Tim Hortons is cancelling its iconic Roll Up The Rim giveaway over concerns the campaign may expose staff to the novel coronavirus.
In a statement on Friday, Tim Hortons didn’t mention Covid-19 by name but still made it clear that health concerns are behind the decision.
“Tim Hortons does not believe it’s the right time for team members in our restaurants to collect rolled up tabs that have been in people’s mouths during this current public health environment.”
Of the $30 million in prizes that were supposed to be given out, Tim Hortons will be redirecting $16 million to their online contests and $14 million to other in-store giveaways.
Tim Hortons is not the only chain that has changed its practices to mitigate Covid-19 concerns. McDonald’s, Second Cup and Starbucks have all taken similar actions, including temporary bans on accepting reusable cups.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Canada has risen dramatically in the past week with 65 cases of coronavirus in four provinces as of Monday.
Six of the latest cases of coronavirus in Canada have been from individuals who were on a U.S.-based cruise ship recently. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Theresa Tam is now warning Canadians to avoid going on cruises for the foreseeable future.
With Tam and other health officials warning that the government may not be able to prevent an outbreak in Canada as the virus approaches pandemic status, the government had advised Canadians to be prepared by stockpiling essential goods and medications.
Last week, the Trudeau government met with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.
All is well, right? Wrong.
The government says they reached an “arrangement” with the hereditary chiefs but refuses to give Canadians any details. To make matters worse, the Trudeau government didn’t meet with the Wet’suwet’en elected chiefs – the ones that actually represent the people living in the community.
Illegal border crossers and asylum claimants whose cases have not yet been heard in front of an immigration judge are in some cases being given 20 years of all-access to gold-plated healthcare services, the Sun has learned.
This provides access to every medical procedure available under the Canada Health Act, as well as full dental coverage and tax-payer funded prescription drugs, according to a medical assistant who is blowing the whistle on these exorbitant freebees.
The medical assistant, who spoke to the Sun on condition of anonymity and provided supporting documentation to back these claims, works at a medical clinic in York Region that takes patients covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). This one office in a town north of Toronto sees 30 to 40 migrants with 20-year permits each week, said the source.
According to the whistleblower, migrants walk into the clinic and provide a government-issued identification number. When the number is inputted into the OHIP computer system, it shows what services the person is qualified to receive.
“They are eligible for everything. Everything. For 20 years,” said the medical assistant, who sent an example of a government certificate dated Feb. 13, 2020 that appears to provide health care until Feb. 12, 2040.
The source sent a client profile page from Blue Cross, a medical insurance company that provides supplemental coverage that Canadians pay for out of pocket, which shows 20 years of coverage.
The documents, issued to an Iranian woman in her 70s, make it clear that she is an asylum claimant and has not yet been granted refugee status in Canada.
The certificate was issued by the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and it outlines the basis for providing free, unlimited, all-access healthcare to people who are not Canadian citizens or even permanent residents.
“The above named individual is eligible for the coverage of health-care costs under the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). This coverage can be cancelled without notice if the individual’s immigration status changes,” reads the document.
The Interim Federal Health Program has become a political punching bag in recent years.
The previous Conservative government cancelled the program for migrants coming from safe countries and for bogus asylum seekers whose refugee claim had been rejected by an immigration judge.
In a head-scratching ruling, a Liberal-appointed federal judge struck down the changes, stating it was “cruel and unusual” for the government to withhold free healthcare from illegal immigrants.
The Trudeau Liberals and much of the media doubled down on this twisted line of reasoning, insisting that the Conservatives had cut healthcare for refugees – even though the cuts only applied to individuals who were explicitly found not to be refugees.
Trudeau has made significant changes to the refugee determination program, including eliminating a process that fast-tracked hearings and deportations for asylum claimants coming from safe countries.
He pledged to keep the IFHP in place, even for bogus refugees and illegal migrants.
According to the government’s website, IFHP coverage is “limited and temporary.” But while it claims to be limited, it also outlines why migrants receive better coverage than Canadians.
“While basic coverage in Canada is similar to health-care coverage provided by provincial and territorial health insurance plans … the benefits are not exactly the same. Benefits reflect the temporary nature of the program.”
Twenty years isn’t exactly temporary.
“I truly believe the general public is unaware of this.” said the whistleblower. “I was shocked when I learned about it, that we as taxpayers are paying for this kind of coverage, and for that amount of time.”
“Our veterans, indigenous communities, single mothers, homeless and elderly do not receive such benefits,” said the medical assistant. “We all pay out of pocket for a lot of this stuff.”
The government acknowledged questions from the Sun about this 20-year access, but did not provide any comment or explanation as of the time of publication.
Does Canada take immigration fraud seriously? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
In this video, True North’s Lindsay Shepherd reviews the recent case of Ou Lian Li, a 54-year old Port Coquitlam resident who used an illegal immigration consulting firm to falsify her permanent residency application documents, yet who has evaded a deportation order.
This is yet another example of weak border policy in Canada.
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China’s ambassador to Canada says the Trudeau government’s assistance on combating coronavirus will not improve Canada-China relations
At a press conference on Thursday, Chinese Ambassador Cong Peiwu said that Canada-China relations remain poor, shutting down suggestions that cooperation on coronavirus has helped to mend relations.
“You know the outstanding issue for the bilateral relationship,” he said.
Cong did praise Canada’s decision not to restrict air travel between Canada and Mainland China, despite Air Canada limiting its flights on its own accord.
Cong suggested that cooperation on coronavirus will not help Canada repatriate Canadian Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor from a Chinese prison.
Kovrig and Spavor have been held in a Chinese prison for over a year, deprived of legal rights on trumped-up charges in retaliation for extradition proceedings against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
In February Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne suggested he had been using discussions about coronavirus with Chinese officials to bring up the cases of the two men.
While it appears that the Canadian government was hoping that aiding China may smooth over their rough relationship with the communist regime, their gestures seem to have made no difference.
In early February Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada was standing by to assist China in fighting the ongoing coronavirus. Trudeau offered China any help it requires in fighting and containing the virus.
“We are going to continue to work with them to ensure that they have the resources to contain this virus,” Trudeau said.
Canada would go on to ship face masks and other protective gear at China’s request.
Multiple experts, including former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney, believed that this approach would not bring the two any closer to freedom.
“We don’t play games when people are sick, and we shouldn’t allow China to play games with us. Freeing the Michaels isn’t a favour or quid pro quo; it is what we expect of law-abiding states,” Mulroney said.
If the dictatorial regime in Iran were as invested in dealing with the spread of coronavirus as it is with curbing the spread of information about it, the country would be faring far better than it is.
Iran’s Covid-19 mortality rate is the highest in the world, and the country appears to have the fastest spread of the virus based even on the grossly understated official figures.
The World Health Organization’s Mar. 7 situation report lists 124 deaths out of 4747 confirmed cases of the virus in Iran, though even these official numbers were outdated within minutes of publication.
The more significant – and more elusive – number is the disparity between the truth and what the Iranian regime acknowledges.
Citing hospital sources, BBC Persia reported the death toll at 210 in a Feb. 28 story while the Iranian government said only 34 had died from the virus.
The Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) pegged the death toll at over 2000 – nearly 14 times the official tally – on Saturday, noting cases in 74 cities in all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
“The scale of the virus spread and death rate in Iran is dramatically more extensive and catastrophic, to the extent that if not contained, hundreds of thousands of Iranians would be vulnerable to infection and death as a result of the regime’s incompetence, lack of sufficient resources to confront the virus and a corrupt ruling elite,” MEK said in a report.
MEK pointed out that unlike other countries, which were transparent about their detection and monitoring of the virus from the outset, Iran only first acknowledged it when there were already two deaths.
Iran’s deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, embodied the state’s duplicity while sweating and coughing from Covid-19 during a news conference in which he downplayed the virus’ spread.
Iran's deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi was seen wiping his forehead on stage before testing positive for #COVID19 – he says he is now self-isolating.
At this point, at least two dozen Iranian lawmakers have been infected, some of whom – most recently a female member of parliament – have died.
Even if we were to accept Iran’s data, we’d see the number of confirmed cases having jumped by over 20% in just 24 hours.
A couple of members of parliament have been rebuked for pointing out the inconsistencies in the regime’s figures.
“The numbers are much higher than what is being said,” MP Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imenabadi said to Al-Arabiya. “It is not as if we can hide the cemeteries.”
While Iranians are being turned away from overcrowded hospitals, Iran has nevertheless found the resources to ensure anyone “spreading rumours” about the virus will be flogged and sentenced to as many as three years in prison.
“Rumours” would appear to be regime-speak for the truth, as one person was arrested for sharing footage from inside a crowded morgue, and a university head from Qom said the government had banned the dissemination of outbreak figures.
Apologists for the regime – including some in western media reports – have said the issues with the official figures are as innocent as “data collection” inefficiencies.
It would be easy to chalk this all up to gross political incompetence were there not so many bodies piling up – and were it not part of a pattern with Iran.
That all of this comes less than two months after the Iranian military shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is no coincidence. The Iranian government apologized for its “unforgivable mistake” and vowed to cooperate with investigative efforts – though subsequently changed its mind.
In Iran’s first major transparency test since, the country is failing once again.
And once again, Iran’s hubris is proving fatal.
Iranian lives aren’t the only ones at risk here. Iran is facing backlash from all over the Middle East as the virus seems to have spread directly from Iran in many cases.
Iran’s negligence has directly put Canadians at risk as well.
While the early Covid-19 cases in Canada were in people who had come from China, the bulk of Canada’s recent coronavirus patients picked it up in Iran.
Even with this week’s confirmation of Canada’s first local transmission of the virus, the majority of infections have thus far been imported. Despite this, the federal government has not imposed any travel restrictions, effectively ignoring the continued importation risk.
“This is a virus that knows no borders and that is growing,” said Canadian health minister Patty Hajdu when asked about shutting down or restricting ports of entry to Canada.
Without travel restrictions, Canadians assume vulnerability because of other countries’ failings.
Justin Trudeau has no idea what to do about the illegal blockades. As a result, our economy is suffering. Unfortunately, it’s not just the blockades that are hurting Canadians.
Companies are pulling their investments out of Canada en masse because of the Trudeau government.
And the government isn’t taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously.
Steven Del Duca, formerly a cabinet minister in Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberal government, has been elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.
At a delegated convention in Mississauga on Saturday Del Duca was elected on the first round of balloting, receiving 58.5% of the vote.
The runner-up, MPP Michael Coteau, secured 17% of the vote.
The Liberals say 2,140 delegates voted in the election.
Under former premier Kathleen Wynne, Del Duca served as transport minister and also minister of economic development.
In Ontario’s 2018 election, which saw the Liberals lose official party status, Del Duca lost his Vaughan riding to Progressive Conservative Michael Tibollo.
After going from fifty-five seats to only seven in the last election, Del Duca told delegates that the party’s future will be difficult.
“Our road ahead as Liberals will not be easy, because we have a ton of work to do,” he said.
“We need to raise millions of dollars. We need to find qualified candidates who reflect Ontario’s incredible diversity. And most importantly, we need to forge a platform of compelling ideas that once again inspires people, lets them know they can trust us to govern – because they trust us to be on their side and to fight for them.”
Despite what the mainstream media portrays when discussing the topic of racism, in 2018, the Jewish community was, in fact, the most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes, with 347 separate incidents — a distinction that they’ve held for more than a decade.
When it came to attacks against Muslims, following a moderate increase in 2017, police reported 176 fewer incidents in 2018, for a total of 173 — a decrease of 50 percent.
Further, when one takes into account that there are approximately three times as many Muslims (~1 Million) in Canada as Jews (~350 Thousand) the difference is even more dramatic.
If you’re surprised by this and thought that the Muslim community would be the most frequent target, you’re not alone.
In 2018 La’ad Canada, an organization I volunteer with, conducted a survey that asked respondents to measure how much of a problem they thought that various forms of racism or discrimination were in Canada today.
54 percent said that Islamophobia was a problem (21% strongly agree, 33% somewhat agree) compared to 43% for antisemitism (15% strongly, 28% somewhat agree) and 42% for homophobia (13% strongly agree, 29% somewhat agree)
But why is there such a difference in perception? Perhaps this is because we often hear a lot about anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobia in Canada.
You may recall Parliamentary Motion M-103 which called for the government to condemn Islamophobia and create a plan to reduce it and all other forms of racism and discrimination.
While it did eventually pass in the House of Commons, the motion was heavily criticized — which, in an odd twist, added to the accusations of Islamophobia on the part of the critics — for its failure to define what precisely ‘Islamophobia’ meant. The critical difference being that unlike police-reported hate crimes, which have a clear definition, Islamophobia does not.
This was followed up by a report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage recommending that January 29th be designated as a “National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia, and other forms of religious discrimination.”
Then there was the intense coverage of the alleged scissors attack on a girl in hijab which prompted an urgent Toronto District School Board press conference and a tweet by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
My heart goes out to Khawlah Noman following this morning’s cowardly attack on her in Toronto. Canada is an open and welcoming country, and incidents like this cannot be tolerated.
Instances like these, combined with an apparent primacy and focus on Islamophobia (it is almost always the only form of hate specifically mentioned,) can create the perception that it is the greatest threat to any minority group in Canada.
To be clear, racism and discrimination against Muslims is abhorrent and wrong and all Canadians must be firm in standing against it. However, given the fact that hate crimes against Muslims have dropped by 50%, one of two things must be going on.
First, there is the possibility that anti-islamophobia initiatives are working – that the various education and awareness campaigns and the increased attention given to the symptoms and causes of anti-Muslim sentiment are having a real effect.
If this is the case, we should be asking how we can replicate these initiatives so that other groups and communities can be afforded the best possible protection. For example, Jews are approximately six times more likely than Muslims to be the victim of a hate crime. The government should therefore immediately launch an equivalent or larger program designed to combat antisemitism as well as racism and discrimination more broadly.
Of course, there is also the possibility that the focus on Islamophobia over other forms of discrimination is based more on virtue signalling and pandering to a particular segment of the political left rather than on actually keeping Canadians safe.
If this is the case, we must all be asking why our government is playing this political game.
Manitoba’s Attorney General has joined other law and policing experts across the country in denouncing Justin Trudeau’s proposed handgun ban.
In an open letter to the Liberal government, Minister Cliff Cullen calls the Liberal government’s plan to allow municipalities to ban legal handguns “unscientific” and “ineffective.”
“You can be certain that the Manitoba government will not support a costly, unscientific, and ineffective federal Liberal proposal for firearms,” writes Cullen.
Prior to Justin Trudeau’s re-election in 2019, he promised more stringent gun control measures for law-abiding gun owners. Among the measures, Trudeau promised legislation to ban “assault-style” rifles, which he did not define, and allow municipalities to impose handgun bans.
Despite the growing number of police chiefs and departments that say such a ban would not impact gun-related crime, Trudeau has pledged to carry out the reforms.
“In some situations, we may have a province that is unwilling to do that despite the willingness of a city or cities to do that,” said Trudeau.
“At which point, I have been assured, there are other tools we can use that wouldn’t be as ideal, because it would involve disagreements with the provinces at a time where we want to be collaborative.”
Cullen pointed out that municipalities fall under provincial jurisdiction, however.
“We want to respect law-abiding firearms owners and we will be informing the federal government that allowing municipalities to regulate or to ban firearms is not appropriate,” says Cullen.
“These are decisions that should be made in consultation with the provinces and not by the federal government alone or a municipality.”
In January, a Winnipeg city councillor suggested the city should have the power to implement a municipal handgun ban. When asked whether such a ban would be effective, the Winnipeg Police Service said nearly all the handguns seized are illegally owned.
“I guess it might make people feel good but it will not change the threat level one iota,” said Winnipeg police spokesperson Const. Rob Carver.
