Thursday, March 28, 2024

Careening Off of the Slippery Slope

What did everyone think would happen when euthanasia was legalised?

That it would never go off of the proverbial rails?

Too late:

We have all learned to live with judges shredding statutes in a moment of dyspepsia, and, indeed, the original Criminal Code ban on assisting in suicide was overthrown in such a spirit. But doctors and nurses are, in today’s Canada, a higher species whose powerful force field repels any thought of judicial review. WV is confined to saving his daughter through strictly procedural arguments a month from now in the Alberta Court of Appeal: he has to somehow show that AHS didn’t follow its own written policies properly, and Justice Feasby does think he has a case worth hearing.
But various appellate courts seem to have created for Canadians a warped kind of mathematical equation here, a chain of principles no one person ever explicitly sought to weld together. Personal autonomy is paramount, for those entitled to exercise it; people who have decision-making capacity have the right to end their lives if they meet certain diagnostic conditions; since the purpose of governments is to facilitate the exercise of autonomy, doctors (and nurse practitioners!) must be allowed to practice euthanasia, even if this conflicts with their professional traditions; the law has no right to intervene in or even demand information about any medical diagnosis.
(Sidebar: what is this personal autonomy one speaks of? Does it exist in Canada? Could people keep their jobs if they didn't get this ridiculous Covid jab, for example?
Splice these noble propositions together, and you don’t quite get to a science-fiction suicide-booths-on-every-streetcorner scenario. It’s merely a pretty close approximation. (And let’s face it: if suicide booths were a popular idea — polls do indicate that Canadians are remarkably tolerant of euthanasia — Canada would never get around to procuring and installing ones that worked.)
 

Oops

 Apparently, only the Americans experience difficulty with geography:

The Canadian Embassy in Washington admits it displayed large friendship banners that mistakenly proclaimed sovereignty over Greenland. The banners were on display more than a week before the Department of Foreign Affairs noticed, a spokesperson said yesterday: “The banner was removed.”

 

We Don't Have to Trade With China

These dissidents are wasting their time.

This inquiry is a time-wasting exercise to save Justin from embarrassment:

Chinese émigrés yesterday pleaded with the China inquiry to counter harassment campaigns targeting dissidents in Canada. Witnesses testified foreign agents typically tried to bully pro-democracy activists into silence: “The hidden agenda is trying to persuade these organizations to remain, quote, unquote, ‘neutral,’ and not to be, quote, unquote, ‘political.'”

 

I Won't Forget How Pierre Ate An Apple In Front of a "Journalist" and Shredded Him

This won't sink Pierre, you rapist-supporting, Jew-hating inbred morons:

A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.

Nawaz Tahir of the Hikma Public Affairs Council in London, Ont., met Poilievre during the leader's outreach efforts in southwestern Ontario last summer.

Tahir says he believes Poilievre has missed chances to show compassion with Muslims and that building ties could be, in his words, "much more difficult now."

Poilievre's reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza came up in January when Conservative MP Garnett Genuis met members of Mississauga's Pakistani and Muslim communities.

In a video shared on social media, Genuis admits the party's position may not be one that is "100 per cent" agreed with, but says defeating Hamas is "critical" to establishing lasting peace for Palestinians.

A Conservative spokesman says Poilievre has said clearly that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestinians need humanitarian relief "as a result of the war that Hamas has started."

Conservatives have been trying to nurture the party's relationship with Muslims and others as part of an overall effort to grow support among newcomer and faith communities.

Tahir says Muslims have been disappointed in Poilievre's opposition to funding a UN aid agency amid allegations that some of its staff were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that triggered the war.

His rejection of a case brought against Israel in the International Court of Justice has also left some feeling dissatisfied, he said.

"We won't forget," Tahir said in a recent interview. "There's no chance that the Muslim community will forget the Conservative position here."

 

Your Craven, Deceitful, Money-Grubbing, Smug Government and You

They sicken me everyday:

On the same day Canadians will see an increase in the federal carbon tax, MPs will also see a little extra on their pay stubs.

And with that April Fool’s Day pay increase, Canadian parliamentarians will become the second-best paid elected officials in the world after Americans.

According to numbers provided to the National Post by the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Canadian members of Parliament will get their customary pay raise on April 1 — resulting in increases of anywhere between $8,500 and $17,000 this year.

Right now, members of Parliament earn a base salary of $194,600 per year — but that’s due to rise to $203,100 on April 1.

The prime minister’s salary will see an increase of $17,000 to $406,200.

Eighty per cent of Canadians oppose the automatic April 1 MP pay increase, according to a Leger poll commissioned by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

In the online survey of 1,541 Canadians of voting age conducted between March 15 and 18, 62 per cent of respondents strongly oppose the pay raise and 18 per cent somewhat oppose.

Those who hold more senior roles or cabinet positions are entitled to additional remuneration — roles such as house Speaker, opposition leader or cabinet minister will be entitled to an additional $96,800 annually, plus car allowances.

That increase was $92,800 before April 1.

Other positions, such as House leaders, whips and committee chairs, are also entitled to a bump.

 

Where is MY money? 


Also:

There has been no capital deepening or productivity growth in Canada in eons because the massive spending at the government level has continued to crowd out private-sector investment. All the spending that was used to combat the pandemic has become a permanent feature of the budgetary landscape. The level of program spending in Ottawa today is 35 per cent higher than it was pre-COVID-19. Meanwhile, volume spending on aggregate business investment is lower today than it was in 2012. How can the citizenry be OK with that?
On a per-capita basis, government program spending is 27 per cent higher than it was in 2019 and almost double the average of the past 40 years. Inflation has only accounted for 40 per cent of that gap in per-person spending now compared to four years ago. The fiscal spending is out of control, and a clear sign is that when it comes to the government sector, what is always billed as a temporary spending measure to fight a crisis inevitably finds a way to remain on the books.
Either Canadians don’t know about what is going on with this fiscal profligacy or, as is typical in this country, totally apathetic to what is going on. The government incursion into the economy in this country is so acute that the public sector now comprises 27 per cent of GDP. Business capital spending? Try a mere eight per cent share and flirting with two-decade lows. The capital spending share of the U.S. economy is practically double that, which is why productivity growth stateside is running at a 2.6 per cent year-over-rate pace versus minus 0.6 per cent (yes, negative) north of the border.

When you blend labour and capital together, total factor productivity in Canada, under this current government in Ottawa, is now back to where it was a quarter-century ago. And productivity is the mother’s milk of future standard-of-living enhancement and no amount of pro-immigration policies to provide the illusion of economic prosperity can act as a true antidote.

 

Are we to import expertise?

Is it actually coming in?

Where is it? 



It's the stupid taxes:

Cabinet must cancel a planned 23 percent increase in the carbon tax, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe yesterday testified by video conference at the Commons government operations committee. “We don’t need to accept this,” said Moe, who launched a February 29 carbon tax strike on natural gas for home heating: “We can make changes.”

** 

It would “be a good idea” for cabinet to calculate how much it costs to collect taxes before introducing any new tax, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. His remarks followed data showing the paperwork on an equity tax targeting foreign property owners costs more than it raises in revenue: “I think there will need to be a correction in the budget.”



How dire North America's situation is:

If Biden is re-elected in the U.S. and Trudeau in Canada, there will be no recovery. The social fabric will have been torn and shredded beyond the possibility of repair. It would no longer be a question of five years or a decade but of the indefinite future. Moreover, the RCMP warning that unregulated access to data via social media and the internet will allow “private entities to develop the means to exercise undue influence over individuals and populations at an unprecedented level,” is abject nonsense and is symptomatic of the political mausoleum that is being prepared for us. Hence the barrage of internet Bills designed to prevent or curtail access to information and censor exchanges among people. Not only is the origin of the sickness being hidden or misplaced, which is an aspect of the sickness itself, we will not be permitted to discuss and communicate freely about how to rectify the disaster.

 

The two have already ruined their respective countries.

Further terms would finish the countries off.



But Wait! There's More!

There often is:

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said his province had already considered alternatives to the federal carbon tax in the past, but decided against them because they were all too costly for Saskatchewan families and industries.
Moe was invited to a House of Commons committee on Wednesday to make the case for why the federal government should cancel the planned increase to the federal carbon tax on April 1 or, better yet, in his opinion, scrap the tax entirely.
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Since Jan. 1, Saskatchewan has refused to collect the federal carbon tax for natural gas and electric home heating.
The federal government has been insisting that provinces and territories are free to come up with their own system of carbon pricing if it complies with the federal benchmark in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If it doesn’t, the federal carbon tax applies.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated to premiers that his government remains “open to proposals for credible systems that price pollution that reflect the unique realities of your regions and meet the national benchmark.”
When asked by Liberal MP Charles Sousa if Saskatchewan had ever considered replacing the federal carbon tax with a system of its own, Moe answered in the affirmative.
“Yes, we did. All of them were costly to our industry, as is the federal backstop that we’re experiencing now, as well as costly to Saskatchewan families,” he said.
Sousa shot back: “It sounds like (kicking) the can down the road for the next generation to deal with. What we need is to take initiative and ensure that we are prepared to do what’s necessary for future generations.”

... says the idiot whose party drove up inflation, taxes and unemployment.
Way to hand a future to the next generations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new measures he says will help protect Canadian renters and help them break into the housing market ahead of the 2024 budget.

He said Wednesday that the proposed three new reforms will “make the playing field fairer for renters” amid an affordability crisis making homeownership out of reach for many.

“It’s too hard to find an affordable place to rent, especially for younger Canadians. That’s why in Budget 2024, we’re taking action to protect renters, make the rental market fairer, and open new pathways for renters to become homeowners,” Trudeau said in a press release.

The proposed measures aim to amend the Canadian Mortgage Charter to allow tenants to count on-time rent payments toward their credit score, and propose $15 million in new funding to provincial legal aid organizations to better protect tenants against unfair rent payments, renovictions or “bad landlords,” the release says.


Where are you getting the money, Justin?

Will the 41 million hand it over to you?



We need a Milei here:

Argentine President Javier Milei plans to fire 70,000 government workers in the coming months in one of the clearest signs yet of how the libertarian’s chainsaw-style approach intends to slash the swollen state.

Beyond the job cuts, Milei boasted Tuesday at an event that he’s frozen public works, cut off some funding to provincial governments and terminated more than 200,000 social welfare plans, which he labeled as corrupt. It’s all part of his strategy to reach a fiscal balance at any cost this year.

“There’s a lot of blender,” Milei said in an hour long speech at the IEFA Latam Forum in Buenos Aires, referring to the erosion of wages and pensions by 276% annual inflation. “There’s a lot more chainsaw.”




Audio released of what transpired before a container ship careened into the Francis Scott Key Bridge:

Audio from the moments before a massive cargo ship smashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge reveals how little time first responders had to stop traffic before the bridge collapsed.

The call, between several first responders, paints a dramatic picture of how quickly the incident happened.

“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. … There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering so until we get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic,” one official is heard saying, warning of the incoming disaster.

“Make sure no one’s on the bridge right now. There’s a crew up there. … You might want to notify the foreman to see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily.”

Another voice is heard, saying he was about to drive onto the bridge to “grab the workers,” but at that point it was too late, and the vessel plowed into a support pillar.



Why?

Because it's Israel:

The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.

None of this meant anything to Israel's critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn't call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.

In their criticism, Israel's opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The international community, and increasingly the United States, barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF for not doing enough to protect civilians—even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage. Instead, the U.S. and its allies should be studying how they can apply the IDF's tactics for protecting civilians, despite the fact that these militaries would almost certainly be extremely reluctant to employ these techniques because of how it would disadvantage them in any fight with an urban terrorist army like Hamas.



Wednesday, March 27, 2024

But How Could This Be?

I have a few ideas:

Young Canadians are more likely than the rest of the population to believe that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and these skeptics are more likely to hold a negative view of Jews and a favourable view of Hamas, according to a new national poll.

One in six Canadians (16 per cent) between the ages of 18 and 24 believe the Holocaust was exaggerated, double that of 25- to 34-year-olds (eight per cent) and eight times greater than those 65 and older (two per cent), according to the Leger survey commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) in February. Only five per cent of Canadians overall hold this view.

Jack Jedwab, the president of ACS, cautioned against conflating the findings of Holocaust skepticism with outright denial.

“I wouldn’t necessarily use the word denial as it doesn’t suggest that they think the Holocaust didn’t take place – though some of the group surely subscribe to that – it’s more that they minimize or trivialize the Holocaust, by questioning its scale and/or other aspects of it,” he told National Post in an email.

The survey also found a nexus between Holocaust skepticism, negative opinions of Jews and support for Hamas.

While 74 per cent of respondents who believe the Holocaust was not exaggerated have a positive opinion of Canadian Jews, less than half (47.1 per cent) of skeptics feel the same. Indeed, the opinion of Holocaust skeptics is virtually evenly split, with a similar share (47 per cent) holding a negative view of Jews. By comparison, less than one sixth (14.6 per cent) of those who say the Holocaust was not exaggerated have a negative view of the religious community.

Among U.S. respondents, eight per cent said the Holocaust is exaggerated, including 15 per cent of those aged 18 to 29, 12 per cent of 30- to 39-year-olds and 10 per cent of people aged 40 to 49. Fewer than five per cent of people over 50 felt the same way. About 40 per cent of Americans who doubted the historical account of the Holocaust also had a negative view of Jews.

The findings square with recent polling in the United States from YouGov showing 20 per cent of Americans between 18 and 29 saw the Holocaust as a myth, with over a fifth (23 per cent) arguing that aspects of the genocide are exaggerated.

Jebwab highlighted the paradox that nearly two-thirds (65.9 per cent) of Canadians who subscribed to the view that the Holocaust was exaggerated also described themselves as having “a good knowledge” of historical genocides.

 

(Sidebar: I'm willing to bet that they don't.) 


Poor breeding, inflating egos, little to no education, importing anti-semitism, letting existing anti-semitism to grow.

One could go on.


 


Mid-Week Post

Four more sleeps until Easter 🐰🌷 ...


The idiot who inherited his wealth - this one - declared that the four premiers who presented their case against the crushing and unpopular carbon tax did not do a good job:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing back against premiers who are asking him to cancel an upcoming increase to the federal carbon price, saying they have not proposed better ideas to fight climate change.

In a reply to the seven provincial leaders on Tuesday, Trudeau said the last time they discussed the issue in 2022, their governments either didn't propose alternative solutions or couldn't meet federal standards for reducing emissions.

"We have made it clear that we are open to working with any and all provinces and territories that want to establish their own pricing systems (as long as they meet or exceed the national benchmark)," the letter said.

The premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador all asked to Trudeau to forgo a planned increase on April 1.

The carbon price is set to increase by $15 a tonne — from $65 to $80. The increase is expected to add about three cents to the cost of a litre of gasoline.

The leaders cite inflation and a high cost of living as reasons to slow down. Most have also requested to testify before a House of Commons committee on the matter, with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe set to appear by video conference on Wednesday.

 

There is so much to unpack here.

Not only is carbon not a pollutant, a tax will no more alter people's behaviour than it will change the weather. Indeed, people will still rely on (somewhat) affordable gasoline-fueled cars as opposed to their more problematic electric cousins and the expense it will take to charge them.

If one did not know any better, one might suggest that such moves were designed to keep people immobile.

But I digress.

The chief reason why Justin will not back down from this unpopular and unproductive tax based on junk science is that he cannot afford to.

Literally.

It isn't just a blow to his inflated ego. 

The tax is not revenue-neutral:

Cabinet will collect nearly a half billion in sales taxes on the carbon tax this year, the Budget Office said yesterday. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has repeatedly claimed the carbon tax is “revenue neutral.”

 

The squeezed public was lied to. 

The Liberals need the money.

It's that simple.

Also, for a government that forces its citizens to pay onerous taxes to fight some nebulous bit of so-called pollution, why is it sending coal to China?

Asking for a friend.


Moving on ...

 

The rigged game in progress:

The China inquiry tomorrow opens its public investigation with testimony from Elections Canada officers who downplayed complaints of meddling by foreign agents. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, the first to testify, earlier told MPs he saw no evidence of Chinese interference but acknowledged he didn’t look: “Our goal is to uncover the truth.”

 

The start looking. 

 

Also:

Liberal MPs yesterday tried and failed to block speedy hearings into why cabinet concealed evidence of Chinese security breaches at the National Microbiology Laboratory. “Why wasn’t this caught earlier?” asked Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.): “This is the start of the matter, not the end.”


ArriveCan is the new (insert scandal here):

The Canada Border Services Agency disciplined more than 140 employees in a year for wrongdoing, Vice-President Jonathan Moor yesterday told ArriveCan hearings. The Agency is one of the largest police departments in Canada with 16,000 employees and a $2.7 billion annual budget: “We have a lot to do.”
**

MPs yesterday ordered disclosure of all internal federal investigations into claims an ArriveCan executive tried to destroy 1,700 emails. Minh Doan, now chief federal technology officer, has not publicly answered allegations he attempted to hide documents on his dealings with contractors: “There seems to be a culture of hiding.”



New voters aren't made; they're imported:

Cabinet should cut immigration to ease a housing crisis, Canadians tell federal researchers. In-house focus groups by the Privy Council Office found popular support for lowering quotas to “alleviate demand for housing.”

 

Like these ones: 

A total 986 Gazans, the majority men and boys, have applied to enter Canada, records show. Immigration Minister Marc Miller has proposed to raise the current cap of 1,000 permits to an unspecified number: “The Department of Immigration has not refused any applications.”

** 

During the October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas terrorists raped, gang-raped, beheaded, burned, mutilated, disfigured, and tortured men, women, children, the elderly and the disabled. Hamas terrorists chopped off fingers, arms and feet, gouged out eyes, obliterated faces and tied up dozens of people — including children — before burning them alive. They cut an unborn baby out of a pregnant woman, stabbed the baby with a knife and shot the mother in the head. Sexual atrocities included targeting the genitalia of male and female victims, cutting off breasts, castrating men, and shooting women in the vagina. The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.”

Girls were so brutally gang-raped that their pelvic bones were broken. For Hamas terrorists, rape is not just a weapon of war, it is a way to alleviate their feelings of inadequacy, prove their manhood, demonstrate what they think signifies superior masculinity, and to ridicule, taunt and torment Israeli men who are unable, at gunpoint, to protect their women and children.

Symbolically, raping women in war signifies conquered territory and the rape of a nation. During their attack, Hamas terrorists raped not only women but men as well. The symbolic meaning of male-on-male rape is that the victims are being turned into women, which from a Palestinian hypermasculine and homophobic culture is one of the worst forms of humiliation. For Palestinians, shame is experienced as female traits of weakness. Hamas terrorists raped and tortured Israeli men to expunge their own hidden shame and project their humiliation onto their alleged oppressors. Similar to prison culture, the victims become their “bitch.” The rationale is, “he, and not me, is actually the woman.”

** 


**

While the involvement of Gazan children and women in Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel is not widely understood, evidence exists in the public domain. An online video of a 12-year-old Israeli boy's abduction from Nir Oz, Israel, appears to show a Gazan boy of about the same age accompanying the kidnappers. Boys were among the mob of Gazans recorded crossing into Israel after Hamas terrorists breached the border. And Hamas-linked Associated Press stringer photographed a Gazan boy entering Kfar Aza, another kibbutz near Gaza, and about 15 miles north of Nir Oz.

Hamas has used its nearly two decades of rule over Gaza to weaponize a generation of Palestinians against the Jewish state, according to analysts. Hundreds of ordinary Gazans, including teenagers, joined in Hamas's assault, during which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took some 240 hostages, the Free Beacon previously reported.

"Hamas directed the education system, the media, and the religious institutions to brainwash children, who make up half of Gaza's 2.2-million-person population," Michael Milshtein, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, told the Free Beacon. "Israelis got their first up-close look at this Palestinian Gen Z on Oct. 7."

**

A lot of numbers were thrown around last week as members of the House of Commons debated an NDP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — even as several of these numbers look increasingly to be totally disconnected from the reality on the ground.

The motion’s sponsor, NDP MP Heather McPherson, for example, stated on the floor of the House that “more than 30,000 innocent civilians” had been killed since the onset of fighting between Israel and terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, “including more than 13,000 children.”

McPherson failed to mention, of course, that these figures include at least 13,000 Hamas fighters, and were taken verbatim from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry (GMH), an entity whose reporting has been called into question from the earliest days of fighting.

A new analysis, published earlier this month in The Tablet, in fact presents what may well be the strongest statistical evidence to date that the Gaza Health Ministry has been fabricating casualty data to fit Hamas’s preferred narrative.

The analysis, conducted by Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, identifies a number of glaring incongruities in daily casualty data released by the ministry between late October and mid-November of last year.

“Hamas hasn’t provided detailed data since early in the war. And why should it?” Wyner told me via email last Wednesday. “You use what you can.”

The most glaring of these red flags is what Wyner calls in his piece an “almost metronomical linearity,” or maintaining a steady rhythm, in daily reports of the total number of deaths in Gaza, which averaged “270 (deaths) per day plus or minus about 15 per cent” through an entire 16-day sample. For this trendline to be accurate, Israeli forces would have had to kill a near-identical number of Gazans each day for over two straight weeks, notwithstanding the inevitable variations in the day-to-day frequency of bombings and density of sites bombed.

 

Like those guys.

 

Also - well, this is awkward:

When the Trudeau government publicly cut off military exports to Israel last week, the immediate reaction of the Israeli media was to point out that Canada’s military was far more dependent on Israeli tech than was ever the case in reverse.

“For some reason, (Foreign Minister Melanie Joly) forgot that in the last decade, the Canadian Defense Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems worth more than a billion dollars,” read an analysis by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Israeli military technology is “protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world.”

According to Canada’s own records, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces were only ever purchasing a fraction of that amount from Canadian military manufacturers.

In 2022 — the last year for which data is publicly available — Canada exported $21,329,783.93 in “military goods” to Israel.

This didn’t even place Israel among the top 10 buyers of Canadian military goods for that year. Saudi Arabia, notably, ranked as 2022’s biggest non-U.S. buyer of Canadian military goods at $1.15 billion — more than 50 times the Israeli figure.

What’s more — despite Joly adopting activist claims that Canada was selling “arms” to Israel — the Canadian exports were almost entirely non-lethal.

“Global Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests, and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” Global Affairs said in a February statement to the Qatari-owned news outlet Al Jazeera. ...

When the Trudeau government publicly cut off military exports to Israel last week, the immediate reaction of the Israeli media was to point out that Canada’s military was far more dependent on Israeli tech than was ever the case in reverse.

“For some reason, (Foreign Minister Melanie Joly) forgot that in the last decade, the Canadian Defense Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems worth more than a billion dollars,” read an analysis by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Israeli military technology is “protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world.”

According to Canada’s own records, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces were only ever purchasing a fraction of that amount from Canadian military manufacturers.

In 2022 — the last year for which data is publicly available — Canada exported $21,329,783.93 in “military goods” to Israel.

This didn’t even place Israel among the top 10 buyers of Canadian military goods for that year. Saudi Arabia, notably, ranked as 2022’s biggest non-U.S. buyer of Canadian military goods at $1.15 billion — more than 50 times the Israeli figure.

What’s more — despite Joly adopting activist claims that Canada was selling “arms” to Israel — the Canadian exports were almost entirely non-lethal.

“Global Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests, and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” Global Affairs said in a February statement to the Qatari-owned news outlet Al Jazeera.

 

 

Weak productivity is making things worse:

The Bank of Canada is warning that waning productivity growth in the country is an “emergency” that can force higher interest rates and limit rising wages for Canadians.

Senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers gave a speech in Halifax on Tuesday in which she sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity rates.

Rogers argued that productivity is a way to “inoculate the economy against inflation,” while sustaining “faster growth, more jobs and higher wages.” An economy with strong productivity growth also does not need to rely as much on interest rates when price pressures start to get out of hand, she said.

But Canadian productivity rates have fallen in six consecutive quarters despite signs of an uptick at the end of 2023, Rogers said, citing Statistics Canada data.

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” she told the crowd.

Productivity can be measured in a few ways, but in general it’s the level of economic output per hour worked. Improving productivity doesn’t necessarily mean Canadians working harder, but rather equipping them with the tools they need to accomplish more in the same amount of time, Rogers said.

One of the main issues dragging down Canadian productivity rates is a lack of business investment. Canadian businesses routinely lag their global counterparts when it comes to investment in machinery, equipment and intellectual property, she noted.

Experts who spoke to Global News in January about the country’s productivity ills said Canada is a “significant laggard” behind the United States and other nations when it comes to equipping workers with “capital stock.”

 

 

The institution too big to fail:

Physicians in Ontario are sounding the alarm as new data shows more than 100 reserved for training new family doctors have gone unfilled.

Each year, medical school graduates decide what type of medicine they want to specialize in. The Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) matches graduates with residency placements at medical schools in two rounds.

There were 108 unfilled family medicine spots out of a total of 560 in Ontario following the first round of this year's match, up from 103 unclaimed spots last year, according to CaRMS data.

That's an increase from 100 in 2023, itself a sharp rise from 61 in 2022, 52 in 2021 and 30 in 2020.

Dr. David Barber, a family doctor in Kingston, Ont., who chairs the section on general and family practice with the OMA, said the data is the latest in a worrying trend showing not enough medical students are choosing family medicine as a specialty.

"What this tells us is that medical students are not applying to family medicine," Barber said. "It's because during medical school the students work with family doctors and train under family doctors. They see how stressful it is, how underfunded it is and how unhappy that the family doctors are."

Across the province, 2.3 million people don't have a family doctor, and that number could grow to 4.4 million patients by 2026, the Ontario College of Family Physicians has warned.

The dwindling supply of family medicine residents in turn means an even smaller number of doctors choosing to enter family practice after finishing their residency.  A slowdown of the pipeline of new family doctors could exacerbate Ontario's family doctor shortage and suggests that those without family doctors may continue to face challenges finding one.

 

 

Why people home-school:

One of the more egregious examples of the politicized Canadian classroom can be found in the halls of L.A. Matheson Secondary in Surrey, B.C. There, the classroom of an anti-oppression curriculum specialist is coated with social justice posters: ones that decry colonialism, ones that inflame racial politics and one that even likens prostitution to regular physical labour.

It’s not appropriate for a public school. Still, it’s the kind of teaching that school systems across Canada are either turning a blind eye to — or worse, encouraging. And when they face criticism, it’s they who claim to be the victims, despite their use of tax dollars to pre-treat students with certain political beliefs.

Criticism has very much confronted L.A. Matheson and its pro-social-justice, anti-capitalist teacher, Annie Ohana, now that web sleuths have stumbled upon it. Ohana has taken enough negative commentary online in recent days to warrant a visit from CTV News. Her primary critic, a former teacher named Chanel Pfahl who herself was ostracized from the profession for daring to question the growing fervour for identity politics in schools, stands accused of causing danger to the class.

“She seems to be making a lot of assumptions that were simply based on misinformation, lies, and in fact, puts myself and other teachers and students and my community in danger,” Ohana told CTV last week.

Defending her methods, Ohana says she’s just helping to create “empowered citizens that can speak up for themselves. Elsewhere, she’s insisted that her students are just learning about “critical thinking.” Which would be believable if the classroom included political posters from across the left-right spectrum.

 

Ohana isn't an educator but an activist paid to brow-beat children.

She might as well call herself Big Sister, head of the Angkar, and declare that this is Year Zero.



The goal was never protection:

This is the problem with legislating against “online harms.” It’s near impossible to put together a definition that won’t be too open to interpretation and therefore open to abuse and result in an assault on freedom of speech. That’s the main concern with Trudeau’s Online Harms Act.
The act starts off pledging to target the true scourge of child pornography, introducing new rules to govern the removal of such content from social media platforms. There are few critics of that provision, although given that such vile content is already illegal, perhaps what we need most is greater enforcement of the laws already on the books and more law enforcement officers assigned to tackle it.
What has people rightly concerned with the bill though are things like the Digital Safety Commission and its Digital Safety Ombudsman, who will be tasked with enforcing this new Act and its yet-to-be-unveiled definition of what constitutes “online harm.”
Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who specializes in online legalities, said this of the Digital Safety Commission in a CTV interview: “It’s got enormous powers, investigative powers, the ability to demand information, it will conduct hearings, it can decide that those hearings can be conducted privately if it wants, it’s not subject to any rules of evidence, and even the commission itself, it’s a fairly small group of commissioners.”
We don’t need this commission or the ombudsman. They could very well be misused from day one. The act has yet to be passed and so any such changes—including a total shelving of the Act—remain possible.
The human rights tribunals were labelled “kangaroo courts” years ago, and the Digital Safety Commission is already giving off the same vibes. If a problem is that serious, it should be dealt with in the real courts, not some quasi-judicial forum. That way real offenders can be appropriately punished and also nuisance complaints can be effectively defended against.
Make no mistake about it, we have a lot of problems with the online world. As the parent of children who will be entering their teenage years in the near future, I’m deeply troubled by the ills of social media and the abuse and exploitation that happens within it.
But this doesn’t mean we should give Justin Trudeau personal discretion to define what is and isn’t an “online harm” and how it should be dealt with.

 

How do you think he will use this bill?



Unbelievable:

A cargo ship lost power and rammed into a major bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, destroying the span in a matter of seconds and plunging it into the river in a terrifying collapse that could disrupt a vital shipping port for months. Six people were missing and presumed dead.

The ship’s crew issued a mayday call moments before the crash took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, enabling authorities to limit vehicle traffic on the span, Maryland’s governor said.

The ship struck one of the bridge’s supports, causing the structure to collapse like a toy. The vessel caught fire, and thick, black smoke billowed out of it.

 

Photographs here



This wasn't a problem before:

Austria, France, and Italy have all issued warnings of potential terrorist threats to Europe by the Islamic State (IS) following the group’s Moscow concert hall attack that killed 139 people.

The French government increased the country’s security alert to its highest level, which means more soldiers will be put on standby and ready to patrol sensitive sites, including schools. According to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, France has thwarted two attack attempts by IS since the start of the year, including a foiled attack on the city of Strasbourg.

While Austria will retain its second-highest security alert level, officials have said there will be an increased police presence during the upcoming Easter holidays in the capital, Vienna, especially in places where large crowds are set to gather. The branch of the IS, which claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), was the same group that planned an attack on the St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in December.

Police will also feature more heavily at popular tourist spots and at “sensitive sites” in Italy during the Easter holiday, including places such as airports, train stations, and cultural and religious sites. “During the Easter holidays you will need to be very careful. We will always do the utmost to ensure the safety of citizens and tourists,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.

Terrorism expert Peter Neumann told German national public radio on Monday that Germany and Western Europe were facing an increased threat of Islamist terrorism since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel in October. He noted that, whereas in the past, the terrorists had acted individually, ISKP works in a more organised, professional way, being able to organise its networks.

As we previously reported, the ISKP is a UN-designated terrorist organisation and analysts consider it the most dangerous of the Islamic State groups. It has a wide presence in Afghanistan, as well as in Pakistan and other areas of Central Asia. The group’s name (Khorasan) derives from an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. General Michael Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told Congress last March that ISKP was quickly developing the ability to conduct “external operations” in Europe and Asia. Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace says the group has sought to distinguish itself among jihadi fighters by adopting a radical Islamic worldview more militant and uncompromising than its rivals, including al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Recently foiled terror attacks in Europe that can be attributed to ISKP were a planned attack on the Swedish parliament, against Christmas markets in Germany, and against the cathedrals of Cologne and Vienna. Conservative parties all around Europe have pointed at the lax immigration policies of the EU as the cause of increased terrorist activity in Europe. Sweden Democrat MEP Charlie Weimers recently said: “This is a result of Europe admitting hundreds of thousands of people from the third world, where Islamist and almost mediaeval values prevail.”