The federal government was duped into hiring fake nurses, engineers and other fraudsters findings by the Public Service Commission show.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the commission audited credential validation and found that the public service was “not immune to such fraud.”
“Indeed, past Public Service Commission investigations have uncovered a variety of fraudulent credentials claimed by applicants and appointees to positions such as nurses, architects and engineers,” said the Results of The Horizontal Audit on Credential Validation report.
The audit reviewed resumes at fifteen federal agencies and found that out of 287 employees, seven of them had credentials which could not be verified, while thirteen didn’t have the proper documents to show that their credentials were vetted.
“Concern over fraudulent or inadequate academic and professional credentials goes beyond the potential impact on the integrity of the staffing system or the reputational risk to the public service,” said the commission.
“The greater risk is assumed by Canadians if such fraud occurs with professionals who have a role in ensuring their health, safety or security.”
The investigation was sparked by Sylvie Lemeling, who was appointed as the national coordinator of the Canadian Coast Guard after having purchased a fake degree from Belford University, a Texas based operation running out of a post office box.
The fraudulent university sold degrees to prospecting clients for as much as $1,500.
Solidarity among transgender Peruvians and how Black Lives Matter is helping Quebec youth cope with the coronavirus pandemic are among the programs receiving a piece of millions of dollars in COVID-19 research funding from the federal Liberal government.
The $4 million funding package was announced by Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains Monday, to be distributed to 172 different projects in the social sciences and humanities.
“These grants provide short-term and timely support for partnered research activities that will inform decision-making in the public, private or not-for-profit sector,” said a news release.
Among the funded research projects is “COVID-19, Serious Leisure, and Risk Tolerance: A case study of a crossfit gym”, which received $24,246 in funding.
Taxpayers will also be billed $25,000 for research on “mapping Canada’s potential to shift to a cycling nation post-pandemic.”
Meanwhile, researchers at McGill University will be given $25,000 to study “how the Black Lives Matter Protests have given Quebec Black young adults a chance to recover from the damaging psychological effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Two University of Toronto researchers, alongside a researcher from Peru’s Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, are getting $24,660 for “Testimonios of COVID-19 Violence and Solidarity among Peruvian Transgender Communities.”
The Liberals also devoted tens of thousands in taxpayer funding to pressing matters like “tackling systemic inequalities through the arts,” “re-conceptualizing young people theatre collaborative playwriting initiative for digitally mediated spaces,” and “music listening habits of Canadians during COVID-19 pandemic.
Other projects which also received funding include:
COVID-19. Identifying mental wellness needs for racial/ethnic minority factory workers during and post- public health emergencies: to inform COVID-19 response – $25,000
COVID 19 The Stream You Step In: Creating a Communal Theatre Experience in the Time of COVID – $19,942
COVID-19 and Sex Trafficking: Understanding Intersections and Amplification of Precarity for Survivors of Labour Exploitation in the Sex Industry in the Durham Region – $24,498
COVID-19: Advocating for resiliency through understanding the differential impacts of COVID-19 for Black Montrealers – $24,508
The funding is coming through the Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative. First announced in May, the program is overseen by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
“SSHRC’s investment in these diverse partnered research projects will advance critical knowledge needed to address the impacts of COVID-19 and the social, cultural and economic challenges facing citizens, communities and businesses in Canada and around the world,” said SSHRC President Ted Hewitt.
A full list of the award recipients can be found on the SSHRC website.
True North has learned that veteran journalist Wendy Mesley will not be returning to hosting her CBC show The Weekly with Wendy Mesley this year.
“The Weekly will not be returning this fall and we are talking with Wendy as to what’s next for her at the CBC,” CBC Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson told True North on September 21.
On June 9, 2020, Mesley was suspended from her hosting duties after using the “N-word” in an editorial meeting earlier that month. A CBC associate producer who witnessed the speech act demanded disciplinary action be taken against Mesley.
An investigation was launched, and on June 25 Mesley announced the investigation was complete and she had been disciplined.
“I now realize that my abuse of the word was harmful. I hurt my colleagues, my team, and the CBC. For that I am deeply sorry and ashamed,” Mesley said in an apology posted to Twitter.
In her statement, Mesley admitted to a second incident where she uttered the forbidden word: in September 2019, she had read aloud the title of the 1968 book “White N******* of America” by Quebec author Pierre Vallières. The book analyzes historic class relations in Quebec society and posits that a Marxist revolution would liberate the underclass that is the Quebec francophonie.
The Weekly, which used to air on Sundays at 11:00am ET, has now been replaced with The Sunday Scrum, according to CBC TV program schedules.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is all the rage in the mainstream media and liberal circles these days. Many are gleefully speculating that Trudeau will announce some form of basic income in his Throne Speech next Wednesday.
The concept of UBI is that the government pays unemployed and underemployed citizens a basic salary so they can enjoy a better standard of living. Believe it or not, this used to be a popular conservative idea.
In the 1960s, free market economist Milton Friedman led the charge in advocating for UBI — but nothing like the programs being floated out today.
Friedman said it would be more efficient and less paternalistic for the government to simply write cheques to citizens as opposed to administering expensive government programs run by bloated bureaucracies.
In other words, he proposed eliminating government bureaucracies that deliver social services, healthcare and even education — leaving all of these programs to be administered by charities, nonprofits and businesses. Instead, citizens would be given cash and left responsible for making their own choices and paying their own bills.
Today’s conversations around UBI are very different, and no liberal is proposing corresponding cuts to welfare programs. Today’s UBI payments are being proposed in addition to our vast and generous government welfare programs. Hence why most conservatives now oppose the idea.
Canada just had its own experiment with UBI — the Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB) which provided $2,000 per month to Canadians who claimed to be out of work as a result of Trudeau’s COVID-19 lockdown.
In the 28 weeks the program existed, it cost taxpayers upwards of $76 billion — prompting the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer to ring the alarm bell and call Trudeau’s spending spree “unsustainable.”
In a recent study, the Fraser Institute calculated that a permanent CERB would cost $465 billion annually, while even a humbler version of UBI — something more like Old Age Security that provided $600 per month to low-income Canadians — would cost $132 billion per year.
I recently sat down with Conservative Finance critic Pierre Poilievre for my YouTube show the True North Speaker Series, and he explained in no uncertain terms why he opposes basic income schemes.
“Most Liberal spending schemes are undesirable…. This one is also mathematically impossible.”
Poilievre told me that even at the low end, this program “would be five times what the federal government spends on health care transfers, 10 times what we spend on the armed forces [and] six times what we collect in GST revenues.”
Despite left-wing voices claiming UBI will help the poor, the reality is that giving people money to do nothing creates its own set of problems.
As American conservative journalist Ben Shapiro points out, the real problem with unemployment is that it creates a crisis of purpose. Working hard and providing for your family gives you pride, satisfaction and purpose that welfare cheques simply do not.
What happens to people who are paid not to work? They often struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives. Some turn to drugs, others begin looting and rioting for no reason other than that they can. Sadly, others feel so much misery and despair that they resort to suicide — which we’ve seen a signifiant uptick of since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Dr. Jordan Peterson has made a similar point about those who suffer from addiction. The worst thing you do, he says, is give an addict money to fuel their addiction. They cannot help but indulge in their worst vices, which is perhaps why opioid deaths have spiked since Trudeau rolled out CERB payments.
UBI may be a trendy idea in liberal circles, but in reality, these programs fail on social, economic and moral grounds. Trudeau would be wise to scrap any notion of a basic government income and instead focus on getting his government’s fiscal house in order.
J.K. Rowling, author of the legendary Harry Potter series, released a new book on September 15, 2020: “Troubled Blood,” the fifth installment of the crime fiction series that she pens under the name Robert Galbraith.
Because J.K. Rowling expressed her support of gender-critical feminism earlier this year, detractors were all too happy to re-launch their smear campaign against her once they caught wind that one of the characters in Troubled Blood was allegedly a cross-dresser or a “man in a dress.”
“J.K. Rowling Proves Her Commitment to Transphobia in Her New Novel,” a Vanity Fair headline claimed.
A bookstore in Perth, Australia announced they will no longer stock any of the Robert Galbraith novels, to make the store “a safer space.” The shop owners said “There are more worthy books to put on the shelf, books that don’t harm communities and won’t make us sad to unpack them.”
The hashtag “RIPJKRowling” started trending on Twitter, as her former fans declared she was dead to them.
All this fuss can be traced back to a review in The Telegraph that claimed the book featured a “transvestite serial killer,” and the book’s moral seemed to be “never trust a man in a dress.”
But defenders of J.K. Rowling pointed to a review of Troubled Blood that contradicted The Telegraph, and stated that the cross-dressing detail amounted to a few lines in the entire book.
I didn’t know what to believe. So naturally, I had to read the 900-page book myself.
The storyline boils down to this: detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are investigating the 1974 murder of Dr. Margot Bamborough, and one of the suspects is a serial killer named Dennis Creed.
Readers learn that Dennis Creed had sexual proclivities with women’s undergarments, and that he lured female victims into his white van by tricking them into thinking that he was a woman, or at least “queer,” with a wig and pink coat.
It is hinted that Creed may have derived enjoyment from dressing as a woman, because one night he put on his female co-worker’s coat and sang a song, but it is simultaneously implied that he mostly put on this demasculinized front to throw off any suspicions of his predatory ways.
So, what’s the verdict? Is this a wholly transphobic novel about a man in a dress, or is the “cross-dressing” element a tangential one?
The true themes of this book are relationships, infidelity, parental issues, dysfunctional families and illness. Issues related to women’s rights – abortion, domestic abuse, childbearing – are the undercurrent of the novel. There is also a notable focus on male-female dynamics – the female detective, Robin Ellacott, will comment on the ways her male coworkers act around her versus when they are amongst themselves.
The “cross-dressing” detail is significant insofar as it is how murderer Dennis Creed abducts his female victims. Though it is hinted that Creed enjoys women’s garments on a sexual level, he mainly uses the wig and pink coat as a matter of disguise, to pass himself off as trustworthy (at first glance) to other women.
Ultimately, the feminist themes of the book shine through much more than any discussion of cross-dressing, and those feminist themes rely on the different characteristics and life experiences of men and women. So if one is offended by discussions of sex differences, I suppose they’d be offended by some of the contents of this book.
But (spoiler alert) in the end, the killer of Dr. Margot Bamborough is not Dennis Creed, but a female nurse who enjoys poisoning people. In true feminist fashion, J.K. Rowling portrays women not only as victims, but perpetrators as well.
There is only one thing left to address, then: in the second novel of this crime fiction series, The Silkworm, detective Cormoran Strike makes a comment about how prison won’t be “fun” for a “pre-op” trans person.
But maybe you can read that one for yourself, and decide for yourself if it is “transphobic”: though J.K. Rowling is undoubtedly a masterful writer, murder mysteries aren’t my cup of tea.
On Friday, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki hosted a video conference with policing leaders from across the country. A media release said the conference was put together to discuss key issues facing the policing community.
The statement went on to say issues discussed were things like “systemic racism and discrimination, mental health, civilian oversight and investigation, and digital policing, among others.”
In other words – a big wank to political correctness.
Evidently, day one of the conference focused on issues like, “tools and techniques for de-escalation and crisis intervention. This collaborative work will include a review of current models, and related policies, procedures and training to allow all Canadian police officers to respond to situations in a consistent way to reduce conflict, minimize use of force and prevent injury.”
All noble enough I suppose. Conflict de-escalation to reduce the use of force is important. But this tends to ignore the realities of the streets in our communities, especially in the cities.
There is a shooting gang war going on in the Lower Mainland of B.C. Shootings in Toronto are at record levels and the violence among minority communities in Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton are at mind boggling levels. But sure, let’s talk about systemic racism and conflict de-escalation. Never mind the actual problems facing our police.
In the media statement, Commissioner Lucki said, “It’s clear that we share a common goal to be responsive to community concerns and calls for action.”
Really? Did I mention the shooting gang wars in our largest cities? How about being responsive to those community concerns?
Also participating in the conference was the Akwesasne Mohawk Police. Their reserve straddles the U.S./Canadian border and is the single biggest smuggling point in this country. Illegal guns, illicit drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl, illegal cigarettes and stolen vehicles all come through that reserve on a large basis. I’m not sure how much of that would be possible without police willful blindness or complicity. But sure, let’s talk about de-escalation instead.
Then there was the participation of the chief of the Ottawa Police Service. There is almost a mutiny within that police service over what they call the inherently poor leadership they serve under. Rank and file officers have even taken to openly mocking their leadership, especially Chief Peter Sloly.
The complaints claim police leaders have lowered the standards for officers of colour much to the detriment of the majority white officers.
I don’t believe there is any such thing as systemic racism in our policing communities. I do believe there is systemic poor leadership in many of our police agencies starting with the RCMP.
Commissioner Lucki is currently under investigation for obstruction of justice by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). Also included in the allegations are Deputy Commissioner Brenda Butterworth-Carr (Ret’d), Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens (Ret’d) and Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass (Ret’d). And, former Commissioner Bob Paulson also retired.
Those allegations arise out of the response of the leadership in the wake of the taser death of Polish traveller Robert Dziekanski and the hanging out to dry of the four members involved.
The RCMP have also paid out more than $100 million in taxpayer funds to settle complaints of what can only be called systemic harassment and the organization turning a blind eye. That is the very definition of systemic poor leadership.
It seems to me police leadership in this country have serious and significant issues to deal with in their communities. Engaging in social justice hand-wringing talking shops does nothing to keep their communities safer and sparks mockery from front line police officers.
Border authorities have seen a 1000% increase in drug seizures along Canada’s border with New York state.
According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), authorities with the Buffalo Field Office made 732 different seizures totalling 40,600 pounds of narcotics.
“In comparison to the same time frame last year, ports had 1,017 seizures totaling more than 3,440 pounds of narcotics. That’s an increase of more than 1000%,” writes the CBP.
The data covers a period spanning from October 1, 2019 to August 31, 2020.
The Canada-US border closure has been extended to October 21 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“The work of the officers has been incredible and their dedication to CBP’s enforcement mission is evident when you look at the increase in narcotics seizures,” said Buffalo Field Office Director Rose Brophy.
“Criminal organizations are not going to stop just because the border has restricted travel. The marijuana seizures alone are valued at just over $120M. Those proceeds will not make it back to the criminal organizations who would have used those profits to fund other criminal activity.”
As it stands, non-essential travel between the two countries is prohibited.
Despite the closure, international travel into Canada has continued.
According to recent reports, 55 different international flights coming into Canada carried passengers who were infected with the coronavirus.
Earlier this week, two Liberal ministers were among nine Canadian officials ordered to cut ties with senior Liberal and former ambassador to the US David MacNaughton. MacNaughton was found to have broken the Conflict of Interest Act.
Are Canadians even surprised anymore? After all, as True North’s Leo Knight points out, the Liberals have a history of corruption.
Leo says the Liberals know the rules. They just don’t think the rules apply to them.
Another major Canadian city has been hit with a rising tide of violent crime during the coronavirus pandemic.
New figures released by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) show a 5.2% increase in violent crime for the first half of 2020.
Over the same period, serious assaults saw a concerning spike in growth of 21.7% compared to 2019.
“The increase in serious assaults was observed city-wide, however specific neighbourhoods stood out and recorded high numbers, like Yaletown, the West End, Strathcona and Chinatown,” said VPD Deputy Chief Constable Howard Chow.
Strathcona has been of particular concern when it comes to criminal activity. According to Chow, the neighbourhood saw a 50% jump in weapon calls, a 68% increase in break-ins and threatening behaviour increase by 14%.
