A majority of Canadians have expressed concern regarding the potential side effects of a future coronavirus vaccine.
According to an Angus Reid Institute poll, 61% of Canadians indicated that they are worried about unintended side effects.
Despite their concerns, 80% of Canadians indicated that they would seek to be vaccinated. Out of those, 32% indicated that they would wait some time before seeking out the vaccine.
On the issue of mandatory vaccinations, Canadians’ opinions differed based on workplace scenarios.
Of those polled, 76% said that healthcare professionals and extended care home employees should be required to receive the vaccine.
Meanwhile, 63% of those polled said that people who work in schools should be forced to get a vaccine, while a slight majority of 52% was in favour of mandatory vaccinations for all workplaces.
The poll comes at a time when nations across the world are racing to be the first to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Liberal government has partnered with the Chinese firm CanSino Biologics – and by extension, the People’s Liberation Army – to develop a vaccine.
In May, the President of Concerned Ontario Doctors Dr. Kulvinder Gill spoke out against the partnership, saying that it was “the most counterproductive and dangerous thing [the federal government] could do.”
“The role of our governments is to build trust through transparency and accountability. If the Trudeau government wants Canadians to trust and buy into a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, partnering with the Chinese Communist Party’s military is […] the most counterproductive and dangerous thing it could do,” Gill told Thinkpol.
“[Canada] must abandon this illogical and dangerous endeavour, and instead fund vaccine trials with our allied nations who understand the critical importance of trust, ethics, safety, transparency and collaboration.”
The Trudeau government isn’t being honest with Canadians about the history of slavery in our country. Instead of presenting basic facts, government officials are spreading misinformation and sowing division by rewriting Canada’s history.
True North’s Candice Malcolm says the Trudeau government should brush up on its own history and learn the facts.
The Liberal government is refusing to reveal details about the companies that received federal contracts during the coronavirus pandemic since July 16.
According to the Canadian Press, the identities and dollar values given to companies in a $5.8 billion spending spree on personal protective equipment and medical supply contacts are being withheld from the public.
Public Services and Procurement Canada’s web page claims that the federal government is keeping the information private to protect Canada’s ability to procure items in a competitive post-pandemic medical market.
“Where we are still reliant on supply coming from overseas, we are guarding our supplier information carefully to make sure we have access to that supply chain on a continual basis should we need it,” said the department’s Deputy Minister Bill Matthews.
The latest figures show that only two-fifths of the contracts have gone to Canadian suppliers, while the rest have been awarded to overseas entities.
Critics have accused the federal government of botching Canada’s emergency preparedness program that was intended to deal with situations like the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
According to Treasury Board disclosures from earlier this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mishandling of Canada’s medical equipment stockpile will cost taxpayers an estimated $1.8 billion.
Since the pandemic reached Canada, the Canadian government has been buying up medical equipment at an inflated rate of 380%.
During a House of Commons health committee hearing in April, Executive Director of the Public Health Association Ian Culbert called the government’s actions regarding the stockpile its “largest failure.”
“I would say the national emergency stockpile is probably the largest failure as far as our response goes to date,” said Culbert.
The CBC is refusing to comment on whether it broke its own ethics code after failing to disclose that a pundit was a paid Liberal contractor during a July 29 Power and Politics segment on the WE Charity scandal.
Amanda Alvaro appeared as a pundit on the program, where she argued that the Liberal government’s relationship with the organization did not constitute a scandal, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
“There isn’t a criminal investigation. There’s a lot that’s been put out there but none of it has been justified. There hasn’t been a lot of evidence behind it. And I think it’s very concerning, quite frankly, that we continue to put the word scandal beside We,” Alvaro said on the program.
On April 8th, Alvaro was paid $16,950 for a contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs. Her company was also later granted a $24,997 contract by the federal government to coach the Liberal Minister of Women Maryam Monsef on media engagement.
Alvaro has also advertised on her personal Twitter page that she is a proud Liberal.
When contacted on whether any conflicts of interest were screened before the program was aired, CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson told Blacklock’s Reporter that all guests are screened before appearing on air.
“We endeavour to do that with all our guests,” said Thompson.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau have been accused of cronyism after awarding WE the administration of a $900 million federal contract despite financial and personal ties with the group.
According to the public broadcaster’s Journalistic Standards and Practices, Alvaro’s financial ties should have been made clear to the audience during the segment, but they never were.
“It is important to mention any association, affiliation or specific interest a guest or commentator may have so the public can fully understand that person’s perspective,” writes the CBC’s practices code.
Further, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Code of Ethics also requires full disclosure of any interests held by pundits.
“It is recognized the full, fair and proper presentation of news, opinion, comment and editorial is the prime and fundamental responsibility of each broadcaster,” says the code.
“This principle shall apply to all radio and television programming, whether it relates to news, public affairs, magazine, talk, call-in, interview or other broadcasting formats in which news, opinion, comment or editorial may be expressed by broadcaster employees, their invited guests or callers.”
On Wednesday July 29th, 2020, the Independent Press Gallery hosted two fireside chats featuring Conservative leadership candidates Derek Sloan and Erin O’Toole.
In the second half of the event, True North fellow Andrew Lawton sat down with Erin O’Toole to discuss his vision for Canada and why he’s running to become Prime Minister.
There will likely be consequences for Justin Trudeau for his role in the WE scandal, but it will barely be a slap on the wrist.
If Trudeau is found guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act yet again, he’ll face a whopping $200 fine. Seriously – that’s it.
True North’s Anthony Furey says it’s time to strengthen the role of the Ethics Commissioner and increase the penalties for those who violate the Conflict of Interest Act.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) staged yet another protest this weekend effectively shutting down a segment of downtown Toronto as they moved from Dundas Square west to the major intersection of Dundas and Spadina, all the while chanting to defund the police and ban prisons.
The woke crowd is so ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Toronto Police stats show shootings are up 13% with deaths from shootings up 39%. But sure let’s defund the police and ban prisons.
It certainly seems counterintuitive to anyone with critical thinking skills to think it would be a good idea to listen to the demands of BLM. Somehow these activists think gangs will go away, organized crime will cease to exist, domestic violence will no longer be a problem and property crime will disappear in a socialist paradise.
Meanwhile, in the city of Portland, Oregon, their police service has been neutered by left-wing politicians who, on July 1st, disbanded the 34 member Gun Violence Reduction Team as a result of police budget cuts. In just one month, Portland had the highest number of murder investigations in a one month period in the last three decades including a shooting incident in which more than 150 rounds were discharged.
In the liberal loony bin that is the city of Seattle, Washington, their city council proposed a motion to abolish its police department and replace it with “a civilian led department of community safety & violence prevention.”
And then there’s New York City where Mayor Bill deBlasio cut $1 billion from the NYPD’s $5 billion annual operating budget. The mayor ordered the disbandment of the effective 660 officer Anti-Crime Squad whose mandate was to work in high crime areas and target those committing crime proactively with a focus on gun crime.
As of August 2nd, 2020 New York has already experienced more shootings than in all of 2019.
These leftist activists seem to believe that some sort of peaceful coexistence will somehow result from defunding and emasculating the police. Because naturally, a beneficent government will provide for everyone’s needs and everyone will be happy.
The problem is that all men are not angels and evil exists.
But police are not simply the solution. They are only one part of it. The justice system, including the courts must act appropriately and responsibly as well. Prison must be an option for the sentencing judge and it must be used. Society is by far safer when an evil, violent person is contained in a jail.
Last week, there was a double shooting in Brampton which resulted in the death of Darian Hailey Henderson-Bellman. She was only 25.
She was killed by her former boyfriend Darnell Reid who had a long history of possessing illegal guns. But every time he was arrested, he was released by the courts who placed conditions on him not to possess weapons. Conditions upon conditions with each arrest that he ignored until he finally took the life of Henderson-Bellman.
She is dead because the system is reluctant to use jail whenever possible. Reid had been arrested in May on an illegal gun charge and domestic violence charges. He was held in custody for six days before being granted bail with conditions, one of which was not to be in contact with Henderson-Bellman, which he had breached on four previous occasions. Too many in the justice system want to think the best of people. Reality is different.
Criminals don’t obey the law and they certainly don’t obey court-imposed conditions. And they certainly don’t obey gun laws as this case shows tragically.
Toronto Mayor John Tory wants to ban handguns in the city. Such a ban will have no effect on the gun crime in that city. It would have no effect on the myriad of gangs that operate in the GTA no matter how much he wishes it were so.
Bad people exist and always will. The only way to protect society is to jail them when they are arrested and convicted. Banning police and prisons is a stupid idea.
As James Madison said, ”If men were angels there would be no need for government.” But they are not angels. Or Darian Hailey Henderson-Bellman would still be alive.
On Friday, Parks Canada published a tweet suggesting Canada was complicit in slavery despite the practice being outlawed before Canada was founded.
Between c.1629-1834, approx. 4,000 people of African descent were enslaved across Canada. This left a legacy of discrimination & systemic racism, that Black Canadians still feel today. Learn more about this shameful period of our history ➡ https://t.co/KMUuMh6uDApic.twitter.com/5ADJOr9lX3
The post was heavily criticized by Twitter users, noting that slavery was abolished 33 years before the Dominion of Canada was created.
Parks Canada’s tweet failed to recognize the progress made against slavery in British North America, including the anniversary of the abolition of slavery.
On August 1, 1793, Upper Canada Governor John Graves Simcoe issued the Act Against Slavery, banning the import of slaves and providing freedom to children of female slaves. Upper Canada was the first British colony to issue such legislation.
In 1834, Upper Canada issued the Slavery Abolition Act, officially ending slavery in what is now Ontario.
August 1 is known in Ontario as Emancipation Day, but this positive event in Canadian history was not shared by Parks Canada.
In the years after slavery was abolished in British North America, Canada became a haven for runaway slaves from the United States.
While estimates vary, between 30,000 and 100,000 slaves fled through the Underground Railroad, mostly to British North America.
Friday’s tweet coincided with the Trudeau government’s addition of “Enslavement of African People in Canada” to Canada’s National Program of Historical Commemoration.
This designation will enable to the government to share its interpretation of slavery in Canada more widely.
In a statement, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Bardish Chagger called the move an important part of the Trudeau government’s effort to address systemic racism in Canada.
“As part of our collective effort to remove the systemic barriers preventing Black Canadians as well as many racialized and religious minority communities from participating fully and equitably in our society,” she said.
“We must confront the hard truths that are part of our history.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared before the finance committee on Thursday to answer questions about his role in the WE scandal, and as he spun his web of excuses and platitudes, one thing was abundantly clear: Trudeau has gotten good at this.
He told Canadians that it was the public service, and not anyone from his entourage, that made the recommendation to award WE with the sole-source contract to carry out the government’s $912 million student works program.
The civil service, apparently, gave Trudeau a binary option: WE or bust. No one else could deliver this program other than WE — a charity that had recently laid off hundreds of employees, saw its board of directors chair and was embroiled in its own financial and ethical controversies.
Trudeau has great respect for the civil service, he said with a smile, as he twisted a knife into the backs of his loyal bureaucrats, but this was entirely their doing.
Trudeau then claimed that he was the one who put the proposal on hold because he knew he had a conflict of interest given that his wife, mother and brother had each been given deals to speak at WE events.
While the big bad media has been painting Trudeau as the incompetent and entitled antagonist in this story, the truth, according to Trudeau, is that he was the white knight — the ethical north star in a PMO frantically rushing to help Canadians at all costs.
With a straight face, Trudeau spent his 90-minute testimony presenting himself as the person who tried to stop this whole thing. And the remarkable thing about Trudeau is that he appears to truly believe his own nonsense.
Trudeau said he personally delayed the vote in cabinet by two weeks so someone else could think through the consequences of handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer cash to a charity closely tied with the Trudeau Liberals.
The only problem is, no one thought it through.
Despite Trudeau’s apparent wisdom in flagging this contract to his staff, Trudeau did not see the need to recuse himself from the discussion or the cabinet vote. But we shouldn’t blame him for that either, you see, COVID-19 made everything so rushed and so crazy he just couldn’t think straight.
All he could think about was helping Canadians.
Paint me cynical, I’ve seen this song and dance before. But each time Trudeau has faced an ethical scandal as prime minister, his excuses have gotten better.
The first time around, when Trudeau accepted a free vacation to a billionaire’s private island in the Bahamas — a billionaire whose foundation happened to receive $50 million dollars from the Trudeau government that year — Trudeau shrugged his shoulders and said he was sorry.
But when the next conflict of interest scandal rolled around, Trudeau went on the offence.
When Trudeau’s office tried to strong-arm former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to cut a sweetheart deal with a corrupt Quebec company with close ties to the Liberal Party, Trudeau insisted it was all about jobs.
Trudeau said he was sorry, sure, but he swore up and down that he was just protecting Canadian jobs (well, Quebec jobs — the only ones that apparently matter to Trudeau), and that he would do it all again.
When Trudeau was caught not once, not twice, but thrice donning racist blackface, he blamed it on his upbringing, said he said he was sorry and claimed it was an opportunity for all Canadians to reflect on racism.
But Trudeau’s best performance in showing contrition while insisting he was in the right came this week, when he told Canadians that he “pushed back” but was ultimately forced to break the rules because they were restraining him for doing the right thing.
Trudeau may be convinced of his own righteousness, but the rest of us sure aren’t buying it.
Some people choose to support a leader based on charisma and charm (Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh), others based on strong moral convictions (Catholics with Jason Kenney), others because of their experience and expertise (Thomas Mulcair, Stephen Harper) and others still because of their strength and forcefulness (Donald Trump).
While Conservative Party members are currently sitting at home with their ballots — which need to be mailed in any day now — it’s useful to think about the different tribes that support each candidate, and what their pathway to victory may be.
There are four main forces that drive support for a candidate, each with its own framework and rationale. These frameworks help form the backbone of arguments used by the various political tribes to increase support for their candidate. They are issues, values, electability and opposition.
Issues
The issues framework is the most straightforward in that it asks the following question: Do you have an issue or group of issues that is so important to you that a candidate’s support would automatically secure your vote?
This argument is both simple and effective. It offers an easy to understand value proposition, vote for my candidate and you are guaranteed they will advocate for X. Critics of the issues framework often frame those who use it as one dimensional. However it is important to remember while we may care about a number of issues equally, we may only be directlyaffected by a few of them. A steel plant worker in northern Ontario should not be shamed for spending more time thinking about the effects of globalization and free trade than the barber in downtown Montreal, even if both also care about the debt.
Values
A values framework is less focused on specific issues than an overarching ideology. Sometimes it is used by political tribes as an exemplar, allowing potential voters to understand how a candidate would approach a wide variety of issues without digging down into specifics. Other times it is used against candidates in conjunction with the issues framework to outline precisely how a candidate would not take action on a number of specific issues. This view is the ‘least political’ in that it stands in opposition to the electability framework by prioritizing principles over potential political wins.
Electability
An electability framework is focused strictly on the perceived electability of the candidates in question. An argument from this framework would say that Trudeau must be defeated in the next election no matter what, it is therefore incumbent upon party members to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of winning, even if their values or top issues differ from the voter’s. This view is problematic because it relies on three main assumptions.
First, it assumes that perceived electability is the same among all party members. The view of who is most electable in a general election varies from person to person. Second, it assumes that a candidate’s electability will translate directly from the leadership race to the general election. Third, it presupposes that a candidate’s electability is a fixed constant and is unlikely to change during an election. Many candidates have been felled by an “October Surprise” where a last minute scandal or long hidden piece of information is revealed shortly before election day.
Opposition
Opposition frameworks use elements of the other three to inform attack arguments where voters are encouraged by one or more political tribes to vote ‘against’ a particular candidate. The basic premise is that Candidate A risks damaging the party or has the wrong set of values. Voters must therefore choose another more palatable option to ensure that Candidate A does not gain leadership of the party, even if the remaining candidates are not so appealing.
These four frameworks can be seen — to varying degrees — in the various arguments being made the four Conservative leadership candidates and their political tribes of support. While each campaign has used elements of all the frameworks, some have chosen to build a large part of their candidate’s image around a one or two.
Peter MacKay’s team has relied heavily on the electability and issues framework. This can be seen by the way he has positioned himself as the candidate most likely to beat Trudeau in the next election, or his recent push to brand himself the “Jobs Prime Minister”, an important issue in a post-COVID world.
Erin O’Toole has also pushed the electability framework, albeit in a different manner than MacKay. He has continually reminded voters that he is a candidate who currently has a seat in the House of Commons — allowing him to challenge Trudeau in the house on day one — and supplemented that with elements of the values framework by holding himself out as the ‘true blue’ conservative candidate to contrast himself with MacKay..
Leslyn Lewis has used a mix of all four frameworks beginning with opposition by highlighting that she is not a career politician and can lead the party in a new and exciting direction if elected. This position has allowed her to then transition into other framework arguments as the opportunity presented itself.
Derek Sloan has framed much of his campaign around the values framework, positioning himself as a strong social conservative who will stand up for the rights of the unborn, get Canada out of the Paris Accord and lead the party in a strong conservative fashion.
Ultimately, each political tribe within the Conservative Party will have to make a decision on which candidate it supports, and which framework they feel best represents their interests.
As such, leadership races are not only interesting because they set the course for the future of the party (I.E. the NDP is markedly different now than it was under Alexa McDonough), they also show us democracy in action and how coalitions form to elect the people who lead our country. So if you haven’t already, take a few moments to fill out your leadership ballot, your vote may just be the one that helps chart the future course of the country.
