During a speech at the University of Ottawa on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that his government never forced anybody to get vaccinated despite legislating some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the world throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
And Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and other prominent women are calling out Canadian male politicians for prancing around in high heels in an effort to raise awareness about domestic violence.
Plus, it’s only a matter of time before the Trudeau government’s online censorship law becomes law.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Rachel Emmanuel and Lindsay Shepherd!
A Concordia University nutrition panel held last Friday claimed, among other things, that large-scale animal agriculture is linked to “Western modernism,” “patriarchy,” “Eurocentrism” and “whiteness.”
One of the panellists also compared the killing of animals by humans for consumption to genocide.
The virtual panel titled “Why (Not) Eat Beef?” was hosted by the Montreal university’s Food Studies Working Group. The latter sought to tackle meat eating from several disciplinary points of view; including sociology, animal studies, feminist studies, marketing, history, and nutrition.
The panel featured Concordia sociology and anthropology professor Sheila Rao, history associate professor Anya Zilberstein and PhD candidate Ali Kenefick. It was moderated by Concordia marketing professor Jordan Lebel.
In her presentation, Kenefick said that industrial animal agriculture is rooted in “Western modernism,” with the latter being guided by patriarchal Eurocentric logic and a “universalistic, white, andro and anthropocentric” worldview.
She added that modernist strategy is “assisted by oppressive tools and languages designed to fragment and distance humans, other animals, materials and environments and categories,” which has “resulted in an exploitative culture that reduces these bodies into objects, resources, and metaphors for use and consumption by the ruling class.”
The PhD candidate also compared humans raising and killing animals for their meat to genocide, saying “we have this giant exploitation of animal bodies, which I mean, in any kind of human perspective, if we were doing this to people… one might even call it genocide. Because we were producing so many animals and killing so many.”
Rao offered land use, critical and feminist perspectives on meat consumption as part of her presentation. She also noted that humans will need to reduce their beef consumption by over 50% to respect “planetary boundaries.”
She explained that feminist agricology movements seek to redress “unequal gender relations, as well as other intersecting relations of marginalization such as race, class, caste, ethnic identity.”
Kenefick and Zilberstein also shared feminist points of view regarding meat. The former noted that she sees meat consumption as “a strongly gendered situation,” while the latter said that “masculinity is closely tied to meat eating.”
Zilberstein offered a critique of lab grown meat, which has been increasing in popularity as an alternative to traditional meat, noting that the latter is “very capital intensive” and also “corporate and highly centralized.” She also said lab grown meat is “bad news for advocates of small farmers, for local choices, for food sovereignty.”
Also present at the panel were two prominent senior Concordia scholars; who offered critiques of some of the points and arguments made by the panellists.
One noted that it is important to remember the significance that meat has for many different cultures, tribes, and religions, including Indigenous peoples. The other scholar said the panel’s discussion had lost credibility in the first syllable because it was woke.
She explained that farmers who she met would have found the conversation to be “bulls**t”, and that discussions surrounding the issue of meat consumption need to be non-threatening, non-intimidating and non-woke, in order to relate to “Linda” – an anti-vaccine working-class farmer. “I think increasingly we have to put Linda in our sites and talk to Linda as much as we talk to each other,” said the scholar.
The question whether or not humans should continue to consume meat, including beef, has become contentious in the last few years – amid progressive activists saying the latter is bad for the environment and people’s health.
It should, however, be noted that humans have been consuming meat for at least 2.6 million years, and that cows began to be domesticated around 8000 BC.
Several experts are also recommending that humans continue to eat meat, including beef – while all meat diets, including the lion diet developed by Mikhaila Peterson, have gained popularity over the last few years amid them having several beneficial health outcomes.
The Alberta government will require individuals and organizations to be licensed by the province before they can begin handling firearms under Ottawa’s confiscation regime, saying the federal government’s current plan is “reckless” and will jeopardize the safe handling of weapons.
The new regulation marks the province’s second action under the Alberta Firearms Act, which quickly passed the legislature last month, and is hindering the federal government’s efforts to confiscate Albertans’ legally-acquired property.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says the federal government appears to be relying on Public Safety Canada to confiscate the weapons, calling the federal department “a large and inefficient bureaucracy.”
“In normal circumstances, the federal government would have hit the pause button,” Shandro wrote.
“Unfortunately, we continue to receive indications that the opposite is occurring. Their decision to move forward with the confiscation program will jeopardize provincial requirements for the safe handling, transportation and storage of firearms. We will not allow that to happen.”
In May 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including AR-15s, through an order in council. He said owners of these guns would have a two-year amnesty period to come into compliance with the prohibition.
The buyback program requires firearms owners to sell their guns to the government or have them rendered inoperable at federal expense.
After federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino wrote to the provinces requesting help confiscating weapons deemed illegal under the order in council, Alberta told Ottawa it will not allow its provincial policing resources to be used to fulfill Ottawa’s confiscation regime.
Shandro also told the Alberta RCMP the confiscation program is not a provincial priority, and as such, is an inappropriate use of police resources.
In a Monday news release, Alberta said Ottawa is signalling that it’s prepared to take front-line police officers off the street to implement the federal firearms confiscation program.
“Public Safety Canada also appears to be considering contracting with untrained personnel to supplement the use of policing resources,” the release said.
Alberta Chief Firearms Officer Teri Bryant said Canadians’ concern over violent crime is rising and Ottawa’s decision to waste police resources and contract untrained personnel is “reckless.” He also said the federal government would compromise public safety by jeopardizing two areas of provincial jurisdiction — the safe storage and handling of firearms.
“The Alberta chief firearms office continues to call on the federal government to focus its resources on illegal firearms activity rather than targeting law-abiding firearms owners,” Bryant said. “Taking firearms away from responsible owners will not improve public safety.”
There are 341,988 possession/acquisition licence holders in Alberta. Albertans own the second-highest number of firearms classified as restricted or prohibited by the federal government.
The province’s first act under the Alberta Firearms Act was to require that municipalities, police services and police commissions receive written approval from Shandro before entering into funding agreements or accepting funding from the federal government to take part in the confiscation program.
During a speech at the University of Ottawa on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that his government never forced anybody to get vaccinated despite legislating some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the world throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trudeau made the comments while speaking alongside Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier during a public discussion between the two.
“My responsibility is to keep as many Canadians alive as possible and all of the scientists and the medical experts and the researchers, not just in Canada but around the world, understood that vaccination was going to be the way through this,” said Trudeau.
“Therefore, while not forcing anyone to get vaccinated, I chose to make sure that all of the incentives and protections were there to encourage Canadians to get vaccinated and that’s exactly what they did.”
Despite Trudeau’s claims, Canadians across the country were fired from their jobs, denied access to basic services and barred from travelling due to vaccine mandates promoted by the federal government.
Canada’s strict Covid-19 measures received international attention. Earlier this year, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem blasted the federal government’s strict pandemic response.
“This family and their business have suffered due to the Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates in Canada. Their daughter was even expelled from her university for refusing the vaccine,” said Noem.
In Oct. 2022, UK Tory MP Danny Kruger also claimed Trudeau’s government was among “the worst offenders” alongside China when it came to violating rights during the pandemic.
“Although many questions about our covid response need to be answered, the UK is by no means the worst offender,” said Kruger
“We are not Canada, New Zealand or China—places where Governments think they can exterminate covid by depriving their population of the most basic civil liberties.”
A video of Justin Trudeau interacting with an apparent pro-lifer has gone viral — and shows Trudeau finally debating someone of his own intellectual stature: a kid.
But for a lot of Canadians, this video doesn’t pass the smell test. There are a lot of strange things about it. Who is the kid he is debating? Where is his footage and where are the other angles of this interaction? Is this video real or is it Liberal Party propaganda?
From importing US politics into Canada to attacking Conservatives on a daily basis, you would be mistaken for thinking that Canada is currently in an election if you were only watching Trudeau and Liberal MPs for the past month.
Watch the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!
The federal and Ontario governments are putting up $13 billion in subsidies to get Volkswagen to build an electric vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, working out to $4.3 million for each of the 3000 jobs the plant is expected to create. This is the largest piece of corporate welfare in Canada’s history, but it’s not clear how or if taxpayers can recoup that money. Macdonald-Laurier Institute domestic policy director Aaron Wudrick joins The Andrew Lawton Show to discuss.
Also, Trudeau is practicing historical revisionism to gloss over his government’s Covid vaccine mandate.
Plus, is it time Alberta ditches the RCMP and starts its own provincial police force? Journalist Doug Firby from the C2C Journal joins to discuss his piece making the case for the Alberta Provincial Police, which you can read here.
Parents as First Educators (PAFE) is calling for the resignation of a Waterloo Catholic school board trustee who publicly commented on Twitter that the “most dangerous creature on the planet is the white Christian male.”
In a now-deleted Tweet, the first-term Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) trustee Wendy Ashby called Christian males a “threat to anyone that is not them.”
PAFE Project Director Amelia Willis says that Ashby’s comments have alarmed parents, who are concerned about the well-being of their children in the classroom.
In a now-deleted Tweet, the first-term Waterloo Catholic District School Board trustee Wendy Ashby called Christian males a “threat to anyone that is not them.”
“Parents and community members are shocked by her statements. They don’t speak that way at home, and they don’t want their children learning this behaviour,” she said. “The school board and Ashby have not apologized at this point, and there really haven’t been any consequences to her actions, as she’s still a sitting trustee. This inaction is inexcusable.”
The PAFE petition entitled “Trustee Ashby Must Resign” has collected 2832 signatures as of April 24. At a meeting slated to take place from 5-9 PM on Monday evening, the WCDSB will be hearing from concerned ratepayers. Protestors are expected beforehand.
Willis says that the WCDSB’s lack of action in demanding an apology from Ashby is evidence of Critical Race Theory (CRT) acceptance.
“If a trustee can openly be racist and the school board isn’t alarmed by this, that’s very disturbing. The lack of apology from Trustee Ashby, as well as the lack of action from the board, indicates that the trustees and staff in the WCDSB have been brainwashed by critical race theory into thinking this is acceptable behaviour,” said Willis.
In a more recent Tweet, also now deleted, Ashby commented, “Hush money. Buying silence about being underpaid. White women make obedient soldiers for the christofascist patriarchy.”
The PAFE petition notes that Ashby’s Tweets have “shown prejudice based on race and religion” which suggest that “she is unfit to represent her white Christian constituents as a trustee.” Willis urges that Ashby’s resignation should be imminent.
“She hasn’t offered any sort of apology to date so she hasn’t really taken responsibility. These are not the acts of a trustworthy public official. There are no ands, buts, or ifs about it – Trustee Ashby should resign.”
Over the past year, the WCDSB’s public counterpart, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB), has seen similar CRT- influenced politics. In mid-November, the WRDSB administered a survey without parental consent that asked its students whether they are “gender fluid, intersex, non-binary, trans or two-spirit.”
Last year, former ESL teacher Carolyn Bujorski was called “transphobic” after being ejected from a WRDSB meeting for questioning the age-level appropriateness of certain books at her school library with sexual content. She claims that after the meeting she was “assigned to home” and threatened with the loss of her retirement benefits. In response, Bujorski filed a $1.7-million defamation suit against the board, claiming that the board misrepresented what she had said.
In a letter to the Greater Victoria School District (SD61), a local parent chewed out the “vocal woke minority” on the school board and the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association (GVTA) for pushing through divisive policies in schools such as defunding police liaisons.
Local Mary Kelly referenced an open letter published by the GVTA calling for the police liaison program to be officially cancelled. Her submission was presented before SD61’s Regular Board Meeting on Monday.
“It is very troubling to consider what possible agenda the GVTA is promoting through their letter. It is certainly not a child-centered agenda that puts each child’s best interest as the primary determinant of each decision,” wrote Kelly.
“I would also be very interested in seeing “the evidence” to support the GVTA position. I suspect it’s quality and relevance to our community is lacking.”
In her letter, Kelly goes on to blast “unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism” cited by the GVTA.
“And to insult Officer [Del] Manak and his Officers with unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism is hurtful, hateful and such a betrayal to all those selfless and brave Officers who put themselves in harms way each day for our safety and well-being,” wrote Kelly.
The resident goes on to commend Sooke School District chair Ravi Parmar who spoke out in support of police liaisons in schools.
“Please remain firm and courageous against any of this despicable rhetoric from the GVTA and “the vocal woke minority”, who are pushing this divisive and harmful agenda,” wrote Kelly about Parmar.
“Please know that you are on the right side of history and that the majority of parents and community members agree with you.”
In a comment given to the Times Colonist, Parmar stated that he welcomed the participation of police officer in his district’s police liaison program.
According to Victoria Police Chief Del Manak, police liaisons have been painted unfairly and they serve an important role keeping kids away from sexual exploitation or gangs.
“(Our role) is to build positive relationships and trust with students, which organically establishes mentorship and role models,” said Manak.
It has now devolved into name-calling, with the striking Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) accusing the Trudeau Liberals of poking the pooch rather than pushing forward with negotiations.
The government, in turn, has accused the massive union of the same.
Hence, progress in getting the 155,000 strikers back to work has been lost in the din of duelling accusations.
The union blasted Ottawa’s Treasury Board for its failure to respond to a revised contract offer and called on the prime minister to help hasten the pace of contract talks.
But the office of Treasury Board President Mona Fortier fired back an hour later, saying efforts to meet with the union went unanswered on Friday, and a Saturday afternoon meeting was cancelled nine minutes after being arranged.
The union’s national president, Chris Aylward, said he was still waiting for a response to new proposals tabled on Thursday evening as Fortier challenged Aylward’s timeline.
Fortier’s board said the union was “unreachable at the common issues table” all day on Friday. It reached out again through a mediator on Saturday with plans to put forward a revised offer of its own at 1 p.m., but accused the union of thwarting those plans.
“The union took three hours to respond to the request, initially accepting the meeting at 12:31 p.m. and then at 12:40 p.m. advised they were no longer available at that time,” the board’s statement read. “While our negotiators and our offer waited, Mr. Aylward chose instead to go on television to complain he had not received it.”
For his part, Aylward focused most of his criticisms on Fortier during Saturday’s bargaining update.
“This screams of the incompetence of Mona Fortier … and her team,” Aylward told reporters outside an Ottawa hotel. “The prime minister has done nothing to move these negotiations along. Our members are fed up.”
Fortier’s office also accused the union of inflexibility, a trait it said was evident in Thursday’s offer, but noted both sides returned to the table after the news conference.
Aylward said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should take a role in the negotiations and exert his influence to ensure the talks progress more quickly.
Trudeau said last week, however, that the government believes in collective bargaining, adding there have been advances at the bargaining table.
On Saturday, Aylward offered encouragement to union members on the picket lines.
“Stay strong,” he said. “We are not going to let them wear us down or wear us out. We will stay here until we get the fair deal that our members deserve.”
The union has said almost a third of all federal public servants are involved in the job action, leaving few departments untouched.
Barring a last-minute deal to end the largest public sector strike in Canadian history, the thousands of public service workers will return to the picket lines on Monday to back demands for a new contract.
PSAC launched strike action last Wednesday after a deadline passed to reach a deal with the federal government. Contract talks continued through the weekend, with wages, hybrid work and seniority the main issues in the dispute.
Over the weekend, as noted, PSAC’s national president and Treasury blamed each other for the slow pace of contract talks.
A frustrated Aylward said the union presented Treasury Board with a “comprehensive package” on Thursday but by Saturday afternoon, he had not received a reply.
“We still not have heard back yet from Treasury Board on a package that we give them Thursday night, and this is Saturday afternoon. This screams of the incompetence of Mona Fortier as the president of Treasury Board and her team,” he said.
On Sunday, Fortier told CTV’s Question Period that talks continued through the weekend, despite what she refers to as “ups and downs” and “kicking and screaming” over the past couple of days.
“I’m not going to be distracted by the kicking and screaming,” Fortier said. “I am focused on making sure that we have a deal that is fair and competitive for the employees, which we have, and that is also reasonable for Canadians.”
A House of Commons committee recommended that the federal government pledge to not follow through on any mandatory fertilizer emission reduction policies in a report published this month.
The report titled Feeding the World: Strengthening Canada’s Capacity to Respond to Global Food Insecurity was published by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
Parliamentarians heard from a flood of agriculture experts who raised concerns about how mandating fertilizer emission reductions would jeopardize Canada’s food supply.
“Recognize that Canadian agricultural producers are leading the world in the efficient use of fertilizers and that it not proceed with any mandatory fertilizer emissions reduction policy that would jeopardize farmer’s yields, but instead encourage them to implement best nutrient management practices such as the 4R program,” wrote the committee.
As part of his 2020 climate plan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced a voluntary goal for farmers to reduce emissions from fertilizer use by 30% by the end of this decade.
Although the federal government has insisted that the policy will remain voluntary, exclusive documents obtained by True North show Ottawa floating the possibility of using more forceful measures to achieve their climate goals such as a “regulatory backstop.”
“A number of policy measures could be put forward for consideration beyond just a ‘voluntary agreement’,” wrote Agriculture Canada officials in an internal discussion document.
“A suite of policy approaches will be necessary, and consideration to be given to a regulatory backstop should voluntary approaches not be successful.”
In their report, the committee notes how “some witnesses nonetheless questioned whether it was prudent to ask agricultural producers to implement such a change at a time of considerable uncertainty for their sector.”
The report also recommended that the federal government review its tariff policy on fertilizer imports from Russia.
This comes after farmers groups demanded that Ottawa immediately end the tariffs and return the $34 million acquired via the measures to agricultural producers.
“Canada is the only G7 nation that is penalizing its own farmers with this tariff, the United States has never imposed a tariff on fertilizer from Russia or Belarus,” wrote Ontario Bean Growers executive director Ryan Koeslag.
