Public Safety Canada wants Canadians to be fully-masked while enjoying the summer weather at the beach.
In a tweet posted to the department’s official Twitter account on Monday, Public Safety Canada reminded Canadians to wear masks outdoors and practice physical distancing.
— Public Safety Canada (@Safety_Canada) June 21, 2021
According to federal public health guidelines, the Canadian government recommends wearing masks in any shared space, whether indoor or outdoor, when there are people from outside of your household.
Included in a list of shared spaces are parks, backyards, outdoor markets, skating rinks and other recreational settings.
True North reached out to the Public Health Agency of Canada to seek clarification on mask wearing at beaches.
“As increased rates of community transmission of COVID-19 continue in many areas across Canada, and as new variants of the COVID-19 virus are identified, it remains important that you wear a non-medical mask,” a PHAC media relations official told True North.
Recent studies have shown that outdoor transmission rates for COVID-19 are very low and that outdoor recreation is generally safe in most circumstances and does not require mask-use.
As vaccination rates ramp up across Canada, several provinces are currently preparing to reopen and lift COVID-19 restrictions and public health orders.
Saskatchewan recently entered the second step of its reopening plan this week and announced that as of July 11, the province will end all COVID-19 public health restrictions.
Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney recently revealed that he intends on lifting nearly all restrictions in the province by this Canada Day.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed a former two-time Liberal candidate to the Senate on Tuesday.
Bernadette Clement’s appointment as an “independent senator” was announced by the Prime Minister’s Office alongside two other newly-minted senators Hassan Yussuff and James Quinn.
Both in 2011 and in 2015, Clement ran as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada in Ontario and lost both times to former Conservative MP Guy Lauzon.
Justin Trudeau and some of the Liberal team at the Highland Games! Check out the tartan! pic.twitter.com/RhUIq1OSR3
— Senator/Sénatrice Bernadette Clement (@Sen_Bernadette) August 2, 2015
“Ms. Clement is a lawyer, the Executive Director of the Roy McMurtry Legal Clinic, and current Mayor of Cornwall, who has devoted much of her life to the betterment of the city,” a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) writes.
“Through various professional and volunteer leadership roles, she has served many members of her community, including newcomers, women fleeing violence, and people with developmental disabilities. She is also a tireless advocate for injured workers, and the first Black woman to serve as mayor in Ontario.”
True North reached out to both Clement and the PMO for comment on the appointment but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.
According to the government, the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments is in charge of the candidate-selection process. The board is billed as an “independent and non-partisan” federal body which informs the prime minister on appointments.
The board was first created by the Trudeau government in 2016 as an alleged attempt to sidestep the partisan nature of Senate appointments.
At the time of the board’s creation, Conservative critics blasted the decision saying that it effectively doesn’t change the reality of Senate appointments and ultimately gives the prime minister discretion on who gets chosen for the role.
“This does nothing to fundamentally change how senators are selected. The Senate nominations list which the panel creates will remain secret and non-binding, and Prime Minister Trudeau will have carte blanche to appoint senators who don’t appear on any recommended list,” said a spokesperson for Senator Claude Carigan at the time.
For weeks and months, Canadians have been looking at places around the world reopen. Now, even within Canada, only a small number of provinces have plans to drop COVID-19 restrictions. True North’s Andrew Lawton points out that a lot of Canadians – especially in the mainstream media – are suffering from lockdown Stockholm syndrome and don’t actually want to reopen.
Also Andrew speaks to veteran Gordon Ohlke, who held a Canadian flag at Sir John A. Macdonald’s statue in Kingston to protest its removal last week. Plus, National Council of Resistance of Iran spokesperson Shahin Gobadi joins the show to break down Iran’s sham election of a mass murderer as president.
Parliamentarians are now demanding a warrant be issued against the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada Iain Stewart after he refused to hand over documents while censured before the House of Commons on Monday.
Stewart, who is the first non-MP to be summoned before the House for censure in at least 130 years, was rung out by members of the opposition after he failed to appear with the requested files concerning the firing of two scientists from a federal microbiology lab in Winnipeg.
“If this House doesn’t respect its own orders, who will? It’s as though someone said, ‘I don’t believe in this rule so I’m going to flout it. I don’t care about the consequences. I don’t care about the rules,’” Conservative MP Gérard Deltell said on Monday.
“We are 338 Canadians here in the House of Commons, but we are more than citizens. We are representatives of our constituents. When we don’t see respect for the House of Commons, we don’t see respect for Canadian citizens.”
On Monday, Deltell introduced a motion to have the Sergeant-at-Arms “enter into the premises of the Public Health Agency of Canada to search for and seize the documents.”
For weeks, members of the opposition have been pressing the Trudeau government to disclose details concerning why scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Kending Cheng were fired and removed from the National Microbiology Laboratory in 2019.
Xiangguo is being accused of sending samples of highly contagious diseases like Ebola and Henipah virus to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to recent media reports, several other scientists were also found to have collaborated with researchers tied to the People’s Liberation Army of China.
In total, seven scientists participated in six different studies published between 2016 and 2020 while employed by the Canadian government.
This was the third order that Stewart had defied. Liberal Health Minister Patty Hajdu also recently stonewalled disclosures after telling members of the Canada-China Relations Committee that “national security” concerns were behind why the federal government refused to disclose the information.
Iran just elected a mass murderer as its President.
That may sound hyperbolic, and I suppose it is.
I use the term “elected” loosely, since Iran is not a democracy. It holds sham elections that are widely boycotted by the Iranian people, and the list of candidates is limited to hardline Islamists within the brutal regime as approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The second part of the sentence, that new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is a mass murderer, is without question a statement of fact.
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.
But few Iranian officials have as much blood on their hands as Raisi.
When he was a young man, he rose up the ranks of the Islamist regime and by age 20, he became the Deputy Prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court. This court does not deal with criminal or civil matters, but instead focuses on political crimes.
This was in the 1980s, which was a particularly brutal time to be in Iran. Following the 1979 Islamist Revolution that overthrew the country’s monarch, and replaced him with a theocratic Ayatollah and Islamist government, the regime began cracking down on its political opponents.
The country’s prisons were filled with religious and political dissidents who were rounded up by Iran’s thuggish moral police force and convicted in dystopian kangaroo courts.
In the summer of 1988, Iran’s then-Ayatollah Khomeni issued a fatwa demanding all political prisoners be retried and if found guilty, put to death.
This ghoulish task was given to a number of government officials, which became known as the Death Commission — including 28-year-old Ebrahim Raisi.
Raisi and others visited Iran’s jails to interview prisoners.
The questions were simple. Are you a Muslim? No? Then that person would be put to death. Do you support the Mujahideen? Yes? That person would be hanged.
Within two minutes, this Death Commission would decide whether a prisoner would live or die — most were put to death.
This cruel madness continued for months, as the Death Commission ordered the killing of thousands of political prisoners in just a few weeks. Some activists put that number closer to 30,000.
The 1988 massacre has all the hallmarks of crimes against humanity. Families of the dead were not allowed to hold ceremonies or funerals, nor were they told where their loved ones were buried. The Iranian regime buried the bodies in mass graves and to this day has not acknowledged this unspeakable atrocity.
Fortunately for the world, Canada has acknowledged the 1988 massacre. The House of Commons unanimously recognized it as a crime against humanity.
I spoke to Kaveh Shahrooz, an Iranian-born Canadian lawyer and Senior Fellow with the Macdonald Laurier Institute, who led a campaign called Massacre88 in 2013.
“The idea was for Canada to become the first country in the world to adopt a motion that recognized these killings as constituting a crime against humanity,” he told me.
“If one country’s Parliament declared the other to have committed crimes against humanity, that is a pretty big obstacle.”
“Now we see the value, as Iran has a President who was very directly implicated in that.”
This will make it all but impossible for the Trudeau government to normalize relations with Iran — something he’s been promising to do since he was an opposition MP.
When it comes to the Iranian regime, the mask has slipped. While many on the political Left in Canada and the US — from Obama to Trudeau to Biden — insist that Iran is a country seeking to moderate and work with Western countries, the election of Raisi proves them wrong.
The Iranian regime has no shame, no remorse, no regard for human life and no interest in working with the West.
Maya Angelou said that when people show you who they are, believe them. Iran is reminding the world who they are — a fanatical backwards regime led by a butcher. It’s time the world listened.
Police are investigating after two Catholic churches were burned to the ground in the South Okanagan region.
The two churches, Sacred Heart and St. Gregory’s, went up in flames early Monday morning. Both churches were on land belonging to the local Penticton and Osoyoos Indian Bands, respectively.
In a statement, South Okanagan RCMP said the fires have been deemed suspicious but will not speculate on the cause or motive at this time.
“Should our investigations deem these fires as arson, the RCMP will be looking at all possible motives and allow the facts and evidence to direct our investigative action,” said Sgt. Jason Bayda.
“We are sensitive to the recent events, but won’t speculate on a motive.”
Several weeks ago, it was alleged that human remains were found at the nearby site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The residential school was operated by the Catholic Church until its closure in 1978. A report from the company doing the investigation is expected to be released this month.
Penticton Indian Band Chief Greg Gabriel inferred that the burnings may have been a reaction to the discovery.
Speaking to Penticton Western News, Chief Gabriel condemned the burnings and said their church was an important part of their community.
“There are some mixed feelings. I understand there is a lot of anger in our community with the discovery of those 215 innocent, poor children’s graves. There is a lot of hurt. But this type of action doesn’t help if in fact it is found to be deliberate,” he said.
“This church has been here since 1911. It was a fixture in our community. Many in our community were members and involved in services. Some of our elders are attached to the church and have come here today very sad. They are hurting but also they understand.”
Last week, a Catholic Church in Vancouver was vandalized with graffiti. The vandals spray-painted the words “killers” and “release the records” on the front doors of St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Parish.
CBC News interviewed a pundit who was paid $16,950 by the Trudeau government without disclosing the commentator’s financial ties.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe was interviewed by the public broadcaster several times throughout 2020 despite receiving the sole-sourced contract from the federal government on August 24th of that year.
CBC made no mention of Tombe’s ties to the government while he appeared to defend Ottawa’s pandemic efforts. Tombe was only referenced as an “academic” before appearing on the network.
During his segments, Tombe claimed that “blaming Ottawa and moving inward does little good.” He also stated that “every single Canadian benefited” from the Trudeau government’s spending initiatives.
“That service was for constructing a detailed model of interprovincial trade,” Tombe told Blacklock’s.
Also according to Tombe, he “did not contribute to CBC Calgary during the time of that contract.”
According to CBC’s Journalistic Standards, a pundit’s ties must be disclosed by the broadcaster when appearing on air.
“It is important to mention any association, affiliation or special interest a guest may have so the public can fully understand that person’s perspective,” the policy states.
This is not the first case the CBC has invited pundits to speak on air without disclosing that they received funds from the Trudeau government.
In 2020, the CBC aired a segment with pundit Amanda Alvaro without revealing that she received thousands from the government for contract work.
According to records, Alvaro was paid $16,950 for a Department of Foreign Affairs contract, while also receiving another contract worth $24,997 to coach a Liberal minister on media engagement.
A school trustee with the Greater Victoria School District claimed that he was working on decolonizing his “mind and thoughts” for National Indigenous People’s Day, while also calling on people to do their part in decolonizing public education.
“I recognize the incredible amount of work we have to do to decolonize our systems, especially in public education,” tweeted Trustee Ryan Painter.
“I also recognize the work I am doing in an ongoing project to decolonize my mind and my thoughts. We all need to do our part.”
National Indigenous People’s Day is celebrated on June 21st every year as a way to recognize the diversity of cultures and contributions that First Nations and Indigenous people have made to Canada.
True North reached out to Painter to ask him to clarify what he meant by decolonizing “thoughts and minds” but did not receive a response by the deadline.
According to British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner (BCOHCR), “decolonization” entails the “ongoing process of recognizing and removing colonial powers.”
“Decolonization is the dismantling of the process by which one nation asserts and establishes its domination and control over another nation’s land, people and culture,” writes the BCOHCR.
“It is the framework through which we are working toward undoing the oppression and subjugation of Indigenous peoples in what is now known as British Columbia and unlearning colonial ways of thinking and being.”
Recently, Victoria city council unanimously voted to cancel its Canada Day celebrations citing the apparent discovery of human remains near a former residential school in Kamloops. According to Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, hosting the event would interfere with reconciliation efforts.
Instead of celebrating Canada’s national holiday, councillors supported having a day of reflection on reconciliation.
The woke mob wants to erase our history, tear our country apart and cancel Canada Day but nobody is standing up to them. In fact, there is a growing political and intellectual movement that seeks to legitimize the woke worldview.
Baseless claims from the woke left are no longer being challenged. Instead, political and media leaders allow radical woke leftists to use Canada as a punching bag.
True North’s Candice Malcolm says defending Canada is now passé. It is much more fashionable to condemn Canada as a uniquely terrible, systemically compromised failed state.
Quebec MNA Claire Samson has crossed the floor to become the Conservative Party of Quebec’s first representative in the province’s national assembly.
On Friday, Samson announced she would be joining the Conservative Party of Quebec (CPQ) just days after being ejected from the governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).
Samson says she did not feel respected by CAQ leadership, noting that she had multiple meetings with CPQ leader Éric Duhaime before deciding to join the CPQ.
“I did ask a lot of questions at the caucus, I think I was becoming a burden,” she said of her time in the CAQ.
“It’s easier for a party when everybody follows the thinking and the line, which is not always my case …. I feel that with Mr. Duhaime, I will be able to express my opinion, so I’m very relieved.”
Samson was ejected from the CAQ after it was revealed she had donated $100 to the CPQ. CAQ leadership ruled that Samson could no longer be part of their caucus as the CPQ publicly opposed the government’s COVID-19 lockdown measures.
Samson sat as an independent for three days until she officially switched her affiliation.
Samson has served as MNA for Iberville since 2014. In the 2018 provincial election, Samson won with 47.6% of the vote.
The CPQ has been a minor force in Quebec politics until recently. In the 2018 provincial election, the party received just 1.46% of the vote, which was an increase from its showing in the previous election.
In April, the party elected Duhaime, a notable columnist and radio host, which has reignited discussion about the CPQ and its place in Quebec politics.
An Angus Reid poll from June 8 found that 8% of Quebecer plan on voting for the CPQ in the next election.
With a member in the National Assembly of Quebec, the CPQ will receive a crucial platform to promote itself. Samson will be able to pose questions to the government on behalf of the part and also hold press conferences from inside the assembly building.
