Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed the number of public figures who have refused to condemn the ongoing spate of church burnings in western Canada.
“All of a sudden, Canada looks a lot like the Soviet Union. Seems like we’re exaggerating a little bit but [leftist groups] are burning Catholic and Anglican churches in recent days,” Carlson said.
“But Canada’s leaders aren’t condemning the burning of churches, they’re endorsing the burning of churches.”
Watch as Tucker Carlson slams the public figures promoting the church burnings happening across Western Canada and says that Canada "looks a lot like the Soviet Union". #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/bcANWDurd0
In recent weeks, inspired by recent claims of burial sites located at former residential schools, far-left radicals have vandalized or torched at least 25 churches and knocked down several prominent statues.
Elected officials including NDP MP Niki Ashton and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have excused the behaviour of the mob, justified these riots, and in some cases, even cheered them on.
Carlson took particular aim at BC Civil Liberties Association executive director Harsha Walia, who tweeted “burn it all down” in response to an article on two Catholic church burnings in British Columbia.
Carlson also pointed out how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s top advisor Gerald Butts said the church burnings were “totally understandable.”
“This is not the Spanish Civil War, this is now — in Canada,” Carlson said.
In addition to the torching of places of worship, the American media personality also acknowledged the toppling of the Queen Victoria statue by vandals on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature.
Despite calls for calm from Indigenous leaders, the church burnings continue. True North is keeping track of all the latest church burnings and acts of vandalism. Check out our interactive map here.
Grade 9 students in Ontario will soon be learning a “decolonial” and “anti-racist” approach to mathematics.
According to documents posted on the education ministry’s website, a new approach to math is needed to combat the field’s inherent white supremacy.
“Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions,” the document reads.
“The Ontario Grade 9 mathematics curriculum emphasizes the need to recognize and challenge systems of power and privilege, both inside and outside the classroom, in order to eliminate systemic barriers and to serve students belonging to groups that have been historically disadvantaged and underserved in mathematics education.”
Changes to Ontario’s math curriculum were announced last year by Education Minister Stephen Lecce.
The government previously said the new curriculum will bring early math streaming to an end, a practice that the government claims created barriers for racialized and marginalized groups.
Under the province’s proposed curriculum, however, teachers will be instructed “to create anti-racist, anti-discriminatory learning environments” and “infuse Indigenous knowledges and perspectives meaningfully and authentically into the mathematics program.”
The education minister’s spokesperson Caitlin Clark told The Toronto Sun that the new curriculum reflects a changing world.
“We are taking action to ensure all children, especially those facing barriers to success, have meaningful pathways to quality learning, graduation, access to post-secondary education and good-paying jobs,” she said.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper believes the world should shun the Iranian regime’s incoming president.
Speaking at a virtual sitting of the Free Iran World Summit, Harper said Ebrahim Raisi’s election is further evidence of the regime’s disregard for human rights.
“Ebrahim Raisi is a criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity. He is a living symbol of the folly of trying to appease (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s) regime,” Harper said.
The former Prime Minister believes the global community should be wary about any communication with the regime under Raisi’s leadership.
“Shame on any government in the world that would sit down and try to negotiate anything with an administration led by Ebrahim Raisi.”
In his speech, Harper said he believes the election of Raisi will embolden extremist forces and is an attempt to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
“All pretenses of a so-called moderate candidacy were dispensed with,” said Harper. “The government I led was never fooled by the supposed existence of a phantom moderate faction.”
While the Iranian nuclear deal was scrapped by former US President Donald Trump, the Biden administration has made a return to the deal one of his top foreign policy priorities.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has indicated in the past that his government would support the controversial agreement.
Canada’s 22nd prime minister joins a number of experts who are sounding the alarm about Iran’s new leader.
In June, True North’s Candice Malcolm wrote that Iran elected a mass murderer as its President, citing Raisi’s position within the government’s Death Commission in 1988 led to the massacre of thousands of political prisoners.
“Most officials in the Iranian regime have blood on their hands. Iran operates a strict Islamist theocracy that routinely puts to death political dissidents, gay men and women, religious minorities, peaceful protesters and even teenagers,” Malcolm wrote.
“But few Iranian officials have as much blood on their hands as Raisi.”
Canadians eager to travel to the United States are fed up with the government’s travel restrictions.
According to a new survey by Nanos Research, 63% of Canadians believe all restrictions on travel across the Canada-US border should be lifted before the end of the year.
When asked what the timeline should be for ending the restrictions, 34% said this fall, 15% said immediately and 14% said this summer. Only 16% of respondents believe the restrictions should be lifted next year.
When broken down regionally, Canadians from the Prairies were more likely to say the travel rules should be eliminated immediately, with 28% of respondents saying they were comfortable with the border reopening tomorrow.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government is currently looking at what rules could be eased “in the coming weeks” to allow fully-vaccinated international travellers cross the border. For unvaccinated tourists, Trudeau says it’s going to be “quite a while” before Canada is ready for them.
“We will continue the reopening of our borders, but we will do it in a way that ensures the ongoing safety of all Canadians,” he said.
Restrictions on travel across the Canada-US border have been in place since March 2020. The government has extended the restrictions on a monthly basis ever since.
In recent weeks, a number of prominent US officials have called for an end to the border closure.
In June, US Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-D) had some harsh words for the Trudeau government when he learned the Canada-US border would remain closed for another month.
“There’s no other way to say: another month’s delay is bulls–t,” tweeted the Congressman.
New York Congresswoman and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik also called for the Canada-US border to begin reopening in June.
In a letter penned to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Stefanik wrote that Canada’s border restrictions have been largely unfair to Americans, noting that the US allows Canadians much more freedom.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also argued for the Canada-US border to reopen as residents of both countries have suffered from the closure for too long.
Approximately 39% of Canadians think that the Liberal government’s current immigration targets are too high.
According to a June 28 Angus Reid Institute poll, 22% of Canadians responded by saying that the number of people the Liberals want to immigrate to Canada was “far too many” and that the “number should be way lower.” Meanwhile, an additional 17% called the target “too many.”
On the other hand, 34% of Canadians said they were content with the targets and called it “about right.” Meanwhile, only 13% want to raise immigration levels, with 8% claiming that current targets were “too few” and 5% responding that “the number should be way higher.”
When broken down regionally, opposition to increased immigration was the highest in Saskatchewan where 54% of people wanting immigration levels to be lowered and in Alberta where 50% of people polled responded the same.
Substantial levels of people in Ontario and BC also wanted to lower immigration levels with 39% and 35% respectively of people supporting a reduction.
Instead of responding to popular support for lower immigration targets, the Trudeau Liberals have stated that they intend to follow through with plans to ramp up Canada’s immigration levels to historic highs.
In March, Liberal Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told a House of Commons immigration committee that the federal government hopes to increase Canada’s immigration targets by 117%.
The current Liberal targets are 401,000 new immigrants for the year 2021, which is a significant increase from 2020 when Canada welcomed 184,370 new immigrants.
Other studies including one commissioned by the Department of Immigration also found that most Canadians do not agree with the current targets.
In that survey, out of 1,500 people polled, 57% said Canada should limit the number of immigrants coming to the country.
Similarly, a survey commissioned by True North last year found that 76% of Canadians wanted a total pause on immigration into Canada until the COVID-19 threat has passed and until Canada’s economy has fully recovered.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is heavily invested in Chinese propaganda film companies, account disclosures reveal.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Board currently holds $7 million in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affiliated film studio stocks. The holdings include a $4 million share in China Film Co Ltd. which is a state monopoly.
The shares are being held by the Board despite past commitments to focus on human rights when it comes to investing Canadians’ money abroad.
“We believe that strong human rights practices contribute to long term value. Engaging with companies in our portfolio on this topic is therefore an important part of our strategy,” wrote the Board.
China Film Co Ltd. has produced various propaganda films praising the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping. One film titled Amazing China depicted “Xi’s vision of a globally resurgent nation.”
“This is our great homeland. This is the new era. This is the magnificent painting of the people’s livelihood,” a CCP review of the film wrote.
Additionally, the Board holds $3 million in Alibaba Pictures Group shares which produced pictures like the World War II film The Eight Hundred which claimed that the Second World War was won by “a Communist-led resistance.”
This is not the first time that the Board has been revealed to have large holdings with companies tied to the Chinese government.
In 2020 it was revealed that the Canada Pension Plan was one of the largest shareholders of Tencent Holdings Ltd. a Chinese company implicated in human rights abuses. A total of $3 billion in shares was held by the Board at the time.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. is the creator of WeChat, which actively blocked criticism of the Communist Party’s COVID-19 coverup and participated in the ongoing detention of Uyghur men, women and children.
In February, at the prompting of Conservative MPs, the House of Commons declared that the CCP’s mass human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang was classified as a genocide.
The Trudeau government plans to launch a national ad campaign to lecture “non-racialized Canadian middle-aged adults” about systemic racism, as part of its anti-racism strategy.
The marketing campaign will cost taxpayers $3.3 million. The Canadian Heritage department says the project is set to launch later this year.
The government’s marketing campaign will target so-called “racism hot spots” in Canada, which include places such as Hamilton, Thunder Bay and the province of Quebec. The government says these locations are being targeted because of a high volume of police-reported hate crimes.
According to the government’s procurement notice, the campaign’s goal is to have more Canadians fighting systemic racism by raising awareness through marketing, social media and public engagement.
“In this COVID-19 context, Canadians are face-to-face with a unique opportunity to reimagine the social contract in ways that place anti-racism, equity, reconciliation and human rights at the heart of the recovery process,” the documents read.
The government’s marketing campaign comes in light of a recent poll by Angus Reid, which revealed that a clear majority of Canadians reject the notion that Canada is a racist country.
According to the report, 66% of Canadians disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that “Canada is a racist country.” Meanwhile, only 34% of Canadians either agreed or strongly agreed that Canada was racist.
Ever since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, politicians across Canada have lectured Canadians about systemic racism.
In April, a True North review found that 15 of Canada’s largest cities and towns have made a declaration in some form or another that they are systemically racist institutions.
Politicians are well-known for speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
At no time did we see more of that behaviour than during the past 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic when we expected our politicians to show some modicum of leadership.
Sadly, for the most part, that leadership has been lacking in so many areas.
Take the excruciatingly long lockdown in Ontario by a Premier who has spent far too much time listening to pollsters and public health officials (who want a COVID zero outcome) instead of actually sticking to the goalposts he himself set for reopening the economy.
Even though Ontario residents have far surpassed the vaccination goals set to move to Stage 3 of the reopening – with 78% with one dose and 46% fully vaccinated as of this past week – restaurants are being forced to wait one more week to permit indoor dining and retail to allow more shoppers in the door without the persistent line-ups outside.
In Toronto, Mayor John Tory crowed this past week that 50% of Torontonians are fully vaccinated.
This was shortly after he tweeted this seemingly tone-deaf message:
In July, we recognize Independent Retailer Month.
Shopping locally supports the economy, creates sustainable cities and builds confidence in the community, while enabling local businesses to prosper and grow. pic.twitter.com/FRkvx3xTcX
It’s tone-deaf because Toronto’s small businesses – forced by fearful politicians to lock down completely since last November — are barely hanging on by their fingernails, if at all. Ontario’s hair and nail salons finally re-opened to limited capacity on June 30 but Main St. retail is struggling to get up and running due to the 25% capacity restrictions.
The doors to gyms, spa services and indoor dining are still locked tight and heaven knows how indoor entertainment venues will manage to survive.
While Premier Doug Ford set the parameters and promptly ignored them, not a word of concern was ever uttered by Tory or other GTA municipal leaders that keeping us in the strictest lockdown in North America might not allow local businesses to “prosper and grow.”
Since we were not permitted to “shop locally” for so many months, we turned to online retailers and to stores south of the border as I did while in Florida – which were open for business throughout with the proper safety precautions (masking, hand sanitizing and physical distancing.)
We were dining indoors in Florida in April and visited both hair and nail salons more than once.
The world did not come to an end and the economy continued to operate on as many cylinders as it could. At least people still had jobs and there was an effort to keep things surviving, if not prospering.
Contrast that to Toronto, a city is hardly “sustainable” at this point. Take a stroll down any major street where shops and restaurants predominate and the For Lease signs stick out like a sore thumb in every third or fourth store window.
The business of the city’s downtown has been replaced in some areas by the drug-addicted and beggars, who have made their homes in Tent Cities in nearby parks.
Dan Kelly, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) says it’s “always positive” when a senior politician promotes and supports independent business owners – and that proclaiming July as Independent Retailer Month in Toronto will bring more attention to locally owned businesses.
He says, however, that independent retailers in Toronto really needed Tory’s help during the 224 days they were locked down since COVID began.
“Despite a lack of any evidence that small retailers were a source of COVID spread, the City of Toronto did nothing but support the province’s lockdown measures,” he said.
Midweek, when Toronto’s medical officer of health Eileen DeVilla pronounced that we’d be wearing masks in Toronto until at least Oct. 1 – long after most states south of the border and Canadian provinces have dropped their mask mandates – Tory insisted that he wants to see as “many things open as soon as possible, but safely done.”
That’s akin to being a little bit pregnant.
Besides, it’s rather disingenuous, considering Tory has spent much of his efforts in recent months cheerleading about the need for vaccines amid promises that if everyone gets vaccinated, things can open up as soon as possible.
But when people get vaccinated, they find things are not opening up — that politicians are really using the carrot and stick approach to keep us compliant.
The idea that the city of Toronto cares in the slightest about small business was quickly dashed this week when the mayor’s executive committee voted to listen to the vocal minority and change the name of Dundas St. – a move that will cost upwards of $7-million, if not far more.
Let’s first talk about the sheer gall of city councillors approving this foolish, costly, unnecessary exercise as businesses struggle to come out of a pandemic if they’ve managed to survive at all.
But don’t forget the move will impact 4,500 businesses, who might if they’re lucky “could be eligible” for support for half the cost of changing their signage under the city’s Commercial Façade Improvement program.
As for recovery post-COVID, the city’s economic development department has a plan, according to city officials, to help get small businesses and the cultural sector back up and running — one that hands a mere $5-million to business improvement areas to help.
Frankly, the plan should be simply to let them open their doors. After 16 long months, they know how to take precautions without our government overseers giving them advice.
Kelly says that for every hour and every day we are in lockdown, more and more businesses are making the decision to pack it in.
“They don’t have the staying power,” Kelly said. “They’ve already been holding things together with tape and glue.”
The CFIB predicts 75,000 or 1 in 5 small businesses will be forced to shut down in Ontario before this is all over.
Just take a walk down any Main Street in downtown Toronto and it will quickly become evident it is already over for far too many small shops.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says he will fix Canada’s controversial Fiscal Stabilization Program to make it more fair for the Western provinces.
Speaking on Thursday in Calgary, O’Toole said Canada’s fiscal programs need urgent reform to end what the Conservatives have called the “mistreatment of Western Canadians.”
“Even as Alberta’s economy suffered with massive reductions in resource revenues, Albertans continued to pay more than their fair share to support the rest of the country,” he said.
“That’s why a Conservative government will fix the Fiscal Stabilization Program as a first step to ensuring that Western Canadians are treated equally in our confederation.”
It's time Alberta be treated fairly by Ottawa. A Conservative government will make sure priorities for Alberta are met. Here's how. https://t.co/XnsCCmf3hs
The Fiscal Stabilization Program was created in 1967 to provide additional funding for provinces that see a sudden drop in revenues.
O’Toole’s proposal will allow Alberta to qualify for more funding and create a $5 billion “Equalization Rebate” to compensate the provinces like Alberta which have paid more into the system historically.
O’Toole says the proposed reforms comes from a 2019 reform proposal that Canada’s premiers unanimously endorsed but was never implemented by the Trudeau government.
“Alberta is struggling, and Albertans quite reasonably expect the rest of the country, including the federal government, to be in their corner,” said O’Toole.
“To begin to address the fact that Albertans have been asked to pay more than their fair share, a Conservative government will implement an Equalization Rebate, to give Albertans back some of the extra money they’ve paid during these tough years.”
Despite paying the most in various equalization schemes, Alberta has received very little benefits over the decades, even after suffering an economic crisis from the decline of the energy sector last year.
In a campaign-style speech, O’Toole said that only the Conservative Party will make Confederation more fair for the West and keep the energy sector alive.
“Canada’s Conservatives are here to offer a choice – more of the same from Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and the other parties on the left, or restoring fairness in the West with Canada’s Conservative,” he said.
