After years of toiling away little noticed, the awkwardly named National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians certainly caught the nation’s attention this week. The committee, which reviewed 4,000 classified documents totaling 32,000 pages and held closed briefings with officials, found that some federal politicians had been “‘semi-witting or witting’ participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics.”
Here’s the most alarming thing about Canada’s foreign interference crisis.
It’s that our response to it is presided over by a prime minister who ignored years of warnings about how serious it was and then fought tooth and nail against holding a public inquiry into it, until he had no choice because of unrelenting political, public and media pressure.
It could take crews roughly one week to repair a massive water main break that has forced Calgarians across the city to conserve water use, according to the city’s manager of drinking water distribution.
Emergency officials held a press conference Saturday afternoon to provide an update on the water issue that first arose Wednesday night.
Chris Houston told reporters that repair crews have been working around the clock to repair the water main.
Long time to go without a shower.
The April jobs numbers from Statistics Canada made headlines: 90,000 new jobs where just 20,000 had been expected. For once, enough new jobs had been created to cover the vast number of immigrants the Liberals were letting in.
The increasing power of transnational organized crime along the Canada-U.S. border means cross-border co-operation among law enforcement is more important than ever, B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said Friday.
Farnworth attended a conference of policing agencies from both sides of the border in Esquimalt to discuss “the challenges that we’re both facing and how we’re dealing with them.”
The podcast interview that earned Conservative MP Arnold Viersen a newspaper across the nose this week was fascinating and confounding just like Cirque du Soleil: There’s so much interesting stuff here, but what is this?
To recap: Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith has a podcast called Uncommons on which he chats with various experts, people in the news, partisan teammates and opponents.
His conversation with Mr. Viersen began with a long discussion of C-270, a bill they’ve worked on aimed at curbing non-consensual online porn. Then the talk branched out.
Of all the responses to the bombshell report of the Prime Minister’s national security advisory committee, in which it is alleged some MPs have been conspiring with foreign powers against the national interest, surely the most arresting was that of Professor Wesley Wark.
The revelations, he told the CBC, are “nausea-inducing.” The urge to vomit seemed particularly to overtake him at the story of a former MP who tried “to arrange a meeting in a foreign state with a senior intelligence official” and “proactively provided the intelligence officer with information provided in confidence.” Prof. Wark’s verdict: “textbook treason.”
The text from a Toronto police spokesperson came at 8:30 on a Friday morning. A synagogue in the city’s north end had been vandalized overnight. Our crew could meet detectives from the force’s Hate Crimes Unit on site.
We arrived at the Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue to find congregant Norman Mosselson quietly sweeping up broken glass. When we asked him how he felt, his voice broke and he stifled a sob.
“Well, shock. Total shock… This is my home,” he said. This was the second time the synagogue had been attacked in a month.
OTTAWA — A major public sector union has assembled a panel to address antisemitism that features a prominent anti-Zionist and critic of Israel, alarming several of the union’s Jewish members.
I think Avi is the bigger antisemite. Great Troll by PSAC though.
OTTAWA — MPs named by top-secret intelligence as aiding foreign interference in Canadian politics continue to go unidentified by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, despite opposition demands to say publicly who they are.
But at least one constitutional expert says it’s possible — and entirely in line with long-established rules — for certain MPs to simply disclose the names from the floor of the House of Commons.
MPs calling out hate while disparaging Israel criticism ‘duplicitous’: Muslim groups
OTTAWA — Muslim groups called on political parties to work harder to stamp out Islamophobia in Canada on Thursday, and to not paint criticism of Israel as antisemitic.
The concerns centred on condemnations of pro-Palestinian rallies and advocacy since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“The response that the Muslim community in Canada, for months, has been receiving from our elected leaders has been duplicitous,” National Council of Canadian Muslims head Stephen Brown said Thursday.
A Calgary woman whose father has challenged her euthanasia request in court is starving herself to death and expects to die within weeks.
The 27-year-old autistic woman, who can only be identified as MV because of a court order, has asked judges to let her get a lethal injection — despite objections from her dad.
She’s now starving herself to death, and wants judges to greenlight her euthanasia request so she doesn’t perish in an ‘incredibly unpleasant’ manner.
The average asking rental price in Canada surpassed $2,200 to reach a record high in May, according to a new report.
Published Thursday by Rentals.ca and Urbanation(opens in a new tab), the report found that the average monthly asking price for all residential rentals increased by 9.3 per cent year-over-year to hit $2,202 in May.
He has Command Voice.
No pleading. No both sides. No apologies. https://t.co/xYAnn1wRts
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 7, 2024
Milton Friedman’s first rule for government programs to alleviate poverty was: “If the objective is to alleviate poverty, we should have a program directed at helping the poor … There is every reason to help the poor man who happens to be a farmer, not because he is a farmer, but because he is poor.”
Treason in Canada?
That allegation leapt off the pages of a recent report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP). The worst example cited, with names and details redacted in the published report, concerned a former MP who engaged in communications with a senior official of a foreign intelligence service and tried to arrange a meeting overseas with this official. According to CSIS, confidential information was passed.
There is no other word for it. This is treason.
