WHEN DEVELOPMENT TRUMPS CATTAILS

 In Pickering, Ontario, a cluster of marshes and swamps south of highway 401 has become an unexpected battleground, pitting job creation against environmental protection.

The wetlands of willow trees, silver maples, and cattails, once protected from development by provincial rules, is now slated to become a warehouse, attached to a nearby casino development.

Since 2018, Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government has used unappealable special orders to allow a host of powerful developers to build in a number of ecologically sensitive areas, bypassing the usual approval process.

DND: WHERE WE DON'T KNOW & DON'T CARE

 National defence says it doesn’t know when it determined that a $70-billion project to buy new warships had fallen five years behind schedule, adding billions of dollars to the cost.

That lack of knowledge about a massive mega-project is unprecedented, according to the department’s former top procurement official, and is further proof the Canadian Surface Combatant project has gone off the rails.

DND now acknowledges that while there were indications in early 2020 the project schedule was slipping, it doesn’t actually know when it was determined the Canadian Surface Combatant program was facing significant delays. “There was no specific month/year,” DND spokesperson Jessica Lamirande wrote in an email to this newspaper. “It was an evolving schedule that continued to shift.”

THE HEAR-NO-EVIL-ABOUT-CHINA LIBERALS

 You have to wonder how often knowledgeable people need to attest that China’s is a dangerous, predatory and untrustworthy government before the fact of it begins to sink in and action is taken.

Yet as warnings go, you don’t get more authoritative or plain-spoken than the one issued by David Vigneault, head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, during an online forum.

Beijing’s hackers attack Canada’s biopharmaceutical and health industries, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, ocean technology and aerospace operations in a relentless effort to steal technology and gather data, he said.  CSIS has been watching “persistent and sophisticated state-sponsored threat activity” for years, and “we continue to see a rise in the frequency and sophistication of this threat activity.”

30 KILLED IN BOMB-MAKING CLASS

 Thirty Taliban fighters were killed in an explosion during a bomb-making class gone awry at a mosque in Afghanistan’s Balkh province.

The dead include six foreign nationals who were considered expert mine makers, the 209th Shaheen Corps said in a statement on Saturday published in Khaama Press News Agency.

The Taliban fighters had gathered in the village of Qultaq for instruction on how to make bombs and IEDs, which are improvised explosive devices commonly used as roadside bombs.

TEXAS IN COLD SNAP; POWER OUTAGES

 A rare deep freeze in Texas that raised demand for power forced the state’s electric grid operator on Monday to impose rotating blackouts, leaving 4 million customers without power even as temperatures dipped to teeth-chattering levels.

The cold snap sweeping Texas reached the northern part of neighboring Mexico as well, where authorities said 4.7 million users lost power early on Monday. Around midday, service had been restored to almost 2.6 million of them.

The PowerOutage.us website, which tracks power outages, said 4,088,064 Texas customers were experiencing outages around 8:30 p.m.

THE OMNISCIENT PONTIFICATING BILL GATES

 Microsoft founder Bill Gates is pushing drastic and 'fundamental' changes to the economy in order to immediately halt the release of greenhouse gasses - primarily carbon dioxide - and 'go to zero' in order to save the planet from long-prognosticated (and consistently wrong) environmental disaster.

TIME TO PUT ON YOUR BIG BOY SOCKS, PM

   Trudeau was forced to go cap in hand to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, looking for more shots. Modi said he’d, “do his best” to get some to us. Right after he finished laughing.
   Then there’s the government’s relationship – or lack of one – with drug companies. In a column last month in the National Post, Paul Lucas, former CEO with GlaxoSmithKline, pointed out that 10 years ago that company rapidly produced vaccines for Canada during the H1N1 epidemic. Since then, the government has made no effort to work with the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, investment moved from this country to the U.S., the U.K. and other jurisdictions. You know, the ones that now have vaccines.
   “Successive Liberal governments, including this one, have created an unfavourable environment for investment and commercial success for innovative pharmaceutical companies in Canada,” Lucas said.
   Instead, Trudeau put his faith in China for a vaccine, relying on the rogue nation that’s holding two Canadians hostage to bail us out.