The Trudeau government is ready to supply Americans with Mifepristone, the abortion pill, if the United States bans it in a Supreme Court decision expected Friday night.
“We have to be vigilant about protecting our reproductive rights,” said Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Karina Gould in an interview with CTV News Power Play host Vassy Kapelos. “We have certainly said that we would work to provide that for American women should that happen in the United States.”
“We remain very committed to making sure that we can support American women if they need that access here.”
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk issued a rule to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill, which could result in the drug being taken off shelves in all U.S. States.
Kacsmaryk stated that his decision to reject the FDA’s approval of the drug is due to a lack of review of the psychological consequences of the drug on the user.
While a decision was initially supposed to be released Wednesday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order giving the court more time to consider.
After Kacsmaryk’s ruling on April 7, the pill remains available but with limitations. The drug cannot be mailed and patients who seek it must make three in-person visits with a doctor.
When the Supreme Court of The United States overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Gould said Americans wishing to access an abortion in Canada would be able to.
“I don’t see why we would not,” Gould told CBC News in May of last year. “If they, people, come here and need access, certainly, you know, that’s a service that would be provided.”
Mifepristone, which is the equivalent of Health Canada-approved Mifegymiso is linked to dozens of deaths including a 19-year-old Canadian last year, a 23-year-old Argentinian in 2021 and 28 women in the United States.
A senior executive at Google appeared before a parliamentary committee on Thursday and indicated that the tech giant has not decided how it will respond if the government’s controversial online news act becomes law.
Plus, Former Liberal MP Han Dong is seeking $15 million in damages from Global News over its reporting alleging Dong was part of China’s interference network.
And a major heist at Pearson Airport in Toronto has left a major bank out $22 million.
These stories and more on The Daily Brief with Rachel Emmanuel and Andrew Lawton!
A report prepared for Dr. Theresa Tam identifies “climate change” and “capitalism,” and “colonization” as part of a “public health emergency” in need of “collective social and political action.” True North’s Andrew Lawton points out the eerily similar language being used to talk about other political issues as were used to discuss Covid. Climate Depot’s Marc Morano joins the show to warn of the impending climate lockdown.
Also, a multimillion dollar gold heist at Pearson Airport.
A recent Nanos poll indicates 74% of Canadians consider the oil and gas sector to be important to the economy. Additionally, 62% of those surveyed agreed that Canada should increase its oil and gas exports to aid in global energy security.
Furthermore, nearly two-thirds (63%) of Canadians agree that the country’s oil industry can contribute to combating climate change.
44% of Canadians rated the government’s role in addressing energy infrastructure to meet their own climate targets as poor (23%) or very poor (21%), with only 8% seeing the government doing a good job.
A favourable view of Canada’s oil and gas industry to the current economy has increased by nearly 10% since November 2020, showing that the population is seeing the industry’s growing importance.
As for the role of the sector in Canada’s future economy, 57% rated it important, up from only 41% in 2020.
Despite increasing demand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not made any significant commitments for Canada to become a major liquified natural gas (LNG) supplier.
During Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Canada in January, he looked forward to Canada increasing exports of natural gas across the globe. Trudeau claimed that the world is looking towards “decarbonizing and diversifying” energy technologies such as funding wind, solar and electric car batteries.
Trudeau also claimed that there was “no business case” for increasing LNG exports during German Chancellor Olf Schlz’s visit as the country seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian oil.
A Leger poll conducted for SecondStreet.org in October 2022 showed that a vast majority (72%) of Canadians think it is Canada’s responsibility to export more oil to the world in order to reduce global dependence on Russian oil.
49% said they strongly support more exports, with only 6% saying they were against it.
After the federal government raised the carbon tax on April 1, Canadian families will have to pay up to $847 extra per year despite rebates according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for visiting a luxury estate belonging to a family friend and donor.
A vacation to Jamaica by Trudeau and his family is facing renewed scrutiny after it was revealed that the private villa they were staying at belonged to a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation donor.
From Dec. 26, 2022 to Jan. 4, 2023 the Trudeaus were staying at an estate owned by Peter Green.
The vacation is believed to have cost taxpayers at least $162,000 – most of which included RCMP security services.
According to the official website, stays at the Prospect Estate can cost up to $7,000 a night and includes a personal concierge and private beaches.
While Trudeau addressed his latest vacation in the House of Commons, Poilievre and fellow Conservative MPs shouted that the prime minister was a “freeloader” as he discussed his relationship with the Greens.
“Throughout the decades, I continued to be friends with these people and to visit them,” said Trudeau.
“Sometimes I would go to theirs, sometimes they would come to mine. We are real friends … and I think even Conservatives would understand the concept of real friends.”
Although the Office of the Conflicts of Interest and Ethics Commissioner green-lit the trip, they did not specify whether they were aware of the property’s connection to a Trudeau Foundation donor.
In 2021, the Trudeau Foundation revealed that they received a generous donation from the Greens to set up a $180,000 scholarship.
The new revelations come after a mass resignation of the Trudeau Foundation’s CEO and board of directors following sources within the intelligence community revealing that the organization received a $200,000 donation at the behest of the Chinese government.
“Following a unanimous consensus reached by the board before its dissolution, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is launching an independent review of its acceptance of the donation with a potential connection to the Chinese government,” said board member Edward Johnson.
“This review will be conducted by an accounting firm instructed by a law firm, neither of which were previously involved with the foundation.”
More than 150,000 public sector workers are on strike right now, holding hostage the services Canadians rely on every day. The federal workers are demanding a 47% hike in compensation, the right to never return in-person to the office again and even mandatory taxpayer funding toward a “social justice fund.”
To nobody’s surprise, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh jumped at the chance to play the role of ‘working-class leader’. All the while wearing a $2000 jacket and a Rolex watch, and propping up the very government that these public-sector workers are protesting.
At a time when Canadians are struggling to get by, it’s clear the public sector must think we’re stupid to make these type of demands.
Harrison Faulkner weighs in on the latest episode of Ratio’d.
The United Conservative Party of Alberta raised a record-breaking $4 million in the first quarter of 2023, marking over half of the Alberta NDP’s total donations last year.
It also marks the most successful fundraising quarter in the party’s history.
UCP President Cynthia Moore said the achievement is proof that Albertans understand the importance of the upcoming provincial election and to keep the province moving forward under the leadership of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“We are proud to have such strong support from Albertans who are standing with us in this important moment for our province’s future.”
In total, $3,154,781 was raised by UCP headquarters. A further $840,160 was raised by UCP constituency associations, although the actual total is expected to be higher since not all donations have been reported to party headquarters.
Elections Alberta will publish the Alberta NDP’s Q1 fundraising numbers on May 4.
In 2022, the New Democrats received $7.2 million in donations.
According to Elections Alberta quarterly reports, the Opposition NDP raised $3.3 million in Q4, $1.4 million in Q3, $1.4 million in Q2 and $1 million in Q1.
The UCP raised $2 million in Q4, $973,000 in Q3, $521,000 in Q2 and $888,000 in Q1. That’s a total of $4.4 million in donations.
Those numbers were impacted by the summer leadership race, in which both Smith and runner-up Travis Toews raised over $1 million for their campaigns. As well, all seven leadership candidates raised $175,000 to run.
The UCP also says it’s now the largest provincial political party in Canada with over 130,000 members.
The Trudeau government’s mission to plant two billion trees over a decade is headed for failure, a new audit by Canada’s Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco found.
On Thursday, DeMarco published a total of five reports, including one audit of the program first announced in 2019.
“There is no solution to climate change and terrestrial biodiversity loss that does not include forests,” said DeMarco.
“It is unlikely that the two billion trees program will meet its objectives unless significant changes are made.”
His office delved into the program’s performance during the initial two years, and the verdict was that the government is falling well behind its goals and not even four percent of the promised trees will be in the soil by 2030.
“It is unlikely that the two billion trees program will meet its objectives unless significant changes are made,” he explained.
The original goal was to plant a whopping 30 million trees in 2021, followed by another 60 million in 2022. The government has already missed the mark by at least 45 million trees to date.
Canadians are still awaiting the final numbers for the 2022 planting season but based on how many tree-planting agreements the federal government reported this year, DeMarco estimates that approximately 16.5 million trees would have made it into the soil.
DeMarco’s long-term projections show that only 76.2 million trees – or 3.8% of the two billion target – will be planted by the end of the decade.
By 2027, the audit stated that Canada will require 350 million seedlings to be planted a year.
As of 2022, there were 94 deals being struck out with private and public partners to initiate planting but only 23 have reached completion as of October.
McGill student paper The Tribune, which is calling on its university to change its name over “colonial and racist origins,” prioritizes non-white students when hiring for positions, True North has learned.
The race-based preferential hiring practices are being done in the guise of “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” (EDI) – a controversial woke practice that the student-funded publication’s Editorial Board has previously advocated for.
The Tribune’s Editorial Board has also shared several provocative left-wing views, including on the police, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, free speech and Israel.
Openings posted to LinkedIn in December for web and multimedia editor positions noted that the publication would “prioritize BIPOC applicants with similar credentials (CV, interview and experience).”
Left wing McGill student paper The Tribune, which is calling for its university to change its name over "colonial and racist origins", engages in race-based preferential hiring by prioritizing non-white students. #CampusWatchpic.twitter.com/qWoOxuBGdt
The Tribunesays it is “working towards redress and strive to eliminate all forms of institutionalized oppression.” The student paper also recently revised its Workplace Conduct Policy and job application process to “remedy institutional underrepresentation across all levels.”
The publication claims it has previously been guilty of institutional racism, saying, “our Editorial Board’s hiring process had discriminatory barriers to entry that did not open doors to all, and our channels for ensuring equity and a safe working environment were not made adequately available.”
“We have acknowledged The Tribune’s history of exclusion toward Black students, Indigenous students, and students of colour––voices needed for any paper to thrive.”
It, however, appears that The Tribune has opted to address its past discrimination with what many would consider to be new reverse discrimination. EDI hiring practices have become common practice in academia, with several university departments restricting professor positions to people of a certain racial group under the guise of increasing diversity.
Using racism to combat racism at @uOttawa. This kind of hiring practice has no place in public education. Professors should be hired based on their research and teaching skills, not their skin colour. https://t.co/Xi0c3NOXzrpic.twitter.com/ymYhrL511u
The Tribune made headlines last week after announcing that it was dropping “McGill” from its name over the belief that the namesake’s legacy is rooted in violent colonialism and racism. It called for the university to follow suit.
“McGill frames its founder as a philanthropist, but hardly acknowledges that the donated fortune, the gift that ensured he would be our namesake, was amassed through the exploitation of enslaved people in Canada, the Caribbean, and the slave trade more broadly,” wrote The Tribune’s Editorial Board.
Prominent Canadian scholar, author and public policy expert Brian Lee Crowley told True North The Tribune’s demand for a name change is based on “absolute nonsense.” He added that woke student activists “claim that they’re acting on behalf of morality and a better understanding of history. And they know nothing of history and even less of morality.”
The Tribune’s editorial board has also previously called for the abolishment of police and shared solidarity with tent cities, saying Montreal “must offer community encampments anti-colonial housing solutions.”
It supported trans activists who aggressively shut down a McGill event featuring renowned gay rights advocate and scholar Robert Wintemute in an op-ed that downplayed academic freedom. Wintermute had told True North the shutting down of his event by protesters was “horribly anti-democratic.”
King's College London human rights law professor Robert Wintemute says the shutting down of his seminar on “The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T” at McGill last Tuesday by trans activists was “horribly anti-democratic”. pic.twitter.com/t2GZpAqQri
The Tribune’s Editorial Board has also written in support of Covid-19 restrictions as recently as Nov. 2022, saying society must adopt a “new normal” and called on McGill to reinstate certain Covid measures and make them permanent. The Editorial board has also said that mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II meant celebrating “a violent legacy,” called Israel a “settler-colonial apartheid state” and wrote a piece denouncing the Freedom Convoy as a “fringe minority group.”
The publication says it gets its funding through mandatory student fees. McGill’s undergraduates are required to pay $4.00 per semester to support The Tribune, while post-graduates pay $1.50 per semester.
The Tribune did not return True North’s request for comment in time for publication.
An articulate Grade 8 student told a Town Hall in Toronto this past week she was completely distraught when she learned the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) decided to select student placements in specialized arts and other programs based on a lottery.
Lela, 14, broke into tears as described to 250 people in person at Earl Haig secondary school and online how she was not offered a cherished spot in that school’s dance program for next year.
The student, who is currently at Claude Watson School for the Arts, said she’d started preparing to audition two years ago but lost hope over the past few months when she realized she was No. 17 on the waitlist.
“During my five years at Claude Watson, I tried so hard to improve my dance (abilities),” she said. “My future has been reduced to a lottery.”
The criteria for admission to the board’s highly specialized programs in the arts, math, science and athletics programs were changed from auditions, entrance exams, report cards and other merit-based assessments to simple interest and a lottery.
The controversial changes to the board’s special interest programs and schools were voted on last May and are impacting current Grade 8 students seeking to apply to specialized schools in the fall.
Black activist education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins, who appears hellbent and determined to dumb down the curriculum as much as she can, said when the policy was passed that the objective of the changes was to provide students with a “fair chance of acceptance” into such programs no matter their identity, ability, postal code or family income.
Her idea was to “remove barriers” allegedly present for black and Indigenous students.
However, most of those who attended Tuesday night’s town hall, agreed that the new policy has been a massive fail.
Using the board’s own statistics (obtained through a Freedom of Information request) UofT professor Marcin Peski showed how the lottery system doesn’t accomplish the board’s goals.
More than anything, a system like that does not take into consideration the passion or talent required to flourish in accelerated arts, math and science programs.
That’s because the board has not been successful at “generating interest” among those groups at the middle school level.
The town hall was organized by new trustee Weidong Pei, who knocked off TDSB chairman Alexander Brown in last fall’s election, party because Pei was vehemently opposed to the specialized program changes.
Peski said accelerated programs require effort sustained by high passion and interest.
“We are not talking about tutoring programs… we’re talking about accelerated programs,” he said.
He added that despite Russell-Rawlins contentions, socioeconomic barriers were not considered in the application process.
Peski said a brief he obtained from the secondary school planning committee indicated the plan (under Russell-Rawlins) is to close all specialized programs within five years and create one homogenous system without any choice.
Ethan, a student at Ursula Franklin Academy, said the lottery system didn’t open up applications and in fact has been “complete failure.”
The well-spoken young man said the board rushed into the decision without a plan and schools had to scramble to accommodate the changes.
“The TDSB needs to rethink this decision or the system will inevitably fail,” he said.
The town hall also heard that the TDSB is “putting up all kinds of roadblocks” for those trying to get into a gifted program when they move from middle school to high school.
According to a variety of speakers, students are being told there is an 18-month gap to apply for the gifted program, even if they’re already in one in middle school.
Jennifer Waston, a retired teacher and daughter of Claude, said her father would be absolutely “appalled” at what the board is doing with this program.
Apparently the 200-plus parents who attend the Pei’s town hall were also appalled by the nonsensical and downright dangerous policy moves by Russell-Rawlins and her woke lieutenants in the TDSB senior management ranks.
One wonders how many times these radical activists masquerading as educators will be allowed to mess up the schools under their watch before the province says enough.
Russell-Rawlins’ policies have led to absolute anarchy and violence in some schools.
This particular policy will drive the more gifted students out of the system turning the board’s classrooms into ones where academics take a back seat to critical race theory and gender ideology.
It is already happening.
Russell-Rawlins is destroying the board’s schools one misguided policy at a time.
