An Ontario farm is reporting a coronavirus outbreak after 85 migrant workers tested positive for the virus.
The temporary foreign workers were imported into the province to be employed in the agri-food sector after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exempted them from coronavirus border restrictions.
Of the 85 who tested positive at the Norfolk Country farm, five of the workers have been hospitalized, while another 25 are showing symptoms.
According to federal health officials, all workers are required to undergo a two week isolation period after arriving in Canada.
To ensure the mandatory isolation is met, Trudeau allocated $50 million in taxpayer funding to cover the expenses and wages of foreign workers during the period they won’t be working.
In addition, the Liberal government recently announced that temporary foreign workers would be eligible for the $2,000-a-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) without requiring to provide a valid work permit.
Before the decision, workers had to send photographs of valid work or study permits so they could get the benefit.
The new measure also applies to other non-citizens including international students and refugee claimants who have a “900-series” social insurance number.
Other parts of Southern Ontario have been witnessing outbreaks of the coronavirus in recent months.
In April, 40 workers at a Chatham-Kent farm tested positive for the virus and as a result, the company had to place nearly half its workforce in isolation.
According to the CBC, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has also seen a spike in coronavirus cases, particularly in the agricultural sector.
Protests over the death of George Floyd have rocked the US and beyond in the past week. The dialogue around the incident has placed police brutality, racism and discrimination at the forefront of people’s minds.
Throughout this, the mainstream media has contributed to an atmosphere of fear and division by highlighting the worst elements of the protests.
Despite the horrific attacks on innocent civilians and the numerous instances of looting and vandalism, there have been several episodes that show the good in people.
Here are eight of the most hopeful moments coming out of the protests:
Sheriff joins peaceful protesters
In a heartwarming gesture, a Flint, Michigan sheriff put down his riot gear and joined protesters in solidarity.
During the incident, Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson high-fived and embraced people in the crowd after they chanted “walk with us!”
“I want to make this a parade, not a protest,” said Swanson.
Genesee County Sheriff (Flint, Michigan) Chris Swanson put down his helmet and baton and asked protesters how he could help.
The protesters chanted "walk with us" so the Sheriff joined — and walked alongside the protesters in solidarity.
Among those in the peaceful demonstrations, a number of violent extremists have sought to use the protests as an opportunity to cause chaos.
During a protests in Washington, DC, one masked Antifa member was apprehended by peaceful demonstrators and handed over to the police.
In the video of the incident, the saboteur is rushed by a group of people after attempting to smash up a sidewalk to create projectiles to throw at police.
The group then carries the protester to the police where he is subsequently arrested.
During a protest in Minneapolis, a peaceful demonstrator condemned looters and opportunists using the protest for their own advantage.
This is what I’ve got to say to people who are destroying things. If you really feel that you’re going to be opportunistic, something is wrong with you,” the man says on live television.
“What we’re trying to do is stand up for the basic rights of humanity and that’s what we’re trying to do, and we’re trying to do it in a peaceful way.”
"If you cannot stand up and fight the good fight and you want to be a cheater…. something is wrong with you."
Protests in Montreal quickly turned violent on Sunday evening as protesters attacked police and looted businesses downtown.
Around 5:00 PM a group of people gathered in front of the police headquarters on St. Urbain Street to protest the death of African-American man George Floyd at the hand of a Minnesota police officer.
Protests in response to Floyd’s death in the United States have spurred on intense looting, vandalism and violence.
About three hours into the protest in Montreal, police arrived and declared the gathering unlawful. Protesters threw rocks and projectiles at the police and officers responded with pepper spray.
Throughout the night, police dispersed gangs of protesters roaming downtown looting businesses and setting fires.
The owner of the Koodo Mobile store Steve Haboucha told the Canadian Press that his security camera recorded looters smashing his window and ransacking his business for around 30 minutes.
In another instance, protesters were seen using street signs to smash the windows of a payday loan store and looting it.
On Monday, Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante took to Twitter to denounce the violence and looting that occurred in the city. Plante had previously tweeted her support for the protests on Sunday just hours before they turned violent.
Demonstrating to denounce racism and demanding that things change is noble and necessary. I can only denounce the actions of the looters who ransacked the shops and who had nothing to do with this peaceful demonstration. #polmtl
Over the weekend protests also took place in Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.
In Toronto, around 3,500 people peacefully protested police violence on Saturday. Protesters in were protesting on the recent death of black Torontonian Regis Korchinski-Paquet.
Korchinski-Paquet died after she fell off her 24th-story balcony while police were present in her apartment last week.
While Korchinski-Paquet’s family originally claimed she was pushed off by police, the family’s lawyer says they have retracted that claim and are now “waiting on evidence from the investigation before any further conclusions can be made.”
Protesters chanted the slogans “not another black life” and “abolish the police” as they marched.
Remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally closed Canada’s borders to stop the spread of coronavirus?
Well, new figures released by the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) show that the borders never really closed.
According to new CBSA data — which was emailed to reporters and hardly received any media attention — 1.66 million travellers entered Canada between March 21 and May 24.
Perhaps this can be explained by the exemptions Trudeau attached to the border closures, including to Canadian citizens and permanent residents returning home, as well as workers who are part of the supply chain and whose job involves getting essential goods into Canada.
The bulk of all travel — 1.24 million people — entered through the land border with the United States, including 722,000 truck drivers and 515,000 travellers who came through non-commercial vehicles.
In addition, Canada saw 425,475 travellers arrive at our international airports, including 123,694 arriving from the United States and 301,781 travellers coming from overseas.
Of those arriving via air, 275,485 were citizens and 20,218 held permanent residency status.
That leaves a jaw-dropping 129,772 non-Canadian travellers who were able to fly into Canada while our borders were supposed to be closed.
Nearly one in three travellers seem to fall outside the guidelines about who can enter Canada at this time.
I reached out to the CBSA to ask the obvious questions: Who are these 130,000 travellers and why were they allowed into Canada if our borders are closed to non-citizens or permanent residents?
The CBSA promptly replied to my email, letting me know that they simply don’t track this information.
“The statistics you have requested are not available. As you can imagine, compiling stats is a very time consuming process and requires resources that are not readily available at this busy time,” wrote a CBSA spokesperson.
Busy time? Airport travel into Canada is down 98% from this time last year.
This is perhaps the least busy the CBSA has ever been. And besides, if they can tally the number of citizens and permanent residents entering Canada, why can’t they track the other visas being used to gain entry?
This seems like an odd lack of transparency from Canada’s border agency.
Fortunately, within the boiler-point information at the bottom of the CBSA’s email, I was given a clue about these 130,000 mysterious travellers.
“The CBSA enforces Orders in Council (OICs) in place during the pandemic. Under Order in Council 7… foreign nationals are currently prohibited from entering Canada… with some exceptions, including temporary foreign workers and international students.”
There you have it. The 130,000 travellers must be either temporary foreign workers (TFWs) or international students.
But Canadians deserve to know why these exemptions were put in place.
Canada’s economy lost nearly two million jobs last month, and the unemployment rate is 18% when adjusted to include those whose job loss is temporary. More than 7 million Canadians have applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. So why on earth are we still admitting TFWs?
The rationale behind the program is that Canada has significant labour shortages and employers can’t find enough workers to fill open positions. This program has always been suspect, but it’s particularly dubious at a time when our economy is collapsing and millions are out of work.
As for international students, Canada’s colleges and universities are closed. They’ve moved exclusively to online models and some have already announced that Fall classes will be held primarily online.
Rather than enforcing the border closure, the Trudeau government quietly made exemptions for visa categories that frankly make no sense during this pandemic.
To add insult to injury, Trudeau is also extending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit to both international students and TFWs. This will cost taxpayers up to $8 billion.
No wonder officials tell Canadians this information is “not readily available.”
It’s a lot easier than having to defend this regrettable policy.
The killing of George Floyd was unjust and wrong. People from all walks of life should demand better from police officers and they should be held to account for their actions.
Unfortunately, the opportunity to push a message of unity and equality is now lost because the protests have turned into mass carnage and anarchy.
Just as many are proclaiming the comeback of the drive-in theatre, British Columbia’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has banned gatherings of more than 50 vehicles.
The town of Cochrane, AB has approved a 300-vehicle drive-in screening event in June.
The Brackley Drive-In in PEI is screening Trolls World Tour and Jurassic Park to 170 vehicles this weekend.
Ciné-Parc Saint-Hilaire, a drive-in theatre outside of Montreal, has recently reopened their screen to 600 cars.
But over in BC, where the so-called curve has been flattened, drive-in theatres are limited to 50 vehicles.
“We know that people don’t stay in their cars all the time when you’re at these events and the more people we have, the more chances we have that this virus can spread to a lot of other people,” Henry said during a press conference.
Henry’s concerns are that concession and washroom lineups will become too populated (meanwhile, Costco or Wal-Mart lineups are A-OK), and that too many people will pack into each vehicle.
Twilight Drive-In, the only such theatre in the Metro Vancouver area, urged their patrons last week to contact their local government representatives and demand that drive-in theatres be allowed to admit more than 50 cars.
“We were allowed to operate our drive-in and concession stand during Phase 1, the worse [sic] part of the pandemic, with the social distancing measures we put in place. But now, in Phase 2, the restart phase, restrictions are being placed on us that will severely impede the viability of the drive-in. Seems contradictory and backwards to us!” Twilight wrote on Facebook.
Twilight had been permitting 200 cars to park at the drive-in amidst the pandemic – about half their usual capacity.
Now, after being forced to reduce their capacity to 50 vehicles, Twilight has announced they will be increasing their admission cost to $50 per vehicle, regardless of the number of people inside. Prior to the pandemic, they were charging $12.50 per adult and $7.50 per child.
True North reached out to Twilight for comment, but did not receive a response.
Drive-in theatres were one of the small nostalgic pleasures of the pandemic (for those with access to a car, at least). They are set in the open air, and offer those who often already reside in the same household a chance to avoid cabin fever. BC’s public health officials are undermining public trust by instituting rules that arbitrarily limit safe activities.
The Liberals and the NDP combined forces to shut down a motion to give a voice to elected Wet’suwet’en chiefs who were excluded from a secret deal signed earlier this year.
Conservative MP and critic for Crown-Indigenous Relations Jamie Schmale introduced the motion during Friday’s Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
The purpose of the motion was to invite the elected chiefs to testify before the committee on how the coronavirus has impacted the indigenous community and their ability to be properly consulted on the Memorandum of Understanding hastily signed between hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs and the Trudeau government.
“It is appalling that the Liberals, with the support of the NDP who represent the Wet’suwet’en in the riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley, would shut down a motion giving a voice to Indigenous peoples,” said Schmale.
The memorandum, which was originally hidden from the public, effectively excluded any input from the band’s elected leadership.
“I have been hearing from the chiefs and members of the Wet’suwet’en, they are beside themselves and can’t believe they are being ignored by the Trudeau Liberals. They have so many questions and deserved to be heard by the federal government,” said fellow Conservative MP Bob Zimmer.
Prior to the agreement’s signing, protesters claiming to be in support of the Wet’suwet’en people sabotaged and shut down Canada’s national railway system.
“Providing essential community services to the people of the Wet’suwet’en is the responsibility of elected chiefs and to exclude them from decisions that affect the people they represent is unconscionable. Conservatives will continue to pressure the Liberal government to do the right thing and listen to the democratically elected chiefs and the people of the Wet’suwet’en,” said the Conservative critic for Indigenous Services Gary Vidal.
Saint Mary’s University professor of criminology Stephen Schneider told a BC commission on money laundering that the province has become a “cottage industry” for criminal syndicates.
On Monday, Schneider said that the high presence of organized crime activity in the province is due to its ties with China and California, as well as the province’s own homegrown drug industry.
“We can’t just think in these stereotypical drug dealers with bags full of cash. We also have to think of more sophisticated corporate entities that are engaged in unethical and criminal activity,” said Schneider.
“One of your most crucial goals in money laundering is to create the guise legitimacy and what better way to do that than in the legitimate economy.”
The Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in BC is headed by BC Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen.
The commission was established in May 2019 by Premier John Horgan after increasingly startling reports revealed that billions of dollars worth of dirty money were flowing through the province.
Schneider was the first expert witness to the commission as it entered the second phase of its investigation.
According to him, private businesses and corporations are pretending to be legitimate entities while also facilitating the cleaning of money earned through illegal activities.
These businesses are also responsible for helping people move potentially trillions worth of funds out of China, claimed Schneider. In China, there is currently a limit of $50,000 for how much money you can take with you out of the country.
“This is something that is fairly new in the context of money laundering,” said Schneider.
“It’s inextricably part of the so-called Vancouver model and contributed to investments in the real estate market being intermingled with the proceeds of crime.”
Public health officials have flip-flopped a number of times during the coronavirus pandemic and all of their projected data has been wrong, yet Trudeau continues to lecture Canadians about listening to their advice.
True North’s Leo Knight says enough is enough – Canadians can reopen the economy safely and responsibly.
The protection of its citizens and our national sovereignty should be paramount for the federal government.
The RCMP is formally responsible for the domestic side of that protection. Along with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the military.
The RCMP has a couple of sections designated to national security. One of those was the National Intelligence Coordination Centre (NICC) which was formed in 2013 amidst a total restructuring of the RCMP’s national security strategy.
With the coronavirus consuming most of the media coverage in Canada, many Canadians aren’t aware of the case of Cameron Ortis – the former director-general of the NICC, the first civilian to ever hold such a high position in national intelligence with the RCMP.
He was arrested in September 2019 and charged with several counts, including a breach of the security intelligence laws – essentially espionage. He was released on bail with the condition he lived with his parents in Abbotsford.
That bail was revoked in October after a review and in late January he was charged with three additional criminal charges. While there is a court-imposed publication ban, just what we know from the already reported information is stunning enough. The Crown decided to take the case directly to the Supreme Court by-passing the usual preliminary inquiry. Ortis remains in custody pending trial.
Now, with all that said, one of the charges dates back to 2015 when Bob Paulson was the commissioner. According to the National Post, Paulson wanted to fast-track Ortis through RCMP training and commission him as a senior officer. The only reason that didn’t happen is because of the pushback from others in senior management.
We also know that Ortis had access to the most classified information guarded by the RCMP, including identities of operational undercover officers and source identities from any number of investigations.
And, we know that the only reason he was caught was that the FBI was conducting an investigation into the activities of Vincent Ramos who was supplying encrypted phone devices to members of organized crime facilitating the flow of drugs around the world.
Ramos has since been convicted of his crimes.
The FBI tripped over Ortis because he allegedly offered up classified RCMP information to Ramos. A joint FBI-RCMP investigation ensued which culminated in Ortis’ arrest and subsequent charges in 2019.
Ortis had access to intelligence information shared by the Five Eyes (U.S., Australia, the U.K., Canada and New Zealand). This is exceptionally troubling.
According to news reports, for at least four years, Ortis was actively engaged in espionage, believed to be for China, Ortis was an expert on the far east and spoke Mandarin fluently.
It has been reported that Ortis was issued technical devices for secret communications. These devices are used in the tradecraft of espionage. They are called COVCOM or covert communications devices. Think of it as a modern day equivalent of a one-time pad.
If in fact, he had received a COVCOM device from China, there is very little ability to determine what he may have provided his spymasters.
For China to do this, as discussed by Brad Johnson, Senior Operations Officer and Chief of Station with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, “Chinese intelligence would not supply this kind of device to Mr. Ortis if they did not consider him to be fully vetted and a trusted spy.”
Since Ortis’ arrest, there has been a damage assessment taking place throughout the RCMP and also in the Five Eyes to try and determine what may have been compromised. We may never fully understand the damage.
This should be considered as Canada considers allowing Huawei into our 5G network plans. The other members of the Five Eyes have said no. Justin Trudeau has said he is still considering it. The U.S. has specifically and strongly warned against it.
Considering Huawei is intrinsically enmeshed with the Communist Party of China to the point they have senior government members on its board and as the Ortis case shows, China cannot be trusted in any way.
Using Huawei equipment in our telecom networks is plain stupid. We know they are actively engaged in espionage. Why would Trudeau even consider this for a moment?
To allow them into our networks would be irresponsible in the extreme.
