Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has said that Justin Trudeau needs to “butt out” of New Brunswick politics, to the New Brunswick Conservatives’ policy requiring parental consent for a student under 16 to change their officially change their gender in school. Poilievre said provinces should decide educational policy and parents should decide how to raise children. True North’s Andrew Lawton says the Conservatives need to be more forceful in their support of parental rights, especially since it’s an issue that seems to extend beyond committed Conservative voters.
Also, the Liberals might give even more money to bail out the media given Facebook’s protest of Bill C-18.
Plus, writer and retired professor Janice Fiamengo of The Fiamengo File joins the show to point out the “false numbers and shameful misrepresentations” behind a YWCA campaign on domestic violence.
The National Capital Commission’s (NCC) new public art installation is being roasted by Canadians on social media – with many calling it ugly and comparing it to trash.
Did you know there used to be a landfill at LeBreton Flats?
In line with the #BuildingLeBreton guiding principle of fostering sustainability, this piece is made from recycled tires:
📏 This crow measures almost 5 meters! 📅 You can see this artwork for the next 12 months pic.twitter.com/bmyrUDu1Om
— National Capital Commission (@NCC_CCN) June 27, 2023
The modern artwork in question was made by Prince Edward Island artist Gerald Beaulieu, who is described as “an artist who uses familiar materials to examine the boundary between what is natural and manmade, helpful or harmful, always returning to his larger questions about how we live in the world, and what the consequences and compromises might be.”
The piece of art is a crow made from recycled rubber tires and is titled When the Rubber Meets the Road.
“By turning our garbage, discarded old tires, into a carrion consuming corvid, that just happen to be the collateral damage of our commuter culture. I hope to have effectively commented on how our habits affect habitat and the creatures that inhabit our shared spaces. [The sculpture] is literally a collision between wildlife and our domestic lives, a theme that I have explored often in the past,” said Beaulieu.
The NCC’s newly installed artwork alongside Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats pathway has garnered criticism on social media.
True North’s Rupa Subramanya said the art piece “looks like a dead bird or someone left a garbage bag on the curb.” She added “I know this route quite well and this area is screaming for better lighting in the dark. Definitely not this!”
Looks like a dead bird or someone left a garbage bag on the curb. I know this route quite well and this area is screaming for better lighting in the dark. Definitely not this! https://t.co/RIV0qJsOUA
Journalists Matt Gurney and Bryan Passifiume both said the artwork looked like a giant dead bird. “It looks like an enormous dead bird that hasn’t been cleaned up yet,” wrote Gurney. Passifiume wrote “Gigantic dead raven lying in the grass — anybody know if they’re still running that West Nile Virus hotline?”
Former CTV News anchor Don Martin said, “this has GOT to be a joke. Either that or the NCC is a joke. This is nothing to crow about.” Former Conservative industry minister James Moore said, “please tell me the art is a thought provoking poem on the blue sign and not the dead crow/tire fire fusion thing in the foreground.”
This has GOT to be a joke. Either that or the NCC is a joke. This is nothing to crow about. https://t.co/ewBoM6Egf0
Please tell me the art is a thought provoking poem on the blue sign and not the dead crow/tire fire fusion thing in the foreground. https://t.co/8wxZDOtxFW
The Hub author Howard Anglin asked, “is there *any* public art anywhere in North America from the last 40 years that isn’t worse than empty space?”
Other Canadians on Twitter also criticized the NCC’s new public work.
“Public art is great, cities always need more of it! But a statue of a pile of tires that looks like a cross between a dead bird and trash someone forgot to clean up, not so much,” wrote one user. Another said “if they hadn’t told us this is art, I’d have assumed that some neglectful construction company had left blasting mats on [NCC] property.” Another user wrote, “at first glance, I thought it was a giant pile of manure.”
Some people did have positive things to say about the piece of art.
One user wrote, “it’s odd and it’s fine. Small to medium sized pieces that hit both those marks are ideal for dropping around a city. It’s contemporary art. You want a Renaissance painting along a bike path?”
Not sure it warranted a tweet but it’s totally fine.
A public opinion tracking survey commissioned by Global Affairs Canada revealed fewer than half of Canadians think taxpayer money should fund international aid.
The survey—which was conducted online by EKOS Research Associations Inc. between Jan. 16 and Feb. 3 and involved 3,059 nationwide respondents—also revealed support has declined since last year.
According to the poll, fewer than half of Canadians (44%) think Canada should spend more money on international aid because it is morally right, decreasing from 48% in 2022.
Moreover, most Canadians also doubt their contributions are impactful.
“When asked to what extent they think various organizations are able to make a difference in reducing poverty in poor countries, findings reveal that Canadians feel many of these organizations can make a difference in reducing world poverty, but are less confident in the Government of Canada’s capacity and their own ability to make an impact in this area,” the report said.
Only 42% of Canadians believe the Canadian government can help reduce world poverty, while 12% think they can personally make an impact as individuals.
The survey also shows Canadians are split on whether the government should increase or decrease its spending on international aid.
One-third of Canadians (33%) say the government should spend more on international aid, down from 37% in 2022. On the other hand, one-quarter of Canadians (25%) say the government should spend less on international aid. The remaining third say the amount should stay the same.
Last year, the federal government pledged $8.15 billion for international aid efforts. Global Affairs Canada was recently slammed by Auditor General Karen Hogan for losing track of billions in bilateral aid for “gender-equality outcomes.” According to Hogan, the federal government provided no progress on any of its spending.
Additionally, Ottawa was forced to recently axe a cultural exchange program after it was revealed that funds were dedicated towards putting on senior sex theatrical performances and sex toy exhibitions abroad.
When asked about the top issues for international aid spending, Canadians ranked providing clean drinking water (44%), education (39%), and health care (37%) as the three most important. The results were consistent with last year’s, noted researchers.
However, the survey also revealed that Canadians have doubts about the effectiveness and accountability of international aid.
Twenty-nine percent of Canadians believe government spending on global aid didn’t achieve results, up slightly from 26% in 2022.
“Despite generally positive views on international aid, Canadians also continue to express some fairly negative views about certain aspects of international aid,” wrote researchers.
Meanwhile, 42% of Canadians doubted the effectiveness of government spending, and more than half agreed with the sentiment that a lot of international aid funding benefits corrupt politicians in the developing world (56%), and that it does not actually help people living in poverty (54%).
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should “butt out” of New Brunswick’s gender identity policy debate and “let parents raise kids.”
Plus, the CBC updates its LGBTQIA2S+ acronym to 2STNBGC. Having a tough time keeping up with the latest woke gender acronyms? Don’t worry, we all are.
And Planned Parenthood has been suspended from Saskatchewan schools after providing explicit content to a Grade 9 class.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Rachel Emmanuel and Cosmin Dzsurdzsa!
The Competition Bureau announced on Tuesday that it’s investigating Canada’s major grocery chains for alleged anti-competitive practices, citing suspiciously rapid price hikes that can’t be blamed on the pandemic.
The government agency also says the grocery industry needs more competition.
“The Canadian grocery industry is concentrated,” the Competition Bureau Retail Grocery Market Study Report said in a study. “Many wonder whether a lack of competition is the reason why grocery prices are increasing at the fastest rate in more than 40 years.”
The report named Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro as the three largest grocery chains, noting each of them operate over 1,000 stores nationwide, including subsidiaries, and collectively reported more than $100 billion in sales last year.
The report—which also named Walmart and Costco as significant players—said the three largest chains had combined profits of $3.6 billion in 2022.
It also recommends government intervention as a means for creating “new types of grocery businesses”; enticing international grocers to enter the Canadian market while encouraging growth among independents; introducing harmonized unit pricing; and curtailing property controls that hamper new competition.
The agency conceded that rapid price escalation isn’t necessarily an outcome of anti-competitive behaviour, and that it’s aware the grocers’ overhead costs—namely food procurement expenses—rose during the pandemic.
However, the government agency is dubious that the three chains’ gross profit margins increased “by a modest yet meaningful amount over the last five years,” well before the pandemic began wreaking havoc on supply chains and inflation reached a 40-year high.
“These margins subtract the costs that grocers incur to buy products, and show how much a grocer makes on each dollar of sales,” the report said.
“The fact that Canada’s largest grocers have generally been able to increase these margins—however modestly—is a sign that there is room for more competition in Canada’s grocery industry.”
Christopher Taylor, a treasury finance executive and market analyst, agrees, telling True North that elevated inflation and rising interest rates have long curtailed consumer spending, and that should have already prompted grocers to lower prices.
But, describing Canada’s largest grocery chains as an oligopoly, Taylor suspects the reason they haven’t is because there’s no competition to nip at their heels.
“They will eventually have to drop prices, but the grocers haven’t yet,” Taylor said.
“You have to create competition for prices to start to come down, but if there are only three or four chains of grocery stores, they earn oligopoly prices.”
According to the report, 81% of Canadians buy groceries one to three times a week, of whom 49% shop at Loblaws and its subsidiaries; 28% at Sobeys and other stores it operates; 25% at Walmart; and 22% at Metro-operated grocery stores.
But the study also revealed that 49% of Canadians buy their groceries from Loblaws and its subsidiaries.
In 2019, despite Loblaws reporting profits in excess of $200 million during the fourth quarter of 2018 alone, the Liberals agreed to chip in $12 million towards the company’s installation of low-emission refrigeration systems at 370 of its stores.
Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, isn’t surprised by such instances of what he calls corporate welfare.
“Mom and pop shops don’t have lobbyists going to Ottawa trying to get taxpayers’ money, but big corporations sure do,” he said.
The Trudeau government is recruiting small-to-medium-sized companies specializing in insect and alternative proteins meant for human consumption to a UK conference exploring the future of food technology.
In partnership with Protein Industries Canada, the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada Research Assistance Program is calling on enterprises to submit expressions of interest to attend the Sept. 25-29, 2023 Future Food-Tech summit.
“The program will include pitch sessions and (business to business) meetings with selected top-tier UK SMEs focused on alternative proteins,” wrote Protein Industries Canada.
“For the purpose of this mission, alternative proteins will include firms leveraging plant-based, cellular agriculture, insect and fermentation technologies.”
The Future Food-Tech summit will bring together over 800 business leaders for the purpose of “creating foods that are nutritious, accessible, and climate-smart.”
“Enjoy a future-focused programme, with thought-provoking discussions and exciting pitches on the latest innovations in improving health through food, elevating the performance and nutritional profile of alternative proteins, and meeting consumer demand for affordable foods whilst reducing carbon footprint throughout the supply chain,” the summit’s about page states.
Insect-based proteins derived from crickets and larvae of the common mealworm have been floated by climate change advocates as a potential substitute for meat-based diets.
“Companies selected to participate in the partnering mission will receive up to $5,000 in funding support towards eligible expenses, including travel and participation related costs,” NRC spokesperson Orian Labrèche told True North.
“This partnering mission is focused on connecting Canadian SMEs to United Kingdom corporations looking to develop alternative protein technologies with the aim of forming collaborative research and development (R&D) partnerships that lead to co-innovation projects. Through this support, Canadian businesses will be better equipped to build their innovation capacity, successfully commercialize their technology and become more competitive in the global marketplace.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is among the organizations that have been pushing insect-based proteins as a meat substitute . The idea has also been promoted at the UN Food Summit as well as COP26.
According to the WEF, farming insects “for food and animal feed could offer an environmentally friendly solution to the impending food crisis.
“Insects are a credible and efficient alternative protein source requiring fewer resources than conventional breeding,” a WEF blog post states.
Insect farming for foodstuffs is not new in Canada. As reported by True North in March, Aspire Food Group’s world-scale London, Ontario cricket-breeding facility is already producing insect-based pet food and wants to open a second facility with the possibility of branching out into creating products for human consumption.
“Crickets are the insects with the most traction from a consumer standpoint and they’re also lower in fat than mealworms or black soldier fly larvae, so you don’t have to de-fat them and the powder has a 24-month stable shelf life,” explained Aspire Food Group co founder Mohammed Ashour.
“On the human food side, the low hanging fruit is in Asia and parts of Europe, but for petfood we’re seeing excitement across the board.”
A Saskatchewan ad agency has admitted to using a fear-based approach to encourage Covid-19 vaccination in an advertisement completed for the province’s Ministry of Health.
Brown Communications Group, which created the campaign, recently said on its website that it targeted people who were vaccine-hesitant or resistant by tapping “into a base potential fear” of how their vaccination status could affect their lives.
“At the time of the campaign, those who feared Covid-19 and those who were community-minded had already received the vaccine. That’s why appealing to our audience’s altruism or sense of greater good wasn’t going to be effective. Rather, we needed to focus on how individuals could be affected moving forward,” wrote Brown Communications Group.
“We strategized that if someone’s vaccination status began affecting their social life, travel plans, or entertainment, that could be the final motivation needed to get on board. So, we tapped into a base potential fear of this group: the Fear of Missing Out.”
The campaign coincided with the introduction of Saskatchewan’s proof of vaccination policy, which required people to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter restaurants, bars, and other services because of a personal health decision.
The web page is being used by the company to advertise its various clients and successful campaigns.
Saskatchewan’s policy was in effect from Oct. 1, 2021 to Feb. 14, 2022, when the province lifted all Covid-19-related restrictions.
Brown Communications Group’s campaign featured two videos: one showing a tailgate party of Saskatchewan RoughRider fans, and another showing a house party. In both videos, an unvaccinated person was discriminated against.
The campaign did not address the reasons some people were either hesitant or resistant to getting vaccinated, such as health conditions, religious beliefs or doubt in the efficacy of the vaccine.
True North reached out to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health for comment on the company’s characterization of the campaign but did not receive a response by the time the article was published.
Brown Communications Group went on to celebrate how the campaign “earned high engagement,” as well as “praise from our client.”
Among the former clients listed on Brown Communication Group’s website are the RCMP, Health Canada, Elections Saskatchewan, and others.
In an acceptance speech Monday night — peppered repeatedly with vows to deliver a “safer, caring and more affordable” Toronto — Olivia Chow’s narrative reminded me of the same hopey-changey hyperbole made by Toronto’s last NDP mayor David Miller.
Miller, a disaster as mayor, managed to increase spending by 43% and the net debt by 176% during his one term. The union friendly mayor landed the city in a costly garbage strike and left the mayor’s office with a $700-million unfunded commitment for buses and streetcars.
It did not escape my attention that the hyperbole Chow used was the same used to woo voters nearly 20 years ago when Miller came to office. But the low-information largely downtown progressives didn’t seem to remember, or care that everything old is new again.
And now a Toronto already in severe decline faces three years under the leadership of someone I call “David Miller on Steroids.”
The union support Miller got pales in comparison to Chow. Every single Ontario teachers union and virtually every single labour union worked overtime to put her in office and will expect their quid pro quo now that she’s there.
Not only did the fiscally challenged Chow refuse to say throughout the 90-day campaign how she’d resolve Toronto’s $1B-plus deficit left by her predecessor but she trotted outrageously low figures (no doubt put together on the back of a napkin) as to how much it would cost to build her promised 25,000 units of affordable housing.
She assiduously avoided the city’s rising crime rate and the subject of policing likely because she is known to be a great supporter of defunding the police. Her plan to expand community crisis teams of social workers who respond to people with mental health issues will do absolutely nothing to resolve out of control lawlessness on the city’s streets and TTC system, largely perpetuated by desperate drug addicts.
Speaking of drug addiction and homelessness, based on Chow’s history of enabling the poverty industry (the Ontario Coalition against Poverty was on speed dial during her councillor days), it should come as no surprise that more encampments and (un) safe drug injection sites are likely.
It is certainly not a leap of faith to suggest that this radical progressive will seal the destruction already well underway during her predecessor’s term — turning Toronto into the next San Francisco, Eastside Vancouver, Portland, and any other U.S. or Canadian city already ruined by progressive mayors.
Now in fairness to Chow, who I’ve known since her post-amalgamation days as councillor in the Mel Lastman government, she took advantage of a confluence of factors that worked in her favour as the preferred choice for mayor.
She presented herself as an outsider and alternative to a City Hall dominated in recent years by the Old Boys, lobbyists and the political establishment.
That in fact was highly manipulative considering she brings to the job her own set of union hangers-on and the loud voices of poverty pimps, queer and cycling activists.
She convinced everyone she is “caring” and toned down for the campaign, spoke to the masses like a protective grandmother.
And no doubt she evoked misty-eyed images of her late husband, the former NDP leader Jack Layton.
The low-information voters lapped it up, claiming they were tired of 12 years of conservative rule, when in fact Chow’s predecessor had done everything he could think of to appease the progressives inside and outside City Hall.
Facts be damned.
Of course, there’s the absolute apathy of a large majority of Toronto residents, only 38% of whom managed to get out and vote.
But the real person to blame for this election fiasco is former Mayor John Tory who ran for a third term despite having a trunkful of baggage and after promising not to do so. It seems for all of his talk about loving Toronto, he actually loved the idea of being mayor more.
He subsequently walked away from the job a mere two months into it — amid revelations of his steamy three-year affair with a former staffer — leaving the city in an absolute fiscal mess and its streets in squalor.
He also left the city with a $13-million by-election bill.
Had he not run for a third term, as he promised, the election last October might have been vastly different experience with far fewer candidates competing for attention on the political spectrum and a far less ideological candidate selected to undo the damage of the Tory years.
As it is, Tory’s legacy is Olivia Chow and the silent majority will have to sit through three years of political pain watching the city decline even further.
The question remains: Will it ever come back?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sue-Ann Levy was on Anthony Furey’s campaign for Toronto Mayor. Furey is currently on leave as True North’s VP for editorial and content.
Former NDP politician and socialist candidate for mayor Olivia Chow capped off her political comeback last night by becoming Toronto’s next mayor. Despite the media painting Chow as a “change candidate,” the truth is, she is nothing but. Chow is proudly receiving the baton of a city in steady decline, as yet another character of the leftist status quo that is ruining our cities. High taxes, drug decriminalization, safe-supply and soft on crime – it’s the same story across Canada in all of the country’s major cities.
Not only is Chow a soft-on-crime candidate, the word crime didn’t appear once in her remarkably thin platform. Chow believes in decriminalizing the possession of hard drugs for minors and is also the undisputed champion of bike lanes in a city where for half the year, it’s impossible to ride a bike. Not to worry though! Chow wants to increase the number of restaurant patios and open libraries on Sundays! Surely that will turn this city around.
Watch the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!
Surging demand for scarce resources is making Québec‘s cost of living crisis particularly acute – and immigration into the province could be worsening the situation.
Montreal is among the North American leaders in annual immigrants received. But while immigration is vital for economic growth in a country that doesn’t adequately reproduce itself, Montrealers are struggling to pay rent, suggesting more people are moving to the city than it can support.
“There’s room for growth but there’s also a capacity issue when we consider issues such as housing and accessibility to healthcare and education,” Chedly Belkhodja, a professor at Concordia University’s School of Community and Public Affairs, told True North. “It’s popping up all over the place. Some places have no capacity to welcome more people, even the big cities.”
Montreal was once touted for its low cost of living, but now studio apartments rent for an average of $1,300 a month—a 2% increase from May. One-bedroom rents rose by 1% to $1,600, and while the average rent for two-bedroom apartments decreased by 1% from May to June, they run $2,069 a month.
Those increases suggest demand is growing rapidly.
Belkhodja says it didn’t help that asylum seekers entered Québec from the United States through the now-infamous Roxham Road crossing, but the Safe Third Country Agreement has since been amended.
“Again, there was a capacity issue. Montreal had it with the Syrian refugees coming in 2015-16 and then the asylum seekers from 2017 has been ongoing, with higher numbers arriving after Covid,” Belkhodja said.
“Montreal is a city where you have many, many different dynamics when you think about immigration. Some immigrants have more accessibility to services and others are more vulnerable and can be in a situation where it’s difficult, and we see them in food banks.”
But it isn’t just newcomers who rely on food banks.
According to Martin Munger, executive director of Les Banques alimentaires du Québec, a food bank distribution network serving 32 regional members province-wide, demand for their services has grown by 34% since 2019.
“But it was different at the beginning of the pandemic,” Munger said. “We had big growth of 50% of demand. Between 2021 and 2022, it stabilized to 20%, but with inflation it’s coming back.”
Les Banques alimentaires du Québec’s 1,200 agencies used to serve an average of 500,000 Quebecers every month, but by 2021 that number grew by 100,000 and it peaked at 671,000 last year.
Munger attributes inflation to the growing need for food bank services in Québec, adding that roughly 81% of food bank users are renters.
“Food is part of the budget, and when people have to pay more and more for their rent, they have less for food at the end of the month,” Munger said.
Munger added rent isn’t the only expense eating away at families’ food budgets.
“If you’re outside of a big city, you need a car to do everything you have to do, and cars are a lot more expensive,” he said. “Even used cars are also expensive.”
Statistics Canada reported Canada’s inflation rate declined to 3.4% in May from 4.4% a month earlier, but only because gas prices decreased. If gasoline were removed from the calculation, the inflation rate wouldn’t have changed.
“The pandemic had a big effect because people have more money available and some bought houses and increased the prices,” Munger said. “It put pressure on the rental market too.”
In tandem with increased immigration, rents should continue climbing because rental housing construction in Quebec is estimated to have fallen by 40% this year, according to l’Association des professionnels de la construction et de l’habitation du Québec, which represents provincial homebuilders.
“It’s not only immigrants for whom housing is an issue,” Belkhodja said. “It’s an issue for a lot of people.”
