The Alberta Sovereignty Act officially passed last week and legacy media journalists, particularly from Ontario, have been unable to control themselves over the prospect of a province other than Quebec standing up for its own interests.
One CBC journalist labelled Danielle Smith’s sovereignty act as “shunning democracy” and Rosemary Barton led an all-Laurentian panel in universal condemnation of the bill without having one Western voice to defend the act.
It’s not the just legacy media journalists that Danielle Smith keeps triggering – it’s also the leftist activists.
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner.
Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett is the faith communities program director at think tank Cardus.
With the impending expansion of Canada’s euthanasia regime in March 2023 permitting doctor-assisted suicide for the mentally ill our country is sleep walking towards a tragic dystopian reality. We have become a society in which you are recognized as only having dignity or inherent value as a human being if you are possessed of a sound mind in a sound body and that you are socially, economically, and I daresay, politically useful.
Implicit in all of this is that the human person only has real value if they can act independently. This is not only a deeply disordered understanding of the human person, but it spells the end of genuine compassion and true dignity. Most tragically, we are not heeding our deepest conscience, which tells us this is all wrong. Instead we accept the advancement of euthanasia as progress, as a fait accompli.
Just because a majority of Canadians support doctor-assisted suicide does not mean that it is right or that it is good for us individually or as a nation. Put another way, just because something is legal and permissible does not mean it is just, good, or true.
At the heart of this debate is not a discussion of legal protections or permissions, of health policy goals, or of individual rights. At its core, the debate over euthanasia is about the very nature of the person.
In a Cardus commentary on human dignity, Who Are You: Reaffirming Human Dignity, we argued “that human beings are not objects to be used but subjects to be loved, and that coming into communion with one another in our common life reveals this reality of human dignity to us. A human being is not just some thing, a human being is someone.” The seemingly limitless and unthinking expansion of euthanasia in Canada is profoundly at odds with this understanding of the human person.
In that same commentary we argued that “we must also assert that our dignity is in no way diminished by a mental or physical disability, or even by grave illness. If human dignity is an interior reality we can recognize in one another despite external realities, then we have no less dignity if we are limited in our material body.”
You cannot lose human dignity. Your external propriety, your ability to do things, how you look, or your mental state does not determine how much dignity you have. Dignity is from within.
But, if I am suffering even to the point of death, don’t I lose my dignity? Again we argued “you do not have less dignity when you suffer, for suffering does not rob you of what belongs to your nature but may even serve to draw out its greatness and beauty. Suffering can be very difficult to endure, whether in ourselves or in those close to us.”
The Judeo-Christian view is that “a human being has infinite worth because we are created in the image and likeness of God, which is much more than a physical or intellectual reality. There is unity between us as members of the human family, and we are in solidarity with one another, even more so where a fellow human being is suffering.”
Suffering does not diminish or end our dignity. Rather, we affirmed in our commentary that “suffering can teach us … about the deep value of virtues such as patience, obedience, endurance, hope, and trust—all of which are unique to us as human beings.”
Can such thinking apply in Canada where many don’t share that Judeo-Christian view of the human? It can. French philosopher Jacques Maritain has argued that regardless of religion, those who “believe in the dignity of the human person, in justice, in liberty, in neighbourly love, they also can cooperate in the realization of such a conception in society and cooperate in the common good.”
Today, many Canadians implicitly embrace the view that solidarity with others includes accepting anything, good or evil. Our only criterion seems to be whether the individual desires it. What if what someone desires though gravely harms them, ends a beautiful, irreplaceable, singular human life?
Euthanasia actually represents a grave failure to be in solidarity with others, to suffer with them, to comfort them, and to gain ourselves an appreciation of the transformative nature of suffering. Let’s be clear, suffering is hard, damn hard, but it is part of our human condition.
Euthanasia is a lonely death and a profound rupture with the solidarity of others. Personal choice is not the highest good; life in all of its many complex stages is.
As we argued about the patient who desires euthanasia “[the patient] determines whether his or her life has value. If he wants to live, his life has value; if he wants to die, his life can be disposed of at will. The contrary view is that human life is not valuable only when people value it but has inherent value on its own. Human life does not have value because we choose it; we choose life because it has value.”
Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett is the faith communities program director at think tank Cardus.
Doctors and nurses leveled some harsh criticisms at the government for mismanaging the healthcare system in a recent survey.
Research conducted by Blu Ivy Group asked 359 healthcare professionals for their opinions about the state of the field in Canada.
One physician said that Canada’s healthcare troubles were happening well before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s not the pandemic. This has been a long time coming — underfunding, burnout, poor efforts at retention, horrible working conditions and regulations, boomers retiring and getting sick. Malignant governmental and societal neglect of healthcare,” said one doctor.
Others also blamed incompetent and “top-heavy” hospital administration for the current crisis.
“I used to have three managers. Now there are well over 20 various managers and directors, and no one is held accountable. It’s a horrifying top-heavy disaster and a huge waste of health care money,” said one nurse.
“There are too many incompetent administrators right now. Decisions are being made from the top down, which is putting patients, staff, and everyone at risk,” another nurse commented.
A November study by the Calgary-based think tank SecondStreet.org found that there were nearly three million Canadians on a healthcare waitlist to access surgeries, scans or specialists. Ontario and Quebec saw some of the highest numbers of people on wait lists.
“The stories behind many of those numbers are pretty atrocious. Sadly, some patients are even dying while waiting to receive a diagnostic scan or meet with a specialist, never mind getting to the point where they’ve been put on a surgical wait list,” explained president Colin Craig.
When it comes to solutions, healthcare workers cited fast tracking professionals from abroad as well as firing unnecessary managers and directors.
“Fire all managers and directors who do not or are not able to work in the areas they manage. They (should) have to work a shift once a month in all the areas they manage. Go back to training all nurses in the hospitals like they used to,” said one nurse.
Last week, Canada’s premiers demanded that the federal government engage in talks about healthcare funding.
“What we’re calling for today is just a meeting to sit down with the prime minister to have the discussion about fair and sustainable funding for the future of health care in our country,” said Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson.
A former Ontario government employee was among two suspects charged by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in relation to a Nov. 2021 vaccine data breach.
Ministry of Government and Consumer Services employee 21-year-old Ayoub Sayid was arrested by police alongside 22-year-old Rahim Abdu.
Sayid was employed by the Ontario government at a vaccine call centre where the crime is alleged to have taken place.
Approximately 360,000 people’s records were swept up in the breach.
“In over 95 per cent of cases, only names and/or phone numbers were impacted,” said the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery.
“Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine booking system is regularly monitored and tested as part of the Ministry of Health’s cyber security protocols and we remain confident that the booking system continues to be a safe and secure tool for Ontarians to use.”
Both suspects are facing Criminal Code charges of Unauthorized Use of a Computer. Either could face up to a maximum of ten years in prison if convicted.
Authorities caught wind of the scheme after the government received reports of people in the database being sent spam messages.
Experts have had concerns about the security of vaccine passport databases since early on in the pandemic.
In Aug. 2021, a group of hackers in Quebec were able to obtain vaccine passport codes of prominent politicians, including the province’s Premier Francois Legault.
The hack included downloading QR codes from the government website by guessing the digits of politicians’ healthcare numbers.
The government filed police complaints as a result of the incident.
A federal byelection is taking place in the GTA riding of Mississauga—Lakeshore as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre faces his first electoral test since being elected leader earlier this year. As a result of activists hoping to disrupt the byelection, 40 candidates are on the ballot.
Plus, federal prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Freedom Convoy protester accused of interfering with the property of downtown Ottawa residents.
And popular satirical news website The Babylon Bee is the latest international voice to pile on Canada over the Liberal government’s assisted suicide policies after more reports of veterans being nonchalantly offered euthanasia by government workers emerge.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Andrew Lawton and Jasmine Moulton!
The too-close-to-call 40-candidate Mississauga-Lakeshore byelection on Monday (Dec. 12) will test the organizational prowess of Katie Telford’s Liberal election machine that has won three consecutive contests and the more recent “kick-ass” campaign spearheaded by Jenni Byrne to crown Pierre Poilievre the latest Conservative leader.
This is the scene set by at least two pollsters.
“This is really a test of how good is Katie’s on-the-ground organization, compared to how good is this new Poilievre organization,” said Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research.
Poilievre’s campaign was “really kick-ass” in its ability to use social media to target people in particular seats, Lyle told the Hill Times newspaper, given the point system used in the federal Conservative leadership race.
“So the question is: can they take what was clearly a first-class campaign at a leadership level, and then take those tools to become similarly strong in a real campaign where it’s the general public, and a lot more voters? So, really the question is: Who’s better at this thing? Jenni or Katie?”
First, they have to manoeuvre through the largest candidate total for a single riding in Canadian history, including 33 independents and the leader of the Rhinoceros Party Sébastien Corriveau.
Also running, not unexpectedly, is John Turmel, who holds the Guinness World Record for running in most elections — 105 so far at all three levels of government, all of them defeats.
If only one thing is to be said about Turmel, he’s persistent.
Corriveau, a Quebec musician who has led the Rhinoceros for the last eight years, told The Hill Times that his party has partly helped co-ordinate the effort to run 33 independents to draw public attention to the Liberal and Conservative parties for failing to reform the Canadian electoral system.
He said the Liberals got elected in 2015 on a platform where electoral reform was a signature campaign promise but abandoned it after winning the election.
The Liberal candidate in the riding is former Ontario Liberal finance minister Charles Sousa, who has represented this riding provincially in the past. The Conservative candidate is Ron Chhinzer, a Peel Region police officer. The NDP candidate is Julia Kole, and Mary Kidnew will carry the Green Party’s banner.
This election pitting two heavyweights against each other — Telford and Byrne — is reminiscent to those of a certain age of the legendary pre-social media campaign gurus, Keith Davey of the Liberals and Norm Atkins of the Tories.
A polling model from Nanos Research combining historic data and recent polls suggested at the end of November the Toronto-area Mississauga-Lakeshore byelection was “too close to call.”
Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos, described the byelection as the “highest-stakes byelection that we’ve seen in a very long time,” adding both parties have an equally good opportunity to win this contest.
He said the Liberals have the advantage as incumbents, even as they falter, and the Conservatives could go after the Liberals on the cost-of-living and affordability issues that are presently top of mind for voters.
In recent history, the Liberals have carried Mississauga-Lakeshore for 25 of the last 29 years, but by relatively close margins.
During this time, the Conservatives won this riding only once—in 2011—when Stella Ambler ousted then-six term Liberal MP Paul Szabo, who had held the seat since 1993. In 2011, the Liberals placed third under Michael Ignatieff’s leadership—a very poor showing and the first in the party’s riding history.
Former Progressive Conservative MP Don Blenkarn served as an MP for the riding from 1979 until the 1993 federal election, when the since-defunct Progressive Conservatives then led by PM Kim Campbell were left with only two seats nationally, and the Jean Chrétien Liberals won the election with a landslide majority.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that the federal government awarded a RCMP contract to a company with ties to the Chinese Communist government in 2021. The contract was ultimately suspended by the government after pressure from the media and opposition politicians.
Years ago, the threat of China wasn’t taken seriously by politicians in Canada. However, that has changed drastically in recent months as Canada is finally decoupling from China – mainly because of pressure from the US government.
The last time I saw Sam Wakim, he was at the Ottawa funeral of Pat Macadam, a former confidante and “spear chucker” — as Macadam called himself — for former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Now word has come that Sam Wakim died last week. He was 85.
Mulroney was at Macadam’s funeral, as well, and sat with Wakim in the pew in front of my wife and I. He was not impressed that I hadn’t called him at his Montreal law office to say that Macadam had finally died after a long wrestle with dementia, but I had called days earlier to let him know Macadam’s death was imminent.
So, I had left a T uncrossed.
“Sam was my best friend in life,” Mulroney told the New Brunswick News, recalling his classmate from the pair’s days at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., in the 1950s, which Macadam also attended.
“He was the best friend any man could ever hope to have.
“He was friendly, he was intelligent, he was entertaining, he was funny, hardworking, loyal. Most of all, Sam was a fascinating guy. He really was a renaissance man.”
Best friend? It was obviously true to anyone who knew about Mulroney, for Wakim was almost always in the former PM’s shadow at any event of importance or significance.
In a personal journal entry contained in Mulroney’s memoir, he wrote that the two spent their time at St. F.X. eating the Lebanese food Sam’s mother and eight sisters regularly sent, going out to see movies, and “drinking beer while discussing our futures well into the night.”
Wakim, a New Brunswick-born lawyer and father of six, also played a crucial role in every one of Mulroney’s campaigns, according to the former prime minister.
“He was indispensable in my success,” Mulroney told the News, recalling how he put together the youth organization that pumped strength and innovation into his campaign. “That brought in hundreds of delegates that in the end made the difference between winning and losing in 1983,” he said of his successful bid for the Progressive Conservative leadership.
“Few people played a more important role in our victory in 1983 than Sam.”
Mulroney called Wakim an accomplished lawyer who had a keen interest in public policy and politics. He added that Wakim was a “very valued counsellor” to him throughout his life.
“He provided a completely unvarnished opinion to me,” he said. “When I was wrong, he told me point blank.
“From say 1980 on, over 40 years, we probably spoke on the phone at least once a day.”
Wakim once represented Ontario’s Don Valley East electoral district which he won in the 1979 federal election. After serving his only term, he was defeated by David Smith of the Liberal Party.
In 2007, he represented Mulroney in litigation with businessman Karlheinz Schreiber over the Airbus affair. He also represented the former prime minister in litigation with the journalist-author Peter C. Newman shortly after his publication of the Secret Mulroney Tapes.
As the News wrote, Wakim had a stroke roughly a year and a half ago and was confined to a wheelchair with paralysis to his right side. With his friend’s health declining, Mulroney said he made three trips to Toronto in the last two and a half months.
“We had long lunches together, just the two of us, over at the National Club in Toronto,” Mulroney said. “It was just like old times, happy times.
Federal prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Freedom Convoy protester accused of interfering with the property of downtown Ottawa residents, among other violations.
A press release by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) explains that the charges were dropped against the individual, known in court-documents only as J.W., after the Crown agreed a provincial declaration of emergency to deal with the Windsor blockades did not apply to this matter.
“On February 19, 2022, J.W. was charged with interfering with the lawful use and enjoyment of property of downtown Ottawa residents, failure to obey a court order, and obstruction of justice for failing to identify himself to police,” the JCCF wrote.
“The court order J.W. allegedly disobeyed was made under the provincial declaration of emergency, to deal with the Windsor bridge blockades. The order was created specifically to clear the Windsor blockades and counsel argued that it was an abuse to use the order for any other purpose. The Crown agreed and withdrew all charges.”
Additionally, the JCCF cited a “lack of evidence” to show that the Freedom Convoy supporter actually violated the rights of Ottawa residents or that he failed to identify himself to law enforcement.
“The Freedom Convoy was a peaceful demonstration that protested the trucker vaccine mandates the Trudeau government imposed in January 2022,” said the JCCF.
“In response to the peaceful demonstrations, the Prime Minister took the unprecedented step to invoke the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, to suppress the peaceful protests, and freeze bank accounts of protestors without a court order.”
Lawyer Sam Goldstein represented J.W. in the case.
“The right to peaceful protest is an integral part of democracy which is why the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed by the Charter,” said JCCF lawyer Henna Parmar.
“We look forward to the Canadian Courts upholding the fundamental right of Canadians to peacefully assemble.”
This development comes as the Public Order Emergency Commission deliberates on whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was justified under the provisions defined by the law.
A report with the Commission’s findings is expected to be released in February 2023.
Krystle Wittevrongel is Senior Policy Analyst and Alberta Project Lead at the Montreal Economic Institute.
To say small businesses in Canada have had a rough few years would be an understatement. Nearly one in five are currently at risk of closure.
If regulators tack on extra costs from ESG (environmental, social, and governance) reporting criteria, it may be the final nail in the coffin for many.
Yet Ottawa has committed to making some additional reporting mandatory, and the Canadian Securities Administrators—an umbrella group of provincial and territorial regulators—are looking at imposing such requirements as we speak.
These new requirements for Canadian companies will likely be based on what the International Sustainability Standards Board has developed.
These disclosure standards would, among other things, make it mandatory for publicly listed Canadian companies to report all upstream and downstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, referred to as Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions.
For instance, take a canola oil processor in Saskatchewan. First, it would need to tally emissions that result from manufacturing. In this case, this means any emissions from that canola oil processor’s manufacturing process, as well as emissions from the fleet of vehicles it owns to make deliveries. That’s Scope 1.
Next, it would need to report emissions from the operation of its facilities. That means getting the emissions intensity information from SaskPower, the local natural gas provider, and any A/C or heating equipment. That’s Scope 2.
Finally, this canola oil processor would need to figure out and report on upstream and downstream emissions. That’s where it gets tricky, because so many things come into play. It would involve figuring out emissions from the farmer who grew the canola crop, from the consumers who used the oil, from the recycling plant where the empty bottle ended up, and even from the processor’s own employees commuting to and from work! That’s Scope 3.
It should come as no surprise that Scope 3 emissions have been referred to as the “fatal flaw” in GHG reporting, as they are the hardest to quantify.
Now, for large corporations, quantifying and reporting on those emissions is an expensive process, but it’s not insurmountable. Most likely, they’ll just end up passing the cost on to the unsuspecting Canadian public and be done with it.
For small businesses, though, this can be lethal. When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considered the idea, it estimated it would cost nearly half a million dollars annually for smaller companies to comply.
That’s not the kind of money small businesses have just sitting in the bank right now, and with 62% of Canadian small businesses still carrying pandemic debt, you can imagine that hiring a compliance officer is pretty low on their list of priorities right now.
Some would argue that since this requirement would only apply to publicly listed companies, smaller businesses would, in fact, be unaffected. But even setting aside the hundreds of small businesses—a lot of them in the resource sector—that are publicly listed, a lot of other smaller firms would be forced to comply, albeit indirectly.
Specifically, these reporting requirements would impede their ability to do business with publicly traded firms.
Take that same canola oil processor. Let’s assume it’s owned by a large public company. When it starts being required to disclose its GHG emissions data, including Scope 3 emissions, it will need to look to each and every supplier in its supply chain to provide their emissions data.
If a supplier—say a rural Saskatchewan farmer—is unable to provide that data, chances are they’ll be dropped as suppliers, or have to settle for a lower price to compensate for the additional resources the processing plant needs to spend to get that data.
That’s one of the reasons why, when the proposed standards were open for consultation, many of the over 80 Canadian organizations that submitted comments voiced their concern.
Small businesses are in dire need of help. The last thing they need is a regulatory slap in the face. Making Scope 3 emissions reporting mandatory would just hasten their demise.
