Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2012, 04:23:22 PM

Title: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2012, 04:23:22 PM
Some good and interesting posts have been made in the last couple of days on the Political Economics thread and we are blessed to have Canadian Tricky Dog chiming in.  Lets continue that conversation here.

Not only are the Canadians our very good friends and neighbors, our cultures, our legal systems, and our political systems all originated principally in England.  This seems to me to lessen the usual amount of static that comes from cross-cultural comparisons.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2012, 05:19:36 PM
I would kick things off my challenging the oft-stated notion that Canada survived the bubble due to regulations they have that we do not.

While partially true (and I have begun to reconsider my inattention to our repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act sp?) I think this blurs a very important point-- that it was precisely the intervention of our government via the FMs guaranteeing loans, CRAP (Community Reinvestment Act Program which forced banks to lend to the unqualified in the name of racial parity of results) and the deranged interest rate policy of the Fed that created the bubble.

Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: trickydog on January 01, 2012, 06:13:01 PM
So regardless of whether you blame the government or the corporations for the American experience, you are essentially concluding from the Canadian experience that, in general, strong regulation is needed for financial services?

Thus the need is for better government, whether or not that means less government?  Regulation necessarily means bureaucracy.

Or is there a free-market  (i.e. unregulated) solution to keep banks from doing this again?

 
Title: Canadian corporate tax breaks - and stagnant private money
Post by: trickydog on January 01, 2012, 06:30:31 PM
As mentioned in the previous thread (Political Economics), the Harper government in Canada just dropped corporate taxes by 1.5% to 15%.  That will equate roughly to 33 billion annually given back to Canadian corporations.

Harper has recently been complaining about the 3/4 trillion sitting in corporate coffers stagnant - most enterprises sitting back during the rough economic times to hold onto their surpluses.  This break will allow them to hold even more money stagnant. 

The assumption seems to be that corporations are going to spend us out of tough times by growing, investing, and otherwise freeing up those stagnant funds.  But that does not really seem to be happening.  Like spooked consumers, they are sitting on the money to see how this plays out.  Which of course just drags out the recovery.

In the case of consumers, you can sometimes get them to start spending even when they probably should remain cautious or work hard at reducing their debt.  Corporations on the other hand are run by some of the most saavy financial types to be found.  They know better than most when to move and when to sit still (although no guarantee of good sense).  And you can expect corps to do what is best whether they get a tax break or not.

I can see the long term benefit of tax breaks - attracting more foreign business, encouraging investment and innovation, etc.  But in a stale or limping economy where the future is uncertain, I do not see why this is a good move, at least in the short term.  Why would corps start spending significantly under these circumstances?  The only real use of corp reserves seems to be the usual M&A activity that accompanies a slow economy.

So is there any reasonable expectation that lowered corp taxes will help jump start an ailing economy?


Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on January 01, 2012, 06:36:35 PM
No matter if it's the US, Canada or Hong Kong, I think there is a desire and need for some degree of regulation of financial markets. In designing systems that have a important role, it's important to structure the system so it fails gracefully rather than catastrophically. As business failure is a required element of a free market (creative destruction), it makes sense that there should not be such a thing as a business/bank "too big to fail".

At the same time, much like every complex system, there is a law of diminishing returns at work as well. While intelligent and properly enforced regulations are important, there comes a point where too much regulation does more harm than good.

So, it's a matter of finding the sweet spot between the extremes of structure and chaos.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on January 01, 2012, 06:39:28 PM
"So is there any reasonable expectation that lowered corp taxes will help jump start an ailing economy?"

Because businesses/corps ultimately pay no taxes?

Meaning that any taxes imposed on a business ultimately are passed on to the consumer of the goods/services the business provides.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2012, 10:01:15 PM
"So regardless of whether you blame the government or the corporations for the American experience, you are essentially concluding from the Canadian experience that, in general, strong regulation is needed for financial services?"

Not necessarily.  Although I am reconsidering the merits of the Glass Steagall Act, I submit that in the US the principal cause was the guarantee of the Federal govt, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, of bad mortgages.  With this, the discipline of the market was removed and reckless behavior thus enabled.  This humongous error was dramatically multiplied by the intervention of the Fed with its low interest rates-- in post inflation, post tax dollars, interest rates have been essentially negative or zero for quite some time now.  This punishes savers, encourages desperate and reckless investing, and accelerated the housing bubble.   I would add that the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which added full employment to the Fed's responsibility of price stability, another market meddling piece of Keynesian interventionist drivel, is also a major factor in the damage that the Fed causes.

"Thus the need is for better government, whether or not that means less government?  Regulation necessarily means bureaucracy." 

As I see it the issue is the concept by which the regulation is justified.  If the regulation is to enforce transparency in mortgage language, that is in support of free market principles and as such is fine.  If the regulation is to “encourage home ownership”, that is government intervention in the market and, as we see from the economic chaos that has ensued from such policies it is NOT fine.

"Or is there a free-market  (i.e. unregulated) solution to keep banks from doing this again?"

The solution is to let failure fail, not to punish savers to benefit the banks and other friends of the Congress e.g. AIG.


Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: DougMacG on January 02, 2012, 07:31:38 AM
"the issue is the concept by which the regulation is justified.  If the regulation is to enforce transparency in mortgage language, that is in support of free market principles and as such is fine.  If the regulation is to “encourage home ownership”, that is government intervention in the market and, as we see from the economic chaos that has ensued from such policies it is NOT fine."

Yes. The justification for bank regulation was -  don't take bad risks because we insure your deposits.  From there we jumped to encouraging home ownership above requiring creditworthiness based on a different justification for government action: 'Hey, we amassed all this power, let's do some good with it!'


"whether you blame the government or the corporations ... is there a free-market  (i.e. unregulated) solution to keep banks from doing this again?"

Looking at it the other way, 'what can the people can do to keep their government regulators from doing this again'?  


"As mentioned in the previous thread (Political Economics), the Harper government in Canada just dropped corporate taxes by 1.5% to 15%.  That will equate roughly to 33 billion annually given back to Canadian corporations."

TD, do you intend to say there will be no recovery of the lost revenues from new revenues generated?  Corporate income is a fixed number?  I disagree.  Let's see in a year.


"33 billion annually given back to Canadian corporations"

A funny way of looking at it.  Even at a lower rate, the who is giving to whom seems backwards.  Not that corporations give freely, but govt is now taking at a slightly lower rate.  When a retailers lowers their price do they assume the same amount of transactions?  If so why do they do it?  Assuming corporations are in the business of making money, why would they not use that 'gift' to make more money, build, buy, hire, expand which all lead to a host of other taxes to be paid including more corporate income tax.  If they will not use the money for those purposes, why not?



Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: JDN on January 02, 2012, 07:57:39 AM
"the issue is the concept by which the regulation is justified.  If the regulation is to enforce transparency in mortgage language, that is in support of free market principles and as such is fine.  If the regulation is to “encourage home ownership”, that is government intervention in the market and, as we see from the economic chaos that has ensued from such policies it is NOT fine."

I agree, the government has no business being in the business of encouraging home ownership.  Doug, are you therefore saying that the mortgage deduction (government intervention) should be immediately repealed?  It would seem that this very costly benefit has no purpose other than to "encourage home ownership".   

Note, personal home mortgage payments are not deductible in Canada, yet home prices and banks seem to do just fine.
Title: China gets the Keystone pipeline that Obama rejected
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 25, 2012, 06:57:48 PM
China's Canadian Energy Play
Alberta's oil sands will be developed, no matter what U.S. greens say..

President Obama may not want to exploit the energy buried in Canada's Alberta oil sands, but China sure does. Think of Monday's $15.1 billion offer by China's state-owned Cnooc to buy Canadian energy giant Nexen as a post-Keystone XL Pipeline bid to replace the U.S. as Canada's biggest energy investor and market.

Nexen offers Cnooc a sweeping North American energy footprint, with assets from heavy oil and shale gas in Alberta to offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Part of the bet is also on Canadian politics, which could block the investment on nationalist grounds but which so far hasn't been captured by the anticarbon fevers that dominate Washington.

Canada seems to understand that its resources are a gift that can raise national prosperity. And as extraction technology has improved, Canada's proven oil reserves have climbed to at least 180 billion barrels, putting it behind only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Unlike the U.S., Ottawa cedes most energy decisions to the provinces, which have encouraged production. A decade ago Alberta reduced to 1% the royalty that companies must pay until they have earned back their capital costs; then the rate reverts to 25%. The incentive kick-started the oil sands investment boom.

Enlarge Image

CloseAssociated Press
 
A Nexen oil sands facility near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
.Canada is also looking for oil from shale, drilling in the Arctic, and even producing in the Atlantic—offshore of Nova Scotia, within spitting distance of Maine. All of this has produced a gusher of oil, tax revenue and jobs. The oil sands alone are estimated to have accounted for one-third of Canada's economic growth in 2010 and 2011, according to Canada's national statistical agency.

Contrast that to the U.S., where President Obama has spent tens of billions on failed green energy schemes while making fossil-fuel exploration harder. This week the White House issued a veto threat against a House bill that would restore pre-Obama plans to allow greater offshore exploration. Alaska oil production is so low that there are worries about the viability of its pipeline. Shell Oil, which has plowed $4.5 billion into an Arctic investment, has been waiting the entire Obama Presidency for permits. The EPA is also waiting for a second term to impose national regulations on shale fracking.

Mr. Obama's rejection of the $7 billion Keystone XL has no doubt concentrated Chinese and Canadian minds. The pipeline would have moved oil from Canada and North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf Coast, and Mr. Obama's bow to American greens was a direct snub to Canada, which provides nearly 30% of U.S. imports. Prime Minister Stephen Harper promptly said that Canada needs to diversify its energy markets, perhaps by building a pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast to export to Asia.

Energy-hungry China couldn't be happier. Chinese bids for North American companies haven't always been welcomed—see the rejection last year of a Chinese consortium's $38.6 billion hostile bid for Canada's Potash Corp. But Cnooc executives might figure that Canadian regulators will be more welcoming to this nonhostile bid in the wake of the Keystone fiasco. Canada needs capital to exploit the oil sands and the markets to buy what is produced. Cnooc can help with both.

The lesson for America, and especially Democrats, is that Canada's oil sands will be developed, whether their green financiers like it or not. If the U.S. doesn't want the oil, China and the rest of Asia will gladly take it. The world wants to grow—must grow to reduce poverty—and it needs abundant, cheap energy to do it. Why is that so hard for some Americans to understand?
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2012, 08:23:44 AM
O'Grady: How Canada Saved Its Bacon Deep cuts in government spending pulled Canada back from an epic fiscal crisis in the 1990s.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY..

Former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has a stern warning for the U.S. political class: Get real about the gap between federal revenues and spending, or get ready for disaster.

Mr. Martin knows of what he speaks. In 1993, when he was Canada's finance minister, his country faced a daunting fiscal crisis. It wasn't Greece, but by 1994 Canada's federal debt-to-GDP ratio was getting close to 80%, and the cost of servicing the debt had begun to eat up an incredible one-third of government revenue.

The central lesson from that crisis, Mr. Martin told an American Enterprise Institute audience in Washington last week, is that delay only ensures that the inevitable adjustment will be more painful.

Truer words were never spoken. Nor has it ever been more likely that they will fall on deaf ears, at least as long as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke keeps financing the partying in our nation's capital.

When the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien took power in October 1993, Mr. Martin was charged with pulling his nation out of the fiscal death spiral. He did it with deep cuts in federal spending over two years that amounted to 10% of the budget, excluding interest costs.

Nothing was spared. Even federal transfers to the provinces to fund Canada's sacred national health-care system got hit. The federal government also cut and block-granted money for welfare programs to the provinces, giving them almost full control over how the money would be spent.

In the 1997 election, the Liberals increased their majority in parliament. The Chrétien government followed with tax cuts starting in 1998 and one of the largest tax cuts—both corporate and personal—in the history of the country in 2000. The Liberals won again in 2000.

What drove the left-of-center Liberals to shoulder the burden of downsizing government in the 1994 and 1995 budgets—Mr. Martin takes great pains to point out—was not ideology but "arithmetic." That is to say that everyone recognized that the magnitude of the debt, and the cost of servicing it, was unsustainable.

The problem had been building over many years. In 1965, federal spending had been 15% of GDP. By 1993 it was 23%. Markets didn't like it. Between February and March of 1994, the three-month Canadian Treasury bill rate went to 5.82% from 3.85%. The Mexican peso crisis in December of that year didn't help. By February 1995 the interest rate on the Canadian Treasury bill reached 7.8%. In a world of increasing uncertainty and a flight to quality, Canada was paying dearly for its deteriorating risk profile. As the exchange rate sank, Canadians were getting poorer and the government was speeding toward a wall.

Another speaker at the American Enterprise Institute conference (which was co-sponsored by the Ottawa-based MacDonald-Laurier Institute) was Janice McKinnon, the finance minister for the center-left New Democratic Party government of the province of Saskatchewan in 1993. Ms. McKinnon told her own war stories.

In 1991, when her government took over, the "province was on its knees." In 1992, according to Ms. McKinnon, Standard & Poor's reported that Saskatchewan's "tax-supported debt was 180% of its annual revenue." "When our credit rating dropped to triple B rating, we had trouble borrowing money."

Ms. McKinnon described some of what followed: "In one budget we closed 52 hospitals, many schools and thousands of people lost their jobs. But we knew we had no choice, and we couldn't look back."

Ms. McKinnon likened the U.S. today to Saskatchewan in the 1980s. You are "not to the point where you are in a crisis, people aren't saying 'maybe we won't lend you money.' " And that means that the politicians can still put things off. "Before you actually realize 'we've got to do this because there is no choice,' there is a lot of denial," Ms. McKinnon explained. "I think you're at that stage."

She's right. Market discipline doesn't exist in Washington, which has the "privilege" of an accommodating central bank issuing the world's reserve currency. The big spenders don't need to pay attention to pesky numbers. As Stanford University economist John Taylor has noted, the Fed bought 77% of all new federal debt last year. It is doing so at rock-bottom interest rates. By holding the short-term fed-funds rate low while it buys up long-term securities, Mr. Bernanke is helping our political class ignore the real cost of rising federal indebtedness.

Of course these battle-scarred Canadians fully understand that the U.S. will reach a day of reckoning when the Fed has to constrain the money supply and interest rates start going up. "Our only plea," Ms. McKinnon said, "is that if you start tackling it before you hit the crisis stage, it's going to be a heck of lot easier. The longer you wait, the worse it gets."

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
Title: We might learn something , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2012, 08:43:00 PM
"To achieve this the Harper government did something you might more expect to see in the private sector. Clement made history in Canada by tying bonuses of senior bureaucrats to the success of government-wide objectives for reducing expenditures. Get this, about 40% of the bureaucrats’ bonuses were linked to a “Deficit Reduction Action Plan.” Yeah, bureaucrats got bigger bonuses when they proposed ways to make bigger cuts.
Clement explained, “Forty percent of this at-risk pay for senior managers was based on how much they contributed to the target of least $4 billion a year in permanent savings. This is just part of how we’re changing the attitude of government officials from spending enablers to cost containers.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2012/07/24/what-president-obama-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-canada/


OTOH, there is this:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/11/canada-bleeding-private-jobs-vancouver.html

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/10/canada-gdp-unexpectedly-shrinks_31.html
Title: POTH: long standing territorial dispute
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2012, 07:59:50 AM

 .

AT a time when territorial disputes over uninhabited outcrops in the East China Sea have led to smashed cars and skulls in China, a similar, if less dramatic, dispute over two remote rocks in the Gulf of Maine smolders between the United States and Canada.

Machias Seal Island and nearby North Rock are the only pieces of land that the two countries both claim after more than 230 years of vigorous and sometimes violent border-making between them.

Except for the occasional jousting of lobster boats, this boundary dispute floats far below the surface of public or official attention, no doubt reflecting the apparent lack of valuable natural resources and a reluctance to cede territory, no matter how small.

But if we are unlikely to resort to arms anytime soon, the clashes in Asia have shown how seemingly minor border disputes can suddenly stoke regional and nationalistic tensions. Our relaxed attitude toward these remote rocks may well be a mistake.

While the United States and Canada have other maritime boundary disputes along their 5,525-mile border, the world’s longest, this is the only one left that involves actual chunks of land.

Machias Seal Island is a 20-acre, treeless lump that sits nearly equidistant from Maine and New Brunswick. It, and the even smaller North Rock, lie in what local lobstermen call the gray zone, a 277-square-mile area of overlapping American and Canadian maritime claims.

The disagreement dates back to the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. The treaty assigned to the newly independent 13 colonies all islands within 20 leagues — about 70 miles — of the American shore. Since Machias Seal Island sits less than 10 miles from Maine, the American position has been that it is clearly United States soil.

But the treaty also excluded any island that had ever been part of Nova Scotia, and Canadians have pointed to a 17th-century British land grant they say proves the island was indeed part of that province, whose western portion became New Brunswick in the late 18th century.

Perhaps more important to the Canadian case, the British built a lighthouse on Machias Seal Island in 1832, which has been staffed ever since. Even today, two lighthouse keepers are regularly flown to the island by helicopter for 28-day shifts to operate a light — even though, like every other lighthouse in Canada, it is automated.

While abundant legal arguments surround Machias Seal Island, natural resources are far less evident. No oil or natural gas has been discovered in the area, nor has it had any strategic significance since it served as a lookout for German U-boats during World War I.

Tour boats from Maine and New Brunswick carry strictly limited numbers of bird watchers to the island to see nesting Atlantic puffins. And the surrounding waters contain lobsters that, thanks to different regulatory schemes and overlapping claims, have occasionally sparked clashes between Maine and New Brunswick lobstermen, although a bumper lobster crop this summer has slackened demand for gray zone crustaceans.

But the lack of hydrocarbons and the current lobster glut make this an ideal time to color in the gray zone.

The United States and Canada settled all their other maritime differences in the Gulf of Maine in 1984 by submitting their claims to the International Court of Justice for arbitration. They could have included the gray zone in that case, but did not. The Canadians had refused an earlier American arbitration proposal by saying their case was so strong that agreeing to arbitration would bring their title into question.

This attitude calls for re-examination. The fact that so little in the way of resources appears to be at stake, far from justifying the status quo, should be the main reason for resolving the issue. And for those concerned about blowback from “giving away” territory, letting the international court decide the case provides the most political cover.

As China and Japan can attest, border disputes do not go away; they fester. And when other factors push them back to the surface — the discovery of valuable resources, an assertion of national pride, a mishap at sea — the stakes can suddenly rise to a point where easy solutions become impossible.

Before that happens, we should put this last land dispute behind us, and earn our reputation for running the longest peaceful border in the world.


Stephen R. Kelly is the associate director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University and a retired American diplomat who served twice in Canada.
Title: R.I.P. John Sheardown
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2013, 07:55:04 AM
John Sheardown, Canadian Who Sheltered Americans in Tehran, Dies at 88
 
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: January 4, 2013
NYT


When militant radicals seized the United States Embassy in Iran in November 1979, they intended to take all its employees hostage. But five were elsewhere in the embassy compound and escaped capture. After six tense days of furtively moving around Tehran, one of them, Robert Anders, placed a call to a Canadian diplomat with whom he played tennis, and asked for help.

“Hell, yes, of course,” the diplomat, John Sheardown, answered. “Count on us.”

The five employees had by then been joined by a sixth. Four ended up being hidden for nearly three months in the home of Mr. Sheardown, the Canadian Embassy’s No. 2 official, who died on Sunday at 88. The other two found refuge with the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor.

The episode, which came to be known as the “Canadian caper,” was a footnote to the Iranian hostage crisis, in which young Iranian revolutionaries seized the American Embassy and held 52 people hostage for 444 days to try to force the United States to return the deposed shah from New York, where he was being treated for cancer. After the shah died in July 1980 in Egypt and war erupted between Iran and Iraq, negotiations with the United States led to the release of the hostages in January 1981.

The concealment and extrication of the American diplomats by the Canadian government and the Central Intelligence Agency inspired the recent movie “Argo.” Though Mr. Sheardown is not mentioned in it — public recognition always gravitated to Mr. Taylor, who is portrayed in the film as a hero — his role was nevertheless consequential.

“Without his enthusiastic welcome, we might have tried to survive on our own a few more days,” Mark Lijek, a retired Foreign Service officer, wrote in Slate last year. “We would have failed.”

Mr. Sheardown’s avuncular, pipe-puffing manner led his houseguests to call him Big Daddy. He bought groceries at different stores to disguise his household’s suddenly larger appetite. He bribed the garbage collector with money and beer for the same reason. Surveillance, including tanks at the end of the street, was constant. Strangers knocked on the front door, suspicious calls were commonplace, their car was repeatedly searched.

“We were already living in danger,” Mr. Sheardown’s wife, Zena, said in an interview on Wednesday. “And certainly the danger was compounded because we were hiding, literally hiding, fugitives.”

Mr. Sheardown, she said, died in Ottawa, where he lived, after being treated for Alzheimer’s disease and other ailments.

John Vernon Sheardown was born on Oct. 11, 1924, in Sandwich, Ontario, a small town absorbed by Windsor in the 1930s. At 18, he joined the Canadian Air Force and flew a bomber in World War II, once crash-landing near an English village after limping back from an attack on Germany. He broke both legs, but was able to crawl to a pub door at 3 a.m. and rouse the owner. He asked for a glass of Scotch, which the owner gave him. The owner then asked for payment while Mr. Sheardown waited for an ambulance — a story Mr. Sheardown relished.

He joined Canada’s immigration service in the early 1960s and later transferred to the foreign service, where he specialized in immigration matters. He was busy in Tehran with Iranians who wanted to leave the country, as well as with Afghans who had fled their country after the Soviet Union invaded it in December 1979. His houseguests became an official part of his responsibilities after the Canadian Parliament held its first secret session since World War II to approve the rescue mission, which included issuing the Americans fake Canadian passports.

While in Tehran, the Americans in his rented 20-room house occupied themselves by listening to news on a shortwave radio, reading, playing Scrabble and cards and, by their own admission, drinking copiously. They had to leave the house only once, when the owner had a real estate agent show it to a potential buyer. The two Americans staying with Ambassador Taylor were spirited to the Sheardown house for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The diplomats posed as members of a film crew who had supposedly been scouting locations. They had been taught how to speak like Canadians — for instance, by ending sentences with “eh?” One was given a Molson beer key ring.

Mr. Sheardown’s first marriage, to Kathleen Benson, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Zena Khan, he is survived by his sons, Robin and John; his sisters, Jean Fitzsimmons and Betty Ann Whitehead; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

After being awarded a high honor, the Order of Canada, Mr. Sheardown fought for his wife, a British citizen, to receive the same award. She had been legally excluded from consideration because she had never lived in Canada. He argued that she had had the tougher job because she seldom left the house while living in danger. She received the honor in 1981.

After “Argo” appeared in theaters, Ms. Sheardown said, its director, Ben Affleck, called to apologize for leaving her and her husband out of the movie. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Affleck said he had been fully aware of the Sheardowns’ heroism before the film was shot, but had reluctantly omitted it for reasons of length, drama and cost.

“They got lost in the shuffle,” Mr. Affleck said. “It really did break my heart a bit.”
Title: Canada-US border trivia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2013, 01:24:33 PM


http://www.flixxy.com/the-bizarre-border-between-canada-and-the-united-states.htm
Title: Canada passes US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2013, 12:40:17 PM
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/the-most-pro-capitalism-place-to-live-in-north-america-is/
Title: Re: Canada passes US
Post by: DougMacG on September 05, 2014, 09:50:50 AM
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/the-most-pro-capitalism-place-to-live-in-north-america-is/

'The Way Forward' and out of stagnation in the US receives an good example from the north.  Conservatives achieve economic success and win 3 elections in a row.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/387201/canada-now-more-american-america-john-fund

Is Canada Now More American than America?
Canada’s Burger King secret: Hold the taxes, hold the regulations.
By John Fund

The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Hortons, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest fast-food company, with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S., because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy businesses everywhere have learned — the U.S. is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America,” says columnist Stephen Green.

Since 2003, more than 35 major U.S. companies have moved their headquarters and reincorporated overseas. Rather than rail against such “inversions,” as President Obama does, or call for an economic boycott, as Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown does, we should figure out what is driving U.S. companies offshore. Here’s a clue: The U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized country, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is “even now looking for ways it can unilaterally raise corporate taxes without going to Congress.”
 
Canada has long been our more socialist and, consequently, our poorer neighbor to the north. But that has changed over the last two decades. Starting in 1995, Canada has drawn back from a public-debt precipice, restrained government spending, and dramatically overhauled its tax system. Next year it will also begin unilaterally reducing tariffs on thousands of manufactured goods — recognizing that free trade makes for wealthier consumers and a more prosperous society.
The results have been dramatic. This year, Canada has a higher per capita household income than the U.S., an unheard-of development that no one saw coming. It ranks eightth in the annual Economic Freedom of the World index (freetheworld.com) that the Fraser Institute compiles for over 150 countries, with especially strong marks in property rights and business freedom. By comparison, the U.S. ranks a pathetic 17th and is now categorized as only “mostly free.” “Unfortunately for the United States, we’ve seen overspending, weakening rule of law, and regulatory overkill on the part of the U.S. government, causing its economic freedom score to plummet in recent years,” said Fred McMahon of the Fraser Institute. “This is a stark contrast from 2000, when the U.S. was considered one of the most economically free nations and ranked second globally.”

While the U.S. eagle has plummeted in terms of economic freedom, the Canadian maple leaf has prospered. The consulting firm of KPMG looked at the tax costs of doing business in ten major nations. Setting the U.S. tax rate at a benchmark score of 100, it found that Canada’s costs were the lowest, 46.4 percentage points lower than the U.S. The United Kingdom, Mexico, and the Netherlands also beat out the U.S.

Canada’s strategy of lowering tax burdens on business was a conscious one, begun under the Liberal government of Paul Martin and accelerated since 2006 by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. The late Jim Flaherty, who served as Harper’s finance minister until March of this year, told me last year that the essence of smart taxation is “to raise the resources needed for prudent government while creating an environment where the private sector is encouraged to create the longer-lasting jobs a country needs to prosper.” He concluded that “if you can give people enough upward opportunity for average people, the talk will be on creating more of it rather than on redistributing a shrinking pie.”

Among the innovations that Flaherty introduced was the Tax Free Savings Account, which allows Canadians to save more by setting aside money tax-free if it’s invested. Combined with the already established Registered Retirement Savings Plan, which is focused on building retirement income, Canadians now have more tax-free savings vehicles to help them remain independent over their lifespan than any people outside of Chile, which privatized its Social Security system in the 1980s.

No one suggests that Canada is a pure beacon of freedom. Harper’s Conservatives have a majority of seats in Parliament, but just shy of 50 percent of Canadians in the last election, in 2011, cast ballots for either the Liberals or New Democrats, both interventionist purveyors of big government. Canada’s single-payer health system delivers less innovation and longer waiting lists than Americans would be likely to tolerate, and many of Canada’s provinces are once again piling up debt and overspending.

But Canada proves that a country can climb out of a deep fiscal hole within a remarkably small number of years and build a prosperous society even while it retains large welfare-state programs.

That is a lesson for U.S. Democrats, who, rather than rail against Burger King’s lack of economic patriotism, should learn how Canada has avoided America’s economic stagnation. It’s also a lesson for Republicans, who often lack the courage of their convictions in calling for genuine economic reform. Canada’s economic example — and the political success of Harper’s Conservatives in winning three elections in a row — should stiffen their spines.
Title: We sure are blessed to have Canada as friend and neighbor
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2014, 09:28:16 AM
http://www.funker530.com/canada-sends-special-forces-to-assist-in-the-fight-against-isis/
Title: Islam in Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2015, 04:13:53 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXa7WaY7F_0#t=48
Title: Lefties win big in Alberta
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2015, 06:24:24 PM
http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.3062840
Title: PC fascism in Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2015, 08:06:39 PM
http://www.therebel.media/i_m_being_prosecuted_for
Title: Canada declares Iran a terrorist state and closes embassy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2015, 02:05:43 PM
http://christiantelegram.com/canada-declares-iran-a-terrorist-state-closes-embassy-and-expels-iranian-diplomats/
Title: Illegals going to Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2017, 10:42:20 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immgration-canada-border-idUSKBN1602NG
Title: Re: Illegals going to Canada
Post by: G M on February 24, 2017, 06:30:53 PM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immgration-canada-border-idUSKBN1602NG

Good.
Title: Imans call for killing Jews
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2017, 03:10:48 PM
Canadian Imams Call for Death of Jews
by IPT News  •  Mar 1, 2017 at 12:43 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5808/canadian-imams-call-for-death-of-jews
Title: Canada: Soldiers of Odin, Three Percenters Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2017, 01:04:31 PM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9NdN4a6D_g


https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/the-birth-of-canadas-armed-anti-islamic-patriot-group?utm_source=vicefbcaads&utm_campaign=global
Title: Re: Canada: Soldiers of Odin, Three Percenters Canada
Post by: G M on June 17, 2017, 01:41:56 PM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9NdN4a6D_g


https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/the-birth-of-canadas-armed-anti-islamic-patriot-group?utm_source=vicefbcaads&utm_campaign=global

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JD7hPM_yxg

I see a similar theme shown in the above movie. When the public doesn't feel protected by it's government, it will form it's own structures to fill that void. Those structures may not be pretty or nice.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2017, 01:49:36 PM
I would like to see that.

I agree with your assessment.

Here is another yet different example of a government not protecting its people:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/16/canada-passes-law-criminalizing-use-of-wrong-gender-pronouns/
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on June 17, 2017, 01:58:48 PM
I would like to see that.

I agree with your assessment.

Here is another yet different example of a government not protecting its people:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/16/canada-passes-law-criminalizing-use-of-wrong-gender-pronouns/


It's worth watching. It's on Netflix now. Narcocultura is also well worth watching.

The governments of the west are bound and determined to utterly destroy and remake the people of the west.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Ingsoc_logo_from_1984.svg)
Title: Thoughcrime
Post by: G M on June 17, 2017, 02:07:16 PM
(https://images.askmen.com/1080x540/sports/fanatic/bruce-jenner-s-decathlon-olympic-gold-1103071-TwoByOne.jpg)

Above is the picture of a woman. Disagree? Thoughtcrime!

"To realise English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the Party created the controlled language of Newspeak to ensure universal orthodoxy of ideology and politics among the populace."
Title: Steyn: Pass me my Sharia Niblick
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2017, 10:33:50 AM
https://www.steynonline.com/7947/pass-me-my-sharia-niblick

Pass Me My Sharia Niblick
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on Canada
June 28, 2017

Pam Davies for The Toronto Sun
Celebrating diversity in court: Ontario judge, Crown Counsel, Arabic interptreter, and niqabed defendant

The formal observances of Canada's 150th birthday have included a sesquicentennial viceregal gaffe and a pair of commemorative prime ministerial socks. But of course what most Canadians like to do when we're not trapping beaver and huffing poutine is celebrate diversity. And so it was that at the Canadian Tire store in Scarborough a "Scarborough woman" went full Allahu Akbar in the paint aisle, but, touchingly, instead of just slashing at her "fellow Canadians" with the traditional machete of her own cultural inheritance, she also embraced Canadian values by clobbering her victims with a golf club as if berating the caddy at nearby Cedar Brae. Global News reports:

Police said a woman walked to the paint section of the store with a golf club and began swinging it at employees and a customer while uttering threats.

A source confirmed to Global News the woman was reportedly wearing a niqab and a bandana adorned with what appeared to be a symbol for IS at the time of the alleged incident.

Police said employees and customers managed to subdue the woman and contact police, when she pulled a "large knife" out from under her clothing.

The woman was restrained and police said the knife was "pried out of her hand" with the help of another store employee. The employee sustained non-life threatening injuries and was treated at the scene.

The "Scarborough woman" is one Rehab Dughmosh, which sounds like a treatment centre for aging hardcore groupies who've put their back out but is in fact the name of the perpetrator. The allegedly alleged perpetrator, I should say. Ms Dughmosh, speaking through an interpreter and the folds of her head-to-toe body bag, made a brief statement to the court:

"I meant to harm those people," Rehab Dughmosh told Justice Kimberley Crosbie through an Arabic interpreter during a court appearance.

"I reject all counsel here. I only believe in Islamic Sharia law. I would like to revoke my Canadian citizenship that I received. I don't want to have any allegiance to you... If you release me, I'm going to commit this type of action again and again because I'm pledging allegiance to [IS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi," she said, adding she refuses to adhere to Canadian law.

Well, that's easy for you to say. Her Honour was not entirely persuaded:

Asking the accused to think about it, Justice Kimberley Crosbie would not immediately accept her attempt to plead guilty to the alleged ISIS-inspired attack that saw two people assaulted.

Joe Warmington's Toronto Sun column is full of fascinating details. For example, the lavishly funded Canadian bureaucracy cannot reliably state whether or not Rehab Dughmosh has any Canadian citizenship to revoke, or where she came from:

They are working on the belief she was born in Syria but before Canada they are looking into leads of a possible stop in Jordan... She does have status in Canada but it's still not clear if she has Canadian citizenship or has the belief that permanent resident status is one and the same.

If she is a Canadian citizen it would be next to impossible to deport her. If she has a temporary or permanent residence status, there is a process.

Good luck with that. Mr Warmington quotes socks symbol Justin Trudeau:

"I'll give you the quote so that you guys can jot it down and put it in an attack ad somewhere that the Liberal Party believes that terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship," he said. "Because I do. And I'm willing to take on anyone who disagrees with that."

Trudeau's premise is "as soon as you make citizenship for some Canadians conditional on good behaviour, you devalue citizenship for everyone"...

It comes to something when a golf-club-wielding Arabic-cursing body-bagged jihadist crone unable to speak the language of "her" country and attacking patrons of a suburban shopping mall in furtherance of the global caliphate nevertheless has a better grasp of citizenship than a western prime minister. But, alas, such is the case. Citizenship is not conditional on "good behaviour", but it is conditional on what Rehab Dughmosh calls "allegiance". In traditional ethnostates such as, say, Denmark, that didn't used to be a big deal: your family had been Danish for a thousand years, you felt Danish, you lived Danish, so naturally your allegiance was to Denmark - "naturally" as in it's so natural you don't even think about it. That's why we call adopting citizenship "naturalization" - because, by the end of it, it's supposed to feel natural. Naturalization requires a transfer of allegiance, which is why in Canada you take an oath to the Queen and in America, just to underline the point, you're also called upon to "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen".

That should just about cover it.

Except that it doesn't. Because to the post-modernists of the western political class "allegiance" is a fusty concept. They don't believe in it, so they don't see why Ahmed off the boat from Misurata should be expected to. Perhaps the weirdest moment for me in the Munk Debate last year, between Nigel Farage and me, on the one hand, and, on the other, Louise Arbour and Simon Schama, was this exchange:

Mark Steyn: When you've got second- and third- generation Belgians and Frenchmen and Germans and Britons and Canadians going off to join ISIS, blowing up Paris, blowing up Brussels, that ought to occasion a certain modesty among us that our skills at assimilation, at inculcating our values, are not as awesome and all-encompassing as they were in the nineteenth century. And to think, when second- and third-generation immigrants are blowing up the airport, that the answer is suddenly to accelerate immigration from the same source, is very bizarre. In what sense are these people Belgian?

Simon Schama: Well, you know, in what sense is Razia Iqbal British? She's fully British, right..? And she happens to be a British Muslim, right? And how more British can you get than doing the BBC World Service?

Mark Steyn: Yes. I worked with Zeinab Badawi at Channel 4 in Britain. I've got no problem with that. But that's my point: Holding a passport does not make you Canadian and does not make you Belgian and does not make you French.

Louise Arbour: What?

Simon Schama: I agree.

Professor Schama appeared to concede that point, but Mme Arbour was apparently stunned by it, and returned to it later, very emphatically:

Louise Arbour: And by the way, Mark, if you have a Canadian passport you're a Canadian citizen. There's no arguing with that, right?

Mme Arbour is a former Supreme Court justice but she's missing my point: a Canadian passport may make you a Canadian citizen, as a point of law, but it does not make you a Canadian, as an actual, living, breathing reality. Body-bagged from head to toe, speaking neither English nor French, Rehab Dughmosh has renounced her allegiance to Canada and proclaimed instead her allegiance to the Islamic State, which happens to be Canada's enemy, which in the pre-Arbour era would be what we quaintly call "treason". Why does Mme Arbour presume to know better than Ms Dughmosh about where the latter's allegiance lies?

A few days ago, a sniper with Canada's special forces broke the world record for longest confirmed kill, picking off a Soldier of Allah at 3,450 meters - which is over two miles. That's phenomenal and unprecedented, and the JTF2 guy who did it deserves all the honours the Canadian state can confer on him. On this 150th birthday I only hope we can continue to produce more men like that.

But what's the point if, for every ISIS barbarian you pick off at 3,450 meters, back on the home front you're importing hundreds and thousands of loons who support him and share his world view, day in, day out. There are more "British Muslims" fighting for al-Baghdadi than for the Queen. Thousands more: they feel their allegiance to the Caliphate in a way that they do not for Britain. Likewise with Rehab Dughmosh: she feels her allegiance to ISIS, and not for Canada. Never did. Pace the socks symbol Trudeau, making citizenship conditional on "good behaviour" - ie, non-treason - does not "devalue citizenship for everyone". Tolerating ISIS fighters holding UK and Canadian and Belgian citizenship is what "devalues citizenship for everyone". Rehab Dughmosh's Canadian citizenship devalues that JTF2 sniper's Canadian citizenship.

That's true in the broader sense, too. Ms Dughmosh and those "British" ISIS volunteers feel their true allegiance; they live and breathe it. If you accept them, as Mme Arbour does, as Canadian and UK and French and Swedish citizens, "no arguing with that", you devalue your own citizenship to the point where its purchase on you starts to weaken and dissolve. I look at the feeble, passive reactions to jihadist provocations in Manchester and London and Paris and Brussels, and wonder: how many of the west's citizens feel British or French or Belgian? It's the shrunken reductive definition of "citizenship" advanced by the likes of Trudeau that devalues it - and (a somber thought for this 150th Dominion Day) perhaps fatally.
Title: Canada moves to modernize anti-terrorism legislation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2017, 06:04:07 AM
Canada Moves to 'Modernize' its Anti-Terrorism Legislation
by Scott Newark
Special to IPT News
September 11, 2017
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6644/canada-moves-to-modernize-its-anti-terrorism

 
With the return of Canada's Parliament later this month, one of the security issues sure to attract attention is Bill C-59.

It aims to modernize and clarify Canadian national security and intelligence operations. This includes how the country collects and retains metadata, better coordination for oversight and review of counter-terrorism investigations.

These issues and the need for reform have been the subject of discussion in Canada for more than a decade and, ironically, many of the changes proposed in C-59 were specifically described in detail in a May 2016 IPT column on the subject.

The bill would revise the much-maligned existing Anti-Terrorism Act, known as C-51, enacted by the previous government in the immediate aftermath of the October 2014 terrorist attacks in Quebec and on Parliament Hill. Curiously, the bill was passed with the support of opposition Liberals who are now in power. They promised changes if elected during the 2015 campaign.

C-51's increase in CSIS authority, expanded information sharing and broader anti-terrorism power in the Criminal Code generated legitimate debate. The bill also fueled partisan and ideological hyperbole in part because it did not address oversight and accountability, and the language used in the Bill to explain and justify its changes was deficient. Its defense by the Harper government was also needlessly combative rather than substantive.

It is important to note that the bill was only introduced in Parliament in late June, 18 months after the elections. The new government may have realized that the original bill was not necessarily as malevolent as had been suggested and that the issues involved were more complex than originally thought. The bill also demonstrates that, to its credit, the government has decided to address larger national security institutional and accountability issues which C-51 did not.

These issues are of real importance to Canadians and while the questionable payoff of $10.5 million to terrorist Omar Khadr and the Liberal government's deer in the headlights approach to the flood of people illegally entering Canada to claim 'refugee' status will be under the spotlight, so too will C-59.

It contains a relatively detailed preamble that sets out the bill's national security purpose and intent, along with the required consideration of civil rights and liberties. This is a welcome feature that greatly reduces the future ability of courts to strike down legislation on Charter grounds on the basis that no justification for the impugned measures was provided by government.

The bill creates the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) that will have direct review authority over the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and, in relation to national security issues, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The new NSIRA can review activities of any department that relates to national security or intelligence and review authority for an issue referred to it by a Minister of the Crown. This should be a significant step to ending the 'siloed' environment that different review bodies encountered when trying to get the 'big picture' on national security issues involving multiple departments and agencies. If C-59 is passed, it will be the entity with the authority to investigate complaints made against CSIS or CSE and the RCMP when it relates to 'national security' issues. This review could include cases of alleged improper information sharing or unauthorized 'disruption' activities. It should be clarified and confirmed that this also applies to the actions of an agency of the federal government, as a significant gap would be created were that not the case.

While this change is positive, the agency needs to be assessed to ensure it is carrying out its duties as intended, because having a mandate is not the same thing as delivering on it. With the creation of the Parliamentary National Security Review Committee, there is no longer a need to have the new NSIRA comprised of former politicians. The agency needs people with operational, academic or even journalistic expertise in order to succeed, and it needs appropriate funding to be able to carry out its important duties.

The bill abolishes the Office of the Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment and replaces it with an increasingly empowered Intelligence Commissioner. The Intelligence Commissioner has defined approval authority for authorizations, amendments or determinations sought by CSIS and CSE for things like communications interception, cyber system intrusion, and for CSIS, travel disruption, financial interference, communications interception, creating false documents. The scope of these new 'disruption' authorities will deservedly be debated as C-59 is reviewed.

The commissioner also is granted extensive review and approval authority over metadata (or 'datasets') acquisition, use and sharing, which is clearly a response to the 2016 Federal Court decision slamming CSIS for its unauthorized activities in this area. Metadata involves communications from cellphones to the internet. Metadata interception does not necessarily record actual conversations, but through modern data analytical technology, it can provide information on who a person communicates with, when that takes place, and more.

While independent oversight is welcome, it must not simply create more self-serving bureaucracy that interferes with operational intelligence and national security needs. This appears to be recognized in s. 21 of the act which permits expedited approval in defined operational circumstances, but this is an issue that needs to be clarified and monitored. In a welcome sign of information sharing and coordination, s. 22 of the Act requires all of the commissioner's decisions in this regard to be provided to the new NSIRA.

C-59's most important changes include a modernization of the Communication Security Establishment's (CSE) mandate that gives more specific detail and authorizes 'active' cyber operations. This means CSE can take proactive cyber intrusion measures, including, presumably, hacking and disruption, in the "global information infrastructure" including in information based systems. These changes more accurately reflect the current cyber and security environment and the activities that CSE is undertaking.
For the first time, CSE will be authorized to carry out 'active cyber operations' for the broad purpose of being able to "...degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group as they relate to international affairs, defence or security." This is a significant enhancement of CSE's mandate that, no doubt, will be subject to close scrutiny.

Changes to the CSIS Act in C-59 provide more detail regarding restrictions on activities as well immunities for CSIS officers in carrying out their duties. The bill does not, however, remove the active 'disruption' authority that was provided to CSIS in C-51 which was a historic change in CSIS' traditional restricted information gathering role. In that sense, the C-59 changes to CSIS are more symbolic than substantive. The amendments also create specific and extensive procedural requirements for CSIS in the gathering and maintaining public 'datasets,' which are the compiled and organized data from 'metadata' retrieval. A preamble to the bill reinforces the priorities of mandate clarity, appropriate respect for privacy and compliance and accountability.

The changes made to the Secure Air Travel Act in C-59 suggest that Transport Canada wants greater operational control of the 'No Fly' list system and that it is finally preparing to add modern technology to the existing biographic data based system. This change will support an effective international 'bad guy' biometric lookout database. The bill also adds measures to somewhat improve the redress system for people challenging their designation, a concern driven in part by recent cases involving children improperly added to the list.

C-59's changes to the Criminal Code are among the most dramatic. They will expand the designated terrorist 'entity' criteria and repeal the unused preventive arrest and investigate hearing provisions.

Unfortunately, the changes covering people who advocate or promote terrorist acts, and the definition of 'terrorist propaganda,' are counter-productive in that they will not address the modern terrorist communications techniques that use broad social media messaging for radicalization and recruitment. There have been no reported instances of abuse of the current provisions, so the motivation for this change appears to be political. Fortunately, the bill leaves existing evidentiary standards for terrorism peace bonds in the Criminal Code, which were lowered in C-51, intact.

The bill also creates a mandatory review of the legislation and its operational impacts in five years which is a helpful strategy.

C-59 likely will preserve law enforcement's and intelligence agencies' national security capabilities created by C-51. The bill dramatically modernizes Canada's cyber security capabilities and makes significant reforms to strengthen and coordinate institutional review and oversight in the national security sector.

There are definitely a number of issues in C-59 that need to be raised at committee so that appropriate explanations of the rationale and purposes of the changes can be provided. That is, after all, the purpose of the committee review of legislation and hopefully this can be accomplished without the acrimony and partisanship that surrounded C-51.

Scott Newark is a former Alberta Crown Prosecutor who has also served as Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, Director of Operations for Investigative Project on Terrorism and as a Security Policy Advisor to the governments of Ontario and Canada. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the TRSS Program in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.
Title: Oh Canada! Tax cutting conservative elected in Ontario
Post by: DougMacG on June 08, 2018, 01:14:27 PM
Conservative elected in Ontario.  Lowest vote for the liberal ruling party in history.  "Progressive conservatives tripled their seats.  What is the significance of just one province in Canada?  Proportional to the US, Ontario is the equivalent of California, Texas, New York and Florida combined. 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-election-live-updates/

Liberals fall short of official party status; Wynne resigns as Liberal leader
"Some Liberal candidates...didn’t even put the word Liberal in their campaign materials."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-wynne-resigns-as-liberal-leader-as-party-suffers-historic-rout-in/

Doug Ford Platform promises: Balance the budget, cut spending, reduce taxes. scrap a minimum wage hike, cut corporate tax rates, abolish the 15 per cent non-resident buyer tax on real estate, cut small business tax rate.  And roll back beer prices!

“I don’t believe in the government sticking their hands in our lives all the time. I believe in letting the market dictate”
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ontario-election-2018-party-platforms/
Title: GPF: Canada-US- the ties that bind
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2018, 07:55:05 AM
The US and Canada: The Ties That Bind
Jun 14, 2018

 
By Jacob L. Shapiro
The United States and Canada were just selected to host the 2026 World Cup together (along with Mexico), but when it comes to trade, the two countries are miles apart. On May 31, the U.S. decided to lift Canada’s exemption from steel and aluminum tariffs. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hit back on June 9, saying that Canada, which last year exported 83 percent of its steel and 87 percent of its aluminum to the U.S., would impose retaliatory measures by July 1. Three days later, U.S. President Donald Trump said Trudeau’s statement would cost Canada “a lot of money.” Trudeau declined to respond to Trump’s most recent comments, and the war of words seems to have ended there, at least for now.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has clashed with a key U.S. ally. Shortly after taking office, Trump had an unpleasant exchange with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an immigration dispute, though both sides quickly patched things up. Trump’s relationship with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has been rocky from the start, and British police even briefly suspended intelligence sharing with American officials following last year’s Manchester bombing, citing U.S. leaks of sensitive information. Now the U.S. appears to be locking horns with its northern neighbor. But as with Australia and the U.K., the rhetorical duel with Canada is superficial, based more on political grandstanding than on a change in the bilateral relationship.
Stalwart Allies
Canada is highly dependent on its relationship with the United States, especially in economic terms. Last year, 76 percent of Canadian exports went to the United States. According to Canada’s National Energy Board, a staggering 99.1 percent of Canadian crude oil exports went to the U.S. as well. A recent study by economist Trevor Tombe at the University of Calgary showed that trade with the U.S. accounted for 49 percent of the gross domestic product in Ontario – by far Canada’s most populous and wealthiest province.
 
(click to enlarge)
 
(click to enlarge)
The U.S. is also reliant on Canada, but to a far lesser degree. Only 18 percent of U.S. exports are destined for Canada. But for a number of states, especially those along the northern border and that import Canadian crude, U.S.-Canada trade is far more critical than it is on the national level. (Michigan, for example, derives 5 percent of its state GDP from exports to Canada.) Even so, the economic relationship between the two countries is hugely imbalanced. Whatever economic vulnerabilities the U.S. has, Canada’s are much larger.
 
(click to enlarge)
But the relationship is not simply an economic one. The United States owes its position as the world’s sole superpower in part to the fact that it has not had to deal with security threats on its land borders for over a century. Mexico hasn’t been a serious threat to U.S. national security since the Mexican-American War of 1848. The U.S. and Canada haven’t fought a major conflict since the War of 1812, when the British still ruled over the territory north of the U.S. In World War II, Canada and the U.S. became stalwart allies, coordinating defense policy and sharing intelligence, even to this day. When U.S. military planners consider how best to organize U.S. forces, they don’t have to worry about protecting the United States from a northern enemy – and it’s difficult to put a price on that.
A Threat to U.S. National Security

This is the reason the steel and aluminum tariffs are causing such angst in Ottawa. It is not about the trade spat itself. Canada and the U.S. have trade disputes going back centuries, and disagreements are inevitable in such a close economic relationship, especially when one side has significantly more leverage than the other.

The problem for Canada is that, to be able to impose the tariffs in the first place, Trump had to claim that the existing trade model posed a threat to U.S. national security. For a country like Canada, whose foreign policy for the past 80 years can essentially be boiled down to not being a threat to U.S. national security, this stretches the bounds of credulity and politeness. Sure, the United States can argue that its increased reliance on steel and aluminum imports necessitates protectionist policies. As a result of Chinese dumping, the price of steel and aluminum has plummeted and, in the process, destroyed U.S. companies. Canada took advantage by almost doubling steel and aluminum exports to the United States in the past 17 years, when Chinese dumping kicked off in earnest.

But for Canada, the insinuation that it somehow poses a threat by exporting steel and aluminum to the United States is a ludicrous argument, one that takes for granted Canada’s contributions to the U.S.-led post-war world order. It also fails to recognize that Canada’s share in U.S. trade has dropped precipitously since 2001, when the U.S. began importing cheaper Chinese goods at much higher rates – which Canada accepted without nary a protest despite the damage done to Canadian manufacturers.
Canada doesn’t have much room for maneuver when it comes to foreign policy or trade with the United States. After World War II, aligning with the U.S. in the global conflict against the Soviet Union was a fait accompli. Canada, like the United States, is protected from most global conflicts by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and because the United States dwarfs Canada militarily, economically and in terms of population, Canada has few alternatives other than to follow the United States’ lead. Canada, for the most part, does this willingly and without protest – few countries are as prosperous and secure as Canada is today, and that is in no small part due to the United States. In fact, the most remarkable aspect of the United States’ relationship with Canada – and indeed with the U.K. and its English-speaking former colonies – is that it carries on inexorably, immune to the politics of the day.

That’s because politics and strategy don’t always align. Like the United States, Canada has its own political divisions, and Trudeau represents the same urban, well-educated, socially liberal segment of the population in Canada that would have voted for Hillary Clinton in the United States. (It is no coincidence that Trudeau has become something of a celebrity to American liberals in recent years.) Trudeau cannot kowtow to Trump any more than Trump can abandon the promises he made to his base. Trump scores points with his base by insulting Trudeau just as Trudeau scores points with his base by insulting Trump. Meanwhile, the U.S. needs Canada, and Canada needs the U.S., and the two go on cooperating on the issues that really matter – like co-hosting the World Cup in 2026. These realities may be overshadowed by politics at times, but that does not make them mutually exclusive.

The post The US and Canada: The Ties That Bind appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.



Title: Canada backtracks on carbon tax
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2018, 08:14:34 AM
The reason Canada is backtracking on the carbon tax is climate change, investment climate change.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-backtracks-on-a-carbon-tax-1534110070

o into effect next year. The reason for the backtrack has to do with climate change, but not the kind associated with global warming.

Mr. Trudeau is reacting to shifting political winds stirred by Canada’s investment climate, which has turned stone cold. He faces an election in October 2019, and will have trouble unless investors warm to Canada.
-------------
Why is Canada against a hundredth of a degree of warming anyway?
Title: Trudeau more dangerous than Trump
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2018, 10:35:27 PM
https://www.newcenter.ca/news/2017/10/7/justin-trudeau-is-far-more-dangerous-than-donald-trump
Title: GPF: Canada caught in Trade War
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2019, 04:54:30 AM

Jan. 17, 2019
By Jacob L. Shapiro
Canada: Caught in the Crossfire of the US-China Trade War


Canada’s arrest of a top Chinese executive landed Ottawa in the middle of a feud it wanted to avoid.


Canada has found itself in the middle of two diplomatic spats over the past five months. In August, Saudi Arabia took exception to a Canadian Foreign Ministry tweet urging Saudi authorities to release jailed women’s rights activists. In response, Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador in Ottawa and suspended all trade and investment with Canada. A few months later, Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, a top executive of Chinese telecom firm Huawei, at the United States’ request. After Meng’s arrest, China detained two Canadians, including former diplomat Michael Kovrig, accusing them of threatening China’s national security. This week, another Canadian was sentenced to death in China after a brief retrial for allegedly organizing a methamphetamine smuggling ring.

Canada probably didn’t intend to provoke a conflict in either situation. It’s hardly the first country to accuse Saudi Arabia of violating human rights – under normal circumstances the Foreign Ministry’s tweet would have been quickly forgotten. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Canada publicly criticized the kingdom in the midst of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s consolidation of power and ambitious drive to transform Saudi society – which hinged on cultivating an image of the crown prince as a reformer. In that sense, the tweet was inadvertently prescient. Canada had no way of knowing it would enrage the Saudi political establishment as much as it did or that Saudi agents would kill a Saudi journalist in a Turkish consulate and bring global attention to the kingdom’s human rights record just two months later.

As for China, Canadian authorities detained Meng not at Ottawa’s directive but because a New York court issued a warrant for her arrest on Aug. 22. While the U.S. hasn’t yet produced an indictment or formal request for Meng’s extradition (it has until the end of the month to do so), Canadian prosecutors said last month she was being charged with conspiracy to defraud banks. Meng is accused of not disclosing to banks Huawei’s links to another tech firm called Skycom, which was doing business in Iran that violated U.S. sanctions. Canada has plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Huawei, but on Meng’s arrest, it’s simply fulfilling its treaty obligations to the U.S. That this justification is unconvincing to China is a subtle reminder of the very real differences between Chinese and Western legal systems.

The Saudi issue is ultimately a minor one – Saudi Arabia represents less than 1 percent of Canadian trade, and whether Canada will continue to sell military equipment and vehicles to the kingdom will be based on domestic political considerations in Canada more than anything else. The China issue, however, is more complicated and potentially more consequential. Canada might have hoped to avoid getting involved in the U.S.-China spat. The Canadian economy is overwhelmingly dependent on the U.S. economy, and though Canada can’t eliminate that dependence, it can try to reduce it – in part with China’s help. Indeed, as recently as last November, Canada’s trade minister said a free trade deal between Canada and China was possible.

(click to enlarge)

That might not be the case anymore, however. Unlike the U.S., Canada has elected to remain in the revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was designed in part to limit China’s expanding global economic influence. In December, it was reported that spy chiefs from the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance met in July in Canada to coordinate efforts to prevent Chinese-made equipment from being used in 5G mobile networks. (The U.S., Australia and New Zealand have banned Huawei equipment from being used in 5G networks, and the U.K.’s largest telecom company announced its intention to avoid Huawei last month. Canada is likely not far behind.) In November, Canada deployed the HMCS Calgary to the Western Pacific to participate in anti-China drills and has signaled its intention to keep up to two ships in the region year-round.

Canada is, therefore, already part of an emerging U.S.-led alliance to constrain Chinese power. China is seeking a temporary trade deal with the U.S., so it can’t afford to confront Washington directly right now, especially not while its economy is under increasing pressure. But Canada is a much smaller and weaker country than the U.S., and Chinese power might have more of an effect there. From China’s perspective, it was already facing an escalating trade conflict with the U.S. and a concerted campaign to block Chinese companies like Huawei from the global economy. Now Canada, of all countries, is arresting Chinese nationals. The excuse that it was merely operating under the rule of law doesn’t make it any easier for China to accept. China has responded that it, too, has laws, not to mention roughly 200 dual Canadian-Chinese citizens in custody. If the West wants to play hardball, China will show it can play, too.

Unfortunately for China, its retaliation against Canada is somewhat self-defeating. China needs foreign investment and has been working hard to keep foreign businesses in China and attract more foreign companies that have the capital and technology to help Beijing manage its ongoing economic transition. Arresting Western nationals will only deter foreign companies from wanting anything to do with China. On the other hand, Beijing can’t afford to look weak, especially in the eyes of its own people. The potential impact on the Chinese economy of the U.S. trade war is so great that Beijing has no choice but to try to spin the situation as much as it can. (Chinese censors are already doing so.) The arrest of a Chinese national – the daughter of the founder of a globally recognized Chinese company no less – is much harder to spin. If the Chinese government can’t protect its own people when they’re abroad, the motherland is not nearly as strong as the Communist Party insists it is.

Canada didn’t intend to set off an altercation with China any more than it meant to offend the Saudi crown prince’s self-styled image as a feminist icon, but as is sometimes the case in geopolitics, intentions are irrelevant. From Ottawa’s perspective, Canada is simply observing the rule of law. China has a different interpretation – according to its ambassador to Canada, “the detention of Ms. Meng is not a mere judicial case, but a premeditated political action.” When China retaliates by detaining Canadians who it says are threats to its national security, and Canada and its Western allies decry this as a violation of the rule of law, China can’t help but express anger at what it sees as “double standards due to Western egotism and white supremacy.” But the Canadian government is obligated to honor a U.S. extradition request, and as a result, it’s now mired in a confrontation it didn’t want. Complicating matters, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ample political reasons not to appear weak on China, considering the 2016 around Chinese contributions to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

In the end, this diplomatic spat will come down to whether the United States is willing to drop the charges against Meng in light of its broader negotiations with the Chinese government. Earlier this week, China signaled it may be open to a face-saving resolution – Meng’s father and Huawei’s founder made a rare public appearance during which he described U.S. President Donald Trump as “a great president” and Huawei as “only a sesame seed in the trade conflict between China and the U.S.” If, however, the two countries, who will continue trade talks at the end of the month, do come to an understanding, it will only defuse the current problem. In the long term, the U.S. and the West are behaving in ways China can interpret only as hostile to its development, and China is behaving in ways the U.S. and the West can interpret only as hostile their interests. It’s looking increasingly doubtful that the two sides can break out of this spiral. In the meantime, Meng, Kovrig and Canadian foreign policy remain caught in the crossfire.
Title: GPF: Canada a casualty of America First
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2019, 08:32:32 AM
May 9, 2019



By Jacob L. Shapiro


Canada: A Casualty of ‘America First’


China is proving tough on Canada, and the U.S. has yet to come to its neighbor’s aid.


Canada’s relations with China continue to deteriorate. Shortly after Canada arrested Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the United States’ behest in December, China arrested two Canadian nationals, including former diplomat Michael Kovrig, in a tit-for-tat move meant to bully Canada into releasing Meng. When that didn’t work, Beijing tried a new strategy, effectively punishing what it perceived as Canadian intransigence by restricting access to the Chinese market for key Canadian sectors such as canola, peas, soybeans and pork. Those measures are now beginning to hurt the Canadian economy, and with little prospect of resolving the issue bilaterally, Canada is reaching out to the United States for help – but its closest ally has been unwilling to render assistance.

Deteriorating Relations

China’s market-blocking maneuvers have been mostly unofficial thus far. What concrete steps China has taken to block Canadian exports have all been taken under the guise of plausible deniability. China suspended the export permits of two Canadian pork producers last week, ostensibly because of a labeling problem. In February, China banned shipments of canola seed from two Canadian companies, claiming that it discovered pests in the shipments, and in April, it filed a quality complaint against a third Canadian canola exporter. Now, there are reports of Canadian soybeans and peas facing unusual obstacles when reaching China, including lengthy inspection delays far exceeding the norm and intense scrutiny of Canadian products.


 

(click to enlarge)


Some Canadian officials have tried to put on a brave face despite these developments – Saskatchewan province’s premier recently dismissed the reports on all Canadian exports besides canola as little more than “hearsay,” while Canada’s agriculture minister insisted last week that the reports reflect little more than the routine issues that periodically emerge during routine customs inspections. Perhaps, but that explanation seems doubtful, especially considering that China’s African swine fever epidemic means China needs to secure sources of pork imports, in particular. It’s more likely that China has made an intentional decision to block certain Canadian exports, even if it means China must find alternative sources for those goods.
Whether intentional or not, the Canadian economy is beginning to feel the effects of China’s emergent fastidiousness.

Canadian trade statistics for February 2019 show an almost 25 percent decline in monthly exports to China compared to prior months. Canola exports have been hit particularly hard; exports to China declined in February by almost 60 percent compared to November 2018, with canola meal (51 percent) and canola seed (38 percent) registering substantial declines as well. And that data will likely be worse when March and April figures are released. At least some of the decline can be attributed to Chinese New Year celebrations in February, but the drops are too precipitous for that to be the only factor. Indeed, an April 29 Reuters report detailed how Chinese buyers were canceling purchases of Canadian canola on short notice, forcing Canadian companies to resell to buyers in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh at steep discounts.


 

(click to enlarge)


With little in the way of leverage to change China’s behavior, Canada has turned to the United States for help. Multiple Canadian government officials have stated publicly that they would welcome U.S. support and that such support could make China more willing to find an accommodation with Canada. No such American assistance has been forthcoming. The U.S. State Department has expressed concern over China’s canola bans, and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a nicely worded bipartisan resolution in March “commending” Canada for “upholding the rule of law” and arresting Meng. In practice, however, the U.S. has done very little. Thus far, the U.S. has elected not to address the Huawei issue – including Meng’s arrest – in its trade negotiations with China or to make China’s Canada-targeted measures an issue. In addition, according to Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Washington has not been particularly forthright with the Canadian government about U.S. intentions for Meng.

‘America First’

The United States’ unwillingness to use its influence with China to protect its northern neighbor fits with the broader foreign policy of the Trump administration – namely, “America First.” This is, after all, the same U.S. government that raised tariffs against Canadian steel exports to the United States by citing a “national security threat” and that has used Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as its favorite rhetorical punching bag. The U.S. is pursuing negotiations with China to secure better trade terms for American companies – not for Canadian ones, even though China’s economic expansion in recent decades has posed similar problems for both countries. The United States is not interested in using the extensive leverage it holds over the Chinese economy to help other countries, even its most stalwart allies – in fact, the U.S. is simultaneously pursuing new trade arrangements with such allies, including Canada and Japan.

It is hard to overstate how radical a departure this is from previous U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. cemented its position as a global power after World War II by doing the exact opposite – by not putting America first. The U.S. did not do this out of generosity or nobility but because it calculated that doing so would give the United States more power. The U.S. was rich and powerful enough that it could afford to pass on the benefits of that power to other countries and, in so doing, build a network of relationships, partnerships and alliances that countries like the Soviet Union then and China now – which has hardly any allies to speak of besides a despotic hermit regime on the Korean peninsula or an eternally fractious Pakistan – can only dream of. By not putting America first in all things, America was first in arguably the most important thing: power.

A country like Canada cannot afford to break with the United States. From a political, economic and security standpoint, Canada is essentially a U.S. province, hardwired into a U.S.-led alliance structure whether it wants to be or not. Certainly, U.S.-Canada relations are not going to crumble because the U.S. is unwilling to use its leverage over the Chinese to protect Canadian companies or because Trudeau and Trump don’t like each other. Still, American power has always been at its most effective not when countries can’t afford to break with the United States but when countries don’t want to. That is exactly why China has singled Canada out. “America First” may mean the U.S. will get what it wants out of trade negotiations with China, but if the U.S. isn’t careful, it might also mean that down the line, its allies will have far less of a reason to put America first themselves.

Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on May 09, 2019, 04:43:45 PM
Until Canada gets rid of PM Zoolander, they are free to go piss up a rope, as far as I am concerned.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2019, 05:56:57 PM
Canada has been a good and real friend.  They rescued our people in Iran during the Carter episode, and they have fought well along side us in Afghanistan are two examples that come to mind.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on May 09, 2019, 06:42:51 PM
Canada has been a good and real friend.  They rescued our people in Iran during the Carter episode, and they have fought well along side us in Afghanistan are two examples that come to mind.

The Canada that was our friend doesn’t exist anymore.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2019, 07:28:53 AM
Disagree, not only based upon what I read, but upon my many dealings with my Canadian friends in the Dog Brothers.
Title: Canada-China-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2019, 08:06:18 AM
Speaking of our good friend Canada, it would appear that they have put themselves in harm's way with the Chinese with the HuaWei arrest , , ,

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-european-diplomats-support-canada-in-chinese-court-in-death-penalty-appeal_2915622.html?ref=brief_BreakingNews&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6ef3c1f0d9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_09_09_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-6ef3c1f0d9-239065853
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on May 10, 2019, 11:24:23 AM
Disagree, not only based upon what I read, but upon my many dealings with my Canadian friends in the Dog Brothers.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadians-are-seeing-the-whole-world-through-an-anti-american-lens/

https://www.thestar.com/halifax/2018/07/11/halifax-professor-says-canadian-hostility-towards-american-expats-in-trump-era-could-drive-them-away.html

http://www.parli.ca/anti-americanism/
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on May 10, 2019, 01:43:13 PM
Maybe I generalize too much but I was under the impression it is the French Canadians who do not like Americans.  Though anectodal the  Quebec Canadians  I met were less than friendly, unlike ones for English Canada.





Title: Re: Canada-China-US
Post by: G M on May 10, 2019, 05:45:24 PM
Nope. That is our not good friend Canada complying with an extradition treaty. I question how long until PM Zoolander waves the white flag.


Speaking of our good friend Canada, it would appear that they have put themselves in harm's way with the Chinese with the HuaWei arrest , , ,

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-european-diplomats-support-canada-in-chinese-court-in-death-penalty-appeal_2915622.html?ref=brief_BreakingNews&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6ef3c1f0d9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_09_09_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-6ef3c1f0d9-239065853
Title: Re: Canada- Wexit, Western Canada Exit
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2019, 06:24:05 AM
https://www.vicnews.com/news/wexit-trending-after-election-in-support-of-western-canada-separation/

#Wexit trending after election in support of western Canada separation
The hashtag is a play on Brexit from the U.K

“When one part of Canada votes to destroy another, we don’t have a country,” said Twitter user @JodyDahrouge. “The time has come to go our separate ways.”

[Color map reversed from US colors.]
-------------------------
I don't want to be ruled by eastern liberals either.  When the US finally splits, make sure we invite the willing areas of Canada to our new coalition.
Title: Re: Canada- Wexit, Western Canada Exit
Post by: G M on October 23, 2019, 06:56:38 PM
Yes.


https://www.vicnews.com/news/wexit-trending-after-election-in-support-of-western-canada-separation/

#Wexit trending after election in support of western Canada separation
The hashtag is a play on Brexit from the U.K

“When one part of Canada votes to destroy another, we don’t have a country,” said Twitter user @JodyDahrouge. “The time has come to go our separate ways.”

[Color map reversed from US colors.]
-------------------------
I don't want to be ruled by eastern liberals either.  When the US finally splits, make sure we invite the willing areas of Canada to our new coalition.
Title: Canada: Calling Soleimani a terrorist can get you arrested?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2020, 02:58:40 PM
https://clarionproject.org/canada-where-calling-soleimani-a-terrorist-can-get-you-arrested/?utm_source=Clarion+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4e33b6fe99-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_06_02_37&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_60abb35148-4e33b6fe99-6358189&mc_cid=4e33b6fe99
Title: Re: Canada: Calling Soleimani a terrorist can get you arrested?
Post by: G M on January 06, 2020, 05:50:04 PM
https://clarionproject.org/canada-where-calling-soleimani-a-terrorist-can-get-you-arrested/?utm_source=Clarion+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4e33b6fe99-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_06_02_37&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_60abb35148-4e33b6fe99-6358189&mc_cid=4e33b6fe99

When you don't have a second amendment, you don't have a first amendment either.
Title: The Woken Dead arrive in Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2020, 08:34:49 AM
https://clarionproject.org/canada-seeding-the-state-with-totalitarianism/?utm_source=Clarion+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a8ad914c91-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_23_02_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_60abb35148-a8ad914c91-6358189&mc_cid=a8ad914c91
Title: GPF on Biden's cancellation of the pipeline
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2021, 03:10:53 PM

(click to enlarge)
The Keystone XL pipeline project is no stranger to controversy. It has inspired protests and objections from environmentalists and indigenous groups for over a decade. The latest disagreement over the pipeline, however, occurred between the U.S. and Canadian governments. On Jan. 21, U.S. President Joe Biden canceled permits for the U.S. component of the pipeline, reversing his predecessor’s policy.

The cancellation revives political and economic tensions deeply embedded within Canada’s national fabric. Canada began as a confederation uniting several colonies scattered across North America. The country is diverse both socially and economically to this day, and underlying tensions between its east and west coasts are more and more coming out into the open, especially amid economic recovery efforts in the wake of the pandemic.

Keystone XL touches on Canada's east-west divide, characterized by different economic models, wealth concentration and historic settlement patterns. (Just last year, four lawmakers from Alberta threatened secession over the government’s failure to address concerns related to the national energy program and provincial economy.) Alberta’s premier, Jason Kenney, has already called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to enact some form of economic compensation – either in the form of payments to TC Energy, the Canadian firm behind the pipeline, and the provinces for losses incurred, or retaliation against the U.S. for backing out of the project. The debate over Canada’s response will be difficult and divisive.
Title: MY: Canada abandons Canadian citizens
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2021, 05:01:41 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/998868/canada-guy-abandons-canadians-in-afghanistan
Title: Re: MY: Canada abandons Canadian citizens
Post by: G M on August 26, 2021, 05:23:27 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/998868/canada-guy-abandons-canadians-in-afghanistan

All the cool kids are doing it.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2021, 04:27:12 PM
https://odysee.com/@RandyHillier:c/we-must-make-ready:b
Title: Canada's Pocahantas
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2021, 08:21:50 AM
https://nypost.com/2021/11/27/canadian-indigenous-health-expert-carrie-bourassa-fired-for-faking-heritage/
Title: Canadian non-compliance with gun confiscation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2021, 11:32:55 AM
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/12/31/come-and-take-it-canadians-arent-complying-with-new-gun-law-n2601237
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2022, 05:19:44 PM
https://rumble.com/vs5o8d-quebec-covid-response-has-gone-off-the-rails.html?mref=6zof&mc=dgip3&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=vivafrei&ep=1
Title: Canadian truckers vs. the Pravdas.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2022, 10:27:22 AM


https://bombthrower.com/articles/corporate-media-and-big-tech-align-against-freedomconvoy/
Title: Trudeau ducks the Truckers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2022, 05:14:28 AM
Justin Trudeau Ducks the Great Trucker Revolt
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker
 January 28, 2022 Updated: January 28, 2022biggersmaller Print
Commentary

The resistance reveals itself always in unexpected ways. As I type, thousands of truckers (numbers are in flux and are in dispute) are part of a 50-mile-long convoy in Canada, headed to the capital city of Ottawa in protest against an egregious vaccine mandate imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will be joined upon arrival by vast numbers of protestors who are defying the restrictions, closures, and mandates of the last nearly two years.

The triple-vaccinated Trudeau, meanwhile, has decided that he has to go into deep hiding because he was exposed to Covid. A clean, ruling-class, fit, and fashionable lefty like him cannot be expected to face such a pathogen directly. As a member of the vanguard of the lockdown elite, he must never take risks (however small) and must keep himself safe. It is merely a matter of coincidence that he will be locked away in hiding as the truckers arrive together with hundreds of thousands of citizens who are fed up with being treated like lab rats.

Previously, Trudeau had said nearly two years ago that the truckers were heroes. On March 31, 2020, he tweeted: “While many of us are working from home, there are others who aren’t able to do that—like the truck drivers who are working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked. So when you can, please #ThankATrucker for everything they’re doing and help them however you can.”

It’s true. Like many “essential workers” in the United States, these truckers bravely faced the virus and many already gained natural immunity, which Canadian law does not recognize. Trudeau decided that they needed to be forced to get the vaccine anyway. Keep in mind: these are the people who get food to the stores, packages to homes, and all products that keep life moving. If they don’t drive, the people don’t eat. It’s that simple. Now Trudeau must deal with #FreedomConvoy2020.

Few events in modern times have revealed the vast chasm that exists between the ruled and rulers, especially as it pertains to class. For nearly two years, the professional class has experienced a completely different reality than the working class. In the United States, this only began to change once the highly vaccinated Zoom class got Covid anyway. Only then did we start seeing articles about how there is no shame in getting sick. It appears that in many countries, the working class that was forced into early confrontation with the virus are saying that they aren’t going to take it anymore (and many are playing that song to make the point).

It’s a massive workers’ strike but not the kind of communist dreams. This is a “working class” movement that stands squarely for freedom against all the impositions of the last two years, which were imposed by an overclass with almost no consultation from legislatures. Canada has had some of the worst, much to the shock of its citizens. The convoy is an enormous show of power concerning who really keeps the country running.

The convoy is being joined by truckers from all over the United States too, rising up in solidarity. This is easily the most meaningful and impactful protest to emerge in North America. It is being joined by as many as half a million Canadian citizens, who overwhelmingly support this protest, as one can observe from the cheers on the highway along the way. Indeed, it’s likely to break the record for the largest trucker convoy in history, as well as the most loved.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has dismissed the whole thing as a “small fringe” of extremists and says it means nothing to him and will change nothing. This is because, he says, these truckers hold “unacceptable views.”

This is setting up to be one of the most significant clashes in the world in the great battle between freedom and those governments have set out to crush it.

Meanwhile, I’m looking now for information on this in the mainstream media. It is almost nonexistent outside social media. Fox is covering some of it but that’s about it. The Epoch Times is a wonderful exception, as we’ve come to expect in recent months. It’s not being covered in any depth in Canadian papers and TV. All the usual subjects in the United States have completely ignored this mighty movement. It’s almost like these venues have created an alternate version of reality, one that denies the astonishing reality that anyone can see outside the window.

Yes, I know that we have all come to expect that the corporate media will not cover what actually matters, and much of what it does cover it does only with a strong bias toward narratives crafted by ruling elites. Even so, it seems to stretch credulity beyond any plausible extent for the major media to pretend that this isn’t happening. It is and it has massive implications for the present and the future.

This is not really or just about vaccine mandates. It’s about what they represent: government taking possession of our lives. If they can force you to get an injection in your arm over which you have doubts, all bets for freedom are off. There must be evidence that you complied. The phone app is next, which gets tied to your bank account and your job and your access to communications and your ability to pay your rent or mortgage. It means eventually 100 percent government control over the whole of life. The technology already exists. Everything going on now with these passports is driving to this point.

This is why the truckers are striking this way. It is an act of bravery but also of desperation. Once the tyranny of health passports arrives, there will be no escape. The window of opportunity to do something about this will have closed. So this is the moment. There might not be another one. Something needs to be done to fight for human rights and freedom, and put in place systems that make lockdowns and mandates impossible in the future.

This is the largest and latest example of the revolt and one that could make the biggest difference yet. But it is only one sign among many that the ruling elites in most countries have overplayed their hand. They have arrogantly imposed their plans for everyone else based on the opinions of only a few and without real consultation with experts with differences of opinion or with the people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the pandemic response.

In the US the revolt is taking many forms. There was the rally in D.C. this past weekend. It was impressive. Also the latest polls on political alliances show that the Democrats have lost a major part of their base. Virginia right now points to where this is headed. The party lost vast amounts of its political power in elections last year and now Republicans rule the state with great popularity.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at Biden’s latest poll numbers. I almost cannot believe my eyes. We are talking about an overall 14-point split between approve and disapprove. If this is an indication of what happens to the pro-lockdown political elite, it stands to reason that Trudeau should be worried.

In the Vietnam War, many Americans fled the draft by going to the safe haven on the northern border. That’s one way that Canada had earned its long reputation for being delightfully normal, peaceful, and mercifully boring. Pandemic policies in Canada changed that, with some of the longest-lasting stringencies in the world.

No one asked the workers. Now they are rising up. Nor does it matter that 90 percent of the Canadian public is vaccinated. Possessing that status alone does not mean that people no longer feel resentment for being forced to accept what they do not believe they needed and did not want in the first place. The vaccinated do not automatically give up their longing to be free and to have their human rights recognized.

The resistance to tyranny in our times is taking many unexpected forms. There will be many confrontations on the way, and there is still a very long way to go. At some point, and no one knows when or how, something has to give.

From the Brownstone Institute
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2022, 05:06:24 PM
Canadian truckers are AWESOME!!!
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on February 01, 2022, 01:35:27 PM
Canadian truckers are AWESOME!!!

https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/456/034/original/264e201a42e1889e.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/456/034/original/264e201a42e1889e.png)
Title: False Flag Operation: Soviet Canuckistan
Post by: G M on February 01, 2022, 04:31:59 PM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/321/189/original/8218a1be1675be6a.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/321/189/original/8218a1be1675be6a.png)

Remember this from the FEDsurrection?

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-holds-a-confederate-news-photo/1230505137

(https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-holds-a-confederate-news-photo/1230505137)
Title: PM J Castro
Post by: G M on February 01, 2022, 05:26:55 PM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/478/632/original/3cd374e7d60b025d.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/478/632/original/3cd374e7d60b025d.png)
Title: Re: PM J Castro
Post by: G M on February 01, 2022, 05:44:00 PM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/341/373/original/9860763723817392.jpg

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/341/373/original/9860763723817392.jpg)

I would love to see Justin's DNA compared to known samples from Fidel.


https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/478/632/original/3cd374e7d60b025d.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/478/632/original/3cd374e7d60b025d.png)
Title: Right?
Post by: G M on February 02, 2022, 10:05:07 AM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/526/902/original/89611d214754ef88.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/097/526/902/original/89611d214754ef88.png)
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2022, 10:21:16 AM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1634155/doubleplusgood-canadians-asking-police-to-join-with-winning-team
Title: RT coverage of Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2022, 03:06:36 AM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1648104/russian-tv-more-respected-than-most-american-us-media
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on February 07, 2022, 07:41:37 PM
https://patriactionary.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/update-on-the-fuzz-and-their-illegal-seizures-of-jerry-cans/
Title: The Spirit of the Devil's Brigade
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2022, 04:15:20 AM
The Spirit of the Devil’s Brigade: Time for a New Can-Am Alliance in Defence of Liberty
William Brooks
William Brooks
 February 7, 2022 Updated: February 7, 2022biggersmaller Print
Commentary

Much has been written about Canada’s trucker protests against vaccine mandates and other forms of government overreach imposed by authorities during the COVID pandemic.

Writing in The Epoch Times, former U.S. Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul said: “We Are All Canadian Truckers Now!” In fact, Canadian truckers have received high praise for their courage from various corners of the free world.

Over recent days it has been reported that an American version of the Canadian Freedom Convoy may be in the works. Speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Brian Brase, one of the organizers of a proposed “Convoy to D.C. 2022,” said his group was motivated by the Canadian example and is planning a protest in support of their own “God-given rights” in the USA.

A Shared History of Valour
Many Americans have expressed surprise and even amusement that Canadians, who some regard as hopelessly deferential denizens of a liberal nanny state, would take dramatic action in defence of their freedom.

It should be noted, however, that grassroots Canucks and Yankees have a history of coming together in defence of liberty. When American General George C. Marshall visited London in the dark spring of 1942, the chief of the British Combined Operations Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced him to a maverick strategist by the name of Geoffrey N. Pyke.

Pyke had a plan to train a special force that would be equipped to attack vital hydroelectric plants in Nazi-occupied Norway. Winston Churchill insisted it should be a combined force of Americans and Canadians.

When the Can-Am Special Service Force finally mustered at Fort William Henry Harrison, the commander was 35-year-old West Point graduate Lt. Col. Robert Tryon Frederick. His Canadian regimental commander was 34-year-old Lt. Col. Jack F.R. Akehurst, a former miner from Southern Ontario.

Canada had been in the war since 1939, so Canadian soldiers were drawn from standing regiments like the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. American recruits came from an assortment of lumberjacks, miners, trappers, farmers, game wardens, and other working-class occupations. Most of the men from both countries were hard-driving, blue-collar types, very much like the truckers who recently took their rigs to Ottawa.

The original plan for Norway fell through, but the 1st Special Service Force (SSF) went on to become one of the fiercest fighting units in World War II. First nicknamed “The Thugs,” “Freddy’s Freighters,” and “The North Americans,” the force finally became known by the German troops who faced it as the “Devil’s Brigade.” The SSF troops traversed from their original training camp in Montana to the Aleutian Islands, the Italian campaign, the Battle of Monte Cassino, Anzio, and the liberation of Rome.

Throughout it all, the Devil’s Brigade was reported to have captured the imagination of the entire Fifth Army, and to have won legendary acclaim on battlefields where heroism was the commonplace. Once, during the fight at Anzio, the brigade was ordered to take up a defensive position. One soldier’s sentiment summed up the entire brigade’s defiant attitude. “Defend? Hell,” he protested. “Let the goddamned Nazis do the defending!” Such is the posture of courageous men when the liberty of their nations is at stake.

A New Kind of Resistance
None of the Canadian truckers would suggest that their present actions rise to the level of sacrifice made by their forefathers on the battlefields of Europe. Nevertheless, they have displayed new levels of conviction and resistance that have been like a breath of fresh air for ordinary North Americans.

Members of the Freedom Convoy risk job loss, financial bankruptcy, possible arrest and even detention. We all saw the scenario that played out after the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal Rally” in the USA. The appearance in Ottawa of a mysterious masked man carrying a Confederate flag who had to be called out by legitimate protestors should be a poignant reminder of the false flag tactics that woke activists are capable of.

PM Justin Trudeau could defuse the situation in Ottawa by opening a dialogue with the truckers. So far he has chosen not to do so. Instead, on Feb. 1, he painted the protesters as being antisemitic, Islamophobic, anti-black racists, and transphobic and called on MPs to unanimously condemn them.

Although the PM has said that military intervention is “not in the cards right now,” one can’t help suspecting he might relish a heroic 1970 moment like his late father’s, who in the wake of two FLQ kidnappings invoked the War Measures Act.

When a Parliament Hill reporter confronted Pierre Elliot Trudeau with the question, “What is it with all these men and guns around here?” and asked how far the prime minister will extend law and order, he answered, “Just watch me.” This response garnered the admiration of some 85 percent of Canadians for his “decisive” action.

Should the CBC’s constant demonization of the truckers continue apace, one can’t help thinking that something similar might be “in the cards.”

Need for a Can-Am Alliance in Defence of Liberty
With regard to the truckers and their supporters, the negative coverage by Canada’s regime media has been effectively challenged by U.S. conservative radio hosts and prime-time Fox News personalities like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld.

It has been gratifying to watch American media outlets give freedom-loving Canadians more attention than they could ever expect from the present cultural establishment in their own country.

In a September 2021 Epoch Times column, I asked, “Can Truckers, Trumpers, and Radio Hosts Help Rescue America?” I argued that the progressive agenda put forward by the “crème de la crème” of a globalist intelligentsia is stealing the hopes and dreams of ordinary North Americans. “Sans frontières” prep school Marxists from both sides of the 49th parallel are always on guard to protect woke orthodoxy and put down dissidents.

Many children and grandchildren of World War II veterans didn’t feel compelled to attend university. They entered trades, started small businesses, or took promising positions in private industry and gradually rose through company ranks. Some of my own friends and family members made a decent living in the trucking business.

Since the late 1960s all of our institutions of learning and influence have become occupied by tyrannous domestic revolutionary movements reminiscent of those that the forgotten men of the Devil’s Brigade risked their lives to resist.

Ordinary Canadians and Americans want their jobs and businesses back and a fair share of their hard-earned dollars. They want their private lives back, the right to dissent returned, and the restoration of their dignity and the freedom to choose what medical precautions are best for themselves.

If common citizens, like truckers and others from both sides of the border, are willing to stand up for our liberty, we should, once again, endeavour to stand with them.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2022, 08:41:24 AM
second

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ottawa-officials-say-towing-companies-are-refusing-to-move-the-canadian-truckers-protesting-vaccine-mandates-in-the-city-s-streets/ar-AATCaJu?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
Title: 4'10" man busted for honking; Truckers win in Alberta
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 09, 2022, 03:12:36 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10491879/Moment-elderly-man-cuffed-arrested-two-Canadian-cops-HONKING-judge-outlawed-it.html

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/8/alberta-caves-canada-trucker-protests-ends-vaccine/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=oC2pVWTspEcyzzGcz0B2D7GR3pNKH2D8AcKF9t8w5yeviDMpH2wMbt1BaG5hQz8B&bt_ts=1644375578379
Title: Heh heh
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2022, 12:32:11 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/09/canada-freedom-convoy-alberta-ambassador-bridge/?fbclid=IwAR3Jm42nbbhst-UgGgCT1NkSOSQVhx6Oe9-4-5lK2lH44XGbExxvOZNi7VQ
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2022, 04:58:06 AM
"Canada’s capital is jammed, its border crossings are blockaded, and there’s no end in sight"

of course the next logical question :


can we get a few million truckers to block Southern border routes inland
add boat owners ....
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2022, 11:31:07 AM
Saw a seemingly credible whistleblower clip out of Canada asserting the Trudeau team is planning to plant a lot of guns on the truckers.

===========

GPF:

Guns and butter. Meanwhile, Canada will send $6.1 million worth of lethal weapons to Ukraine and offer a loan worth 500 million Canadian dollars ($390 million), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. The loan follows a previous loan of CA$120 million. The U.S. also offered Kyiv loan guarantees of up to $1 billion to support economic reforms.

Emergency action. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the emergency powers act to counter blockades and protests related to the government’s pandemic restrictions. In addition to giving law enforcement more leeway to act, Ottawa is securing critical transport areas and restricting the operability of crowdfunding platforms until they register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. The premiers of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec expressed concern about invoking the act.
Title: Good thing that can't happen here!
Post by: G M on February 16, 2022, 09:11:51 AM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/895/346/original/98fd4a8099b23904.png

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/895/346/original/98fd4a8099b23904.png)
Title: Re: Good thing that can't happen here!
Post by: DougMacG on February 16, 2022, 09:35:00 AM
Not that I support him, but it won't happen here if Rand Paul is President, for example.  Elections matter.  Picking your own candidates matters.

Doug Ford was the conservative who won Ontario, that no conservatives will support again.  Ontario conservative is perhaps analogous to Arizona Republican, cf McCain, Flake, Day-O'Connor.

Getting it wrong is part of the process of getting it right.

Title: The standard
Post by: G M on February 16, 2022, 09:44:21 AM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/792/464/original/e1464a1d58684e20.jpg

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/098/792/464/original/e1464a1d58684e20.jpg)

The whole world is watching.
Title: The switch has been flipped
Post by: G M on February 16, 2022, 02:49:22 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/397855.php

Good thing that can't happen here!
Title: Re: The switch has been flipped
Post by: G M on February 17, 2022, 07:19:41 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/397855.php

Good thing that can't happen here!

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/trudeaus-justice-minister-says-pro-trump-factor-will-decide-bank-account-frozen-emergency-orders-video/

Good thing they'd never do this here!
Title: Canada-US, Ben Shapiro on Tyranny in China
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2022, 08:00:54 AM
https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2022/02/16/canada-goes-tyrannical-n2603351

Well written re-cap of the crime committed by government and the consequences.
Title: Trudeau stands up for the rights of peaceful protests - in India!
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2022, 08:51:37 AM
https://youtu.be/ssHNImTnxjs

Trudeau voices support for farmers in India who blocked major highways to New Delhi for more than a year in 2021, saying at the time: “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.”

Always?
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on February 17, 2022, 11:00:06 AM
Who declares who is a terrorist

the Justice Dept.?

Biden?

Homeland security?

a bunch of shysters can declare who is a terrorist
and seize their lives

the problem is the Democratic Party has determined all opposition to them is to be somehow warped into Domestic Terrorism and it is up to the shysters to twist legal interpretation to authorize enforcement .

Good chance this is  how the Civil War will be conducted going forward.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on February 17, 2022, 11:05:59 AM
of note the Patriot Act expired
and so far has not been renewed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

I have no idea who can declare someone a terrorist

We would all be terrorists if many Dems had their way
just because we oppose them.
Title: Omar defends truckers
Post by: ccp on February 17, 2022, 01:26:11 PM
"https://www.newsweek.com/ilhan-omar-defends-freedom-convoy-donors-givesendgo-leak-1680116"

I am in shock and need an epi shot ! :-o
Title: And they call us...
Post by: G M on February 17, 2022, 08:18:38 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg

(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg)
Title: Re: And they call us...
Post by: G M on February 17, 2022, 08:23:20 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg

(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg)

https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/099/053/868/original/700c7cfa799e1633.jpg

(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/099/053/868/original/700c7cfa799e1633.jpg)
Title: Re: And they call us...
Post by: G M on February 17, 2022, 08:25:24 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg

(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Bro2.jpg)

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/warmington-cold-war-era-east-berlin-had-armed-checkpoints-now-ottawa-does-too
Title: Ottawa police may kill truckers' pets
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2022, 09:23:42 PM
https://www.thecountersignal.com/news/ottawa-police-may-euthanize-truckers-pets-as-punishment
Title: It's time!
Post by: G M on February 17, 2022, 10:16:07 PM
https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/02/separate-ways.html
Title: Hard choices
Post by: G M on February 18, 2022, 07:54:59 AM
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/what_will_the_canadian_truckers_do.html

Not just in Canada.
Title: I was just following orders hasn't been a viable defense since 1945
Post by: G M on February 19, 2022, 11:13:33 AM
https://instapundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/dana_loesch_canadian_mounties_trample_elderly_woman_02-19-2022.jpg

(https://instapundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/dana_loesch_canadian_mounties_trample_elderly_woman_02-19-2022.jpg)
Title: 7 Great Truths
Post by: G M on February 19, 2022, 04:52:42 PM
https://straightlinelogic.com/2022/02/18/seven-great-truths-by-robert-gore/
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2022, 12:15:23 AM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1726527/meme-wars
Title: Lines are being drawn
Post by: G M on February 20, 2022, 05:46:47 PM
https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/02/to-serve-and-protect.html#more

This will come here.

Plan accordingly.
Title: Understand where their loyalties lie
Post by: G M on February 20, 2022, 07:46:00 PM
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/wef-infiltration-rogan-redpilled-canadian-mp-cut-asking-accused-spreading-disinformation
Title: An important call for a general strike
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2022, 08:49:43 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1733899/important-call-for-general-strike-across-canada
Title: Move towards permanent expanded surveillance powers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2022, 08:59:14 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trudeau-government-moves-to-make-expanded-surveillance-powers-over-financial-transactions-permanent/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=26777851
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: DougMacG on February 21, 2022, 11:26:16 AM
"SO WE KNOW WHO DONATED TO THE CANADIAN TRUCKERS, BUT NOT WHO GHISLAINE MAXWELL’S CUSTOMERS WERE."

Just saying.    [Glenn Reynolds]
Title: Canadian Parliament extends emergencies act for 30 days
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2022, 06:21:11 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/canadian-parliament-votes-to-extend-emergencies-act-for-30-days/#slide-1
Title: Re: Canadian Parliament extends emergencies act for 30 days
Post by: G M on February 21, 2022, 06:54:30 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/canadian-parliament-votes-to-extend-emergencies-act-for-30-days/#slide-1

Just one month to stop the spread!
Title: The doxxing of Canada
Post by: G M on February 21, 2022, 08:20:02 PM
https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/02/the-doxxing-of-canada/

Good thing that won't happen here!
Title: Lucky for him, the ER visit and eye patch will be free!
Post by: G M on February 21, 2022, 08:51:54 PM
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/099/381/933/original/78e8c74fa2e6b4fa.mp4

Title: No bail for you!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2022, 09:16:43 AM
https://theprovince.com/news/canada/canadian-press-newsalert-ottawa-protest-organizer-tamara-lich-denied-bail/wcm/53165ade-d669-460c-b531-f50f08243bff?fbclid=IwAR0FiRhcAot_oIABfuegLVg6k_NKSmk_Y_esB_C5yVzY1R6qi5J9U8hSFGQ

PS:  Maybe we should be calling him Justin Castro?  Just sayin' , , ,
Title: Re: No bail for you!
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 09:25:11 AM
https://theprovince.com/news/canada/canadian-press-newsalert-ottawa-protest-organizer-tamara-lich-denied-bail/wcm/53165ade-d669-460c-b531-f50f08243bff?fbclid=IwAR0FiRhcAot_oIABfuegLVg6k_NKSmk_Y_esB_C5yVzY1R6qi5J9U8hSFGQ

PS:  Maybe we should be calling him Justin Castro?  Just sayin' , , ,

Fidelito Castreau
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on February 22, 2022, 10:21:18 AM
well we could call him "Justin Castro" in Toronto

and "Fidelito Castreau" in Montreal ......

 :wink:

In the US we call him worse names.......
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: DougMacG on February 22, 2022, 10:40:26 AM
well we could call him "Justin Castro" in Toronto

and "Fidelito Castreau" in Montreal ...

-----------------
The pro-government forces project that the honk honk of the truckers means Heil Hitler, right while the government moves toward Nazi-like Fascism at a speed that would make the former Führer blush.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2022, 03:49:27 AM
WSJ:

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Tyranny
Ottawa is now freezing bank accounts as if the truckers are terrorists.
By The Editorial Board
Follow
Feb. 22, 2022 6:35 pm ET


Modern liberals can hurtle from extravagant tolerance to suppression without batting an eye. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dramatizes the tendency.

Every trucker blockade in Canada has been cleared, yet Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government isn’t giving up the emergency powers it claimed to criminalize the protest movement against vaccine mandates. “This state of emergency is not over,” Mr. Trudeau said, citing the risk of future blockades. This isn’t how a nation of laws is supposed to function.

Mr. Trudeau’s new powers rely on defining the disruptive but peaceful truckers as a security threat akin to violent terrorists. His emergency law, a broad prohibition on public assemblies and even indirect support for them, ensnares tens of thousands of Canadians as “designated persons” whose assets must, per another of his new laws, be found and frozen by any financial institution, without due process or court supervision. There isn’t an appeals process in case of error, and so far 200 accounts are frozen.

Pressed for details, Justice Minister David Lametti initially explained that “pro-Trump” big donors “ought to be worried.” Now the government says it is targeting only the truckers, but its power has no limiting principle.

Mr. Lametti says, “We took measures that had been applied to terrorism and applied them to other illegal activity.” This is how a trucker who violated traffic laws or committed “mischief” becomes the target of financial tools designed to disable al Qaeda cells.

Bank-account freezes weren’t necessary to clear the blockades. That required police only to arrest those blocking traffic and to requisition tow trucks (already authorized by Canada’s criminal code). The asset freezes serve not to end an emergency but to incapacitate and intimidate protesters after the fact.

Parliament declined Monday night to revoke Mr. Trudeau’s emergency. He prevailed with the support of the socialist New Democratic Party, which once prided itself like others on the left as a defender of civil liberties. “We understood absolutely that we do not want to trigger an election,” said leader Jagmeet Singh, cowed by Mr. Trudeau’s threat. “That would be the worst thing to do in this crisis.”

The vote captured the left-liberal pas de deux that has led to abuse of emergency powers. Ottawa’s police chief was a progressive and, as progressives do, he let protesters violate the law with impunity—for weeks. This exasperated Canadians who wanted order and commerce restored. The Liberals blamed foreign interference and lambasted the truckers along trendy American lines as racists and insurrectionists. Then Mr. Trudeau stepped in to curtail the rights of political enemies.

In December 2020 Mr. Trudeau chided India for its police response to farmers’ blockades of Delhi. “Let me remind you,” he said, “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.” Mr. Trudeau prattles on about rights half a world away but won’t respect them half a block from Parliament.

Canada’s government is obliged by law to hold a public inquiry on the state of emergency. The courts could also rule against Mr. Trudeau, throwing into question convictions against truckers and leaving Canadians to wonder what the Prime Minister could have been thinking. Mr. Trudeau may then find there is a real emergency—to the survival of his government.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: DougMacG on February 23, 2022, 04:38:38 AM
While we fight against the expansion of authoritarian, totalitarian regimes Russia and China around the world , Canada turns into one.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on February 23, 2022, 06:04:49 AM
Trudeau won with the lowest popular vote in Canadian history

32%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_federal_election

Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: DougMacG on February 23, 2022, 06:48:29 AM
Trudeau won with the lowest popular vote in Canadian history

32%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_federal_election

And people in the US want to get away from the two party system which is supposed to move both sides to the middle and get 50+% of the vote for the winner.  Sorry, these other systems are not better.
Title: WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2022, 03:09:17 PM
Canada Instructs Banks to Unfreeze Freedom-Convoy Accounts
Finance official tells lawmakers process started Monday, days after police largely shut down Covid-19 protest in capital

Demonstrators outside Parliament earlier this month.
PHOTO: ED JONES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Paul Vieira
Follow
Updated Feb. 22, 2022 11:46 pm ET


OTTAWA—Canada told banks to unlock financial accounts belonging to individuals involved in a weekslong Covid-19 protest in Ottawa that police shut down this past weekend, according to a finance ministry official.

“They started [Monday] to unfreeze accounts,” Isabelle Jacques, a senior official in Canada’s finance department, told lawmakers Tuesday.

The step marks a reversal for the Liberal government, which has argued the sweeping power to freeze bank accounts and other assets was crucial during what was declared an emergency period.

The power became available over a week ago, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency measures in an effort to end a roughly three-week protest calling for all Covid-19 vaccine mandates and related social restrictions to be rescinded. The Ottawa protest, involving thousands of individuals and hundreds of trucks, inspired blockades at crucial U.S.-Canada border crossings.


A representative from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police didn’t respond Tuesday evening to a request for comment about why officials started unlocking financial accounts.


On Monday, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland defended the freezings, which some financial-law experts warned could affect people unaffiliated with the protest.

“These measures were put in place to disrupt illegal activity in Canada,” she said. “We were very clear that we would be following the money, that we would be using financial tools to disrupt illegal blockades and occupations. The focus absolutely has been on leaders and on the vehicles that were such an important part of the illegal blockades and occupations.”

“The way to get your account unfrozen is to stop being part of the blockade and occupation,” she added.

A key U.S.-Canada trade corridor has reopened for travelers and freight, marking an end to protests over Covid-19 restrictions that lasted roughly a week and caused economic repercussions. Photo: Nicole Osborne/Associated Press
The organizers of the Ottawa protest said in a statement posted on social media that the freezing of bank accounts and other financial assets has shocked Canadians. “The more severe implication, however, is that by using [emergency powers] as financial warfare, it will sow mistrust in both the banking system and the government and the repercussions will be felt for years to come.”

A representative for the organizers, who operate under the Freedom Convoy banner, didn’t respond to a request for comment about Canadian officials’ instructing banks to start unlocking accounts.



Under the same cabinet order allowing authorities to freeze bank accounts, police could also designate certain areas—including the streets around Ottawa’s Parliament Hill—as no-protest zones, where demonstrators could be subject to arrest, and compel service providers, like tow-truck operators, to remove vehicles.


The Canadian legislature voted Monday to extend the emergency powers for a total 30-day period. The extension still requires approval from the Senate, whose members are appointed by the prime minister and which rarely overturns measures approved by the lower house.

A senior RCMP official said the emergency powers, including the ability to choke off financial support, were crucial in ending the protest. The RCMP said financial institutions had frozen over 200 accounts belonging to individuals and one held by a payment processor with a value of 3.8 million Canadian dollars, equivalent to $3 million. Police had also ceased transactions involving 253 cryptocurrency addresses.

Police said this week that the accounts they told financial institutions to freeze belong to individuals considered central organizers in the Ottawa blockade, and owners or drivers of vehicles who refused to leave the area, but not people who donated to the protest through crowdfunding Web sites.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com

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Appeared in the February 23, 2022, print edition as 'Can
Title: Ottawa convoy, the view from the Left, Slate
Post by: DougMacG on February 24, 2022, 05:56:37 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/ottawa-freedom-convoy-truckers-protest.html
Title: Dahlia Lithwick
Post by: ccp on February 24, 2022, 06:55:08 AM
there is a whole wiki piece on this lib

of course Yale undergrad and JD from Stanford

and long list of liberal endeavors from
one of the self righteous:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlia_Lithwick
Title: Did Fidelito cause a bank run in Soviet Canickistan?
Post by: G M on February 26, 2022, 07:32:27 PM
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/02/25/did-trudeau-create-a-dangerous-run-on-canadian-banks-by-freezing-protesters-bank-accounts-n1561873
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 28, 2022, 03:04:34 AM
Ran across this meme:

"Pay Attention!  Not one western leader has condemned the actions of Trudeau!"
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2022, 12:41:28 PM
https://patriotpost.us/memes/86663-ymca-2022-03-03
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on March 07, 2022, 12:56:02 PM
Ran across this meme:

"Pay Attention!  Not one western leader has condemned the actions of Trudeau!"

Canada and Australia are the testing grounds for what they want to do here.
Title: Bitter Centurion from Soviet Canuckistan
Post by: G M on April 27, 2022, 10:49:35 AM
https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/04/drinking-from-firehose.html?m=1
Title: Huge gun grab legislation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 31, 2022, 04:58:25 AM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1531447066999799808
Title: Easier to take down Soviet Canuckistan
Post by: G M on June 10, 2022, 12:18:58 AM
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/truedough.jpg

(https://ace.mu.nu/archives/truedough.jpg)
Title: Trudeau: No right to use a gun for self defense
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2022, 02:12:37 PM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1535383099147689984
Title: Re: Trudeau: No right to use a gun for self defense
Post by: DougMacG on June 12, 2022, 08:36:46 AM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1535383099147689984

At the time that the US splits in two, there may be regions/provinces of Canada wanting to join the freedom side of the divide.
Title: Re: Trudeau: No right to use a gun for self defense
Post by: G M on June 12, 2022, 08:31:39 PM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1535383099147689984

At the time that the US splits in two, there may be regions/provinces of Canada wanting to join the freedom side of the divide.

Alberta for sure.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/wexit-alberta-join-united-states

Title: BitCen taking a break
Post by: G M on June 12, 2022, 08:33:35 PM
https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/06/shuttin-er-down.html

Title: Re: Trudeau: No right to use a gun for self defense
Post by: DougMacG on June 13, 2022, 07:43:18 AM
"Alberta for sure.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/wexit-alberta-join-united-states."


C'mon in!

Alberta has oil.  Saskatchewan has Uranium. (And good hockey.)

Maybe we just want a land bridge to Alaska like the Russians want to Crimea.
Title: Re: Trudeau: No right to use a gun for self defense
Post by: G M on June 13, 2022, 07:48:18 AM
"Alberta for sure.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/wexit-alberta-join-united-states."


C'mon in!

Alberta has oil.  Saskatchewan has Uranium. (And good hockey.)

Maybe we just want a land bridge to Alaska like the Russians want to Crimea.

Crushing Soviet Canuckistan's fake and gay military won't be an issue.
Title: Soviet Canuckistan continues the downward spiral
Post by: G M on July 30, 2022, 08:05:00 AM
https://bittercenturion.blogspot.com/2022/07/brand-new-lows.html?m=1
Title: Chinese penetration of Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2022, 02:08:01 PM
https://globalnews.ca/news/9253386/canadian-intelligence-warned-pm-trudeau-that-china-covertly-funded-2019-election-candidates-sources/?fbclid=IwAR2WIoCuVoPyMXG3U-S0HIzbBE25m0on7F4xy9Lf1QkVT2Q97YAG-zvD8aw
Title: Trudeau considered tanks against truckers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2022, 04:16:33 PM
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/11/25/private-documents-reveal-trudeau-was-going-to-use-tanks-to-stop-freedom-convoy-protests-n2616383
Title: WSJ: The Campaign to Re-Educated Jordan Peterson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2023, 12:02:11 PM
The Campaign to Re-Educate Jordan Peterson
For speaking his mind, the psychologist could lose his license.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
Updated Jan. 4, 2023 1:55 pm ET


You would think Canadians had learned by now not to tell Jordan Peterson what to say. The psychology professor became an internet sensation in 2016 after arguing that Canadian legislation amounted to “compelled speech” on gender pronouns. Now the College of Psychologists of Ontario is demanding that Mr. Peterson acknowledge he “lacked professionalism” in public statements and undergo a “coaching program” of remedial education.

Maybe the new commissars missed Mr. Peterson’s videos praising Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the man who said: “Live not by lies.” Mr. Peterson won’t comply, and he says he’ll now face a disciplinary committee that could revoke his license to practice.

The College of Psychologists, the profession’s governing body in Ontario, appointed an investigator in March to examine complaints about Mr. Peterson’s comments on Twitter and the popular Joe Rogan podcast. On Nov. 22, the College’s panel released a decision. Per images provided by Mr. Peterson, the panel ruled: “The comments at issue appear to undermine the public trust in the profession as a whole, and raise questions about your ability to carry out your responsibilities as a psychologist.”

What are these comments? Calling Elliot Page, the transgender actor, by her former name, “Ellen,” and the pronoun “her,” on Twitter. Calling an adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “prik.” A sarcastic crack at antigrowth environmentalists for not caring that their energy policies lead to more deaths of poor Third World children.


Calling a former client “vindictive.” Objecting to a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover of a plus-size model: “Sorry. Not Beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” In Canada even offenses begin with “sorry.”

“The impact risk in this case is significant,” the panel found, because the comments “may cause harm.” It counseled Mr. Peterson that coaching would help “mitigate any risks to the public.” The College of Psychologists declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality.

Mr. Peterson responded sensibly: “Who exactly was harmed, how, when, to what degree, and how was that harm measured”? He says there have been about a dozen formal complaints since 2017, each one demanding a formal reply. One complainant cited Mr. Peterson’s Twitter response to a critic worried about overpopulation: “You’re free to leave at any point.” Mr. Peterson thinks the investigations aren’t about mitigating harm but preventing free expression, and that “the process is the punishment,” giving online detractors an effective way to badger him.

Professional bodies are supposed to ensure that practitioners are competent, not enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office. But that’s the trend in Western medical associations and beyond. The Law Society of Ontario had pushed a mandatory diversity pledge for all lawyers until a members’ revolt took over the board and nixed the pledge in 2019. At the time, an Ontario lawyer objected to the “ever-expanding mission to socially engineer the profession.”

Sounds like an issue of id, ego and superego. You could ask a psychologist about it.
Title: Canada going after Jordan Peterson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2023, 11:23:34 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxjONzERjVo&t=7s
Title: BitCen on Soviet Canuckistan
Post by: G M on February 21, 2023, 07:50:56 AM
https://thenewbittercenturion.blogspot.com/2023/02/peak-idiocy.html
Title: Canada Man charged for self defense with gun
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2023, 04:18:25 PM
https://vidmax.com/video/218079-canadian-man-charged-with-second-degree-murder-after-shooting-armed-home-invader-with-legally-owned-gun-justin-trudeau-says-you-don-t-have-the-right-to-self-defense-with-a-gun-in-canada
Title: China tampered with Canadian elections
Post by: G M on February 26, 2023, 05:10:39 PM
https://thenewbittercenturion.blogspot.com/2023/02/teflon-trudeau.html

Good thing that can't happen here!
Title: Priorities in Soviet Canuckistan
Post by: G M on March 01, 2023, 07:14:32 AM
Maxime Bernier:

Trudeau doesn’t have enough money for disabled veterans and they’re offered MAID [assisted suicide] instead.

But he has enough to give $75k to civil servants who want to mutilate their bodies to look like the other sex.
Title: Chinese Penetration of Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2023, 10:52:36 AM
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/what-does-china-want-from-canada?fbclid=IwAR35IohFMRv7q4LFjpUoPqe90JxZUkCCJOIaGkfVl2H-_qVFmUyY6Z1T1Ao
Title: Good thing that can't happen here! Soviet Canuckistan edition
Post by: G M on May 11, 2023, 07:18:45 AM
https://jeremymackenzie.substack.com/p/canadas-coming-communist-cage?utm_medium=email
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2023, 04:16:05 PM
We must figure we are alone.  There is nowhere to run to.  Are we frogs in the pot slowly being heated to boil? 
Title: "Are we frogs in the pot slowly being heated to boil?"
Post by: ccp on May 11, 2023, 04:24:03 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull

I remember see on cable history show of Nero how he would take delight in torturing people this way

MY GOD !   :cry:
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on May 12, 2023, 06:35:50 AM
We must figure we are alone.  There is nowhere to run to.  Are we frogs in the pot slowly being heated to boil?

I have been assured that we can just vote harder and everything will be fine.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: ccp on May 12, 2023, 07:07:50 AM
"I have been assured that we can just vote harder and everything will be fine."

I disagree
No one on this board is assuring you voting  will guarantee our desired result

But we have to keep trying

Not voting WILL  guarantee we lose for sure !

so why don't we recognize this ?

keep voting keep fighting AND prepare for the worst. 








Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: G M on May 12, 2023, 07:20:30 AM
I vote. I know that at the federal level, it's meaningless. You should too.


"I have been assured that we can just vote harder and everything will be fine."

I disagree
No one on this board is assuring you voting  will guarantee our desired result

But we have to keep trying

Not voting WILL  guarantee we lose for sure !

so why don't we recognize this ?

keep voting keep fighting AND prepare for the worst.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2023, 08:05:11 AM
Woof!
Title: Trudeau, gun registration, confiscation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 19, 2023, 05:03:55 PM
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/justin-trudeau-2010-vs-2023
Title: Michigander plans the liberation of Canada
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2023, 08:39:02 AM
I suppose this could go under humor, but they do need liberating (and so do we).

Long, detailed plan.

https://notthebee.com/article/this-guy-came-up-with-a-very-detailed-plan-to-conquer-canada-and-people-are-loving-it-in-the-replies
Title: Canadian parliament applauds WW2 SS officer; follow up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2023, 07:41:59 AM
https://www.foxnews.com/world/canada-under-fire-applauding-literal-nazi-parliament-during-zelenskyy-visit

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/zelenskyy-trudeau-honor-actual-3rd-reich-nazi-standing-ovation?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1850
Title: More follow up; Canada-India
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2023, 02:13:38 PM
Canada, Are You Feeling Okay?

The immediate and most embarrassing problem for the Canadian government this morning is that the term “fought with the Nazis” does not always mean “fought against the Nazis” — it can also mean “fought in support of the Nazis.” If you’re going to invite a 98-year-old Ukrainian veteran of World War II to a session of Canada’s Parliament during a visit by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, you had better make darn sure you know which side he was on.

Alas, Canadian speaker of the House Anthony Rota did not do that, and managed to lead the Canadian House of Commons Friday in a standing ovation for a man who fought in the volunteer First Ukrainian Division, which “was also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS — referred to as the SS Galichina — and considered part of the Germany’s Nazi war machine”:

“We have here in chamber, today, a Ukrainian Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98.”

Everybody in the commons rose to their feet in applause as Rota spoke.

“His name is Jaroslav Hunka, I am very proud to say he is from North Bay and my riding of Nipissing—Timiskaming. He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero and we thank him for all his service.”

As those of you who have cracked a history book know, as messy, bloody, and complicated as the history of southeastern Europe is, the side that was fighting against Russia in World War II was . . . the Nazis. (Let’s pause to point out that the Soviets committed their share of war crimes and mass murder of imprisoned civilians and political prisoners in Ukraine, too. This is not a pro-Nazi statement, just an observation of the historical fact that the Eastern Front didn’t have many combatants we would consider to be good guys.) The history of the First Ukrainian Division/Galacia Division during World War II is dark, bloody, and grim, with plenty of executions of civilians and praise from Heinrich Himmler. The only silver lining is that in the 1980s, the Canadian government established a Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes, and concluded:

Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission. . . . In the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.

The Ukrainian delegation and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, upon learning of the facts about Hunka, apologized and insisted the invitation wasn’t cleared with them. But as our Dominic Pino observes, for an error like this to occur, it requires some spectacular historical ignorance on the part of more than one individual:

Political operations like this don’t get planned by one person. How many people in Rota’s office — and the prime minister’s office, which would have likely been involved in planning this event — missed that someone fighting against the Russians in Eastern Europe during World War II might have some connection to the Nazis? Or at the very least, remember that at that point Canada was allied with the Russians against the Nazis?

It’s not as though World War II is a minor event in Canadian history. Over a million Canadians served in the war, and Canadian forces successfully led the assault on one of the five beaches on D-Day. That ought to be a source of national pride and be firmly secure in national memory.

For what it’s worth, Rota says no one else in the Canadian government knew he was going to salute Hunka.

As if the embarrassment wasn’t bad enough, Canada just handed Russia more easy fodder for propaganda that the Ukrainians are the real Nazis, and that the dictator who’s breaking treaties, hinting at global conspiracies involving Jews, and constantly bombing civilians — the dictator who has kidnapped at least 19,000 children — is the real hero of this war.

This morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “Such sloppiness of memory is outrageous. Many Western countries, including Canada, have raised a young generation that does not know who fought whom or what happened during the Second World War. And they know nothing about the threat of fascism.” The Kremlin is a pack of damnable liars, but that’s a fair criticism of Canada.

The second biggest problem for Canada this morning is that it is now in something of a Cold War with India, because apparently the Indian government used its intelligence services to execute a Sikh activist in Vancouver.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was gunned down in the parking lot of a Sikh temple on June 18. He was an activist in the movement of Sikh separatists who want to create an independent ethno-religious state in the northern Punjab region of India.

To hear the Indian government tell it, Nijjar was a terrorist, the leader of a group called the Khalistan Tiger Force. The government issued an Interpol Red Notice for his arrest in 2014 and offered a reward of roughly $12,000 for information about him.

The Canadian government was and is skeptical of the Indian government’s claims, and treated Nijjar like just another dissident — although it’s possible there’s more to the story. Nijjar’s son claimed that his father was regularly meeting with Canadian intelligence officials:

Balraj Singh Nijjar, 21, said his father had been meeting with Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers “once or twice a week,” including one or two days before the June 18 murder, with another meeting scheduled for two days after his death.

The meetings had started in February and had increased in frequency in the following three or four months, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

He said he also attended a meeting between his father and the RCMP last year in which they were told about threats to Nijjar’s life.

His father was advised to “stay at home,” he said.

As of August 15, at least publicly, Prime Minister Trudeau’s stance was that all was well between the Canadian and Indian governments. He issued a statement on Indian Independence Day reaffirming that, “as the world’s largest democracy, India is — and will continue to be — a key partner for Canada in the promotion of our shared values of democracy, pluralism, and progress. We are committed to building on this rich history of collaboration, including under India’s presidency of the G20 this year.”

But during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi in early September, the statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi hinted that Trudeau had raised the issue of Nijjar murder:

Prime Minister [Modi] highlighted that India-Canada relations are anchored in shared democratic values, respect for rule of law and strong people-to-people ties. He conveyed our strong concerns about continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada. They are promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises, and threatening the Indian community in Canada and their places of worship. The nexus of such forces with organized crime, drug syndicates and human trafficking should be a concern for Canada as well. It is essential for the two countries to cooperate in dealing with such threats.

Then, a week ago, Trudeau addressed the Canadian House of Commons and dropped a bombshell: “Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.”

“Canada has declared its deep concerns to the top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government. Last week, at the G20, I brought them personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms. Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he continued.

If the Indian government’s version of events is right, then the Canadian government was, presumably out of naivete or denial, protecting and regularly meeting with a terrorist attacking India. If the Canadian government’s version of events is right, then the Indian government is just straight up assassinating its critics, legal citizens of foreign countries, on foreign soil, where they’re supposed to be protected by the other country’s citizenship and sovereignty.

What the Indian government is alleged to have done is uncomfortably similar to the Saudi government’s execution and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist and U.S. green-card holder Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Abusing activists, dissidents, and political prisoners on your own soil is bad enough. But running operations to kill them in somebody else’s country is meant to send a message that dissidents aren’t safe anywhere.

And this is an American news story and diplomatic headache as well. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported that after Nijjar was assassinated, the U.S. intelligence community provided the Canadians with additional information pointing to the Indian government’s role.

As the Times put it:

A spokesman for the White House declined to comment. U.S. officials were reluctant to discuss the killing because although Washington wants to assist Canada, a close ally, it does not want to alienate India, a partner with which it is hoping to expand ties as a counterbalance to China’s rising influence in Asia.

As the Journal put it:

U.S. officials are reluctant to talk about the alleged assassination plot at the same time the Biden administration is eager to forge closer ties with India to counter China, though President Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week the accusation was a “matter of concern.”

Note that President Biden hosted Modi at the White House a few days after the killing and Biden gushed about Modi’s commitment to democracy and universal human rights:

Mr. Prime Minister, we’ve met many times over the past few years, most recently in Hiroshima at the G7 Summit. And each time, I was struck by our ability to find new areas of cooperation.

Together, we’re unlocking a shared future of what I believe to be unlimited potential.

And with this visit, we’re demonstrating once more how India and the United States are collaborating on nearly every human endeavor and delivering progress across the board. . . .

Let me be — close with this: Indians and Americans are both peoples who innovate and create, turn obstacles into opportunities, who find strength in community and family, and who cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights, which face challenges around the world and each — and in each of our countries but which remain so vital to the success of each of our nations: press freedom, religious freedom, tolerance, diversity.

I mean . . . do Modi and his government “cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights”? That claim looks kind of sketchy this morning.

Diplomacy and foreign policy require us to prioritize what issues matter to us the most. Perhaps keeping India aligned with the U.S. against China is our most important priority. But turning a blind eye to Indian government agents’ just straight up murdering critics on the soil of an ally is a tough pill to swallow.

ADDENDUM: The Hollywood writers’ strike appears to be over. As discussed Friday, the pressure of next year’s film- and television-production schedule being at risk probably forced everyone to be more reasonable and find some acceptable compromise.
Title: Fidel was Justin Trudeau's dad
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2023, 11:42:29 AM
https://medium.com/@leibowitt/of-course-fidel-castro-is-justin-trudeaus-dad-nobody-has-debunked-anything-4db6fc8a9042
Title: Who is your daddy?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2023, 04:08:04 PM
https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/149/488/950/original/6e6727fd1d438621.jpeg
Title: Alberta invokes Sovereignty Act
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2023, 01:41:29 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSqFxWiB_iY&t=39s
Title: Cana
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 18, 2023, 05:33:30 AM
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/auditor-general-new-brunswick-covid-19-pandemic-response-education-health-justice-1.7058576
Title: MY: Canada police vs reporter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2024, 06:44:44 PM
https://michaelyon.substack.com/p/canadian-fascism-in-full-view?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-4b338986-dec1-4845-8031-794baae97f15
Title: Canada: Use of Emergency Powers was Unconstitutional
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2024, 02:33:50 PM
Canada’s Use of Emergency Powers to End Trucker Protests Was Unconstitutional, Judge Rules
Liberal government plans appeal of ruling on use of extraordinary powers to halt demonstrations over Covid-19 vaccine mandates
By Paul Vieira
Jan. 23, 2024 3:33 pm ET

OTTAWA—A Canadian judge ruled Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated the country’s constitution when he invoked extraordinary powers in 2022 to end a weekslong protest in the capital against Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

The Federal Court of Canada ruling marks the latest setback for Trudeau’s Liberal government, which is struggling in public-opinion polls with an election over a year away. The protests in Ottawa were led by the so-called Freedom Convoy, a group of truck drivers and tens of thousands of other individuals who said they were fed up with the social restrictions and vaccine mandates meant to contain the spread of Covid-19. The protest in the capital spawned copycat demonstrations at certain U.S.-Canada border crossings in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario, and abroad, like in New Zealand.

Canadian officials said Tuesday they would appeal the ruling from Justice Richard Mosley. Legal watchers say the case likely ends up with the Supreme Court of Canada, which may have to decide that either the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act was justified, or if not what limits future governments face in trying to invoke such powers.

Justice Mosley said the Trudeau’s government use of the federal Emergencies Act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness—justification, transparency and intelligibility—and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration.” He said the use of emergency powers “infringed” on provisions in the constitution. 

The judge said the Trudeau government argued emergency powers were required because of a national-security threat prevalent across Canada. Protesters sympathetic to the Freedom Convoy cause popped up in Coutts, Alberta, and Windsor, Ontario, to temporarily thwart commercial and passenger transit between Canada and the U.S. Police in those jurisdictions eventually removed the protesters.

Judge Mosley said the government’s characterization of the security threat “was, in my view, an overstatement of the situation known.” While the Trudeau administration was worried about the threat of other protests at border crossings, the judge said “the evidence available to cabinet was that these were being dealt with by local and provincial authorities, through arrests and superior court injunctions, aside from the impasse which remained in Ottawa.”

At the time, critics of the use of emergency powers said the government unnecessarily usurped people’s rights for what was essentially a policing issue contained to one city, Ottawa. Among the measures temporarily invoked was the freezing of bank accounts and other assets belonging to convoy protesters.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, one of the plaintiffs challenging the use of emergency powers, said the federal court decision “sets a clear and critical precedent for every future government” seeking to use the Emergencies Act.

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters in Montreal that, at the time the emergency powers were invoked, “our national security, which includes our national economic security, was under threat. We were convinced at the time, and I was convinced at the time, it was the right thing to do.” She said an appeal was forthcoming.

Last year, a judicial inquiry said that the Freedom Convoy protest was the result of simmering social, economic and political grievances exacerbated by the pandemic. In the end, the inquiry concluded, Trudeau was justified in invoking emergency powers because senior officials had information about threats “of serious violence,” adding a series of local policing mistakes “contributed to a situation that spun out of control.”

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com
Title: Because Eventually a Competent Despot Will Come Along
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 24, 2024, 09:21:31 PM
Hmm, not sure if this is the best place for this, but a Canadian court finds Trudeau’s handling of the truck strike was illegal.

https://www.cato.org/blog/canadian-court-trudeaus-use-emergency-powers-crush-protests-was-illegal
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2024, 04:54:20 AM
Yes, this is a good place for that-- witness my post prior to yours  :-D
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 25, 2024, 05:11:34 AM
Yes, this is a good place for that-- witness my post prior to yours  :-D

Yeah, but I didn’t see much in the way of “US” in these pieces (besides mirrored authoritarian predilections in some political circles) and hence hesitated.
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2024, 05:17:37 AM
Ah.

I realize that we have quite a few threads here and so I look for opportunities to minimize that.
Title: Canadian Truckers Found to have been Illegally Harassed & Arrested
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 27, 2024, 07:39:09 PM
The parallels between there & what is happening here are eye opening:

https://the-pipeline.org/canadas-laurentian-elite-cry-uncle/?fbclid=IwAR3idr9XB87jRa5hfphEy7YViYdxqaL1hhvshIXA_LejbwVGOSCWHqh30Yw
Title: Re: Canada-US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2024, 04:54:02 AM
And one of the ways the truckers were cut down was by shutting down their bank accounts.

Let us beware of banking laws and regs that under the name of preventing laundering, enable such totalitarian power.
Title: Jew Hatred in Canada
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2024, 07:52:24 AM
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20511/canada-jew-hate