Meetings that Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chairman Ian Scott had with lobbyists from big telecom companies – including a one-on-one at an Ottawa pub with the now-CEO of Bell – are further reasons to overturn a recent CRTC decision and fire Scott, a small internet provider told the Liberal government.
We are a Banana Republic
A prime minister does not take the Speaker of the House of Commons to Court!
Those words ought to be yelled from any and all rooftops.
It’s been a tough few weeks for Iain Stewart.
As the federal government’s point man in a heated political fight, he faces parliamentary sanction for refusing to tell MPs exactly why two scientists with links to China were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory.
This is the stuff Eisenhower warned about.
Tensions flare as top federal health official scolded in the House for failing to turn over documents
OTTAWA — The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was publicly admonished in the House of Commons on Monday for failing to turn over unredacted documents demanded by MPs related to the firing of two scientists at Canada’s highest security lab.
In an extraordinarily rare procedural move, PHAC president Iain Stewart was escorted to the bar in the House of Commons chamber where he was reprimanded by House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, which sparked off a series of tense exchanges between the government and opposition.
Canada’s China Class Quislings at work.
The head of the Public Health Agency of Canada is showing no sign he’s willing to release unredacted documents about the firing of two scientists at the country’s highest security laboratory — despite the prospect of being publicly shamed in the House of Commons for his refusal to produce the information.
PHAC president Iain Stewart told the Commons health committee Friday that he is bound by law to protect national security and privacy rights.
And he said nothing in a House order demanding that he produce the documents relieves him of that obligation.
Protecting the privacy rights of suspected Communist Chinese spies? I suspect he’s protecting the misdeeds of our China class.
Imagine if it turns out Canada made a significant contribution to the development of the China plague.
OTTAWA — The Conservatives on Thursday threatened to boycott a key intelligence oversight body, marking a sharp escalation in political pressure over the government’s withholding of documents that might explain why two scientists were fired from a high-security infectious disease lab earlier this year.
Documents related to the firing of two scientists from the high-security laboratory in Winnipeg, and the transfer of viruses to a research facility in Wuhan are too sensitive to hand over to the special committee on Canada-China relations, Health Minister Patty Hajdu said Monday.
“In this particular case, the information requested has both privacy and national security implications,” Hajdu said. “Compliance with the order without proper safeguards in place would put sensitive information at the risk of public release.”
Gotta protect the China class
If Netflix is looking for its next hit show, it should consider a new chapter of its wildly popular crime thriller “Narcos” — this time set in the Great White North. While Canada once evoked images of serene mountainsides and dim-witted cartoon Mounties, we’ve become something much more exciting — and sinister.
…Atwin said she stands by her pro-Palestinian position, and was hurt by the accusation made that she was anti-Semitic. She said she’s been told there is a difference of opinion among Liberals and believes there will be an opportunity within her new caucus to have a more “healthy discussion and debate” than was possible with her former team.
“I know I’m going to a place where I’m not alone in how I feel about this issue, and that I’ll have that collaboration to work through it and come to an understanding, and that’s what I’m very much looking forward to,” she said, without naming names.
The Conservatives have sought to attack the Liberals over the move, framing it as welcoming in “another anti-Israeli MP,” suggesting she will be “in good company.”
The tectonic plates of Canadian politics rumbled and roared on Thursday. In the greatest one-day erosion of a parliamentary caucus, the Green Party of Canada lost 33.33 per cent of its parliamentary wing. It was epochal. To put it in ecological terms, if the Antarctic ice sheet melted with the same speed and volume as the Green party shed its MPs, the penguins would have to start building high-rises.
OTTAWA — A parliamentary committee issued a scathing report Thursday on the Trudeau government’s now-cancelled deal with WE Charity that includes calls for stronger measures to protect against inappropriate lobbying and conflicts of interest.
The report from the House of Commons ethics committees followed months of contentious hearings and the release of thousands of pages of documents since last spring, when the government first inked the agreement with WE.
The WE Charity is in hot water again, this time with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which has levied penalties against it for improperly issuing donation receipts of $1.8 million. The charity has filed an appeal with the tax court and a trial date must now be scheduled.
Not since 2000 – 21 years ago – when the Chretien Liberals were forcing through amendments to the Canada Elections Act, has a government used “time allocation” to end debate on a bill at the committee stage.
But Monday, with the backing of the Bloc Quebecois, the Trudeau Liberals told the House of Commons Heritage Committee to stop picking apart Bill C-10, the government’s Internet censorship legislation, and send it back to the Commons to be passed before summer – and a likely election.
Canada is now a shitty little country thanks to our political class.
If there’s one thing that’s booming in Canada, it’s government revenues. According to the latest IMF statistics, our federal, provincial, and local governments will raise close to $1 trillion in taxes, user fees and other revenues this year. This tidy sum accounts for 41.8 per cent of Canada’s economic output. Just six years ago, in 2015, governments collected a fifth less – about $800 billion – or 40 per cent of GDP.
The whereabouts of two scientists at the centre of a parliamentary showdown over alleged national-security breaches at a high-security laboratory remain unknown, as Ottawa’s explanation for their firing has shifted.
Xiangguo Qiu, a former head of a key program at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, and her husband, Keding Cheng, have not publicly commented on why they were fired. Nor have they responded to questions from The Globe and Mail about whether their dismissal was related to the transfer of highly infectious viruses to China’s Wuhan Virology Institute.
The Globe has found that the scientists are no longer living in Winnipeg, and it is unclear if they are still in Canada. The RCMP would not say if they know where the couple are located.
(Go incognito)
