This week on the Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel, Rachel discusses Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s sovereignty act legislation which passed this week, just ten days after it was tabled.
Also on the show, the United Conservative Party government is leading in the polls under Smith’s leadership, the first time the UCP has been ahead of the NDP in a couple months.
And finally, Smith skipped NDP leader and former Alberta premier Rachel Notley’s official portrait unveiling this week.
International voices continue 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.
The latest criticism comes from the popular satirical news website The Babylon Bee.
In a Dec. 9 article titled Canadian Dentist Now Offering Euthanasia As Alternative To Cavity Filling, the website quips about the “growing demand for assisted suicide in” Canada.
“(Toronto dentist Joseph) Meyer has seen an influx of patients since announcing the service,” writes the Babylon Bee.
“‘Patients are always complaining about how much fillings hurt,’ said Meyer. ‘One patient said, ‘it’s killing me.’ That’s when I got the idea.’”
In August, reports revealed that an official with Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) offered doctor-assisted euthanasia to a veteran looking for mental health services.
Changes brought forward by the Liberals this year will legally allow those who have a mental illness to seek reprieve by opting for doctor-assisted suicide.
When confronted with the exchange, VAC officials acknowledged it had happened and apologized for the incident.
“VAC deeply regrets what transpired,” said the agency claiming that “appropriate administrative action will be taken.”
“Providing advice pertaining to medical assistance in dying is not a VAC service.”
During a recent Senate testimony, veteran and Paralympic athlete Christine Gauthier explained how VAC suggested she seeks assisted suicide after she requested help with installing a chair lift in her home due to her disability.
“With respect to me, I have a letter in my file, because I had to face that as well,” said Gauthier. “I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying.”
Social media reactions to the Babylon Bee article ranged from the humorous to the concerned.
“I am always shocked and then I have to stop and realize who tweeted. Love it though. Haha,” tweeted 6NewsAU US correspondent Jackson Gosnell.
“Haha, not far from the truth,” said Twitter user Brad Miller.
Gregory Tobin is the Digital Strategy Director for the Canada Strong & Proud network of pages. Working in graphic design, video editing, social media management and much more. His career has seen him work on numerous political campaigns across the country.
I imagine little Swiss, German, and other European children will be acting naughty on purpose this year in the hopes Santa brings them some coal so they can power their homes.
Canada has been watching from across the ocean as an energy crisis rages across Europe. And while a majority of Canadians agree we need to be doing more to be energy sufficient for ourselves and our allies, there are many who still seem unconvinced – particularly our political leaders.
Let me give a few examples of the dystopian nightmare taking place over there.
The country of Switzerland recently announced it will ask its people to turn off their video games in an effort to help fight the energy shortages.
Let’s pause and think about this for a second. We’re talking about Switzerland. A fully developed European nation doesn’t have enough power to let teenagers play Fortnite.
On top of banning the playing of video games, Switzerland has also said it may ask people to stop driving electric vehicles (EVs) because they’re sucking up too much juice when they charge. (Remember when politicians told us to just buy an EV if the carbon tax made gas too expensive for us?)
And they’re prepared to shut down sports stadiums and leisure businesses if the energy crunch gets too bad.
Over in France they’re cancelling short-haul flights.
Volkswagen in Germany is having trouble keeping the lights on at its manufacturing plants.
In Poland, people are digging up coal in their backyards – apparently it’s a thing that can be done, but is illegal – in order to heat their homes.
And across the continent people are being told to leave that thermostat alone.
This headline from The New York Times pretty well sums it up: “Bundle up, and get ready for outages.”
We’re talking about some of the most advanced nations on earth heading for a very cold and very dark winter.
You can imagine scenes of kids having to wear coats to bed to prevent them from freezing. I picture mothers using candles to warm up formula bottles in the middle of the night. I picture fathers spending their time after work going out and desperately searching for things to burn.
Makes you wonder if there’s a business case to sell these countries some energy, eh?
It’s a disaster. Yet it’s a disaster that many have been warning would happen for a while now.
The so-called transition off of oil and gas and over to supplemental energy sources was always going to result in chaos. And Europe is now living through it.
Wind turbines and solar panels serve a purpose. But they have the highest material input needs of any energy source, and they don’t provide steady energy.
In the United States, where they unleashed fracking, they reduced their emissions by some 20% – and that’s with no carbon tax either, mind you.
We in Canada have been transforming our energy supplies from coal, over to liquid natural gas, and it helped us reduce domestic emissions.
If we could ramp up production for ourselves, and utilize our huge energy reserves to displace coal, wood, and dung burning in developing nations, imagine the global emissions we could slash.
Yet in the province of Quebec, which is running out of energy, its Premier, Francois Legault, banned energy exploration in his province in the name of the climate. Talk about missing the obvious solution.
It doesn’t have to be the case that dealing with environmental issues means you let families freeze in their homes and just give up on having civilization.
We can have reliable, affordable, sustainable energy like natural gas and nuclear, and use carbon technologies to keep emissions low. And no one has to burn garbage to keep their kids from freezing – it’s really a win-win.
Germany just signed a 15-year deal with Qatar to supply LNG. Why the hell wasn’t it Canada signing that deal?
We have to let go of the failed eco-radical ideologies of the past that are still holding us back.
Most Canadians rightly see the bounty of resources we have here as an opportunity (and a business case) rather than something to be left in the ground. Will our political leaders sit up and notice the European crisis, and change course to avoid the same dystopia happening here?
In the 20th century, Canada created a great name for itself as a peacekeeper. Let’s make the 21st century the one where we’re known as leaders in ethical and responsible resource production for the free world.
In the meantime, let us hope and pray the toll this winter takes on Europe is as minimal as possible.
This week on Fake News Friday a legacy media journalist at the Toronto Star looks down on independent journalists by comparing her work to performing surgery and the leader of the NDP once again confronts Canada’s “ongoing genocide” against Indigenous peoples and wants to confront the same government he’s guilty of supporting for years.
Also on deck, a face mask writes an intimate love letter to its owner hoping to get back together for the winter season and after hours of watching television, “researchers” have found that the hit Discovery channel program “Shark Week” is not diverse enough!
Andrew Lawton and Harrison Faulkner take a deep dive on this week’s story to see what’s really going on.
Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees spent more than eight hours discussing how to tackle the tremendous uptick in violence in their schools – even though it was a foregone conclusion before they started that they’d turn to the same hug-a-thug methods that have not worked to date.
Executive superintendent Jim Spyropolous, to whom education director Colleen Russell Rawlins kept deferring, said what schools really need is a “caring adult” to deal with the violence.
So no adults have cared up to now?
Russell-Rawlins, who is a proponent of critical race theory (now dressed in the guise of anti-black racism), contended that student safety is clearly an issue of “great importance” and they are “listening and will keep listening.”
She said the plan they’ve put forward – A Collaborative Approach to School and Community Safety– has “firm timelines” and will involve working with local communities.
She said school monitors and social workers will be added to violent schools because the board believes in the “abilities” of thugs who have held the schools hostage and they “see their humanity” even when they “make mistakes”
The education director did not use the term “thugs” but I felt it important to do so to highlight how ludicrous it is for her to characterize those who shoot and kill others or terrorize schools as having “humanity” and just making mistakes.
Parents were invited to speak at what would turn out to be two nights of debate and interspersed between the “defund the police” activists, several made an urgent plea to reinstate cops in schools at least temporarily to bring the temperature down.
The cops in schools program was canceled in 2017 by the TDSB after vocal activist Desmond Cole and the BLM crowd pressured politicians into thinking police were targeting black students.
Parent after parent spoke of lockdowns at their child’s high school, fears of going to the washroom alone, stabbings in the school followed by a protest and then a shooting in the few months since school started.
“Grade 12 students have never experienced such a level of violence but are expected to perform to get into college or university,” said Larrisa Bholaraminsingh, a mom of a Grade 12 student at Woburn Collegiate.
“Which college or university will know their level of trauma or stress?” she added.
Yogesh Kumar, co-chair of the Marc Garneau Collegiate parent council, said students had to deal with a lockdown on the very first day of school.
But pretending they actually cared about the scenarios the parents painted, the largely left-wing trustees wouldn’t hear of police. In fact for some – mainly the Black Lives Matter activists – the very thought of police set them into a frenzy.
One radical activist, Alexis Dawson, aggressively badgered those parents who mentioned the idea of police, trying to attack their credibility.
If the discussion couldn’t get more bizarre, at one point Spyropoulos proudly highlighted that from 2016 to 2020, suspensions have decreased by 6.4%–a goal of the board.
But, in the same period the number of violent incidents on TDSB school premises has been increasing and during this school year, the board could be reporting the “highest number of violent incidents” since 2000.
Violent incidents include weapons possession, physical assault causing bodily harm, sexual assault, robbery, using a weapon to threaten bodily harm, extortion, hate and/or bias-motived incidents.
For heaven’s sake, do these highly paid bureaucrats not understand the principle of cause and effect? Can they really be this foolish?
Between disbanding the Student Resource Officer (SRO) program and giving no consequences for bad behaviour, is it any wonder that violence is out of control in some Toronto schools?
Russell-Rawlins and Spyropolous kept returning to the narrative that violence is “systemic” and that they need to continue to address systemic barriers faced by black and indigenous students – that just building a “more inclusive and positive school culture” will restore learning environments.
Board vice-chair Neethan Shan – a professional candidate who was absolutely unimpressive during the one year he was a city councillor – added that anti-racism training was needed for everyone, even janitors.
Yes indeed that will curb violence.
Another trustee and York professor, Anu Sriskandarajah, who came onto the meeting from her home sporting a mask, reminded everyone that the “rights” of troublemakers need to be respected.
When Sriskandarajah asked about daily fights in schools, Russell-Rawlins responded that it is her expectation that principals will take real steps to “address underlying issues” that cause these fights.
It didn’t take eight hours to realize that few people in that TDSB boardroom are connected with reality and, except for a few new trustees like Weidong Pei, don’t really care about the safety of students.
The parents who dared, spoke loudly and clearly but the high-paid bureaucrats didn’t listen.
All they really care about is saving face and propping up an anti-oppression, anti-black racism agenda that has created divisiveness, hate and has increased violence.
Students, teachers and administrators will continue to pay the price for their absolute ineptitude and blindness.
Anti-mask graffiti on the outside of Westdale Secondary School in Hamilton. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
Despite a new mask rule being introduced at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) earlier this week, hardly any students are following it and there has even been anti-mask graffiti sprayed at schools.
HWDSB trustees voted 10-3 on Monday night in support of what they call a “temporary universal masking requirement”, the only such rule throughout Ontario.
In response, some schools in the area have been hit with anti-mask graffiti and the vast majority of students still choose not to wear masks, sources tell True North.
“Four schools were tagged with graffiti in two days,” Shawn McKillop, communications manager for HWDSB, told True North. “The graffiti is an act of vandalism. Police have also been made aware.”
The trustees stopped short of actually calling the mask rule a mandate and they provided a significant opt-out clause that arguably renders the new rule meaningless.
“Students have unrestricted access to the opt-out process,” writes director of education Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, in an email to parents, which was shared with True North. “A parent, guardian, or caregiver may complete the Mask Opt-Out form in the Parent Portal on behalf of their children. A paper copy can be made available at the school. They may also let the school know verbally if they prefer.”
A HWDSB staff member, who requested anonymity due to employment concerns, told True North that “mask uptake by students and staff the day after the masking requirement [came into effect] is minimal.”
The staff member was also aware of crews showing up to remove anti-mask graffiti the same day the graffiti was made. “In an organization that takes months to years for work orders to be completed, the speed is breathtaking,” the staff member explained.
One mother of two elementary school students in the region said it’s frustrating to see this push for masks return after over two years of mandates.
“It’s just really sad – sad for the kids, sad for the kids, anybody who is being forced right now to wear the mask or feels the pressure to wear the mask,” says Lisa Donegan Baetz.
She sees the recent four hour board meeting on the issue and the board’s $500,000 monthly mask budget as a waste of resources that should instead be going to help students with their actual education and learning loss.
“As a parent, I think this needs to be left to families to decide what’s best for their children,” Donegan Baetz says.
Last month, an attempt to introduce a mask mandate at the Ottawa Carleton District School Board failed to get sufficient votes, even after the proposed motion was watered down to allow significant opt-out clauses.
A new sustainability report published on Friday by Corus Entertainment, the parent company of Global News and other media properties, is chock full of woke initiatives including mutiple climate initiatives and mandated employee “diversity, equity and inclusion training” (DEI) sessions.
This comes only weeks after Global News executives testified before a federal Senate committee to state that their financial situation was so dire they were seeking to partake in the federal government’s $600 million bailout reserved for newspapers and other print media.
Corus Entertainment’s Sustainability Report 2022 seeks to align the company with “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) goals – a business practice closely aligned with the United Nations’ “sustainable development goals.”
“I am pleased to share Corus’ first Sustainability Report, an important milestone in our work to formally integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals into everything we do,” wrote Corus CEO and president Doug Murphy.
Among the initiatives undertaken by the company include measures to “reduce carbon emissions”, “company-wide DEI-focused training”, “environmental sustainability sessions for employees”, among others.
“We continuously strive towards a culture of equity and inclusion in our workplace, our content and our industry. I love the transparent approach Corus has taken, providing quarterly updates to our DEI Action Plan, internally and externally,” said the company’s head of diversity, equity and inclusion Lenore MacAdam.
Critics of DEI initiatives have slammed the practice as ideologically-driven and destructive to social relations.
Renowned psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson called the policy a “radical leftist” trinity.
“Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than (DEI). Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than (DEI). When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of (DEI), and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well,” wrote Peterson in an op-ed earlier this year.
Similar workplace policies have caused rifts in other media companies, including the CBC which saw the departure of producer Tara Henley over the public broadcaster’s “radical political agenda” which included vetting the race of show guests.
Part of Corus’ approach to improving equity and diversity at the company includes a designation system for four “designated groups”: “Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, persons with disabilities and women.”
It is yet to be seen whether the policy will improve Corus’ financial straits as the company has lost over 80% of its stock value in the past five years.
Former Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission vice-chair Peter Menzies recently told True North that giving the company more benefits as per their Senate committee request will make the news organization dependent on the Liberal government remaining in power.
“To give further financial benefits to already profitable and – some might say – pampered companies such as Global/Corus it will do so at the disadvantage of the more than 200 innovative and entrepreneurial news websites that have launched in recent years,” said Menzies.
“It would also be a step further towards the creation of a permanent co-dependence between the Liberal party being in power and Global/Corus’s ability to produce news.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was “disconcerting.” This should be underscored as a huge understatement.
After all the past hassles with the extradition of Meng Wanzhou to the United States, the unnecessary stall in tossing the Huawei 5G contract, and the arbitrary imprisonment in China of the Two Michaels, the fact that the Liberal government awarded another Chinese firm that is partially owned by the Communist government a high-tech contract with the RCMP shows the heads of Public Services and Procurement Canada may have suffered an aneurysm.
There are few other explanations. According to the CBC, the federal government awarded Sinclair Technologies a contract worth $549,637 in October of 2021 for a radio frequency filtering system designed to protect the RCMP’s land-based radio communications from eavesdropping.
The work is already underway in Saskatchewan and Ontario.
While Sinclair Technologies is based in Ontario, the company has been controlled by Hytera Communications of Shenzhen, China since 2017, when Hytera purchased Norsat International, Sinclair’s parent company.
The Chinese government of dictator Xi Jinping owns approximately 10% of Hytera Communications through an investment fund.
The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blacklisted Hytera in 2021, stating the company is one of several Chinese firms that pose “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons.”
Sales and imports of Hytera equipment were banned in the United States as a result.
Hytera is facing 21 charges in an American espionage case. The United States Department of Justice has accused the company of conspiring to steal trade secrets from American telecommunications company Motorola.
The indictment alleges Hytera recruited and hired Motorola employees to obtain confidential business information between 2007 and 2020. Hytera Communications has denied all the charges in the indictment.
Sinclair Technologies’ main competitor for the RCMP contract was Comprod, a Quebec-based communications technology firm.
According to the CBC the difference in the Sinclair and Comprod bid was approximately $60,000.
Jawad Abdulnour, Comprod’s vice-president of R&D and engineering, told the CBC that Sinclair Technologies can make equipment cheaper than it did before because some of its components are now made in China, not Canada.
“It’s very frustrating, disappointing and worrisome,” Abdulnour said in an interview.
“How is it that a government agency just goes with the lowest bidder and will give contracts to companies like that when we’re talking about national security?”
That’s the $60,000 question when firms linked to the Chinese government — like Huawei — should be treated as extremely toxic instead of given half-mil contracts with our federal police force.
So, what gives?
University of Ottawa senior fellow Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a former senior federal official and a specialist on China’s science and technology, said the government should terminate the contract.
“You have to be naïve,” McCuaig-Johnston said. “It’s like giving the key to Canada’s security to Chinese actors.
“It’s not just about getting rid of the contract. It’s also a matter of ripping out what has already been installed.”
The October 2021 decision by the federal government makes Sinclair a preferred vendor for a three-year term. The agreement includes the possibility of a two-year extension option.
A spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), the department that awarded the contract, said in response to the CBC’s questions that PSPC did not take security concerns and Sinclair’s ownership into consideration during the bidding process.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act is now officially passed in the Alberta legislature. The law that is designed to give the province the ability to ignore federal laws that it deems harmful to its interests garnered a lot of discussion around the country, including hints that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may soon fight it.
Plus, a new public opinion survey on Canada’s Premiers shows Quebec’s Francois Legault is a popular figure but Ontario’s Doug Ford is fast losing support.
And tens of thousands of children were targeted by the state for violating covid-19 Quarantine Rules. Was this a good use of our resources?
Tune into The Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Rachel Emmanuel!
An amendment to Bill C-21, the government’s gun grab legislation, is attempting to ban thousands of long guns and hunting rifles. Guns on this list include break action shotguns from the 1940s and even a gun from the 1800s. However, the Trudeau government has repeatedly told Canadians that they aren’t going after hunting rifles, they’re only going after “military-style assault weapons”.
Harrison Faulkner goes through some of the guns on the amendment list so you can be the judge of whether or not they are are really “military-style assault weapons” or just guns used by law-abiding license holders who like to hunt.
Also on the show, NHLer Carey Price spoke out against Trudeau’s gun grab — only to be cancelled by his own team.
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner
