A failed lawsuit against the Conservative Party filed by the CBC during the 2019 election cost taxpayers almost $400,000, according to newly obtained documents.
Plus, Canadian youth have some of the worst outcomes when it comes to labour force participation rates according to Statistics Canada.
And the House of Commons passed a motion calling on the Liberal government to review Canada’s record immigration targets with support from all opposition parties.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Lindsay Shepherd!
A 31-year old man has been charged after the attempted arson of a Regina Catholic church.
Jordan Willet was arrested last Friday and now faces charges of alleged arson, disguise with intent to commit a criminal act and two counts of failing to comply with a probation order.
The fire in the early hours of Feb. 12 at the Blessed Sacrament Parish was quickly extinguished by Regina Fire and Protective Services.
“Fire investigators reached out to police who began an arson investigation,” reads the release. “Over the past seven days, officers have been investigating, including reviewing security video from the area. As a result, officers were able to identify and locate a suspect.”
Willet was scheduled to appear in court Feb. 20.
A camera captured a suspect with his face covered pouring what appeared to be gasoline from a jerry can onto the church’s office entrance.
The suspect can then be seen lighting the accelerant on fire before running away.
“The alarm went off immediately when it detected smoke,” Fr. James Hentge told 980 CJME AM radio in an interview. “My Apple iPods picked up the alarm and alerted me… that there was an alarm going off in my home.”
The church, which is located in Regina’s downtown at 2039 Scarth St., had to cancel its Sunday mass as a result of the fire and its clean up.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre addressed these arsons publicly last month.
“There is no justification for burning down a church period. Regardless of the other information or justifications that people claim to use, there is never a justification to burn down a church,” said Poilievre.
No matter the mayor in charge, Toronto city council has a history of denying the Jew hatred that has played out on the city’s streets for more than 15 years.
The latest attempt by Coun. James Pasternak, a lone wolf who has tried to put an end to the now almost daily antisemitic events that appall Jews and non-Jews alike, was so benign it should have shot through council unanimously.
Pasternak merely asked at council last week that the city manager develop a “policy framework for the management of rallies and protests” that would follow the city’s Human Rights and Anti-Harassment policy.
That 12-page policy dictates that people have a right to be protected from harassment and discrimination in city facilities, parks and on city streets.
It highlights such examples of harassment as “frequent angry shouting and regular use of profanity and abusive or violent language, physical, verbal or email threats, intimidation, violent behaviors, name calling and public humiliation.”
In other words, these are the kinds of behaviours – on steroids – that Jews and non-Jews alike have endured from the anti-Israel terrorist sympathizers since Oct. 7.
Pasternak asked that the city manager report back to council by the end of this December – likely and hopefully after the Israel-Hamas conflict is long over.
Still, it barely passed.
Mayor Olivia Chow supported the motion but it was voted down by such council activists as Alejandra Bravo, Lily Cheng, (Communist) Paula Fletcher, Parthi Kandavel and Ausma Malik (both of whom see Islamophobia under every rock) and Chris Moise (who was anti-Israel politician Kristyn Wong-Tam’s heir apparent and would positively be hysterical if even one protest was held against the LGBTQIA community).
It bears repeating that Malik cleaned up her act to run politically but I was the first to reveal her involvement in anti-Israel protests standing beside a Hezbollah flag. She has not attended one single pro-Israel event since Oct. 7.
Still it is not surprising from this council, which seems to attract more and more activists to run in each election and from a City Hall which has a long history of not dealing with the rising Jew hatred on the streets of Toronto.
I know. I was there to report on it. I would venture to say that this cavalier attitude has perhaps emboldened the rise in Jew hatred across Canada, coupled with the federal government’s lax immigration policies.
From 2009 to 2014, I watched our city politicians and certain hapless leaders of Toronto’s Pride community bob and weave and find every excuse not to ban the hateful Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from the Pride parade.
Only the late former mayor Rob Ford tried to cut off city funding to Pride until QuAIA was banned – to shrieks of self-righteous indignation and claims he was homophobic from the radical LGBT community.
The file was so mishandled that the QuAIA horror show finally fizzled out on its own after World Pride in 2014.
Back then I wrote in the Toronto Sun that its demise was certainly not due to any attempts by the majority of council or Pride’s organizers or city organizers to get the group and its noxious anti-Israel message out of the parade.
City Hall enabled its existence with ridiculous edicts about the need to respect freedom of expression and a ruling that “Israeli apartheid” did not violate the city’s anti-discrimination policy.
The pathetic excuses to keep hateful Al Quds protests occupying the streets of Toronto picked up where QuAIA left off.
I attended more than one Al Quds Day protest before and after COVID, witnessing young ladies in niqabs holding professionally made signs calling for the destruction of Israel and police accompanying protesters screaming anti-Israel slurs up Toronto’s University Ave., which they blocked without a permit.
This hateful action went on for years in plain sight of Mayor John Tory, the Toronto police and all the NDP activists on council.
In 2019 I watched councillors wring their hands for months about directing police to enforce bylaw contraventions, issue trespass warnings and seek reimbursement for policing if protesters occupied city property without a permit.
Police were even instructed to take “swift and immediate action” against any group advocating antisemitism or other forms of hate on city property.
But it was all a ruse. That never happened.
That brings us to the past four months.
Is it any wonder the anti-Israel contingent are out of control with nearly 500 often violent and intimidating protests blocking city streets and squares in the city of Toronto since the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Even the toxic and highly confused Queers for Palestine have risen from the ashes of QuAIA.
I blame City Hall and our activist/spineless politicians for allowing Jew hatred to fester.
Somehow Jews and the rabid harassment of my community doesn’t matter to many of those who’d scream, shout, shriek and take to X to call out the slightest act (whether true or not) of anti-black racism, Islamophobia and of course the latest cause, criticism about dangerous gender ideology.
So you’ll pardon my skepticism about this latest move by councillor James Pasternak – even though his heart has always been in the right place.
The barn door was opened years ago and it’s too little, too late.
A day hasn’t passed since the horrors of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of some 1,200 innocent Israelis, aided and abetted by hundreds of ordinary Gazans, without some politician or the other calling for an immediate ceasefire followed by a two-state solution to this latest attempt to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.
Israel pushed back stronger than ever on this foolishly naïve and patently suicidal suggestion Sunday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government is proposing a declaration that “outright rejects” any attempts by foreign powers to create a Palestinian state.
“In light of the talk recently heard in the international community about an attempt to unilaterally impose a Palestinian state on Israel, I am bringing today a declarative decision on this issue for the approval of the government. I am sure it will be widely accepted,” Netanyahu told the cabinet in Hebrew.
Cabinet unanimously approved the declaration.
“Israel outright rejects international dictates regarding the permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” it said. “Such an arrangement will be reached only through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions. Israel will continue to oppose the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. Such a recognition, following the massacre of October 7, will reward the terrorism, a reward like no other, and will prevent any future peace settlement.”
The statement echoes what Netanyahu told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, namely that direct or even indirect recognition of a Palestinian state “would be a prize for those who planned and orchestrated the Oct. 7 massacre.”
Biden, other U.S. officials, and many world leaders have repeatedly said that Israel’s war against Hamas should end with a two-state solution, implying by this call that they would quickly recognize a Palestinian state. Such a view is rife with historical amnesia, if not cynical political posturing or even outright antisemitism.
Israel has repeatedly attempted to make peace and accept a two-state solution with Palestinian and Arab leaders over the past 75 years, but all offers have been rejected, including the original 1947 UN partition plan that led to Israel’s establishment, and Israeli offers in 2000 and 2008 that would have recognized a Palestinian state.
“I do not think a two-state solution is possible, and, even if possible, it is not advisable. For more than 50 years, hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘peacemakers,’ led by the United States, have attempted to coerce Israel and the Palestinians into a two-state solution,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said last month.
Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador under former president Donald Trump, said these efforts fail because Palestinians won’t accept a Jewish state, there’s a high likelihood a Palestinian state would become a terror state, and the West Bank is biblical Israel, meaning Jewish and Christian holy sites would likely be destroyed absent any Israeli control.
Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper strongly condemned efforts to impose a quick two-state solution in a National Post editorial titledIsrael’s war is just, Hamas must surrender or be eliminated. He used unequivocal words that would never be echoed by Justin Trudeau who has equivocally muttered out of both sides of his mouth on this war.
“Israel’s war objective — the elimination of Gaza’s Hamas regime — is essential,” Harper said. “Leaving the job unfinished, with Hamas’s existence tolerated and its actions contained, has been tried, and it has failed. The Israeli people cannot be reasonably asked to return to the pre-war status quo. That is the position our own nations took toward the attacks launched by Nazi Germany against us. Israel has as absolute a right to absolute security now as we did then.”
“Suggestions that a victorious Israeli army should simply walk out of Gaza and assume some harmonious “two-state solution” will emerge out of thin air is insincere and hypocritical,” Harper added. “I dare say it is also beyond foolish. That is precisely what Israeli was persuaded to do in 2005, and it is why we ended up where we are today.”
Harper took note of anti-israel mantras such as “from the river to the sea” and “settler occupation” that fundamentally reject the idea of a Jewish state.
“We must stop pretending that a two-state solution can be pursued in the face of the continued propagation of such a view,” he said.
Such words need to be heeded: when it comes to the Palestinians, the world needs to stop telling Israel what to do and how to do it.
Since 2015, Canada’s federal government has faced deteriorating fiscal conditions with successive large deficits and increasing debt, but proposals suggest that significant spending reforms similar to those of the 1990s could lead to a balanced budget within one or two years starting from 2024/25. Fraser Institute fiscal studies director Jake Fuss joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss.
As Durham voters get ready to head to the polls for a Mar. 4 election, top of mind issues are inflation, housing, and the cost of living.
True North went to Oshawa, Courtice, and Bowmanville – communities in the riding east of Toronto – to ask potential voters what issues matter to them.
While voters were generally in agreement on the pressing issues facing the country, they had different perspectives on how to solve the problems – and which party should do it.
Out of over 20 potential voters True North spoke to, open support for the Liberal candidate Robert Rock was absent.
Kaitlyn Rose, 26, is a nurse in a long-term care home. Like many voters, she prioritizes housing. She currently lives in a basement apartment in north Oshawa with her boyfriend.
“Rent’s expensive, a decrease in the rents would be great. Health care is critical to me. There’s a shortage of nurses,” she said. “We’re often short-staffed, and fair wages are important for that.”
The byelection is to replace Conservative MP Erin O’Toole, who retired last year. Jamil Jivani is running for the Conservatives. Robert Rock, who attempted to be the Conservative candidate, is running for the Liberals. The New Democrats have fielded Chris Borgia. Patricia Conlin is running for the PPC while Kevin MacKenzie is standing for the Greens.
Many voters said their ideal candidate “actually cares” about the people. Rose wants a candidate who cares for the working class and will decrease taxes.
“I voted NDP in the last election and was happy with that. I mean, they didn’t get in, but for the most part, I’ve been happy with what they promote,” she said.
Danielle Armstrong, 44, typically votes NDP and will continue to vote that way. Armstrong is a rehab therapist who also lives in north Oshawa. On top of returning the housing market to normal, she agrees with Rose and thinks there should be more funding for Canada’s healthcare system.
Armstrong supports the NDP because they “make plans and policies for the public” rather than running against something.
On the other end of the political spectrum, lifelong Conservative supporter Frank McGinnis from Scugog wants to ensure the riding has a conservative voice.
McGinnis, 60, is now retired. He feels the weight of property taxes and sees friends and family struggling with bills.
“What’s happening federally is an embarrassment,” McGinnis said. “My ideal candidate is someone who will listen to the issues of the people who are actually paying the taxes and going to work every day, looking at their paycheck realizing over 50% of it’s been taxed.”
Dmitriy Suzdalev, a 28-year-old who works at a jewellery shop in Courtice, said inflation has influenced his vote.
“Grocery shopping weekly is over $100. Not even ten years ago, when I was in university, I could get by with $40 a week.” Suzdalev said, adding that he’s settled for less healthy food because it’s cheaper.
Suzdalev said he would support the Conservatives this time but has voted NDP and Liberal in the past.
“But now both those parties seem not to have the common citizens’ interests in mind,” he said.
Durham College employee Mike Brannan, 39, raised immigration as an issue.
“For me, I would say the burning thing is immigration. I don’t feel like we have the infrastructure in place to support the immigrants that we are bringing into the country,” Brannan said.
“As a Canadian, it’s actually kind of embarrassing because they came here to start this new life and then figured that going back to the place they were trying to leave because it was so bad is better than staying here.”
Brannan cited the carbon tax as a problem. Even with a combined household income of over six figures, bills are challenging for him.
Brannan doesn’t consider himself politically affiliated. But he has lost confidence in the Liberals despite voting for them in the past.
Bowmanville welder Damian Black, 29, will be supporting the Conservatives. He voted PPC in the last election but supported Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015. He too flagged immigration as a key concern.
“There are too many people here for what we can provide everybody and not enough for Canadians that have been here,” he said.
Black’s ideal candidate is someone who’s not a globalist and will build the economy in Canada without sending money around the world.
“We have many more problems to figure out before we can start handing out millions and millions to other countries,’ he said.
For Omotayo Adeniyi, 52-year-old Bowmanville physician, this will be the first federal election he can vote in since becoming a Canadian citizen. In the provincial election, he voted Progressive Conservative, so he’s leaning Conservative in the federal byelection.
Two PPC supporters in Bowmanville, 30-year-old Cassandra Ashley Burton and Paulie Rovillard, 43, said the Conservatives represent the status quo.
Katherine Henneke in Bowmanville thinks Canada is ready for a change. She lost her job for seven months after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine and struggles with how divided Canada is because of the government’s response to the pandemic.
“Trudeau and the NDP have got to go. Their time is up; they failed repeatedly in this country. It’s time for change and to get Canada back,” Henneke said.
Two years ago this week, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, a decision he continues to defend despite its recent ruling of unconstitutionality by the Federal Court. Freedom Convoy organizer Tom Marazzo joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to reflect on this unprecedented moment in Canadian history and the events surrounding it.
A failed lawsuit against the Conservative Party filed by the CBC during the 2019 election cost taxpayers almost $400,000, according to newly obtained documents.
Details of the lawsuit were kept behind closed doors for three years, sparking a new conversation about freedom of information procedures in Ottawa.
Conservative leader in the Senate, Don Plett, had to file an access to information request in 2021 to find out how much taxpayers paid in legal fees, after his questions went unanswered by the federal government.
“The Trudeau government has just given up on its promise of openness and accountability,” Plett told the National Post. “In this specific situation, we had to go around roadblocks that were set by the government to get an answer to my questions three years ago.”
“Somebody needs to be held accountable for this because we have the right to have these answers,” added Plett.
The documents reveal that CBC’s combined legal fees amounted to $359,971.34 with no additional expenses.
However, the documents were dated before the broadcaster had received expenses from the Conservative party, which are expected to be around $30,000, based on the rates set by the Federal Court.
The costs given to the party ultimately ended up being $32,665.78, a figure later confirmed by CBC’s director of media relations Leon Mar, bringing the total of the lawsuit to $392,637.12.
CBC launched the lawsuit based on copyright infringement in response to a political attack ad made by the Conservative party which used some of their broadcast footage without authorization.
The Federal Court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling there was no evidence that the footage was used for partisan purposes “reflected adversely on the broadcaster.”
Plett filed an order paper question in the Senate on May 25, 2021, wherein he asked what the cost of the lawsuit was to Canadian taxpayers, requesting a breakdown of the legal fee costs and the amount awarded to the Conservative party and any other related expenses.
Plett would file again on Nov. 23, 2021, asking the same questions.
According to Mar, CBC responded to both order paper questions on June 21 and Dec. 13 of 2021 respectively.
The initial response wasn’t disclosed because it may have died on dissolution of the 43rd Parliament, which ends all unfinished businesses. This includes order paper questions as well as legislation.
However, the second response is presently still on the order paper because the Senate does not have a deadline for order paper questions the way that the House of Commons does.
Still, Canadian Heritage has not provided any explanation for the parliamentary delay now that the deadline has passed. Furthermore, it hasn’t confirmed whether or not the department is opposed to publicly disclosing the information.
Plett asked Marc Gold, the government’s representative in the Senate, why the response to his questions took three years but he could not provide Plett with an answer.
Gold instead suggested the Senate consider changing the procedural rules around order paper questions to be more akin to the House of Commons model, which “imposes upon an obligation for answers in a timely fashion.”
“Colleagues, I do my very best,” said Gold. “But once I transmit (the order paper questions) and follow up (with the relevant departments), as my office and I do diligently, it is out of my control.”
Plett called Gold’s answer “offensive.”
“He’s basically saying: you want transparency? You’re not going to get any. You’re going to have to change a rule that forces us to give you an answer,” Plett told the National Post. He wonders if the Trudeau government is deliberately avoiding his questions on the issue, some of which were filed as early as 2020.
Last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilivre promised to make changes to the access to information system that would allow for faster response times and force the government to release more information going forward.
A motion to curb record immigration levels within 100 days, spearheaded by the Bloc Québecois, passed in the House of Commons with a vote of 173 to 150 on Monday.
All 149 Liberal MPs voted against the motion, with 1 Independent joining them. The rest of the Independents, the entirety of the Conservatives, Bloc Québecois, NDP, and Green Party voted in favour of the motion.
The motion on federal immigration targets calls on the government “to review its immigration targets starting in 2024, after consultation with Quebec, the provinces and territories, based on their integration capacity, particularly in terms of housing, health care, education, French language training and transportation infrastructure, all with a view to successful immigration.”
The non-binding motion also calls on the Prime Minister to convene a meeting with provinces and territories to consult them on their respective integration capacities.
Within 100 days, the motion calls on the government to present a comprehensive strategy to revise the 2024 federal immigration targets, reflecting the integration capacities of the provinces, and territories. This includes a detailed plan addressing the resource gaps necessary for the successful resettlement of newcomers and ensuring provinces and territories are adequately supported.
“Canadians strongly disagree with the immigration policies of what is left of this government,” said Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet. He insisted that the Liberals “could not have cared less” about costs incurred by taxpayers.
“Everyone is being crushed by health care costs, education costs, and other costs,” Blanchet told MPS. “This used to be a Québec thing. Now it is a Canada-wide issue.”
A previous Nanos poll revealed that over half of Canadians would like to see the Liberals reduce their immigration targets. 75% of Canadians believe that immigrants are contributing to the housing crisis. 73% believe that immigrants are putting pressure on the health care system, and 63% believe the same for the school system, revealed a Leger poll.
Since March 2022, the number of Canadians willing to welcome more immigrants has nearly halved from 17% to 9%.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged that the current level of temporary foreign workers and international students has grown at an unsustainable rate and noted that the system is “out of control.”
However, when speaking in the House, Miller defended his government’s immigration policy.
“We need them,” he said, defending the level of 500,000 new immigrants per year for 2024 and 2025, saying that the number comes after conducting extensive consultations.
Thanks to an influx of new permanent residents, CIBC estimates that the housing demand by 2030 will be at least five million units, not the 3.5 million projected by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
CIBC’s report projected the Canadian population would reach 38.7 million by 2020, a significant underestimation. There were 1.4 million more people than expected. Non-permanent residents accounted for over 90% of the discrepancy, which has since increased. In the third quarter of 2023 alone, Canada’s population grew by 430,000 people, the highest quarterly growth since 1957.
There were 240,267 total unit housing starts last year, a decrease from 261,849 in 2022 and 271,198 in 2021. To reach the goal of five million starts, there would need to be just over 830,000 housing starts a year. The United States has approximately nine times more people than Canada but only builds 1.4 million houses a year.
Internal documents revealed that the federal immigration department analyzed the negative effects of high immigration on the economy, housing and services, showing that population growth has exceeded housing starts. The Bank of Canada conducted its own analysis and reached the same conclusion.
Canada’s largest oil sands companies say they are ready to pledge $16.3 billion to create the world’s largest underground carbon capture project but a lack of commitment from the federal government to guarantee the development’s long-term success is leading to cold feet from investors.
Pathways Alliance, a consortium of some of Canada’s largest players in the oil business including Cenovus and Suncor, says the first phase of investing has secured funding to move ahead with the project.
The underground carbon capture facility is expected to cut 22 million metric tons of emissions by 2030, equivalent to taking 4.7 million cars off the road.
However, the project faces uncertainty due to the lack of long-term government support, which could jeopardize its viability and competitiveness.
Pathways Alliance has been seeking commitments from the federal and provincial governments to provide stable and predictable policies, such as carbon pricing, tax credits and clean fuel regulations, that would ensure the project’s economic feasibility and environmental benefits.
“The real challenge for Canadian (carbon capture) then is not insufficient incentives — they are some of the most attractive in the world — but the uncertainty of their existence throughout project life,” said Wood Mackenzie analyst Peter Findlay in a report on the status of the project.
“The value of most of these incentives could be changed by political whim at any point during the project life — even going to zero.”
The federal government has expressed interest in supporting carbon capture projects as part of its climate strategy, which aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The announced in July 2021 an $81.5-million call for expressions of interest to fund research, development and demonstration projects in CCUS technologies. In November 2021, it also proposed a refundable investment tax credit valued at $2.6 billion over five years, starting in 2022–23, to encourage the development and adoption of CCUS technology.
However, these measures may not be enough to address the risks and challenges faced by the Pathways Alliance and other carbon capture projects in Canada.
According to the Wood Mackenzie report the value of most of these incentives could be changed or eliminated by political decisions at any point during the project’s life.
