FROM THE LEFT: JUST THE SOUND OF CRICKETS

This asymmetry of institutional criticism and activism along ideological and partisan lines ought to concern everyone. An overwhelming left-wing bias in our mainstream institutions is neither healthy for our civic life nor the institutions themselves. It can ultimately lead to declining trust and rising polarization as we’ve witnessed elsewhere.

The elite reaction to the Trudeau government’s recent decision to sue the Parliamentary speaker is a case in point. The House of Commons has passed several motions in recent weeks to request documents from the government regarding the firing of two federal scientists on national security grounds and yet the government has consistently refused to comply.

The Trudeau government has now taken the extraordinary step of filing a lawsuit against Speaker Anthony Rota (who is himself a Liberal Member of Parliament) in order to circumvent the Parliamentary orders. The ongoing ordeal raises basic questions about Parliamentary supremacy in our constitutional system.

It’s precisely the sort of issue that ought to animate law professors across the country who can usually be relied upon to issue an open letter of condemnation every time a Conservative government makes a decision they don’t like. Yet there’s been deafening silence in response to the government’s act of executive aggrandizement. No open letters. No protests. No media exposes. Not even the usual snark or incredulity on social media. Apparently academic Twitter has suddenly exhausted its usual supply of indignation.

SENATE SAYS NO TO C-10 AND CONVERSION THERAPY BILL

Senators passed C-12, the government's "climate accountability" legislation, which would force current and future federal governments to set binding climate targets to get Canada to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The upper house passed it on a vote of 60-19, with two abstentions. All Conservative senators voted against the bill.

Senators also gave the green light to the multi-billion-dollar federal budget that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled in April, clearing the way for some pandemic-related programs to continue until the fall as the pandemic drags on.

But the government wanted at least four of its "priority" bills passed before Parliament wrapped up the last sitting ahead of what many predict will be a fall election campaign. It fell short on the conversion therapy ban and C-10, a bill designed to make online streamers contribute more to Canada's cultural landscape — which has been attacked by Conservatives as an attack on free speech.

NEBRASKA GOVERNOR'S LESSONS DEALING WITH CCP

Steering the flagship farming state of Nebraska, Gov. Pete Ricketts has been all about opening doors for the world’s markets to access his state’s plentiful produce. From top-quality beef raised on the lush Great Plains pastures to the premier agri-tech that assists the growing of crops around the world, Nebraska has been exporting billions of dollars worth of products, a lot of it to East Asia.

It made perfect sense to Ricketts to lead a trade mission to China in 2016 in an effort to expand the market further yet.

What happened on the trip, and in the following years, however, gave the Republican a rude awakening.

REVISITING SECTION 13 & CANADIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

 Free speech advocates say the Liberal government’s re-introduction of a new version of a controversial hate speech law involving the Canadian Human Rights Commission brings back the same problems that led to its repeal in 2013.

“The concerns that we had with (Section 13) continue to be concerns,” said Cara Zwibel, the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s fundamental freedoms program.

“I think we will probably see people making complaints that probably shouldn’t go forward and there may be a chilling effect on people who were concerned about expressing themselves and whether they’ll cross some sort of line.”

MILITARY VIOLATING THE RULES

 Military commanders violated federal rules and acted without authority when they ordered intelligence teams to collect information on the public as well as use propaganda techniques against Canadians, top defence officials now admit.

Information was culled from social media accounts of members of the public in Ontario and data was compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings. Military commanders also proceeded with a plan to use propaganda techniques employed during the Afghanistan war, claiming that was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic.

But military investigations into those activities have concluded not only were rules not followed, but senior leaders also had no authority to conduct such initiatives.

THE EMACIATED KIM JONG UN

 SEOUL — Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim.

“Seeing respected general secretary (Kim Jong Un) looking emaciated breaks our people’s heart so much,” the man said in an interview aired by state broadcaster KRT on Friday.

CENSORING & PUNISHING DOCTORS

SASKATCHEWAN: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms represents Dr. Francis Christian, Clinical Professor of General Surgery at the University of Saskatchewan and a practising surgeon in Saskatoon. Dr. Christian was called into a meeting today, suspended from all teaching responsibilities effective immediately, and fired from his position with the University of Saskatchewan as of September 2021.

On June 17, Dr. Christian released a statement to over 200 doctors which contained his concerns regarding giving the Covid shots to children. In it he noted that he is pro-vaccine, and that he did not represent any group, the Saskatchewan Health Authority, or the University of Saskatchewan. “I speak to you directly as a physician, a surgeon, and a fellow human being.” Dr. Christian noted that the principle of informed consent was sacrosanct and noted that a patient should always be “fully aware of the risks of the medical intervention, the benefits of the intervention, and if any alternatives exist to the intervention.”

“This should apply particularly to a new vaccine that has never before been tried in humans… before the vaccine is rolled out to children, both children and parents must know the risks of m-RNA vaccines,” he wrote.

Dr. Christian expressed concern that he had not come across “a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed” about Covid vaccines for children.

MCKENNA NOT SEEKING RE-ELECTION

  Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna has decided not to seek re-election.

Her surprise decision opens up some prime political real estate that could become a launching pad for former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney should he decide to run for the Liberals in the next election.

As Trudeau's environment minister during his first mandate, McKenna stick-handled the introduction of the Liberal government's national climate change action plan, which included imposing a price on carbon emissions.

IVERMECTIN: CAN A DRUG BE "RIGHT-WING"?

 As December passed into the New Year, Judith’s health declined. Her family members, increasingly desperate, had been doing what people in the Internet age do, Googling in search of potential treatments. They saw stories about the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, learning among other things that a pulmonologist named Pierre Kory had just testified before the Senate that the drug had a “miraculous” impact on Covid-19 patients. The family pressured doctors at the hospital to give Judith the drug. The hospital initially complied, administering one dose on January 2nd. According to her family’s court testimony, a dramatic change in her condition ensued.

“In less than 48 hours, my mother was taken off the ventilator, transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit, sitting up on her own and communicating,” the patient’s daughter Michelle Kulbacki told a court.

After the reported change in Judith’s condition, the hospital backtracked and refused to administer more. Frustrated, the family turned on January 7th to a local lawyer named Ralph Lorigo.

Lorigo immediately sued the hospital, filing to State Supreme Court to force the facility to treat according to the family’s wishes. Judge Henry J. Nowak sided with the Smentkiewiczes, signing an order that Lorigo and one of his attorneys served themselves, and after a series of quasi-absurd dramas that included the hospital refusing to let the Smentkiewicz family physician phone in the prescription — “the doctor actually had to drive to the hospital,” Lorigo says — Judith went back on ivermectin.

COVID INFECTIONS AT 2019 MILITARY GAMES IN WUHAN

 This week, lawmakers in the United States called for an investigation into whether the October 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China was a COVID-19 super-spreader event and whether officials should have known something was amiss, given that the city seemed unusually empty and was described by some participants as a “ghost town.”

Canada’s Parliament should do the same, according to some Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members who participated in the Games and came back with COVID-like symptoms that military officials seemingly ignored. Canada sent around 180 military athletes and support personnel to the Games, out of a total of 9,000 athletes from 100 countries.

The Games were held in October, but China did not disclose the virus to the world until the end of December.

ISRAEL'S FULLY VACCINATED CATCHING VARIANT

 About 90 percent of new COVID-19 infections in Israel were caused by the CCP virus’s Delta variant, officials said, while adding that about half of the adults infected in the recent outbreak were fully vaccinated.

Ran Balicer, who leads an expert advisory panel for the Israeli government, in announcing the finding on Friday, said that the country might end up implementing another lockdown after opening up earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The fully vaccinated individuals were inoculated with the Pfizer COVID-19 shot commonly used in Israel.

REMOVING SERIAL SEXUAL OFFENDERS FROM RCMP

 The RCMP says it's looking into whether it can automatically fire Mounties accused in multiple sexual harassment cases and stop other alleged perpetrators from retiring early.

The force says it's also seeking a legal opinion on whether it can fire Mounties found to have committed more than one act of harassment.

Both ideas come out of last winter's report by former Supreme Court of Canada justice Michel ​Bastarache, who was tasked with assessing claims made through a landmark sexual assault and harassment lawsuit. His scathing final report called for changes to the RCMP's culture and discipline methods.

JUSTIN'S PURSUIT OF POWER

OTTAWA -- Justin Trudeau’s blueprint for his future career is an easy read.

The prime minister aims to call an election this summer, coast to a majority mandate on post-vaccination euphoria, spend a couple years as ‘dean’ of world leaders at the G7 before retiring to lucrative corporate directorships and an international speaking tour paying a cool $150,000 per canned speech.

But that victory march might hit a nasty speedbump if voters believe they’re being dragged to the polls by an arrogant government using false pretenses to call Trudeau’s last election.

There was plenty of evidence this week that all Trudeau’s protestations about not wanting a fall vote are merely deceptions rooted solely in his minority government’s pursuit of greater power.

CANCELLING AN ASSOCIATION WITH PAYETTE

 An elementary school in Kanata named for Julie Payette will be renamed, Ottawa’s French public school board decided at its regular meeting Tuesday evening.

According to a report, written originally in French, CEPEO sought a possible name change because the allegations against Payette could have a negative impact on the school’s reputation.

751 UNMARKED GRAVES ON RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL GROUNDS

Cowessess First Nation says it has found an estimated 751 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.

Chief Cadmus Delorme said,  "The Catholic church representatives removed the headstones and today they are unmarked graves," he said.

 Delorme says he is confident that the Church will hand over records pertaining to the school, but at present, they have just one book of records from a Knowledge Keeper, who he said held onto it when she was young, despite threat of charges.

THE DETESTABLE CAROLYN BENNETT

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs is calling on Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett to resign following a text she sent to Jody Wilson-Raybould, which Bennett has acknowledged was “inappropriate.”

Wilson-Raybould, Independent MP for Vancouver-Granville, is a member of the We Wai Kai Nation in B.C. She tweeted her horror following the discovery of 751 unmarked residential school graves in Saskatchewan. In the same tweet, she added that “no one really wants” an election right now.

Bennett, in a text that linked to that tweet, sent a single-word message to Wilson-Raybould: “Pension?”

PHAC HEAD'S HISTORY WITH CHINA CONTROVERSIES

But the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada has a long history of interface with China, both pursuing active engagement and handling Beijing’s sometimes-controversial behaviour.

His career in that sense mirrors Canada’s balancing act with a nation that is a growing hotbed of science — and alleged plunderer of others’ research.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s Asia-Pacific section, says CSIS has consistently warned of China’s vast intelligence-gathering network and the threat it poses to Canadian intellectual property. A report he commissioned in the mid-1990s while at the service estimated Canada lost more than $10 billion a year from economic espionage.

But Juneau-Katsuya says governments give short shrift to the intelligence agency’s cautions and are too lax in protecting Canada’s scientific jewels.

WHY I SPOKE OUT AGAINST LOCKDOWNS

I had no choice but to speak out against lockdowns. As a public-health scientist with decades of experience working on infectious-disease outbreaks, I couldn’t stay silent. Not when basic principles of public health are thrown out of the window. Not when the working class is thrown under the bus. Not when lockdown opponents were thrown to the wolves. There was never a scientific consensus for lockdowns. That balloon had to be popped.

LIBERALS DESPERATE FOR C-10 TO BECOME LAW

 While most Canadians were sound asleep, the Trudeau Liberals — along with their allies in the Bloc and NDP — were busy passing a bill to regulate your social media feed.

The controversial Bill C-10 passed third reading shortly after 1:30 Tuesday morning after a 14-hour marathon sitting of the House.

Thankfully, this bill is unlikely to pass the Senate before the upper house rises for the summer recess, but the Liberals have made it clear that they want this passed and will push hard when Parliament returns in the fall.

MEDIA TURNING ON DR TAM

 Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has never exactly been popular among the mainstream journalists, commentators and public intellectuals I follow on social media. But nor has she come in for a huge amount of criticism — certainly nothing like her retiring-on-Friday colleague at Queen’s Park, Dr. David Williams.

But Tam’s luck may have run out this week at a press conference on Tuesday. With remarkable and frankly inexplicable speed, the Canadian media narrative recently swerved from “will the inevitable fourth wave be the worst yet?” to “what’s taking so long to reopen?” We have surpassed the benchmarks Tam herself established in April for loosening restrictions: 75 per cent with a single dose, 20 per cent with two. Why, reporters demanded to know, has Tam not issued guidance on what vaccinated Canadians can and cannot do?

Tam did not seem prepared for that. The third time she was asked, she began as follows: “I’m sure you’ve heard that vaccinated people can get infected, so even the most effective vaccines are not absolutely perfect.”

LOOMING SOLAR PANEL TRASH TSUNAMI

 The study — which attempted to estimated the raw tonnage of solar panels set to hit landfills in coming years — warned that if the solar industry doesn’t get a handle on its trash problem, “we may soon face the dark side of renewable energy.”

While hydroelectricity remains by far Canada’s largest source of renewable energy, solar capacity has skyrocketed in recent years.  Driven in large part by government incentives, at the end of 2019 Canada had 3,310 MW of solar panels as compared to just 221 MW in 2010  — an increase of 1,500 per cent. If the sun is shining, all those panels technically have a capacity matching that of Ontario’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

However, solar panels have a short lifespan and are particularly ill-suited for recycling. They contain very few materials worth recovering, and as bulky sheets of glass, they’re expensive to transport to a recycling facility.

FIRED SCIENTIST LISTED AS CHINA'S INVENTOR

The high-profile scientist who was fired from Canada’s top infectious disease lab collaborated with Chinese government scientists on inventions registered in Beijing, but closely related to her federal job, intellectual property documents indicate.

 The federal Public Servants Inventions Act states that the federal government owns all inventions “made by a public servant that resulted from or is connected with his duties or employment.”

And the legislation says a government employee cannot file a patent outside the country without the minister’s permission.

Mark Johnson, a spokesman for the Public Health Agency of Canada, refused to comment on whether Qiu had obtained such permission.

CHINA'S COVID COUP

It is time for Americans to contemplate the possibility that the United States may be surpassed as the world’s most influential country. The Chinese have just won the greatest strategic victory in the last 30 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However it originated, the novel coronavirus was repressed within China by recourse to draconian measures but was deliberately permitted to infect the rest of the world, enabling China to exploit the blunderbuss Western lockdowns and make a giant leap towards economic preeminence in the world. 

TWO CATHOLIC CHURCHES BURNT IN BC

 Two Catholic churches on Indigenous land in the southern Okanagan were destroyed by fire early Monday, as shock waves continue from the discovery of 215 unidentified graves near the old Kamloops Indian Residential School.

According to Penticton South Okanagan RCMP spokesman Sgt. Jason Bayda, an officer on patrol spotted fire coming from the Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band land at around 1:20 a.m.

Bayda said that less than two hours later — at 3:10 a.m. — Oliver RCMP and the Oliver Fire Department were notified that St. Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Band land was ablaze.

“Both churches burned to the ground and police are treating the fires as suspicious,” Bayda said.

The wooden churches were each at least 100 years old and are the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nelson.

LIBERALS' DISMAL RECORD OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

 In a recent interview, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland explained the need to focus on economic growth to deal with many of Canada’s fiscal issues including our high debt levels. Minister Freeland is correct that higher rates of economic growth would solve many of the country’s issues. Unfortunately, her policy prescription for higher growth is more of the same—more debt-financed government spending and new and higher taxes—which has delivered lower, not higher, economic growth since the Trudeau government came to power.

A recent study compared the economic performance for the four-year periods preceding the last five recessions (or economic slowdowns)—specifically, the economic performance of 2016-19 (Trudeau), 2011-14 (Harper), 2005-08 (Martin-Harper), 1997-2000 (Chrétien) and 1986-89 (Mulroney).

The results were clear, both in terms of overall economic growth (GDP) and growth in per-person GDP. The Trudeau government experienced the weakest economic growth compared to the previous four governments. For per-person GDP growth, the results weren’t even close. Trudeau recorded average growth of 0.8 per cent, which was 50 per cent lower than the next lowest performer (1.2 per cent during the Martin-Harper period of 2005-08).

INFRASTRUCTURE BANK BOONDOGGLE

 The House of Commons Transportation committee reported this week that the Canada Infrastructure Bank is in breach of a committee order, dated March 23, demanding it discloses how much it is paying its executives in bonuses and severance.

Calgary-area Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie, revealed “millions of dollars have been paid to executives,” some of whom are no longer even with the CIB.

Last year, the bank that can’t even give away government money in the middle of a pandemic, nonetheless reported it had paid $3.4 million in bonuses to executives and $3.8 million in severance. Some severance went to employees who left willingly.

CRA AUDITS OF ULTRA-WEALTHY YIELD NOTHING

 Data from the Canada Revenue Agency shows its recent efforts to combat tax evasion by the super-rich have resulted in zero prosecutions or convictions.

In response to a question tabled in Parliament by NDP MP Matthew Green, the CRA said it referred 44 cases on individuals whose net worth topped $50 million to its criminal investigations program since 2015. 

Only two of those cases proceeded to federal prosecutors, with no charges laid afterward.

Green said federal authorities avoid pursuing Canada's biggest tax cheats but go after small business owners who don't pay their taxes under a "two-tiered system" pocked with "loopholes."

ARROGANT LIBERALS DEFY HOC ORDER

The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Iain Stewart, appeared before the bar at the House of Commons today, where he was publicly admonished by Speaker Anthony Rota for failing to turn over to a Commons committee documents related to the the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Stewart was ordered to bring with him the unredacted documents demanded by opposition MPs. The Speaker said Stewart's lawyer had reached out to Rota's office earlier in the day saying he would be unable to produce the documents.

In defiance of the House order, the minority Liberal government instead provided the unredacted documents to the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, NSICOP, whose members have top security clearance and are bound to secrecy.

NSICOP was established by the Liberal government in 2018 to review Canada's national security and intelligence activities.

NET ZERO A SUICIDE MISSION FOR CANADA

Canada’s plan for net-zero “greenhouse-gas emissions” by 2050 will come home to roost. Grandstanding has consequences, and in Bill C-12 we are witnessing the legislation to give it teeth. The demonized energy sector appears impotent to resist this attack and is outwardly embracing the idea, presumably to placate regulators and the woke mob.

Grandiose promises, for which the bills come over in decades, are a natural product of election-minded politicians. Their strategy is to garner positive press while leaving someone else to deal with the difficult task of making the promises happen, including paying for them. This is how, for example, unfunded liabilities became prevalent in Canadian governments at all levels.

Just as Millennials and Generation Z will have to pick up the tab for Ponzi schemes such as the Canada Pension Plan, so too will they have to pay for pie-in-the-sky environmentalism. The price will come in the form of fewer jobs available and higher energy prices, which in turn raise the prices of almost everything in the economy.

TRANSWOMEN IN WOMENS PRISONS

For five decades, thanks to feminism and The Pill, women’s cultural standing and fortunes advanced steadily. At long last respect! Then, gender ideologues decreed that men who identify as women “are” women, with all the attendant rights due to them such an affirmation implies.

Astonishingly, without demur, in the name of “inclusion,” our cultural and political elites fell in with this self-evident untruth. And so, in the past decade, respect for women has receded, as fairness and safety in protected single-sex spaces like sport, abuse shelters and prisons have been compromised. That this double-cross of women is happening with the full-throated complicity of policy-makers who call themselves feminists is especially confounding.

It is now government policy that men who identify as women — or say they do — are permitted to request transfer to women’s prison, where conditions are more pleasant, since violence there is not the issue it is in men’s prisons. These natal males are not required to undergo sex reassignment surgery, as used to be the case, which set a numerically low limit to those qualifying, or even required to embark on a hormone program. Amongst those natal males who have been permitted to transfer to Canadian women’s prisons have been a serial pedophile, a serial sex offender, a contract killer, a child killer and a murderer.

LIBERALS' VIRTUE-SIGNALLING UNENFORCEABLE LAW ON IMPORTS

 A workers-rights group has uncovered new evidence that goods possibly made with forced labour are entering Canada from China and elsewhere, despite being banned in the United States.

Dozens of shipments of Malaysian palm oil and clothing manufactured in China have arrived in this country from two companies blacklisted by the U.S., a report released Monday by Above Ground reveals.

The information adds to evidence that, despite a new Canadian law meant to keep out products of slave labour, such goods continue to flow into the country with impunity.

The government has yet to indicate that any shipment has been barred under the law.

RE-FUNDING POLICE

 Who could gave guessed that defunding the police would cause crime to skyrocket?

Anyone with common sense, obviously. But, woke cities run by liberals learned the hard way as my colleague Stephen Kruiser wrote on June 7. According to a report from Fox Business, cities including New York City, Oakland, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles are “planning to reinstate tens of millions for the construction of new police precincts, increase police department budgets, among other plans to bankroll more efforts to confront the uptick in crime.”

While restoring funding will certainly help, perhaps the more important question is whether anyone would want to be a part of law enforcement in municipalities that don’t fully support them. The Associated Press reported just last week that “law enforcement agencies across the country experienced a wave of retirements and departures and are struggling to recruit the next generation of police officers,” since the death of George Floyd reignited anti-police sentiment and protests calling for “defunding the police.”

SHAMELESS BACK-PATTING OF MINISTER OF LTC

On Saturday morning now former Minister of Long Term Care Merrilee Fullerton was busy thanking everyone on Twitter for a job well done.

She thanked the many people who helped her “repair” and “rebuild” long-term care.

She also thanked her “team” at the LTC ministry for putting residents first.

It would be laughable if her tweets weren’t so darn infuriating and devoid of reality.

 It was as if she’d had an award-winning Oscar-like performance at the helm of the long-term care ministry over the past three years and most particularly during the COVID pandemic.

PHAC HEAD HIDES BEHIND PRIVACY ACT

The extremely rare reprimand, requested as part of an opposition motion, comes after PHAC has declined for weeks to provide documents to a parliamentary committee that might explain why two scientists were fired from Canada’s highest-security infectious disease lab earlier this year.

Stewart on Friday said he made the decision to withhold documents on the advice of officials in the Justice Department. He said he has not spoken with anyone in the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the matter.

He said the ruling that his department was in contempt of Parliament does not absolve him of the need to adhere to the Privacy Act and other laws, saying “that’s been the challenge in this file.”

Opposition members on the heath committee blasted Stewart for withholding the documents, citing past rulings that have found the right of Parliament to compel documents “supersedes statutory obligations.”

EXPOSING CENSORSHIP OF DOCTORS & SCIENTISTS

Independent MP Derek Sloan holds a news conference on Parliament Hill to raise concerns about the alleged censorship of doctors and scientists as well as medical information related to vaccines. The Ontario MP has been critical of lockdowns that have been in place due to the pandemic.

Derek Sloan has reached out to whistle blowing nurses and doctors, and others, in Ontario to tell their stories.

PATHOGENS ON YOUR CHILD'S MASK

Meanwhile, we on Team Reality have not only continued to point to real-world data that shows masking to be entirely ineffective, we've also maintained that forced public masking, especially long-term, has negative societal and even health ramifications that the powers-that-be are all-too-happy to ignore in subservience to their newfound face mask god.

It only stands to reason that one of those health ramifications would be the fact that millions of people, particularly children, have been forced to wear and carry around pieces of cloth they've continually breathed through for hours on end. What lurking pathogens might be found on these disgusting contraptions being incessantly handled, stuck in pockets, and mindlessly tossed on books, tables, and desks? Well, one group of Florida parents sent a batch of masks worn by their children to a lab to find out. And yeah, you'll probably need to make sure you aren't eating dinner anytime soon before you digest THESE results.

TRUDEAU'S FEMALE SHIELD

 Freeland, Paul had claimed, had a hand in former Green MP Jenica Atwin crossing the floor to the Liberals — something she said was part of a pattern from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “undermining strong women, capable women at the height of their careers,” and of “pushing, strong, competent, capable women out of politics.”

Trudeau, Paul alleged, does this to women “with impunity.”

“I’m also going to say shame on Chrystia Freeland for her complicity in this, for being his female shield against all of that,” Paul said, speaking with host Greg Brady in an interview for 640 Toronto Thursday morning.

“She also has a role to play. She also was in these conversations with Jenica Atwin.”

HOLDING PHAC IN CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT

For the first time in more than a century, the Canadian House of Commons has ordered a private citizen to appear on the floor of the chamber for a formal reprimand by members.

Conservative MP Gérard Deltell put forward a motion on Thursday that asked the House of Commons to find the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament for not turning over documents it had been ordered to provide to the Canada-China committee.

In this case, the adoption of the motion means that in addition to finding the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament, the House of Commons has also voted to order the president of the agency to appear at the bar of the chamber for a formal reprimand within two sitting days.

SPEAKER VOIDS AMENDMENTS OF C-10

The Liberal government’s push to speed controversial broadcasting bill C-10 through Parliament hit a road bump Tuesday, when the Speaker of the House voided dozens of amendments to the bill.

The amendments were made public Monday when the amended bill was tabled in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Blake Richards asked the Speaker of the House to strike those amendments, arguing the committee exceeded its authority, and on Tuesday the Speaker agreed.

Speaker Anthony Rota declared dozens of amendments added at committee after debate time ran out null and void, and ordered the bill to be reprinted without them.

 “In some ways it’s indicative of frankly how the Liberals have handled this bill, almost from the get go. You’ve had a minister unable to effectively communicate the contents of it, you’ve had a provision pulled back which clearly has sparked enormous amount of concern across the country,” Geist said Tuesday. “And now, in the rush to try to get this legislation through without any real debate, and it oversteps the very boundaries of committee. And especially for this government which came to power, arguing that it was going to give more power to committees and leave them more independent, to see them rebuked in this way by their own speaker is, I think quite telling.”

THE G7 HYPOCRITES

  Rex Murphy:  It was heartening to see Mr. Trudeau prancing about in various photos, he who has been in lockdown longer than medieval hermits, now wandering with the Queen in her garden, unmasked in one picture, masked in another. Something like Batman, he has a secret identity (that everyone knows). It was good, too, to see him finally socializing a bit, and nice of Stella McCartney not to insist on a mask when they met.

Their frolics and inconsistencies have not gone unnoticed. The guy who normally runs a now closed barbershop, the owner of the bankrupt shoe store, the waitress at the closed restaurant, these people and thousands like them are only too painfully alert that there are two types of people in this COVID era. Those who have no choice but to bear the weight of the rules; and those who made them, and then pick and choose what day or moment they themselves will abide by them.

No one thinks they shouldn’t meet. But why do they get to flip the rules when it suits them? In the COVID era must they meet in person? As Mr. Scrooge might say, “Is there no Zoom? Are there no cellphones?”

THE LAUGHABLE PM

 Apparently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fancies himself the “dean” of the G7, based on his maturity, wisdom and … be quiet back there. This is a serious news story.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not exactly a grownup even if he has found time to father more children than he can count. And French President Emmanuel Macron is not exactly a grownup even if he and Trudeau found time to pledge to strengthen “security co-operation and strategic dialogue in the Sahel” while “on the margins of the G7.” (No really; it’s what their press release said.)

As well as “making new commitments on gender equality at the Generation Equality Forum, and advancing equality, diversity, inclusion and the fight against all forms of hatred, discrimination and violence; promoting, in both countries and internationally, ambitious objectives for the protection of biodiversity … and for the fight against climate change and for carbon neutrality by 2050 … developing their cultural exchanges and promoting the Francophonie as an expression of cultural diversity and as a space for prosperity and democracy,” blah blah blah.

CHINA'S MIRACLE SURGE OF ORGAN DONORS

The Chinese Communist Party celebrated on Sunday that the current number of organ donation “volunteers” in the country is 100 times the size it was in 2015, shortly before China began building concentration camps for ethnic minorities.

China’s state-run Global Times in particular applauded an alleged increase in the number of organ donation volunteers since the first outbreak of Chinese coronavirus began in central Wuhan city in late 2019. Reports published last year indicated a potential rise in the live harvesting of organs from political prisoners in desperate attempts to perform lung transplants on coronavirus patients.

LIBERALS SHRUG AT WE ETHICS REPORT

 Breaking with the hallowed tradition of government committees that putter along for years without producing any meaningful output, on Thursday the House ethics committee released a timely, pointed, and actually useful report.

Within its scathing 116 pages lies a list of 20 recommendations to reform Canada’s lobbying and conflict of interest laws, supported by all three major opposition parties. While they largely stem from the infamous WE Charity affair, they also touch upon other suspect pandemic funding decisions, including those for large ventilator contracts.

Unfortunately, the governing Trudeau Liberals aren’t on board. They attached a four-page dissenting opinion that rejects the committees’ 20 recommendations as either “unhelpful” or “outside the scope of this study.” They also include three recommendations of their own; ones that would be comical in their hollow inanity if the subject  weren’t of such importance to Canada’s democracy and national security.

THE WORST FORM OF LAWMAKING

The House of Commons heritage committee has been accused of “secret law-making” as it rushes to pass the controversial C-10 broadcasting bill.

On Thursday, the Liberal, NDP and Bloc members of the committee agreed to vote on more amendments but without the opportunity to ask for explanations, or clarification about what the effect of those amendments would be.

“I find it shocking and deeply troubling that the committee is proceeding with clause-by-clause by voting on amendments that have not been made public, are not subject to debate, and there are no experts available to answer questions,” said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. Geist, a vocal critic of the bill, said that process amounts to secret law-making.

 Geist said in an email that voting on bills without experts in the room constitutes “the very worst form of lawmaking.” Geist, who obtained the text of some of the amendments, said one of the them uses language similar to net neutrality but may have the effect of harming net neutrality. “Were any experts consulted on this? Do MPs who voted on it understand the implications?” he asked.

JUST ANOTHER AMBITIOUS CYNIC

 One wonders what that idealistic young man would have made of the Liberal Party’s latest electoral manoeuvre – supporting a Bloc Québécois sponsored bill to make concessions on supply management in future trade deals illegal, while secretly working to frustrate the legislation’s passage into law? It is hardly the “real change” he sold voters on six years ago.

The Liberal plan appears to be to support the bill in the House, enabling Quebec Liberal MPs to boast of their supply management bona fides in an election, and then grind things to a halt in committee, so that the legislation dies on the order paper when Parliament rises.

MAXIME BERNIER ARRESTED

 WINNIPEG — The leader of the People's Party of Canada was arrested Friday in Manitoba after attending a rally against COVID-19 restrictions.

RCMP said Maxime Bernier was charged with exceeding public gathering limits and violating Manitoba's requirement to self-isolate upon entering the province.

The arrest south of Winnipeg occurred before Bernier was to arrive at a protest in Winnipeg.

CHINA's ANTI-SANCTIONS LAW

There should be little doubt that the timing is intentional: China on Thursday passed its sweeping new law to 'safeguard' Chinese businesses and entities from Western and especially US sanctions, just hours ahead of President Joe Biden sitting down with G-7 leaders in Cornwall to argue for a common stance on curtailing China's influence. AFP observes: "China's quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing 'irreconcilable' compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investment."

THE WAR OVER GENETIC PRIVACY

“When you upload your DNA, you’re potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family.”— Law professor Elizabeth Joh

“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age.

All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.

Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

BLM INFIGHTING ESCALATES

Monica Showalter prophetically saw Black Lives Matter starting to fall apart over money almost two weeks ago, and events yesterday confirmed her prediction. Jon Street of Fox News reports on the grass roots local chapters that are demanding “accountability” and “transparency” in the wake of earlier revelations about the lavish spending of co-founder Patrisse Cullors . The reactions escalated yesterday, as the news that she has spent at least $35,000 on fencing and an electronic gate for that luxury compound became known.

It probably started with the mother of Breonna Taylor, a young woman who died in a police shooting, who criticized the organization for its exploitative ways. That may have surprised some people, but her argument was logical and believable: she said the organization not only did nothing to help the rest of Taylor's family, but raised millions of dollars for itself through the use of her daughter's name, while sharing none of its largesse. 

MISTRUST OF RCMP IN NS

The RCMP’s near-blanket refusal to provide information about its investigation into the shooting spree that terrorized Nova Scotians in April of last year may be to blame for a series of leaks to a Halifax magazine, policing experts told Global News.

Two experts, including a former senior RCMP officer, told Global News these kinds of leaks most often occur when individual police officers don’t trust the institutions they work for to tell the truth. Leaking this information, they said, is a way of ensuring accountability and transparency.

Davies said the RCMP’s decision to remain silent about what it knew -- and when it knew it -- about the gunman has caused significant reputational damage to the force and led people to distrust what it says.

“What it smacks of is, basically, protecting the herd,” Davies said.

JOHN TORY'S LEGACY DREAMS DISAPPEAR

The tribunal's ruling is a "big blow to the future of the park," said Mayor John Tory Wednesday. "I'm deeply disappointed because it makes it more difficult, with the expense and otherwise, for that park to proceed as envisioned."

Rail Deck Park was estimated to cost close to $1.7 billion in 2017, and was touted by Tory as a "now or never" opportunity. The 21 acres of green space would stretch across downtown's rail corridor, south of Front Street from Blue Jays Way to Bathurst Street, and is the last remaining site suitable for a signature park.

"You have to think big in the context of growing a great global city," Tory told reporters Wednesday. "That's what this was about."

IRAN'S BAD LUCK

 Iran has suffered a lot of bad luck during the past few weeks. We should be cheering for the people who have made it so and are working to ensure it stays bad. With any luck on our side, it will affect the Iranian ships that are now sailing the South Atlantic and probably headed to Venezuela.

CANADA IS NOT RUN BY GROWN-UPS

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is overseas strutting his stuff at the big boys’ table at the G7 and NATO conferences. But Canada is no longer one of the seven biggest economies, and is a laggard in terms of its NATO commitments.

Due to mediocre growth, high taxation, low productivity and over-regulation, Canada hasn’t made the cut for a while, but stays in the G7. Both Italy and Canada are smaller, in terms of nominal gross domestic product, than China and India. Canada is the world’s ninth-largest economy, according to International Monetary Fund estimates, but — at current growth rates — could be overtaken in a couple of years by South Korea, Russia and Australia.

Canada is not run by grown-ups, but by a cabinet that has zero expertise in business, economics or much of anything else except spending and taxing. The result is falling standards of living due to productivity drops.

RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS AWASH WITH CHILD PREDATORS

One of the most horrific aspects of Indian Residential Schools — and the one that took the longest to be publicly revealed — is that virtually from their inception they were institutions awash with child predators.

Schools didn’t bother performing even the most rudimentary background checks on potential new employees and they paid such piddling wages they would take almost any willing recruit. Students were kept constantly hungry and were relentlessly cowed into meek obedience through corporal punishment, both of which would be ruthlessly exploited by abusers.

 As for why so few abusers have faced punishment for their actions, the sexual predators who ran through the Indian Residential School system benefited from the fact that so many of their victims ended up dead, homeless, incarcerated or addicted to drugs. For those willing to step forward with charges and relive the traumas of the abuse, the almost universal result was years of court action resulting in a sentence amounting to only a few weeks of jail time per victim.

“The Canadian legal system failed to provide justice to Survivors who were abused,” read the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “When, in the late 1980s, that system eventually did begin to respond to the abuse, it did so inadequately and in a way that often re-victimized the Survivors.”

CDC'S SLOW RESPONSE TIME TO COVID JAB PROBLEMS

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an "emergency meeting" of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.

Does anyone else not find it odd that after discovering 800 cases in the VAERS database the "emergency" meeting is in 7 days? ... and in the meantime, every public health authority figure is encouraging parents to get their young children vaccinated?

CRA QUESTIONS WE CHARITY DONATION RECEIPTS

The WE Charity is in hot water again, this time with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which has levied penalties against it for improperly issuing donation receipts of $1.8 million. The charity has filed an appeal with the tax court and a trial date must now be scheduled.

 The dispute involves four WE Day events held in Canada between 2010 and 2012. The CRA imposed penalties of five per cent on the disputed receipts of $1.8 million – penalties of only $90,000, though the alleged donors may have enjoyed tax savings of up to $800,000. The disputed tax receipts represent more than five per cent of all receipts issued by the charity during the period.

FRUSTRATED EMPLOYERS BLAME OTTAWA

 The CRB has been paying out $500 per week to unemployed workers. Ottawa is planning to reduce that to $300 per week in July.

“The government is empowering people to stay home and still get paid,” said Angelo Santorelli, president of Schomberg, Ont.-based Trisan Construction.

Trisan employs around 180 people and pays its operators anywhere between $22 and $28 per hour, Santorelli said. But he has seen workers across that pay range decline work in order to continue receiving federal benefits.

LIBERALS' CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY LEGISLATION

 Bill C-12, the Liberal government's net-zero emissions accountability act, could be a landmark law in the history of Canada's efforts to combat climate change.

But first it has to actually become a law — and it's suddenly not obvious that the bill will get through both the House of Commons and Senate before both chambers adjourn for the summer.

If the bill fails to pass before then, long-held hopes for climate accountability legislation in Canada could hang in the balance during a fall federal election.

KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE OFFICIALLY DEAD

 Albertans will owe about $1.3 billion for Keystone XL as the government and TC Energy confirmed Wednesday the pipeline project is officially dead.

The announcements come after U.S. president Joe Biden signed an executive order to revoke the pipeline’s permit on his first day in office in January — a move he had promised during his election campaign.

In a news release Wednesday afternoon, the government said it reached an exit agreement with TC Energy, but both parties would still look for ways to recoup the government’s investment in the project. The release said final costs to the government are expected to be approximately $1.3 billion, as previously estimated.

SNAP. JUST LIKE THAT, THEY DISAPPEAR

 A massive data correction by the Eastern Ontario Health Unit wiped 123 confirmed COVID-19 cases from the region’s running totals on Tuesday afternoon.

On its website, the EOHU noted the change was due to a data correction, with no further explanation as to the significant drop in numbers.

Along with the reduction in the running total, the number of active cases also dropped from 95 to 14, changing the picture of COVID-19’s presence in the region substantially.

OPPOSITION ON THE RESERVES

If there is a villain in the Indian Residential School story, one can do no better than Duncan Campbell Scott, the career bureaucrat who oversaw the enforced expansion of the Indian Residential School system in the early 20th century.

“Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian department,” Scott famously told a Canadian Senate hearing.

“The Indians do not, unfortunately, seem to show any great appreciation of what we are trying to do for their children,” reads an 1892 annual report from Shingwauk Residential School, one of the country’s first. Two generations later, in a 1940 letter a principal at Ahousaht Residential School similarly bemoaned the fact that the “progress” they instilled at the school was being diluted by “opposition on the reserves.”

MEDICATED STATISTICS

Sucharit Bhakdi, formerly of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, currently chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz and co-author of Corona False Alarm? shows how Germany’s federal government and research agency for disease control, the RKI—the country’s counterpart of the CDC in the U.S.—had juggled the numbers. The RKI, he writes, “calculated that 170,000 infections with 7000 coronavirus deaths equals a 4% case fatality rate.” The problem is that “the number of infections was at least ten times higher because mild and asymptomatic cases had not been sought and detected. This would bring us to a much more realistic fatality rate of 0.4%.”

Additionally, deaths from other causes were folded into the mortality count. A true statistical correction “would yield an estimate of between 0.24% and 0.26%.” Sucharit wryly provides a hypothetical example. “If I drive to the hospital to be tested and later have a fatal car accident…I become a coronavirus death. If I am diagnosed positive for coronavirus and jump off the balcony in shock, I also become a coronavirus death.” Statistically speaking, it’s a good gig if you can get it.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS

Mark Steyn:

John Hinderaker writes:  The anxiety of the entire American establishment to protect the Chinese Communist Party is remarkable. Prominent Americans from Joe Biden to Mark Zuckerberg to Lebron James apparently prioritize loyalty to China over pretty much everything else. We normal Americans need a much better understanding of why this should be true.

To which Roger L Simon provides the obvious answer. These guys figure the Chinese have already won - and therefore, unlike Kraut-chummy Parisian trollopes in 1945, there will be no price to be paid for "collaboration":

A perfect example is giant Apple whose most recent quarterly China revenue came in at a record-breaking $21 billion+. At the same time we got all sorts of 'social justicey' talk from CEO Tim Cook.

What Cook is doing, cashing in big on one side while mouthing 'liberal' pieties on the other, suits the Chinese communists perfectly well, essentially enabling them. Apple then becomes a linchpin of American communism much in the way Huawei is a linchpin of Chinese communism. (Not inconsequentially, Apple's top five executives, including Cook, earned a total of almost exactly $120 million in 2020, up 13 percent during the pandemic.)

CLAIMS CRA TARGETS MUSLIM CHARITIES

  In a new report, a civil rights group says the Canada Revenue Agency has unfairly targeted Muslim charities for audits, causing a disproportionate number to lose their charitable status.

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group studied the work of the Review and Analysis Division (RAD), a unit set up inside of the CRA in 2003 to specifically look for terrorist financing connected to the charitable sector.

The report found that between 2008 and 2015, 75 per cent of the charities who have seen their status revoked were Muslim charities, despite Muslim charities representing only 0.47 per cent of charities overall.

SUING CHIEF SCIENTIST AT WHO

The Indian Bar Association has taken legal action against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for allegedly spreading disinformation on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

The association (IBA) served a legal notice (pdf) on Swaminathan on May 25, claiming that she was “spreading disinformation and misguiding the people of India, in order to fulfill her agenda” and sought to prevent her from “causing further damage.”

They further stated that Swaminathan, in her statements against the use of ivermectin, ignored research and clinical trials from two organizations—the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance and the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD)—who have presented solid data showing ivermectin prevents and treats COVID-19.

PREMIER FORD HIDING OLG AUDITS

   What exactly is the Ford government trying to hide when it comes to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation?
   Despite promising to release audits of the goings-on at the provincial gambling monopoly, those documents are now considered secret and other records are being held ransom by the Ford government.
   Requests submitted through the provincial Freedom of Information system — which is supposed to grant the public access to the workings of government — have been met with outright refusals to release the material or demands of thousands of dollars in search fees.

SPECIAL RULES FOR HIS HIGHNESS & ENTOURAGE

OTTTAWA — Conservative MPs are crying foul over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s upcoming hotel quarantine, charging it is unfair he is staying at a specially arranged hotel in Ottawa, rather than an already approved site for returning travelers.

Trudeau is set to travel at the end of this week to the G7 summit in the United Kingdom and then to Brussels for the NATO summit, his first international trip since the pandemic began.

Almost all international flights arriving in Canada have been diverted to Montreal, Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver since the start of the year. When travellers arrive they have to stay in a designated quarantine hotel until they receive a negative test.

When Trudeau and the delegation of staff and media travelling with him return, they will follow all the standard testing measures, but they will stay in an Ottawa hotel instead of one of the already designated sites.

SLAPPING MACRON

Two men have been arrested after a major security incident at a political event in southeast France on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron was in La Drôme where he met with restaurant and local business owners just ahead of a national easing of COVID-19 restrictions set for Wednesday.

Thinking he was approaching a "fan" behind a metal barrier, Macron walked up to a man in the crowd and grasped his hand, only for the man to then shout in his face, "Down with Macronia" (à bas la Macronie) - according to France24 - while simultaneously delivering a hard slap.

CHINA ENGAGED IN MASSIVE COVERUP

A leading advisor for the World Health Organization said Monday that China is still engaged in a “massive cover up” of the coronavirus pandemic, calling for a “full investigation” to be conducted by the US government and it’s international allies.

Appearing on Fox News, Jamie Metzl urged that “The Chinese have engaged in a massive cover-up that is going on until this day, involving destroying samples, hiding records, placing a universal gag order on Chinese scientists and imprisoning Chinese citizen journalists asking the most basic questions.”

Metzl, a former State Department official and Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, added that “The more that China stonewalls, the more suspicious that it looks.”

AUSSIE COPS & FBI GET GLOBAL CRIME BUST

 A secret Australian police operation using a fake app to spy on the texts of senior mafia and bikie figures was put at risk when a tech geek correctly accused it of being a scam months ago.  

Authorities sensationally carried out the country's biggest ever organized crime bust on Tuesday morning, announcing 224 people had been arrested as a result of an elaborate sting using technology designed by the FBI. 

Some of Australia's most sinister criminal networks began using 'AN0M' branded phones and encrypted messaging almost three years ago, not realizing the Federal Police were using the platform to read their messages.

FBI RECOVERS MILLIONS IN RANSOM

The U.S. recovered almost all the Bitcoin ransom paid to the perpetrators of the cyber attack on Colonial Pipeline Co. last month in a sign that law enforcement is capable of pursuing online criminals even when they operate outside the nation’s borders.

U.S. officials said Monday that they captured about 63.7 Bitcoin traced to recipients of a 75-Bitcoin ransom paid by Colonial soon after the early May attack that resulted in a shutdown of the nation’s largest gas pipeline. The shutdown had caused fuel shortages across the east coast just ahead of the Memorial Day weekend.

 Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate said at a Justice Department briefing announcing the seizure that law enforcement identified a virtual wallet used in the ransom payment and then recovered the funds. He said investigators found more than 90 companies victimized by DarkSide, a Russia-linked cybercrime group blamed in the pipeline attack.

HISTORY PRIMER: P TRUDEAU'S 1969 WHITE PAPER

   There is almost exactly a century separating the governments of Sir John A. Macdonald and Pierre E. Trudeau, but not much difference in their approach to Indigenous issues.
   Trudeau’s “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969” didn’t propose separating Indigenous children from their parents and isolating them in schools where they could be abused by nuns and priests, but the strategy was the same: the best way to handle the Indian “problem” was to get rid of the idea of being “Indian” in the first place. Better to turn them into regular old Canadians like the rest of us. As Trudeau saw it, assimilation as a strategy was far from dead, it just needed updating.
   The proposal, known as the 1969 White Paper, was launched by one of Trudeau’s ambitious young cabinet up-and-comers, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jean Chrétien. It was a monumental disaster. You can date today’s activism to the backlash generated by Trudeau and Chrétien. It makes educational reading for anyone wondering why so little progress was made between 1867 and 1969 — or today for that matter — or who thinks carting off a few statues and renaming some schools is a solution to anything.

NAV CANADA's $7M BONUS PROGRAM

 Politicians are calling on executives and management at Nav Canada to pay back $7 million in bonuses they received last year during the pandemic, while the private non-profit was tapping into government aid and issuing layoff notices.

Opposition MPs told CBC News they want the company — which owns and operates Canada's air traffic control system — to follow Air Canada's lead. The airline announced yesterday its senior executives will give back their 2020 bonuses in response to "public disappointment."

When asked repeatedly by CBC News if company executives will pay back the bonuses from 2020, Nav Canada refused to answer directly. Instead, the company's spokesperson Brian Boudreau defended the "management incentive program," saying it was "reduced significantly" last year by 20 per cent.