O'TOOLE AVOIDS THE SYSTEMIC RACISM LABELLING

New Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole won’t say whether he believes systemic racism exists in Canada amid ongoing protests and debate about the issue both here in Canada and in the United States.

 O’Toole spoke about the need to stamp out racism but wouldn’t say whether he believes systemic racism exists, or how it can be defined.

 “I’m always going to say, ‘I think there is racism’ and I want to stamp it out,” O’Toole said. “I fight for people that wear a uniform. And when you use a term like ‘systemic,’ some of those people feel that you’re calling them racist.

ANOTHER FARCE ON BILL BLAIR'S WATCH

   The notion that Bill Blair, the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, is in way over his head was not something I brought to this game. It’s a learned response. Lately it’s kind of getting locked in.
   First there was the federal government’s response to April’s mass murder in Nova Scotia, which amounted to three months of silence and stonewalling, a botched announcement of an “independent review” that would have no power in law to compel testimony, and a hasty retreat after three days because basically everyone in Nova Scotia was saying in the newspapers what hundreds of them had been trying to tell Blair in private for months.
   The hallmarks of this farce were unfamiliar but, in hindsight, look characteristic. A long period of bland assurance that all is well in hand. (“We’ll put the processes in place to make sure that those answers not only are obtained for Canadians, but done in a way which is trustworthy,” Blair told Maclean’s in June. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but that’s my job.” Nice touch, that last bit.) The belated realization that actually, freaking nothing is happening. And finally, the headline-driven climb-down, accompanied by assurances that the minister was on top of things all along.

MIKE DUFFY LOSES COURT APPEAL

  Sen. Mike Duffy has lost his bid to overturn a court decision blocking him from suing the Senate for millions of dollars over his suspension without pay.

The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a 2018 lower court ruling that said the Senate’s decision to suspend Duffy is protected by parliamentary privilege.

Duffy’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, said the ruling effectively means the Senate is above the law. He said Duffy will consider seeking leave to appeal it to the country’s highest court.

RETURN TO SCHOOL FEARMONGERING

Teachers’ unions have adopted the claim that back to school means an “unsafe September.”

So, I put a simple question to the province’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams.

“Would you recommend for your children or grandchildren to go back to school, as students or teachers, this September?” I asked.

“Yes, I would,” Williams replied.

CNN's DENIAL OF OBJECTIVE REALITY

   On Tuesday, with its reporter standing in front of a raging fire, CNN ran a ludicrous chyron stating, “fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting.”
   Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be worthy of reporting three days later.
   However, for some reason, this chyron was a bridge too far for many people, and the internet is still flooded with memes. It’s apparent that, with this latest denial of objective reality, CNN has finally completed its transformation into Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, whom many Americans remember almost fondly as Baghdad Bob, the Hussein regime propagandist who insisted that Saddam was winning even as U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

A BUSYBODY INTERLOPER IN THE COURT

 A woman calling herself Jacquie Phoenix and representing the mother in a bitter child-custody dispute says she has pledged allegiance to a British lord and invoked an article of the Magna Carta that means Canada’s laws and courts do not apply to her and her client. She threatened a judge with “the gallows” if he didn’t comply.

Phoenix, whose legal name is Robinson, is one of a number of followers of a scheme Justice Robert Graesser calls the “Magna Carta Lawful Rebellion” who have notified Alberta courts recently of their supposed legal immunity.

He barred her from representing the mother — saying Robinson had abused the court process as a “busybody” interloper — and said he’s inclined to prohibit her from acting for any clients in Alberta courts.

EQUALIZATION PAY DISCOURAGING ECONOMIC GROWTH

Canada’s equalization program discourages natural resource development in “have-not” provinces, including all three Maritime provinces. As a province receives more revenue from natural resource developments, it receives less money from the federal government in equalization transfers, and consequently, governments in have-not provinces that receive equalization are discouraged by the clawbacks from developing natural resources.

ALBERTA'S FINANCIAL WOES LAID BARE

 Ever since Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party took power in Alberta, they have repeatedly argued the province has a spending problem. That's where they have centred their fiscal focus.

Thursday's fiscal update, however, showed just how bad the revenue side of the government's finances has become — the plight of the oilpatch is leaving a giant hole in the budget.

Revenue from the oilpatch is expected to be $1.2 billion this year, down from the $3.9 billion forecast and a far cry from better days in the sector, such as 2014-15 when those revenues were $8.9 billion.

GREEN WARRIORS USING COVID CRISIS

Rex Murphy:  I quoted our new economic czar, Chrystia Freeland, in my last column, saying, “I think all Canadians understand that the restart of our economy needs to be green.” To which I asked, “Where, oh where, did she pick up that strange understanding?” Maybe this would be true if there were a poll taken on Pluto, assuming a few Canadians are there, but not from the Canadians on the planet we are already familiar with.

There is no basis whatsoever for asserting that all Canadians believe (or want) the recovery to be “green.” What that statement really represents in this government’s grossly cynical attempt to leverage the great health crisis of our time, and the dislocation and anxiety surrounding it, as an instrument to pursue its one unfailing objective:  to blunt, wound and radically downscale our central natural resource industry.

 A recent Bloomberg article on the Liberals’ recovery plans makes the point explicitly: “One line of thinking says they will go for large-scale investment in renewable energy and other green initiatives selling it as a job-creation package that can help Canada get past its reliance on exporting oil and gas.”

An ideological fixation — global warming — is taking over genuine efforts to fix the economy. It is, to revive one of the most depressing utterances in politics, a perfect example of the maxim, “never let a crisis go to waste.”

SURPRISE ENDING FOR SIKH ACTIVISTS IN BRAMPTON

 Sikh independence activists say they’re used to intense online debates about their cause, up to and including threats of violence.

But when men in a pickup truck festooned with the Indian flag arrived at an anti-Indian government gathering this month toting an automatic pistol, they were stunned, says Jay Grewal, a director of the group Sikhs for Justice.

Police eventually carried out a dramatic arrest in the Brampton, Ont., parking lot, charging five men with firearms offences after recovering a loaded handgun from their vehicle.

HURRICANE LAURA HITS LANDFALL

   Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana near the Texas border early Thursday as a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.
   That made Laura the most intense hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana in 164 years, since what was called the Last Island Storm in 1856. It is also tied for the strongest hurricane on record to ever hit the state.
   Laura made landfall in Cameron, Louisiana, at about 1 a.m. (2 a.m. ET), according to the National Hurricane Center, which called it an "extremely dangerous" storm.

FIRST NATIONS SUPPORT FOR ENERGY PROJECTS

 Many people would have us believe Indigenous North Americans are unanimous in their opposition to oil and gas development. Canada has seen a steady stream of protesters travelling from the United States who cite “helping protect Indigenous lands” as their motivation for interfering with oil and gas development projects in this country. Yet Indigenous people in Canada are far from homogeneous. In Canada there are 633 First Nations, plus the Métis people and the Inuit. In the U.S., there are another 574 Native-American groups. Nowhere else on the planet would such a diverse group of peoples be expected to be unanimous about anything.

The anti-resource development stereotype is false. Among Indigenous groups there is clearly some opposition to some development in specific cases. But in recent research, a colleague and I found that an overwhelming majority of the British Columbia and Alberta First Nations that have taken public positions on oil and gas projects are in support of responsible, sustainable development on their lands. Opposition to such development is — by far — a minority view among Indigenous people and communities in Canada.

CANADIANS PAYING FOR TRAVELERS' QUARANTINE TABS

 People ordered to quarantine or isolate by a Quarantine Officer are not obliged to pick up the tab.

Instead, the cost of their transportation to the hotel or facility, three meals a day and other essentials are covered by Canada.

“All of these items are delivered to their rooms,” the statement said. “They also have access to a toll-free phone number where they can identify essential items that they require. Travellers also receive daily health checks during which they can discuss any concerns they may have.”

CRA TO AUDIT COVID 19 AID PROGRAMS

 OTTAWA — The Canada Revenue Agency will launch an audit pilot project to see if fraudulent applications are a problem within the Trudeau government’s $82.3 billion flagship COVID-19 corporate aid program.

The federal agency says it has detected a few illegitimate claims for the wage subsidy during the verification process that precedes any payment, but that the “vast majority” of first checks came back clean.

Since the programs’ launch, multiple media outlets have reported on identify theft linked to CERB, false applications and even fake consultants who promise to help Canadians to apply for CERB in exchange for payment, even though they may be ineligible.

Another issue is CERB “double-dippers” — people who applied and received twice the amount of CERB they were entitled to since the beginning of April. In May, a government official told parliamentarians that they had already identified at least 200,000 cases of double payments.

ERIN O'TOOLE NOT SOFT ON CHINA

 Canadians were already getting frosty on China pre-pandemic. Then they watched as Beijing tried to cover-up the coronavirus and lie about it.

Yet as the case against China has mounted and the need for Canada to decouple from Beijing has become increasingly clear to the vast majority of the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has failed to pivot. He can’t even yet bring himself to ban Huawei, which is really just the first step, the price for admission to show you understand the broader issue.

Enter Erin O’Toole, the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. A review of O’Toole’s platform, headlined “A Call to Take Back Canada”, shows that he’ll be taking on with gusto this key issue that Trudeau’s been ignoring.

After arguing that Trudeau’s “cowering approach to the Community Party of China continues to fail us now”, O’Toole offers a roadmap to get Canada on the right path that goes beyond merely banning Huawei from the 5G grid.

INSIDE CHINA'S MILITARY ATTACK ON NORTEL

In 2004 Nortel cyber-security advisor Brian Shields investigated a serious breach in the telecom giant’s network. At the time Nortel’s fibre optics equipment was the world’s envy, with 70 per cent of all internet traffic running on Canadian technology.

And someone wanted Nortel’s secrets.

Shields found that a computer in Shanghai had hacked into the email account of an Ottawa-based Nortel executive. Using passwords stolen from the executive the intruder downloaded more than 450 documents from “Live Link” — a Nortel server used to warehouse sensitive intellectual property.

Shields soon found the hacker controlled the accounts of at least seven Nortel executives. This was no random cybercriminal. But who was it?

DESTROYING THE THIN VENEER OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

   Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.
   The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.

O'TOOLE NEW CONSERVATIVE LEADER

 OTTAWA — Erin O'Toole begins a new political life as the leader of the federal Conservative party.

O'Toole was declared the winner of the leadership race early Monday morning after technical problems delayed the vote results by hours, as thousands of ballots had to be replicated by hand after the counting machine shredded their envelopes.

After three rounds of counting, O'Toole emerged the victor with 57 per cent of the vote, a resounding victory over his rival Peter MacKay, who won 43 per cent.

PROROGUING PIERRE POILIEVRE

   Rex Murphy:   His forensic lacerations of Justin Trudeau on the few occasions when a mostly absentee prime minister dared the ordeal, were top quality demolitions. In every exchange, and they are all there for the viewing, it was clear who was the austere teacher, and who was the stammering tyro.

Poilievre’s press briefings had to be the dread of the wizards who practice spin for Trudeau. Their spin was unspun, and the tangled amateur “explanations” given out by the government about how Trudeau, finance minister Bill Morneau and Youth Minister Bardish Chagger variously locked arms and fired (email) billet-doux back and forth, were both derided and destroyed.

His masterpiece was the very latest, where he flung, with magisterial scorn, blacked-out page after blacked-out page of the government’s file on WE Inc., over the press podium. Most telling was his central point during that conference: that the government wasn’t “proroguing” to work on a “reset” or devise a post-COVID “agenda.” It was prorogued to shut down the committees, one of which Poilievre headed, looking into the WE affair. It was prorogued to halt the revelations hidden and obscured under black ink that the government lathered over the documents released.

BILL MORNEAU, THE TAXING PRO

 Scrolling through the numbers, what stands out about Bill Morneau is not his deficits but his taxes. (Bill Nye may be the science guy but Bill Morneau was the taxing pro.) Real income taxes per Canadian rose from $5,691 in 2016 to $6,084 in 2019, an all-time high. Same thing for personal income taxes, which hit their all-time high of $4,437 per Canadian in 2019.

The new taxes were to finance government spending, where Morneau also holds the record. Per capita program expenditure rose from $8,078 in 2016 to $8,725 in 2019, an increase of eight per cent real (inflation-adjusted) per person.

GOVERNMENT STILL DOING BUSINESS WITH SNC LAVALIN

 SNC-Lavalin, the company that landed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in trouble with the ethics commissioner, has been awarded more than 100 government contracts since the controversy.

According to a database from Open Government, SNC-Lavalin received 142 government contracts with a combined worth of about $25 million between January 2019 and June 2020.

Aaron Wudrick, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said he was shocked SNC-Lavalin was continuing to receive government contracts.

CLIMATE CHANGE & DIVERSITY IN THE OIL PATCH

 For executives at Husky Energy's headquarters in Calgary, there is a new wrinkle in how their pay is calculated: climate change.

This is the first year the company is linking greenhouse gas emissions to compensation as part of a new plan that also includes a goal to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent over the next five years and set a similar gender-diversity target for management.

The measures come at a time when oil and gas companies around the world are competing for limited investment dollars, and those investors are increasingly focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

CONTROLLING LIBERAL SPENDING

   To get to this moment, Trudeau has seen off a procession of people who have stood in his way. This week, former finance minister Bill Morneau was the latest casualty. Morneau’s resignation on Monday was reported to be about his long-standing misgivings about Trudeau’s spending extravagance.
   In his place, Trudeau put his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, whose meteoric rise in the Liberal ranks has singled her out for a possible leadership bid. Some Ottawa observers suspect that may be the very reason Freeland, with no financial background, was given the portfolio: to keep her busy, her fortunes tied to Trudeau, and in a position where the prime minister can keep an eye on her.
   Freeland, though, has been touted as a future prime minister and there is a long history of tension between finance ministers and prime ministers.
  Issues, both governmental and political, inevitably arise. Historically, the prime minister is often a profligate people-pleaser who sees the path to re-election lined with dollars from the public purse. The finance minister has the unenviable job of keeping his prime minister, and every other minister in the government, in check.

SILVER's LOBBYING EFFORTS TO BENEFIT HIS COMPANY

   The spouse of the chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a plugged-in Liberal in his own right, embarked on a concerted effort to lobby ex-finance minister Bill Morneau’s office to change a multi-billion dollar emergency wage subsidy program to benefit his company, VICE News has learned.
     Rob Silver is a former lobbyist who now serves as Senior Vice President for mortgage and insurance giant MCAP. He is also married to Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Silver repeatedly asked his partner’s government to change its COVID-19 emergency assistance program for businesses so it would include MCAP.
    Silver went so far as to request specific legislative amendments to the Commercial Emergency Wage Subsidy, according to two sources who are familiar with the matter.

NEW EI PROGRAM A DISASTER FOR CANADA

   Corbella: Changes announced Thursday by Canada’s new Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough would make young workers eligible to collect Employment Insurance benefits for six months after only working 120 hours.

 The ministers also announced that they were extending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) for four more weeks to give government time to revamp the Employment Insurance program to allow more Canadians to receive financial aid during COVID-19.

“Every day I hear from worried business owners that they’re having troubles competing with the CERB to get workers,” said Kelly, whose organization represents small business owners who employ 60 per cent of working Canadians.

TRUDEAU ERODES CANADA's PLACE IN THE WORLD

   After boastfully declaring that he would enhance Canada’s place on the international scene, the Prime Minister failed in his bid to secure a United Nations Security Council seat. Canada’s place in the word has been effectively eroded under his watch.
   But under the current liberal government, Foreign Affairs in Canada became a wing of the virtue-signalling mill, more interested in projecting progressiveness than in achieving policy ends. Ironically for an image-infatuated regime, there was not much consideration of the consequences of incessantly projecting wokeness; and consequences, there have been.
   Take our relations with China, soured from the start by the prime minister’s wokeness. Aggravating relations for the sake of promoting human rights might be a worthy objective, but publicly shaming the proudly authoritarian culture of the Chinese Communist Party for not being progressive enough about the number of women “sitting at the table” was ridiculously unwise

LIBERAL BUSINESS MODEL OF GRANTS & SUBSIDIES

   Diane Francis:  With Bill Morneau turfed, there are no adults left in the room — which is terrifying given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s autocratic proclivity.
   This week, Trudeau, in a move that would make Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban proud, jettisoned his finance minister to distract from a scandal, and then shuttered Parliament for a month to halt investigations into his government’s corrupt practices. He then announced that a cabinet retreat would be held to chart Canada’s economic course by Sept. 23, which, given his inept crew, foretells serious trouble for the Canadian economy.
   A greater threat is the potential adoption of the loopy recommendations put forth this summer by Trudeau’s Task Force for a Resilient Recovery. It was created as a vehicle to further the anti-business agenda of Trudeau’s former chief of staff, Gerald Butts, who left his post for helping push out the attorney general to help SNC-Lavalin.
   Now he’s back in business with a hand-picked task force that is a grab-bag of professional Liberals, green activists, former civil servants and self-described social entrepreneurs whose business models are all about getting grants and subsidies. Not a single business person was included on the list of task force members that I saw a few months ago.

THE BLACKED OUT TRANSPARENCY OF LIBERALS

OTTAWA — WE Charity is shedding more light on a controversial email from co-founder Craig Kielburger to then-finance minister Bill Morneau this spring, saying it was about a possible second wave of COVID-19 — not securing government business.

   But like many of the newly released records it was heavily blacked out, making it difficult to know what Kielburger was communicating to Morneau.
  The document was among those Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre pointed to in a news conference Wednesday in alleging a coverup of the Liberal government’s decision to have WE Charity administer a multimillion-dollar student-volunteer program.
  “We’d love to learn about the attached documents in it, but unfortunately, in what is to become a trend throughout this package, all the relevant information in the two documents are completely blacked out,” Poilievre said.

SACRIFICING MORNEAU

   Yet while many Liberals say they are still not certain what exactly led to Morneau’s abrupt resignation on Monday, it’s clear his fall from political grace did not begin only in the past few weeks as the media spotlight on him grew hotter.
   The Star reported on Aug. 8 that Trudeau was weighing a cabinet shuffle to go along with bold fall spending plans. After that, there were reports Trudeau was consulting former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney for advice on the economic relaunch, and that there had been policy disagreements between Trudeau and Morneau.
   Sources say those news stories shook Morneau, who believed they were deliberate leaks by the Prime Minister’s Office that were meant to undermine him.

AUSTRALIA MAY BLOCK CHINA CO.'s PURCHASE

 SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia’s government may block China Mengniu Dairy Co Ltd’s (2319.HK) purchase of some of the country’s best-known milk brands, the Australian Financial Review reported on Thursday, citing unidentified sources who blamed “diplomatic issues”.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has gone against the advice of the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) which was in favour of approving the A$600 million ($430.98 million) deal, the newspaper said.

Chinese investment to Australia more than halved in 2019 to $2.4 billion, and the number of deals is likely to keep falling this year due to the diplomatic tension as well as the coronavirus outbreak, bankers said.

TRUEAU's INSULTING SPIN

 Corbella:  In the days before Morneau’s resignation, anonymous leaks from the Prime Minister’s Office to Parliament Hill reporters revealed that there was a rift between him and his finance minister. Peter Donolo, the former communications director for Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, told CBC’s Power & Politics Tuesday that the “undermining of a sitting finance minister” was “disgraceful” and “shabby treatment” and that “political game-playing when the country is in such an economic bind, I think, is a mistake and it’s detrimental to the country.”

Trudeau’s office was working overtime last week to embarrass Morneau, says Bratt. His days were numbered. The PM wanted him gone and he obliged. But why did he stick to the PM’s unbelievable talking points?

“Morneau’s a good political soldier and he’s being a good Liberal team member even though he was publicly humiliated by the prime minister,” said Bratt during a telephone interview Tuesday.

LEGISLATING DOG WALKING IN GERMANY

 A new rule forcing Germans to take their dog for a walk twice a day has unleashed a debate on whether the state can decide what is best for the country’s 9.4 million pet canines.

Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner announced this week she had taken expert advice and was introducing a law to ensure dogs go for a walk or run in the garden at least twice a day for a total of an hour.

PROROGUE PARLIAMENT? WHAT PARLIAMENT?

 Rex Murphy:  Prorogation. Does it mean the actual end of Cottage Life government, which all Canadians have come to know and love during this COVID-troubled spring and summer? No more the sweet image of our PM’s morning walk down the few steps of his hideaway and halting to stand facing the grand inquisitors of the nation’s press?

Should it be so, I will deeply miss it — the daily soliloquy, the sombre tone of his matutinal assurances and, of course, each morning’s distribution of the swag. We all lined up around our TVs or stared down at our iPhones to see which was the lucky group of the day to get a chunk of the billions that our generous leader was flooding the land with, or at least that portion of the land that held his wonderful favour.

DOCUMENTS SHOW LIBERALS' PANTS ON FIRE

 Lilley: In the days before Canada’s civil service began discussing WE Charity as the group to run the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG), there were multiple emails, phone calls and messages exchanged between the Kielburger brothers and the politicians who would make the decision.

The Trudeau government has tried to put forward the narrative that it was civil servants who selected WE and that the political class in Ottawa was simply following their advice. The release of more than 4,000 pages of correspondence, memos and sales pitches, however, doesn’t support the government’s claim.

SELF SERVING XI PURGING CHINA'S DEEP STATE

While it's true that China's political system suffers from "endemic corruption", that's not the real reason President Xi is doing this now, contrary to what some western media outlets have suggested.

Instead, it appears President Xi is launching his own war against China's "deep state" by launching a full-blown purge of the state security apparatus.

The ultimate goal of the campaign is simple: create police, prosecutors and judges who are "absolutely loyal, absolutely pure and absolutely reliable".

MANHUNT LAUNCHED FOR BLM THUG

   Police investigators have confirmed that the man viciously beaten by Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland on Sunday night was trying to help a transgender female who had been the victim of a robbery.
   BLM agitators claimed they attacked the man, subsequently identified as Adam Haner, because he was a “white supremacist” trying to run people over while shouting racial slurs, but there is no evidence of this whatsoever.
   Shocking footage shows protesters trying to drag Haner out of his vehicle while assaulting his female companion, before they continue to pursue him, causing Haner to crash his Ford 4×4.
   Haner is then assaulted again before a man later identified as Marquise “Keese” Lee Love, a “security guard” for Black Lives Matter, kicks him in the head, immediately knocking him unconscious and leaving him bleeding on the street.

GRACELESS EXITS OF MORNEAU & OTHERS

   Rex Murphy: When somebody decides to enter politics for the first time, the press often asks, “Why are you getting into politics right now?” I keep waiting for this answer: “Well, putting aside more petty considerations, I’d really like to spend less time with my wife and children.” The side benefit of such a response would be that when that person decides to leave politics, he or she could, with perfect impunity, say, “Well, I really think it’s time to get back to the wife and kids. My how the young ones have grown.”
   In no particular order, I note that Morneau told Monday’s press conference about his intention to run for the office of secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m heading off to take over the Max Planck Society. This OECD fantasy, and the prime minister’s “promise” to back him on it, has to be the effluvium of a distressed and embarrassed mind. Or perhaps just plain shock.

CHINA MUST INTERACT WITH & PREY UPON THE WORLD

  We need to briefly describe how the CCP runs China as a giant corporation. While typically we think of governments running countries in a purely bureaucratic sense, the CCP owns China, literally. All China’s resources and people are its properties. The Communist Party is deeply intertwined with, and exercises total control over, all businesses in China. Doing business in China is not a right, but a privilege granted by the party.

SHATTERING SEATTLE

Last week, the Seattle City Council voted to slash funding for the police department, leading the city’s first black female police chief to resign. The council defunded the police even after antifa rioters had wreaked havoc on the city in the name of racial justice. In one particularly memorable case, rioters used a van loaded with explosives to blow open a police station. On Sunday, rioters fired explosives at police, wounding at least three of them. Some businesses in the city have had enough.

FREELAND IN FINANCE; GOVERNMENT PROROGUED

OTTAWA – With Chrystia Freeland now sworn in as federal finance minister, the Liberal government will prorogue Parliament and introduce a new throne speech before Parliament resumes in the fall.  

    Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said he did not have hope that Freeland replacing Morneau would mark a change in policy or direction for the Liberals.

   “Regardless, though, of how you play musical chairs, we still have the same corrupt and incompetent prime minister ahead of the same corrupt and chaotic government.”

   Proroguing will shut down the House of Commons committees investigating the WE Charity scandal and remove the legislation currently on Parliament’s order paper.

EXPLAINING THE CONCEPT OF PRIVACY TO OMAFRA

    An appeal has halted for now the release of Ontario Farm Business Registration numbers and there are no plans by three Ontario farm groups to launch a class action lawsuit against the provincial government over the issue, says Keith Currie, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
   The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs stirred a wave of anger in the farm community when it disclosed it would release the names of FBR holders but not their numbers or other personal information in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It followed passage of a law tightening trespass laws on Ontario farms.
   “As an organization, we are disappointed in the decision of OMAFRA,” Keith Currie said. “We are concerned about the safety and security of our farm businesses and the serious risk this poses to them.”

  
It's your information.  Protect it.
by Donald R. Good, P.Ag.
AgriNews Staff Writer:   

   The farm community has become concerned over the request by an unknown person who has made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for detailed information on farmers registered under the Farm Registration and Farm Organizations Funding Act (FBR). Should farmers be concerned? The obvious answer is, ‘yes.’

LIBERAL STATISTICS

 The Liberals also cite Statistics Canada figures showing that the number of Canadians living below the official poverty line has dropped from 12% when they came into power in 2015, to an all-time low of 8.7% in 2018, the last year for which figures are available.

Sarlo describes Liberal boasting about lifting a million Canadians out of poverty as “superficial and cringe-worthy” because many of the people they say they’re lifting out of poverty wouldn’t have been classified as being in poverty, until they changed the way they calculated the poverty line.

SJWs PROTEST A BAKERY

"Cake lives matter" was actually written on a sign of one of the protesters who showed up outside Coccadotts Cake Shop in New York, just outside of Albany. The bakery drew huge protests over the last couple of days for doing what a bakery does: baking a cake.

But, of course, this wasn't just any cake. This was a cake with feelings: a super-racist, super-homophobic capitalist cake. And the protesters knew that because it was made in the shape of a red hat that said "Make America Great Again" on it.

SOROS LAMENTS

In a lengthy transcription of an interview with Italy's La Repubblica, billionaire hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and - some might argue - puppet master to a new world order, expounded at length on Europe's demise, financial market bubbles, and - the focus of this note - Europe's imminent demise unless they follow his grand plan.

PAYETTE'S ENTITLEMENT TAKES FLIGHT

 The flight time from Ottawa to the Mirabel cargo airport, a crow-flying 133 kilometres away, is about 19 minutes by jet.

For the average Canadian coping with a pandemic, that can be the wait time to get into a Costco.

And yet, Gov. Gen. Julie Payette is using a government Challenger, which takes a couple hours of pre-takeoff prep time and almost $5,000 an hour to defy gravity, for pick-ups and drop-offs at Mirabel en route to her Laurentian Mountain cottage. To reach the terminal via her chauffeur-driven car would take less than 90 minutes.

PAYETTE'S OBSTINATE DISREGARD FOR RCMP SECURITY

 Gov. Gen. Julie Payette's disregard for the Mounties paid to protect her has resulted in added security risks and unnecessary taxpayer costs, according to RCMP and Rideau Hall sources.

Payette's secrecy and resistance to working with the RCMP routinely sends her protective detail scrambling to fulfil last-minute requests and drives up spending on overtime, hotel and plane tickets, multiple sources told CBC News. 

Payette has even made repeated attempts to slip away from her protectors in Canada and abroad, sources say. The force has also had to apologize for her behaviour to foreign security abroad because she treated them so poorly, said sources.

MORNEAU RESIGNS AS LIBERAL FINANCE MINISTER

   Bill Morneau has resigned as Justin Trudeau’s Finance Minister.
   Recently, reports have emerged that Trudeau and Morneau has been disagreeing over economic policy: with the finance minister unprepared to push Canada deeper into an unprecedented deficit.
   Trudeau, on the other hand, was committed to environmental policy and stimulus packages.
   Some commentators have suggested that this is a way of distancing Morneau from the WE scandal, as it would also set a precedent for Trudeau to resign.

PEACE AGREEMENT BETWEEN UAE & ISRAEL

    We don’t hear many good news stories out of the Middle East, particularly recently, in the midst of the despair over Beirut, regional conflicts and the ravages of COVID-19. But on Thursday there was a hopeful development: U.S. President Donald Trump announced a historic peace agreement that will normalize relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
    But why now? It’s clear this was the only way to stop Israel’s annexation of the territories in the West Bank allotted to it in the Trump plan. This may seem surprising, since the Emirates have neither been in the forefront of peace-making diplomacy nor had a good relationship with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. And yet, because Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed and other Emirate leaders believe (probably correctly) that Israeli annexation would kill even the possibility of two states and Israeli-Palestinian peace, they decided to offer normalization.

CRA HIT BY TWO CYBER ATTACKS

The federal government has revealed that the Canada Revenue Agency was recently hit by two cyberattacks, compromising thousands of accounts linked to the agency's services.

The agency confirmed on Saturday that as of Aug. 14, about 5,500 accounts had been affected by the separate attacks but that the breaches are now contained. The CRA's My Account, My Business Account and Represent a Client services were affected in the incidents.

Earlier this month, Canadians began reporting online that email addresses associated with their CRA accounts had been changed, their direct deposit information altered and that CERB payments had been issued in their name even though they had not applied for the COVID-19 benefit.

Most reported that they were first alerted to the suspicious activity after receiving legitimate emails from the CRA confirming that their email addresses had been discontinued.

SETTLING THE ESTATE OF NS KILLER

   The former partner of the denturist who killed 22 Nova Scotians in an April shooting rampage has filed a claim against his estate, setting the stage for what could be an emotional legal battle with the families of his victims over his holdings, which are estimated to be worth about $1.2 million, including properties in Dartmouth and Portapique.
   The statement of claim, filed in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax on Wednesday, is the first public statement from the former partner since the events of April 18 and 19, when her common-law partner went on a murder rampage in a replica RCMP cruiser.
    She is seeking damages for assault and battery and false imprisonment and “intentional infliction of mental suffering” at the hands of Gabriel Wortman on the night of April 18.

GIVE UP YOUR HOUSE IN SEATTLE

BLACK Lives Matter activists in Seattle have urged white residents to give up their homes as a form of reparations.

Dramatic footage livestreamed from a protest Wednesday night showed a crowd shouting up at the residents inside an apartment complex.

"Give up your house,” an activist shouted into a megaphone.

“Give black people back their homes. You’re sitting there comfortably — comfortable as f*** as if you didn’t help gentrify this neighborhood."

DEFENDING MENG WANZHOU

 VANCOUVER — A former adviser to the U.S. State Department says the American government omitted key statements by Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in order to support its extradition case against her.

The U.S. used a presentation Meng made to HSBC in 2013 to allege that she lied about Huawei's relationship to Skycom, putting the bank at risk of breaking American sanctions against Iran.

An affidavit filed in B.C. Supreme Court by Meng's lawyers from John Bellinger, a lawyer who advised the administration of former president George W. Bush, says the U.S. left out that Meng clearly told the bank that Huawei worked with Skycom in Iran.

SIGHT SEEING AMERICANS STILL TRYING TO CROSS BORDER

As Canada and the U.S. move to extend the border closure by another month, more than 12,000 Americans have been turned away at our shared border — and almost half of them were coming to Canada to sightsee, shop or have some fun, despite the ongoing pandemic.

The number has continued to climb since CTV News first reported last month that more than 10,000 U.S. citizens attempted non-essential border crossings.

According to the latest figures sent to CTVNews.ca by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), 12,819 U.S. citizens have been turned away from our shared border between March 22 and August 5.

POSTMEDIA DISGRACES ITSELF

   Two weeks ago the National Post newspaper sent us an e-mail gleefully banning our reporters from setting foot on the grounds of the Alberta Legislature.
   No explanation. No appeal. We weren’t invited to the secret witch trial. They just banned us.
   After two weeks of action by Rebel News, faced with a massive boycott and a Competition Bureau lawsuit, they blinked.
   Not only did Postmedia disavow their own letter banning us, they actually ordered all of their own reporters to quit the Alberta Press Gallery themselves! And — even more delicious — they ordered their sullen reporters to just shut up about it, and to stop promoting censorship!

JOHN TORY, TORONTO'S WOKE MAYOR

Toronto Mayor John Tory announced the start of what he calls sweeping reforms to the Toronto Police Services following the publication of a new city report that outlines more than 80 recommendations to address systemic racism within the force.

"This is a recognition of the fact that we know we must do more because systemic racism in policing threatens the equal rights and opportunity and justice and wellbeing of Indigenous, Black and marginalized communities in our city and that is not something that's acceptable to me as mayor or to you, the people of Toronto." he said

 "These [recommendations] represent the most sweeping series of proposed changes to policing," said Tory, adding that he believes they can be implemented in a way that keep police motivated to do their jobs well while stepping back to allow other organizations to take on some of their current responsibilities.  

Along with a focus on funding community organizations, the recommendations include examining accountability and exploring removing legal barriers that prevent further disciplinary action for police misconduct.

STRONACH SETTLES FAMILY FEUD

 A high-profile feud among members of the Stronach family has been resolved out of court, ending a potentially messy legal drama.

Under a settlement announced Thursday by The Stronach Group, control of the family fortune is basically split between two factions.

Former politician and business executive Belinda Stronach will remain chairwoman and president of The Stronach Group, with full control of its horse racing, gaming, real estate and related assets.

Her Austrian-born parents, Frank and Elfriede Stronach, will assume full ownership and control of a stallion and breeding business, all farm operations in North America and all European assets.

CORONA VIRUS CHARTER CHALLENGE

    CBC News has obtained an unredacted copy of a lawsuit launched by an anti-vaccination advocacy group against the government response to the coronavirus crisis, the details of which can now be independently verified and publicly reported for the first time. 

The lawsuit was filed July 6 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto by Aylmer, Ont.-based Vaccine Choice Canada and seven individuals. The legal action is a challenge under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the country's pandemic response measures, including compulsory face masks, the closure of businesses and the enforcement of physical distancing. 

The plaintiffs are suing the governments of Canada and Ontario, the City of Toronto, senior politicians, a number of local Ontario health authorities, health officials and the CBC over their response to the pandemic. 

The suit states that the closure of businesses to prevent the spread of the virus was "extreme, unwarranted and unjustified," that self-isolation measures imposed on individuals were "not scientific, nor medically based nor proven" and that the mandatory wearing of face coverings in some public spaces imposes "physical and psychological harm."

WE CHARITY WEASEL WORDS

    WE Charity has registered to lobby the federal government and retroactively disclosed dozens of previous interactions between its employees and federal officials over the past several months.
   Dalal Al-Waheidi, WE Charity's executive director, told MPs on the House of Commons finance committee the organization had submitted the paperwork to enter the Registry of Lobbyists on Thursday, the same day as her testimony.
   WE Charity filed a total of 65 communication reports with the registry, including 38 monthly communication reports in the past six months. The reports refer to any oral or other arranged communication with a public office holder, which can be a minister, political staffer or bureaucrat.

   WE Charity co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger, who appeared before the finance committee two weeks ago, told MPs the organization had not registered previously because it had "very limited engagement with the federal government seeking funds."

HEAVILY REDACTED RCMP SEARCH WARRANTS IN NS

 A senior RCMP officer in Nova Scotia who obtained search warrants for the investigation into the mass shooting in April was grilled in court Wednesday about why most of those documents remain heavily redacted.

Search warrants are supposed to be made public after they have been executed, with some exceptions, but in this case the Crown has produced heavily redacted versions that are now the subject of a court challenge by media outlets, including The Canadian Press.

In the mass shooting case, some of the victim’s relatives have complained they have not been told enough about what happened to their loved ones or how the RCMP’s actions may have played a role in their deaths. Most of the families are seeking to register a class action lawsuit against the RCMP.

WOKE PROFS AT CARLETON UNIVERSITY

 There’s no doubt that police services across Canada face challenges of racial bias in the way they do their work. It’s the sort of problem where one might expect intelligent insight or useful solutions from an organization like Carleton University’s Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Instead, Carleton’s criminology professors are reducing their engagement with these real-world problems by cancelling student internships with a wide range of policing and corrections organizations, starting next school year.

Cutting its ties to police and corrections organizations would undermine something the institute touts as an advantage on its own web site, which says  “Carleton’s location in Ottawa gives you research and employment opportunities at the Department of Justice, the RCMP, the Correctional Service of Canada, the National Crime Prevention Centre and the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.”

FARMING: A DANGEROUS PROFESSION

CALGARY -- Family of an 18-year-old farmer who they say was left bloodied after being dragged out of his tractor by Alberta Sheriffs performing a checkstop are raising money in an effort to have charges dropped.

Jeremia Leussink, 18, was travelling from one field to another on July 31 when he was stopped by Alberta Sheriffs performing a checkstop on Highway 2A near Didsbury.

Video footage shows five sheriffs surrounding Leussink's tractor and he is pulled out of the vehicle, which family says left him bloodied.

FART FACTS

 The pride of some, the horror of others, farting is an integral part of a healthy digestive system. As farting is such an integral part of our daily lives — the average human farts about eight times per day —  the sometimes stinky deed can provide us with quite a bit of information about our own bodies.

• The average human farts eight times per day, expelling 33 to 125mL per fart
• Diets high in fibre, raffinose, lactose, fructose and sorbitol can increases the amount of gas in the digestive tract and, with it, the need to fart
• An increase in the potency of the smell of a fart accompanied by abdominal pain is a symptom of food insensitivity — including lactose intolerance and celiac disease

WISCONSIN's IDIOTIC, VIRTUE-SIGNALLING MASK POLICY

Despite the deluge of data that continues to come in indicating that the coronavirus may not be the death sentence that the mainstream media has made it out to be, the sharp overreaction from those who can't help but be scared half to death from the virus continues unabated.

The latest example comes to us from the Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, who told its employees that effective August 1, they would have to wear a mask - even for teleconferences.

MEDIA WARNED ABOUT CRITICIZING KAMALA HARRIS

    Media organizations have just been warned by the Democratic Party machine that they better be very, very careful with how they cover Joe Biden’s vice presidential choice — just revealed to be Kamala Harris. Any criticism of the expected woman will be considered racist and sexist, we are told. Oh, they wrap up that threat in a word salad, but that’s the bottom line: There should be second and even third thoughts about any criticism of Mr. Biden’s VP pick.
   An actual memo went out from an ad hoc group of Democratic operatives (pretending to be advocates for women) to media organizations with orders on how to proceed with their coverage. The fact that they expected this partisan missive to be accepted and adhered to by media entities tells you all you need to know about the problem with today’s legacy media.

CONTROLLING THE ONLINE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS

   When the Toronto-based tech company Tucows Inc. discovered it was providing domain registration services to the Pakistani Taliban, it immediately contacted the RCMP for guidance.
   Days later, it was still waiting for a response.
   By Tuesday, it had waited long enough and took action on its own, disabling the website’s domain.
   The site was one of two using the services of Tucows that were propaganda arms of outlawed terrorist organizations — Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

RESTORE MARKET FORCES TO ONTARIO'S HYDRO MORASS

 The cost of electricity has been a drain on Ontario’s economy and public finances for decades. Successive governments have meddled more and more in the market for electricity, with Ontario ratepayers and taxpayers paying for the resulting rise in electricity costs, according to my new study, released Tuesday by the Fraser Institute. Despite promises to fix the mess, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has continued the policy of directly setting electricity’s price without lowering its cost.

As long as governments in Ontario treat electricity as a tool to be manipulated for electoral purposes and avoid re-establishing the supremacy of market forces, ratepayers and taxpayers will continue to hemorrhage money. 

THE FLAWED LOGIC OF RACE-CRIME STATISTICS

 A new report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission released Monday concludes Black people are disproportionately arrested and charged by Toronto Police compared to whites.

But it also found white people are disproportionately arrested, and charged by Toronto Police compared to visible minority groups, other than Blacks, which it collectively identified as “Asian, Aboriginal and Brown” people.

Should we thus conclude that not only are Toronto Police systemically racist against Blacks compared to whites (and other visible minorities), but also systemically racist against whites compared to “Asian, Aboriginal and Brown” people?

EXPOSING NUCTECH, CHINA'S X-RAY SCANNER PRODUCER

   Ivison:  Two weeks ago, as reported here first, the government of Canada made a standing offer to the self-same Nuctech to install X-ray scanners in all of its embassies and high commissions around the world — even though at least two Canadian companies had bid on the contract.
   At the time, I reported that Nuctech had won because it made the lowest bid: $6.8 million. Yet it turns out even that fig leaf of a defence has been blown away.
   Kham Lin of Calgary-based KPrime Technologies said his company offered to supply the scanners for $5.4 million. He said that even if the Nuctech bid included shipping and installation, KPrime would still have been able to offer a more competitive price.
   Lin’s contention is that Nuctech should not have been allowed to bid at all, given its checkered history. Besides the bribery controversy in Taiwan, Nuctech has been engaged in questionable practices in Namibia and Europe, where a five-year tariff was imposed on the company for alleged dumping.

LIBERALS' UNCONSTITUTIONAL FIRE ARMS BAN DRAWS LAWSUITS

   Legal challenges against the Liberal government’s firearms ban are beginning to pile up, with five separate lawsuits now challenging the constitutionality of a sweeping prohibition that infuriated gun owners and retailers.
    The five challenges, filed in federal court, claim that the government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contravened the Firearms Act when it immediately outlawed more than 1,500 firearms through regulatory decree rather than a legislative process. The Liberal government enforced the ban on May 1 through an order in council.

   Lawyers representing the applicants say the five lawsuits could potentially be consolidated into a single constitutional challenge, which would amount to one of the largest legal cases involving firearms in recent memory, involving lobby groups, gun sellers and individual owners. Provincial leaders, including Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, are also considering joining the legal battle against Ottawa.

GOV'T OF FRANCE APPEASING ITS ENEMIES WITHIN

  Lyon, the third largest city in France, July 20, 3 a.m. A middle-class neighborhood. A young woman walks her dog on a quiet street. A car arrives at high speed and crushes her dog. The driver stops, backs up, runs over the young woman and crushes her too. He goes forward again, at full speed, and drags her dead body half a mile. People awakened by the noise write down the license number of the car. The police officers who come to the scene are horrified. The young woman's body was dismembered. A leg was found on one side of the street; the rest of her body was shredded. One arm was close to the body of her dog. The other was still holding onto the dog's leash. Her name was Axelle Dorier. She was a nurse, only 23.
   Equally horrific acts, increasingly numerous, have been taking place every day in France, many times, for years. The perpetrators are usually young adults in their late teens or early twenties. All are immigrants from the Muslim world. They are not Islamists and have no political or religious motives. They generally show no remorse.
   They are described by the psychiatrists examining them as "practicing gratuitous violence": a violence without a goal other than enjoying inflicting violence. They appear to have no respect for human life or for laws.

CARNEY ADVISING THE COVID RECOVERY PLAN

   Mark Carney, the only person to run two major central banks, is helping Justin Trudeau craft next steps in a plan to pull Canada out of a deep recession sparked by the coronavirus.
   Five months after stepping down as Bank of England governor, Carney has become an informal adviser on policy matters with the Canadian prime minister. Trudeau is leaning on the former Goldman Sachs banker as a sounding board for what officials are characterizing as an ambitious economic recovery plan, according to a person familiar with internal policy operations.
   The plan will seek to tackle everything from deficiencies in the social safety net to climate change, infrastructure and immigration. The first measures are likely be rolled out in a budget update this fall before a more comprehensive fiscal package early next year, the person said.

USA COURT SLAPS SAUDI PRINCE MBS WITH SUMMONS

    A U.S. court has issued a summons for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a lawsuit from a former Saudi intelligence official now living in Canada who claims bin Salman attempted to assassinate him with a hit squad sent to Canada in October 2018.
   On Friday, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia told the crown prince — and numerous other defendants named by Saad Aljabri — “you must serve on the plaintiff an answer to the attached complaint” within 21 days upon receipt.
   A summons is an official notice that a person is being sued. The summons lists 12 additional defendants who, Aljabri alleges, were involved in the failed attempt on his life.

PATRICK BROWN STICK HANDLES THE TRUTH

   This weekend, thanks to a viewer tip, we released a twenty minute video showing Brampton, Ontario mayor Patrick Brown breaking his own COVID-19 rules at a hockey rink.
   Brown said he was there to check out the facility, not to play hockey. But if he was there to inspect the joint, why did he have a helper bring his hockey bag emblazoned with PATRICK BROWN #00 and sticks?
  Despite his own lockdown rules, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown has been playing taxpayer funded hockey with his pals at an arena, at a cost of $1,000 per day.

BLACK COP IN SAN DIEGO REFLECTS ON BLM

  And he denies that people of color are being unfairly singled out and targeted.  He also said some things that if said publicly by a white cop in today's bubble of wokeness, would get that cop fired.  Ben, a cop of color, said that, based upon his experience when dealing with suspects, the group that he knows he will most likely see incorrigible and/or violent behavior from are Blacks.  The group that he is next most likely to have such issues with are Hispanics.  And in third place, Whites.

But we all know that the protesters are of all colors.  Ben the cop witnessed some very aggressive protesters early on in downtown San Diego, emboldened by the "successful" level of destruction achieved during the nearby La Mesa protests. Heck, some of the San Diego protesters were likely veterans of the La Mesa protests.  Ben does not know why exactly, he speculated perhaps because we have a Republican mayor in San Diego, but the San Diego cops were allowed to bring their A game.  When the protesters tried throwing bricks and bottles they were responded to immediately with rubber bullets.  Body shots.

THE TERMINATION CLAUSE COULD BE UNENFORCEABLE

   COVID-19 has left many employees staring at a crystal ball, wondering about their futures.
   Many are left with the grim reality that even with the CERB ending shortly they may not return to work.
   Adding to this employee anxiety is the fact that some employers have carefully-crafted employment agreements that limit, to the furthest legal limits, severance payments for employees who will eventually be terminated.
   Based on a new decision, however, the termination clause in your employment agreement could be toast.

WHEN CHINA NATIONALIZES THE COMPANY

   China enticed an American entrepreneur with the opportunity of helping build a cutting-edge automobile company in the world’s largest car market, then used the uncertainty cast by COVID-19 to steal his intellectual property, the businessman says.
   Steve Saleen, founder of specialty high-performance sports car manufacturer Saleen Automotive, and his partner Charles Wang, a Chinese immigrant and former attorney at a New York law firm, were approached in late 2015 about forming a joint venture with the city of Rugao to manufacture automobiles.
   By early 2020, everything was going according to plan. The initial product, an SUV, was in certification and the employee headcount had swelled from three to nearly 1,000. The factory, armed with 470 state-of-the-art robots, was ready for production.
   Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck.  
  With both Saleen and Wang stuck in the U.S. as flights to China were grounded, the Rugao government seized on an opportunity to “nationalize the company,” according to Saleen.

TICKING BOMB OF LAX SHIPPING REGULATIONS

   Hidden behind the tragedy of the recent deadly explosion in Beirut is the more pervasive travesty of the abandonment of ships, seafarers and cargo, and unless the global public reckons with this deeper problem, another disaster is all-but inevitable.
   Though Lebanese investigators say that nearby fireworks likely ignited 2,750 tons of explosives, the true causes of this explosion stem from slower-moving and less dramatic factors: anemic enforcement by shady flag registries that are supposed to hold shipowners accountable, tightened immigration controls that routinely trap stranded crews on decrepit ships, lax rules and a maritime bureaucracy designed more to protect anonymity and secrecy of ship owners than to enable oversight and transparency of the industry.
  These are the factors that make it so easy for vessel owners and operators to walk away from their responsibilities, usually with impunity, and sometimes with life-or-death consequences for the crew that gets left behind.

AN EXERCISE IN OBFUSCATION

  The Halifax Examiner is one of eight media organizations that has been petitioning the court to unseal documents related to the RCMP’s investigation of the April 18/19 mass murders.
   The documents in question are the “Information to Obtain”s (ITOs) a search warrant, which the RCMP submitted to a court in order to get various search warrants. As well, we hope to get the search warrants themselves, and the “return”s, which are lists of what was seized during the searches.
   This is a long and expensive count battle, as federal and provincial Crown attorneys are resisting us at every stage. On May 25, we received redacted versions of the first seven (of an expected 20 or so) ITOs. Those ITOs mostly (but not entirely) duplicate each other, and they are heavily redacted. 

    Thursday, the RCMP released a statement “to provide context to recently unsealed information.”
   I distrust RCMP statements, both on principle and through experience.
   The principle is that the RCMP shouldn’t be attempting to spin the public about material that could conceivably put the RCMP in an unfavourable light. Put simply: the RCMP’s PR wing is not a trustworthy narrator.

THE PROBLEM WITH ALLIES

America’s many alliances, both formal and informal, are supposed to serve a purpose: enhance U.S. security. They are a means, not an end. Their effect might be to protect other nations, but their ultimate objective should be to make America safer.
   Yet Washington officials have come to treat military partners like Facebook friends, to be accumulated endlessly to win popular bragging rights. In which case Americans can easily claim victory. In recent years the U.S. added Montenegro and North Macedonia to NATO. Next up, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick? That would give the U.S. an insurmountable lead in the global friendship sweepstakes.
   In fact, now would be a good time to start the painful process of unfriending some useless or even counterproductive allies. That doesn’t mean treating them like enemies. Just wish them well and let them begin taking responsibility for their own problems — such as defending themselves, rather than expecting Uncle Sam to forever be a soft touch, with treasury doors wide open and troops ready to transport.

GIVE US A COHERENT DEFINITION OF SYSTEMIC RACISM

   The current Prime Minister recently publicly contradicted RCMP Commissioner, Brenda Lucki, for saying there is no systemic racism within the RCMP. Actually, Lucki said she didn’t know what “systemic racism” is.
   In her words, “I have to admit, I really struggle with the term ‘systemic racism’. I have heard about five or ten definitions on TV. I think that if systemic racism is entrenched in our police and our procedures we don’t have systemic racism”.
   The Prime Minister had none of that. According to him, not only was the RCMP “systemically racist” – whatever that means – all Canada’s institutions are “systemically racist”. A troop of his political supporters then loyally repeated his mantra. Yet, neither the Prime Minister nor his supporters were able to give a coherent definition of what being “systemically racist” was – even though they had just branded the RCMP and the whole country with that “racist” label.

TRUMP RESTORES IMPORT TAX ON CANADIAN ALUMINUM

   The Trudeau government is promising to impose retaliatory tariffs on American products after U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday he is restoring an import tax on raw aluminum from Canada later this month.
   "In response to the American tariffs, Canada intends to swiftly impose dollar-for-dollar countermeasures," Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a written statement.
   She called Trump's decision to reimpose tariffs on Canadian aluminum "unwarranted and unacceptable" and suggested his timing couldn't be worse.
   U.S. appliance companies like Whirlpool, where Trump chose to make his announcement Thursday, were forced to raise prices in 2019 because of the previous steel and aluminum tariffs.

EXPLAINING TO LIBERALS: CHINA IS NOT OUR FRIEND

   Canada’s former ambassador to China David Mulroney told a parliamentary committee meeting on Thursday that it’s time for a change in Canada’s approach to the country, a change he doesn’t believe the Liberal government is yet willing to make.
   “It is not clear that the government has completely given up the fiction that China is our friend,” he said. “This long overdue course correction must be shared with Canadians who would be enormously reassured.”
   Mulroney was supposed to appear alongside former ambassadors John McCallum and Robert Wright, but those two declined the invitation to appear. The committee voted to formally summon them to testify.