Recession fears, high rates to slow spending for businesses, consumers: BoC survey
Businesses and consumers alike are trimming their spending plans ahead of a possible recession, according to new surveys from the Bank of Canada.
The central bank’s fourth-quarter surveys of business and consumer sentiments, published Monday, showed an overall dour outlook for 2023, with the majority of both polled cohorts indicating they expect a recession in the next 12 months.
NEW YORK (AP) — When some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last year, sessions on climate change drew high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.
But an entirely different narrative played out on the internet, where social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.
The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Experts say what was once a conspiracy theory found in the internet’s underbelly has now hit the mainstream.
Not if I can do anything about it. Up yours woke moralists. Seriously. https://t.co/iyx0UAKhkw
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 16, 2023
More… Economic woes, war, climate change on tap for Davos meeting
There was a noisy protest with a heavy police presence at an all-ages drag event in Calgary on Sunday morning.
Protesters who were against the event were met by LGBTQ2S+ supporters. The two groups were face-to-face outside the Rec Room where the event was set to be held at 10:30 a.m.
Some came with signs saying: Save the Children. Others placards read: We Are Your Children.
It is amazing that the media chooses to advance this perversion, must be a condition of placement on Trudeau’s payroll .
Ingrid de Sain is one of thousands of dairy farmers in the Netherlands who says she sometimes lies awake at night. Since a court ruling in 2019 which found the Dutch were breaking European environmental law, her farm of 100 cows in north Holland has been illegal.
Like the other 2,500-plus farmers whose environmental permission was suddenly invalid, she wants a future where she can earn a living and farm legally again.
The Netherlands is first to face questions scientists believe will soon come to all intensively farmed areas: how can we balance the needs of the environment with the way we farm and grow? Have we reached “peak meat”, like peak oil: so much livestock, so much local pollution, that the only sustainable future is in reduction? They’re questions the US, the world’s largest producer of beef, will also soon have to answer.
A disturbing video of an altercation between two hospital security guards and Stephanie Warriner—a patient who lost consciousness and never woke up after the interaction over her mask being pulled down under her chin—has been published by various media outlets.
On Jan. 12, CTV News Toronto released new video footage showing 43-year Warriner being confronted by guards Amanda Rojas-Silva, 42, and Shane Hutley, 35, at Toronto General Hospital on May 11, 2020. The two guards were later charged with manslaughter and “criminal negligence by unlawful confinement/restraint causing death.”
TORONTO- Stephanie Warriner, 43, went to Hospital with chronic beathing issues but because she had her mask under her nose she “ended up in an altercation with 4 security guards that led to her death”
A judge ruled no rules were broken. Just her life🤷♀️
— Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) January 16, 2023
More … Outrageous but unsurprising: Canadian judge tosses case against guards who killed a woman for not wearing a mask
Germany’s Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht has resigned following a series of blunders and PR disasters.
It comes as Berlin comes under rising pressure to allow the delivery of German-built battle tanks to Ukraine.
Ms Lambrecht was mocked for her announcement that Germany was supporting Ukraine by sending 5,000 military helmets.
She was also widely criticised for failing to improve Germany’s notoriously ill-equipped armed forces.
This was despite the provision of €100bn (£88bn) for that task following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A small Canadian telecom service firm is taking issue with a tech watchdog’s report that it discussed working with an alleged front company to help Iranian officials spy on civilians.
Citizen Lab, the Toronto-based digital and human rights organization, alleged in a Monday report that Port Coquitlam, B.C.-based PortaOne was involved in 2019 discussions to help set up a new mobile phone service in the Islamic Republic, which is now facing a massive wave of upheaval.
An Afghan asylum seeker accused of murdering a reveller during a row over an e-scooter broke down in tears today as he claimed his parents were killed by the Taliban and detailed the alleged torture he endured.
Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, 21, was charged with the murder of aspiring Royal Marine Thomas Roberts, 21, outside a Subway sandwich shop in Bournemouth on March 12 last year, having allegedly stabbed him twice in the chest with a ’10cm blade’.
Giving evidence for the first time today at Salisbury Crown Court, Abdulrahimzai sobbed as he described the abuse he claims he endured at the hands of the Taliban and how the insurgents killed his parents after ‘bombing’ his home.
Agents of change
A small neighbourhood in Toronto has built a program to help residents reduce their household emissions. Could their grassroots approach become a template for the rest of the country?
On a snow-flecked Sunday afternoon in mid-December, Paul Dowsett gathered a group of neighbours in his backyard for a toast.
Although the event featured mulled wine and a crackling bonfire, this was no holiday party. Rather, it was an event to celebrate homeowners in the Pocket — an east Toronto neighbourhood — who have committed to an energy retrofit to reduce their carbon footprint.
A Pocket resident since 1997, Dowsett is an architect by trade and a local sage on matters of sustainability. Dressed in a striking green lumber jacket, the 61-year-old extolled his neighbours’ climate consciousness, and after a breezy explainer on the environmental harms of natural gas, related some breaking news.
Even some kin of Coretta Scott King hate the new $10 million sculpture just dedicated to her and her iconic civil rights leader husband in Boston — with a cousin claiming it “looks like a penis.”
The massive bronze piece, titled “The Embrace,” features two sets of arms holding each other, an artistic interpretation of the classic photo of Coretta and hubby Martin Luther King Jr. hugging after he won the Nobel Peace Price in 1964.
“The mainstream media … was reporting on it like it was all beautiful, ’cause they were told they had to say that,” Seneca Scott, Coretta’s cousin, told The Post by phone Sunday, referring to the new artwork on the Boston Common.
One of the worst aspects of seeing your family ripped apart by a drunk driver, said Brenda Simmons, is knowing that it could have been avoided with political will and the right application of technology.
“If somebody didn’t have the decency, or they didn’t have the decision-making capacity [and they] still decide to get behind the wheel, if that vehicle didn’t start because of some mandatory technology, my son would still be here,” she told CBC News.
How many times have we been treated, in the era of the New Normal, to exasperated corporate media hacks complaining about “misinformation” pushed by “conspiracy theorists” regarding the COVID-19 mRNA gene therapies deceptively marketed as “vaccines”?
A viral video of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland explaining why she needs to spend $2 billion quickly is giving Canadians an inside look at how the Trudeau government acts first and thinks later.
Chrystia Freeland gets completely flustered trying to explain where this money is going. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/VsAxRbwLQZ
— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) January 10, 2023
Britain is increasing purchases of Indian oil amid the Western sanctions war with Russia – but much of it is likely refined from Russian product sold to India at a discount.
While there is a general perception that Russia has become a pariah state since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with only the likes of Iran and North Korea allegedly offering covert support, many governments in Africa, Asia, and South America have largely stayed out of the West’s economic war with Moscow, including countries considered traditional allies such as Israel, India, and even NATO member Turkey.
The F-35 …. finally.
This is not an I told you so but a positive recognition of the long overdue government announcement this week to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter for the RCAF and for Canada.
