The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) conference ended recently in Davos, Switzerland, and our sole Canadian political representative, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, was an enthusiastic participant.
I predict Freeland’s seat goes NDP next election, Toronto is crazier now than ever.
Canada knows China tried to influence the last two federal elections, according to a top secret briefing report obtained by Global News that said the government “must do more” to fight foreign interference.
“We know that the PRC sought to clandestinely and deceptively influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections,” according to the briefing released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
A former director of Canada’s spy agency says the tendency of government entities to protect and over-classify information plays well with officials who seek to avoid public controversy.
“Over time, the protective culture becomes dominant and this actually sits well with ministers and central agencies and senior officials, especially when … the practical effect is reducing the likelihood of controversy,” Richard Fadden told the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference on Jan. 31.
An organization representing Uyghur Canadians is withdrawing from the public inquiry into foreign interference, a development that threatens to undermine Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue’s ability to hear testimony from all vulnerable diaspora communities facing persecution from China.
The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project wrote to Justice Hogue Wednesday to serve notice it is formally withdrawing because she granted party standing to former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Michael Chan, now deputy mayor of Markham, Ont., and independent MP Han Dong. This type of standing means they can cross-examine witnesses and gain access to all evidence collected, including that presented to the inquiry outside of hearings.
As the United States and Texas state governments clash over the Mexican border, a very different kind of immigration crisis is taking place elsewhere in North America. Unlike in the divided US, Canada is supposed to be one of the world’s most solidly pro-immigration societies. More than just another self-satisfied Justin Trudeau facade, this attitude has been attested to by historically high levels of public support.
However, an unfolding shift in public sentiment may now change that. Amid a housing crunch and soaring costs of living, Canadians are turning against the prospect of welcoming more immigrants. And the Trudeau government has slowly started to bend under this pressure.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is convinced he is really getting under the skin of Justin Trudeau and his Liberals. He may well be correct.
“Yes, I’ve had it up to here with Mr. Poilievre,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, one of the steadiest voices in the Trudeau cabinet, said in an interview this week.
Health Minister Mark Holland launched into an impassioned, lengthy diatribe at the microphone on Wednesday, lamenting how Conservatives were profiting from fear and anxiety in the country. It was prompted by questions on how the Liberals are being massively out-fundraised by the Conservatives, according to the latest reports.
Costly woke obligations adding to price tags of already over-engineered projects
Not so long ago, a $10-million government infrastructure project was regarded as a significant expenditure. But now $10 million doesn’t come close to funding projects as simple as a firehall or new police station. Here in the Victoria region, a new firehall in the District of Saanich originally budgeted at $27 million has jumped to $45 million. In the Langford District the estimated cost of a new RCMP building is an incomprehensible $82 million. Just north of Victoria, the cost of what was to be a simple flyover eliminating a dangerous left turn across the busy Patricia Bay Highway has spiked from its original estimate of $44 million to $77 million.
Several challengers to the Emergencies Act say they’re preparing to sue government officials and financial institutions after the Federal Court’s recent declaration that the invocation of the act was not justified.
Military veteran Eddie Cornell, police veteran Vincent Gircys, and Jeremiah Jost said in a Jan. 29 statement that they will sue “those in government, the financial institutions who froze people’s bank accounts, and the police officers who beat up and injured innocent.”
Canada’s economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2023 by 0.2%. That’s the second quarter of shrinkage in a row. In the third quarter, it fell 0.3%.
Technically that means Canada is in recession, since the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of Gross Domestic Product shrinkage. Yet no one in the government or over at the toady Bank of Canada will use the “R” word.
It’s remarkable how much our international reputation has faded over the past 10 years, both diplomatically and economically
It is remarkable how much attitudes about Canada have shifted, both here and abroad, over the past 10 years. A decade ago, riding the wave of a booming economy, Canada was widely admired for a banking system that had got through the 2008-2009 global financial crisis without government bailouts. Today the country’s global stature is much diminished and Canadians are rapidly losing confidence in their economic prospects.
Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party have caused this harm to Canada.
The damage has been so thorough, so devastating that to deny it was deliberately orchestrated places one in the ranks of conspiracy theorists.
h/t Mauser
OTTAWA — The federal government’s discussions around rebranding the rebate program for its carbon pricing system are aimed at ensuring Canadians are aware of what their rebates are for, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Tuesday.
The first public acknowledgment of a potential rebrand of the government’s flagship climate policy comes as the Conservatives immediately dismissed the idea, and experts and political insiders raised questions on whether a rebrand would boost perceptions of the carbon price.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 ignored multiple warnings and committed Canada to membership in Xi Jinping’s pet project—an infrastructure bank that finances Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and furthers China’s bid to become an imperial power.
The bank, known as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), pretends to be benign—just another multilateral development bank, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank—but its corporate structure belies such “business-as-usual” claims.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer goes the old saying. But is it true? It certainly seems to be the case in Canada.
A new report published by Statistics Canada last week showed that the wealth gap in our country continues to widen. According to the report, the richest 20 per cent of Canadians accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the country’s total wealth in the third quarter of 2023, while the bottom 40 per cent of Canadians represented a meagre three per cent of Canada’s wealth in that time. The wealth gap between these two groups rose by 0.2 per cent from 2022 to 2023.
In political communications, “too much” is sometimes worse than “not enough”.
It’s understandable that the Liberals, frustrated at the success of Pierre Polievre’s freewheeling demagoguery, would be tempted to go into overdrive on the message front.
On Monday, the day of Parliament’s return, we saw a case of overdrive becoming overkill.
Canada’s interim ethics commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein has confirmed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau consulted his office in advance of his latest Jamaican vacation, and he was within the rules to accept the gifted accommodations from a friend.
“He consulted us, and we advised him,” von Finckenstein told MPs while testifying before the House of Commons ethics committee about the rules around gifts and trips on Tuesday.
