At Canada’s biggest rodeo, the starting gun is fired in the fight over Alberta separation

At Canada’s biggest rodeo, the starting gun is fired in the fight over Alberta separation

Over a million people descend on the Calgary Stampede every year to marvel at the iconic chuckwagon race, a sport invented in the Albertan city where carriage drivers race teams of horses around the track to the sound of pounding hooves, or be amazed by the speed of bareback riders racing in First Nations horse relays.

The ‘Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth’ is the marquee event on Alberta’s summer calendar, a distinctly western Canadian spectacle where political leaders also have to test their mettle, judged on the quality of their pancake flips at community Stampede breakfasts and their ability to pull off a cowboy hat.

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Jesse Kline: Mark Carney’s $70-billion U.A.E. deal to nowhere

Jesse Kline: Mark Carney’s $70-billion U.A.E. deal to nowhere

Given that the Liberals long ago ditched Stephen Harper’s vision of transforming Canada into an “energy superpower,” Prime Minister Mark Carney has resorted to going cap-in-hand to actual energy superpowers to get some of their sweet, sweet oil money. The only problem: despite his promise to fast-track nation-building projects, Canada still doesn’t have anything to invest in.

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The pain at the grocery store is real. Can Ottawa’s $3-billion food strategy actually help Canadians deal with food inflation

The pain at the grocery store is real. Can Ottawa’s $3-billion food strategy actually help Canadians deal with food inflation

Lea Reambeault can walk to three discount supermarkets in minutes from her Toronto apartment above a Food Basics store. Still, grocery shopping is a chore she often leaves to her partner out of anxiety.

The 36-year-old mother of three has been out of work since the birth of her youngest daughter a year ago. Her family of five — squeezed into a two-bedroom unit — relies on her partner’s roughly $80,000 annual income and spends about $600 a week on groceries and household essentials. Sometimes the couple has to put off rent to keep food on the table.

Average tattoo cost by size. My guess 500 to 1500 bucks. h/t Hermes

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SNOBELEN: Canada’s trucking industry rolling into a dangerous era

SNOBELEN: Canada’s trucking industry rolling into a dangerous era

There is a pattern to building a respectable business.

Small family businesses mark milestones along a growth trajectory that builds over time into a mature, stable and sometimes profitable business.

Our little trucking business was like that. The first new truck. A bigger rented yard and shop. The first big company party. And finally, our first, heavily mortgaged and built-to-spec. truck yard.

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Canada’s next defence fight won’t be over spending. It’ll be over trust

Canada’s next defence fight won’t be over spending. It’ll be over trust

If there’s one catchphrase to sum up the dilemma facing Canada and other allies post-NATO summit, it might very well be: Show me the money.

It may be cliché. It may be somewhat worn out — after all, it’s a pop reference to the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. But it probably best captures a stirring public sentiment.

Britain found out the hard way recently that being able to account for an avalanche of money going to defence and security is a live, visceral political and policy issue that is capable of causing damage and casualties.

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Hubris Sinks Canada

Hubris Sinks Canada

Andrew Moran, the economics editor at Liberty Nation News, writes that Canada seems to be quietly revising the core tenets of its “climate change” religion.  Under a headline that bluntly announces, “Canada Admits Justin Trudeau’s Climate Agenda Was a Scam,” and a lede that asks, “Is it too little, too late for the struggling nation?” Moran analyzes a seventeen-minute YouTube video that Prime Minister Mark Carney published on June 30.

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Carney has had the worst first year of growth for a PM since 1963: poll

Carney has had the worst first year of growth for a PM since 1963: poll

Canadians support Mark Carney’s approach to managing the economy, even though he’s presided over the worst first year of growth for a prime minister since at least 1963.

A Nanos Research Group poll for Bloomberg News shows 60% of Canadians think Carney has done a very good or good job of handling the economy. That compares with 24% who think he’s done a poor or very poor job.

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If Mark Carney can avoid lecturing Saudi Arabia, why not Donald Trump?

If Mark Carney can avoid lecturing Saudi Arabia, why not Donald Trump?

On Thursday, Mark Carney stood in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and said something long overdue when it comes to Canadian foreign policy. The PM called for an end to Canada endlessly lecturing other countries.

Carney was responding to a question about doing business with countries where we have a different view when it comes to issues like human rights.

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HANNAFORD: Ottawa’s six stealth attacks on your freedom of speech

HANNAFORD: Ottawa’s six stealth attacks on your freedom of speech

Over the past three years, the Government of Canada has passed six new laws to restrict and diminish your freedom to say out loud what you think and believe.

This is not opinion. This is fact. Every one of these new laws promises something good. But, hidden in every bill is something you should never see in Canadian democracy. It is classic bait-and-switch.

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Canada is taking an outsized role in the construction of the post-American world

Canada is taking an outsized role in the construction of the post-American world

Annual gatherings of the great democracies in the age of Donald Trump have acquired a certain … rhythm. There is the meeting that takes place before the President arrives, when all is as it usually is between world leaders of the same broad ideological hue: convivial open sessions, chummy photo-ops, urgent side-conferences.

Then there is what happens after he gets there, and the desperate scramble to reconcile the chaos that ensues with the serene normalcy that went before: to insist that the torrent of lunacies foaming out of the President’s mouth from the moment of his arrival, making hash of everything the other conferees had agreed upon – not to mention decades of settled international law – were in fact in perfect harmony with the rest.

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Geoff Russ: Canadian voters are aging out of mainstream conservatism

Geoff Russ: Canadian voters are aging out of mainstream conservatism

The Conservative Party faces the problem of a changing country, not a change in ethnic diversity or gender identity, but a change in age brackets. In fact, the electorate is aging out of their preferred conservatism, and they are not getting any younger.

In this changed country, appeals to tax cuts and smaller government simply do not have the attraction they once did. Dependence on the state has grown. Part of that dependence stems from the outsized expansion of the public service since 2015, but that is not the main culprit. The real culprit is the growing share of the population made up of retirees and pensioners.

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China Investment Corp Tie to Gregor Robertson Council’s Condo Land-Swap Deal Was a “Clerical Error”: Why a Short-Seller Sees Old Vancouver Patterns in Carney’s Condo Bailout

China Investment Corp Tie to Gregor Robertson Council’s Condo Land-Swap Deal Was a “Clerical Error”: Why a Short-Seller Sees Old Vancouver Patterns in Carney’s Condo Bailout

OTTAWA – In 2016, through a citizens’ lawsuit over a City of Vancouver land-swap deal with a private developer, records surfaced pointing to something stranger than fiction.

In Mayor Gregor Robertson’s City Hall, an independent review of the file — commissioned to answer the community’s victory in court — indicated that a Chinese state investment giant had an interest in the file. Reports on the controversial condo development could be provided to China Investment Corp, the sovereign fund managing Beijing’s foreign assets, under a formal clause written into the contract.

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‘I don’t blame them,’ says instructor after Quebec requires new Ontario truckers to take exam

‘I don’t blame them,’ says instructor after Quebec requires new Ontario truckers to take exam

Members of Ontario’s trucking industry say they understand why Quebec will require inexperienced drivers from Ontario to take practical exams, citing concerns over insufficient training.

“I don’t blame them. It’s unfortunate,” said Gus Rahim, president of Ontario Truck Driving School.

Some schools that offer training in Ontario — the first province to introduce mandatory entry-level training for truckers — have been found by Ontario’s auditor general to be cutting corners, and Rahim says that’s been a serious concern for the reputation of all schools and for road safety.

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