Jessica Yaniv returned to court in Surrey, B.C. on Monday afternoon for a hearing over two counts of possessing unauthorized weapons.
In August 2019, Yaniv’s home was searched and Yaniv was arrested by RCMP officers immediately after showing off a stun gun on a Youtube livestream with popular transgender YouTuber Blaire White.
Yaniv, who was born male, became internationally known for filing complaints with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal against several female estheticians who refused to wax Yaniv’s male genitalia.
After hearings took place over the summer, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal eventually ruled against Yaniv’s complaints in October 2019, and Yaniv was ordered to pay $2,000 to each woman named in the case.
I'm at the Surrey court waiting for Yaniv to appear before a judge regarding non-lethal weapons charges. Yaniv was supposed to appear at 2PT but left with a police officer to speak to court registry. Idk what is happening. Also @TheRealKeean is banned from entering.
“In many of these complaints, [Yaniv] is also motivated to punish racialized and immigrant women based on her perception that certain ethnic groups, namely South Asian and Asian communities, are ‘taking over’ and advancing an agenda hostile to the interests of LGBTQ+ people,” wrote tribunal member Devyn Cousineau.
Despite attempting to appeal the Tribunal’s decision, Yaniv’s appeal was turned down.
While in court Monday, Yaniv asked the Justice of the Peace for a publication ban which includes a ban on online publications. However, later that day another judge denied Yaniv’s request citing the fact that there was no provision in the criminal code to protect against negative media publicity.
Yaniv will be appearing in court for another hearing on Monday, February 10 at 2:00PM.
The head of Maple Leaf Foods is blaming Donald Trump for the deaths of passengers on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which was shot down by Iran last week.
In a rant posted on the official Maple Leaf Foods Twitter account, CEO Michael McCain referred to Trump as the “narcissist in Washington” and laid the blame for the tragedy at the feet of the US, despite Iran already admitting to shooting down the airliner.
“U.S. government leaders unconstrained by checks/balances, concocted an ill-conceived plan to divert focus from political woes,” wrote McCain.
“A narcissist in Washington tears world accomplishments apart; destabilizes region. US now unwelcomed everywhere in the area including Iraq; tensions escalated to feverish pitch.”
In response to McCain’s tweets many people were quick to point out that under his watch Maple Leaf products killed 22 Canadians after a listeriosis outbreak in 2008.
“Tragically, our products have been linked to illness and loss of life. To those people who are ill, and to the families who have lost loved ones, I offer my deepest and sincerest sympathies,” McCain said in an apology over the incident.
McCain’s company settled with the victims of the outbreak and their families for $27 million.
On January 11, the Iranian government admitted it had shot down the airliner “by accident” after anti-aircraft missiles targeted the flight.
In response to the government’s admission, thousands of Iranians marched in protest against Iran’s dictatorship. The protests are now entering their third day after reports of Iranian security forces firing upon and killing protesters.
Trump tweeted at the Iranian government, calling on the regime to not shoot innocent civilians, warning that the world is watching how events unfold.
“To the leaders of Iran – DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free! Stop the killing of your great Iranian people!” tweeted Trump.
In general terms, I am very sceptical of polls. There are a number of reasons for that, but the main reason is that pollsters using leading questions can manipulate the answers they get typically to justify whatever position they are trying to promote.
One needs only look at the 2016 Presidential election in the U.S. to see the problem when all the polls showed Hillary Clinton virtually a certainty to win. Well, Donald Trump and the American people showed how wrong the polls were. The pollsters wanted her to win so badly their questions and samplings were skewed to get the result they wanted. Election day showed a different reality.
My other problem with polls is they work off landline lists provided by telcos or lists given by clients like political parties. In this day and age many if not most folks don’t have a landline, just their smartphone. So who are the pollsters actually reaching?
It is with these thoughts in mind that I question the Angus Reid poll released this week on the justice system and policing.
The poll found that nationally 48% of those surveyed believed crime had increased in their communities in the past five years. This was higher in the western provinces where it was nearly 60%.
Where the poll really loses me is when it said 82% of B.C. respondents reported they had been a victim of crime in the past two years. What?
That’s just simply not true. I live in Vancouver. If that were true it would be the talk of the town. Equally, any numbers compiled by the police, municipal and the RCMP, simply do not back that up.
Stats kept by the Vancouver Police doesn’t bear that out. In fact, in most categories of crime, the numbers are decreasing year over year.
Certainly some urban areas have seen a spike in things like gang violence with shootings spiking in Toronto, Calgary and Surrey, B.C.
Yes, that’s a problem and it contributes to the average person’s perception when every time they open the paper or turn on the evening news they are hearing of another shooting. In Toronto last year there were 490 shootings with 248 of those resulting in injury or death.
In comparison, in 2005, the so-called ‘year of the gun’ in Toronto there were 262 shootings resulting in 53 deaths.
Where I think the poll does require some attention is the trend it shows where people are losing confidence in their police and court system. According to the poll just 54% of folks surveyed said they held their local police in high regard. The RCMP garnered just 57% support.
Now, I doubt those numbers are accurate, but they likely do show a disturbing trend. Our police officers do a very difficult and challenging job. Most folks never have any interaction with the police in the normal course of events.
The police, for the most part, deal with the dregs of society. Be they drunks, dopeheads, gangsters or whatever, for the bulk of their shift they aren’t dealing with nice folks.
Most people would not want to do their jobs, so I think it’s a bit disingenuous to ask folks whether they support their police or hold them in high regard. Having said that, the trend in the poll would suggest the number is getting lower year over year. This certainly sends the message to the various police agencies they need to do a better job of connecting and communicating with their communities.
That would be a fair criticism. But overall, I don’t think the poll is very instructive.
If what we take out of it is that gang violence, the drug problem and illegal guns, are on the rise, then there is something to learn for the police, for the courts and mostly for politicians who continually talk nonsense about banning what is already banned and refusing to deal with the actual problem.
The police fight the problem at the sharp end and the courts need to understand the ramifications for society of lenient sentencing and ridiculously inadequate bail for too many repeat offenders.
But mostly, the politicians need to get serious about the problems and work with all the stakeholders to find solutions not just knee-jerk stupidity.
Canadians might be footing the bill for Prince Harry and Meghan’s security in Canada, according to a UK report from the Evening Standard.
The report, published Monday, says Trudeau assured Queen Elizabeth II “taxpayers in his country should pick up the huge bill for the couple’s round-the-clock protection while they are in the country.”
The story comes the same day Queen Elizabeth II announced the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be splitting their time between Canada and the UK during a “transition” away from full-time royal duties.
According to the Evening Standard, the security bill could run $1.7 million CAD per year, with the RCMP taking on the responsibility of protecting the couple and their son.
The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment in response to an inquiry from True North. At a press conference, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said he and Trudeau had “not had any discussions on that subject.”
The Sussexes are protected by a royal guard from Scotland Yard.
Harry and Meghan have recently made headlines with their decision to become “work to become financially independent.”
A statement released by the Sussexes revealed the decision Jan. 8.
“After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen,” the statement said.
What is Alberta’s place in Canadian confederation? Amid rising western alienation, that’s the question at hand at a Calgary Conference.
Alberta Proud is hosting a Value of Alberta conference Jan. 18 to discuss Alberta’s place in Canada and the province’s future.
Former finance minister Joe Oliver, author and British peer Conrad Black, and Ted Morton are among the speakers at the event, which is sponsored by Canadians for Democracy & Prosperity and the Buffalo Project.
The one-day conference at Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre comes at a time when national attention has increasingly shifted towards western alienation and the relationship between Alberta and the federal government.
Conference spokesperson Becca Polak said the event is a response to feedback from the province’s grassroots.
“It all started with what our community on Facebook is saying in our comments,” said Polak.
“There’s a lot of different opinions and we’re not out there to just put views out but actually respond to what people are asking. There’s a lot of frustration, curiosity, there’s a lot of fear so we decided to gather who we think are experts to talk about that.”
Polak said she’s expecting anywhere between 300 and 500 people to attend, though added it’s more about the quality of discourse.
“I think our first goal is that we just hope we can contribute to the discussion,” she said.
“We’re trying to see if we can get a fair deal for Alberta, by our discussions by our experts and just really answering some of the questions that Albertans have.”
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, along with several provincial ministers, recently travelled to Ottawa to lobby the federal government for several changes, among them completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline and the repeal of bills C-69 and C-48.
Kenney has also advocated for a new equalization formula for federal transfer payments.
Alberta Proud, which has no affiliation with Ontario Proud and Canada Proud, is a citizen advocacy group with over 182,000 followers on Facebook.
The media went into a tizzy when Conservative leader Andrew Scheer met with oil and gas industry representatives ahead of the 2019 federal election. The Globe and Mail reported on it as a “secret meeting.” The National Observer said Scheer had “holed up in a resort with…Big Oil’s most powerful lobby group, to plot the demise of the Trudeau government, among other discussions.”
Big Oil conspiracies abounded, no doubt emboldened by then-democratic institutions minister Karina Gould’s suggestion of “collusion” and former environment minister Catherine McKenna’s accusation of “scheming.”
In fact, the April 11 session at the Azuridge Estate Hotel outside of Calgary welcomed a number of stakeholders, including senior Liberals and First Nations leaders. The host organization, the Modern Miracle Network, let the industry pitch its vision while giving Scheer an opportunity to share his own.
Modern Miracle Network, an oil industry-led group that openly celebrates and promotes Canada’s energy sector, was branded as some sort of shadowy cabal of executives with a hidden agenda.
The rhetoric around this event is indicative of how the media seems to view the oil and gas sector: any political lobbying is sinister, and any politician who supports Canada’s energy sector must be unethically in bed with the industry.
It’s why the Modern Miracle Network hosts dialogues like the one in Alberta, founder and executive director Michael Binnion told True North.
Binnion, who’s also the president and chief executive officer of Questerre Energy, wants an “adult conversation” on energy policy, which includes discussion about whether carbon taxation is the best way to protect the environment.
Modern Miracle Network, a registered non-profit, is transparent about its goals. The organization isn’t a household name because it markets its ideas to the media, politicians and other stakeholders, rather than to the public directly.
“We’re an organization that’s trying to bring people together who have a common view or alignment with our objectives, which is having an adult conservation on hydrocarbons and energy,” Binnon said. “Our job is to facilitate a network for that conversation.”
In an October article, the National Observer called Binnion the “little-known colossus behind the Conservatives’ anti-climate agenda,” a moniker rooted to some extent in the author’s confusion about a remark Binnion made at the 2018 Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa.
During a panel discussion about carbon taxes, Binnion joked that a page of hand-written notes was the “official list for the conservative movement on the options that we’re going to discuss.” The National Observer said this amounted to Binnion “boasting” that he held “key elements of the Conservative’s (sic) energy platform.”
Despite a reporter’s inability to differentiate between conservative ideas and the Conservative party, there’s no question Modern Miracle Network aims to reshape the discussion around energy policy. Much of this involves showcasing the work the sector has already done.
“I think the (oil and gas) industry has done an amazing job of actually delivering on what people say they want, which is a lower environmental footprint,” he said. “Every single year we continue to do that.”
The Canadian energy sector has spent more money on environmental technology, clean technologies and environmental protection than all other industries in the country combined, he noted.
It’s a quintessential Canadian success story, Binnion said.
“Thank goodness – for the planet – that the oil sands were put in Canada,” he said. “What other country, what other group of scientists or engineers, would have been able to take a resource that had the 90th percentile of emissions intensity per barrel and have reduced new projects to the 50th percentile, and are now talking about being better than average in emissions intensity? What an amazing Canadian achievement.”
It’s an evolution we’re not seeing in other oil rich nations, like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, yet it is only domestic oil production that seems to be demonized by activists.
While corners of the media are no doubt hostile to pro-oil voices, Binnion said the industry itself shoulders a lot of the blame for not better communicating its successes.
“I think our industry’s done a terrible job at that, but that’s because we’re an industry of geoscientists and engineers,” he said. “We’re not an industry of people who market Coca Cola. We’re too busy focusing on delivering. If you look at the amazing progress, it’s really quite something. What we haven’t done is convinced other Canadians that we actually care about what they care about.”
Modern Miracle Network isn’t just about naysaying – the group has its own proposals, which it believes are absent from the national discourse on environmental policy. Though the organization takes a firm stance against the carbon tax schemes pushed by left-wing governments in Canada, it isn’t against emission-reduction policies. Its members just want them to be more effective.
Binnion said a localized, regional carbon tax – which each province has been forced to implement under the federal government’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act – simply causes companies to migrate their emissions elsewhere.
“It doesn’t create an incentive for production to move where the emissions are lower; It actually creates an incentive for production to move where emissions are highest, because they can get away from the tax,” Binnion said. “This Canadian parochial approach – a patchwork of local taxes – actually does the opposite of what is intended relative to production.”
The argument is a sound one as much of the United States , makes itself more competitive. The higher a carbon tax in a Canadian province, the more likely a company is to set up shop elsewhere, making the policy environmentally ineffective and economically harmful.
Carbon taxation also doesn’t take into account future growth, Binnion said. The world population is expected to rise to 9.5 billion people by 2050, meaning there will be more people demanding a higher quality of life as time progresses. Opposing pipelines and imposing carbon taxes isn’t going to solve this impending problem, especially as countries like China and India prove unlikely to sacrifice economic progress in the name of the environment.
While there’s no silver bullet, Binnion said people need to stop demonizing the oil and gas sector while lionizing alternative energies that have benefits, but also bring their own baggage.
“We’re not afraid to admit that wind and solar have benefits,” he said. “They do. And we’re not afraid to admit that oil and gas have impacts, and that we need to make major technological leaps to solve them.”
“We’ve got some amazing initiatives that we’re working on that never get mentioned when people want to just tell that one side of the story.”
U.K. counter-terrorism police included the climate extremist group Extinction Rebellion in a guide on extreme ideologies targeting the public and youth.
Extinction Rebellion was named alongside various Neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups, extreme satanists, the alt-right and Islamist extremists.
The guide which was intended as reference for local authorities to identify members of extremist groups was published by Counter Terrorism Policing and it asks police to report radicals to the UK’s anti-extremism Prevent program.
“While concern about climate change is not in itself extreme, activists may encourage vulnerable people to perform acts of violence, or commit such acts themselves,” states the guide about Extinction Rebellion.
“An anti-establishment philosophy that seeks system change underlies [Extinction Rebellion’s] activism; the group attracts to its events school-age children and adults unlikely to be aware of this. While non-violent against persons, the campaign encourages other law-breaking activities.”
Extinction Rebellion protests have popped up throughout Canada and the group was often a presence at events attended by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg. The group was seen at several Canadian protests where Thunberg was present including in Vancouver and Montreal.
Senior members of the group have had a history of making extremist and controversial comments.
Recently, Roger Hallam who is the co-founder of the movement explicitly downplayed the Holocaust in an interview. During the interview, Hallam said that the Holocaust, which led to the brutal murder of six million innocent Jews was “almost a normal event … just another fu**ery in human history.”
Hallam was also quoted calling on his supporters to bring down the government and to even die for the group’s cause in a report by the former head of the Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit Richard Walton.
“We are not just sending out emails and asking for donations. We are going to force the Governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose…and yes, some may die in the process,” the report quotes Hallam as saying to a crowd of supporters.
Thunberg herself has gotten into hot water over comments which were seen as encouraging violence. In one Dec. 13, 2019 speech Thunberg said that politicians should be put “against the wall” for their inaction on addressing climate change. Many interpreted Thunberg’s comments as a call for political executions.
Did you ever think you’d see a time when the CBC, our notoriously leftist public broadcaster, would be accused of spreading racism, xenophobia, and “dog-whistle politics?”
A collective of 30 immigrant rights, indigenous rights, and labour organizations have sent an open letter to the CBC Ombudsperson, calling for an investigation into an episode of the CBC program The Fifth Estate titled “Passport babies: The growing shadow industry of Birth Tourism,” which aired January 5th, 2020.
The complaint, sent by Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, claims the CBC’s “Passport babies” episode is spreading “misinformation” that “increases the risk of violence and hatred toward migrants and their families.” Some of the groups that signed off on the complaint include Montreal Antifasciste, Idle No More, and Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network.
The CBC show was based on the figure that approximately 5,000 babies were born to non-resident mothers in 2018, up 15% from 2017. Many of these babies are born to “birth tourists,” often from China, who fly into Canada while pregnant, and pay hospitals private healthcare fees upwards of $10,000 to give birth to their child. Any baby born on Canadian soil is automatically granted citizenship. The child born in Canada then has access to the publicly-funded healthcare system, domestic post-secondary tuition rates, and the option of later sponsoring their parents to immigrate.
There are many websites and agencies that promote the multi-million dollar industry of birth tourism, and birth houses are established in communities such as Richmond, BC so that pregnant women can lay low until they go into labour, and have a Canadian address to refer to. The women are told to fly into Canada at about 6 months pregnant, and are coached on how to answer border officials at the airport.
Birth tourism is a legal practice at this time. In 2012, then-Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney considered cracking down on birth tourism, but it was not seen as a large enough problem.
The Migrant Workers Alliance complained that the CBC was unbalanced in their report because it did not consult any immigration rights experts that could provide “alternative interpretations of the statistics cited.” According to the Migrant Workers Alliance, the episode served to “fan [the] flames of xenophobia and racism by redirecting concerns about lack of funding for healthcare towards immigrants. This is dog-whistle politics, and it has a direct and harmful effect on hundreds of thousands individuals [sic] and families, and biases [sic] policy makers.”
The TorontoStar’s Race and Gender columnist, Shree Paradkar, accused the public broadcaster of disseminating “white nationalist talking points on public television.” A writer with the alternative outlet The Media Co-op claims “the show repeats the racist anti-immigrant fear mongering, straight out of Fox News, and Trump’s playbook.”
The CBC got a taste of what it’s like to be called racist and bigoted simply for doing research and reporting. It’s hard to say if this will make them sympathetic to those slandered as racist, or make them back off from doing investigations into controversial or sensitive topics of this nature in the future. In any case, I’ll be waiting to see the ombudsperson’s review.
