ONTARIO'S MISLEADING COVID DATA

It’s what’s known as incidental hospitalizations — people who are included in the Ontario government’s daily count of people in hospital with COVID-19, but who aren’t actually in hospital for the virus.

 Instead, they’ve gone to hospital for something completely different and just happen to test positive for the virus upon arrival but aren’t at all suffering from it.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is now looking to draw attention to this under-reported issue, which is only getting bigger. “I’ve been told it’s about 50% of cases,” Brown said in a phone interview with the Sun , referring specifically to Brampton hospitals.

FIRST HIGH LEVEL COVID CRIMINAL CONVICTED

Dr. Charles Lieber was arrested last year (January 28, 2020) by the Department of Justice, alongside two Chinese researchers, for three separate China related cases. One of these Chinese nationals, Yanqing Ye, is both a student at Boston University, and a lieutenant of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The other, Zaosong Zheng, was supposedly a cancer researcher, who attempted to smuggle vials of SARS and MERS strains to China, through Boston’s Logan Airport.

Whist also receiving grants from NIH and the Department of Defense, Dr. Lieber received $50,000 a month from China for “living expenses”, and a lump sum of $1.5 million for his work with the Wuhan Institute of Technology. In video recordings between Lieber and the FBI after his arrest, he said “Money is a big temptation. That’s one of the things that China uses to seduce people.”

He was found guilty of lying about his Chinese ties, and was convicted on six counts. These include two counts of making and subscribing a false income tax return, two counts of making false statements to federal authorities, and two counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts with the Internal Revenue Service. His sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS WARN OF END TIMES

The very real Covid crisis has fused with the politicised crisis of the ‘climate emergency’ to generate the increasingly authoritarian idea that it is only by tempering the brutish, greedy instincts of the human species that we can ‘save the planet’. As leading green hysteric George Monbiot argued, mere days into the first Covid lockdown, back in March 2020, ‘Covid-19 is nature’s wake-up call to our complacent civilisation’. You and I saw a virus that mankind should urgently tackle; eco-doomsters saw yet another prophecy of mankind’s diseased, destructive impact on poor Mother Earth.

KENNEY NOT IMPRESSED

According to the federal government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “just transition” is a fair and caring program that will kindly shepherd oil and gas workers through a difficult time.

 “Some of this stuff informing this ‘just transition’ is from cloud cuckoo land,” said Alberta Premier Jason Kenney . “It doesn’t add up."

“There’s nothing just about putting people out of work and there’s nothing realistic about strangling the largest part of Canada’s economy that employs half a million Canadians and is the largest source of government revenues and the largest export industry in the country. It’s bananas to suggest that it is possible.”

MAXWELL CONVICTED OF SEX TRAFFICKING

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted Wednesday of five federal sex trafficking charges after a jury concluded that she played a pivotal part in recruiting and grooming teenage girls to be sexually abused by her close confidant, the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell was found guilty of five of the six federal counts she was charged with and faces up to 65 years in prison. The judge has not set a sentencing date.

Maxwell was convicted of conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors and sex trafficking of minors.

RCMP CLAIMS COMPLAINTS BACKLOG IS CLEARED

 After years of criticism, the RCMP now says it has cleared its backlog of public complaints and is in the midst of implementing recommendations coming from its watchdog agency — but some of the complainants are no longer alive to see the results.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP (CRCC) is called upon hundreds of times a year to investigate public complaints about RCMP activity, ranging from claims of bad behaviour to allegations of botched investigations.

When a member of the public has an issue with the way they were treated by Mounties, the local detachment investigates the complaint first. If the individual isn't satisfied with the RCMP's findings, they can turn the case over to the CRCC.

HOW WOKE CAN YOU GO: 2021 LISTINGS

 When the holidays arrive, I often take the occasion to write solemn think pieces that survey the human condition in all its many facets — as with my 2019 Christmas essay about how Ambrose of Milan’s response to the Massacre of Thessalonica in 390 A.D. shaped the western Christian tradition. But writing those thumb-suckers takes a lot of “emotional labour.” So this year, as yuletide approaches, I’ve instead acceded to my editor’s request that I write a trashy listicle cataloguing the most hilariously woke Canadian social-justice meltdowns of 2021. “It is easier to look wise than to talk wisely,” Ambrose sagely advised. Here are some social-justice enthusiasts who had challenges on both fronts.

VOLUNTEER BAND RESPONDING TO DISASTER ZONES

 Who are you gonna call when your town is ravaged by fire or flood? The answer increasingly is Team Rubicon, a volunteer band of ex-Canadian Forces personnel who have stepped up to help restore local economies and get people back into their homes in the wake of a disaster like the Lytton fire or the floods in the Fraser Valley.

“Canada is going to be seeing a lot more of us in future years,” said Bryan Riddell, a veteran who served for over a decade in the Canadian Armed Forces, including seven years in the Special Operations Command, deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq. Riddell is now chief executive of Team Rubicon Canada, which is an offshoot of a U.S. non-profit established by Marines sent to rebuild Haiti after the destructive earthquake in 2010.

WHY CHINA GOT AWAY WITH IT

What can you say about a country that trashed the planet Earth with a deadly virus? That it knew what it was doing?

China has gotten away with it: businesses and industries destroyed or damaged; massive recession and unemployment; medical systems strained to the point of collapse; countries rent asunder by populism; transport systems in disarray; interruption of children’s education and development; loss of confidence in governments; rising mental illness, anger, and civil disobedience; vulnerability of the elderly and those with underlying conditions; and nearly twice as many American dead than in World War II. The full effects of COVID-19 and its variants are yet to be known.

  The world’s reaction to this monstrous act has thus far been relatively mild. The full force of the world’s media, governments and multilateral organizations, judicial processes, and multinational companies has not been brought to bear. Yes, there was some initial outrage but it has subsided and yielded to a broad acceptance of the status quo: it is what it is, as they say.

HEALTH CARE HYPOCRISY

 Yesterday, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube announced some health workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 will be allowed to stay on the job. He said the move is necessary to keep the health-care system operational, and the decision would be made on a case-by-case basis under certain conditions. 

Quebec reported 12,833 new cases and 702 hospitalizations, with 15 more deaths linked to the virus.

Manitoba and Ontario have said they are considering similar measures to avoid overwhelming their own health systems. Manitoba reported 825 new cases and five deaths yesterday, while Ontario reported 8,825 new infections.  

CANADIAN GOV'T FINES CHINA'S BANK

 Federal regulators have fined the Canadian operations of China’s biggest state-controlled bank $701,250 under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.

ICBC breached the Act by “failure to submit suspicious transaction reports where there were reasonable grounds to suspect transactions were related to a money laundering or terrorist financing offence,” and “failure to treat activities in respect of a person or entity as high risk.” Details were withheld by investigators.

The bank claims “paperwork” mistakes were to blame, and the Act wasn’t breached.

LEGACY MEDIA IN DEATH SPIRAL

  Renowned Canadian author and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson slammed the CBC and other legacy media in a tweet last week.
   “The legacy media are in an unrecoverable death spiral, spinning ever more uncontrollably. The CBC has become a mewling, meandering, self-righteous, slogan-spewing narcissistic near-corpse,” said Peterson.  

   For several years now, CBC has seen advertising revenue rapidly decline and Canadians tune out of their hyper-partisan programs. According to the public broadcaster’s latest Annual Report, the CBC saw a 10% decline in ad revenue for the year 2020-21 alone.

PFIZER ANTIVIRAL COVID PILLS POSE RISKS

Experts warn that despite the first antiviral pills for COVID-19 promising protection for those at risk of severe disease, Pfizer's or Merck's new medications may not be safe for everyone, NBC News reported over the weekend.

One of the two drugs in Pfizer's Paxlovid antiviral cocktail could cause severe or life-threatening interactions with commonly used medications, including statins, blood thinners and some antidepressants, and the FDA does not recommend Paxlovid for those with severe kidney or liver disease.

In addition, due to concerns about the potential side effects of Merck's molnupiravir, the FDA has restricted its use to adults and only in cases in which other treatments are inaccessible or are not ''clinically appropriate.''

MEDIA GROUPTHINK ABOUT COVID

When it comes to reporting on COVID in Canada, the legacy media are failing Canadians.

Journalists don’t report the facts, they only push a narrative – even if it means burying important facts. The result is that journalists sound like government propagandists and their reports look like vaccine infomercials.

Today on The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by Toronto Sun comment editor and columnist Anthony Furey to discuss the media groupthink when it comes to COVID.

ONTARIO & FLORIDA COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT

  They’re uncanny, the differences between Florida and Ontario.
   While seniors and other people down here are enjoying normal freedoms, my mother is locked away in an Ontario retirement home.
   I noticed the difference – the logical easing of draconian restrictions – as soon as I crossed the border into the United States a month ago and started driving south. In most places where I stopped – from West Virginia to Charlotte, North Carolina to Savannah, Georgia – masks were not a must unless we took an Uber.

     As ridiculous as the measures were before I left Toronto, they have become outrageously draconian and cruel with the onset of the Omicron variant – a highly contagious strain of COVID that presents as mild in the vast majority of cases, particularly those who are fully vaccinated.

CHINA'S INVOLVEMENT IN LATIN AMERICA

 In 2000, China's trade with Latin America amounted to $12 billion. By 2019, the number had grown to a staggering $330 billion.

The astounding growth is suggestive of how China's influence in Latin America has deepened over the past two decades.

China's involvement in Latin America clearly seems to be translating into control, and not just of national resources. "In the past four years, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama have each switched their recognition from Taiwan to China", TIME Magazine wrote in February.

THE LIES AND THE LUNACY CONTINUE

 Dr. Vernon Coleman looks back on the last two years, and looks forward to the next, to predict the enemy's plans for 2022.  They are getting increasingly desperate; a sign that we are winning the war.

IS BRITAIN RECOVERING ITS SENSES?

 Look at all these amazing things. For the first time in 21 months the Cabinet considered the damage to society, the economy and human civilization that would result from yet another effort to scare us all into cowering in our homes.

For once, these panic-driven ninnies sucked at their knuckles and wondered: 'Is burning down the house really a sane and rational response to finding a wasps' nest?'

On Thursday, a prominent BBC presenter wondered out loud whether a 'Covid hospitalisation' actually meant that the person involved was in hospital for Covid rather than something else.

I hope for the sake of his career that he does not carry on using his brain in such a dangerous fashion.

WHEN ARE YOU BLOCKING HUAWEI FROM 5G JUSTIN?

 Western countries should have a united front against China to prevent the Asian state from using commercial interests to play them against each other, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in an interview aired on Saturday.

Trudeau said China has been “playing” Western countries against one another as they compete for access to economic opportunities in the country.

“We need to do a better job of working together and standing strong so China can’t play the angles and divide us one against the other.”

BLAME IT ON THE TOURISTS

The trouble began, as it often does here, when tourists asked the hotel staff to help them buy cocaine.

It’s a common enough request across Mexico’s Mayan Riviera that the employees of the Hyatt Ziva knew how to accommodate their clientele. They called a few local drug dealers, according to security officials who investigated the incident.

 But the dealers who arrived at the beachside resort outside Cancún last month came from rival cartels, part of the kaleidoscope of criminal groups who have converged on Mexico’s busiest tourist corridor. Within minutes, shooting began. Security footage shows the attackers sprinting from the beach toward the $400-a-night hotel, and tourists in bathing suits seeking cover in hallways.

ALEXA, YOU'RE FIRED

 Anyone with an Amazon Alexa device has likely noticed that the smart speaker has tried to upsell them while asking about the weather in the last few months. This is because Amazon understands there is fading interest in its money-losing Alexa voice-controlled smart speaker division. 

According to internal data obtained by Bloomberg, 15% to 25% of new Alexa users during 2018 through 2021 completely abandoned the device in the second week of ownership.

There have been countless complaints, 75,000 and counting, of Amazon users fed up with the company's surveillance capitalism tactics to harvest their data with the core purpose of profit-making. This has spawned into at least three class-action suits alleging that Amazon devices recorded people without permission.

LIGHT, WARMTH & HOPE ALWAYS RETURN

Neil Oliver video: On Christmas Day, I have no wish to look backwards into the dark.

EU: THE FOURTH GERMAN REICH

  Poland's national-populist leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused Germany of trying to turn the European Union into a federalist "Fourth German Reich" in an interview published Friday.
   There are countries that "are not enthusiastic about the prospect of building a German Fourth Reich on the basis of the EU," the Law and Justice (PiS) party president told Polish far-right daily GPC.

   During the recent visit of the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Poland, his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki described the German coalition government's support for greater federalism in the European Union as "utopian and therefore dangerous" and reiterated that his government backed the concept of "a Europe of sovereign nations".

ISRAELI PUBLIC WISING UP

 What we are witnessing is a spectacle of political leaders — in Israel and elsewhere — guided by vanity, not principle. They have enjoyed two years of public acquiescence to the unprecedented use of unchecked power in peace-time. They have confused public compliance, up to now, with their brilliance in managing COVID, which they persist in likening, two years on, to the Bubonic Plague.

What so many leaders — including Bennett, as well as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — fail to understand is that there is now a directly inverse relationship between public trust and their increasingly tyrannical tendencies. The public’s good faith has been exploited for brazen political gain. Again and again.

WARNING: EUROPE'S GREEN ENERGY IS A DISASTER

By recklessly rushing into unreliable renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, the U.K. and Europe are now in the midst of an energy crisis heading into winter, where electricity prices to consumers are skyrocketing and factories are reducing production or shutting down

It’s a warning to Canadians about what could happen here if the Trudeau government, and future governments of any political party, don’t revise unrealistic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

 The Liberals are pretending unreliable and intermittent forms of green energy are ready to replace reliable and proven ones, the same mistake Europe and the U.K. made.

A VIRUS ON THE LOOSE IN WUHAN

 Video:  What really happened in Wuhan.

TUNING OUT RIDICULOUS COVID ISOLATION RULES

 The yawning gap between what politicians and public health officials are saying about Omicron on this side of the border and what they’re saying to our south is enough to induce a bad case of vertigo. U.S. President Joe Biden recently told vaccinated Americans to enjoy Christmas as usual. Meanwhile, we’re caught in a tornado of panic bound to leave a path of economic, psychological, and political destruction in its wake.

   This week, medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches announced that if anyone in a household has a single COVID-19 symptom –– just one! –– that the entire household must self-isolate for 10 days, regardless of vaccination status. If another person develops a single symptom during that time frame, the clock starts all over again in an absurd loop that could see families isolating for weeks on end. Etches told CTV that these are the guidelines coming from the province.

A TYRANNY OF HURT FEELINGS

Capping another year of unhinged censoriousness, raging in one institution after another, we now have a YouGov poll showing that the public is not that enamoured of free speech, either. Those who believe we should prioritise ‘stopping offensive and hateful speech’ apparently beat those who prefer ‘protecting free speech’ by 43 to 38 per cent.

   The extent to which free societies like Britain ever really lived up to their liberal values is up for debate. But at least liberty was until recently the aspiration, the story we told ourselves. Increasingly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as many sinister moments in 2021 made abundantly clear.

PHAC TRACKED 33 MILLION PHONES DURING LOCKDOWN

The Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement during lockdown, the agency revealed this week.

“Due to the urgency of the pandemic, (PHAC) collected and used mobility data, such as cell-tower location data, throughout the COVID-19 response,” a spokesperson told National Post.

“I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over—and afterwards,” David Lyon, author of Pandemic Surveillance and former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University, said in an email.

Lyon warned that PHAC “uses the same kinds of ‘reassuring’ language as national security agencies use, for instance not mentioning possibilities for re-identifying data that has been ‘de-identified.’”

MAINTAINING THE COVID PANIC IN UK

70 per cent of London’s COVID hospitalisations were diagnosed after the patient had already been admitted for other ailments, it has been revealed.

The figure is important because a so-called ‘surge’ in London hospitalisations for COVID is being used as a justification to lobby for further lockdown restrictions on the British public.

However, as Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson reveals, much of the panic is being driven by cases being counted as COVID despite the patient being admitted for other reasons.

MERRY CHRISTMAS YOUNUS

Canadian Imam Younus Kathrada in a recent sermon compared wishing people a Merry Christmas to congratulating murderers and pedophiles, as he called on Allah (God) to “humiliate the infidels” and “annihilate the heretics and atheists.”

In a speech delivered at the Muslim Youth of Victoria Islamic Center on Friday, radical Islamic scholar Younus Kathrada addressed the topic of holiday greetings toward non-Muslims during the Christmas season.

MRS. CLINTON'S DELUSIONS

Miranda Devine said Thursday that Hillary Clinton is begging Democrats to consider her again with her "masterclass in self-pity and delusion" after she tearfully read what was her would-be victory speech if Donald Trump hadn't defeated her in the 2016 presidential election.

SCRAP POLITICAL WELFARE

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) called on the Ontario government to fulfil its promise to scrap the province’s political party funding on Monday.

“Despite promising to end sleazy handouts to political parties when he ran for office, Ford has failed to scrap the system,” said CTF Ontario director Jay Goldberg. “He isn’t alone: All four of Ontario’s major political parties have helped themselves to millions of dollars from taxpayers’ wallets.”

Goldberg said all four of the province’s main political parties will take a record $14 million in subsidies by the end of 2021.

IT'S SIMPLY INCOMPETENCE

   Is it just me or is there something a little off about the Prime Minister’s Office lately? I don’t mean the Prime Minister himself, who has always had, needless to say, an erratic streak to him. I mean the people around him, the brain trust, the pros, the people who are supposed to keep the ship tight and the clocks wound.
   Because some of the decisions coming out of there of late have been more than a little odd. Again, there will always be strange decisions coming out of any prime minister’s office from time to time. But usually these show some evidence of being the product of, well, not thought exactly, but at least intent. Whereas I’m not sure the current PMO is even aware of some of the things they’re doing.

WOKE YOUNGSTERS: GET A LIFE

How did they become such wusses, the youth of today? Probably from being over-praised; every rubbish crayoned scribble pinned up and treated as a Picasso, every undetermined clay abortion bowed down to like a Barbara Hepworth. When you never hear a ‘No’ and never get the criticism that might actually help you achieve something of merit, you will forever find yourself saying ‘No’ to people who have. (This is most keenly seen in the publishing industries, where well-connected nobodies in menial roles are now allowed to censor the actual talent.)

FORD CREATES STAMPEDE FOR BOOSTERS, FAIL TO DELIVER

 After nearly two years of “managing” the pandemic, one would have hoped the Ontario government would have the hang of it, but no, not even close.

Last week, Premier Doug Ford announced that everyone over 18 would be eligible for booster shots, starting Monday. “Nothing matters more than getting these third shots into arms,” he said. The message was reinforced by his science advisory table, which portrayed the boosters as the best hope of staving off Omicron doom.

Come Monday, big surprise, booster shots were either difficult or impossible to book. People booking through Toronto Public Health were offered times in February. Ottawa Public Health had no appointments available through its site Monday. A search of Ottawa and Toronto pharmacy web sites revealed some appointments in February and March.

PROGRESSIVES TURN EVERYTHING INTO A CRISIS

 I’ve been wondering when we would hit peak hysteria. It seemed certain to be approaching. We are constantly on notice to be afraid. Nothing is normal anymore, everything is a crisis.

We have a climate emergency, a global pandemic and a crisis of democracy, all at the same time. We keep finding new terms to ramp up the anxiety factor. We no longer have weather, we have heat domes, atmospheric rivers and polar vortexes.

We face emergency lockdowns, border bans, growing debt and rising inflation. The Arctic is melting, the forests are burning. “Now is not the time to travel,” our (latest) health minister informs us piously.

150 STUDIES SHOW MASK INEFFECTIVENESS & HARM

It is not unreasonable to conclude that surgical and cloth masks, used as they currently are being used (without other forms of PPE protection), have no impact on controlling the transmission of Covid-19 virus. Current evidence implies that face masks can be actually harmful. The body of evidence indicates that face masks are largely ineffective.

My focus is on COVID face masks and the prevailing science that we have had for nearly 20 months. Yet I wish to address this mask topic at a 50,000-foot level on the lockdown restrictive policies in general.

Because we saw very early on that the lockdowns were the single greatest mistake in public health history. We knew the history and knew they would not work. We also knew very early of COVID’s risk stratification. Sadly, our children will bear the catastrophic consequences and not just educationally, of the deeply flawed school closure policy for decades to come (particularly our minority children who were least able to afford this). Many are still pressured to wear masks and punished for not doing so.

HUNTING DOWN VACCINE REFUSERS IN AUSTRIA

The Austrian government is hiring people to “hunt down vaccine refusers,” according to a report published by Blick.

Yes, really.

The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly.

GENERAL EYRE RETREATS ON CRITICISM OF MILITARY EXODUS

 Canada’s top soldier is trying to quell the criticism he has faced for his admonishment of military personnel retiring from the forces by acknowledging each has to do what’s best for themselves and their families.

Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre admitted in a new message to military personnel that his comments during a conference in late October “did not sit well with some current and former members.”

Eyre had blamed the military’s sexual misconduct crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic for an exodus of Canadian Forces personnel. “We need our mid-level leaders to dig deep and do this for the institution, to put service before self, not to retreat into retirement, but to advance forward and face the challenges head-on,” Eyre stated then.

LIBERAL PRIORITIES

 OTTAWA — It's the end of days for plastic grocery bags and Styrofoam takeout containers in Canada.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault published draft regulations Tuesday outlining how Canada will ban the manufacture, sale and import of these items, along with plastic cutlery, stir sticks, straws and six-pack rings, by the end of next year.

The public can provide written comment on the draft regulations until March 5, and the timing of the final regulations will depend on how much feedback is received. World Trade Organization rules mean Canada has to allow a six-month phase-in period once the final regulations are published, but Guilbeault said he expects them to take effect by the end of 2022.

LONGEST EVER HEALTH CARE WAIT TIMES

 Canadians are living through two health-care crises: COVID, which dominates the headlines, but also unacceptably long wait times for virtually all medical services. In 2021, Canadians could expect to wait an estimated 25.6 weeks on average — essentially half a year — between referral from a family physician and medically necessary treatment. Though lengthened by COVID, these waits have far more to do with long-standing failures of domestic policy than with the global pandemic.

GIFTED A NEW CHRISTMAS TRADITION

Video: Neil Oliver: Our new Christmas tradition? A great big dollop of fear from Government grinches...

CHINA'S SPIES PENETRATED TAIWAN'S MILITARY

The operation detailed in these documents shows how Beijing allegedly sought out commanders in the Taiwan military and induced them to become spies. It comes amid a series of convictions for military espionage in Taiwan in recent years. Those cases reveal that China has mounted a broader campaign to undermine the democratic island’s military and civilian leadership, corrode its will to fight, extract details of high-tech weapons and gain insights into defense planning, according to senior retired Taiwanese military officers and current counter-espionage agents, as well as former U.S. military and intelligence officers with experience in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s spycatchers are battling a campaign that has compromised senior officers at the heart of the island’s armed forces and government agencies, a steady stream of convictions handed down in the courts shows.

PRO-BEIJING PATRIOTS SWEEP HONG KONG ELECTIONS

   HONG KONG, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Pro-Beijing candidates swept to victory in an overhauled "patriots"-only legislative election in Hong Kong that critics described as undemocratic, with turnout hitting a record low amid a crackdown on the city's freedoms by China.
   The 30.2% turnout, about half that of the previous poll in 2016, was seen by pro-democracy activists as a rebuke to China after it imposed a broad national security law and sweeping electoral changes to bring the city more firmly under its authoritarian grip

   China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong described the election as a "successful practice of democracy with Hong Kong characteristics".

GOV'T STILL PAYING DAMAGES OVER PHOENIX FIASCO

Ottawa paid out $400-million to federal public servants last year as part of continuing compensation for damages related to the Phoenix pay system, which caused major payroll disruptions across the government.
   That newly revealed amount is in addition to the $160-million in compensation Ottawa paid the previous year. The government estimates an additional $165-million could be paid during this current fiscal year, which would bring the total to more than $700-million.

    Chris Aylward, the national president of PSAC, said the Phoenix “pay fiasco” continues for federal public service workers who were overpaid, underpaid or not paid at all. He said it is important to remember that the compensation money is being paid to hundreds of thousands of workers who experienced pain and suffering because of pay problems.
   

A NOD TO TMX CREWS IN COQUIHALLA RESTORATION

VICTORIA — Transportation Minister Rob Fleming heaped praise on B.C. highway crews and contractors Wednesday for readying the Coquihalla for a partial return to service starting next week.

Fleming characterized the restoration of bus and truck traffic on a highway that was broken in 20 places just a month ago as “one of the most remarkable engineering feats in memory in B.C.

 Subsequent news releases would underscore how the Trans Mountain workforce went into action quickly “assisting communities and local authorities with road clearing and providing equipment and resources.”

20 YEARS IN JAIL FOR FUNDING TERRORISM

 An Edmonton man who pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court Friday to conspiring with others to fund Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist activities will serve 20 years in prison, according to his plea agreement.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a Friday news release from San Diego said Abdullahi Ahmed Abdullahi, a Canadian citizen who once lived in the coastal California city, admitted he conspired with others to provide material support to terrorists engaged in violent activities, including murder, kidnapping and maiming of persons in Syria.

SAVE YOUR TEARS FOR HER VICTIMS

 Nothing better illustrates the vast, cavernous moral vacuum at the heart of identity politics than the transformation of Shamima Begum into a poor little victim of Racist Britain. Here we have a young woman who willingly, happily trekked thousands of miles to join an Islamist death cult that was enslaving Yazidi women, executing Christians, defenstrating homosexuals and waging an unforgiving war on anyone who deviated from its deranged belief system. And yet according to the woke set, she’s the victim. Not only of the evil men who allegedly groomed her into joining ISIS – yeah, right – but also of the horrible, Islamophobic stain on this planet that is modern-day Britain. She betrayed her country in the most sordid way imaginable and the woke condemn the country rather than her. As I say, moral vacuum.

$26M OF GOVERNMENT CARELESSNESS

 The federal government deposited nearly $26 million into the wrong bank accounts during the last fiscal year — and more than $10 million of it may be gone for good.

According to figures tabled in the House of Commons, the government sent 22,170 direct deposits to the wrong bank accounts between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. In the previous fiscal year, it deposited 9,619 payments worth a total $6.6 million into the wrong accounts.

The number of cases reported during the 2020-2021 fiscal year is the highest since at least 2012. The total amount paid into the wrong accounts — $25.9 million — is much higher than the figure reported for the previous year and is the second largest annual amount of misdirected cash reported since at least 2009.

LIBERAL INCOMPETANCE DELAYS CERB FRAUD ACCOUNTING

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is not only incompetent, it’s derelict. The House finance committee heard testimony this week that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) likely included many fraudulent payments, but the auditor general won’t be able to look into the situation for another year because the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has not begun verifying whether recipients met eligibility requirements.

CHARGING HEALTH FIGURES & POLITICIANS WITH GENOCIDE

Activists are charging UK officials and the world’s most powerful health figures with genocide, citing a range of statistics on the effects of COVID “vaccines” and policies.

A group that includes former Pfizer vice president Dr. Michael Yeadon filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of UK citizens against Boris Johnson and UK officials, Bill and Melinda Gates, chief executives of Big Pharma companies, World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab, and others for crimes against humanity.

In the group’s complaint filed December 6, they present evidence that COVID-19 “vaccines” are in fact experimental gene therapies engineered with gain-of-function research from bat coronaviruses, arguing that these “vaccines” have caused massive death and injury and that the UK government has failed to investigate such reported deaths and injuries; that COVID case and death numbers have been artificially inflated; that face masks are harmful due to hypoxia, hypercapnia and other causes; and PCR tests are “completely unreliable” and “contain carcinogenic ethylene oxide.

WHO DROPPED RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL CASE AGAINST CATHOLIC CHURCH?

In the fall of 2015, someone in the federal government decided to drop a multimillion-dollar residential school compensation case against Catholic Church groups.

CBC News recently reached out to more than a dozen current or former ministers and senior bureaucrats. No one would say who gave the order, although several admit they likely have relevant information and documents that they refuse to share.

Advocates say survivors, their families and the public have a right to this information immediately. They say it's the latest slap in the face to survivors by the federal government, the courts and the Catholic Church.

"Everybody is covering their butts. You have a conspiracy of silence from mostly white males. It's so disappointing," said Tom McMahon, the former general counsel for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

THE ARROGANCE OF SCIENCE TABLE DOCTOR

 The arrogance and utter lack of compassion that some parts of the expert scientific community have shown during the pandemic was on full display Thursday.

One of the lead scientists on Ontario’s self-appointed and self-important Science Table told restaurant workers and owners to “stop moaning” as he called for their incomes to be cut dramatically.

“What’s the problem with going back to 25% capacity in a restaurant?” Juni asked. “Life will continue.”

GLOBAL POWER GENERATION FROM COAL UP 9%

There's no question that the 'greenification' of the global economy has returned many industrial countries to coal in 2021. New data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that the amount of electricity generated worldwide from coal is on track to hit a record high.

IEA's Coal 2021 report says global power generation from coal soared 9% in 2021 to an all-time high of 10,350 terawatt-hours. The rebound comes amid a rash of green policies and stupid political choices, such as decommissioning oil and gas-fired power plants and fossil fuel exploitation projects, ironically resulting in an energy crisis worldwide.

TALIBAN SHOOTS CANADA-BOUND GIRL

A 10-year-old girl was shot and killed by the Taliban while her family was waiting for the federal government to bring them to Canada. Her father had worked for the Canadian military in Afghanistan and they had been approved for resettlement.

The family was driving through a Taliban checkpoint in Kandahar on Dec. 10 when gunmen fired on its vehicle. Aman Lara, an organization that’s providing support to Afghans who meet Canada’s resettlement criteria and is working to get people out of the country, confirmed that the family is on its evacuation list.

Eleanor Taylor, a retired Canadian lieutenant-colonel and volunteer chief of staff at Aman Lara,said Canada-bound Afghans have to put themselves at extreme risk to get their passports, and she’s heard stories of people being arrested at the passport office, or targeted after they pick up their passport. But this story “has been the darkest and the most horrifying example of what failing to resolve this issue means for people.”

MORE DECREES FROM ONTARIO'S OVERLORDS

 Ontario is rolling out a suite of new restrictions for businesses and social gatherings as it contends with a spike in COVID-19 cases linked to the Omicron variant.

Effective 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday, indoor social gathering limits will be reduced from 25 people to 10, and outdoor gatherings are being reduced from 100 people to 25. 

"We need to meet this variant head on. We need to do everything we can to push it back," Premier Doug Ford said on Friday.

VIRTUE SIGNALING TRUMPS SAFETY

 Two major websites used by homebuyers to search for properties to move into have decided that ignorance is bliss when it comes to crime statistics.  As noted by Stacey Matthews on Legal Insurrection, Realtor.com and redfin.com decided on the same day that providing crime information on neighborhoods would promote racial bias. Helping families avoid moving to a house or condo in a dangerous crime-ridden neighborhood is far less important to them than virtue signaling their trendy “anti-racism.”

CHINA'S COVID MIRACLE

Some things are so remarkable one is forced to say “wow!” followed be “hmmm.” Things like President Biden uttering a coherent sentence or the Detroit Lions winning a football game.

Or the “fact” that the world’s most populous country hasn’t suffered a single fatality from the coronavirus in the past ten and a half months. And only four since April 18th of 2020. Even though it suffered 1,290 deaths in the 48 hours prior to that date. “Wow!

How to account for this? What could possibly explain this? Is China flat out lying? Certainly. China doesn’t want the rest of the world to think it is responsible for the pandemic, it wants the rest of the world to think it has defeated it, due to its remarkable, broad-based competence.

On the other hand, the United States appears to have deliberately and significantly inflated the number of fatalities it has suffered. Why the difference?

NO TIME FOR AN OMICRON LOCKDOWN

 There is much we do not yet know about Omicron, the new COVID variant that has some Canadian officials inadvisably panicking. But here’s what we do know: lockdowns are exceedingly harmful to the general public — psychologically, economically, socially and even physically. They should not even be considered. Any advice for governments to shutter businesses or schools as a means to controlling the spread of the virus should be ignored, full stop.

Whatever justifications there might have been for draconian restrictions during earlier waves of the pandemic when we knew little about the virus, no longer apply. Twenty-one months into this endless, waking nightmare, the greater threat is to our civil liberties and mental health. Whatever Omicron’s severity, there’s no getting around the reality that the virus will continue to mutate and that we will have to learn to live with COVID. It’s long past time governments stop reflexively leaning on intrusive health restrictions.

BC's COQUIHALLA HWY REOPENS MONDAY

 The Coquihalla Highway will reopen to commercial traffic on Monday, re-establishing a crucial supply link between the Lower Mainland and the B.C. Interior, indeed the rest of Canada, weeks earlier than anticipated.

On Wednesday, Transportation Minister Rob Fleming lauded construction crews that have worked around the clock for the accelerated reopening.

“This is a turning point for the province,” Fleming said.

LIBERAL TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS ARE EVIDENCE-FREE POLITICAL THEATRE

   The Trudeau government’s aborted intention this week to ramp up travel restrictions amounts to little more than “political theatre” from a government that cannot produce data to support tightened travel rules, say multiple sources who work for premiers who participated in Tuesday’s First Ministers meeting.

    The hastily arranged 90-minute teleconference convened by Trudeau opened with federal officials telling surprised premiers that Ottawa was considering the re-introduction of a mandatory 14-day quarantine on all incoming non-essential travellers, regardless of vaccination status or nationality, and planning to impose an outright ban on all non-essential inbound foreign nationals.
   Several premiers challenged those notions, asking them to provide a scientific rationale for imposing such drastic restrictions. None was provided.

THE WOKE ASSAULT ON WESTERN CIVILIZATION

If ignorance is bliss, the Western world should be ecstatic. Even as colleges churn out degrees and collect fees, and technology makes information instantly accessible, the basic level of literacy, as measured by such things as reading books and acquainting oneself with the past, is in a precipitous decline. Rather than building a vital world with our technological culture, we are repeating the memes of feudal times, driven by illiteracy, bias and a rejection of the West’s past.

OMICRON MAY BE NO WORSE THAN THE FLU

   Britain’s Omicron wave may be no worse than a flu pandemic, an expert has said, as the first major study into the new variant suggests it is less severe than delta.

  The first real-world study looking at 78,000 Omicron cases in South Africa found the risk of hospitalisation is 29 per cent lower compared to the Wuhan strain, and 23 per cent lower than delta, with vaccines holding up well.

   Far fewer people have also needed intensive care from Omicron, with just five per cent of cases admitted to ICU compared to 22 per cent of delta patients, the study shows.

TRUDEAU RUNS AWAY FROM BILL 21 DEBATE

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that while he is "deeply" opposed to Bill 21, his government won't step into the legal challenge taking place in Quebec in order to avoid triggering a fight with the province over jurisdiction.

"I think that it's important, in the first stages of the work that's being done right now, to not give the excuse of a fight between Ottawa and Quebec," Trudeau said.

The prime minister said that by staying out of the fight right now, he can "ensure that it is Quebeckers themselves" making the case to the Quebec government that the law is discriminatory, without giving an "excuse to the Quebec government that this is federal interference."

MILITARY MEMBERS CHALLENGE VACCINE IN COURT

  The Federal Court is scheduled to hear arguments today from four Canadian Armed Forces members facing disciplinary action for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Chief of the defence Gen. Wayne Eyre ordered all Armed Forces members to be vaccinated by the end of November or face remedial measures, including possible dismissal from the military. That deadline has since been extended to Dec. 18.

The order follows a similar requirement for all federal public servants as the Liberal government sought to set an example for all Canadians to get vaccinated. Eyre has also said his order is intended to protect the military during the pandemic.

In sworn affidavits, the four service members challenging the order say they are opposed to getting the vaccine for different reasons, including concerns about its long-term safety and on religious grounds.

THE STRENGTH OF TRUDEAU'S COMMITMENT

   The head of the organization representing Canada's personal protective equipment manufacturers says the industry feels betrayed by the Canadian government because it's not buying from small, home-grown companies after encouraging them to step up to deliver "critical supplies."

   Barry Hunt, president of the Canadian Association of Personal Protective Equipment Manufacturers, says the domestic market is now saturated with cheap imports of masks and other protective items, and companies that have developed new, environmentally friendly products in Canada can't get government contracts.
   "The prime minister himself and the federal government made a commitment to our industry to buy products," said Hunt.
  "What we've seen is the exact opposite: buying only from multinationals, buying only commodity products, locking health-care workers out of new and innovative products, and essentially, decimating the new PPE industry."

REMOVING CHRISTIAN REFERENCES AT THE EU

The European Union’s Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, recently issued a memo on inclusive communication. The guide sought to “reflect diversity” and combat “stereotypes deeply rooted in individual and collective behaviour.”

The report was full of the usual dreck about the necessity of replacing “Ladies and gentlemen” with “Dear colleagues,” and the perils of assuming anyone’s gender. It even noted that instead of potentially referring to the “colonization of Mars,” we should say “sending humans to Mars.” Okay.

But that’s not all. The EU’s Equality Czar issued this timely direction: all references to Christmas should be avoided, since referring to elements of Christian culture is tantamount to “assuming that everyone is Christian.” The generic term “holiday” is to be employed instead. The memo even implied that Christian names such as Mary and John were problematic and borderline offensive.

SLAPPING DOWN SUZUKI

 Nothing could be finer in the lead-up to Christmas than to see environmental activist David Suzuki and his bags full of money getting slammed with both a petition and a boycott.

This is the same David Suzuki who scared the bejeebers out of our kids during a Christmas past by insisting that Santa Claus and his reindeer were going to drown unless money was thrown at  global warming which was causing the North Pole to melt away.

“The other day Suzuki crossed a dangerous line and only apologized after a public backlash. But he didn’t apologize for or condemn the group he was speaking to who said that world leaders could be killed due to inaction on climate. (The group has said it is nonviolent but cannot control the actions of others).

CHARGED WITH BREACH OF TRUST

 Wanping Zheng, who was charged last week in what police are calling "a matter of foreign actor interference," claimed publicly to have overseen a number of major Canadian aerospace projects.

Last week the RCMP charged 61-year-old Wanping Zheng of Brossard, Que. with breach of trust. He's accused of using his status as an engineer at the Canadian Space Agency to negotiate satellite station installation agreements with Iceland on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company. Documents filed in court show the alleged crime happened back in 2018.

A source with knowledge of the investigation said the company Zheng is accused of helping is called Spacety. It's a Chinese company specializing in satellites that can take high-resolution images.

WHAT PRICE INTEGRITY?: MANIPULATED IVERMECTIN STUDY

 In a stunning admission, virologist Dr. Andrew Hill acknowledged in a zoom call that publication of his study could lead to the deaths of at least a half million people.

In defending his reversal on the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, he discussed his “difficult situation” and said, “I’ve got this role where I’m supposed to produce this paper and we’re in a very difficult, delicate balance.”

Andrew Hill, PhD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in Pharmacology at Liverpool University. He is also an advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. As a researcher for the WHO evaluating ivermectin, Hill wielded enormous influence over international guidance for the drug’s use.

Hill had previously authored a analysis of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 that found the drug overwhelmingly effective.

WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF COVID SCIENCE

 Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve heard one refrain over and over again: “follow the science.” It’s a well-intentioned line that’s hard to refute and generally serves as good advice. But somewhere along the way, levelheadedness turned emotional, and quests for transparency and truth turned dogmatic. Many people’s dedication to science began to resemble something decidedly unscientific: religion.

Rigorously cleaning and sanitizing surfaces we’ve long known aren’t major sources of transmission is largely a comfort ritual. Erecting plastic barriers that may actually worsen ventilation is also often about psychological reassurance.

Wearing masks as you walk to your table in a small restaurant, but not for the next two hours as you eat, drink and socialize, is not just ritualistic, but a theatrical display. The same goes for QR code menus and directional stickers in aisles. These things may look like science, sound like science, and even feel like science, but they’re stretching what science actually demands.

LIBERAL QUARANTINE PROGRAM AN UTTER FAILURE

On Thursday, federal Auditor General Karen Hogan released an analysis of the Trudeau government’s COVID hotel quarantine programs. “This was not a success story,” Hogan wrote.

The auditor general was being kind. The Liberals’ quarantine program was an utter failure.

Canada’s border protections, including mandatory three-day stays in designated hotels upon arrival, were so holey, so full of exemptions and cheats that it is unlikely they did anything to keep a single infected traveler from circulating among Canadians.

PAY MORE, OR FORGET IT

Dozens of would-be homebuyers who've invested in pre-construction units across southern Ontario say developers are trying to charge them more money in a move that, for some, hurts their chances of ever owning a home.

Citing insurmountable delays and construction costs related to the pandemic, several developers have cancelled sales agreements, then offered the same buyers a chance to pay tens of thousands of dollars more for the same units, the potential purchasers told CBC News.

Some who decided to walk away with their deposits said developers then relisted the units at higher prices.

WE ARE FINDING THE 2800 MISSING CHILDREN

  The “secret graves” and “missing children” narrative had our national flag flying at half-mast for over five months after an obscure indigenous politician made the startling claim that she “knew” that 215 indigenous children had been secretly buried in the “apple orchard” on their Kamloops reserve.
   Chief Rosanne Casimir said she “knew” this because “Knowledge Keepers” told her of “oral histories” of 6 year olds being hauled from their beds at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) in the middle of the night to bury fellow students in the “apple orchard”.

    But since that startling announcement, we have learned of problems with that claim. It appears that the claim that the “remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old” were found is a conspiracy theory that has been floating around for the last 30 or so years. More on that later.

    But the more sophisticated audience, that doesn’t really believe that thousands of indigenous children were massacred and secretly buried by the light of the moon, is still swayed by claims that death rates from disease at residential schools were vastly higher than on the reserves of that era. But is that true?

ADVENTURES IN PANDEMICA

 Our trip to Pandemica was unplanned. It began March 17, 2020, on a sunny St Patrick’s Day. No packing, no suitcases, no plane tickets and no jetlag. We simply got out of bed—and we were there.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in this strange new land or how long we’d be here, so I acquired a couple of travel books;  Fodars Guide to the Living Room  has come in handy and  Lonely Toilet  has been indispensable.  

Although not a big place (as vacation spots go), Pandemica has lots of interesting, undiscovered regions to explore. I never get tired of staring into the refrigerator.

THREATS & LIES FROM CHINA'S AMBASSADOR

  China’s ambassador to Canada says Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor confessed to crimes before their release from his country’s prisons this past September.

Envoy Cong Peiwu also said Friday Canada will pay a price if it blocks Chinese telecom company Huawei from participating in the country’s 5G internet network as its Five Eyes Allies, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have already done.

Cong said China wants to move forward with a positive relationship with Canada, noting that their trade volume has risen despite the decline in diplomatic relations over the three years since the onset of the Meng-two Michaels affair.

COVID OUTBREAKS IN VACCINATED TORONTO POLICE

 First Toronto Fire Services stations were hit with COVID-19 amongst vaccinated staff, now Toronto Police has been stung.

After suspending 205 staff for non-vaccination compliance to prevent spreading the virus, the service has now seen outbreaks a Traffic Services and 11 Division.

Some unvaccinated officers on unpaid leave have raised the question about the possibility of rapid testing to allow all members to work as long as they can show they are COVID free.

ISIS PROPAGANDIST PLEADS GUILTY

 A Canadian propagandist for the Islamic State, hunted by international authorities for years, pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Va., federal court to terrorism charges only two months after being brought to the United States for prosecution.

The case is an unusual one in that Mohammed Khalifa, 38, is not from the United States or accused of involvement in any direct attacks on U.S. citizens. But he agreed in court Friday that he conspired to provide material support to a terrorism organization that resulted in death and could spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. He is set to be sentenced April 15.

HACKERS DELETE BRAZILIANS' VAX RECORDS

 On Friday, hackers identifying themselves as “Lapsus$Group” took down several systems within Brazil’s health ministry. At this point, it looks like a ransomware attack but the possibility exists that it was, in fact, a way to destroy the government’s collection of vaccine information.

AUSTRIA'S PROPOSED VACCINATION POLICY

A member of the populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has expressed concern that amendments to a law on administrative enforcement could be used to imprison unvaccinated people for as long as a year.

Susanne Fürst of the FPÖ fears that an amendment to the Administrative Enforcement Act could be used to enforce the proposed mandatory coronavirus vaccination policy against the unvaccinated.

The new amendment would raise fines from €726 (£617/$818) to €2,000 (£1,701/$2,255) and would also increase prison time for refuseniks from just four weeks to up to a year in prison.

AG REPORT EXPOSES FEDERAL INCOMPETENCE

 Never let it be said that Canadian bureaucracies can’t learn on the fly. In a March 2021 report, federal Auditor General Karen Hogan found that from March to June 2020, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) could only verify that one-third of people who were supposed to be quarantining upon arrival in Canada had done so. By mid-2021, however, much progress had been made: A follow-up report released this week found that between January and June of this year, PHAC had only lost track of 37 per cent of incoming travelers.

The incompetence laid bare in Hogan’s reports this week is so all-pervading that it’s difficult even to start arguing what should be done about it. You can’t fix decades of yawning complacency in a year and a half, even in extremis. That hotel-bound woman did provide a good example of exactly what we shouldn’t conclude, though: one, that any of this is surprising; or two, that Canada’s pandemic experience might have been hugely different had some other party been in charge.

LIBERALS' DIRTY PLOY THAT FAILED SPECTACULARLY

   Who then to send to Beijing after the kidnapping of the two Michaels? Sometimes the best way to do business with a gangster is to enlist intermediaries who have done business with the gangster before. Why wouldn’t the same hold true with a gangster regime?
   That was the consensus diplomatic thinking in Ottawa throughout 2019. Former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney (who later recanted) advocated sending the powerful Desmarais family to Beijing.
   For decades, the Desmarais family has lobbied for a business-friendly approach to China through the Canada China Business Council (CCBC), which they created in 1978 to bend Canadian foreign policy toward a position that favoured the family and fellow businesses with interests in the People’s Republic.

    Dominic Barton is from that set. Indeed, the controversial speech he gave advocating for increased business ties with China, even while the two Michaels were being sleep-deprived in harsh confinement, was delivered to the CCBC.

ONTARIO'S NEW HEALTH MEASURES

   The government said it will be delaying the lifting of vaccine certificate requirements past January 17, which would have allowed places like restaurants, bars, casinos, bingo halls, and sports facilities to stop checking proof of vaccination.
   Starting January 4, only vaccine passports with the QR code and the Verify Ontario app will be accepted as proof of vaccination (but the QR code can either be provided digitally or on a slip of paper.)
   The provincial government also noted that as of December 20, kids aged 12 to 17 years old will have to provide proof of vaccination when taking part in organized sports at recreational facilities

    Earlier this week, the Ford government announced it would be pausing its reopening plan indefinitely.

FREELAND ARGUES CANADIAN ECONOMY IS STRONG

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the Canadian economy is strong and has weathered COVID better than many other nations, while dismissing Conservative claims about inflation at a House of Commons committee Thursday.

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre repeatedly asked Freeland to explain how the government will address inflation which is pushing up food prices and other costs across the country.

 “It’s really important for Canadians, not to be misled by a false narrative,” she said. “I do really want people to come away from today with an understanding that we have done a really good job as a country of managing what was a devastating crisis and what could have been much, much worse.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT: COVETING VICTIMHOOD

   At first glance, the Jussie Smollett trial looks like one of the maddest things taking place in the Western world right now. Here we have an actor accused of giving wads of money to two Nigerian brothers in 2019 in return for them beating him up and racially insulting him. Apparently it was all part of a dastardly plot by Smollett to secure the sympathies of the celebrity set and possibly become more famous to boot. He allegedly encouraged the burly bros to shout ‘MAGA’ slogans at him and to hang a noose around his neck. Make it look as racist as possible, this black actor allegedly advised the black brothers. Oh, and he had previously masturbated with one of the brothers, in a bathhouse, and on another occasion they also did some drugs. Allegedly. 

   And yet, take a closer look at this simultaneously hilarious and deranged affair and you might see that, in this era of wokeness, it kind of makes sense. It kind of makes sense that someone would allegedly go to such extraordinary lengths to depict himself as a victim, as a bruised, bleeding recipient of racial hatred, as yet another target of the white supremacy that had apparently been turbo-charged in the Trump years. After all, ours is a time in which a great many people covet victimhood. In which it’s the in thing to suffer.

CHINA'S RAPE CULTURE

“Even if I court disaster like an egg against stone or a moth to a flame, I will tell the truth about you and me.” These were Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai’s last words on Weibo, China’s heavily censored social media platform. In her explosive revelation, she detailed how China’s former vice-premier, Zhang Gaoli, had coerced her into sex on more than one occasion.

In China, sexual assault has become an epidemic. Its rape culture has emboldened men in every corner of society, from the upper echelons of power within the Chinese Communist Party, to mid-level management at state enterprises, literary circles and the public intelligentsia.

Sexual violence against women is so romanticized in China’s pop culture that one of the country’s most famous martial arts novelists, Louis Cha, created a character who developed an unwavering love for her rapist. Many Chinese women have said on Weibo that they were discouraged from reporting sexual harassment and rape because of tepid legal support and threats of retaliation from their assailants, specially when they are powerful men.

LIBERALS WRIGGLE AWAY AGAIN

 The Conservatives have lost their bid to resurrect a House of Commons order demanding the release of secret documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada's highest security laboratory.

Commons Speaker Anthony Rota ruled Thursday that the order expired, along with all other business before the House, when Parliament was dissolved in August for a federal election.

Consequently, Rota said it's up to the House or a Commons committee in the new Parliament to decide whether to issue a new order for production of the documents.

IGNORING THE REALITIES OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES

  Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says he wants a national mandate that would force auto dealers to sell a certain number of electric vehicles to be in place by the end of next year.

Road transportation accounts for one-fifth of Canada's total greenhouse-gas emissions. As Canada charts a path to net zero by 2050, eliminating carbon dioxide from passenger cars is a big part of the process.

The federal government wants half of all new passenger cars sold in Canada to be zero-emission vehicles by 2030, and reach 100 per cent by 2035.

AFN REJECTS MULTI-$MILLION SPENDING

A proposal to spend up to $2-million on a permanent Ottawa residence, including furniture, for the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations was put before regional chiefs at a meeting this week.

The pitch, which was rejected, included another proposal for up to $3.5-million to buy “any number of properties, including furniture,” for use by the national chief or regional chiefs, both current and future.

Some members of the executive of the AFN say now is not the time to be buying property for the organization. Both Northwest Territories Regional Chief Norman Yakeleya and Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse said Thursday that if the AFN has access to this amount of money, it should be directed to those who are less fortunate.

LIBERALS' SOARING GOVERNMENT SPENDING

 A new report into Ottawa’s spending by the Parliamentary Budget Office suggests that economist Milton Friedman was not wrong when he said there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.

The PBO said the government is seeking budgetary authorities for $379.9 billion this fiscal year to date. That is 28 percent higher in real 2021 dollars than the federal government sought a decade ago and 16 percent more than the year before COVID hit. (The Estimates do not cover costs related to the wage and rent subsidies, the Canada Child Benefit, tax expenditures or Employment Insurance, for which Parliament does not authorize annual spending.)

We will get a much clearer view of the government’s total spending when Chrystia Freeland tables her fall fiscal update next week. (As an aside, we should treat its projections with caution – the PBO report reveals that the last fiscal update forecast COVID recovery benefits would cost $10.3 billion this year; the reality will be closer to $18 billion.)

But it is already apparent that the Liberals have used the pandemic as an opportunity to expand the reach of government.