In a continued gesture of gratitude for Boston’s aid following the devastating 1917 Halifax Explosion, the province of Nova Scotia has once again gifted a Christmas tree to the city that now stands tall in the Boston Common.
According to the Nova Scotia government, this year’s tree, a white spruce from Hugh and Liz Ryan’s property in Mattie Settlement, Antigonish County, was officially lit Dec. 5 at Boston Common, the 350-year-old park where the colonial militia mustered amid the American Revolution.
“We have watched this tree grow from a young sapling to its present height for the last 30 years. We are happy and proud to donate this tree to Boston as a heartfelt thank you for all the help received during a great hardship in Halifax,” said the Ryan family.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston was in attendance at the tree-lighting ceremony. The tree will remain standing throughout the Christmas season.
The tradition of gifting a Christmas tree to Boston dates back to 1918, a year after the Halifax Explosion, one of history’s largest non-nuclear blasts.
A French cargo ship carrying explosives collided with a Norwegian vessel in Halifax Harbour, resulting in a massive fireball that tragically claimed nearly 2,000 lives and injured thousands more.
Despite a raging blizzard, Boston immediately sent aid to Halifax, including vital supplies, medical personnel, and volunteers.
In appreciation of this selfless support, Halifax sent its first Christmas tree to Boston in 1918.
The annual tradition was revived in 1971 and has continued uninterrupted since then. This year’s tree marks the 53rd consecutive year of this poignant exchange and coincides with the 107th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion.
The annual gift of the Christmas tree serves as a lasting symbol of the enduring friendship and gratitude between Nova Scotia and Boston.
Last year’s Christmas Tree for Boston was donated by the Gourley family in Stewiacke, N.S.
In an attempt to address rising gun crimes in Canada, the Trudeau government added 324 firearms models to its prohibited list, building on the 2020 ban of 1,500 models. The total prohibited list has now grown to over 2,000 models.
But here’s what the Trudeau government won’t tell Canadians – the majority of gun crimes are being committed by illegal guns and not by individuals who have gone through the strenuous process of legally obtaining a firearm.
Joining The Faulkner Show today is Ian Runkle, a criminal defence and firearms lawyer and the creator of the YouTube channel Runkle of the Bailey. Tune in now!
Today on the Rachel Parker Show, Rachel speaks with the President of Canadians for Affordable Energy and former Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who explains why he thinks Justin Trudeau has destroyed the Liberal Party brand for a generation.
McTeague says Trudeau has ignored common concerns and opted for divisive politics.
He also explains why Chrystia Freeland’s bid for a Liberal leadership is misguided.
Canada’s special representative on combatting Islamophobia is blaming a terror attack on a Christmas market in Germany that killed five, including a nine-year-old boy, on “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim rhetoric.”
The attack perpetrated by a Saudi Arabian refugee who drove a vehicle at full speed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, left 200 injured; 41 of those are in “serious condition” with lives endangered, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Amira Elghawaby, a Trudeau appointee tasked with taking on Islamophobia in Canada, said anti-Muslim bigotry is the culprit.
“Our thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones and those who have been injured in a senseless attack on a Christmas market that demonstrates the devastating impact anti-Muslim rhetoric, hatred, and Islamophobia can have on our societies,” Elghawaby said in a social media post.
Cœur brisé en Allemagne 💔
Nous pensons à ceux qui ont perdu des êtres chers et à ceux qui ont été blessés lors d'une attaque insensée sur un marché de Noël qui démontre que le discours antimusulman, la haine et l'islamophobie peuvent avoir des effets dévastateurs sur nos… pic.twitter.com/YmUGsRPxve
Local media have identified the alleged terrorist as Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian refugee who has been living in Germany since 2006. Abdulmohsen has been arrested and charged with several counts of murder, among other charges.
A scan through the alleged terrorist’s social media shows that he’s criticized Islam since applying for asylum in Germany.
A video circulating online of Abdulmohsen’s arrest shows a man yelling “Allahu Akbar,” a term used frequently by Muslims which means “God is the greatest.” It’s unclear if the man being arrested in the video is the one who yells the Islamic refrain, however.
This is footage of the moment the terrorist in the Magdeburg Christmas market attack in Germany was arrested by police. pic.twitter.com/dmMyy5ULC4
According to one Saudi Arabian political commentator, Abdulmohsen had fled Saudi Arabia in 2006 after being accused of rape and implicated in “serious crimes.” Saudi Arabia had requested his extradition, but Germany rejected the request, citing human rights concerns.
Abdulmohsen publicly declared himself as an ex-Muslim fleeing Islam and the Saudi regime, criticizing Germany for rejecting Saudi Arabian refugee claims while also accusing Germany of importing Islam into the country.
According to reports, Abdulmohsen had repeatedly made explicit threats against Germany, accusing it of conspiring against Saudi refugees, though he was determined not to be a risk. He claimed German police had failed him and other refugees as a justification for the threats.
“I will make the German nation pay the price of the crimes committed by its government against Saudi refugees,” one threat said.
Abdulmohsen is a self-proclaimed Saudi activist who purported to help asylum seekers, primarily from Saudi Arabia, seek asylum. According to Saudi sources, Germany was repeatedly warned about the man and potential attacks.
The attack comes eight years after an Islamic terror attack, perpetrated by a Pakistani asylum seeker who had his asylum claim rejected, rammed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13.
German authorities have said the date wasn’t a coincidence but fell short of calling the incident “an Islamist” attack.
A former Liberal MP says that Justin Trudeau has destroyed the Liberal party brand for the foreseeable future.
Dan McTeague, who sat as a Liberal MP from 1993 to 2011, said the Liberal party may go from being one of the most successful political organizations in the world to “cease to function for a period of time.”
Under Trudeau’s leadership, he said the party detached itself from common concerns in favour of divisive policies like DEI and ESG.
“And I think created a scenario where it was ‘us versus them’ and created significant social and political division in this country, the likes of which I’ve never seen — the likes of which a country wasn’t able to survive in the past,” McTeague said in an exclusive interview on the Rachel Parker Show.
He also said Trudeau’s Liberal party was “more of a cult.”
“The narrative was, you could think only a certain way, you could challenge a certain way… of course the discipline has been extraordinarily stringent.”
His comments come as multiple media outlets have reported on a weekend Zoom call with 51 of the Liberal caucus’ 75 Ontario MPs – all of whom reached a “consensus” that Trudeau must step down.
Some MPs on the call said Trudeau’s brand has become “toxic.”
McTeague said Trudeau should have stepped down in the summer 2023 as the polls began to surge for the Conservatives.
“For whatever reason, he can’t understand the possibility that he’s been rejected,” he said. “
He said Trudeau showed some promise initially until he began following the energy prices in 2016. McTeague is also the president of Canadians for Affordable Energy which informs Canadians about energy policy.
Now, he believes there is no path forward for Trudeau.
“I think it’s clear that the end is near,” he said.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh committed for the first time to voting to bring down the Liberals in a non-confidence vote, meaning there is no viable path for Trudeau to continue governing once the House of Commons reconvenes at the end of January.
The former MP also said that much of the damage and scandal caused by the government won’t be revealed until a new government is able to sift through documents kept hidden by the Trudeau Liberals.
He said that information being made public will ensure that the Liberal party “remains in the penalty box and never seen for quite a few elections away.”
The full episode of the Rachel Parker Show will be released on Tuesday.
Santa isn’t the only one keeping a Naughty or Nice list. The national legal charity that I work for, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, has compiled its own list of government measures, laws, proposals, and even individuals that were either “naughty” or “nice” for civil liberties in the last twelve months. While sometimes the government, the courts and civil society got things right, unfortunately there is more than enough coal to go around.
Topping the “naughty” list this year are bubble zone laws, which have been expanding at a rapid speed across Canada. “Bubble zones” prohibit protests within defined geographic areas. Anyone who protests within the protected “bubble” can face penalties. There are now bubble zones around schools, libraries, community centres, hospitals, and places of worship. Calgary restricts protests based on the topics, and Liberal MP Marco Mendocino even proposed bubble zones to prevent protests in front of his office! Enough with the bubble zones.
Also gaining a spot on the naughty list is a proposal by special interlocutor Kimberly Murray to criminalize what she calls “residential school denialism.” Murray provides an impossibly broad definition of denialism: she says it includes minimizing the harm of residential schools, saying the death rates were typical for the period, saying that we don’t know the truth and that there is a conspiracy to exaggerate deaths, or that it wasn’t a genocide. Much remains unknown about unmarked burial sites, and creating a broad criminal sanction around this topic will not allow for a full investigation to take place.
A strange new rule in the Yukon city of Whitehorse also gets a spot on this year’s naughty list. We are sadly becoming accustomed to governments trying to censor our speech, but what if they try to censor our thoughts? That’s what is happening in Whitehorse. The northern city recently adopted a “civility policy” that bans signs and “microaggressions.”
Whitehorse has defined this absurd new term a “microaggression” as “comments or actions that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude towards a member of a marginalized group.” The policy also bans signs from city council meetings, and allows the presiding officer at a city council meeting to require a participant to remove or cover up any attire including buttons, non-religious headwear, pins, or other item” that the presiding officer decides is “disrespectful.” Banning obvious political speech and even unconscious thoughts is an unacceptable limit on the freedom of expression of citizens who want to participate in and observe city council meetings.
And it should come as no surprise that closing out this year’s naughty list is the censorship in the proposed Online Harms Act, parts 1 to 3 of Bill C-63. This law would create a new $200 million bureaucracy that can order massive fines against online platforms that don’t take down what they define as “harmful” content, including broadly defined hate speech. It would make Criminal Code amendments that could land people in jail for life for “hate motivated” offences, and it would allow individuals to bring civil claims through the human rights commission for online speech they think is hateful. Parts 1-3 of Bill C-63 will result in government censorship, and need to be scrapped (as well as added to the Naughty List).
But it may surprise readers to learn that Part 4 of the Online Harms Bill gets a spot on the nice list. Part 4 deals with mandatory reporting of child pornography online by Internet service providers. If the Liberals were actually serious about addressing the issue of child sexual abuse, they would have proposed part 4 alone and passed it months ago, instead of tying it to highly controversial, potentially unconstitutional, and censorious proposals in Parts 1-3 of the bill. Protecting children from abuse is important, and Part 4 should pass unanimously as a separate bill.
Also on the Nice List is the decision by the Federal Court in the Emergencies Act case. The court found that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act against the 2022 Freedom Convoy was illegal and the freezing of bank accounts was unconstitutional.
This case, brought by the CCF, was the most important civil liberties case in a generation. But this incredible decision is now under threat. Within minutes of the 200-page decision’s release, the Trudeau government announced they were appealing. We are fighting to maintain the precedent set by Justice Mosley in the appeal, which will be heard in February of 2025.
Also on the nice list is a new plan by the Alberta government to fight censorship by professional regulators. Professional regulatory bodies are punishing their members for speaking out about political, social, cultural or even religious issues.
The most notorious case is Dr. Jordan Peterson being punished by the College of Psychologists for his social media posts. Regulators need to stick to their knitting and only deal with issues directly related to their mandate, not the opinions of their members on social issues. Alberta has announced plans to rein in this censorship by professional regulators is very nice, and should be emulated by other provinces.
As a national civil liberties charity in Canada, the CCF is deeply concerned by expanding state intrusions into our rights we saw in 2024. But we are looking forward to a new year where we can fight back against these intrusions. This will not occur because of governments’ own decisions to cede power. Rather, it is because of the tireless advocacy of all our supporters and the work that we and other organizations do to fight against government overreach.
Justin Trudeau is ending the year with a bang after losing his finance minister and most trusted political ally Chrystia Freeland, who exited in a blaze of glory by triggering another mutiny against the embattled prime minister. But 2024 will be remembered – like most years for Trudeau – as a bad one for the Liberal government.
On this episode of Ratio’d, Harrison Faulkner previews the five worst Liberal government fails of 2024.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cancelled scheduled year-end interviews with legacy media outlets, an unprecedented move amid the political turmoil started by Chrystia Freeland’s resignation from his cabinet last week.
Trudeau and other political leaders customarily sit down with journalists for one-on-one interviews in December, reviewing events of the year and forecasting what Canadians can expect after the holidays.
Multiple journalists and outlets have confirmed that scheduled interviews with Trudeau have been abruptly cancelled in recent days.
I was supposed to have a year end interview with the Prime Minister tomorrow for Global News. PMO just called to tell us it is cancelled. Not just us, year enders across the board not happening.
Global News host Mercedes Stephenson was the first to share that this happened, but the Hill Times has since confirmed with the Prime Minister’s Office that no year-end interviews are taking place.
The Hill Times confirmed cancellations with at least seven major media organizations, including Global News, CBC, CTV, Radio-Canada, TVA Nouvelles, and a joint interview with CityNews and OMNI Television.
Freeland’s surprise resignation last Monday took place hours before she was set to deliver the fall economic statement. The news was followed by a cabinet shuffle later in the week and mounting calls from Liberal members of Parliament for Trudeau to resign so a successor can be named prior to the next election.
Jagmeet Singh also committed for the first time to voting to bring down the Liberals in a non-confidence vote, meaning there is no viable path for Trudeau to continue governing once the House of Commons reconvenes at the end of January.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather says the “vast majority” of MPs within his party want to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign immediately.
Housefather had already previously stated his desire to see Trudeau step down but now says that sentiment is felt by a growing number of MPs who’ve privately called for him to step down ahead of what appears to be an imminent election.
Housefather told Global News in an interview Sunday that “Canadians have clearly lost confidence in him, and Canadians want him to go.”
“It’s clear they’ve tuned him out, and he is not the best person to deliver the message of our party in the next election,” said Housefather.
He fears that if Trudeau remains at the party’s helm, the election will be focused on his leadership, instead of Canadians comparing the Liberals’ policies against those of the Conservatives and the NDP.
Housefather thinks it’s time for the Liberal party to take on “a more centrist vision” than the direction it has gone under Trudeau.
“For the vast majority of people I’m talking to, they recognize that,” he said. “They know that we’re at a precipice. This is the last time that our leader can change, and I think that they would like that to happen.”
Housefather said he’s not alone, adding that a “significant majority of MPs” also believe Trudeau “has no path to remain” on as the party’s leader.
Whether or not Trudeau plans to prorogue Parliament to buy himself time, Housefather said his resignation must be the next step to allow for the party to select a replacement, which should be done sooner than later.
“The immediate step that he needs to take, I think, is to show Canadians that he’s heard the message. “He’s done a lot of great things for the country, but this is now the time,” he said.
“All great leaders need to recognize that there’s a certain time for them to go. I think he’s left it a little bit too late, but I think he can still preserve his legacy by doing this relatively quickly.”
Multiple media outlets have reported on a weekend Zoom call with 51 of the Liberal caucus’ 75 Ontario MPs – all of whom reached a “consensus” that Trudeau must step down.
Some MPs on the call said Trudeau’s brand has become “toxic.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says it’s “surreal” that male offenders expect they can self-identify their way into female prisons, vowing to keep men out.
Poilievre was prompted by a triple murderer’s request to be incarcerated among woman.
Mohamad Al Ballouz was sentenced to life in prison Friday after being convicted of the 2022 murders of his wife, Synthia Bussieres, and the couple’s five-year-old and two-year-old sons Eliam and Zac.
Al Ballouz, who now claims to be a woman going by the name Levana, has asked to serve his sentence at the Joliette Institution for Women in Quebec.
“Surreal: A man who killed his wife and two kids now claims he is a woman to go to a female prison,” Poilievre wrote on social media. “I can’t believe I have to say this: but when I’m prime minister, there will be no male prisoners in female jails. Period.”
Surreal: A man who killed his wife and two kids now claims he is a woman to go to a female prison.
I can’t believe I have to say this: but when I’m PM, there will be no male prisoners in female jails.
While this is the first time Poilievre has made such a specific commitment, earlier this year he was clear that “female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for biological males.”
“Female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males,” he said at the time.
Correctional Service Canada, which oversees federal prisons, says it strives to “meet the needs of gender diverse offenders”
“We place them in institutions aligned with their gender identity (men, women, non-binary, etcetera) or expression, if they prefer, regardless of their sex (anatomy), the gender or sex marker on their identity documents.”
The correctional service said it applies “fair and impartial decision-making methods” to meet these needs.
The government’s data say that 1% of federal Canadian inmates have “self-disclosed gender accommodation needs.” Current numbers are not available, but the number of incarcerated federal inmates in Canada often falls between 12,000 and 15,000.
