OTTAWA GRANDEES BRAVELY RESISTING A MILITARY INVASION

Instead of exhibiting sangfroid, unfortunately, many of Ottawa’s grandees reacted as if they’d become history’s witnesses to a military invasion. That single aforementioned whack job with the Confederate flag was held up as evidence that Ottawa had become Danzig-on-the-Rideau. “Watching what is happening today, I am not sure if I am more worried that this will be similar to Charlottesville or the January 6 (Capitol) insurrection,” tweeted Liberal MP Anthony Housefather. “Either way, it is something I hoped never to see on this side of the border.”

Horrified by the possibility that this earnest-seeming Liberal’s apocalyptic fears were being realized, I surfed a few news channels, all of which were broadcasting images of what was essentially a combination traffic jam and street party. If a bunch of dudes in horned fur hats had conquered the House of Commons in the name of Incel Roganistan, it wasn’t being reported.

In true Canadian fashion, protesters even began policing one another’s behaviour. This included setting up ad-hoc litter patrols to clean up everyone else’s mess — leading to the unintentionally hilarious spectacle of CBC reporter Hannah Thibodeau trying to drum up outrage with a tweeted picture of neatly arranged garbage bags. Her CBC colleague Falice Chin, meanwhile, complained that protests were negatively affecting residents’ ability to do weekend “errands,” while also somewhat breathlessly reporting that a truck was “literally” parked on the street outside her home. Other complaints seemed positively Victorian, with one Ottawa architect tweeting at great length about truck-driving yobs perpetrating “all manner of rudeness.”

TRUDEAU'S HIGH DUDGEON

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is not “intimidated” by members of the trucker protest who “hurl insults and abuse” workers or “steal food from the homeless” over the weekend and will not meet with organizers.

“Over the past few days, Canadians were shocked, and frankly, disgusted by the behaviour displayed by some people protesting in our nation’s capital,” Trudeau said during a press conference Monday in which he came out swinging against some members of this weekend’s massive trucker protest in Ottawa.

Monday, Trudeau confirmed he would be going nowhere near the protest nor meeting with any of its organizers.

COVID 19 STORYLINE: GREATEST SCAM IN WORLD HISTORY

   Israel is the most vaccinated major nation in the world. Almost the entire population is quadruple vaccinated. Yet right now Israel is No. 1 in the world for COVID-19 infections. Over one half of 1% of their entire population is testing positive for COVID-19 PER DAY.
   In Germany, the most draconian COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in the world were sold to the public with false data. Just like in America, the German government labeled this a "pandemic of the unvaccinated." They claimed up to 90% of the infected and dead were unvaccinated. Newspaper investigations have found that none of this was true. The government simply classified every sick or dying person as "unvaccinated." Government officials are apologizing, blaming the "mistake" on a "software error."

   In Alberta, Canada, the government published, then quickly deleted health data exposing that almost 60% of the COVID-19 victims classified as "unvaccinated" were actually among the vaccinated. It turns out everyone who got sick, was hospitalized or died within two weeks of getting any vaccine (the first jab, or second, or third) was counted as "unvaccinated."

LIBERALS IN NO POSITION TO SCHOOL US ON ACCEPTABILITY

 You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to take lessons on what is acceptable, at a protest or otherwise, from a movement whose leader defends church burnings as understandable — something Trudeau and his sidekick Gerry Butts did this past summer.

This isn’t a matter of whataboutism, defending the actions of the trucker convoy by deflecting back to what others have done.

I have no stake in the trucker convoy, but like many Canadians, I’m tired of the Liberal double standard and the majority of our media who let them get away with perpetuating it.

TRUCKING ALLIANCE NEEDS 23,000 DRIVERS

The Liberal government is promising more money to address bottlenecks and infrastructure problems that are gumming up supply chains, but the president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance said it’s a lack of people that are slowing things down.

 The president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, Stephen Laskowski,  has been front and centre this week, in the controversy over vaccine mandates for truckers, but he said the labour shortage goes far beyond the mandate. The alliance supports vaccination, but asked the government to consider at least delaying the cross-border rules due to labour shortage.

WE ARE DOING IT FOR OUR CHILDREN

 Ontario Farmer reporter Ian Cumming continued his coverage in Ottawa this weekend as thousands of protestors gathered on Parliament Hill to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other public health measures

CREATIVE ANONYMOUS DONORS

At least a third of the donations to the GoFundMe campaign set up to support the convoy of trucks headed to Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates came from anonymous sources or were attributed to fake names, according to an analysis by CBC News.

Some donations were made using the names of other people. Among the most common donor names listed on the GoFundMe site are Justin Trudeau, Sophie Trudeau and Theresa Tam — the name of Canada's chief public health officer.

Other listed donors identified themselves as "Fidel Castro - Justin Trudeau's dad," "Justin Trudeau's conscience," "Dump Trudeau" or used a number of other phrases laden with obscenities.

RECAP OF DAY 7 OF FREEDOM CONVOY

   True North:  On Day 7 of the Truckers for Freedom Convoy, tens of thousands of people peacefully converged on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, the legacy media’s hateful narrative crumbled and Canadians sent a message to the entire world – that vaccine mandates and restrictions under COVID must come to an end.

PATHETIC CBC BLAMES RUSSIAN BOGEYMAN

While in a normal world this would be beyond satire and ridicule, it is perhaps of no surprise whatsoever that the blame for instigation of the "Freedom Convoy" is already being placed on so-called 'Russian actors'...

Speaking in an interview on Friday with Canada’s public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, CBC host Nil Koksal suggested that possible Kremlin meddlers might have brought about the massive “Freedom Convoy":

"...given Canada's support of Ukraine... I don't know it it's far-fetched to ask but there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows... perhaps even instigating it..."

GREAT RESET BECOMES ROADKILL

   These truckers stand for all the people in the West who have done everything their political leaders forced upon them. While the power class (politicians, media, the professoriate, billionaires, etc.) sheltered at home, these people — whether truckers, store clerks, sanitation people, bus drivers, police, or dozens of other jobs that needed to be done — bravely went out despite the fear of an unknown disease. Back then, the leaders were grateful. Indeed, Justin Trudeau couldn't say enough for truckers
   Now, though, the truckers are getting in the way of the grand plans that the politicians, media types, professors, and billionaires have hatched. The Great Reset, about which leftists, including Trudeau, have been open, requires that every person be tracked and controlled via technology. COVID and vaccine madness provided the perfect way to do that, with many people — mostly from the same class as those pushing the Reset — voluntarily handing over their freedoms.

   But in America and around the world, the regular people don't want to become slaves to the state. They don't want to be forced to take experimental medicines, to see their children masked and isolated, to watch the greenies destroy their livelihoods, their access to food, their ability to travel, their AC in the summer and heat in the winter, and everything else that the ruling class has planned and is enforcing through a toxic amalgam of government and the private sector.

FREEDOM CONVOY MOST INSPIRING STORY AROUND THE WORLD

Mark Steyn:  Justin Trudeau and his entire cabinet have come down with the dreaded pantywaist variant and are self-isolating in the basement.

Neil Oliver: I stand firmly with the Canadian pilgrims in their trucks...

MEDICAL BRILLIANCE TWO YEARS TOO LATE

 While it has long been considered heresy for members of the public to say that COVID-19 cannot be contained by lockdowns and that it’s time we learned to live with it like the flu, this is now the view of many medical officers of health across Canada.

It’s simply an acknowledgment of reality.

“I absolutely think we have to start to understand that we have to learn to live with the virus and we’ve let our lives be controlled for the last two years in a significant amount of fear”, Ontario chief medical officer Kieran Moore said Thursday.

Let’s forget for the moment that much of that fear was generated by people advising the Ontario government on what to do about COVID.

TAKING FEDERAL ARCHIVES TO COURT

Ottawa consultant Michael Dagg is appealing to the Federal Court, asking a judge to order Library and Archives Canada to speed up his freedom of information request.

The federal institution originally quoted Dagg an 80-year turnaround time for his 2018 request. That meant the now 73-year-old wouldn't see his request fulfilled until at least his 150th birthday.

Dagg requested documents related to the RCMP's Project Anecdote, an investigation into money laundering and public corruption that was launched in May 1993. "Project Anecdote was a major project," he said. "They spent 10 years researching it. We're entitled to get answers."

No charges were laid, and the Mountie files were turned over to government archives.

CROSS-CANADA PROTESTS SUPPORTING FREEDOM CONVOY

EDMONTON — Like many of those gathered near the Alberta legislature to support a convoy of trucks that inched their way through Edmonton's downtown streets for several hours on Saturday, Kyla Keulers has been to protests against COVID-19 health restrictions before.

But there were so many more people at Saturday's event, and so many truck horns honking, that she felt optimistic things are about to change — that their protests will finally make a difference.

The event, which a provincial spokesman said attracted several thousand people, was one of numerous convoys that were held in conjunction with a national convoy against vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers that rolled across Canada this past week and arrived in Ottawa on Saturday.

GEARING UP FOR THE FINAL STRETCH TO OTTAWA

 Ontario Farmer reporter Ian Cumming was live on the scene in Vankleek Hill last night as over 1,000 trucks and vehicles made their way into Herbs Truck Stop for a rest. Here in a column written hours before the convoy reaches its final destination of Ottawa, Cumming speaks to the group of people gathered that included truckers, farmers, nuns, volunteers and citizens

NOVA SCOTIA GOV'T BANS ROADSIDE CONVOY SUPPORTERS

   Nova Scotia has made it illegal to gather alongside the interprovincial highway in support of the Truckers for Freedom Convoy.
   The provincial government announced the directive Friday afternoon, claiming that “allowing people to gather in those areas would put themselves and others at risk.”
   Although called a “Highway Blockade Ban” on the government’s press release, and is nominally directed towards “prohibiting protesters from blockading Highway 104 near the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border,” the ban also covers supporters of trucking convoys

   Another section of the ban goes so far as to prohibit “financing” of such activities. True North reached out to the Nova Scotia government to learn what exactly this meant but received no response by deadline. As of publication time, the GoFundMe for the freedom convoy had reached $7.5 million.

ENVY OF FREE REPUBLICAN STATES IN USA

As a Canadian living in what amounts to a Covid dictatorship in a nascent totalitarian country, I envy my American counterparts, at least those living free of lockdowns, masks, mandates, and vaxxports in the so-called “red” or Republican states. Were the legislative chains struck from our ankles, and if the Biden administration relaxed its border controls, my wife and I would be among them in a heartbeat.

 Not a single political party, with the exception of the People’s Party of Canada (with no seats in Parliament), has opposed the Liberal Party’s roughshod trampling of the Charter.

SHAMEFUL MEDIA DEMONIZING TRUCK CONVOY

   Brian Lilley:  If you haven’t heard, this protest is destined to become Canada’s January 6th, the storming of the American capital that took place just over a year ago. Where did the idea come from that people involved in the convoy wanted to attempt a violent overthrow of the Canadian government?

It wasn’t from any of the organizers, it was an anonymous comment made online and referenced by Global News in one of their reports. It was enough to set the tone of the coverage for days to come — these are violent extremists. Beware!

I’ve covered all kinds of political protests from the Summit of the Americas riots in Quebec City to riots in Montreal, violent protests in Ottawa and the Idle No More campaign that took hold near Parliament Hill for weeks. Never have I seen our national media, led by those on Parliament Hill, spend so much time digging into the comments and views of a group of people trying to find those they can demonize.

UNITED IN THE CAUSE

 There was a call from an older cattle dealer in central Ontario. He had never protested in his life. Ottawa was going to be a first. He told of a local small operator, “I mean he’s small and needs the money,” who had donated $10,000 to this convoy.

“It’s the fear,” he said. “I’m not sure what scares them more? The fear of COVID, or the fear of people critical of them for not complying? There has only been one farmer demand I wear a mask in his barn when out buying cattle. He’s on the milk marketing board.”

TRUCKERS THE EMBLEMS OF WORN DOWN CANADIANS

    Rex Murphy:  A couple of years ago Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was sending valentines to our noble truckers for keeping Canadians fed through their deliveries. Yet a couple of days before this weekend’s gathering of the aforementioned truckers, who have travelled half of Canada in midwinter, from both directions, to express their concerns and feelings in a peaceful protest, he shoved them to the margins, declaring them a “fringe” and their views “unacceptable.”

There is a voice within this protest, a voice beyond the owner of the hands on the wheel, beyond the cheers coming from the side of the road or from the highway overpasses. A voice coming from the less comfortable in society, the perennially less seen or regarded. It’s the voice of dutiful, working citizens whom the past two years of shutdowns, loss of work or severe reduction of income, all kinds of pressures and anxieties, have worn them down. The truckers are emblems, stand-ins for these Canadians.

PERILS OF GRANTING THE OLYMPIC GAMES TO CHINA

 Last week, Yang Shu, deputy director general of international relations for the Beijing organizing committee, said at a press conference that “dedicated departments” would investigate athletes’ comments at the Games. “Any behaviour or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against the Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment.”

So let’s get this straight: athletes and journalists attending Beijing 2022 are likely to be subject to authoritarian surveillance, cybercrime, and censorship. If they are perceived to step out of line, they, by China’s own admission, will be subject to the CCP’s notorious brand of draconian punishment. Based on those two sentences alone, never mind other concerns like the Uyghur genocide, how is it conscionable to permit these Games to proceed?

THE USUAL DISRESPECT FROM POLITICIANS & MEDIA

   Rex Murphy:  A matter — I was going to write a little matter, but it’s not little at all — very much worth noting here is that a mass rally of big-rig truckers crossing the country, to go all the way to Ottawa in a Canadian January, is no minor undertaking. As I suggested in the previous column on this topic, a lot of what we have come to call protests commonly demand no more than hopping on a subway and heading to some downtown intersection, a squat on the pavement for a few hours, a blurb to uninquisitve reporters, and heading off to the coffee shop to post on Twitter.

 This is different. It’s a protest that is taking work and time and real commitment. And it has emerged from people who hardly ever protest and certainly do not exercise protest as a hobby or routine.

As such it should be receiving much more detailed coverage, much more serious analysis, and certainly a respectful and full response from all our elected representatives than has so far been the case.

COWARD OF THE COTTAGE

 A catchy tune to brighten your day.

TRUCKERS FOR FREEDOM CONVOY

On Day 5 of the Truckers for Freedom Convoy, the Western fleet was met by huge crowds as it rolled through the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Eastern fleet headed across New Brunswick.

THE USELESS UN

   North Korea will lead the United Nations' Conference on Disarmament in a rotational one-month presidency in June this year, the world body has said.

  North Korea is among six countries -- along with China, Colombia, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ecuador -- that will assume this year's chairmanship for four weeks each in alphabetical order.
  The North's presidency is expected to stir controversy, especially as it has been ramping up tensions on the Korean Peninsula with a series of weapons tests since the start of the year.

MPP HILLIER CONDEMNS POLITICIANS' VACCINE MANDATES

(PERTH, ONTARIO) “For our Prime Minister to restrict access to food and basic necessities in the middle of winter, in Canada, is nothing short of an act of domestic terrorism,” Mr. Hillier explained. “Our Premiers across this country, including Doug Ford, are complicit in holding Canadians hostage with restrictions that do nothing but keep food off our store shelves,” Mr. Hillier continued. “Hard working and patriotic truckers, who are being kept from crossing the border, are headed to Ottawa in protest; I salute them and I intend to join them. It’s my hope that they stay in Ottawa, on Parliament Hill, until our Prime Minister and premiers end all terrorist decrees of vaccine mandates and all other mandates end,” said Mr. Hillier.

TRUDEAU SLITHERS AWAY FROM TRUCKERS FOR FREEDOM

Last night, I learned that I have been exposed to COVID-19. My rapid test result was negative. I am following @OttawaHealth rules and isolating for five days. I feel fine and will be working from home. Stay safe, everyone – and please get vaccinated.

ERIN O'TOOLE WANTS TO EDUCATE TRUCKERS

After weeks of waffling over truckers and vaccine mandates, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Erin O’Toole has doubled down by calling for shot clinics along trucking routes and “educational programs for truckers to better address vaccine hesitancy.”

O’Toole made these and other recommendations in a Postmedia column Wednesday. His statements come after several prominent members of his Conservative caucus have already sent out clear messages of support for truckers as well as condemnations of COVID vaccine mandates.

THE KIDS ARE NOT ALRIGHT

I don’t claim to be a doctor or an expert in virology. There is a lot I don’t know. But I spend my days with our youth and they tell me a lot about their lives. And I want to tell you what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, when our school went fully remote, it was evident to me that the loss of human connection would be detrimental to our students’ development. It also became increasingly clear that the response to the pandemic would have immense consequences for students who were already on the path to long-term disengagement, potentially altering their lives permanently.

The data about learning loss and the mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves.

DOCTORS WILL NOT BE SILENCED ON IVERMECTIN

An Ontario doctor prohibited from prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID-19 has launched a telehealth service offering the unapproved treatment to Ontarians to treat the virus, Global News can reveal.

Dr Patrick Phillips, a family doctor who is the subject of several investigations by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), is the director of a new telehealth service based in Ontario that is offering ivermectin, an antiparasitic treatment not approved by Health Canada to treat COVID-19.

The service, called Canadian Covid TeleHealth Inc (CCTH), was launched by members of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA), a website promoting information at odds with public health advice, which also features new initiatives from at least two other Ontario health professionals with COVID-related license restrictions.

ROXHAM RD REOPENING NETS 2800 ILLEGALS

New statistics reveal that 2,800 illegal border crossers entered Canada through Roxham Road in December, only one month after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced its reopening.

According to CTV News, that’s nearly a threefold jump since November, which saw 832 crossings at the controversial crossing.

On Nov. 22, Trudeau reopened the unauthorized point of entry to refugee and asylum claimants after it was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Border officials reported that only 96 people were admitted at Roxham Road in October.

BILINGUAL DELUSIONS AT TORONTO'S FRANCOPHONE UNIVERSITY

The latest enrolment figures are out for the Université de l’Ontario Français, established 2019 on the Toronto waterfront, and they are grim: Exactly 14 Ontario high-school students have applied to attend this coming autumn. That’s five grimmer than last year, when only two of the 19 applicants had UOF as their first choice on the common Ontario application form. (Choice data isn’t yet available for next year.)

OTTAWA POLICE CHIEF FAFFING ABOUT

Let’s summarize the situation with the Ottawa police. Almost six years ago, an external study said sexual harassment on the job was a major problem. This month, another major external study said sexual harassment was a still a problem and one that requires “urgent and immediate attention.”

Faced with this internal crisis, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly has proposed a corrective plan that is light on details, will take five-plus years to implement and will cost $8.2 million. It’s a banquet of bureaucratic activity.

In any case, the key point on timing is that the problem will be allowed to slowly fester until after Sloly’s contract is up. One of the features of Sloly’s approach is that not only are there no clear consequences for people who continue to sexually harass, there are none for the people in charge. By the time this five-year plan ends, Sloly will likely have moved on and so will the people on the police services board.

TRUCKERS FOR FREEDOM CONVOY

Canadian author Jordan Peterson retweeted news that approximately 500,000 Canadian truckers will descend on Ottawa Saturday. He warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he’s in for “a very bad week.”

Recap of Day 2 of the Truckers for Freedom Convoy across Canada.

PFIZER'S ANTI-COVID PILL REACTS WITH OTHER DRUGS

The catch? One part of the drug, a ritonavir booster, has the same impact on a range of other drugs, increasing their potency to a potentially dangerous level in some cases.

A patient on blood thinners could end up with spontaneous bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract or brain, noted Evans. Someone taking pills for hypertension might see their blood pressure fall so much they pass out, said Dr. Andrew Hill, a pharmacology researcher at the U.K.’s Liverpool University.

“There are all kinds of ways that Paxlovid could cause serious harm,” he said.

Ritonavir is used in HIV treatments, too, so there is a wealth of knowledge about those conflicts. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) product monograph for Paxlovid lists over 100 drugs that it says should not be taken with the COVID pills or whose use ought to be carefully monitored.

THOUSANDS ATTEND FREEDOM RALLIES

Canadians gathered by the thousands in various cities on Saturday to voice their opposition to lockdown measures, vaccine passports and mandatory COVID-19 shots.

The Worldwide Freedom Rally was held in solidarity with cities around the world. Protests took place at dozens of urban centres including Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Fredericton.

In the streets of downtown Toronto, protestors waved Canadian flags and held signs with statements such as “Unvaxxed are not sick!” and “Compliance isn’t science.”

BACKLOG OF HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRANT APPLICATIONS

In a recent article in Foreign Policy, Parag Khanna of globalization experts FutureMap predicted that the Great Lockdown will be followed by the Great Migration, as the best and brightest move to exploit opportunities and fill labour shortages.

 It would seem an inopportune time for the government of Canada to stop accepting applications from highly skilled workers from overseas. Yet that is exactly what the Liberals have done.

 The high-skilled worker stream is backlogged, so despite nationwide labour shortages, the government is pausing new invitations because the department can’t process them.

The reason why Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is so backed up are entirely political.

REFORMING THE RCMP

 It's been years since Cathy Mansley wore her RCMP uniform. She still gets upset talking about her exit.

The former constable said she was the target of discrimination and sexual advances — including unwanted touching — throughout her career.

"When I became more vocal about how I was being treated at work and how I wasn't being helped, especially after I asked for help, everything just went downhill from there," she told CBC News from her home in Cape Breton.

PFIZER CEO TRYING TO SELL AN ANNUAL COVID JAB

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, said it would "not be a good scenario" if people were to get boosters every four to five months. "What I'm hoping [is] that we will have a vaccine that you will have to do once a year," he told Channel 12 news on Saturday. Instead, Bourla argued it would be easier to sell the idea and "easier for people to remember" if a vaccine is required only once per year, calling it "an ideal situation" from "a public health perspective."

As far as Pfizer's bottom line is concerned, it might not be an "ideal situation" - but it might just be the best the company can hope for given how their vaccines have performed over the last year.

UNDIGNIFIED TEST CAUSING PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS

CHINA has brought back its "undignified" anal Covid swabs just two weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympics begin.

The Communist regime claims the virus test — which involves inserting a 5cm long saline-soaked swab up a patient's bum and rotating it — is more accurate than other on-the-spot virus tests.

However, the prospect of foreign visitors being swabbed up the bum has sparked controversy.

EXPOSING THE WRONG BEING DONE IN THE NAME OF PUBLIC HEALTH

 Neil Oliver: 'There are consequences of Covid coming, a great wave of them'

SURVIVING A CHINESE RE-EDUCATION CAMP

 I was born into a Uighur family that had lived in Xinjiang for generations. 

This jewel, more than six times the size of the UK, is at the far western end of China. Its riches include gold, diamonds, natural gas, uranium, and – above all – oil.

Since being annexed by China, we Uighurs have been the stone in the Beijing regime’s shoe.

Xinjiang is far too rich a strategic corridor for it to lose and President Xi Jinping wants it cleansed of separatist populations. 

In short, China wants a Xinjiang without Uighurs.

WIFE'S STANDOFF WITH HOSPITAL TO KEEP HER HUSBAND ALIVE

Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and immunologist who has contributed to mRNA vaccine technology, said in a December 2021 interview on The Joe Rogan Experience said that the financial incentives aren’t rumors.

“The numbers are quite large,” Malone told Rogan. “There’s something like a $3,000 basically death benefit to a hospital if it can be claimed to be COVID. There’s a financial incentive to call somebody COVID positive.”

The hospitals receive a bonus, Malone added, from the government if someone is hospitalized and able to be declared COVID positive.

“They also receive a bonus—I think the total is something like $30,000 in incentive—if somebody gets put on the vent,” Malone said. “Then they get a bonus, if somebody is declared dead with COVID.”

LOCKDOWN ADVOCATES RUNNING FROM THEIR DECISIONS

For those who were part of the lockdown Resistance, it is gratifying, but also oddly unbearable, to see the people who attacked us admitting that the “misinformation” we were accused of spreading 18 months ago turns out to be remarkably close to the truth. I am not a particularly rebellious person, and certainly not a brave one, but if I encounter any kind of injustice, my inner Welsh dragon starts breathing fire. I can’t help it. During the lockdowns, Idris the Pearson dragon seldom stopped fuming at the thousands of harrowing stories which readers shared with me. Like the lecturer who emailed about one of his students, a glorious young man, who fell to his death after hiding on the roof when police raided his house because a small party there breached lockdown regulations and the lad didn’t want to get into trouble. He paid with his young life for the stupid rules that were made – and repeatedly broken, as we now know – by middle-aged men in Westminster.

WHEN DID ALBERTA SAY YES TO NET ZERO?

  Rex Murphy:  Is it not passing strange, and then some, that such a huge, historical upheaval in the province of Alberta as the eventual shutdown of the energy industry came by what I will call slow-motion fiat?

Was there a specific meeting, a specific moment, when Alberta said Yes to “net zero,” said Yes to “transitioning its workers out of oil and gas,” said Yes to declarations made in Paris and Glasgow?

When was that moment? Where are the documents that recorded such a monumental agreement between Alberta and the federal government, yielding the province’s economic well-being to Trudeau’s personal cause of all causes, the wish to be a hero on the global stage in the holiest of crusades, the fight against climate change.

STRETCH GOAL OF COVID JABS

For many months, conservatives have been predicting that the CDC will redefine what it means to be vaccinated. In the distant past — that is, more than two years ago — being vaccinated meant you'd had an injection that left you forever immune to a disease. This became problematic when the COVID vaccines did not leave people immune to the disease. Now there are boosters, so the CDC has announced that you're not vaccinated unless you've also had your booster. Of course, even with that booster, you're still not immune, as the troubles in Israel reveal.

NET-ZERO VIRTUE SIGNALING LIBERALS DESTROYING ECONOMY

 Rex Murphy:  Another way of phrasing the same question is: What’s so wrong, what’s so defective in our current energy system that the Liberal government has pledged, as its absolute priority, to replace it?

Having a secure and tested energy system is a very big deal for any nation, but having a secure and tested energy supply is the quintessential necessity for a vast northern country — really vast — that is also the home of a wealthy, modern economy.

A subsidiary question is: Does the government of a Confederation have the right, the legislative competence to declare the central industry of one of the provinces within that Confederation outmoded? And on that premise make it a national policy to destroy the economic well-being of that province?

ANDREW'S WELL-DESERVED KICK IN THE PLUMS

Who’d have thought a 95-year-old woman, who’s just lost her husband of seven decades, could be so utterly ruthless? Who could know she’d stand ready to desert her favorite child? And who could imagine that she would put her business — “The Firm,” as she calls it — ahead of her nearest and dearest?

Okay, she might be the Queen, but even so her son Andrew must feel he’s been kicked hard by his own mother, right between the legs, just when he’s friendless and the whole world is denouncing him. She’s stripped off his military titles and royal patronages and instructed that he will no longer be called His Royal Highness. He’s no longer a working Royal, and a range of charities and trusts have cut their ties with him. Even his Twitter page has been deleted. Like a peacock, each of his colorful feathers are being ripped out, one by one, in full, painful, public view.

THE SURLY PUBLIC IN THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD

 Together with guarded hopes that the decline of the omicron COVID-19 wave marks the beginning of the end of the pandemic comes the question: what happens when it has finally run its course? What will the post-pandemic world be like? The most likely scenario is that it will unleash the greatest political jailbreak since the end of the second world war. Only a few months after Hitler’s armies surrendered, the British electorate, eager to put the restrictions of war behind them, handed Winston Churchill a landslide defeat and replaced him with Clement Atlee. Once victory removed the rationale for all the regulations they had willingly accepted, they set about removing them. With the end of the current pandemic, the justification for lockdowns, masks, mandates, tracking, and restrictions on the public will similarly vanish and the desire for a new world will be unleashed.

INTEREST RATE HIKING CYCLE FORECASTED

As early as next week, the Bank of Canada will start a campaign of tighter monetary policy that will test the country’s debt-laden consumers and reveal whether its robust economic recovery has staying power.

The country has one of the highest total debt burdens in the developed world, ranking slightly behind France and well ahead of the U.S. Even so, markets are betting that the Bank of Canada will be the most aggressive Group of Seven central bank in lifting rates.

Economists and traders see a string of hikes, likely starting at the Jan. 26 decision, until the policy rate is back at the pre-pandemic level of 1.75% in about a year. The Bank of Nova Scotia is forecasting it will climb as high as 2%.

FORMER POPE, BENEDICT, UNDER SCRUTINY

The report by law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) will analyse how abuse cases were dealt with in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising between 1945 and 2019.

The Munich archdiocese, which commissioned the report, said it will examine "whether those responsible complied with legal requirements... and acted appropriately in dealing with suspected cases and possible perpetrators".

Ex-pope Benedict -- whose civilian name is Josef Ratzinger -- was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

TRUCKERS' SLOW ROLL CONVOY PROTESTING VACCINE MANDATES

  Truckers from across Canada are organizing a convoy to Ottawa to demand an end to all vaccine mandates.
  The Freedom Convoy 2022 protest comes after Ottawa enacted a policy requiring truckers to show proof of their COVID shots at the border or be turned away.
  In an email obtained by True North, convoy organizers say truckers will begin a “slow roll” from multiple border points on Jan. 23, and head towards Ottawa. They hope that slowing down major transportation routes will garner attention for their cause.

  Organizers of the convoy say the time has come to show federal and provincial governments that they’re no longer allowed to “continue to slowly squeeze Canadians into giving up their God-Given – and Constitutionally protected – Rights and Freedoms.”

LIBERALS INFRINGING ON CANADIANS' RIGHTS

It may be unpopular to stand up for travellers during COVID-19, but violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should concern every Canadian. Reports coming out of the U.S. suggest our federal government is de facto denying Canadian citizens a key right : the one to enter, remain in, or leave Canada.

 The violation comes in the face of severe testing shortages. Increasingly, Canadians who travel to the U.S. are unable to secure the negative COVID molecular test result that is required within 72 hours of their return home. This even includes those who have pre-booked tests. In response, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canada Border Services Agency are presenting these Canadian citizens with two options: being denied entry or paying exorbitant fines of $6,200 per person to enter the country.

APPALLING IDEOLOGY DESTROYING CULTURE

Jordan Peterson: We are now at the point where race, ethnicity, “gender,” or sexual preference is first, accepted as the fundamental characteristic defining each person (just as the radical leftists were hoping) and second, is now treated as the most important qualification for study, research and employment.

Need I point out that this is insane ? Even the benighted New York Times has its doubts. A headline from August 11, 2021: Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm than Good? In a word, yes. How can accusing your employees of racism etc. sufficient to require re-training (particularly in relationship to those who are working in good faith to overcome whatever bias they might still, in these modern, liberal times, manifest) be anything other than insulting, annoying, invasive, high-handed, moralizing, inappropriate, ill-considered, counterproductive, and otherwise unjustifiable?

INEVITABLE CRASH OF CHINA'S PROPERTY MARKET

Video:  China has already collapsed.  You just don't know it yet.

CANADA POST HAS LOST THE PLOT

Canada Post workers risk being sent home from work if they wear masks other than ones issued by the corporation, even if their masks are an upgrade in safety.

Employees who buy their own N95 masks and bring them to work are being told to switch to company issued cloth masks or risk being sent home.

“The mask requirements, like our vaccine mandate, are mandatory and necessary under direction from the (Employment and Social Development Canada [ESDC]),” a spokesperson for Canada Post said in an emailed statement. “Therefore anyone at work must comply.”

AS LAWSUITS PILE UP, FEDS' PROTECTION NOWHERE TO BE SEEN

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled his election platform on Sept. 1, he made a promise to employers: "we'll protect businesses that mandate vaccinations from unjustified lawsuits."

Now, employment lawyers say lawsuits from fired unvaccinated workers are beginning to pile up — and the federal government's protections are nowhere to be seen.

"We are seeing a huge amount of cases, claims, lawsuits involving terminations resulting from an individual's vaccine status," said Lior Samfiru, a Toronto employment lawyer and co-founder of Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Neil Oliver reacts to Danish newspaper apology for Covid coverage…

INFLATION CLIMBING EVEN HIGHER

 OTTAWA — Statistics Canada says the annual pace of inflation climbed in December to its highest rate since 1991.

The agency says the consumer price index in December was up 4.8 per cent compared with a year ago.

The reading compared with a year-over-year increase of 4.7 per cent in November.

TRUDEAU'S LARGESSE WITH TAXPAYERS MONEY

 OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is giving no indications of plans to rein in government spending after a critical report by the parliamentary budget officer questioned the Liberals' case to spend tens of billions in planned stimulus.

The Liberals had promised up to $100 billion in economic stimulus, subject to a series of spending guardrails to determine whether the economy had recovered enough from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Budget officer Yves Giroux's report released Wednesday morning said those benchmarks, largely tied to the labour market, appear to have been met. He said that suggests any stimulus should be wound down before the fiscal year ends in March.

Giroux added that the rationale for the planned stimulus of up to $100 billion no longer exists, unless the government has changed the policy yardsticks.

PM DETERMINED TO DESTROY SUPPLY CHAINS

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending the federal government’s decision to implement a vaccination mandate for truck drivers despite warnings that it could worsen price increases and shortages.

Mr. Trudeau told an Ottawa news conference on Wednesday the federal government has been clear since November that the requirement for truckers would come this month.

But critics say the mandate is poorly timed, coming in the winter, when Canadians rely on international supply chains for fresh produce, and that it will push already high levels of inflation even higher.

LIBERALS STILL DESPERATE TO MAINTAIN SECRECY

 Government House leader Mark Holland is urging the Conservatives to reconsider their rejection of a compromise proposal that would allow MPs to finally see unredacted documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada's highest-security laboratory.

 In a recent article in the Globe and Mail penned by Michael Kergin, former ambassador to the United States, and two former senior officials in the Privy Council Office, Greg Fyffe and Jim Mitchell. , the trio argued that prolonging the dispute over the documents "could be damaging for Canada's intelligence and security agencies."

They wrote that the release of information that appears innocuous could actually wind up "unmasking" foreign sources and could be "a gift to hostile intelligence powers." It could also deter potential sources from sharing information for fear they could be identified.

Moreover, if the government were to lose control over the release of sensitive information, the trio argued that would violate Canada's obligations to its "Five Eyes" intelligence partners, with whom sensitive information is shared under strict confidentiality conditions.

GOVERNMENT DISINTEREST IN OUR MILITARY

Russia seems intent on annexing more of Ukraine, unless NATO agrees to a redrawing of the European security map – effectively conceding Vladimir Putin Soviet-era zones of influence across Eastern Europe.

Canada has 540 members of the CAF in Latvia, another 200 trainers and, according to a Global News report, an unspecified number of special forces troops in Ukraine, part of whose mission may be to evacuate diplomatic staff.

 This is where the Canadian military falls short. In terms of personnel, training and equipment, CAF has rarely been in such rough shape. Government disinterest and lack of direction has reached the point where retired generals are speaking out, offering opinions they say are shared by senior officers still serving.

LIBERALS CAN'T DO ENOUGH FOR THE CBC

 A year after CBC president Catherine Tait defended the public broadcaster’s foray into sponsored content in front of the country’s broadcast regulator, the Liberal government has set its sights on moving the CBC away from the advertising business.

The Liberals have promised $400 million over four years to make the CBC less reliant on advertising, and are aiming to ensure the public broadcaster’s programming is more distinct from its private sector competition.

MORE TAXES WILL NOT MAKE COVID GO AWAY

As we head into the third year of revolving government lockdowns, Canadians have every right to be furious. But we shouldn’t let politicians divide us. And we shouldn’t be duped into believing that we are going to tax our way out of a pandemic.

“We’re looking for a health contribution for adults who refuse to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons,” announced Quebec Premier François Legault.

Legault’s “health contribution” is just another tax to be added on to the heavy burden of income, business, sales, property, payroll, import, fuel and carbon taxes that Canadians are already forced to pay.

In 2020, the average family spent more on taxes than on basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing combined . More taxes won’t make COVID-19 go away.

CALLS FOR SIGNIFICANT REFORM OF CANADA'S DAIRY TRADE

 New Zealand said Canada needs to overhaul its approach to dairy imports because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has repeatedly broken its promise to let foreign cheese and butter flow more freely into the country.

The public criticisms are the first in what trade lawyers expect could become an international pile-on following Canada’s loss to the United States this month in a long-running dairy dispute. Canada’s approach to dairy imports has long been a sore spot for trading partners, and the success of the U.S. in challenging that approach could embolden copycat actions under trade agreements Canada signed with the European Union and a group of mostly Asian countries that includes New Zealand, a major dairy exporter.

WHEN SOIL ABNORMALITIES BECOME 215 GRAVES

One of 2021’s biggest stories was the “discovery” of unmarked children’s graves in the grounds of Kamloops, B.C.’s, former industrial residential school (1890-1978), founded by Shuswap Chief Louis Clexlixqen, and run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of St. Anne of Quebec.

The “discovery” meme arose from a scanning by ground-penetrating radar in a search for the remains of children already surmised to have been buried there. A preliminary report did not find bodies, but rather soil disruptions in a nearby apple orchard. No remains were exhumed, but First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir stated that according to community “knowledge,” the soil abnormalities were 215 “missing children,” some as young as three.

 The anthropologist who oversaw the scans cautiously theorized that there were likely 200 “probable burials” — not specifying age — based on the disturbances. But only excavation could provide further evidence of anything, and no excavation has yet been done. But the story was too good to fact-check, and went viral, often with the trope “mass graves” substituting for “unmarked graves,” a distinction with an enormous difference, since “mass” graves are associated with genocide.

GOVERNMENT APPROVED PHARMACEUTICAL PROFITS

    A U.S. judge on Friday barred Martin Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry for life and ordered him to pay $64.6 million after he famously raised the price of the drug Daraprim and fought to block generic competitors.
In comparison:
   The wealth of the 10 richest men in the world has grown so much during the coronavirus pandemic that even a one-time 99% tax on their gains would be able to pay for the production of all the COVID-19 vaccines the world needs and more, according to the charity Oxfam.

CLEARING ROAD TEST BACKLOG OF 500K

   There’s a backlog of almost half a million new drivers waiting to take their road test to earn their full license. Back in September, Ontario announced the addition of temporary testing centres in particularly clogged regions, running seven days a week, to help ease the strain.
   Last week, they announced a further step: to save time, they’re cutting the traditional 30-minute test in half by eliminating the requirement to test a new driver’s ability to parallel park, do a three-point turn, and perform a roadside stop. They argue that drivers have already been tested on these maneuvers as part of their G2 road test.
   The parallel parking portion of the road test has been the bugaboo of new drivers for generations. Why the stress and hand-wringing? Because it was a difficult skill to master. A measurable outcome with little margin for error. Do you use it every day? Some do, many don’t, but it’s time to look beyond the little-used application and appreciate the reason it is a perfect example of why it should not only not be ditched, but that it should be part of a better, if not bigger, test.

ONTARIO STUDENTS FALLING BEHIND

 According to a poll conducted by Léger and commissioned by the Fraser Institute in November, before the Ford government rang in the new year with school closures, nearly 80 per cent of Ontario parents of children in K-12 schools said their child had fallen behind due to government pandemic policies and the impacts of COVID-19. And one in five Ontario parents — 20 per cent — had no confidence their child’s school had a plan to catch them up.

That was November. At that point, between March 2020 and May 2021, Ontario kids had missed 19 weeks of school—the most in Canada. Now, thanks to the Ford government’s decision, Ontario children will miss at least another two weeks, with in-person learning scheduled to resume Jan. 17. That’s 21 weeks (and counting) of missed classroom learning, on top of many children missing school due to COVID isolation policies.

WANTED: CHEERLEADERS FOR TROUBLED SHIPBUILDING PROGRAM

   As the country’s shipbuilding strategy continues to pile up billions of dollars in extra costs to taxpayers, Public Services and Procurement Canada is quietly seeking what it calls influencers to push out social media messages that the program is a success.
   The federal Liberal government’s National Shipbuilding Strategy, which will see the construction of new vessels for the Canadian navy and coast guard, has skyrocketed in cost and various projects are facing delays expected to further drive up the price tag.
   It is being sent out to various companies and defense analysts and academics who are deemed supportive of the shipbuilding program. They are to be provided with positive messages and data by PSPC about federal shipbuilding with an emphasis on jobs being created. But in their roles as “key crew influencers” those pushing out the positive messages wouldn’t reveal the government was behind the propaganda campaign, warned sources who leaked details about the new program to this newspaper.

LIBERALS DETERMINED TO BREAK THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Industry experts are expressing concerns that this week's confusion on the new COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truckers may leave some drivers, who were under the impression they would be exempt, stuck if they are already en route, or facing two weeks with no paycheque while undergoing quarantine.

In a joint statement, Canada's transportation, health, and public safety ministers said that Canada’s initial policy stands, requiring truckers coming into Canada from the U.S. to be fully vaccinated, or face PCR testing and quarantine requirements.

Despite the CBSA telling reporters on Wednesday that unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers arriving at the border would "remain exempt" from testing or quarantine requirements, the government says that information, provided by a spokesperson, was incorrect.

CANADA'S HOSPITAL CAPACITY EASILY OVERWHELMED

   A 2017 OECD ranking also found that Canada was one of the countries least likely to have an acute care bed available for use. Even before COVID-19, 91.6 per cent of Canadian acute care beds already had someone in them, a rate that was worse only in Israel and Ireland. In the U.S., average occupancy rate on acute care beds was just 64 per cent. In the U.K. it was 84.3 per cent.
   Canada also ranks near the back of the pack in overall hospital beds. The latest numbers from the OECD show Canada with just one hospital bed for every 400 citizens , a ratio that put us in the bottom tier of OECD countries. In France, there’s a hospital bed for every 172 citizens, and in Japan (the first place contender) there’s a bed for every 78 people.
   Throughout the pandemic, provincial health systems became critically overwhelmed by levels of hospitalization that wouldn’t even phase the average British or American hospital. In September, economists for CIBC calculated that hospitals in both the U.K. and the U.S. didn’t reach their “peak” until hospitalizations were as much as five times higher than what it took to max-out a Canadian hospital. “Simply put, we reached capacity at levels that many other countries consider to be acceptable,” wrote the authors .

KARAHALIOS PREDICTS ANOTHER FORD FLIP FLOP

Ontario has signaled that it will not follow in the footsteps of Quebec and institute a tax on the unvaccinated, but an Ontario MPP is saying that the government’s past decisions paint a different picture.

New Blue Party of Ontario MPP Belinda Karahalios told True North that Ford has been telling Ontarians one thing and saying another behind closed doors.

“The Ford PC government committed to not introducing a COVID-19 vaccine passport and then later admitted they spent the summer of 2021 lobbying the Trudeau government for a national COVID-19 vaccine passport until finally settling on introducing a provincial version on Ontarians,” said Karahalios.

O'TOOLE: A MORE EFFICIENT LIBERAL

 Conservative Party members, why won’t you punt O’Toole?

“We got nowhere else to go! We got no one else!”

Who knows, though, maybe “no one” would be a better choice.

MOBILE HOSPITALS IN STORAGE AS OMICRON SURGES

   Ottawa allocated $300-million at the beginning of the pandemic for the construction of 15 mobile hospitals, but only four 100-bed units have been completed and they are sitting in storage despite the strain on hospitals caused by Omicron across the country.
   The federal Liberal government gave a sole-sourced contract of up to $150-million to a joint venture between SNC-Lavalin and Pacific Architects and Engineers (SNC-PAE) in April, 2020, to build five mobile respiratory-care hospitals that can be set up in existing structures such as conference centres and indoor skating arenas.
   A similar multimillion-dollar contract went to Weatherhaven Global Resources Ltd. for 10 stand-alone field hospitals that can be deployed either in urban or remote areas.
   So far, Weatherhaven has delivered three units and none of them are currently in use, according to the office of federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos.

CANADA FAILS AT ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING COMMITTMENTS

   Canadian housing prices are unaffordable, at least in part, because successive governments have failed to address the fact that Canada is one of the world’s foremost tax and secrecy havens, minus the palm trees.
   In fact, the term “snow washing” has been coined to describe how easily dirty money can be washed clean, like the snow, in Canada. But there is some hope on the horizon.
   The House of Commons finance committee is to be congratulated, in the spirit of better-late-than-never, for opening hearings this week into the country’s dangerously high housing prices. “We risk the possibility of a major housing crash when interest rates go up, just like the Americans experienced in ’08-’09,” said Pierre Poilievre , the Conservative MP who requested hearings.
   “It’s time for the finance committee to … begin emergency hearings into where all the money is coming from that is ballooning our housing market, making home ownership unaffordable to our youth and working class and risking a massive financial collapse later on.”

EPSTEIN & THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERUP

Question: Is our ruling class trying to make us to think they're a bunch of pederasts? Our media could not be less interested in Jeffrey Epstein's child molestation ring and, with the sole exception of the Palm Beach Police Department, every arm of government has bent over backward to bury the case.

(Who says our media and government can't work together?)

The jury's courageous delivery last week of five "guilty" verdicts against Epstein's pimp, Ghislaine Maxwell, was a sort of reverse jury nullification. The U.S. attorney's office -- the prosecution -- did everything it could to get an acquittal, but the jurors defied them.

As for media coverage, did you even know that the FBI found Epstein's cache of sex tapes labeled "(name of underage girl) + (name of VIP)" -- and then lost them?

LIBERALS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

The Liberal government allowed a Chinese state-owned company to bid on a Canadian lithium mining operation without launching a formal national security review into the purchase.

As reported by the Globe and Mail, Chinese firm Zijin Mining and Canadian Neo Lithium Corp. have agreed to an acquisition and are close to completing their business deal.

The deal has been in the making since October when Zijin Mining first announced that it was looking at buying the Toronto company for a price tag of $960 million.

In 2021, Canada categorized lithium as a critical mineral. Lithium is predominantly used to manufacture electric vehicle batteries and is a comparatively rare element.

VAXED PATIENTS OUTNUMBER UNVAXED IN AUSTRALIA

 For the first time, New South Wales (NSW) has seen more fully vaccinated patients hospitalized with COVID-19 compared to the number of unvaccinated patients as the Omicron outbreak continues to edge toward its peak.

Data published by the NSW government’s COVID-19 Critical Intelligence Unit has revealed that as of Jan. 9, 68.9 percent of COVID-19 patients aged 12 and over in hospitals had two doses of the vaccine, with 28.8 percent unvaccinated.

The number of double-dose vaccinated patients in intensive care units (ICUs) also surpassed those of the unvaccinated, with 50.3 percent of the vaccinated presenting to ICU with COVID-19, more than the 49.1 percent who are unvaccinated.

UNVACCINATED WORKERS FILING WRONGFUL DISMISSAL CLAIMS

Employers across the country have begun firing employees who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to lawyers who say they are inundated with vaccine-related cases and claims of wrongful dismissal.

The deluge of cases sets up a crucial legal test of vaccine mandates imposed by employers, one that pits the individual rights of workers against employers’ health and safety concerns amid a pandemic that has dragged on for almost two years.

“The question we are all trying to answer is, can an employer, in a non-unionized setting terminate an employee with cause for not getting vaccinated? In my view, they cannot, except in very specific circumstances,” said Lai-King Hum, founder of Hum Law, a boutique law firm in Toronto that deals exclusively with labour and employment issues.

“The complication that employers are starting to realize is if your employment agreement did not state from the very beginning that vaccines are compulsory, then you would likely have to pay an employee if you want to terminate them. That cost adds up,” Ms. Hum said.

A CASE STUDY IN GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE

 There is no better example of our atrophied state capacity — the ability (or lack thereof) for Canadian governments to get stuff done — than our decade-long failure to buy a pistol for the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Armed Forces use Browning 9mm pistols as its standard-issue sidearm. Some specialized units use other pistols purchased for a specific purpose in smaller batches, but the Browning 9mm is the standard.

It’s a fine pistol, but it has an old design — the first “HiPower,” as they’re branded, was built in 1935. More to the point, the ones the Canadian Forces use were built during the Second World War.

FLY THE FLAG PROUDLY

The City of Port Colborne has backed away from ordering a woman to remove a popular anti-Trudeau flag from the front of her home.

Melissa, a working mother, said she had originally flown the “F*CK TRUDEAU” flag as a protest against the results of the Sep. 2021 federal election.

The “*” in “F*CK TRUDEAU” is represented by a maple leaf.

PM'S CUTE WORDS: ENCOURAGE & INCENTIVIZE

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says provinces are “right” to consider ways to encourage and incentivize COVID-19 vaccination.

His comments come just one day after Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced plans to impose a tax on any unvaccinated Quebecers who don’t have a valid medical exemption.

“Different jurisdictions are making different decisions about how to encourage people to get vaccinated, and as a federal government, we will be continuing to be there to support them in those decisions and to make sure that everyone gets vaccinated,” Trudeau said.

30% ABSENTEE RATES TRIGGERS OUTBREAK NOTIFICATION

The Ontario government says parents will only be notified of a potential COVID-19 outbreak when approximately 30 per cent of staff and students in the school are absent but data on absentee rates will be available to the public before that threshold is met.

Students in Ontario will return to in-person classes on Jan. 17 following nearly two weeks of remote learning due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

When student and staff absenteeism in an individual school reaches approximately 30 per cent from its baseline, it will trigger the principal to notify local health officials, the government said Wednesday.

USA TRUCKERS TO CANADA MUST HAVE JAB

 Only days before Canadian truck drivers were required to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 to get into the country or face quarantine, the federal government is backing away from the vaccine mandate.

The new rule will still take effect for American truckers starting this weekend, with drivers being turned away at the border unless they've been inoculated.

But a spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency told The Canadian Press late Wednesday that unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers, or those who have had only one dose, will not have to quarantine.

The head of the Canadian Trucking Alliance says about 10 per cent of the 120,000 Canadian big-riggers who traverse the border have not been fully vaccinated.

TRUDEAU PAVED THE WAY FOR LEGAULT'S PUNISHMENT TAX

   Rex Murphy:  It is not, nor ever will be, rightly called a health tax. It’s a punishment tax. A punishment tax for exercising adult judgment on your own health. Who owns universal health care? Is it the citizens who fund it, or the politicians and bureaucrats who think they are in charge of it? Who, in Quebec and elsewhere, are now using as a bludgeon what was supposed to be a universal solace.
   COVID-19 is not our biggest problem. It is that COVID is supplying our politicians with a lever, a plausible cover, for the abridgement or outright override of our country’s most fundamental understandings and principles.
   Politicians are using COVID to gut the fundamentals of universal health care, drawing exceptions to its applications, naming who should receive its ministrations without barrier and who should not, and as a kite-tail to that vast and pernicious overreach, acting as amnesiacs as to the existence of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

RCMP: REPORT ANTI-AUTHORITY INTERNET OPINIONS

RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki urged Canadians to report suspicious Internet behaviour, including comments by people who express “anti-government, anti-law enforcement” opinions.

The RCMP added that law enforcement “has no role in policing the thoughts of Canadians.”

Despite this position, the federal police force openly endorsed Bill C-36, which would have brought in $70,000 fines or house arrest for Internet users suspected of making legal but offensive posts “that involve detestation or vilification” of identifiable groups. Bill C-36 was introduced in June but died in Parliament with the calling of 2021 federal election.

MAX BERNIER MARCHES WITH MONTREAL PROTESTORS

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier was among thousands of people who attended a protest in Montreal against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine passports on Saturday.

Bernier said in a video posted to Twitter that while the temperature in Montreal was cold, it would not stop the crowd from protesting. He said people are ready to fight for their rights.

“We are saying no to these draconian measures, no to more lockdowns, no to vaccine passports and no to the delusion and segregation that our establishment leaders are imposing on us right now,” he said.

CANADIAN OILSANDS PROSPECTS SURGE

 Just over a year ago, Canadian oilsands companies were struggling to keep their heads above water as pipeline cancellations and delays, environmental pressures and low crude-oil prices sent stock prices plunging and investors heading for the exits. While some of the challenges remain, especially on the environmental front, the oilsands appeared to have come out stronger from the ordeal even as some of its competitors face their own set of challenges and production declines.

Now, the decimation of crude exports from rival heavy oil producers has made the Canadian oilsands the last exporting blend standing in the Americas.

Mexican exports of crude oil and products to the U.S. hit a decade low of 226,000 barrels per day in the last week of December, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. In contrast, Canadian oil exports to the U.S. were trending near record highs to 3.8 million bpd during the same period.

QUEBECKERS SUPPORTING PREMIER'S PUNITIVE REGIME

Quebec Premier François Legault’s announcement Tuesday that his province will very soon start levying a “significant” special tax on willfully unvaccinated Quebecers may sound to some of us like common sense. The choice to forego vaccination has “consequences” that radiate through the health-care system, Legault argued. “It’s not up to all Quebecers to pay for that,” he suggested . To make the point, he said he would call the tax a “health contribution.”

Many Canadians will likely applaud. But in fact this sets a horrible precedent that undermines the central tenets of a universal public health-care system; that could lead Quebec and the Rest of Canada down some very dark alleys; and that highlights just how critical it is to fix this country’s seat-of-the-pants health-care systems.

Legault has been rolling out the most punitive regime for the unvaccinated in Canada, and Quebecers can’t seem to get enough of it. Last week the government announced proof-of-vaccination would soon be required to enter provincially run liquor and cannabis stores. A Léger poll released Tuesday found 73 per cent of Quebecers supported the move, and 72 per cent would support expanding the requirement to all retail environments save grocery stores. (A majority of respondents in every region except Manitoba and Saskatchewan also supported the latter idea.) That seemed to be having the desired effect: demand for vaccination appointments quadrupled overnight , according to Health Minister Christian Dubé.

QUEBEC DOCTORS DECRY LEGAULT'S ANTI-VAX TAX

An organization composed of physicians dedicated to maintaining Quebec’s public health care system has voiced its opposition to the Legault government’s proposed “health contribution” that would be imposed on those who remain unvaccinated for non-medical reasons .

Médecins québécois pour le régime public on Wednesday described the idea as “discriminatory and unfair” and a “slippery slope” toward the commodification of health care.

Dr. Mathieu Isabel, spokesperson for the 500-member group, said that behind the common image of the unvaccinated lies the reality of the homeless, those with mental health issues and immigrants who speak neither French nor English.

The group also worries that the proposed “contribution” could open the door to a breach in the public consensus that everyone should benefit from the same medical treatment regardless of whatever individual risk they may present.

OPEN THE DAMN COUNTRY BACK UP

   Jordan Peterson:  We are pushing the complex systems upon which we depend and which are miraculously effective and efficient in their often thankless operation to their breaking point. Can you think of anything more unlikely than the fact that we can get instant trouble-free access to our money online, using systems that are virtually graft- and corruption-free? Just imagine how much work, trust and efficiency was and is necessary to make that a reality. Can you think of anything more unlikely than fast, reliable and inexpensive jet air travel, nationally and internationally, in absolute safety? Or the constant provision of almost every consumer good imaginable, in the midst of plentiful, varied and inexpensive food?

 These systems are now shaking. We’re compromising them seriously with this unending and unpredictable stream of restrictions, lockdowns, regulations and curfews. We’re also undermining our entire monetary system, with the provision of unending largesse from government coffers, to ease the stress of the COVID response. We’re playing with fire. We’ve demolished two Christmas seasons in a row. Life is short. These are rare occasions. We’re stopping kids from attending school. We’re sowing mistrust in our institutions in a seriously dangerous manner. We’re frightening people to make them comply. We’re producing bureaucratic institutions that hypothetically hold public health in the highest regard, but subordinating all our properly political institutions to that end, because we lack leadership, and rely on ultimately unreliable opinion polls to govern broadscale political policy. I’ve never seen breakdown in institutional trust on this scale before in my lifetime.