Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) leader Eric Duhaime is hopeful ahead of the provincial election campaign, saying his party has already had a huge success.
Duhaime is running on a campaign based on freedom. He is pledging more tax cuts for Quebecers, allowing for the expansion of the province’s natural resources and increasing the private sector’s role in Quebec’s health care system.
True North’s Elie Cantin-Nantel caught up with Duhaime at a candidate announcement event the PCQ held on August 11 at the Hotel V in Gatineau, QC.
Elie asked Duhaime about his campaign’s momentum, the legacy media, Legault’s pandemic restrictions and the PCQ’s future in a post-pandemic world.
The judicial inquiry into the unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act to quell last winter’s Freedom Convoy will begin public hearings on September 19, the same day Parliament is set to resume.
“One of the Commission’s primary responsibilities is to hold the Government of Canada to account for its decision to declare a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act.” Justice Paul Rouleau said in a statement.
The Commission anticipates calling on a variety of witnesses including protest participants, law enforcement at all levels, federal, provincial and municipal officials and businesses impacted by the protests. The hearings are expected to run until Oct. 28, 2022.
The Trudeau government will need to provide evidence to justify the use of the never-before-used act to quash the peaceful Freedom Convoy. Measures taken during the declared emergency will also be investigated.
Enforcement of the Emergencies Act lasted for nine days and saw 230 arrests and nearly $8 million in assets held by convoy organizers and supporters frozen.
“I intend to conduct the hearings in as open and transparent a manner as possible,” said Justice Rouleau. The inquiry must “help Canadians gain a better understanding of the events,” he said.
All proceedings will be live streamed on the Commission’s website. True North will provide extensive coverage of the hearings as well. A final report will be completed by Feb. 6, 2023 under statutory deadlines.
Cabinet has not yet disclosed any specific evidence it relied on to justify the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
“We have asked many times for the current government to confirm if it will disclose the evidence that justifies invocation of the Emergencies Act,” Conservative MP Dane Lloyd told the House of Commons on April 28.
“Every time it has refused.”
“If the government has the evidence to support its extraordinary actions it should be pleased to take the opportunity to table it in the House,” said Lloyd.
“Canadians are increasingly wondering whether the Liberal government even had the evidence at all.”
A special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency was formed on Mar. 3 to investigate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the act.
A number of the government’s claims to justify the act have been debunked in recent months, including the claim that police forces requested the government invoke the never-before-used act.
Former Alberta Liberal Party leader Raj Sherman says nobody is interested in running to be leader of the party because it’s struggled to elect MLAs in the previous two provincial elections.
Sherman’s comments follow the party’s Friday deadline, in which no one submitted a nomination to run in the Alberta Liberal Party leadership contest.
The lack of interest follows recent elections, in which progressive voters have swarmed Alberta’s NDP while conservatives rally around the United Conservative Party (UCP), Sherman said.
“Nobody else has access to the legislature except the NDP and the UCP,” he told True North.
The Alberta Liberal Party is the oldest party in the province. It formed a majority government the year it was founded, in 1905, and held power until 1917 — the last time it formed government. It was the official opposition from 1992-2008, but has struggled to find relevance since.
In 2012, the Alberta Liberal Party held third party status. It elected just one MLA in the 2015 election — David Swann, the Liberal’s former leader who returned as interim leader in 2015, following Sherman’s resignation.
The party failed to elect any MLAs to the legislature in the 2019 general election, which saw a historical UCP majority led by Jason Kenney.
The Alberta Liberal Party removed the leadership section from its website after failing to attract a single applicant on Friday. It did not respond to a request for comment from True North on Monday.
John Roggeveen has been the interim leader since March 2021.
Sherman led the party from September 2011 to January 2015. During his leadership, the Liberals dropped from nine seats in 2008 to five following the 2012 election.
At the time of his resignation, Sherman told Macleans he was proud of his accomplishments, saying he took the party out of debt and had all the riding associations registered and ready to take candidates.
The challenge the Liberals now face is that many supporters have moved over to the centrist Alberta Party, he told True North.
“If you want to win the election, you have to get people who have the ability to organize people, volunteer, fundraise, and do the work that’s required,” Sherman said.
Sherman recently attempted to run in the UCP leadership race, but was denied entry because he was not a member of the party for at least six months ahead of the contest.
The party granted federal Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner an exemption when her membership lapsed and she was considering a leadership bid.
Sherman told the party he declined a UCP membership while on the governance board of the College of Physicians and Surgeons because they dislike when board members are also members of political parties. The college even wrote a letter supporting his case, but the argument lost credence when the UCP learned he donated $4,000 to the Alberta Party last year.
The BC government wants to leave unvaccinated mothers who are public servants on the hook for any maternity leave they benefited from.
Mothers who are denied an exemption to the Covid-19 shot could be terminated from their jobs and pay back up to $50,000 in maternity benefits.
“The vaccination policy stipulates that BC Public Service employees who do not receive two doses of vaccination against COVID-19, or refuse to disclose their vaccination status, and do not have an approved exemption request, are to be placed on a leave without pay for a period of at least three months, after which they may be terminated,” the BC government writes on their website.
Mothers speaking to the outlet My Prince George Now say that they are being treated unfairly by the government.
“At this point, it would just be punitive if I lose my job,” one woman who wished to remain anonymous said.
“It’s like they want to make examples out of people… It is absolutely cruel in a country like Canada.”
Another mother said that she’s facing up to $50,000 in maternity leave repayment and is not eligible for EI for simply deciding not to get the Covid-19 vaccine.
“I believed I was providing security for my family, I had a permanent position to return to,” she said.
“I can’t do it. We have a newborn and are trying to pay our mortgage and other bills.”
“We have a mortgage and two children. With the crazy economy and inflation, to have the little savings you have ripped out of your hand just seems crazy,” she continued.
The federal government has also said that they are refusing to compensate any unvaccinated workers negatively impacted by vaccine mandates.
Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc said that Ottawa would “absolutely not” be offering any compensation packages to the thousands of unvaccinated workers it has terminated.
Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis has run a campaign based on her social conservative views and her support of the Freedom Convoy.
As the leadership race is set to come to a close, with the winner set to be announced on Sept 10, True North’s Elie Cantin-Nantel caught up with Lewis at an event she held in Gatineau, Quebec, and got an update on her campaign.
Plus, Lewis elaborates on why she thinks Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich is a political prisoner.
What do you do if you are Justin Trudeau and an independent journalist exposes your flawed Covid response? You deploy the “fact-checkers” at Press Progress to discredit that reporting and the journalist, of course! That’s exactly what happened this week when Press Progress jumped at the chance to protect Trudeau by labelling Rupa Subramanya’s bombshell report as “misleading.”
Plus, the woke Trudeau government has now set its sights on Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is being investigated by the government for posthumous honours due to “controversial beliefs”. Apparently those “controversial beliefs” include the idea that society should teach deaf people to learn to read lips so they could assimilate into the rest of society. Because of that, all of his honour and recognition for inventing the telephone must be cancelled. We wouldn’t want someone who represents the greatness of old Canada be celebrated today!
And transportation minister Omar Alghabra takes home the Ratio of the Week award for his pathetic follow-up act of Chrsytia Freeland trying to convince us that the government loves truckers.
United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership candidate Danielle Smith is urging Alberta Premier Jason Kenney not to interfere in the ongoing race to replace him.
The warning comes as Kenney said Smith’s Sovereignty Act would make Alberta a “laughingstock” on his Saturday radio show.
The Premier’s comments regarding the Sovereignty Act are “premature, ill-informed and disrespectful to a large and growing majority of UCP members that support this important initiative,” Smith said in a statement.
“I would also urge the Premier to focus on being a voice for Party unity and to respect our Party’s democratic leadership process that allows members to select our Leader in an open and transparent selection process without interference from the acting Premier and Leader of the Party,” she wrote.
The Alberta Sovereignty Act seeks to bar federal legislation deemed harmful to Alberta. It’s a product of the Free Alberta Strategy group, of which Rob Anderson is the co-founder. Anderson took a leave from the group to act as Smith’s campaign chair.
Weeks into the campaign, Smith said she would introduce legislation to enshrine the Sovereignty Act into law as her first act as Premier, if elected. She touted the proposal as a means to get projects built in Alberta without federal interference and to bar federal vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions.
“Albertans are tired of watching Justin Trudeau and Ottawa continuously run over the rights and freedoms of Albertans and they want a leader who will stand and defend our Province without apology; and that is exactly the leader I intend to be,” she said.
Smith was a vocal critic of Kenney ahead of the leadership race, and announced her intentions to run for Premier long before Kenney said he would resign. She’s now asking the Premier and other critics to reserve their opinion of the Sovereignty Act until they read such legislation.
“If elected to replace (Kenney) as Leader and Premier, I will work closely and collaboratively with our entire UCP Caucus to ensure the Sovereignty Act is drafted, passed, and implemented in accordance with sound constitutional language and principles,” she said.
Kenney said the proposal “is nuts.”
“The proposal is for Alberta basically to ignore and violate the Constitution in a way that is unprecedented in Canadian history,” he said. “The province should be focused on realistic, practical ways to fight unfair Ottawa policies.”
Leadership candidates and sitting UCP MLAs Travis Toews, Rebecca Schulz, Rajan Sawhney and Leela Aheer all took aim at Smith’s pitch during the first leader’s debate last month.
The proposal is “seductive,” but there’s nothing about it that makes sense, Sawhney said, while Aheer argued it’s redundant because we already have the constitution, which enshrines areas of provincial jurisdiction.
There are aspects of the Alberta Sovereignty Act that break the rule of the law, Schulz said. Toews said it would be “delusional” to think the proposal would solve Alberta’s problems when it would actually drive investment away.
Finance Minister Jason Nixon has said the Alberta Sovereignty Act is “problematic” and would be unlikely to be adopted by the Alberta Legislature.
Independent MLA Todd Loewen is the only candidate besides Smith to support the Act.
Smith’s proposal is resonating with more UCP MLAs, as evidenced by her growing number of endorsements.
On Thursday, Alberta Labour and Immigration Minister Kaycee Madu was the second cabinet member and seventh UCP MLA to endorse Smith as the best person to take over as Alberta’s premier. That includes two MLAs who pulled their endorsement from former finance minister Travis Toews.
UCP members will elect a new leader and Premier on October 6.
The Democracy Fund (TDF) is representing a group of concerned university students and parents who may soon be taking the University of Toronto to court for recently announcing a new booster mandate that will be implemented for all students living in residence this fall.
On July 28, U of T announced the reinstatement of their Covid vaccine mandate requiring students to have both shots and at least one booster dose before moving into residence. The university is still going ahead with the mandate despite the lack of recommendations from public health officials.
“The right to bodily autonomy, medical privacy and equal treatment under the law are fundamental rights in our democracy,” said TDF Senior Litigator Mark Joseph in a letter to U of T urging them to rescind the booster mandate or to otherwise accommodate affected individuals.
“These rights aren’t surrendered simply by implementation of governmental or university policy. Forcing incoming residence students to take a COVID-19 booster arguably violates these rights.”
Ontario previously lifted its proof of vaccination requirement on Mar. 1, 2022. Most universities dropped or paused their restrictions, including U of T on May 1. However, U of T is the only post-secondary institution in Canada that has implemented a booster mandate.
“Thus, the Booster Mandate is not defensible given the minimal justification provided by the University,” writes Joseph.
The university announced the new mandate just one month before students are expected to return to on-campus residence, putting undue strain on students now seeking alternative housing. Many students have already paid their tuition fees before being made aware they were not able to return to campus.
“It is important for Canadians to resist the forfeiture of their fundamental rights and freedoms because the price paid to secure them was so high,” said Joseph.
Conservative leadership candidates Pierre Poilievre and Roman Baber also spoke out against U of T’s new booster mandate.
“Now universities want to shut out students who are not triple vaccinated. Enough. Let students take back control of their lives. End COVID vaccine mandates. Now,” Poilievre tweeted.
Now universities want to shut out students who are not triple vaccinated.
“Dr. Moore said Ontario can’t recommend boosters for everyone, since young persons should assess the small risk of hospitalization vs 1 in 5,000 risk of myocarditis. Shame on @UofT for forcing students to factor in the risk to their education,” tweeted Baber.
CMOH Dr.Moore said Ontario can't recommend boosters for everyone, since young persons should assess the small risk of hospitalization vs 1 in 5,000 risk of myocardisis. Shame on @UofT for forcing students to factor in the risk to their education. #cdnpolihttps://t.co/YXYGZpVcQT
According to U of T, the renewed vaccine mandate doesn’t apply to students or staff living off campus, but the university says that mandates “may be reinstated on short notice if public health conditions or guidance change.”
The Democracy Fund is a Canadian charity founded in 2021 to help protect constitutional rights and advancing education. TDF supports initiatives for Canadians to have access to justice resources in response to lockdowns and other public policy infringing on rights.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that The Democracy Fund is not currently taking the University of Toronto to court. The TDF is representing a group of students and parents who may take the University of Toronto to court.
Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine is offering an online “white fragility clinic” for faculty and staff as part of its continuing professional development program.
The clinic, which is being hosted by Dr. Gaynor Watson Creed and Dr. Eli Manning, professes to teach future physicians about “the concept of whiteness and its role in racism.”
“Learning objectives (include) to explore in a safe and non-judgmental space issues including the concept of whiteness and its role in racism (also) to build and practice racial resilience in attendees.”
According to a disclaimer on the program, the course is certified by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and is accredited by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
“White fragility” is a term popularized by “anti-racist” author Robin DiAngelo.
“White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy,” Diangelo wrote in her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions … Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how — rather than if — our racism is manifest.”
In recent months, investigations into how public schools are peddling critical race theory and other associated concepts to kids has brewed controversy among parents.
As reported by True North reporter Sue-Ann Levy, Ontario’s largest teachers union put out a lesson plan to teach kids about their “white privilege” and how it oppresses their minority peers.
The curriculum titled “Who’s Got the Power” discusses “male and white privilege” and the “values of society that Whites receive…by virtue of their skin colour in a racist society.”
The Iranian regime officially reacted to the attack on renowned author Salman Rushdie on Monday, denying any link to the incident and blaming the writer and his supporters instead.
Rushdie was the target of a 1989 fatwa – a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader – by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the release of his book The Satanic Verses. The fatwa forced the author into hiding for nearly 10 years.
On Friday, a man rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York and stabbed Rushdie 15 times as he was delivering a talk.
According to BBC, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said the regime “categorically” denied any link to the attack, adding “no-one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Kanaani added that Rushdie insulted the religion of Islam.
“In this attack, we do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation,” Kanaani said during a weekly press conference in Tehran.
“By insulting the sacred matters of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and all followers of the divine religions, Salman Rushdie has exposed himself to the anger and rage of the people.”
Iran’s state media has extensively commented on the attack as well.
Iran’s state broadcaster daily Jaam-e Jam said “an eye of the Satan has been blinded” in reaction to the news that Rushdie may lose an eye following the attack.
Further, Iran’s state-run newspaper Iran Daily praised the attack as an “implementation of divine decree.” Another state-run newspaper Kayhan termed the attack as “divine revenge.”
On Saturday, Hadi Matar, 24, was charged with attempted murder. Matar has pleaded not guilty.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt says Matar “preplanned” the attack by taking steps to put himself in a position to harm Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event and arriving a day early with a fake ID.
“This was a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack on Mr. Rushdie,” Schmidt told the court.
According to the BBC, Matar was born in the US to parents who had immigrated from Lebanon. His social media accounts have suggested that he is sympathetic to the causes of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Rushdie has been taken off a ventilator and his condition is improving.
