What are facts? What is the truth? Questions that schoolchildren used to be able to answer now trip up journalists and prime ministers. We’ve tumbled from a world that generally agreed upon what is true and what is not, down a rabbit hole where the pursuit of power, money and clout twist and stretch reality until it’s sometimes barely recognizable.
For once, a Liberal who isn’t spinning fairy tales about the coming disruption his party’s “green” policies will cause ordinary Canadians.
Last Monday, during debate on this year’s federal budget, Whitby, Ont., Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull admitted, “Achieving net-zero is not going to be easy, that’s for sure … We are going to have to switch our lifestyles and that is going to be painful at times.”
OTTAWA — Nowhere in the Liberal government’s latest attempt to craft clear, practical gun control legislation — by introducing a new handgun “freeze”— does it say “thou shalt not buy, sell, import, trade or transfer handguns.”
Instead, the mechanism to slap a freeze on the acquisition of handguns is found in the legalese of a 55-page bill — and accompanying regulations — that are typical of the morass that is firearms law in Canada.
It’s a classic example of the Liberals’ beleaguered efforts at gun control, which can often seem like more talk than action to its supporters and critics alike.
So far, the various justifications the Trudeau government has given for invoking the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy protests have fallen apart.
Consider the record to date.
Neither the RCMP nor Ottawa police asked the federal government to invoke the act, contrary to claims by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
Record-high gas prices in Canada are driving concerns for taxi and ride-hailing app workers across the country, with many struggling to make ends meet.
The Canadian national average for gas prices has surpassed $2 per litre for the first time ever this year, according to GasBuddy and the CAA. That means drivers are spending more to fill up their tanks and working longer hours on the road.
There’s no doubt about it: Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino misled Parliament.
Oh, maybe the words Mendicino spoke in front of Parliamentary committees don’t meet the precise, legal definition of misleading the House and Senate. Maybe they don’t rise to the level required to expel him.
But at best “misleading” is the polite word for the minister’s justification of the Liberals’ use of the Emergencies Act back in February.
TORONTO – As many motorists fill their tanks in increments in an effort to save on gas, some are being left stranded or forced to abandon their vehicles as soaring gas prices leave their wallets and tanks empty.
Paula Guitar, who was on her way to Newmarket, Ont. to care for her ill mother, told CTV News that she ran out of gas in the middle of her drive. Guitar ended up using her actual guitar to busk for enough funds to get to her destination.
“A lot of people are driving on $20 worth of gas,” Brian Patterson, the president of the Ontario Safety League, told CTV News. “When they run out of gas … you can imagine today on the 400 somebody runs out of gas in the middle lane.”
When the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act to quash the peaceful Freedom Convoy, they made a number of wild claims to rationalize its use of the never-before-used act. Since then, Trudeau’s narrative about why the government needed these unprecedented powers has crumbled – the convoy was not funded by foreign donors or terrorists, the protesters had nothing to do with the arson attempt in Ottawa and to this date – not a single police force has confirmed the government’s claim that the police requested the government to invoke the act.
I have today a grim and possibly, in the current moment, arcane subject: the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in the parliamentary system. It is possible, I suppose, to have chosen another topic even more leaden and esoteric, one guaranteed to drive readers away and usher them to the much superior enlightenments of Lord Black. Such as, for example, the CBC’s concept of comedy.
In every government, there are cabinet ministers who cause us to roll our eyes in disbelief pretty much every time they open their mouths. In Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, for many Canadians, that’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
No matter where you live, if you own a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, you are currently getting walloped with the highest gasoline and diesel prices ever seen in the history of Canadian motoring. Mere months ago, the prospect of $2-per-litre gasoline was unspeakable. Now, major Canadian cities are spending weeks on end with prices north of $2.25.
Link fixed.
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has twice sought a change of venue for a trial into allegations by a former foundation scholar who says she was sexually harassed by her assigned mentor, pressured to keep it quiet and left unsupported and unbelieved.
Members of a gun club in Toronto fear the impacts of a new federal gun bill.
“We’re obviously nervous,” said Graham Brown, president of the Toronto Revolver Club, which has more than 200 members.
“The biggest effect will be that it stops the transfer of handguns between legitimate sporting participants. And that’s a big worry for us.”
… In April, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told the same committee that after weeks of blockades in downtown Ottawa and at several border crossings, the government was in regular consultation with law enforcement including the RCMP.
“The advice we received was to invoke the Emergencies Act,” Mendicino said at the time.
But Stewart said Mendicino didn’t mean police directly asked for the law to be used.
“I believe that the intention that he was trying to express was that law enforcement asked for the tools that were contained in the Emergencies Act,” Stewart said.
OTTAWA –A week after the federal government proposed to freeze handgun sales and bring in tougher measures to curb illegal gun violence, gun vendors say handguns are flying off the shelves.
“It’s insane,” said an employee at a York Region firearms store.
Sales are “going crazy,” said Sylvia Shi, manager of Solely Outdoors in Markham.
“It’s very busy. We sold over a couple of hundred handguns in three days,” she said, adding business has “more than tripled” the usual pace, before politely saying she had no more time to speak.
