Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wished Scott Moe a sarcastic “good luck” as the Saskatchewan premier gears up for a fight with the Canada Revenue Agency over his province’s refusal to remit the federal carbon tax on natural gas.
[Trudeau] said this week that Saskatchewan residents would continue to get their carbon rebates despite Moe’s decision to not send carbon taxes on natural gas to Ottawa, said on Wednesday that he has “faith” in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to collect the money it is owed.
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“I don’t know about you, but having an argument with CRA about not wanting to pay your taxes is not a position I want anyone to be in. Good luck with that, Premier Moe,” he told reporters during a post-budget housing announcement in Oakville, Ont.
Trudeau insisted that the tax department is “very, very good at getting money it is owed,” whether it comes from Canadians, from businesses or even from provinces — and will take action.
And what will you do to get that money if Moe still refuses, Justin?
Canada’s Building Trades Union penned a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month expressing frustration with Nextstar’s insistence on using temporary foreign workers through its various subcontractors, saying 50 foreign workers were set to arrive in Windsor in early April to perform work previously promised to Canadians.
The union federation said the work could easily be performed by local tradespeople despite claims from Nextstar that it was only bringing over workers because it needed their “specialized knowledge” to get the facility up and running. For example, the CBTU said it had proof of foreign workers offloading equipment for module lines, using forklifts and conducting equipment installation work previously contracted to Canadian workers.
One week after tabling the latest federal budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remained on the defensive while responding to increasing opposition from business and industry groups against proposed changes to capital gains taxation. ...
In response to every question, Trudeau beat the same drum: that the system is currently unfair to young people who can’t afford to buy a first home and that it’s time for wealthier and older individuals to pay more to work towards “intergenerational fairness.”
Justin inherited his wealth, hides his family's holdings off-shore and personally ruined this country.
Let it all sink in.
Justin Trudeau answers a question on "rent counting towards credit scores" and demonstrates that he has absolutely no idea how rent works and likely has a 0 credit score. Like IQ, if it were possible, Trudeau's score would be negative. pic.twitter.com/BaOrkySoDs
Danielle
Smith has long promised to be the most combative of Premiers. She has
lived up to those words, perhaps especially so in legislation introduced
this month, the Provincial Priorities Act (Bill 18), which would allow her government to say a pre-emptive yea or nay to every funding deal Ottawa makes in Alberta.
There is a long list of downsides for the academics and
cities caught in the crossfire. But given the angry national mood –
including frustration with the federal Liberal government’s reach into
realms that are mostly provincial, such as housing, electricity,
dentistry or school lunch programs, for all the good and the bad – the
bill could be a win for Ms. Smith and her unabashed main cause: autonomy
from Ottawa.
Her high-profile Sovereignty Act
hasn’t proven its effectiveness yet, and might not hold a candle to the
disruptive potential of this bill. If passed, it would require entities
in the province – including public agencies, postsecondary
institutions, school boards, health authorities, housing management
bodies and municipalities – to obtain prior approval from Alberta’s
government before signing agreements with Ottawa. Quebec has had similar
legislation on the books for decades.
All week I’ve been thinking about the sheer number of people who must have known about this event and who apparently didn’t anticipate a potential constitutional problem. Hey, what could go wrong? Surely no Liberal cabinet minister would show up, press the flesh all day, head back to the office, and plunge moronically into auto-campaign mode, sharing snapshots of how “we discussed … our Online Harms Act” at the palace over oolong and scones.
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The GG’s own materials describing the event are careful to characterize it as a fundamentally sociable get-together with no relationship whatsoever to a government agenda. Attendees to the event insist that legislation now before the House of Commons wasn’t explicitly discussed by any of the speakers.
As Colleague Sarkonak pointed out in her hair-raising Tuesday column on the scandal, the symposium included a panel discussing “Emerging Solutions for a Safer Digital World.” In any other setting it would be weird and surprising to have such a discussion without involving any “solutions” that are legislative in nature. But maybe the attendees were careful to talk exclusively about technological and social solutions to online abuse: such a thing is certainly possible. Those of us whose invitations were lost in the mail are left to make maximally charitable assumptions.
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It’s just that, logically, we can’t be charitable to both the Governor General and Justice Minister Arif Virani in this case. Their stories conflict, in a direct and consequential way.
Anyway, none of the excuses being made really cut much ice. It’s true that a governor general has some freedom to engage in philanthropy, oratory and social organizing that have no visible partisan aspect. It’s also true that if a GG’s social agenda coincides awkwardly with the House of Commons order paper, you’re playing Russian roulette with the Constitution. On Tuesday the government introduces a bill outlawing soda pop; by the end of the week the Gov-Gen is inviting diabetics and nutritionists to chat about their “lived experience” of Mr. Pibb addiction. And, most likely, when anyone at all objects, you get a familiar barrage of “conservatives pounce” stories.
Two men who used to work for the United Nations in Montreal are facing criminal charges for their alleged roles in a conspiracy to sell Chinese attack drones to a Libyan armed group, and sanctioned oil to China.
Fathi Ben Ahmed Mhaouek, 61, appeared in a Montreal court Tuesday afternoon after he was arrested earlier in the day. He has been charged with one count of conspiracy.
Police and prosecutors say the alleged conspiracy took place between 2018 and 2021, while he was working at the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN agency headquartered in Montreal.
"The conspiracy consisted of offering oil from Libya for sale that was from entities that are sanctioned by the United Nations. The oil was destined for the People's Republic of China," federal prosecutor Marie-Ève Moore told reporters at the Montreal courthouse.
Moore said Mhaouek's alleged co-conspirator, Mahmud Mohamed Elsuwaye Sayeh, 37, who also worked at ICAO at the time of the alleged offences, has been charged with two counts of conspiracy. One is related to the alleged scheme to sell Libyan oil to China, the other involved a plan to sell Chinese military equipment, including drones, to a Libyan group.
Sayeh remains on the run. An INTERPOL Red Notice — an alert sent to police around the world — and a Canada-wide warrant have been issued for his arrest, Moore said.
A third man, James Kuang Chi Wan, is named in the charging document as a co-conspirator; however, prosecutors declined to comment about why he has not been charged.
RCMP spokesman Sgt. Charles Poirier said the alleged conspiracy involved the use of shell companies to sell Chinese military equipment — including large drones that can carry multiple missiles — to a Libyan armed group in violation of UN sanctions related to the Libyan civil war. A federal regulation gives the sanctions the force of law in Canada.
Among people who immigrated to Canada in the last decade, more think Canada’s latest immigration targets will bring in too many people, a newly released Leger poll suggests, while fewer recent newcomers think the plan will bring in the right amount of people or not enough.
The Budget Office is calculating the cost of failed asylum claims by
illegal immigrants. It seeks to update 2018 figures that put expenses at
up to $33,700 per person depending on lengthy appeals: “They are
staggering.”
After learning that samples of deadly Ebola and Nipah viruses had been sent from Canada’s top-security lab in Winnipeg to China, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said his reaction was similar to that of an MP who expressed incredulity upon learning of the move.
“I’m really concerned about the March 2019 incident where [Winnipeg lab scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng] were implicated in a shipment of live Ebola in Hanipah [Nipah] viruses on a commercial Air Canada flight. How the hell did that happen?” NDP MP Charlie Angus asked during a House of Commons Canada-China committee meeting on April 15.
In response, Mr. LeBlanc said, “When I saw that report, and publicly, I had the same reaction as you.”
The minister deferred Mr. Angus’ question to the Public Health Agency of Canada, saying, “I don’t have any [information], but I had the same reaction as you, Mr. Angus.”
Mr. LeBlanc, who became minister of public safety in July 2023, was previously minister of intergovernmental affairs starting in July 2018.
The National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg shipped 15 different strains of Nipah and Ebola viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China on March 31, 2019. The package was sent from Winnipeg to Toronto and then on to Beijing via a commercial Air Canada flight.
The link
to the Chinese governmental agency’s website specifying these
requirements for the current academic year is prominently featured on
the website of the Canadian agency in charge of promoting the program, as of this writing. The Canadian government issued a notice about this year’s program earlier this month.
On the Chinese side, the Canada-China Scholars’ Exchange Program is managed by the Chinese Scholarship Council, an agency under China’s Ministry of Education that oversees international academic exchanges. On the Canadian side, the program is administered by the Canadian Embassy in Beijing and promoted by EduCanada,
a federal organization under Global Affairs Canada that collaborates
with the provinces to help international students looking to study in
Canada.
The Canadian Forces and National Defence originally claimed in an
April 8 statement to this newspaper that the location in Ottawa for the
new building was secret for security reasons.
But that information was false. National Defence outlined details about the Uplands location in publicly available documents that are online. The department also held public consultations on the Uplands location as part of its environmental assessment for the site, government documents show.
The
publicly available records outline the construction of the building as
well as a parking lot for employees who will work at the Uplands site.
Trudeau said Tuesday in Saskatoon the Canada Revenue Agency has mechanisms to collect money the province owes.
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“We’re
going to continue to deliver the Canada carbon rebate to families right
across to Saskatchewan despite the fact that Premier Moe is not sending
that money to Ottawa right now,” he told reporters at an unrelated news
conference.
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“The Canada Revenue Agency has ways of ensuring money that is owed to them is eventually collected.
“We have faith in the rigorous quasi-judicial proceedings the Canada revenue agency uses.”
The
Saskatchewan government decided earlier this year to not remit the
federal carbon tax on natural gas to Ottawa, a move that breaks federal
law.
Saskatchewan
Premier Scott Moe invoked the measure after Trudeau exempted
home-heating-oil users from having to pay the tax in a move largely seen
as politically motivated to boost Liberal support in Atlantic Canada.
The carbon tax is a punishment for living.
It affects everything.
It certainly doesn't do anything for the weather.
In the next little while, a poll will be conducted to see if this ploy works.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has postponed until after the next election the mandatory registration of $34 billion a year worth of plastic goods made in Canada from takeaway cups to fishing gear. Guilbeault’s lawyers are currently appealing a 2023 Federal Court decision that struck a “toxic” blacklisting of plastics: “Not every plastic manufactured item has the potential to create a reasonable apprehension of harm.”
Federal airport screeners predict millions more Canadians will fly over
the next year but are making no promises on reducing wait times. The
forecast follows a 33 percent increase in mandatory fees paid by
travelers to cover security costs: “Canadian travelers already pay one
of the highest aviation security fees in the world.”
No country for anyone:
What Germany was to the Jews of a century ago, America is today. New York is the world's most Jewish city, and Brooklyn is famously the most Jewish place on earth, with more Jews than either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. As in Germany, Jews are the businessmen, brain surgeons, physicists, film producers. I take it as read that the day is fast approaching when London, Paris, Toronto, Copenhagen will be Jew-free. But New York? ...
Well, now we know that murder and rape and kidnapping and torture and kiddie-burning ain't gonna cut it, not with your Ivy League co-eds. As Julie Burchill says in The Spectator, "'anti-Semitism' doesn't cover what's going on right now". That's true: there are people who find Jews all a bit Jewy and don't want them in the country club ...and there are people who cheer on the gang-rape of the Jewesses and the torching of their infants. A term that embraces the lot doesn't seem terribly useful when the children of white upscale American liberals have moved en masse to the hardcore end of the spectrum - and pointing out Hamas atrocities doesn't resonate with them because that's what they like about it.
Australian
police arrested seven teenagers accused of following a violent
extremist ideology in raids across Sydney on Wednesday, as a judge
extended a ban on social media platform X sharing video of a knife
attack on a bishop that started the criminal investigation.
The seven, aged 15 to 17, were part of a network that included a 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing a bishop in a Sydney church on April 15, police said.
Clips of the stabbing were taken from the church service’s livestream and subsequently made the rounds on X. An Australian regulator on Monday ordered the platform to take down the videos, an action the platform is fighting.
Other social media companies including Google, Microsoft, Snapchat and TikTok have complied with similar orders.
Five
other teenagers were still being questioned late Wednesday by the Joint
Counter-Terrorism Team, which includes federal and state police as well
as the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the nation’s main
domestic spy agency, and the New South Wales Crime Commission, which
specializes in extremists and organized crime.
More
than 400 police officers executed 13 search warrants at properties
across southwest Sydney because the suspects were considered an
immediate threat, New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner David
Hudson said.
The Leger survey for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) and the Metropolis Institute was conducted about four months after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, the UN has been under fire for its response to the attack, and for a UN agency’s alleged connections to the Hamas terrorists.
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According to the survey, only 38 per cent of Canadians and 30 per cent of Americans trust the UN.
Jack Jedwab, president of ACS and the Metropolis Institute, said the long-term impact of countries losing trust in the UN is a serious concern amid the Israel-Hamas war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other conflicts.
“The erosion of trust and their capacity going forward … would be a serious concern,” he said. “It is important for that international body to ensure that in many of the key partners and its deliberations, particularly our neighbour to the south, it retains and fosters trust. Otherwise, its capacity to effect change will risk being affected.”
In both the U.S. and Canada, views differ by political affiliation with a higher percentage of left-leaning citizens having more trust.
In Canada, 53.7 per cent of left-identifying respondents, 23.5 per cent of right-identifying respondents and 41 per cent of centre-identifying respondents said they had trust in the UN. In the U.S., it was 54 per cent for left-identifying, 13.2 per cent for right-identifying and 38.1 per cent for centre-identifying.
The investigation drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and dozens of interviews that showed the freeze began far earlier than previously known and involved political and scientific infighting in China as much as international finger-pointing.
As early as Jan. 6, 2020, health officials in Beijing closed the lab of a Chinese scientist who sequenced the virus and barred researchers from working with him.
Scientists warn the willful blindness over coronavirus’ origins leaves the world vulnerable to another outbreak, potentially undermining pandemic treaty talks coordinated by the World Health Organization set to culminate in May.
At the heart of the question is whether the virus jumped from an animal or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis says there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory, but the debate has further tainted relations between the U.S. and China.
Unlike in the U.S., there is virtually no public debate in China about whether the virus came from nature or from a lab leak. In fact, there is little public discussion at all about the source of the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan.
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Crucial initial efforts were hampered by bureaucrats in Wuhan trying to avoid blame who misled the central government; the central government, which muzzled Chinese scientists and subjected visiting WHO officials to stage-managed tours; and the UN health agency itself, which may have compromised early opportunities to gather critical information in hopes that by placating China, scientists could gain more access, according to internal materials obtained by AP.
In a faxed statement, China’s Foreign Ministry defended China’s handling of research into the origins, saying the country is open and transparent, shared data and research, and “made the greatest contribution to global origins research.” The National Health Commission, China’s top medical authority, said the country “invested huge manpower, material and financial resources” and “has not stopped looking for the origins of the coronavirus.”
The program was announced shortly
after COVID-19 shots first became available to the public, and provides
financial compensation to people who were adversely effected by Health
Canada-approved vaccines.
In the study, titled “Increased Age-Adjusted Cancer Mortality After the Third mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticle Vaccine Dose During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan,” five Japanese scientists used an entire dataset of the country’s 123 million population (Japan has the highest vaccination rate in the world) to study excess cancer mortalities coinciding with mass COVID vaccination. ...
The study shows there were 1,568,961 total deaths in Japan in 2022. About 1,453,162 deaths were expected based on statistical predictions using pre-pandemic information, which means there were 115,799 excess deaths in 2022.
The 115,799 “age-adjusted excess number of deaths” in 2022 occurred after two-thirds of the Japanese population had received the third dose of COVID vaccine.
Based on Japan’s Ministry of Health data, I calculated that there were 39,060 COVID deaths reported in 2022. So, the majority of Japan’s excess deaths in 2022 were not caused by COVID infection, but rather are strongly associated with the vaccination.
Ryan O’Connor has been representing 18 students from the university, which was formerly known as Ryerson, since they launched their lawsuit in 2022. Despite the long delay, a judge has now decided enough evidence exists to move the case to discovery, he told The Epoch Times.
“[TMU lawyers] wanted to appear in court to attempt to schedule a summary judgment motion and have the lawsuit tossed, claiming there was no viable cause for action that the students had against the university,” Mr. O’Connor said.
However, in February the court decided “this is a case that ought to go through the normal legal process,” he said. He expects the sharing of evidence and oral cross-examinations to begin sometime this summer.
“This is an opportunity to review the university’s evidence and the rationale behind why it decided to adopt the policy it did,” Mr. O’Connor said. “And let’s be clear, they had to adopt a vaccine policy but they were not required to deregister or otherwise discipline students who were not able to be vaccinated for whatever reason.”
He said the more time passes since the policy was adopted, “the more we’re understanding the risk [of vaccination] far outweighed any sort of reward. We also knew that at the time, the vaccines were not stopping transmission. And the university would have had that evidence at the time the policy was adopted in the fall of 2021.”
A famous atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explained he identifies as a "cultural Christian" in an interview after learning Ramadan lights were hung on a street in the UK as opposed to hanging lights to celebrate Easter.
Dawkins was referring to Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, turning on 30,000 lights for Ramadan – the Muslim holy month – on the cusp of Easter weekend on Oxford Street.
"I must say I'm slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead," Dawkins said in an interview with Rachel S. Johnson of LBC Sunday. "I feel that we are a Christian country."
"It's true that statistically, the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I'm happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches. So, I count myself a cultural Christian. I think it would matter if we... substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful," he told the media outlet.
A poster in a teacher’s classroom at a high school in Surrey, B.C., suggests society is too moralistic about sex work, the quote coming from an avowed Satanist. National Post writer Jamie Sarkonak described the classroom in this way: “The classroom ... 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.”
This teacher drapes herself in a pride flag and speaks openly of her pansexuality as well as her subscription to social justice and DEI.
In March, the teacher appeared on CTV after being roundly criticized on X by an Ottawa teacher, Chanel Pfahl, who was chased out of the profession a few years ago for questioning critical race theory. The Surrey teacher said that Pfahl “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.” She also argued she was teaching about “critical thinking” and creating “empowered citizens that can speak up for themselves.” A Canadian flag hangs forlornly in her classroom, atop it is scrawled, “No pride in genocide.”
So far, she has faced no direct consequences for her political position or trying to indoctrinate her students. Indeed, she has won three teaching awards.
I, on the other hand, was walked out of my classroom and career for suggesting the only thing buried at the former residential school in Kamloops was the truth. In the eyes of my employer, I had put students and the community in danger by saying students who died while enrolled at a residential school did so from disease and not murder.
Nearly half of China's major cities are suffering "moderate to severe" levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released on Friday.
The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found 45% of China's urban land was sinking faster than 3 millimetres per year, with 16% at more than 10 mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables but also the sheer weight of the built environment.
