The revelations surrounding Beijing’s interference in Canadian elections keeps on coming, this time with a report that the Chinese Communist regime funnelled money to the Trudeau Foundation.
Meanwhile, a Sport Canada report shows a whopping 90% of female athletes believe that transwomen have a competitive advantage and want to see sports categories exclusive to biological females.
Plus, a Canadian think-tank is urging governments to consider the promotion of stable family units as part of government policy.
Tune into the Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Rachel Emmanuel!
Halton District School Board education director Curtis Ennis was told to come up with a staff dress code policy by March 1.
Instead, he and his superintendent of H.R.Sari Taha have produced such gobbledygook for the March 1 board meeting, they should be fired for ragging the puck.
The 20-page report to trustees — entitled the Professionalism Policy – contains no policy on a staff dress code, or anything whatsoever on professionalism.
The closest the alleged “policy” comes to anything related to the issue at hand is this paragraph:
“The purpose of this Policy is to consolidate and affirm existing expectations regarding staff professionalism, including dress and decorum, at board and school settings and at school-based activities…”
But even that is tempered with a reminder – the perennial reminder from school board bureaucrats who use it to further their woke ideology – that trustees must comply with the “primacy of the Human Rights Code.”
For heaven’s sake trans shop teacher Kayla Lemieux must be laughing hysterically at these bumbling fools.
The order to craft a dress code policy came following four months of dithering by trustees, Ennis and his underlings while Lemieux made international headlines for sporting a prosthetic with mammoth-sized breasts and protruding nipples under tight tops to class.
The drag queen-ish outfit came complete with short shorts and a cheap blonde wig.
Education minister Stephen Lecce didn’t offer up comment until mid-December at which point he finally sharply rebuked the board for not handling the situation in a professional or expedient manner.
Ennis and Taha made it quite clear where they stood on the matter when they declared in mid-November that Lemieux’s rights to gender expression far outweighed the rights of the board’s students.
But once Lecce weighed in, the trustees appeared to recognize he meant business. Ennis was told quite clearly on Jan. 3 to develop a professionalism policy outlining the HDSB’s “expectations of all staff members including the requirement to maintain appropriate and professional standards of dress and decorum in the classroom…”
The policy and its “expectations” were to be delivered to the board on March 1 following an interim report in mid-February.
I watched the meeting in mid-February and it was clear Ennis was dragging his heels.
He told trustees he was engaging in consultation and warning trustees they were in collective bargaining negotiations – the latter implying the negotiations stood in the way of insisting teachers dress professionally.
It is no surprise that the actual report – a dog’s breakfast of feel-good statements– indicates consultation began on Feb. 24 (one week before the deadline) and will continue until March 10. The report is insulting to one’s intelligence.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what should be in the policy starting with: Teachers of all genders should take care to wear appropriate-sized prosthetic breasts (if they are necessary) into the classroom.
Teachers should wear shirts/sweaters/blouses, etc. that do not show one’s cleavage or nipples. But the weak gang at the HDSB, who clearly have no political will to correct the problem, are so steeped in their woke ideology they can’t even think straight.
I always thought bureaucrats at school boards believed themselves to know far better than trustees, and often for good reason considering the dearth of talent that gets elected.
This report clearly shows that trustees are just window dressing, at least in Ennis’s mind, and he can do whatever the heck he wishes.
Unfortunately, as I’ve said before, this cavalier attitude stems from a lack of direction from the Ford government and from Lecce himself.
If Ford had cleaned out the education ministry of Kathleen Wynne hangers-on when he first got elected, we’d probably be seeing less of this woke nonsense.
But he failed miserably on this front and school boards are becoming caricatures of themselves.
The China election interference story has only grown, with Justin Trudeau now accusing critics and CSIS of racism for raising concerns about a foreign power meddling in Canada’s democracy. In this live edition of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew discusses the scandal with Patricia Adams of Probe International. Also, in just a few weeks, Canada’s conservative movement will be meeting in Ottawa for the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference. CSFN president Jamil Jivani joins for a preview of what we can expect.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing growing calls to launch an independent inquiry into recently surfaced leaks about how China allegedly influenced Canadian elections over the past several years.
The allegations which have been reported by various media outlets over the past few weeks range from direct donations to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation to China bussing out sympathetic supporters to specific candidates’ nomination meetings.
Trudeau has since cast shade on the claims, even suggesting that the allegations are rooted in anti-Asian racism.
True North has compiled all of the major claims about Chinese election interference from the past month below.
11 candidates targeted by Beijing in 2021
Early in February, the Globe and Mail reported that files from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) show evidence of a Chinese interference campaign in Canada targeting 11 largely Liberal candidates in the 2021 election.
The stated aim of the operation was to secure the return of a minority Liberal government while simultaneously working to prevent the victory of specific Conservative candidates that China had considered opponents to its goals.
The Chinese government was reportedly applying pressure on its consulates to devise plans aimed at utilizing politically-engaged members of the Chinese community and organizations to advance its interests, all while concealing any connections to Beijing.
China also saw Trudeau as the best representative in power for its interests but also wanted to limit his government’s capabilities due to its recent anti-China stances.
Liberal MP Han Dong’s nomination
According to CSIS sources and documents first reported by Global News, Liberal MP Han Dong received help from the Chinese consulate in Toronto during his nomination to be the Liberal candidate in 2019.
The consulate allegedly transported seniors and students to vote for Dong at a party meeting, with the intelligence agency urging senior officials in Prime Minister Trudeau’s office to rescind Dong’s nomination due to the suspicion of foreign influence.
Sources claim that the consulate arranged for two buses of Chinese Canadian seniors to support Dong at the nomination meeting, with his name written on their arms as a cue. Chinese international students were also allegedly sent to the meeting under threat from Beijing.
Dong denies the allegations and states that his nomination was legal and rule-abiding.
China’s $1 million donation
A report published by the Globe and Mail this week alleges that China attempted to influence Prime Minister Trudeau via a clandestine $1 million donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, named after the current PM’s father.
The outlet claims that CSIS eavesdropped on a conversation in 2014 between a political adviser to the Chinese government, Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin, and an official with China’s Canadian consulates, during which the topic of the 2015 Canadian election was discussed.
The Beijing-connected official allegedly urged Zhang to donate $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation with the promise of reimbursement from China.
Following Trudeau’s successful election in 2015, Zhang was at a Liberal Party fundraiser where the prime minister was invited as the guest of honour. The Trudeau Foundation later revealed it received a $1 million donation from Zhang in honour of Pierre Trudeau, with $200,000 of it going directly to the foundation.
The Prime Minister’s Office has claimed Trudeau was not aware of the donation.
Source: (Gleichen, AB), P75-103 S7-184, 1945, General Synod Archives.
The Tseshaht First Nation of central Vancouver Island, BC announced on Tuesday afternoon they believe 67 children died while attending the Alberni Indian Residential School (AIRS). However, the land surveyor they hired to scan the site using ground-penetrating radar found only 17 soil disturbances, which the Nation interprets as unmarked graves.
How can we make sense of these two distinct numbers?
The Port Alberni-based First Nation hired BC land surveyor GeoScan in July 2022 to scan the grounds of the former AIRS site with ground-penetrating radar to detect soil disturbances that indigenous advocates understand to be the graves of deceased indigenous children. The school operated from 1892 to 1973 under various names.
GeoScan also used LiDAR, which is a drone-based laser scanning instrument, as well as other geophysical scanning technologies.
“We do not see human remains with geophysics,” GeoScan Geophysics Division Manager Brian Whiting stressed during the Tseshaht announcement. “There’s no such thing as a geophysical bone detector. We’re looking for very indirect evidence: disruptions in [soil] layers, reflections from things like potentially coffins if there were any.”
Retired University of Manitoba anthropologist Hymie Rubenstein has stated, “It is important to understand that ground-penetrating radar can only determine the presence of disturbed soil. It can’t identify bodies, let alone count them, determine their age at death or answer the question of whether the bodies were ‘dumped’ or given a proper service.”
While GeoScan found 17 soil disturbances in the 12 hectares of land they surveyed, the Tseshaht First Nation believes 67 children died at the school, based on personal interviews with residential school attendees and school archives. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has 29 recorded student deaths at AIRS, but Tseshaht Chief Councillor Ken Watts noted that figure should actually be 24.
Screenshots from the Tsehaht First Nation’s livestream explaining the figures they found of how many students passed away.
“Please bear in mind, two different numbers… they’re two independent ways of getting at the truth of the matter,” said Brian Whiting.
Tseshaht First Nation Executive Director Vicky White emphasized that they do not place the different forms of evidence in a hierarchy, as that is a “colonial tendency.”
To make sense of the numbers, think of it this way: the Nation is saying 67 children died as students of AIRS, even though many of them died in hospital or at home. The 67 figure being presented by the Nation includes the 29 already known to have died at the school declared by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). However, the NCTR list is unfortunately not an accurate one, and the Tseshaht Nation itself revised that number to 24, though independent researcher Nina Green has found further errors in the NCTR data. The Tseshaht Nation’s criteria for who else is included in that 67 figure is unclear, though they emphasize that their research relied on stories from residential school survivors.
The 17 figure presented by GeoScan refers to soil anomalies found on the former school grounds, though these are not necessarily “unmarked graves” of missing children because the scanned region may have been a known burial site, as well as the fact that any possible burials could actually contain the bodies of church members, school staff, or other community members – not necessarily indigenous schoolchildren.
Here’s one takeaway: children lived in close quarters in residential schools, which led many to sadly pass away from disease. Sometimes these sick children died at home, or in hospital, but some may possibly have been buried on school grounds. However, this cannot be confirmed without excavations, and no excavations have been done.
“On the topic of missing students, missing children,” Tseshaht Nation’s research lead Sheri Meding said, “many, many students who attended AIRS were sick, were in the infirmary and were either discharged to home and died at home or were discharged to one of the three Indian hospitals in the province.”
Meding stated, “overwhelmingly, the cause of death was due to medical conditions.”
To this, author of many books and articles on indigenous issues Frances Widdowson says, “It seems to be the ‘motte and bailey’ tactic once again. The uncontroversial claim (that children died from disease) is being used to buttress the unsubstantiated implausible allegation that there are 17 clandestine burials. We will not know whether the ‘17 soil disturbances’ are burials until there are excavations, but the band will be reluctant to do these. This is because excavations in the past have not found any clandestine burials. The insinuation that there are clandestine burials, however, will be used to extract more transfers from the government for more ground-penetrating radar work, ‘research,’ trauma assistance, et cetera.”
Renowned author and professor emeritus of political science Tom Flanagan also notes that the Tseshaht First Nation has not performed any exhumations, and doesn’t have a schedule in place to do so.
“The fact remains that there haven’t been any exhumations anywhere,” he says. “I doubt that they ever will, frankly.”
“As long as the media swallow these stories holus bolus, why should they exhume, why should they excavate?”
The Tseshaht First Nation announcement comes a year and a half after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation of Kamloops, BC presented their ground-penetrating radar results. The Tk’emlúps band’s original 2021 announcement that they discovered “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” set off a show of shame in the country, though the Tk’emlúps band later downgraded the number of soil disturbances to 200. The Tk’emlups band and their research team also admitted that they would probably never really know how many “gravesites” are present, because they don’t currently plan on performing any excavations.
“The mainstream media keep replaying these stories over and over and over… they don’t do any genuine on the ground investigation… They allow themselves to be used as props in the drama. It’s very disheartening,” says Flanagan.
A new shocking report alleges that China had aimed to influence Justin Trudeau after he became the Liberal Leader in 2013 by facilitating a $1 million donation that in part went to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
The Globe and Mail wrote on Tuesday that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) intercepted a dialogue in 2014 between a political adviser to the Chinese government, Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin, a member of China’s foreign promotion networks and an official with China’s Canadian consulates.
During that conversation it is alleged that the topic of the 2015 election came up and that the Chinese diplomat told Zhang to donate $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation with the promise that he would later be reimbursed by Beijing.
This latest allegation comes on top of a series of Chinese election interference claims levelled against the Liberals – who are alleged to be the main beneficiaries of said operations.
After Trudeau came to power in October 2015, Zhang attended a Liberal Party fundraiser where the prime minister was a guest of honour.
A few weeks later, the Trudeau Foundation announced a $1 million donation from Zhang in “the memory” of Pierre Trudeau – $200,000 of that sum went directly to the Trudeau Foundation.
In a statement given to the Globe and Mail, the Prime Minister’s Office has denied that Trudeau was aware of the donation.
“Following his election as Leader of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister withdrew his involvement in the affairs of the foundation for the duration of his involvement in federal politics,” press secretary Ann-Clara Vaillancourt told the outlet.
Yesterday, Trudeau denied reports that China sought to influence past elections and suggested that any claims to that effect were a form of anti-Asian racism.
“One of the things we’ve seen unfortunately over the past years is a rise in anti-Asian racism linked to the pandemic, and concerns being arisen around people’s loyalties,” said Trudeau.
Responding to a report that Liberal MP Han Dong benefitted from a Chinese influence operation that included bussing people to vote for him at a nomination meeting, Trudeau said such suggestions should “not be entertained.
“I want to make everyone understand fully: Han Dong is an outstanding member of our team, and suggestions that he is somehow not loyal to Canada should not be entertained,” said Trudeau.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is denying reports that Liberal MP Han Dong is a willing benefactor of Chinese Communist influence operations, going so far as to suggest it’s racist for CSIS and others to suggest so.
Meanwhile, the Canadian federal government has banned Chinese social media app TikTok from government devices.
Plus a comedian in Quebec has had his shows cancelled for featuring a puppet that critics say is a blackface prop – but the comedian, who is Black himself, is not backing down.
Tune into the Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Lindsay Shepherd!
German European Parliament Member Christine Anderson responded to accusations of racism and hate made by Canadian political figures in an interview with True North. She also voiced her support for Canada’s Freedom Convoy movement.
Anderson, who has become both a popular and controversial figure in Canada, held a cross-country tour with sold-out events in Calgary, Cambridge, Toronto, Whitby and Montreal.
She also met with Conservative MPs Colin Carrie, Dean Allison and Leslyn Lewis, which led to leader Pierre Poilievre denouncing Anderson for views he says are vile, hateful and racist.
Anderson became known in Canada’s Freedom movement after heavily critiquing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year when he came to address the European Parliament.
A child’s family structure should be part of the equality conversation, according to a new report.
A report from Cardus, a Canadian think tank, using newly released 2021 Census data shows 60% of Canadian children live with married parents, and asserts that equality-minded governments should increase that number.
“Stable family environments are correlated with better outcomes for children,” wrote the report’s author Peter Jon Mitchell. “Children in healthy, stable homes tend to be happier and healthier, and to do better in school.”
Mitchell said governments that promote equality for children should promote stable, healthy marriages at home.
“Given the benefits of healthy marriages,” said Mitchell, “governments concerned about inequality should address barriers preventing young adults from forming stable marriages.”
According to the Cardus report, the number of Canadians under the age of 15 that lived with married parents steadily declined for decades leading up to 2016, but has held steady since.
Also in the new Census data, roughly one-in-five children lived with a single parent, and about one-in-six lived in unmarried, common-law families.
By a wide margin, elite female athletes have rejected the idea of allowing male-bodied athletes to compete in their women’s sport.
This comes from a Sport Canada commissioned report which the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) think tank managed to obtain via an Access to Information request.
Ottawa’s initial attempts to obstruct the release of the report so critical of its policy is likely due to this blatant rejection by female athletes.
The report, Canadian High-Performance Female Athletes’ Voices: Transgender Inclusion in Elite and Olympic Sport Guidelines, was the first attempt in Canada to consult the women living with the consequences of the new policies that “rank transgender inclusion as more important than safety, fairness, and equality of the sexes.”
In a new MLI commentary by Linda Blade, a prominent coach, leader in the female sport community and a former high-performance track-and-field athlete, looks at the report that provides a deep study of the attitudes of 25 current or former elite female athletes who speak about how this policy exchange affected them and their colleagues.
And it is not even close.
First, 91.7% of the female athletes interviewed agreed that female athletes should have the right to compete in dedicated female sport categories in sex-affected sports.
And, when considering the scientific evidence, 88% agree that transwomen (biological males) have a competitive advantage over females.
Plus, 88% of respondents also disagreed when asked if gender identities are more important than biological sex when deciding eligibility in high performance sports.
It was that one-sided.
As Blade concludes, the survey shows that “most of the athletes consider biological sex to be more important than gender identity in eligibility criteria for high-performance sport categories.”
“They feel they have not been consulted, that their voices are often dismissed, and that they are unable to speak about this policy area without being called transphobic. They voice considerable sadness, distress, frustration, fear, and anger,” she wrote
According to Blade, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) bears responsibility for enabling the current policy mess.
Despite its primary mandate being to spread the anti-doping message, the CCES implored national sports organizations (NSOs) to include male-born persons in the female category based upon self-identified gender status alone.
“Compliance by NSOs has only resulted in a hitherto unknown form of sex discrimination that is both painful and difficult to understand,” said Blade.
In 2021, a relatable MLI poll revealed significant findings regarding Canadians’ views on gender identity and women’s sport that confirm the results of the Sport Canada-commissioned survey report.
By wide margins, Canadians support traditional sex-based categories for competitive sport, believing that allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s competitive events is “unfair.”
The poll also showed that three times as many Canadians believe it is “right” for men and women to compete separately from each other, compared to those who think separate gender categories are “wrong” in sport (56% versus 18%).
Blade has three recommendations for Sports Canada:
Formally withdraw the CCES transgender guidelines; Overhaul the CCES and ensure that it gets back to focusing on its original mandate; and Undertake a broad consultation process to create new guidelines for a fair and balanced accommodation of both biological sex and gender identity in Canadian sports.
The findings of this Sports Canada report should come as a surprise to no one. Canadians, by and large, respect level playing fields, not jerry-rigged changes to feed the latest political-correctness-of-the-day.
Understanding transgender needs and wants is akin to learning a new and very complicated language.
