Sunday, April 30, 2017

MINNESOTA MEASLE OUTBREAK

Fears of the MMR vaccine have taken hold within the Somali community, particularly after 2008, when many parents became concerned about what seemed to be a cluster of autism cases among Somali students in the Minneapolis schools. Measles vaccination rates among young Somali children have fallen sharply since, providing fertile ground for an outbreak to develop.

THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED

Ancient humans settled in North America around 130,000 years ago, suggests a controversial study — pushing the date back more than 100,000 years earlier than most scientists accept. The jaw-dropping claim, made in Nature1, is based on broken rocks and mastodon bones found in California that a team of researchers say point to human activity.

ONTARIO'S HOSPITAL OVERCROWDING GETTING WORSE

NP:  After she spent five days on a stretcher in a Brampton Civic Hospital hallway because no beds were available, Ball’s story reached Queen’s Park and the Liberals promised to combat the bed shortage in the 2017 budget. In an interview days before he released the budget Thursday, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said “we don’t want people to be in hallways.”
But the $518 million, Ball has learned, won’t help solve a capacity crisis that has led to the province’s hospitals opening 1,100 unfunded beds. Instead, the funding will do little more than cover inflation and will not be enough to even sustain the current system, according to the Ontario Health Coalition. 
 

LEARNING CAPACITY OF ONTARIO LIBERAL VOTERS

NP:  As if any more proof was needed, the Ontario budget tabled this week has driven home, yet again, that the province’s Liberals, and their leader Kathleen Wynne, haven’t learned a thing. The only real question is whether the voters of Canada’s most-populous province have.
The budget is predictably heavy on the self-congratulation and back-patting that it seems all such announcements are now obligated to contain. The government is particularly proud of having “balanced the budget,” as it had previously promised, by the next fiscal year. This is clearly something the Liberals are banking on ahead of the 2018 election.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

YORK REGION

Beware their draconian tree cutting bylaws spreading throughout rural Ontario.

CANADIAN MORTGAGE LENDER FUNDAMENTALLY INSOLVENT

After two years of recurring warnings (both on this website and elsewhere) that Canada's largest alternative (i.e., non-bank) mortgage lender is fundamentally insolvent, kept alive only courtesy of the Canadian housing bubble which until last week had managed to lift all boats, Home Capital Group suffered a spectacular implosion last week when its stock price crashed by the most on record after HCG revealed that it had taken out an emergency $2 billion line of credit from an unnamed counterparty with an effective rate as high as 22.5%, indicative of a business model on the verge of collapse .
One day later, it emerged that the lender behind HCG's (pre-petition) rescue loan was none other than the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP). As Bloomberg reported, the Toronto-based pension plan - which represented more than 321,000 healthcare workers in Ontario - gave the struggling Canadian mortgage lender the loan to shore up liquidity as it faces a run on deposits amid a probe by the provincial securities regulator.

BOTHERSOME PROPER DOCUMENTATION

The Washington Post reported that more than 5400 of the 21,362 illegal aliens detained by ICE since January had no criminal convictions. Of the remaining nearly 16,000 illegals, most had been convicted of "traffic violations."
The figures contradict Trump administration claims that "most" of the illegals being detained until they could be deported had criminal convictions.
And to that, I give the most exaggerated shrug of my shoulders possible. The Post and illegal alien activists who are horrified at this figure, fail to mention that the very act of crossing the border without proper documentation is a "criminal act" as defined by the U.S. code, with the perpetrator clearly and unambiguously subject to deportation.
 

EU SETS BRITAIN TOUGH DIVORCE TERMS

European Union leaders endorsed stiff divorce terms for Britain on Saturday and warned Britons to have "no illusions" about swiftly securing a new relationship to keep their access to EU markets.
At a Brussels summit marked by unusual harmony among the 27 leaders, there was a flash of the cross-Channel acrimony which some fear could wreck any deal when officials accused London of cynically vetoing some EU spending and demanded it back down or face disrupting the start of talks next month.

LOGISTICAL HEADACHES FOR PARAMEDICS

The acting chief of the Ottawa Paramedic Service said provincially-ordered policy changes have caused a planning crunch in the organization, where paramedics are now facing uncertain shift times and logistics staff are managing a heavier workload.

Friday, April 28, 2017

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Who's there?

CLOSING ONTARIO HOSPITALS

Health Minister Eric Hoskins got rather miffed with me Tuesday when I suggested his government was simply reinventing the wheel by closing hospitals on the one hand and offering $9 billion in this year’s budget to construct new ones.
In their nice glossy 2017 budget book, the Liberals claim the $9 billion will be used over the next 10 years to support “major hospital projects” across the province — in other words mega-hospitals — as part of their investments in “service transformation.”

ALLEGATIONS AGAINST VICE ADMIRAL NORMAN

The man who was Canada's top naval officer leaked cabinet secrets to a Quebec shipyard in order to pressure the government to move forward on a military procurement project, the RCMP allege in newly unsealed court documents.
The documents lay out the Mounties’ case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, who was suspended from his role as the country's second-highest ranking military officer in January. The RCMP are investigating Norman for breach of trust and two breaches of the Security of Information Act. Norman's lawyer says he has served Canada honorably and is the victim of a bureaucratic crossfire.

DEFENCE MINISTER'S BALD-FACED LIE

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has apologized to Canadian, American and Afghan troops that he served with in Afghanistan for claiming that he was the “architect” of Canada’s most famous and bloodiest combat operation of that war.
The description was denounced as “a bald-faced lie” by a retired Canadian officer familiar with the planning done for Operation Medusa in the late summer and fall of 2006. Other officers who served in Afghanistan expressed similar anger and disappointment in Sajjan’s speech.

GOOD LUCK TORONTO CITY COUNCIL

Councillors voted Wednesday to ask Queen’s Park to change legislation to give Toronto Community Housing the discretion to ban a tenant who has been evicted for committing serious crimes.
Currently, social housing providers in Ontario can successfully evict tenants for criminal activity but must accommodate them if they re-apply for a subsidized housing unit.
Not only that, despite the long-waiting list for TCH’s 55,000 units, someone kicked out for drug dealing or violence could be considered “disadvantaged” and therefore move to the top of the list.
 

ANOTHER QUEBEC GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION CRISIS

The head of Montreal’s police union has thrown Philippe Couillard’s government into another Quebec corruption crisis after he alleged political interference blocked criminal charges against a current Liberal caucus member.
Yves Francoeur, president of the Montreal police union, alleged law-enforcement officials asked him “to do something” after a person he did not identify blocked some 2012 criminal cases from going to court. The cases involved a current sitting Liberal member of the National Assembly and another who since resigned, Mr. Francoeur said Thursday.
 

Thursday, April 27, 2017

SOMEONE GET JT SOME DEPENDS

Just days after the US Commerce Department imposed duties averaging 20% on Canadian softwood lumber, accusing Chinese timber companies of getting an unfair government subsidy, on Thursday round two of the trade war between the US and Canada broke out when Boeing asked the U.S. Commerce Department to investigate dumping, subsidies and unfair pricing for Canadian planemaker Bombardier's new CSeries airplane, a competitor to the Boeing 737, confirming that the trade tensions between the two neighboring countries are set to get far worse.

LOTTERY WINNERS

💰More than 95,000 people took part in the first immigration lottery, hoping to win a spot to bring their parents or grandparents to Canada.

                                                                 AND

🤑The province of Ontario will explore the effectiveness of providing a basic income — no matter what — to people who are currently living on low incomes, "whether they are working or not," Wynne said.
Wynne said the pilot will provide the basic income to 4,000 households chosen from applicants invited "randomly" by the province in the coming weeks. 

OH CANNIBIS!

It is now commonplace, for instance, to refer to the “recreational” use of reefer. Seldom, if ever, is the question raised as to how even the widest definition of “recreation” applies to the habit of toxically obliterating awareness, chemically detaching from one’s surroundings, and pharmaceutically retreating into the white smoke of intellectual obliviousness.

USA ENERGY SUPERPOWER

Under President Trump, the U.S. may become the energy superpower that Canada’s former Prime Minister Stephen Harper aspired to make of his own country. 

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

CANADA'S NATIONAL POLICY SWAMP

FP:  For three long hours last Thursday evening the Public Policy Forum’s 30th annual awards dinner nominally celebrated “extraordinary Canadians at home and abroad.” It turned out to be an all-star Big “L” Liberal event that essentially doubled as a fundraiser for the Liberal Party of Canada policy agenda. About 1,500 attendees sat around 150 tables at $6,800 each to help produce at least $1 million in new funds the PPF can use to generate endless papers and reports providing ideological backing for Trudeau-style economic interventionism.

MEDICAL CARE OF NO VALUE

Each year, there are at least one million unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures done in Canadian health care settings. This means that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are exposed to potential harm by unnecessary care.
What constitutes ‘unnecessary care’?
Unnecessary care could be a prescription drug, a diagnostic test or a medical procedure that does not improve a patient’s health outcomes and is not backed by the best available evidence.  It may also involve risks and harmful side-effects.
In other words, this is medical care that offers no value to patients and strains health care resources.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

RULES ARE ONLY FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) has filed a lawsuit against federal environment minister Catherine McKenna, asserting that the Government of Canada is not following its own rules about protecting caribou. 

BILL C-4 AND THE SECRET BALLOT

If the House of Commons rejects the Senate’s amendments and Bill C-4 is passed as it was previously drafted, unions will be able to bypass a secret ballot vote and automatically certify if they sign up a sufficient number of workers through so-called “card check”—50 per cent plus one. (A secret ballot vote, however, would still take place if the union does not sign up sufficient number of workers.)  

THE SYSTEMATIC DEPRAVITY OF THE KIM REGIME

Amid all the strategizing -- much of which envisions somehow continuing to "manage" the North Korea problem -- it's easy to sideline a basic and profoundly important element of the Pyongyang regime, a quality we should take into account quite thoroughly, front and center, before considering any course that might leave the Kim regime in power. The feature I'm talking about is the raw moral obscenity of Kim's North Korea.

Monday, April 24, 2017

20% TARIFF UPCOMING ON CANADIAN LUMBER

The expected announcement from the U.S. Commerce Department on countervailing duties — a type of import tax meant to counter a subsidized export — is just the latest in the ongoing Canada-U.S. softwood row, which stretches back to the 1980s.

TRUDEAU'S PURGE OF THE REFUGEE BOARD

14 adjudicators have already been removed, while 39 more are expected to be let go.

5 YRS AND $1.2 MILLION FINE

For Avik Caron, opportunity came knocking in 2011 when the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers rented a warehouse partly owned by his wife to store that year’s harvest.
As if he had been handed the keys to a bank vault, Caron almost immediately began looking for a black-market buyer who could convert the syrup-filled barrels into cash in his pocket.

THE USELESS UN

The United Nations Economic and Social Council voted late last week to place Saudi Arabia on the Commission on the Status of Women for a four-year term beginning in 2018, despite that country’s appalling record on the treatment of women.
 Hillel Neuer, director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, expressed his outrage in a statement Friday,
“Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “It’s absurd.”

LE PEN FINISHES SECOND IN FIRST ROUND

In a victory speech Sunday evening, Front National anti-mass migration candidate Marine Le Pen called on patriots in France to support her against Emmanuel Macron, who she called the heir of unpopular French President Francois Hollande.
 Ms Le Pen, who exit polls show finished second in the first round of the French presidential election, told a large crowd gathered in the north of France that the battle was now between supporters of globalism and those against.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

WHEN WHORES GET TOO OLD

They stomp their feet when they find out being a climate change Liberal cheerleader isn't going to get them any money.

MONTREALERS HEAD TO THE POLLS IN FRANCE'S ELECTION

In Montreal, French citizens lined up for hours outside a private school in Outremont. Of the 85,000 eligible French voters in Canada, the vast majority of them were registered to vote here.

CHRISTY CLARK'S MICRO-AGGRESSION

That's when it happened. Clark turned towards her NDP opponent — touched his arm and said, "Calm down, John."
It was too much for Horgan.
"Don't touch me again, please. Thank you very much," he said, as he glared to his left at Clark before composing himself and continuing with his answer.

A WIN FOR FAIR COMMENT

NP: A 2015 ruling against National Post writers in a defamation suit brought by a prominent climate scientist, Dr. Andrew Weaver, was overturned this week.
The articles in question were written by Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster and Kevin Libin. Between them they wrote four articles that mentioned Weaver, which were published in the National Post, the Financial Post and FP Magazine in late 2009 and early 2010. At the time, Weaver was Canada Research Chair in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria. He had also contributed to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH TRUDEAU

NP:  Canada has a sense of entitlement that Trump, in his undiplomatic way, is exposing. His plan to renegotiate NAFTA — and to walk away from it if the renegotiation didn’t serve America’s interests — was widely met in Canada with indignation and outrage, as if we had an entitlement to the U.S. market. True to form, we also responded with praise for the glories of free trade and contempt for America’s backward turn to protectionism. Yet Canada remains one of the West’s great bastions of protectionism, barring foreign ownership of banking and other major sectors and unable to achieve even internal free trade among our provinces, despite 150 years of trying. The provinces themselves don’t accept the provisions of NAFTA, cannot be bound by them and haven’t honoured them

YOU CAN'T TRUST A WORD SHE SAYS

Six months ago, Premier Kathleen Wynne was against imposing a foreign homebuyers’ tax on real estate deals, saying it could have “unintended consequences.”
On Thursday, she reversed herself, saying a foreign homebuyers’ tax is necessary, apparently regardless of “unintended consequences.”
This raises the question of whether voters can trust any statement Wynne makes, or doesn’t make.
In that light, let’s review Wynne’s record on five other major issues

116% DEBT INCREASE IN 14 YEARS

The wildly unpopular Ontario Liberals will table the provincial budget on Thursday.
It is yet another opportunity for Premier Kathleen Wynne to distract the public from her government’s failed policies which have caused serious, long-term economic damage to the province.
Like so many budgets before, it will contain a long list of lofty promises which will never be fulfilled.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION RING BUSTED

Dr. Fakhruddin Attar was arrested in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, Michigan Friday, accused, along with his wife Farida Attar, of involvement in the same female genital mutilation conspiracy that led to the landmark arrest last week of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala.
 The three suspects now charged represent the first prosecution in the United States for female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice common primarily in Muslim countries, particularly those in Africa. For example, UNICEF estimates that 98% of Somali girls and 87% of Egyptians have endured the procedure.

INFILTRATING THE FARM

Be careful who you hire this year. Mercy for Animals’ Toronto-based animal rights office is hiring an undercover investigator.

HACKING INTO YOUR TRACTOR

Some U.S. farmers are buying hacker software from the Ukraine and Poland to hack into their own tractors’ computers to repair their machines, reports an online science website.
Motherboard.vice.com says farmers sign licencing agreements with some large tractor companies which state that farmers are not allowed to repair or modify their machines and security walls stop them from trying.

ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG, FIX THE PROBLEMS WYNNE

The province needs to build an electricity system that will be cost-effective, low carbon, reliable and resilient, and capable of electrifying other sectors. Sounds like a tall order? It is. If the government is serious in meeting all these objectives, it needs to learn from past mistakes and directly face the challenges and risks ahead. The year 2030 is right around the corner. Ontario needs to empower customers with information, relentlessly pursue efficiencies, provide clear market signals, and open up the planning process.

SMUGGLING ASYLUM SEEKERS

U.S. border patrol officers claim to have documented multiple instances where they believe Nigerian nationals were smuggled into Canada from North Dakota.
The apparent asylum seekers paid $2,000 US each and filed refugee claims after reaching Canada, according to affidavits obtained by CBC News.

Friday, April 21, 2017

ANN COULTER SPEAKS UP

"I WILL BE SPEAKING NEXT THURSDAY," the right-wing commentator tweeted, calling the move to cancel her planned event on April 27 a ban on free speech.
Coulter was invited to speak at Berkeley by campus Republicans on the subject of illegal immigration. The event raised concerns of more violence at Berkeley, where masked rioters smashed windows, set fires and shut down an appearance by former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in February.

CHALLENGING THE EXXON PROBE

Schneiderman and Healey, both Democrats, are looking at whether the company violated consumer protection laws by selling fossil fuels while failing to reveal information about the effects of burning them on the global climate.
In their brief, the attorneys general said Healey and Schneiderman were abusing their power and violating Exxon's rights to free speech by "using law enforcement authority to resolve a public policy debate" over whether carbon emissions cause climate change, a debate they claim is not settled.

MOTHER OF ALL PROTESTS IN VENEZUELA

The Venezuelan opposition called for a second “mother of all marches” on Thursday from the same 26 rally points from which hundreds of thousands took the streets to demand an end to socialism on Wednesday.
 The call for more protests follows the deaths of three on Wednesday – teen student Carlos José Moreno, 24-year-old protester Paola Ramírez, and an unnamed Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) soldier – and vows from the ruling socialist party that peaceful dissidents will pay for defying the government.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

LAST STAND IN NEBRASKA AGAINST KEYSTONE XL

Backed by conservation groups, the Nebraska opponents plan to cast the project as a threat to prime farming and grazing lands - vital to Nebraska's economy - and a foreign company's attempt to seize American private property.

4-20 CHEECH AND CHONG DAY

We said, ‘OK, we’ll give them a chance’ to see what their legislation is and then we’re handed this turd pie.”

THE POWER OF BIG DAIRY

FP:  That old meany Donald Trump, the alt-factualizing president of the United States, is targeting poor innocent Canadian dairy farmers and the sacred text of the North American Free Trade Agreement. What an insult Trump has thrown on Canada’s institutions. We’re as clean as a cow-herding dog whistle on dairy trade. Whatever problems U.S. farmers may have with falling demand and prices, they are “due to U.S. and global overproduction” of dairy milk. Nothing to do with us upright Canadians.
That’s the official load of cow pie from Canada. What we have in reality is another Canadian dairy-farmer supply-management scam implemented — as usual — at the expense of Canadian consumers of dairy products.

TORONTO POLICE UNION WANTS PRIDE PARADE FUNDING AXED

🌈Members of Toronto’s police union want the city to cut hundreds of thousands in funding from the city’s Pride parade.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

ONTARIO'S FISCAL MESS

Finance Minister Charles Sousa will deliver Ontario’s spring budget on April 27 and the expectation is that Ontario will deliver a balanced budget for the first time since the onset of the Great Recession. Ontario has now run nine consecutive deficits accumulating $91.6 billion in deficits and increasing the province’s net debt from $156.6 billion in 2007-08 to an expected $317.9 billion in 2016-17.

RELATED: Registered practical nurses are being eliminated from an entire unit at the North Bay Regional Health Centre, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) claims.

RELATED: Staff at the Canadian Transportation Museum and Heritage Village are struggling to keep the lights on and fear they may have to cease operations because of skyrocketing hydro bills.

MEANWHILE IN SASKATCHEWAN

A human smuggling charge has been laid in connection with an investigation into asylum seekers crossing the United States border into Saskatchewan, RCMP said Tuesday.
RCMP said the charge was laid on April 15

ROAD TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD

Now, after four years of construction in brutally harsh conditions, the last 137 kilometres connecting Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea, will finally stitch Canada's coasts together.

RELATED: Tuktoyaktuk has a population of approx. 800 people.

WYNNE'S EASTER BASKET OF ROTTEN EGGS

The nice weather on Easter weekend in Ontario disguised the fact that April 14th, 15th and 16th were really bad days for electricity customers.

Ontario ratepayers picked up the bill for not only the $28.1 million paid to Windstream for a canceled offshore wind project, but also another $50.2 million, making the past four days very expensive for everyone.

PICKING SIDES FOR A WTO ACTION

FP: Australia and New Zealand dairy industry leaders said on Wednesday they would support moves by the United States to draw the World Trade Organization into a trade dispute with Canada, after President Donald Trump said existing rules were unfair.

ECO-WARRIOR HEARTBREAK

FP:  Another day, another disappointment for Bill McKibben. The eco-activist, author and co-founder of the anti-carbon lobby group 350.org, confessed Monday that he’s been let down yet again, this time by our own prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Worse, McKibben wrote in the U.K.’s Guardian, Trudeau has proven himself to be phonier than even Donald Trump. The Liberals must be mortified.

REVENUE NEUTRAL MY A$$

The federal government stands to raise as much as $280 million in revenue off provincial carbon taxes in Alberta and B.C. in the next two years despite claims carbon taxes would be revenue neutral for Ottawa.
Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna have long insisted Ottawa would collect no revenue from the carbon price the federal government is requiring the provinces and territories impose by 2018.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

OTTAWA TAXPAYERS OVER PAYING FOR GREEN BIN WASTE

Orgaworld receives $8 million annually from the city to process a minimum of 80,000 tonnes of green bin waste. The city must pay the money, even if the volume is less than 80,000 tonnes.
The city sent 71,000 tonnes of organic waste to the processing plant in 2016, according to a recycling analysis provided to council’s environment and climate change committee.

WELL SAID JOHN ROBSON

In societies where property rights are trampled, the politically powerful live obscenely well anyway. Only where the rule of law holds sway can even the peasant in his damp hovel not be disturbed or robbed.

TIME FOR ACTION, TRUDEAU

The crisis at Canada’s southern border is getting worse, and it’s time for the Trudeau government to take action over the sudden and significant influx of illegal migration.
An investigative video report from The Rebel Media has made it clear that there is a coordinated effort by human smugglers to thwart our immigration rules and facilitate large-scale illegal migration into Canada.

Monday, April 17, 2017

ONTARIO HEALTH CARE ALA BROOM CLOSET

Patient capacity at about half of Ontario’s 145 hospital corporations exceeded 100 per cent and reached as high as 130 per cent, according to figures requested by the Star from the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA).
Hardest hit have been large urban hospitals, regional facilities and some community hospitals. Even some rural hospitals have been overwhelmed. They include hospitals throughout the Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Kingston, Windsor, Sudbury and Cornwall.

SUCKS TO BE YOU EH ACORN

A community organization that works to help low-income families is increasingly frustrated with getting internet access for all Nova Scotians.
Members of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) Canada say they're disappointed in the 2017 federal budget unveiled last month, because the $13.2 million over five years cited to support access to broadband relies on big companies to voluntarily create programs.

QUEBEC'S PRO SCARECROWS

For Quebec's farmers the return of geese means damaged fields as the birds lay waste to the open ground, scavenging for food.
But farmers have one ace up their sleeves for that time of year when the birds return: the professional scarecrow.
Armed with a gun that fires blank cartridges, these pros scare the geese off properties in hopes of limiting the damage.

OUTHOUSES & HONEY LANES STILL CAUSING A STINK

The federal government is trying to avoid a stink over outhouses from generations ago that could cause land title problems for about 500 homeowners in two former Cape Breton coal mining communities. 
Backyard lavatories were the norm before modern plumbing and the material deposited in them had to be cleaned out regularly by a man and his horse-drawn "honey wagon."
To reach each of these outhouses, the "honey man" followed a strip of land about three to six metres wide known as the honey lane.

ONTARIO'S ELECTRICITY GRID: THE ENVY OF NORTH AMERICA

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her cabinet ministers excel at alternative facts and fake news.
The latest example was Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s speech Thursday to The Empire Club, part of which boasted about how the Liberals saved Ontario’s electricity system by doing the heavy lifting needed to improve it.

CANADA IS G-7 GROWTH LEADER

Almost out of nowhere, Canada has become one of the fastest growing economies in the developed world.
The oil-producing nation, which struggled mightily with falling crude prices the past two years, grew at an annualized pace of almost 4 percent in the first quarter, according to the Bank of Canada’s latest estimates. No other Group of Seven economy even came close.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

INVESTIGATING LOIS LERNER

One way or another -- either through a DoJ investigation or a lawsuit -- the truth is going to come out. That Lerner has been able to avoid serious scrutiny this long is due entirely to the rabid partisanship of the Eric Holder Department of Justice. The potential seriousness of what the IRS did -- unprecedented in American history -- was belied by Holder's insistent refusal to give the investigation the kind of attention it deserved.
Lerner was held in contempt by Congress, but the DoJ refused to prosecute. It's long past time to compel Lerner to tell us her role in the scandal and who else was responsible for this blatantly illegal activity.
 

REMEMBER WYNNE'S 15% CAR INSURANCE CUT?

While Ontario drivers are among the safest in Canada — consistently recording one of the lowest accident, serious injury and fatality rates — they pay the highest auto insurance premiums for coverage that fails to provide them with proper medical care when they need it.
Small wonder Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, which promised and failed to cut car insurance premiums by an average of 15% annually, chose to quietly release the study last Tuesday.

ONTARIO'S USELESS, EXPENSIVE DRIVE CLEAN PROGRAM

Ontario taxpayers are on the hook for tens of millions of dollars annually to keep Drive Clean emissions testing going when the failure rate for most vehicles on the initial test is just 4%.
  Environment Minister Glen Murray told the Toronto Star that without Drive Clean, Ontario could become the “beater capital of Canada.”

SHOCKER!: AL-ASSAD DECEIVED UN

NP:  President Bashar al-Assad retains hundreds of tonnes of his country’s chemical stockpile after deceiving United Nations inspectors sent in to dismantle it, Syria’s former chemical weapons research chief and experts have told The Daily Telegraph.
Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat, who served as head of chemical warfare in the powerful 5th Division of the military until he defected in 2013, said Assad’s regime did not declare large amounts of sarin and other toxic materials.

CRA PAYING PHANTOM WORKERS

Call them the phantom tax collectors.
They're the thousands of Canadians who received paycheques from the Canada Revenue Agency, even though they're not actually on the payroll.
It's a $2-million headache for the agency, which is responding partly by writing off the erroneous payments and letting those phantom workers keep the cash.

ALWAYS REMEMBER TO VOTE

And vote often!

PROPOSED CHANGES TO IMPAIRED DRIVING

On Thursday, the federal government introduced legislation legalizing cannabis. At the same time, a proposal to create stricter rules surrounding drunk driving was tabled.

The changes would allow law enforcement officers to demand breath samples from any driver they lawfully stop, without having suspicion that the driver has alcohol in their body.

CHIEF SPENCE AND THE FAKE AMAZING FISH BROTH

 I had already witnessed enough weirdness, which peaked on day three of my futile vigil when I saw Spence picked up at the dinner hour in a white Hummer chauffeured by Mohawk Warriors. I assumed they were taking her to the nearby 4-star downtown Delta Hotel, where she reportedly stayed when she needed a break from the teepee. As it got harder and harder to maintain the fiction about the starving chief in the tent, the story changed to say that she was not on a hunger strike in the traditional sense, but was supplementing her diet with fish broth.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

ONE FINE SPRING DAY COSTS ONTARIO MILLIONS

April 9, 2017 was a perfect day to demonstrate the mess the current Ontario government could have expected if they had simply done a cost-benefit study of the electricity sector prior to imposing the GEA (Green Energy and Green Economy Act).

RELATED: The Ontario government says it has paid a $28-million award that a NAFTA tribunal ruled was owed to a wind power company over a provincial offshore wind moratorium.

LIBERALS REFORMING PARLIAMENT

Here are five things to know about the Liberals’ controversial battle to reform how Parliament works.

Friday, April 14, 2017

GETTING THE MESSAGE

Trump came into office promising to expel the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally, who he says steal American jobs and fuel crime. Most are from Mexico, and many of them have been here for decades, raising families, owning homes and businesses.
Three months into the Trump administration, the number of illegal border-crossers has plunged to a four decade low, according to the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP).
Apprehensions of illegal border crossers in March dropped to 16,600, down 30 percent from February and 64 percent from a year ago.

CHEECH AND CHONG MUSTA BEEN LIBERALS

As the federal government prepares to legalize marijuana, questions are being raised about a former Liberal minister’s role in shaping that legislation while working for a prominent law firm poised to capitalize on the lucrative new industry.

MEASLES OUTBREAK ACROSS EUROPE

Measles is spreading across Europe wherever immunisation coverage has dropped, the World Health Organization is warning.
The largest outbreaks are being seen in Italy and Romania.

SUPREME COURT DISMISSES APPEAL

The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed an appeal lodged by Hamed Shafia in the “honour killings” of his three sisters and step-mother, the high court ruled in a decision published Thursday.
Hamed Shafia, his father Mohammad Shafia, and his mother, Tooba Yahya, each lost an appeal after the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously rejected their arguments in a November 2016 ruling.

RAINFALL RECORD SET FOR CALIFORNIA

Never in nearly a century of Department of Water Resources (DWR) recordkeeping has so much precipitation fallen in the northern Sierra in a water year. DWR reported today that 89.7 inches of precipitation – rain and snowmelt – has been recorded by the eight weather stations it has monitored continuously since 1920 from Shasta Lake to the American River basin.  So much for the "permanent drought" spouted by the environmentalists.
 As Bernie wrote in the comments section:
CAGW will cause dryer and wetter conditions simultaneously. Hotter and colder too. Like in “The day after Morrow,” the planet will get so hot that it freezes instantly

WYNNE'S BALANCED BUDGET BULLSH!T

Ontario's first balanced budget since the recession is set to be delivered April 27.
Even though Ontario's Liberal government has managed to knock down a deficit that was at one point more than $20 billion, the province's debt continues to grow.
It has swelled to more than $300 billion and in last year's budget interest on that debt was more than $11 billion and was growing twice as quickly as any program spending area..
Ontario's net-debt-to-GDP ratio is about 40 per cent.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

BUNNY TALES

🐰Two former foster parents are taking the Children's Aid Society of Hamilton to court, alleging that their two young foster children were removed from their home because they refused to tell the kids that the Easter bunny was real.

MORE SHAKEDOWN ON ICE

🏒Mayor Jim Watson isn't ruling out investing public money into a downtown NHL arena at LeBreton Flats.

TEACHERS GIVE WYNNE AN A++++

😎In 2014 — one year after Wynne succeeded Dalton McGuinty — 2,517 people listed as teachers made the so-called Sunshine List of public servants earning six figures. Two years later, that number rose to 7,066.
As a result, taxpayers were left with a $765-million bill to pay the salaries of the teachers who made the list in 2016, compared with $263 million in 2014

THE JUSTIN & SOPHIE SHOW

Seated together in the centre aisle of the House of Commons, Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau both laughed and sheepishly put their hands to their foreheads.

UNDERSTANDING SYRIA

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a tyrant who “gasses his own people,” Reuters reported this week, expressing a revulsion echoed countless times in the wake of the latest chemical attack in Syria on innocent women and children.
This Western viewpoint is fundamentally confused, explaining why the West is unable to understand the tragedy of Syria, and to end it.

SUNNY WAYS CLOUDING OVER

Trudeau promised transparency and accountability but has instead delivered his own version of secrecy and control.
It’s not what Canadians voted for and it’s not a sunnier approach to governing.

TRUDEAU'S CHANGE OF TUNE

In opposition, Justin Trudeau promised to eliminate the practice of employing “inappropriate omnibus bills to reduce scrutiny of legislative measures.” In government, he thinks differently. The Prime Minister told the House on Wednesday that “any budget bill includes a broad range of provisions” that will “touch on a broad range of issues.” To which NDP MP Nathan Cullen laughingly retorted: “I didn’t think I’d see him quoting Stephen Harper.”

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

MANITOBA BUDGET 2017

Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government chose to make a series of modest changes to the provincial budget this year instead of engaging in the radical fiscal change some observers had wanted and others feared.

MORE HYDRO ONE SHENANIGANS

Hydro One ombudsman Fiona Crean quit March 10 after less than two years in the job, leaving critics wondering why the company kept her departure secret for so long while it’s under heavy scrutiny.

LEAVE IT TO BEAVER

A wandering beaver shut down part of a highway in southern Ontario on Wednesday as police worked to get the animal back to its natural habitat.

JOBS FOR LIBERALS

All eyes will be on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage as it hears from dozens of witnesses to study the ill-defined phenomenon of Islamophobia, along with other forms of discrimination and racism.

CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE ON PARLIAMENT HILL

The Trudeau government tabled legislation Tuesday which, once passed, will give the parliamentary budget officer expanded powers but also impose new restrictions.
The legislation, however, also proposes to mandate the PBO to submit its annual work plans to the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons for approval.
If passed into law, the moves would alter the rules surrounding the budget office, which is designed to serve parliamentarians as an non-partisan check on the management of government finances.

LIBERALS' SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS

The federal government tabled a wide-ranging budget bill Tuesday that includes legal changes to the powers of the Parliamentary Budget Officer as well as a new law that creates the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
The opposition says the legislation, at more than 300 pages, amounts to an omnibus bill at the very same time that the governing Liberals are separately proposing changes to the parliamentary rules that would make omnibus bills illegal.
 

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES ON PARLIAMENT HILL

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he wasn’t personally invited by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to attend Sunday’s ceremony in France marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
“Mr. Trudeau did not invite me to go to the Vimy commemorations and I would very much like to have gone,” Mulcair told CTV’s Power Play on Monday.

Monday, April 10, 2017

HEADS UP ALBERTA!

“It’s aggressive,” said Gary Reynolds, an energy industry consultant in Calgary, about the government’s timetable to kick Alberta’s dependence on coal.

CANADIAN MUSHROOMS

That is, that Environment Canada secretly advised Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna in November 2015 that Canada will need a carbon price of $100 per tonne by 2020, and up to $300 per tonne by 2050, to meet federal short-term and mid-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
This as opposed to Trudeau’s program setting a minimum national carbon price of $10 per tonne starting next year, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022, although several provinces are ahead of that pace.

CNN INTERVIEW GOES HORRIBLY WRONG

CNN interviews a Syrian survivor of a chemical attack in 2013. From SDA.

CANADIANS FUNDING A CORPORATE WELFARE SCHEME

The Trudeau Liberals are proposing to create an Infrastructure Bank that would use private equity financing for projects — financing expected to be four times more costly than public bonds.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

MEANWHILE BACK IN EMERSON, MANITOBA

Spring flooding is complicating the crossing for some asylum seekers walking over the international border into Manitoba and forcing some to sneak over by a different route.

CANADA'S 150th COMMEMORATIVE 10$ BANKNOTE

The Bank of Canada has unveiled a commemorative $10 banknote to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation. It's only the fourth time in Canada's history that it has created a commemorative banknote.

WHEN OUI BECOMES AYE

Scotland should join Canada if it decides to leave the UK after Brexit, an author has suggested. 

NY DROPS BUY AMERICAN PROVISIONS

Wynne said she doesn't want Ontarians to have to worry about protectionism threatening Ontario's economy.
"It is an uncertain time, there's no doubt about that and it's very important that, as premier, I play very close attention to, and put resources into, that protection of our interests — not protection of our border, but protection of our interests," she said.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

WHEN WHORES GET TOO OLD

🔥They send you  a hydro bill even after your house (and meter) have burned down.

MTO's BIG HAMMER ON ONTARIO DRIVERS

🚨An unknown number of Ontario residents who are finding their lives in turmoil after having their driver’s licences arbitrarily suspended for offences as minor as the non-payment of a single parking ticket or for going faster than a posted speed limit.
An offender has 15 days to either pay up or dispute any ticket. If it’s neither, the Provincial Offences Court where the ticket is can then order a licence suspension.
In cases where more than three years had passed, many of these people had to go through the province’s graduated licencing program, which is designed for brand new drivers (although waiting periods such as a year between acquiring a G1 licence and a G2 were generally waived — but not always).

HOLY COW

🐄The cow is considered sacred by India's Hindu majority, and killing cows is illegal in many states. Last month, the state of Gujarat passed a law making the slaughter of cows punishable with life imprisonment.

MONTREAL CONSIDERS A CONGESTION FEE

Montreal is considering charging drivers to get into the city.

ONTARIO'S SAVE ON ENERGY PROGRAM

How many people does it take to change 24 light bulbs?

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE BARRIERS STILL IN PLACE

NP:  Perhaps there is some sort of mathematical inevitability to it — the more politicians are on hand to announce something, the less there is to announce — but for all the attempts to paint the new Canadian Free Trade Agreement as a heroic achievement there was no disguising the fact that what the ministers were here to announce was a failure. Indeed, one might say a historic failure, the kind that floods cities and brings epochs to a close.

TRUMP LETS FLY HIS TOMAHAWKS

NP:  The Kremlin is furious. The Khomeinists in Tehran are beside themselves. U.S. President Donald Trump’s alt-right fan base has joined leftish anti-imperialists in paroxysms of betrayal and outrage. Awkwardly, Chinese president Xi Jinping was Trump’s guest at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida when those 59 Tomahawk missiles were sent flying towards the Syrian airbase at Al Shayrat, 45 kilometres from the city of Homs, so he was taken by surprise, and didn’t quite know what to say.

Friday, April 7, 2017

GROWER EXODUS OUT OF ONTARIO

A growing number of Ontario greenhouse operations are expanding across the border into the U.S. and Mexico.

Since 2012, about CAD $220 million (approx. USD $163 million) has been spent by Ontario greenhouse businesses on opening additional operations in the United States.

SHAKEDOWN ON ICE

Last weekend Calgary Flames CEO Ken King offered up the explicit threat that if taxpayers don’t award his professional for-profit sports franchise hundreds of millions of dollars, Flames fans might one day be left without a team to cheer.

ONTARIO'S CARBON FAIRY

How do I know Ontario has a Carbon Fairy?
Because Ontario just announced the “historic” results of the province’s first sale of carbon permits to Ontario businesses on March 22, under Wynne’s cap and trade scheme, and apparently we don’t have to pay for it! Hallelujah!
Yep. Ontario said all the current permits were sold, bringing $472 million into Liberal government coffers and an expected $1.9 billion annually in ongoing quarterly auctions every year.

USA MILITARY STRIKE AGAINST SYRIA

The strike is the first direct military action taken by the US against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's six-year civil war. It represents a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region, and could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

DOES IT GO UH-UH-UH?

The doll says phrases like "Canada is a country strong not in spite of our differences but because of them."

ANOTHER OBSCENITY FROM PARLIAMENT HILL

The president of the largest public service union says she is outraged that performance bonuses were paid to executives involved with the problem-plagued Phoenix payroll system while her members struggled to receive their regular paycheques.

FROM 0 TO 50 IN 100 YEARS

The History and Development of Canada's Personal Income Tax.
Livio Di Matteo’s essay contrasts today’s personal income tax with where the tax started. One great difference between now and then is how little revenue the income tax originally raised. As a share of total federal revenue, personal income taxes went from just 2.6 percent in 1918 to an expected 51 percent in 2017.
The number of Canadians who pay personal income taxes has also risen sharply. As late as 1938, only 2.3 percent of the population filed income taxes. Now almost 75 per cent of Canadians do.

DEMOCRAT BOOK BURNERS

"Public school classrooms are no place for anti-science propaganda, and I encourage every teacher to toss these materials in the recycling bin,” Scott said. “If the Heartland Institute and other climate deniers want to push a false agenda on global warming, our nation’s schools are an inappropriate place to drive that agenda.”

DEMANDING A STOP WORK ORDER FROM MOECC

Prince Edward County remains in a state of emergency today following an accident in which a barge being used to transport materials to the Windlectric wind power project on Amherst Island sank, polluting the waters of Picton Bay with diesel fuel. At the time of the incident, Windlectric had no Marine Logistics Plan in place.

PATRICK BROWN'S EMISSIONS DANCE

NP:  “The reality is, Patrick Brown, when he’s elected premier in 2018, he’ll dismantle Kathleen Wynne’s cap-and-trade plan.”
At that point, things will get tricky. Brown wants to “replace it with a model that reduces emissions in Ontario, cuts taxes, and protects the Ontario economy,” he says.
A year ago, at a party convention in Ottawa, Brown stunned the room by announcing he supports putting a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, with the goal of reducing them because they’re contributing to climate change. He might as well have promised a windmill on every lawn and tofu in every pot.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

THE GREEN PARASITE SEEKS WESTERN HOSTS

When Heather Bishop looks at the long row of solar panels installed in the yard of her rural southern Manitoba home, she sees not only an impressive setup, but an investment in the future.
"Every time I drive into the yard, it catches me again, and it's like, 'Wow! That's impressive,'" Bishop said.

THE WYNNE PENDULUM

Premier Kathleen Wynne is said to have developed a "bold" strategy for getting re-elected in next June's provincial vote.
Essentially the new strategy involves overwhelming Ontario residents with "progressive" initiatives designed to appeal to traditional Liberals who are fed up with the endless debacles of the Wynne government, NDPers and others with a progressive bent.
Presumably the folks who would change allegiance or jump back on the Wynne train to nowhere reside mostly in the big cities and their suburbs.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS W-T-F

😎At least 15 police officers in Ontario earned more than $100,000 each in 2016 while sitting at home for most or all of the year, suspended over criminal charges yet collecting their full pay.

😎 RELATED:Among the names of those who made the Sunshine List for 2016 are police officers who had been suspended with pay, including one member of the SD&G OPP detachment's Alexandria office.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

THE FLEECING OF THE SHEEP HAS BEGUN

Ontario's first cap-and-trade auction sold out all current allowances, giving the new market a strong start, but the province's environment minister warned the real test of the system will be in the emission reductions it brings about.
The March 22 auction brought in $472 million.
But over the next 15 auctions, to the end of the compliance period in 2020, the market can probably expect "a reasonable amount of volatility and unpredictability," said Environment Minister Glen Murray.

CELL PHONE SPYING ON PARLIAMENT HILL

A months-long CBC News/Radio-Canada investigation has revealed that someone is using devices that track and spy on cellphones in the area around Parliament Hill.
The devices are known as IMSI catchers and have been used by Canadian police and security authorities, foreign intelligence and even organized crime.

LIBERAL ENTITLEMENTS THE SAGA CONTINUES

Some of the money taxpayers paid as a result of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's controversial Bahamas vacation went to a billionaire Trudeau has described as a close family friend.
Money listed in documents tabled in the House of Commons as "per diems" for a tour technician who accompanied the prime minister was actually paid to the Aga Khan who owns Bell Island.

QUIT TWEETING TRUDEAU

Many refugees will not find a home in Canada, even if they are granted temporary asylum. According to data supplied by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, out of the 15,196 in-country refugee applicants processed in 2016, a total of 4,970 were rejected for various reasons, such as applicants not being considered in enough danger in their home country — and that was only after hundreds of other applications had already been terminated because the applicants had criminal records, abandoned claims, etc.

UPDATE: Here they come by the busload.

PAY UP! SOME MORE HYDRO ONE CUSTOMERS

On March 31, Hydro One filed a Distribution Rate Application for its 2018-2022 revenue requirement and rates with the Ontario Energy Board. In the summary of its request for higher rates Hydro One explained that, despite an expected reduced load forecast, less usage of its power, the, “… resulting average impact on distribution rates is an increase of 6.5% in 2018 and an average of 3.7% per annum over the Term.”

Monday, April 3, 2017

P!SSING OFF GUN OWNERS

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is expected to table legislation this spring to get handguns and assault weapons off the streets and promises not to create a new national long-gun registry, but some rural Liberal MPs say they are anxious about any tinkering of the gun laws.
“They’re awfully nervous about what the legislation could be,” a Liberal source told The Hill Times on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject and did not want to be seen criticizing his own party. “They’re afraid it’s a backdoor to a gun registry like we had before.”
 

TAKING TRUDEAU'S GOVERNMENT TO COURT

Calgary Lawyer Clint Docken filed Wallace’s legal action in the Federal Court of Appeal last week, seeking damages for lost income and demanding that the government stop the selection process to replace Wallace on the nine-member NEB board.
Wallace's legal challenge alleged that the Trudeau government delayed enacting the law that repealed the mandatory retirement age because it wanted to get rid of him.