OTTAWA — British etymologist Susie Dent offered the archaic best wishes of “respair” (fresh hope) and “respiscence” (a return to a better frame of mind) on social media as we entered the new year.
But for Canadian political watchers, the mood was likely closer to another of Dent’s obsolete nouns — “humdudgeon,” an imaginary illness caused by a sense of it all being over, pending a return to a gloomy reality.
Only 15 months after experiencing one of the most inconsequential elections in history, Canadians are apparently willing to try again.
Nearly half (49 per cent) of Canadians want a federal election in 2023, according to a poll conducted just before Christmas by Ipsos. What’s more, 54 per cent of respondents would want that election to not feature Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader.
The Liberal government is aiming to move forward early this year with its “just transition” legislation intended to help workers in Canada’s oil and gas sector to move into green energy jobs, according to Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.
“I said it many times publicly that I do not believe that the challenge we are going to face is that there are workers who are displaced that will not find other good-paying jobs,” Wilkinson told CBC News. “I am actually quite worried that there are so many opportunities … we will not have enough workers to fill the jobs.”
Canada sets immigration record in 2022 with 430,000 new permanent residents
The federal government settled 431,645 new permanent residents in 2022, blowing past the previous all-time record set in 2021.
It’s one signal that the federal government appears on track to carry out its immigration plan. Next year, the government hopes to bring in another 485,000 new permanent residents.
“Newcomers play an essential role in filling labour shortages, bringing new perspectives and talents to our communities, and enriching our society as a whole,” said Sean Fraser, the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, in a news release Tuesday.
BULLSHIT. Unless of course you happen to like virulent anti-Semitism, honor killings and Sikh-Hindu sectarian violence spilling out on our streets or the poison of identity politics.
The Bank of Canada loves it too, they told the Corporate class to keep wages down as it was their intent to fight inflation on the backs of working people.
Immigration policy in Canada is designed to meet the needs of the corporate class, it should be designed to benefit citizens FULL STOP.
Now tell me again that Canada is not a Banana Republic.
Jamie Sarkonak: Trudeau Liberals are filtering out dissent to their ‘anti-hate’ agenda
Internal emails show a question was added to a survey to weed out those critical of the government’s plans after too much negative feedback
Back in April, Canadian Heritage ran online consultations for a future “National Action Plan on Combatting Hate” that could introduce anti-hate laws and curb freedom of expression. While the department publicly encouraged “every person in Canada” to participate in a survey about what this plan should include, email records show that people were screened out if they believed that an anti-hate plan wasn’t needed at all.
This is a government deserving of your hatred.
An imam prayed, “O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them”. A new report funded by the Canadian government claims that his critics are Islamophobes. The targets of the report include the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project, funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, was set up to “create profiles of key public, media and political figures as well as organizations who produce and distribute Islamophobic ideologies and propaganda”.
With sky-high inflation, climbing interest rates and carbon tax hikes, you could be forgiven for drinking. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rubbing margarita salt in the wound by using high inflation to binge on higher alcohol taxes.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is warning of a “slippery slope” regarding Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) laws, saying it should not be provided to people who have mental illness as their sole condition — his comments coming after people reached out to the Mississauga Food Bank seeking MAID.
“Conservatives believe that we should provide mental health care to people to improve their quality of life, help heal the psychological wounds that are afflicting them rather than giving up,” Poilievre said during a press conference Friday.
Soon after repressive regimes seized power in countries like China and Iran, language began to appear across state communications that reflects those regimes’ ideology and propaganda. Some observers say they are seeing similar trends today in Canada, with ideological terms increasingly becoming standardized throughout government communications.
In China and other communist countries, terms reflecting Marxism’s class struggle are entrenched in all aspects of society, with keywords like “people’s” and “revolutionary” added to wording used by many government bodies and entities. The same is seen in leftist theocracies like that of Iran, which, besides religious terms, espouse the notion of “protecting the disadvantaged” and “preserving the revolution.”
Ray Noyes has spent most of his life without a home internet connection.
He lives in Vanier, a densely populated neighbourhood close to Ottawa’s downtown core. Before the pandemic, he would bring his old laptop to the local library or go to his mother’s house and use her computer to check his email.
At the time, Noyes was eligible for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), which provided him with $1,169 a month for basic needs and shelter. He said on this budget purchasing home internet was out of the question.
I don’t begrudge anyone making a profit but when it comes to cell phones and the internet Canadians are gouged thanks to our crony capitalist system.
A survey says nearly 90 percent of Canadians support creating a registry of foreign agents, a result that came after Ottawa announced plans to consult the public on establishing such a registry amid growing concerns of foreign interference from China, Russia, and other authoritarian states.
The survey, conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of The Globe and Mail, found that 88 percent of Canadians support or somewhat support a foreign-influence registry, which would require an individual or an entity working for a foreign authority to register with the government. With the registry, the feds aim to make such operations more transparent, where failure to comply would likely result in fines or even prison time.
A majority of Canadians want Justin Trudeau to step down as leader, but few of us think he will. And while half of us want a federal election this coming year, fewer than 50% of us think it will happen.
It’s almost exactly a month ago that Germany made a 15-year deal for the supply of natural gas with the kingdom of Qatar.
Qatar was not Germany’s first choice. Readers will recall that Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a special trip to Canada hoping as a Reuters’ news report put it that “a democratic G7 ally would one day ship his country liquefied natural gas to replace Russian gas imports.”
It was announced with all the fanfare of a Canadian beaver cull. On the Wednesday before Christmas, in a nondescript office building north of Toronto, the parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, Julie Dabrusin, released new government regulations on zero-emission vehicles that will require manufacturers to ensure one-fifth of their cars, SUVs and trucks run on electricity by 2026, or pay a $20,000 per car penalty.
It’s no secret the price of cars has risen dramatically in the past two years, which might leave buyers wondering this holiday season if auto prices are about to come down, or if they’re only headed higher.
Auto prices came into focus anew on Wednesday when Environment Canada released its long awaited zero-emission vehicle mandates, which dictate that 20 per cent of all new cars sold in Canada by 2026 be clean vehicles, rising to 60 per cent by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2035. Zero-emission means battery-powered electric vehicles, unless other technology suddenly emerges.
No point buying an EV if you can’t charge it. But then that’s likely the plan.
