Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups in Canada don’t agree about much, but the coalition government now being formed by Benjamin Netanyahu has both sides worried about the future.
The arrival of Israel’s most right-wing government ever will also challenge the Trudeau government — which has pursued the same pro-Israel course as Stephen Harper, albeit with less fanfare.
“It is an honour and a privilege.” How often have you heard that worn carpet of a formulation in public speeches, a dead phrase signaling a dull talk. I wish to revive it, to bring it back to actual meaning.
It is an honour and a privilege to be allowed to enter the pages of Blacklock’s and throw a few words out about Blacklock’s armed police eviction from the ever-so-choice, universally admired college of journalistic brilliance and courage, thrower of great annual dinners, the Ottawa Press Gallery.
The Press Gallery version of events…
Statement from the Parliamentary Press Gallery re: Blacklock's employee Tom Korski:
#media pic.twitter.com/UF8YKto1Bk— David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) December 6, 2022
RCMP foreign interference investigators visit B.C. friendship society
RCMP national security officers investigating China’s foreign interference activities in Canada were at the headquarters of a Richmond, B.C. non-profit group on Saturday.
The RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team conducted interviews at the Wenzhou Friendship Society and in the surrounding neighbourhood.
While it has been mostly older people with comorbidities who have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, it has been younger Canadians who have experienced the highest percentage of excess mortality, according to data from Statistics Canada.
Excess mortality takes place when more people die during a given period than normally expected based on trends.
Data provided by Statistics Canada analyzed by The Epoch Times shows that since March 2020, there were on average 7 percent more deaths than expected for all ages.
The U.S. ambassador to Canada is hailing what he calls a pivot on China policy: Ottawa has woken up, he says, to a pressing geopolitical challenge.
David Cohen acknowledges there were worries in Washington about whether Canada was too chummy with China, noting it even came up last year in his Senate confirmation hearing.
But the U.S. envoy says those concerns are being put to rest by Ottawa’s latest moves: pushing Chinese state-owned companies out of Canadian mines, cancelling a contract for RCMP communications equipment and studying the creation of a foreign agents list.
Only a fool would trust Junior.
Every era has its characteristic corporate buzzword. The nineties had “synergy.” The early 2000s added a lowercase “e” prefix to about everything. And now, we’re in the era of “ESG,” also known as environmental, social and governance criteria.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser Jody Thomas says her office has seen no evidence supporting allegations that the Chinese regime funded 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election, but also said federal intelligence agencies are investigating the allegations.
“The news stories that you have read about interference are just that: news stories,” Thomas told the House of Commons national defence committee on Dec. 8, adding “We’ve not seen money going to 11 candidates, period.”
When they deny it you know it’s true.
For almost 50 years Canada has done a thoroughly crappy job – to use the technical term in economics – of fostering a labour market that would provide for steady, year-over-year increases in real pay for working Canadians. I calculate that in 1976 it would have taken a worker earning the median employment income six years to save enough for a down payment on a typical single-family home. In 2020 it would have taken 17 years. If that worker lived in Greater Toronto or Vancouver, it would have taken 28 and 30 years, respectively.
Canada’s immigration policy in a nutshell: Corporate Canada wants fear ridden malleable wage slaves and our politicians dutifully provide them.
How brazen is corporate Canada? Recall that Tim Horton’s incorporated the import of foreign labour under the TFW into their business model.
“A growth model that relies on opening vast numbers of new stores every year also relies on nearly unfettered access to cheap labour to keep profit margins from getting crushed. Tim Hortons has regularly said as much in its annual reports, in the section where it lists all the potential risks to its business: Any labour shortage due to “the cessation or limitation of access to federal or provincial labour programs, including the temporary foreign worker program,” could lead to declining revenues, profits and brand reputation.”
Auditor General Karen Hogan told MPs on a parliamentary committee Thursday that foreign vessels without transponders can travel undetected through Canada’s Arctic because of “gaps” in surveillance technology and resources.
“Does Canada possess the capability to track a vessel that is without a transponder throughout the entire Arctic?” Conservative MP Pat Kelly asked Hogan during a House of Commons national defence committee meeting on Dec. 8.
“That was an identified gap that the government themselves had identified several years ago,” Hogan replied. “In repeated assessments on gaps, they re-identify it, but there’s just no action or solution taken to resolve that gap.”
The RCMP has suspended a procurement contract with a company that has links to China.
The office of Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino confirmed to CBC News that the RCMP has suspended a contract with Sinclair Technologies for radio frequency (RF) equipment. Sinclair’s parent company, Norsat International, has been owned by Chinese telecommunications firm Hytera since 2017.
The Chinese government owns around 10 per cent of Hytera through an investment fund.
As a physician who has watched the pandemic unfold on chest X-rays and CT scans, I’ve seen the many waves of COVID wreak havoc on my patients. I have tried my best to speak over the cacophony of misinformation on social media to paint a realistic picture of what’s been happening in our hospitals, in the hopes of encouraging vaccination and accurate risk assessment. But sadly, I’ve come to the realization that not even the unyielding reality of ebbing COVID cases will quiet the voices of committed alarmists on social media.
A Canadian film-maker who was allegedly sexually assaulted as a teenager has accused the country’s largest book publisher of knowingly releasing a memoir by one of her alleged assailants that depicts the incident as consensual.
In a 6 December post on Medium, Zoe Greenberg claimed she was subjected to a sexual assault in her youth.
“I was drunk. I was crying. I was barely conscious, on my back by the side of a pool. I didn’t want it. They both sexually assaulted me. He did, then she did,” wrote Greenberg, describing an alleged assault by two of her close friends, one of whom is identified as the writer Leah McLaren.
Ottawa not legally required to bring Canadians home from Syria, federal lawyer tells court
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not obligate Ottawa to repatriate Canadians held in Syrian camps, a government lawyer told a Federal Court hearing Tuesday.
Family members of 23 detained Canadians — six women, four men and 13 children — are asking the court to order the government to arrange for their return, saying that refusing to do so violates the charter.
The Canadian citizens are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Let them rot.
As at least 10,000 delegates and observers from more than 190 countries gather in Montreal for the Convention of the Parties’ biodiversity summit this week, it’s difficult not to be dreary about the summit’s prospects for reversing the alarming trends that continue to push the earth’s animal and plant species over extinction’s cliff edge.
Government will review RCMP contract awarded to China-linked company
The federal government is reviewing an RCMP equipment contract awarded to a company with ties to China’s government that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called “disconcerting.”
Trudeau said the government will also re-examine its approach to procurement.
A Radio-Canada investigation found that Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) awarded Sinclair Technologies a contract worth $549,637 last year to build and maintain a radio frequency (RF) filtering system for the Mounties.
