OTTAWA — Immigration Canada has granted the husband and two children of detained Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou COVID-19 travel exemptions to visit her in Vancouver.
Meng’s lawyers stated in court Tuesday that her husband Liu Xiaozong and two children applied for the exemption to travel from China at the end of 2020. Liu arrived in October and was followed by the children in December. They remain in Canada.
Donors to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign are among a group of New York lawyers who donated to the reelection of Liberal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller.
Google and Facebook received a growing share of the federal government’s advertising budget after the Trudeau Liberals took power, as Ottawa quadrupled how much it spent each year on ads from the American web giants between 2015 and 2019.
Winnipeg MP Jim Carr is returning as a full cabinet member after stepping aside for cancer treatments.
The move was announced in a cabinet shuffle this morning that saw four members in total take on new roles.
Carr stepped down as the minister of international trade diversification following a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, after experiencing flu-like symptoms during the 2019 federal election campaign, though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed him as a special representative for the region.
The Trudeau government is investigating whether the extreme right-wing group the Proud Boys should be declared a terrorist organization. That is a legal decision. But there’s politics in it as well. The Liberals are trying to discomfit Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives by linking the party to extremists.
On the Proud Boys, “officials will be analyzing useful intelligence and evidence as that comes forward,” Mary-Liz Power, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, said in a statement on Sunday.
“When this work is completed, it will form the basis of the decision whether or not the Proud Boys or any other ideologically motivated violent extremist organization reaches the legal threshold for listing.”
Because I was not a balloon, I said nothing:
The Department of Environment in an educational program for schoolchildren recommends kids avoid party balloons as pollutants. Cabinet proposes to list plastic as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: “You are never too young or too old to start taking climate action.”
I’ll just leave this right here:
Quality and safety issues are drawing more attention as incomes rise and upwardly mobile Chinese grow more health conscious. While virtually all toys on the market, whether foreign or domestic brands, are made in China, factories making foreign brands are assumed to abide by more rigorous standards to screen out lead paint and other harmful materials.
Canadians cry – “More punishment, please!”:
Taxpayers have paid pandemic relief to five banks operating in Canada including branches of the state-run Bank of China Ltd. The Prime Minister’s Office did not comment: “It’s not good news for anyone if local businesses have to close shop.”
Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson for the first time acknowledges climate change programs will see Canadians pay higher net costs for fuel. Wilkinson also called the carbon tax a “carbon tax,” a phrase never used by his department: “Politicians have an obligation to the public to tell them the straight goods.”
Like in the press gallery, for example:
While stopping short of demanding that Chinese propaganda outlets like Xinhua and the People’s Daily be required to register as foreign agents, O’Toole expressed his disappointment that they have been accredited by Ottawa’s Parliamentary Press Gallery.
O’Toole also vowed to cancel all remaining joint exercises with China’s People’s Liberation Army.
(Sidebar: yeah, whatever, O’Toole.)
Make no mistake who owns Canada and who sold it out.
Are we really going to accept the fact that politicians get to decide where we can go, who we can gather with, when we can go outside, and then give ‘exemptions’ to whoever they choose?
“What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters, incited by the current president and other politicians,” he said during an address outside his residence at Rideau Cottage.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said for the first time on Friday there could well be an election this year, indicating his government is preparing for a vote he insists he does not want.
A former Liberal Party president and a former longtime Liberal MP say the party has veered too far to the left and alienated many veteran Liberals.
Six-term Liberal MP Dan McTeague sat in the House of Commons representing southern Ontario ridings from 1993 to 2011, and was active in the party going back to the late 1970s.
But McTeague says that his former party is now Liberal in name only.
An Environment Canada report says while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax raised $2.6 billion in 2019, only $2.2 billion was rebated to households, small and medium-sized businesses, municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals.
Canadian households subject to the tax received $1.97 billion in rebates, in 2019, the first year of the carbon tax in provinces where it applied at the time — Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Freeland: “Mister Chair, as I said earlier, I am a very strong believer in the importance that the independence of the Bank of Canada plays in our economy … and in our financial system … and I would urge members to ask questions … pertaining to the Bank of Canada, of the Bank of Canada.”
Poilievre: “Well, the minister says that the bank is accountable to the people. We are the people’s representatives. Surely, we should know. So, where did the $180 million go?”
Freeland: “Mister Chair, I want to be very clear that it is undermining of our economy … to be … raising questions in the minds of Canadians about the independence of the Bank of Canada. That is not responsible behaviour.”
h/t all of you who sent this in.
