The City of Victoria awarded thousands of dollars to an “anti-capitalist” magazine and a local Black Lives Matter arts event as part of its new granting program “Everyday Creativity.”
An appendix of all the approved applicants lists a $1,000 grant being approved for “(UN)Productive: A Zine on Art & Anti-Capitalism.”
“A zine project that addresses the entanglement of artmaking and capitalist notions of productivity and labour, particularly while in a pandemic,” the project description reads.
According to the project’s web page, the magazine is meant to “stimulate conversation and practice around anti-capitalist modes of productivity in a playful and self-reflexive way.”
Another grant worth $2,250 was awarded to a project titled “Black Lives Matter Arts Event”.
“A social and dance event to engage and support marginalized groups in the community through the performing arts. The event will include a mixed dance event, info session and dialogue,” the grant description claims.
Among the other winning initiatives which received funding are an indigenous-themed colouring book which received $4,700, an open call by the Dance Days Festival for dance films “shot on phones” which received $2,200 and $5,000 for a grief-centred art retreat.
Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said her government was given a mandate for its carbon tax during the last election.
“Our government has put a price on pollution across the country, a carbon price. We fought the 2019 election on that decision, and we were re-elected,” Freeland said.
“We really believe we do have a national mandate to move forward.”
Freeland neglected to mention the government’s December expansion of the carbon tax, despite previous claims that it would not increase.
Freeland was appearing on a stakeholder relations panel at the virtual summit, which aims to kick off the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative.
Included among the panelists were International Monetary Fund executive director Kristalina Georgieva and Salesforce CEO Marc Beniof.
While the Liberals were re-elected after implementing the carbon tax, Freeland neglected to mention the government’s December expansion of it, despite previous claims that it would not increase.
This was pointed out in a tweet by Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Aaron Wudrick.
“Fought the election on it?” he said. “They explicitly said they weren’t going to increase it, then after the election announced an increase.”
Freeland went on to explain that in December the Liberal government put in place an “ambitious plan” to meet and exceed the 2030 targets set by the Paris Accord. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether the carbon tax is constitutional.
During the panel discussion, Freeland said the key to balancing green targets and social inclusion is to build a green agenda. She also talked about the potential for job creation with sustainable retrofits to homes, building electric car charging ports and the Liberals’ pledge to plant two billion trees.
“These are three concrete examples of how Canada intends to build a green agenda into a recovery and jobs agenda,” said Freeland.
What Freeland omitted from her answers was the direct cost to taxpayers the carbon tax would incur, and how the rebates failed to offer any significant return.
Justin Trudeau accuses anyone who talks about the Great Reset of spreading conspiracy theories, but this week Chrystia Freeland and Patty Hajdu are speaking at the Davos Agenda, a World Economic Forum summit to officially launch the Great Reset Initiative. True North’s Andrew Lawton explains what the so-called reset is all about, plus how the mainstream media weaponized a young man’s tragic death to score pandemic points.
Also, Rebel Commander Ezra Levant joins the show to talk about the government fining him for publishing a book about Justin Trudeau.
The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) warned today that demand for access to mental health services will likely spike once Canada emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) data, more Ontarians required mental health care between March to December 2020 than in the same period the year before.
“Ontarians worried about contracting COVID-19 or having a loved one do so; about finances and job security; about their children and parents tolerating the loneliness and isolation. To make matters worse, we did so without our usual coping mechanisms,” said OMA President Dr. Samantha Hill.
“We have been unable to hug each other, to surround ourselves with friends and family or to ‘get away.’ It’s been harder than usual to go to the gym, to access psychological therapy and even buy groceries. Prolonged stress like this taxes our mental and physical health. The resulting need for mental health services further increases the pandemic deficit of health care.”
For the period from August to December 2020, the province’s healthcare system saw a 8% spike in major mental health visits and a 12% increase in other related visits.
The findings by the OMA echo similar concerns by the Canadian Mental Health Association which raised the alarm earlier this month about an impending mental health crisis.
“We are hearing from people unable to secure timely treatment. Many people who had the ability to access online supports [increased by the provincial government during this period] feel that the online support isn’t giving them the care they need,” said CMHA Nova Scotia executive director Pamela Magee.
“We are hearing this as well from those who are contemplating suicide and have lost hope. They feel there isn’t a door they can walk through to receive timely and adequate care.”
According to a poll commissioned by the CMHA in cooperation with the University of British Columbia, around 40% of Canadians reported that their mental health has worsened over the course of the pandemic.
Former finance minister Bill Morneau is dropping his bid to be the next secretary-general of the OECD after realizing he lacked the support to advance in the race.
Morneau said in a Tuesday announcement that he was proud of his campaign, but didn’t have the backing of enough member states.
My statement on the OECD campaign // Ma déclaration sur ma campagne pour devenir secrétaire général de l'OCDE. pic.twitter.com/mFmtkcmpQ2
“I have decided to withdraw from the race to become the next Secretary-General of the OECD, as I do not have support from enough members to continue to the third round of the campaign,” wrote Morneau.
“I am proud to have used this opportunity to talk about issues that matter to Canadians and to the world- the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the fight against climate change, inclusive growth and seizing the opportunities of the digital world.”
The former Toronto Centre MP resigned from cabinet and the House of Commons in August in the midst of the fallout from the WE Charity scandal.
During a parliamentary testimony over his involvement in the $900 million student service grant debacle, Morneau admitted that he had paid back the charity $41,000 for free travel he received in 2017, while he was still Canada’s finance minister.
Trudeau and his own family were also implicated in the scandal after it was revealed that his mother, wife and brother had received nearly half a million dollars in pay from WE for various speaking engagements.
Following the admission, media reports signalled that Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau butt heads over the issue.
Since leaving the position to pursue the OECD role, the federal government assigned 19 public sector workers to help the former minister on his campaign.
The Ottawa city councillor leading an effort to change the name of a local street called Trump Avenue says that he waited until former US president Donald Trump left office until moving forward with the request.
According to Ottawa City Councillor Riley Brockington, consultations to rename the Central Park Community avenue began this past weekend to gauge the level of interest from local residents.
“I committed to assist them in surveying every household to determine if there is support, or not,” Councillor Brockington told True North.
“I have been asked for a number of years, by local residents to change the name. I did not feel it was appropriate to do so while the past President was in office. He has since left, more requests were received and I agreed to circulate the survey.”
On the Ottawa page of the online messaging board Reddit, the street’s renaming has picked up steam already reaching 763 upvotes by the time this article was written.
“Right now it is up for a vote from all residents on the street, then if there is a majority of 50%+1 residents to start the process it’ll follow up with a renaming process to decide on the new street name,” said an anonymous resident in a screenshot of an Ottawa Central Park Community Facebook group posted to the page.
News reports show that since at least 2016, the very year Trump first won office, residents have been calling for the street’s name to be changed.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says that Canadians struggling with drug addiction should not be sent to prison.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, O’Toole said that drug addicts deserve better services from the government rather than prison sentences.
“It is not appropriate to have very serious sentences for Canadians who have drug problems,” O’Toole told a reporter from Le Devoir.
“We must provide assistance to Canadians who have drug addiction problems and health problems like that. I am not for very serious penalties for a crime like that. “
O’Toole was asked to comment on a decision by Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel to avoid prosecuting people for non-violent drug possession cases. O’Toole only reiterated that he does not support legalizing any new drugs.
In August, Roussel ordered public prosecutors to only prosecute “the most serious cases” of drug possession and to consider alternative forms of justice.
“For example, where the possession relates to a substance use disorder, prosecution should generally be avoided where the offender is enrolled in a drug treatment court program or a course of treatment provided under the supervision of a health professional,” a spokesperson told CBC.
Public Health experts believe that Canada’s opioid epidemic is only going to get worse. In most parts of Canada, 2020 was the deadliest year on record for opioid deaths.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam has spoken in support of decriminalizing opioids as a means to combat the worsening crisis.
It’s been a year since Canada was nearly brought to a standstill by illegal rail blockades and the issue of anarchist violence has yet to be seriously addressed by our political elite.
Last January, peaceful protests in support of hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs were derailed by a handful of far-left extremists willing to use criminal means to achieve their political goals.
Reports from the time detailed how some radical activists lit fires underneath incoming trains, attempted to arrest the premier of British Columbia at his home and even aroused suspicions in Quebec that AK-47s were present at the blockades.
Meanwhile, anarchist websites which still remain active today, openly published instructions on how to create Molotov cocktails and how to use the highly flammable industrial material thermite to attack critical infrastructure.
Skip ahead only a few short months later, Canada was once again threatened by anarchist violence dresed in the garb of last Spring’s anti-racist protests which began in response to the US killing of George Floyd at the hands of police.
While the protests did not reach the same deadly and fiery conclusions as those south of the border, some extremists clearly saw it as an opportunity to import far-left violence into Canada.
One Black Lives Matter inspired protest in Montreal resulted in a handful of far-left radicals looting local small businesses and attacking police, eventually prompting other businesses in Toronto and Vancouver to board their storefronts in anticipation of further protests.
Following the looting and violence in Quebec, another anarchist website published a screed to supporters stating that looting Canadian businesses was legitimate “because everyone should have nice things.”
In the case of the rail blockades, to most observers, it was clear that these were the actions of few political extremists trying to hold the country hostage. In fact, an Ipsos poll on the issue found that an overwhelming 61% of Canadians thought the criminal blockades were unjustified.
If that’s the case, why has the federal government refused to denounce domestic terrorism coming from the extreme left?
At the time, when I asked Public Safety about anarchist websites calling for violence against police officers, I was told that they do not “investigate movements or ideologies.”
Except just today as the House of Commons returned, parliamentarians voted to call on the federal government to list the notorious alt-right group the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity and to further clamp down on far-right extremism.
Clearly, if the political will is there, our government can act quickly and decisively to protect our citizens from the threat of radicalism on both sides. Yet on the issue of far-left violence and extremism, the political will has been either non-existent or is being actively suppressed.
In truth, the Canadian intelligence and security establishment is well aware of the threat anarchist extremists pose to our national security.
According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s Public Report 2019, anarchist violence is listed as an example of ideologically motivated violent extremism alongside ethno-nationalist violence, the incel movement and anti-LGBTQ violence.
Similarly in the US, the White House has taken recent steps to list the amorphous anarchist group Antifa as a designated terrorist entity, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation has even gone as far as charging two women with terrorist activities after they were recorded attempting to derail a train close to the Canadian border.
For any reasonable government, these developments should be concerning enough to at least prompt further investigation, except this is not the case in Ottawa.
Instead of addressing the real and well-documented threat that anarchist violence poses, the federal government continues to sit on its hands waiting around for the next time Canada might be brought to its knees by a few radicals.
Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and Health Minister Patty Hajdu will be among the world leaders and global elites speaking as the World Economic Forum officially launches its “great reset” this week.
Freeland is scheduled to participate in an “Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism” panel Tuesday evening, which aims to examine “how investors and governments can work together to advance stakeholder capitalism in their region.”
Health Minister Patty Hajdu will be speaking on Thursday afternoon’s “Restoring Cross-Border Mobility” panel, which looks at the “policies, practices and partnerships…needed to reopen borders and enable essential travel in a safe and sustainable way.”
Neither Freeland nor Hajdu responded to a request for comment from True North.
Normally held in the Swiss alps, the World Economic Forum has adopted a virtual model for this week’s series, which kicks off the Great Reset Initiative and asks global leaders to “choose innovative and bold solutions to stem the pandemic and drive a robust recovery over the next year.”
“The time to rebuild trust and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems grow stronger around the world,” the World Economic Forum says.
The World Economic Forum’s “great reset” argues the world must adopt a new form of capitalism as it rebuilds from the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The week’s first keynote speaker was Chinese chairman Xi Jinping, who spoke about the importance of expanding globalization and supporting the United Nations-led world order. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres spoke Monday afternoon, calling for countries to embrace a “new social contract and global deal,” plus a form of multilateralism that goes beyond existing international organizations.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised eyebrows in September when he spoke about the pandemic’s “opportunity for a reset” at a United Nations conference. When Conservative member of parliament Pierre Poilievre pointed out the similarity between Trudeau’s remarks and the Great Reset Initiative, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of spreading “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories.”
The World Economic Forum is hosting its annual meeting in Singapore at the end of May.
