to B.C., Ontario and Quebec as they face dangerous shortfalls.

“We want all of our country to know that in both good times and bad, Alberta is there for Canada,” said Premier Jason Kenney.

The total value of the contribution announced Saturday is $41.2 million. The province does not ask for payment.

STILL WAITING FOR SURGE OF COVID-19 IN ICUs

They have been bracing for the worst, a deluge of desperately sick patients who strain resources to the limit and lead to desperate choices over how to ration care.

Doctors, nurses and other staff who run the nation’s intensive-care units have feared for their own safety, too, amid shortages of protective equipment.

But, perhaps surprisingly, some critical-care physicians in the hardest-hit provinces say they have yet to face that feared surge of coronavirus sufferers.

So far, at least, there is no flood, and plenty of available ICU beds.

31 DEAD AT QUEBEC SENIORS' RESIDENCE

   Quebec has ordered inspections done in 40 private nursing homes across the province after confirming 31 seniors died at a single private seniors’ residence in the last month alone.
   At least five of the deaths at the residence, Dorval’s Résidence Herron, were due to COVID-19, Premier François Legault announced on Saturday.
   A police investigation has also been launched after the province says the centre’s staff “abandoned” its 150 residents during the coronavirus pandemic and its owner refused to cooperate with authorities once the situation came to light.

COVID-19 STATISTICS RE CANADA

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Canada is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease was first confirmed to have spread to Canada on January 27, 2020, after a man returned to Toronto from travel in China, including Wuhan. As of April 9, 2020, there have been 22,148 confirmed cases in Canada, 6,013 recoveries, 569 deaths, and over 390,000 tests performed. The Government of Canada has released modelling anticipating 11,000–22,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic, assuming "stronger epidemic control".

CMA HEAD WANTS EXPLANATION FROM HAJDU

   The head of the organization representing Canada’s doctors says the health care system was “not prepared” for the current pandemic, and doesn’t see why the federal government doesn’t fully acknowledge the weaknesses exposed by the COVID-19 crisis.
   “I am trying to understand the government’s response today because I think everyone was caught flat-footed," said Sandy Buchman, president of the Canadian Medical Association. “The front line is telling us over and over that they are not prepared and they are scared. We are hearing it from everywhere.”
   Dr. Buchman was responding to a 2006 federal document that warned Canada needed to be better prepared for the outbreak of a pandemic or face serious consequences. That plan warned that a new virus could spread very quickly, transmitted by people with no symptoms, and urged governments to be ready with a domestic stockpile of medical supplies to assist and protect health care workers facing surges of infectious patients.
  Hajdu insists the government did what was needed, when it was needed.

POLICE ENFORCE QUARANTINE ORDER

   Canadian police are to begin visiting homes to enforce the government’s COVID-19 quarantine, the RCMP said on Friday, warning that “recklessly” failing to comply could result in a $1-million fine and three years in prison.

The RCMP said it had been asked by the Public Health Agency of Canada to help with national coordination and enforcement of the March 25 Quarantine Act Order that requires everyone arriving in Canada to stay home for 14 days.

Officers will speak to those under quarantine and advise them of the “potential consequences of non-compliance,” the police force said in a statement that cautioned violators could face “significant penalties, including fines and imprisonment.”

HEALTHCRATS' RECORDS OF BEING WRONG

   Our country is now run by the Healthcrats.
   The previously ignored public health agencies, buried deep within various levels of government, are the experts politicians now defer to. This would be good news if, on rare occasions, the Healthcrats were right about something. Actually, anything.
   Dr. Theresa Tam is the Healthcrat who runs the federal government. Her record on being wrong is spotless.

CONTRADICTING FACTS & COMMON SENSE

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law when they refused to take in migrants under the European Union's September 2015 relocation agreement. During the 2015 migrant crisis, EU leaders agreed to relocate 160,000 migrants and refugees EU-wide, assigning each EU member state a fixed quota from the camps in Italy and Greece, where migrants and refugees were arriving in record numbers. However, the Czech Republic accepted only 12 of the 2,000 refugees assigned it, while Hungary and Poland took in none.

NATURE'S RESPONSE FOR SIN AGAINST ECOLOGY

    Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of "nature's responses" to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis, CNN reports.
   The remarks were cited in a Wednesday interview with The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, wherein the pope further described the crisis as an opportunity for mankind to "slow down the rate of production and consumption".
   "We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?" the Pope said.

ARROGANCE & IGNORANCE AT THE HELM

   When asked Thursday what went wrong in the government's COVID-19 planning, Trudeau said there will be time for reflection at a later date. He said he was confident the government made the "best decisions" with "the information we have."
   "I think we've seen countries around the world caught off guard by the nature of this epidemic," he said. "The challenges we faced in terms of getting Canadians protected are echoed in challenges faced around the world.
   "I think Canada has done a good job of keeping on a path that is going to minimize as much as possible the reality we're in right now. As we look back at the end of this, I'm sure people will say, 'You could have done this a few days before.'"

MILITARY WARNED GOV'T OF VIRUS IN JANUARY

   A small, specialized unit within the Canadian military's intelligence branch began producing detailed warnings and analysis about the emergence of the deadly novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China in early January, CBC News has learned.
   It has a mandate to track global health trends and contagion outbreaks to predict how they'll affect military operations, but its assessments are heavily influenced by reports from the Five Eyes Intelligence partners, including the U.S. military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI).
   For at least one of the country's leading intelligence experts, the fact that the unit was tracking the COVID-19 outbreak and reporting on it raises serious questions about information-sharing within the federal government — and its possible failure to heed early warning signs.

TICKETING ALTERCATION IN OTTAWA

   An Ottawa father is fighting $2,010 in tickets levied by an Ottawa bylaw officer during the weekend crackdown on physical distancing after he refused to give his name while he and others were being ushered out of Michele Park on Saturday evening.
   Obi Ifedi, 39, is planning to contest his tickets in court and is now considering legal action of his own, alleging the bylaw officer punched him in the face with a bare-knuckle fist following an altercation involving the officer and two Ottawa police officers. Ifedi said the incident was witnessed by his seven-year-old daughter and his neighbour.
   “I have major anxiety attacks, I’ve never had any trouble with the law, I have no record … As a black person in that situation, with my daughter (nearby), I was terrified,” Ifedi said.

BERN OUT

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced the suspension of his 2020 presidential campaign on Wednesday morning, paving the way for former Vice President Joe Biden to become the Democrat Party’s White House nominee

WHAT CHINA WANTS THE WORLD TO FORGET

China's official news agency has released a coronavirus timeline to hit back at accusations that Beijing tried to cover up the full scale of the outbreak.

State-run Xinhua said that the timeline, published on Monday, proved how the country 'has shared information and advanced international cooperation' in the fight against the killer bug.

The 37-page document included - as described by Xinhua - the 'main facts and measures China has taken' to contain the epidemic. In particular, it hailed the role of President Xi Jinping and other Communist leaders. 

However, the mammoth report has left out some of the most crucial events of the health crisis, each of which has played a decisive role in the development of the global emergency.

HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE PILLS ON WAY TO USA

   President Donald Trump persuaded India’s prime minister to release many millions of hydroxychloroquine pills on April 6 after the Indian government had announced it would keep all of the pills for its own population of almost 1.5 billion people
  Many doctors say their coronavirus patients do improve after being treated with hydroxychloroquine.

TRUMP PUTS A HOLD ON WHO FUNDING

   President Donald Trump announced Tuesday at the White House that he would put a hold on funding to the World Health Organization amid the coronavirus crisis.
   The president noted that the World Health Organization receives more from the United States than any other country, and would require accounting for their failure to properly alarm the world about the coronavirus outbreak.
   We want to look into the World Health Organization because they really called it wrong,” Trump said. “They missed the call, they could have called it months earlier, they would have known, they should have known, and they probably did know.”
  Trump said the WHO frequently sided with China despite heavy criticism for their lack of transparency about the virus.
 
  Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) on Tuesday introduced a resolution demanding Congress withhold funding from the World Health Organization (WHO) until its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (pictured), resigns from his post.

DOCUMENTS REVEAL CANADA'S EARLY COVID PLANS

   Early on in 2020, the message from the federal government was that the coronavirus risk here was low, but the rapidly-spreading disease eventually reached Canadian soil, setting off a cascade of ever-evolving policies, from the advice given based on the virus’ ability to spread, to measures needed at the border and the need to inventory medical supplies, internal documents show.
   In early January, the government went from saying the novel virus was being “actively monitored” with no confirmed cases in Canada. By mid-March, the government had repatriated citizens, assessed the national stockpile of supplies, and was having to update public health advice with the suggestion that up to 70 per cent of the country could contract the disease.
   These evolutions in policy, reacting to the evolving understanding of the never-before-documented virus are documented in part, through hundreds of pages of departmentally-redacted documents obtained by CTVNews.ca. The documents offer a glimpse into some of the early-stage federal conversations and policy decisions made in the months after the novel coronavirus was identified and labelled COVID-19.

THE MISSING STOCKPILE OF PPE

Look, there is plenty of blame to go around on why our frontline workers don’t have the material they need. That extends to provincial governments across the country and even local hospital administrators.

Yet, when it comes to providing a backstop, that is a promise the federal government made after SARS and when they gave this mandate for stockpiling protective equipment to Public Health in 2004.

Public Health and Hajdu owe the public real answers as to why the stockpile was not at the level it should have been when coronavirus hit.

DR THERESA TAM'S FLIP-FLOP FARCE

   Canada’s public health officials initially discouraged regular people from wearing masks while out and about. They said they didn’t work and that they might even be counterproductive.
   “What we worry about is actually the potential negative aspects of wearing masks where people are not protecting their eyes, or you know, other aspects of where a virus could enter your body,” Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief medical officer, said only a few days ago.
   Finally, on Monday, Tam reversed course, citing “emerging information.” This new information involves confirmation that there are in fact many asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 walking around and mask wearing can stop them from spreading the virus to others.

  A bit of background:   Dr. Theresa Tam was named Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) on June 26, 2017. She is a physician with expertise in immunization, infectious disease, emergency preparedness and global health security.

AG REPORTS ON GOVERNMENT CHEQUE WRITING

The reviews of the social insurance number (SIN) system, which underpins much of the income transfer system in Canada is particularly interesting. The evaluation in 1998 raised enormous concerns about the integrity of the SIN system and its vulnerability to fraud. For instance, the AG noted that there were 3.8 million more SINs for Canadians 20 years and older than actual people in that age group; there were 100 times as many active SINs for those over the age of 100 as living Canadians over that age; and that over 50 per cent of SINs had no supporting documentation.

A follow-up report was completed in 2002 that noted many problems had persisted. The AG concluded there were five million more SINs for people over the age of 20 than there were Canadians of those ages and that since 1998 more than half of all SINs were not properly verified with the applicant’s identity and citizenship status. A subsequent report in 2007 concluded that progress on previously identified problems with the SIN system was “unsatisfactory,” largely because outstanding issues of concern had not been resolved.

The AG reports also include specific program evaluations that are enlightening. For instance, the AG reviewed the government’s heating relief program in 2001. The program was intended to provide money to low and modest income households impacted by an increase in heating costs. Seems straightforward but the AG’s report found at least 40 per cent of recipients were not low-income or did not incur increased heating costs, approximately 90,000 Canadians in need of assistance received no relief due to a technicality in eligibility, and between 25 per cent to 35 per cent of individuals received money despite having heating included in their rent or heating with electricity. The report also found that at least 4,000 taxpayers not living in Canada received money, up to 1,600 prisoners may have received money and at least 7,500 deceased people received payments.

XI FORCED CHINA BACK TO WORK

    To push America aside and seize global leadership, China got Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), to say that China's response to the coronavirus showed the "superiority of the Chinese system and this experience is worthy of emulation by other countries." Then Beijing set about making a big show of "donating" medical equipment and diagnostic kits, most notably to stricken Europe.
     Finally, Xi Jinping, beginning around the first week of February, forced China back to work to demonstrate that China had ended the epidemic.
   None of these showy displays will convince anyone, however, if the virus ravages China again. Unfortunately for Xi, that is what is happening: people in China are re-infecting each other. For instance, in industrial Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, workers returning to their jobsites have been carrying the coronavirus, and this has forced health officials to quarantine other workers. China's leader can jump-start the economy or throttle the coronavirus, but he cannot do both at the same time.