A church in Windsor and another in Aylmer, Ont. are facing charges for holding services allegedly in contravention of the Reopening Ontario Act.
Under Ontario’s lockdown rules, places of worship cannot have more than 10 people present, regardless of the building size – a rule that Pastor Aaron Rock of Windsor’s Harvest church says denies houses of worship the right to open safely using the same methods grocery stores and liquor stores use.
True North’s Andrew Lawton says the targeting of churches not only violates religious freedom, but even flies in the face of the science used to justify lockdowns.
On Christmas Eve, the Hamilton Police Service asked residents in the rural Millgrove area to check their surveillance systems for suspicious activities after a December 19 home invasion.
The victim’s rural home near 5th Concession Road West and Millgrove Side Road was entered by two suspects while the victim was inside with friends.
The suspects, who police describe as both being male, black and between the ages of 18 and 25, demanded specific items while pointing a handgun at the resident.
According to police, the victim was then assaulted before he fled his home to find safety.
Around 8:00 p.m. that night, police arrived and treated the victim’s minor injuries on scene. By that time, the suspects had left the residence and had not taken any property.
“From the information gathered, detectives believe this was a targeted incident,” wrote the Hamilton Police Service.
“At this time it is not known how the suspects arrived and left the area. Police are asking area residents to check their surveillance cameras for any suspicious activity and to contact police.”
Police describe one of the suspects as wearing a black winter jacket with white/grey fur around the hood and a blue medical mask, while the other suspect had a black pull up “scarf type” mask.
Both suspects are believed to be around 5’10’’ in height and of a thin build.
Anyone with information is being asked to contact Detective Constable Jared Millington at 906-656-8966, or to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
According to an Access to Information document, senior management at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) praised the government finance agency as “an important part of the engine that helps Canada operate.”
“We make Canada better. We contribute to the quality of life in Canada by striving to deliver world class tax and benefit services that touch the lives of over 36 million Canadians,” management said.
The remarks were made in response to a contest application to be named one of “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” in 2020. The winners were chosen by MediaCorp Canada Inc. of Toronto.
In their application, the CRA listed a number of employee benefits including, eighteen weeks’ paid maternity leave, 5% bonuses for executives, up to six weeks’ paid vacation, fifteen paid sick days a year, 45 hours of family-related paid leave annually, an annual barbeque and a certificate signed by the Prime Minister for ten years’ service.
In September, as a large swathe of Canadians remained out of work due to the ongoing pandemic, 29,000 CRA employees received a retroactive salary increase.
The tentative agreement, which was negotiated by the Public Service Alliance of Canada, will give CRA employees an average annual raise of 2.2% retroactively.
In November, the CRA also refused to elaborate on a spike in audits of small businesses who benefited from the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.
Despite calls from the Conservatives to pause audits on small businesses, the CRA would not provide further information on where auditors have been allocated since relocating 3,000 of them to focus on coronavirus programs on April 21.
Justin Trudeau has racked up the biggest deficit in Canadian history in a matter of two months. Our deficit is nearing $400 billion and our national debt is a whopping $1.4 trillion.
To make matters worse, there is no oversight and no accountability for this historical amount of spending. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has acknowledged that there is a lack of information available to the public.
True North’s Leo Knight hopes the Trudeau government treats the taxpayer better in the new year – but he highly doubts it.
Free lunch buffets in the House of Commons lobby for MPs during emergency parliamentary sittings cost taxpayers $891 a day.
According to government documents obtained by Blacklocks Reporter, the cost for eleven days of emergency sittings during the coronavirus pandemic totaled $9,806 or the equivalent of $891 daily.
This is the first time in 29 years that the costs of the free lunches were disclosed to the public.
In addition to the free buffet in the lobby, MPs are allotted a $21 per diem for lunch.
According to Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, many MPs would treat themselves to the free lunch buffet despite not being on House duty. Many MPs would pocket their $21 per diem at the same time.
“There are many, many, many MPs that have lunches at committees, lunches in the lobby, and still claim the full per diem,” “You are supposed to, by the rules, if you have a lunch in the lobby, eliminate that lunch from your daily per diem. I don’t know how many Members are doing that,” said Lukiwski during an operations committee meeting in November.
“If we’re going to talk about cutting down on costs, let’s go all the way. I mean, let’s really talk about saving taxpayers’ dollars.”
As MPs enjoy their free meals, many Canadians are struggling to make ends meet as a result of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns.
According to Canada’s Food Price Report 2021, Canadians are expected to pay up to $695 extra for groceries next year. The growing cost of meat, bread and vegetables will contribute to an 3% to 5% increase in food.
Further, food bank usage has increased across Canada. According to Feed Ontario, Ontario has seen a 26.5% increase in first-time visitors at food banks across the province since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the pandemic began, politicians across Canada have worked tirelessly thinking of ways to curb the coronavirus – and so far, the only solution they can think of is closing down small businesses and locking Canadians down.
Are lockdowns the only viable solution to combat the coronavirus? Or is there a better way?
Anthony Furey hopes politicians across the country take a break this holiday and gain some perspective.
Despite Justin Trudeau’s many proclamations about the importance of press freedom, his actions show it’s not a liberty he cares about in practice.
After True North’s Andrew Lawton did a year-end interview with Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, the Liberals sent out a fundraising email maligning True North as “far-right” and “anti-immigration.”
This isn’t just an attack on True North, but on all those who view and support True North’s content, Lawton says
Provinces across the country are imposing stricter lockdown measures as cases of COVID-19 continue to rise. For many Canadians this has meant that their only major shopping choices are ‘big-box’ stores or online.
This has had a crippling effect on the economy and put many small companies out of business, but what has it done to the free market as we understand it?
Sam Eskenasi says that the free market in Canada has not only been substantially harmed, but that rationale for doing so simply isn’t borne out by the data.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Trudeau government’s second carbon tax could increase the cost of gasoline by 50 cents by the year 2030.
The government’s recently unveiled Clean Fuel Standard aims to reduce the carbon content of liquid fuels — including those used in transportation and heating homes.
The Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAE) is raising the alarm about the potential harm such an increase would have on low and middle-income households.
“This is extremely cruel. It’s a real mess and it’s completely self-inflicted. I have been in government, and I have never seen a government inflict this kind of cost on consumers,” said CAE President Dan McTeague, who is also a former Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs.
“This is a bad day for consumers. They just got hit with a hammer. This will have a cascading effect on costs that will impact everybody.”
The new regulations which require the ethanol content to increase from the current rate of 5% to 13%, are expected to take effect in 2022 with further proposed hikes over a seven-year period.
A notice by the Department of Environment even acknowledged the fact that the hike would disproportionately impact ordinary households and those currently struggling with “energy poverty.”
“These impacts will not be distributed evenly,” claimed the Department of Environment notice.
“[An increase] would disproportionately impact lower and middle income households.”
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled an increase to the federally imposed carbon tax scheme. Under the latest hikes, Canadians can expect the carbon tax to reach $170 a tonne by the year 2030 with $15 a year spikes each year until it hits that target.
In an interview with True North for the four-part documentary series Green Hypocrisy, Canadian Taxpayers Federation Federal Director Aaron Wudrick told Candice Malcolm that the carbon tax scheme would harm Canadians who are reliant on gasoline for their daily lives.
“Things like gasoline are pretty inelastic so if you have to drive to work or you live in a place where there’s no transit, you have to pay for gas,” said Wudrick.
“So even if the price of gas is $1.00 a litre or $1.50 a litre, you’re still going to do it so you don’t actually reduce the emissions but you do increase the cost to use.”
