The Trudeau Liberals, holders of a horn of plenty when it comes to negative vibes, can also take an unwelcomed credit for the economy taking a decided step back.
The 0.2% decline in the second quarter came as housing investment fell 2.15% to post its fifth consecutive quarterly decrease. New construction dropped 8.2% in the quarter, while renovation spending fell 4.3%.
The drop in consumer spending came as Canadians face higher borrowing costs fuelled by five consecutive interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada, which is trying to bring inflation back to its desired target of 2%.
Housing, said the Liberals following their last cabinet shuffle, would be this term’s primary focus.
Well, so much for that.
This economic stall will be some good news on the interest rate front, however, as analysts expect the BoC not to rise the rates a sixth consecutive time and keep it at 5% on Sept. 6, warding off some doom among stretched-to-the-limit mortgage holders, of which there are also plenty.
The monetary squeeze by the BoC this year has been felt largely in the construction sector at a time when low housing supply continues to be at the forefront as major cities like Vancouver and Toronto are seeing punishing rent prices and near virtually zero new rentals.
“Residential building construction (-2.0%) was the largest contributor to the decrease, down for the 14th time in 15 months,” Statistics Canada wrote, “reflecting continued declines in home alterations and improvement, and lower construction of new single-detached homes in the month.
“These declines coincided with higher borrowing costs and lower demand for mortgage funds, as the Bank of Canada continued their monetary tightening, raising the policy interest rate to 4.75% in the second quarter,” the report reads.
It now sits at a tenuous 5%, the highest rate in 20 years.
Some — as in most — speculate the hikes could finally be cooling, and the bank will hold the rate steady this week, while others — as in fewer — warn that it could be raised again.
While many who are hoping to buy a home will see fewer options on the market, the real estate sector nonetheless continues to see a lot of demand.
“Offices of real estate agents and brokers rose for the second consecutive month, up 3%, led by higher home reselling activity in BC and Alberta,” Statistics Canada said.
When the prime minister and his cabinet went into a huddle at this year’s retreat in Charlottetown, it was clear that housing was top of mind. When Trudeau re-appeared last week, he told reporters some of the measures Canada most needs.
Among those was the need for ‘densification,’ a growing topic dominating conversations at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
“We have been working closely with provinces and municipalities on the issue of housing,” Trudeau said. “Whether it’s the Rapid Housing Initiative or the Housing Accelerator Fund, that’s $4 billion for municipalities to accelerate zoning changes, increase densification, create more affordable housing.
“These are the kinds of things that we’ve been doing,” said Trudeau. “But yes, it is clear, there is a need for much more coordination.”
When asked about the Ontario Premier Doug Ford government’s controversial and imploding plan to build housing in Ontario’s Greenbelt, Trudeau said he saw “densification” as a better solution than building on protected lands.
But both will need help.
A spokesperson for federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s office told Global News, for example, that support from municipalities is crucial, and a key reason why the federal government is tying incentives from its $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund to promoting the densification of Canadian cities.
It seems to have forever been thus, however, when it comes to the balking of municipalities.
The Liberals should have known this when the best accelerator they could come up with was $4 billion, which is not bad for Vancouver and Toronto but peanuts per province and territory.
When trustee Weidong Pei endeavoured at a recent Toronto District School Board (TDSB) meeting to ask questions about the status of a review into the tragic death of principal Richard Bilkszto, he was quickly shot down.
In fact he’d barely gotten out the first two sentences when virtue signaling chairman Rachel Chernos-LIn told him he was out of order.
“Is this related to the director’s leadership report,” said Chernos-Lin rather testily. “It’s out of order, sorry.”
The same scene repeated itself when Pei asked a presenter on safety and executive superintendent Jim Spyropolous about the status of violent incidents in board schools.
Spyropolous said they don’t have “the exact numbers” at this point but will have them shortly (some day, some month, some year).
Chernos-Lin interrupted Pei yet again when he asked about school violence related to safe injection sites.
She asked him what that had to do with the school board and safety in schools.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Is she really that foolish?
The South Riverdale Community Health Centre – the scene of a shooting of a mom of two this summer – is just metres away from a TDSB school.
TDSB chairman Rachel Chernos LIn
But the weak virtue signaling chairman got her marching orders from Colleen Russell-Rawlins, the director she is supposed to oversee. All the trained seals on the board at the meeting nodded in agreement.
They appeared to be on high alert, ready to gaslight any trustee, like Pei, who dares demand accountability.
Heaven forbid they should address real issues plaguing the board and the stories that made headlines for weeks this summer as they commence another school year.
Critical race theory and gender ideology is alive and well at Canada’s largest school board but transparency and accountability are dead.
I got a taste of that when I received a letter late last week informing me that it will take the board 125(!) days to find invoices submitted by the KOJO Institute, requested under FOI legislation. I’m appealing this effort at obstruction of course.
While the ship reels from the inside and a toxic bullying culture has principals and teachers anxious and afraid for their jobs (unless they follow the woke playbook), the impression must be conveyed that the board is being run efficiently and effectively by Russell-Rawlins and her acolytes, that she’s doing what’s best for kids.
Colleen Russell-Rawlins
After the requisite amount of back-patting at the August 30 meeting about all the summer programs run by the TDSB, the director indicated joy, engagement and belonging based on student identity are priorities for the board again this year to achieve “high academic achievement.”
She claimed they are “aligned” with the ministry in improving student literacy and numeracy.
One of the indicators that is new from the ministry, she said, is increasing school participation in monitoring attendance and suspensions.
She then vowed to continue their commitment to “truth and reconciliation, human rights, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression” – the same message given at a meeting of board administrators earlier last week.
“In 2023 no student should have to leave their identity at the door to access learning or feel a sense of belonging or respect,” she said of her “mission”.
She added that as a school community they have a responsibility to combat hate.
It was obvious to me that Russell-Rawlins is a practiced politician who knows how to say all the right virtue signaling comments to the leftist trained seals on the school board.
She talks a good game.
But this black activist just refuses to get it.
I guarantee you that if she’d stop pandering to the so-called oppressed with a free pass for bad behaviour, with bordering on abusive indoctrination about white privilege, with a focus on diversity instead of the basics and social promotion for those who don’t bother to show up, perhaps TDSB students would achieve better results on standardized tests and graduate with some literacy.
Will she really allow schools to take attendance? My guess is no because it would show that some of the visible minority students she protects never make it to class and if they do, are often late.
And how do they monitor suspensions if they are never given in board schools?
I don’t need to make Russell-Rawlins’ $300K salary to know that yet again this year she and her acolytes will simply be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic leaving teachers to work with woke edicts, badly behaved students and fears of being cancelled for looking at a black student or administrator the wrong way.
The board’s brass and the weak, bordering on useless, trustees are no doubt hoping that the rot exposed subsequent to Bilkszto’s death will simply fade away.
Interest rates are unlikely to drop back down to their pre-pandemic levels of 1% to 2%, according to a former Bank of Canada governor.
Former governor David Dodge told BNN Bloomerg that he doubts any rate cuts will come before the the end of 2024, at the earliest.
Dodge, who is now senior advisor at Bennett Jones said that while Canadians can expect to see interest rates to “come down a bit” from the current 5% in 2025, he believes that it will remain higher than levels of previous decades, predicting it will stay around 3.5%.
“We’re not going back to the (around) 2% interest rate at the Bank of Canada that we enjoyed in the 10 years leading up to COVID-19,” said Dodge, in a television interview.
“And we’re certainly not going back to the 1% or 1.5% that we had as recently as 2021.”
On Sept. 6, the Bank of Canada is scheduled to announce its latest decision on interest rates.
Additionally, Statistics Canada is set to release their data on second-quarter gross product figures the day before.
Dodge said that the economy looks to be still generating excess demand however the expected economic data will help paint a clearer picture of what’s to come.
The former governor believes many economists hold a view that is too optimistic of the economy’s future when it comes to thinking that we’re heading back to the near zero interest rates prior to the pandemic. Dodge said that the “basic assumption that a lot of people make is that we’re going back to pre-COVID-19 times.”
“That’s just wrong,” said Dodge. “It will not be the case again, there are all sorts of factors that are going to push up pressures on inflation going forward, which means the central banks are going to have to be tighter than they were in the pre-COVID-19 period.”
If the interest rates remain at high levels past what is currently being predicted, the federal government will be faced with higher debt servicing costs, according to Dodge.
The most recent federal budget estimated debt services costs would hover around 9%t but by Dodge’s calculations, it would likely be closer to 11%, or maybe even more.
“They’re going to have to plan for higher debt service costs than (Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland) planned in her budget,” said Dodge. “That means that there’s going to be less room for the government to do other things.”
A recent Alberta court ruling has invalidated the province’s pandemic-related health orders, asserting that politicians, not the chief medical health officer, made the final decisions. Lawyer Sarah Miller of JSS Barristers joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the implications of this ruling, and whether or not it is the victory it may seem to be.
Conservative Party of Canada members will be voting on resolutions to make candidate nominations fairer and more transparent and to ban lobbyists from serving on the party’s governing body at this week’s convention in Quebec City.
Delegates will be voting on a total of 37 constitutional resolutions, in addition to 60 policy resolutions. Constitutional resolutions are binding and lead to the amending of the party’s constitution.
Constitutional resolutions are submitted by Electoral District Associations (EDAs), which are made up of party members in local constituencies across the country. This gives the possibility for grassroots members to influence the party’s policies. The party’s National Council can also submit resolutions.
Candidate Nominations:
Several resolutions aim to reform the candidate nomination process. This comes amid controversy that arose over the candidate nomination of the riding of Oxford, where pro-life candidate Gerrit Van Norland was disqualified.
Submission C-32 from the Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek EDA would require the party’s National Candidate Selection Committee to “provide to the candidate all detailed information used for the disallowance of a candidate within 48 hours of the disqualification,” in the case where a candidate is barred from running.
It would also allow for candidates to “appeal of such a disallowance decision to a meeting of National Council in which the candidate shall have the opportunity to provide a live appeal in the same format as the meeting.”
The resolution would also require the leader to “sign the Candidate nomination forms with Elections Canada based on National Council’s decision”
The rationale for the resolution reads “we do not believe in candidate cancel culture!”
“This proposal would help end candidate cancel culture, which hinders good candidates from running due to the fear that they will be cancelled. This process (also) shields the leader from the political pressure to disqualify candidates, since it is rather the decision of National Council.”
Submission C-6 from the Vancouver Centre EDA also seeks to add more transparency to the nomination process by requiring all committees, including the National Candidate Selection Committee, to record minutes and make those minutes public.
“it is absurd that a candidate can be disqualified at the National Candidate Selection Committee and the membership has no idea which of their elected reps brought forward and seconded the motion and who voted for/against this,” reads the rationale.
Submission C-36 from the Kitchener Centre EDA seeks to give the EDA board the power to “veto any decision by National Council and/or the Leader preventing a candidate from running in a nomination contest or election.”
The rationale notes that the resolution “provides an appropriate check and balance on the power of National Council and the Leader’s office.”
Resolution C-33 from the Calgary Heritage EDA seeks to standardize the nomination process by instructing National Council to create rules and procedures for the selection of candidates “with clear timelines.”
“Members shall be notified of the close of nomination via email, at least 14 days in advance of the official closing of the nomination period,” and “the date of the nomination vote shall be at least 14 days after the official closing of the nomination period.”
The rationale for the policy notes that “transparent and open communication to EDA membership regarding the opening and closing dates of a nomination race, and the process for obtaining and submitting a nomination package, is essential for our continued efforts to build and maintain support for the party at the EDA level.”
Resolution C-35 from the Carleton Trail–Eagle Creek EDA would change the rules for incumbent nominations.
“Nominations shall be held in every Electoral District, regardless of incumbency, in a majority parliament. In a minority parliament, for Electoral Districts where there is an incumbent, members shall be sent a ballot asking if they want a nomination vote. If more than 50% of all the members in the Electoral District vote in favour of holding a nomination, a nomination shall be held.”
The rationale notes that “in the current minority parliament, National Council decided that incumbent protection would be based on raising $15,000 per year for the EDA. We believe in free and open nominations decided by members. In minority parliaments this should be balanced with a high threshold so that the only very unpopular incumbents will face nomination races.”
National Council
Constitutional resolutions are also seeking to change who is eligible to sit on the party’s governing body, the National Council.
Resolution C-19 from the Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill EDA would ban those listed on federally recognized lobbyist registries from being members of National Council.
It would also ban lobbyists from serving as party leader, directors of the Conservative Fund or Executive Director of the party.
The resolution’s rationale says the proposal “would modernize our constitution by bringing it in line with the broadly accepted conflict-of- interest rules that the vast majority of organizations have.”
Resolution C-7 from the Vancouver Centre EDA would also ban parents, siblings, spouses, children, as well as anyone normally residing in the same household as a member of the Conservative Party caucus from sitting on the National Council.
Furthermore, it would ban anyone “barred by any legislation or any Standing Order(s) of Parliament from working in the office of an MP or Senator” or that holds a commercial or financial interest in the Conservative Fund, the Conservative Party, or Conservative caucus caucus from sitting on National Council.
Other resolutions:
Resolution C-30 from the Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston EDA seeks to change the leadership review process so that an automatic vote take place after a leader loses an election, rather than at the next convention following an election loss.
“A Leadership Review vote is triggered when, following a General Election, the leader of a party other than the Conservative Party is sworn in as prime minister,” reads the resolution.
The rationale notes that “the members choose the leader, and should vote on whether to retain the leader after an election loss. A fixed timeline within four months of the swearing-in of a non-Conservative government gives certainty that the leadership vote will occur within a reasonable time frame.”
“The current procedure leads to timing uncertainty, especially in a minority parliament, and potential delegate selection based on how a delegate may vote.”
Resolution C-23 meanwhile from the Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek EDA meanwhile seeks to require the party leader and caucus to “promote and implement the Policy Declaration and not deviate substantively from the Policy Declaration when developing an election platform and legislation.”
The rationale noted O’Toole’s platform, which some accused of having policies not in line with conservative principles. “The 2021 election platform deviated substantively from this section of the Policy Declaration. We believe that it should be clearly stated that the role of the leader and caucus is to promote and implement the policy declaration.”
The full list of constitutional resolutions that will be debated at the convention can be found here.
As previously reported by True North, members will also be debating several “anti-woke” policy proposals. Resolutions advancing to the convention will, among other things, address gender ideology as well as “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).
The Conservative Party of Canada convention takes place Sept. 7-9 at the Quebec City Convention Centre. True North will be on the ground to bring you independent coverage.
The public sector has more than tripled the amount of job growth within the private sector since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.
Ben Eisen, Evin Ryan and Milagros Palacios co-authored the report, titled “Public and Private Sector Job Growth in the Provinces During the COVID-19 Era,” which found that net job growth went up 11.8% in the public sector between February 2020 and June 2023, whereas the private sector saw an increase of only 3.3%.
“In all ten provinces, the rate of job growth was faster in the public sector than in the private sector, including self-employment. In four provinces, private sector net job creation expressed in this way was negative,” wrote The Fraser Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank.
The Trudeau government has cited top-line labour force statistics on several occasions to claim that Canada’s employment levels made a full recovery coming out of the pandemic, however the majority of those jobs are in the public sector, not the private sector.
The public sector includes those who are employed federally, provincially and municipally.
Although jobs in the public sector are up across the country, “the provinces vary widely in the extent of public and private sector job growth.” said the study.
“Of the four largest provinces, British Columbia had the fastest rate of public sector job creation (22.6 percent) and the slowest rate of private sector job creation (0.3 percent), while Alberta had the lowest rate of government sector job growth (8.9 percent) and the fastest rate of private sector job growth (6.2 percent).”
The rate of public sector job growth in Ontario was 11.7% compared to 4.7% in the private sector. In Quebec, jobs in the public went up by 7.6% compared to 2% for the private sector.
The study also pointed out how Canada’s rising population should have lent itself to a higher growth in the private sector but unfortunately, has not.
“The rate of private sector job growth appears even weaker if we consider that this has been a period of rapid population growth in Canada and that the country’s population over age 15 increased by 4.8% over the same time.” said the study.
During the pandemic, the Trudeau government paid out an additional $190 million dollars to public sector employees in bonuses. Executives who worked with the Canadian Tourism Commission received bonuses of $32,000 per employee even though industry was shut down as a result of the lockdown.
Prominent economists from some of Canada’s largest banks are raising the alarm over Canada’s record level immigration targets set by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
Despite these warnings, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said that revising the half a million per year target was out of the question and instead he might even increase the number of permanent residents accepted into Canada.
As Canadians face increasingly unaffordable housing costs, the Trudeau government is feeling the pressure to address the exploding demand for housing. On this issue, however, it’s not the Conservatives who are calling out the Liberals but some of Canada’s most influential economists.
True North has compiled a list of eight prominent economists warning Ottawa about its handling of the immigration file.
CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal
Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, recently warned that the federal government has been underestimating the number of non-permanent residents (NPR) living in Canada by about one million.
Tal’s report, published on Wednesday, reveals that Statistics Canada’s method of counting temporary resident visa holders, such as international students, is flawed. The agency assumes that visa holders leave the country within 30 days of their visas expiring, but many of them stay longer or even permanently. As a result, Canada has a much larger population than officially reported, and therefore a much higher demand for housing.
“The practical implication of that undercounting is that the housing affordability crisis Canada is facing is actually worse than perceived, and calls for even more urgent and aggressive policy action, including ways to better link the increase in the number of NPRs to the ability to house them,” wrote Tal.
His findings have prompted Statistics Canada to revise its data reporting policy.
University of Waterloo professor of economics Mikal Skuterud
In response to recent reports by major banks outlining the impacts immigration is having on housing, University of Waterloo professor of economics Mikal Skuterud said that while other factors are also contributing to the housing crisis, the impact of immigration is undeniable.
“On the housing front, there are underlying issues there that are longstanding and/or independent of immigration levels. For sure, immigration is not helping the issue — it’s probably exacerbating it,” said Skuterud.
“When the population grows faster than the capital stock, then there’s less capital per person and that makes us poor.”
TD Bank chief economist Beata Caranci
A recent report by TD Bank warns that Canada’s high immigration strategy could worsen the housing shortage by half a million units in two years.
The report, written by TD’s chief economist Beata Caranci, says that the population growth of 1.2 million in the past year was more than double the government’s target and caught many economists by surprise.
Caranci argues that Canada was already struggling to meet the demand for housing and hospital beds before the population surge, and that these problems could become more acute for provinces and cities that receive more immigrants.
“Canada was already on its back foot in meeting housing demand, and this was also true in hospital beds on a per capita basis. These chronic tensions can quickly become acute for provinces and cities that absorb a higher population share. As dislocations widen, it creates an even larger come-from-behind strategy in addressing housing affordability and quality of life issues,” said Caranci in an interview for TD Stories.
“To test this theory, we applied an aggressive assumption that homebuilders would be motivated to reach, and sustain, a record level of completions. Even in that scenario, a housing deficit would persist if Canada continued with annual population growth of one million or more. This returns to the earlier point that Canada is already in a “come from behind” position.”
Rosenberg Research chief economist David Rosenberg
Rosenberg Research’s chief economist and strategist David Rosenberg called the Liberal government’s record-level immigration target strategy a “mirage” meant to create the illusion of economic growth.
In reality, Canada’s economy was in dire straits, argued Rosenberg.
“The Canadian economy on a per-capita basis is flat on its back,” Rosenberg told Global News.
“You can create this mirage of economic prosperity, but in the end that’s what it is, a mirage.”
Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter
In an interview with BNN Bloomberg Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter said that data shows that population growth from immigration is driving up housing demand to the detriment of positive effects like reducing wage pressure.
Porter’s analysis found that immigration is actually worsening housing shortages.
“The extra spending and the extra demand for housing is almost instantaneous, whereas it might take a new worker a little bit of time to really act as a dampener on inflation,” Porter said.
“The short-term impact does tend to lift inflation a little bit, whereas longer term, it turns to more of a neutral.”
Scotiabank economist Derek Holt
A Scotiabank economist criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration target of 500,000 newcomers per year as a factor driving inflation. Derek Holt warned that the high immigration levels are putting pressure on the housing market and other sectors of the economy.
“Alas, no one will win a Nobel Prize in Economics for observing that when you add a massive surge of immigration into a market with no supply, rents and house prices will push higher,” wrote Holt.
“Welcome to Duhonomics! The argument that immigration could invoke balanced effects on demand and supply side pressures on inflation that cancel each other out was never sensible and we’re getting the kind of persistent housing inflation I’ve warned about since last year when immigration numbers were skyrocketing.”
Holt said that adding more people to a market with limited supply would inevitably push up rents and house prices. He also dismissed the idea that immigration would have balanced effects on inflation.
Holt noted that inflation on shelter rose by 0.7% in a month due to higher costs of rent, insurance and electricity. He added that other service categories, such as airfare, recreation and education, also increased.
“It wasn’t just shelter, however, as other service categories also jumped,” said Holt.
National Bank of Canada chief economist Stefane Marion
National Bank of Canada chief economist Stefan Marion has advised the Canadian government to consider revising its record-level immigration targets.
According to Marion, the reason to do this is because the ratio of houses being approved for building compared to the number of working-age people has fallen to a new low.
“Ottawa should consider revising its immigration targets to allow supply to catch up with demand,” said Marion.
Two prominent Canadian infectious disease specialists say mask mandates, including for schools and hospitals, do not need to be re-implemented this fall – amid concerns about new variants.
In recent days, legacy media outlets have reported on calls to bring back mask mandates, including from a group of BC healthcare professionals who have signed an open letter demanding masks, as well as testing and giving priority eligibility to children for Covid shots.
Other physicians, including Ottawa family doctor Nili Kaplan-Myrth, have also been calling for masks. The hashtag “#BringBackMasks” also trended on X (formerly Twitter) Friday morning.
However, Infectious Diseases Specialist and Medical Microbiologist Dr. Neil Rau and Infectious Diseases Physician Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti told True North the current situation does not warrant a return to mask mandates.
“I completely disagree with their perspective (and) with the idea that resorting to masks again at a population level or even a focus group level is the answer to controlling Covid,” Rau told True North.
Chakrabarti echoed Rau’s sentiments, and added that “what we’re seeing now is the vast majority of the population has immunity, whether through vaccination or exposure to the virus, or both. So you have great protection.”
“I see patients in the hospital and while we do still see Covid occasionally, the vast majority, even people who are older, and even people who have different comorbidities, they do fine with the virus,” he said.
Rau added that “the best we can do with Covid now is to vaccinate with a booster the highest risk people, give the antiviral medications to the highest risk people who come down with the disease… and then keep updating the vaccine if possible.”
“Let’s stop trying to stop the spread of Covid. Let’s focus on preventing the outcomes from Covid. We can’t stop the spread of covid.”
Both doctors are also not recommending that parents mask up their children for school this fall.
Chakrabarti noted that “in the real world setting where you have a class of kids who are sitting there for hours at a time together, kids can’t wear the masks properly, they don’t fit… eventually they’re gonna get exposed”
“Being in school (means) kids are exposed to viruses. It’s always been like that,” he added. “It’s unfortunate when kids get little flus and colds, but that’s part of being exposed to viruses. It builds immunity and I don’t think that this is something that is necessarily a bad thing.”
Masking children also comes with several downsides.
Rau noted that “a child has some loss in terms of wearing a mask, in terms of communication, being understood.”
“If their teacher were to mask, they also lose the visual sight of the teacher speaking… from an understanding of expression perspective, that can be a negative,” said Rau.
He also said that “if a child is a new Canadian and English is not spoken at home, the school is where they’re learning and mastering English or French. From a pediatric development perspective, putting a mask on everybody is not very helpful for language development.”
The Doctors also told True North they don’t believe it makes sense to bring back mandatory masking in hospitals, noting that there are already plenty of protocols in place to protect both healthcare workers and patients from disease.
New Variants
New variants have emerged in Canada, including the Pirola BA.2.86 variant and the EG.5 Omicron subvariant. However, both doctors said the new variants are not cause for panic.
Chakrabarti noted that, “We basically had variant stability, meaning the same overarching variant, dating back to about November, 2021. We’re coming up on two years.”
“Overall, yes, there are minor changes that are occurring, but what does that mean for us? Well, when people are getting sick with Covid, now the vast majority of people have minimal symptoms, said Chakrabarti.”
Rau added that variants are “like the iPhone.”
“The iPhone 12 is out into people’s hands, few people are interested in the iPhone 12. What do they have to do at Apple? They have to change the phone a little bit so that people get excited and want an iPhone 13 in their hands. And when the 13 is in too many people’s hands, what do they do? They make an iPhone 14. The virus is almost like this.”
“It doesn’t have the brain and mind of Apple executives behind it, but it has the ability to constantly modify itself in a random fashion until the right mutation is found to make it spread more easily to the right people.”
Fall booster shots
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) is recommending that every age group who is approved for a booster this fall receive one. New updated booster shots are also expected this fall, pending approval from Health Canada.
Both doctors recommended that seniors and immunocompromised people get a booster, given that their immune systems are not as strong.
For Chakrabarti, his booster recommendation is “very similar to my answer that I gave for the third dose of vaccine, for the fourth and for the bivalent booster. You look at the highest risk populations; any kind of help you can give them would be beneficial.”
Rau, who supports vaccinations, added that “we have to be more nuanced about who gets the vaccine.”
“The idea of boosting children to me is absolute insanity, and I know some experts have called for it, I don’t agree with it at all. I think it’s a complete misuse of effort and resources,” said Rau.
“If we vaccinate a whole bunch of kids, you’re going to very temporarily reduce the risk of having the disease, but they’re ultimately gonna get it anyway.”
Pierre Poilievre has been enjoying a strong lead in the polls, garnering significant support among young voters. National Post columnist Sabrina Maddeaux joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss how the Conservative leader has managed to find a voice among a traditionally non-Conservative demographic.
The leaders of four church denominations are urging Manitoba’s political leaders to search Prairie Green landfill just outside the city of Winnipeg for the remains of two tragically murdered indigenous women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.
Winnipeg police say Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois, and a fourth unidentified woman the community has named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, were all the victims of an alleged serial killer, Jeremy Skibicki, 35, who is charged with four counts of first-degree murder. (Submitted by Cambria Harris, Donna Bartlett, and Darryl Contois)
One of these leaders recently claimed anti-aboriginal racism explained the province’s refusal to support such an effort.
“I think sometimes we have a preference for people who are white in this country and we tend to ignore people who are Indigenous,” said Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
“I can’t imagine that if there were white people in the landfill that we wouldn’t be searching for them. So I think in many ways, this is racist and it certainly does not work in terms of our commitment to reconciliation.”
Calls for a search of Prairie Green have been growing since Premier Heather Stefanson said she would not fund a complex undertaking that could take up to three years and cost up to $184 million, citing dangers to searchers as highlighted in a feasibility report conducted by outside parties.
In an August 29 email, Stefanson said as premier, “As much as I would like to say yes to everything, sometimes the answer has to be no.”
While her statement said, “We can all agree that this is a tragic situation,” she once again cited “significant human health risks that cannot be ignored.”
What she failed to mention is that the chance of finding any human remains based on a scientifically flawed and self-serving feasibility study is nearly zero and that a drawn out search could compromise the conviction of Jeremy Skibicki, the man charged with the first degree murder of the women.
According to their media advisory, the female leaders of four church denominations expressed no concern about these trifles, instead promising to “join the voices of supporters” at two sites on September 5 to urge Manitoba’s political leaders to support searching the garbage dump.
Representing the United, Presbyterian, Evangelical Lutheran, and Anglican churches, these leaders promised to visit Camp Morgan, a small, and informal tent ground at the Brady Road landfill outside Winnipeg where the remains of another indigenous woman were found last year, “in solidarity with those calling for justice and an end to the violence against Indigenous women, children, and Two-Spirit people.”
The same charge of racism has been made repeatedly by family members and supporters of the two murdered women.
This is indeed a grave charge in a tolerant country like Canada and so requires sound evidence to be taken seriously.
To be sure, racism has been an accusation bandied about in some form or the other since first contact between European and indigenous people in the early 16th century, the initial phase of perhaps the most benign example of colonialism the world has ever known.
Consumed by a desire to ensure a proper funeral for their mothers and led by the mantra “we are not garbage,” it is nonetheless easy to be sympathetic to the pleas of family members and their supporters.
Still, their cries of racism, if this means hating or disparaging aboriginals as a people, need to be rejected.
This specious charge is based on the accusation that not searching “would send a dark message that Canada’s governments condone the act of disposing of indigenous women in landfills,” according to Cathy Merrick, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
One indigenous writer even called the government’s decision “the empowerment of racist ideology and behaviour.”
Such inflammatory rhetoric has no credibility because there are also thousands of missing white Canadians buried across the land and overseas whose remains are unknown or forgotten.
A prime example is the tragic story of the “British Home Children,” some 100,000 offspring of destitute parents sent to Canada between 1869 and 1948 to work as indentured servants for farm families in rural areas, an occurrence few people have ever heard of. Many, perhaps most, children were sent to Canada without their parents’ consent and lived in often terrible conditions, sometimes including physical or sexual abuse. Their last humiliation was to be buried in unmarked plots, some of which have only recently and privately been commemorated.
Even worse is the fate of tens of thousands of unknown, unmarked, or poorly maintained graves containing the remains of Canadian soldiers of multiple races and ethnicities who lost their lives in two world wars, and today lie anonymous and alone in Canada and around the world despite having paid the ultimate price for their country.
Moreover, if there is systemic anti-indigenous racism, it is not directed at individuals or groups but at a politico-legal system that has granted aboriginals special constitutional and allied rights and privileges denied other Canadians, reinforced by a constant and financially exorbitant call for reparations masquerading as “reconciliation” rarely offered to any other disadvantaged national group or category of people.
Playing the race card to explain the treatment of indigenous people also underpins the more recent accusation of aboriginal genocide, a fallacious charge manufactured about 30 years ago among fringe members of the Indian Industry, the two concepts now joined at the hip in the politics of searching for the remains of these two women.
This is because the genocide slur only gained traction following its use in the June 2019 Final Report of the government-sponsored and funded National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. The report minced no words when it claimed there exists in Canada – note the present tense – “a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples…empowered by colonial structures…leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations.”
The Final Report declares that its use of “genocide,” which occurs no fewer than 72 times in its first volume alone, is in keeping with the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
None of the UN Convention’s features apply to the random murder or disappearance of 1,200 or so indigenous women and girls since 1980. The serendipitous murders of indigenous females by numerous unconnected individuals acting on their own, were certainly not “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a particular racial or ethnic group through the coordinated efforts of some other racial or ethnic group — the overarching ground for identifying a genocide.
This is not to deny that violence, including homicide, is disproportionately committed against indigenous women. Statistics Canada data between 2011 and 2021 show that of all 1,125 gender-related homicides of women and girls, 21% of victims were Indigenous, despite comprising only 5% of the Canadian female population in 2021. In 2021, the rate of gender-related homicide of Indigenous victims was more than triple that of gender-related homicides of women and girls overall (1.72 versus 0.54 per 100,000 women and girls).
This is surely a horrific tragedy but like the murder of non-indigenous women, few of these heinous crimes appear to be racially or ethnically motivated. This is because RCMP data for the period between 1980 and 2012 says up to 92% of “female homicide victims generally know the person who kills them – more than 90% had a previous relationship with them. This is true for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal female victims.” This shows that intra-racial murders are much more common than inter-racial ones.
Indigenous activists and their supporters calling for a search of the landfill should also be advised that the Holocaust, the genocide of genocides that saw the carefully planned slaughter of some six million Jews by the Nazis before and during the Second World War, resulted in the recovery of the names of several million victims, few or none associated with specific human skeletons or other remains. Since 1954, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem (“A Memorial and a Name”), has been working to recover the names of all the victims, and to date has managed to identify some 4.7 million.
“Every name is very important to us,” says Dr. Alexander Avram, director of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names and the Central Database of Shoah [Holocaust] Victims’ Names.
“Every new name we can add to our database is a victory against the Nazis, against the intent of the Nazis to wipe out the Jewish people. Every new name is a small victory against oblivion.”
Still, 69 years later, more than a million unidentified victims disappeared without a trace. No one has ever called this absence of evidence or linkage to individual remains racist or an example of Holocaust denial.
Oblivious to such history, Bishop Johnson hopes adding the church voices to the call for a landfill search will prompt the province to reconsider its stance. “We’re taking reconciliation seriously, so I hope they’ll be able to listen. I hope they’ll be able to change their minds,” she argued.
As heartfelt as the bishop’s efforts might be, orthodox theologians could easily see them as a repudiation of Christ’s stern admonition recorded in Matthew 22:21: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” What this means is Christians are not only allowed but commanded to obey the authority of the state because such authority is ordained by God to protect the lives and welfare of its citizens.
Whether grounded in Christian ideology or not, if rational and evidence-based truth-telling is taken seriously, this would require the Manitoba government to stand firm on its decision despite a flood of emotion and race-based virtue signaling urging it to reverse course.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba
