The United States has indefinitely extended its ban on unvaccinated foreign nationals crossing its land border. Combined with Canada’s ban on unvaccinated people boarding airplanes, unvaccinated Canadians are still, effectively, trapped in Canada. True North’s Andrew Lawton discusses the latest, plus talks to Canadian veteran James Topp about his march across Canada for freedom. Also, Quebec’s population is in decline but Quebecers want more representation in the House of Commons. University of Calgary political science professor Barry Cooper joins the show to talk about this motion, which even the Conservatives supported.
Jean Charest is a leadership candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Our country’s healthcare system is cracking under its own weight. Seven years of big left-wing government, and a pandemic that allowed it to cement its grip over national healthcare policy and subject Canadians to lockdowns, have left us in a state of crisis.
In every category, from ICU and hospital beds per capita to doctors and nurses per capita, to wait times for basic procedures, Canada is near the bottom of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) rankings, despite spending more than most countries who outperform us.
More empty promises, irresponsible spending or slogans are not the answer. What Canada needs is strong Conservative leadership to unleash healthcare reform and stop the downgrade spiral of degrading healthcare services.
We have politicians that have used this pandemic as an opportunity to exploit people’s real fears and anxieties as a reason to divide us. Canadians have the right to be frustrated with lockdowns and the countless fumbles made by our government throughout the pandemic. However, in Conservative politics that frustration must translate into substantive and serious policy alternatives.
My leadership bid is the only one with a robust stance on healthcare policy, one that can counter the big government mindset that has crept in, to revitalize our healthcare system. Failure to properly address these issues now will mean Canadians’ health remains neglected long into the future.
A Charest government would immediately call an inquiry into the Liberals’ pandemic response. It’s unacceptable that Canada was subjected to more stringent lockdowns than almost anywhere else in the world. For this to happen in a developed country, with some of the world’s leading medical practitioners, demonstrates that our system is in urgent need of innovation and structural change.
The problem with a government that seeks control is that it needed little incentive to go along with lockdowns, rather than seek more accommodating, and responsible, alternatives. Their desire to control healthcare policy, keep the provinces under their thumb and prevent innovation meant that when COVID hit, we had a broken system unable to cope. So, we got locked down.
That was bad enough. But what is even more egregious is that the government has refused to learn its lessons, and instead remains committed to controlling healthcare policy, keeping it out of provincial hands that are better suited to meet demands on the ground.
Just this week, provincial premiers issued a united appeal to the federal government for increased health transfers. Even the NDP premier of British Columbia, John Horgan, decried the government’s gung-ho decision to fund vast new social healthcare programs without the stable healthcare funding that Trudeau’s government promised the provinces seven years ago.
Committing funding to extensive new dental care programs, while the provinces desperately await the funding needed to clear the backlogs of vital surgeries and appointments that have accrued over the past two years illustrates this government’s paternalistic approach. They try to win political plaudits with overreaching schemes, instead of supporting their provincial partners who deliver health care services.
It’s time to untie the hands of the provinces and let them develop their healthcare services based on local needs, without the federal government interfering in their jurisdictions. A Charest government would commit to maintaining the 3% annual increase in the Canada Health Transfer and to renegotiate a long-term agreement. Despite the Liberal’s campaign promise in 2015 to secure a “long-term agreement on funding”, seven years later the provinces remain united in their criticism of Trudeau’s government failure to deliver.
With the health of Canadians on the line, a delay is no longer an option. My whole political life I have advocated for each province to determine the right healthcare delivery model that works for them, under the core principles of universality and affordability. My Conservative government, following consultations with provinces, would table a new National Healthcare Act to reform the Canada Health Act.
Recently, my leadership campaign released a comprehensive, Conservative healthcare policy that would be implemented by a Charest government. As well as unshackling the provinces, it would empower healthcare workers and prepare us for the future by investing in Canadian supply chains, clearing backlogs, and improving access to critical medicines.
The last point is one where this government is ideologically opposed to the private sector. Arcane regulations have prevented people suffering from rare diseases from getting access to the lifesaving drugs they need. Cystic Fibrosis Canada has been lobbying the federal agency and health minister for access to critical medicines, as people with the disease cannot get access to vital medicine produced solely by American pharmaceutical companies.
The logic of preventing access to such drugs while another respiratory illness ripped through our country, is baffling. My government would review Health Canada’s regulatory processes to ensure rigorous swift procurement and supply of critical medicines. Simply put, it would get the federal government out of the medical red tape business and let doctors care for patients.
Big government is not the solution. Canada needs responsible government that will treat health care as a true national legacy and one that will finally give the provinces the freedom to innovate and deliver efficient quality health services.
Canadians deserve better. They deserve a government that tackles the healthcare crisis with true leadership with the provinces and policy solutions that commit our country to caring for those who need a compassionate healthcare system.
Conservative leadership candidate and perceived front-runner Pierre Poilievre held another well-attended event on Tuesday night, this time in the Liberal-NDP stronghold of downtown Toronto.
The size of Poilievre’s events has generated a lot of enthusiasm – and criticism as well. Legacy media journalists have criticized the Carleton MP for having only “white people” at his rallies. But is this actually true?
True North producer Harrison Faulkner was at the rally on Tuesday and spoke with supporters and campaign volunteers, including two former cabinet ministers about what excites them about Poilievre’s campaign and the media’s criticism of the campaign.
As of right now, Poilievre is one of just three verified candidates in the race along with former Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Ontario MP Leslyn Lewis. True North will continue to bring you daily updates and original journalism of the Conservative leadership race.
A new report by Ottawa Police chief Steve Bell reveals that the force dismissed most of the complaints it received during its handling of the Freedom Convoy protest.
The document titled “Complaints Report – Part V, Police Services Act” will be presented before the Ottawa Police Services Board on Apr. 25.
According to the report, public complaints concerning the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) shot up by 324% in the first quarter of the year compared to 2021. Of the 327 complaints received, 84% were related to the Freedom Convoy protest in the city’s downtown.
In total, the force received 266 improper conduct complaints, 56 excessive force complaints and 24 complaints pertaining to a neglect of duty.
Of these, only 3% were forwarded to investigation by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) which oversees complaints and disciplinary proceedings.
“Of these 275 Public Complaints directly attributed to the illegal protest, 263 (95 percent) were screened out by the OIPRD. By complaint type, 232 Conduct related complaints resulted in 226 (97 percent) being screened out, and six (3%) being referred to the OPS for investigation,” wrote the OPS.
253 complaints were dismissed on the grounds that they were “frivolous, vexatious, over six months after the facts on which it was based occurred” or “deemed to be not in (the) public interest.” Another 24 were “unsubstantiated or resulted in no further action.”
Compared to 2021, when 8 complaints resulted in the discipline of officers, this year only 3 officers were disciplined.
According to the report, 58 investigations into complaints are ongoing.
In February, a joint force of federal, provincial and municipal police joined the OPS to crack down on peaceful convoy demonstrations against COVID-19 measures after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history.
The crackdown saw militarized police employing riot horses, gas canisters, pepper spray and heavy weaponry.
The Trudeau government’s decision is currently being investigated by a special committee in the House of Commons. Recently, the Special Investigations Unit deemed that an injury that occurred after a woman was trampled by a Toronto Police Service officer on horseback was too minor to investigate and dropped the matter entirely.
Former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith is returning to politics, seeking a United Conservative Party nomination in her Alberta riding. Smith has taken aim at Jason Kenney’s leadership, and will try to replace him if UCP members vote to remove him. She joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss why she wants to get back into politics, and why she feels Kenney has failed Albertans and conservatives.
Three summers ago, and prior to the COVID pandemic, I wrote about the decay of Seattle, and I warned that Toronto could be next.
The day has come, and the warm weather hasn’t yet begun.
Crime is already rampant.
On Easter weekend in Toronto, a woman was pushed onto the Bloor-Yonge subway tracks by another female (since arrested) and a teen forced out of her car at gunpoint in what has traditionally been a quiet north Toronto neighbourhood.
There was also a $28.5-million bust of crystal meth and coke in a condo directly beside the Novotel hotel, where more than 220 homeless men and women, many with drug addictions, are being housed.
Toronto police touted it as the largest single-day drug bust in their history.
The drug stash and the dealer arrested had no doubt used the Novotel – where residents can take their illegal drugs with impunity– as a cash cow.
Never mind the other homeless hotels in downtown Toronto where illegal drugs are not only permitted but encouraged – or the plethora of safe injection sites around downtown where addicts are given clean needles to take their drugs, but “safely.”
Prior to the pandemic, I watched for hours the comings and goings of drug addicts outside one controversial safe injection site at Dundas and Sherbourne. The neighbourhood was a veritable Dante’s Inferno, full of drugged-out squatters and prostitutes plying their trade for a fix.
The Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization (DCCO), which has endured two years of lawlessness in and around the Novotel homeless hotel site, also put out a statement this past week that an area restaurant and the local Shoppers Drug Mart had experienced successive smash-and-grabs by perpetrators looking for liquor, cash and electronic equipment they could sell for drug money.
DCCO representatives have been sending monthly incident reports full of break-ins and assaults to the mayor’s office for two years.
They’re ignored, it seems.
Meanwhile, up in midtown Toronto – where the Roehampton hotel was turned into a shelter permitting drug addicts two summers ago – residents continue to express concern about the crime and their fear of walking the surrounding streets.
None of this fazed Mayor John Tory and his council, who claim the TTC is safe while violent incidents seem to occur every second day.
Two weeks ago, without a second thought, Tory and his would-be-woke councillors unanimously approved the continued use until Apr. 2023 of three problem downtown hotels — the Novotel, Strathcona and Hotel Victoria — to house the homeless.
Toronto’s politicians also gave the controversial Roehampton Hotel the green light to remain a homeless shelter until May of next year, if necessary. That so-called temporary fix is now heading into its third summer, and it can safely be said that residents of lawful communities where these shelters are plunked were sold a bill of goods.
They were told they were temporary. They were told the shelters would operate for two years at the most. They were promised that the safety of the surrounding community would be of utmost importance.
The cost of extending these leases plus meals, private security, extra staffing and a program to house refugees will top $130 million this year, according to city documents. It’s an obscene amount to protect the homeless from a pandemic that is pretty much over.
It’s especially obscene that council along with a mayor – who has announced he’s running for a third term – seem to no longer care about prudent fiscal management, even in an election year. But these initiatives — and the disturbingly lax illegal drug enabling sites within or around the shelters — have come with a far greater cost.
The residents of Toronto, who see the crime, filth and decay in downtown Toronto and even beyond that our politicians pretend doesn’t exist, feel helpless. Many have left the city for good and others refuse to come downtown anymore. Members of DCCO and residents living near the Roehampton Hotel fear it will be a long summer.
The drug addicts have been enabled. The drug and homeless industry know they can ask for pretty much anything they want and get it from Toronto council. The drug dealers are laughing at the prospect of having a steady flow of clients at these temporary shelters for another year.
Toronto’s politicians have adopted the best case of NIMBYism yet. As long as they don’t see it or experience the havoc as they whoosh by in their cars (and not on the TTC) why should they care?
The Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) said in an “anti-racist” course for government employees that “colorblindness” or treating other ethnicities equally “is no longer acceptable,” and public service workers had to “undo racism in (their) minds.”
“We need to work to eradicate racism everywhere by developing our self-awareness, self-reflecting, and challenging our unconscious biases,” wrote the CSPS.
“We need to strive to undo racism in our minds, in our personal environments and in the world. We need to work towards equality for all. Silence is no longer an option, colorblindness strategy is no longer acceptable and we need to take action to enact change.”
The course was titled “Taking Action to Build an Anti-Racist Canadian Public Service.”
According to the Canada School of Public Service being sarcastic and rolling your eyes is a microaggression and an insult to minorities. pic.twitter.com/b3Xls8Y2eP
Another CSPS workshop instructed government employees to avoid “micro-aggressions” such as sarcasm, or checking their watch while in a conversation to avoid offending people from marginalized groups.
In a presentation titled “Unconscious Bias Read-to-Use Workshop”the federal department instructed public-sector workers to “proactively and consistently (disrupt) unconscious biases” and eliminate problematic behaviours.
Micro-aggressions are defined as “comments or behaviours that are part of everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership. Brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative slights and insults to marginalized individuals or groups.”
Some examples of said micro-aggressions include the “use of sarcasm”, “comments that are belittling”, “body language such as rolling your eyes when someone talks”, and “looking at your watch while someone is talking to you” or having a “harsh tone of voice.”
The presentation also delved into “micro-inequities,” defined as “unconscious messages that devalue, discourage and impair” performance of individuals. They include not being invited to lunch with coworkers or having their ideas ignored.
Numerous CSPS initiatives and courses are being offered based on the far-left notion of “diversity, inclusivity and equity.”
Critics including renowned psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson have slammed the concept and its associated practices as being destructive to society and its institutions.
“Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us,” he wrote.
“Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well.”
After firing thousands of healthcare workers over vaccinate mandates, the British Columbia government has announced it will spend $12 million to fast-track the registration and licensing process for foreign-trained nurses to address critical staffing shortages.
The funding includes $9 million in bursaries to help around 1600 foreign-trained nurses with the costs of assessment fees.
“Our government is committed to addressing the province’s demand for nurses,” said B.C. health minister Adrian Dix on Tuesday. “That’s why we’re launching this comprehensive suite of supports for internationally educated nurses to help them put their skills to use here in B.C.”
The nursing shortage in B.C. – which, as with many provinces, was at crisis levels before the pandemic – was intensified during the fall and winter when vaccine mandates preceded a hospitalization spike over the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
According to Dix, the lack of staff was so acute that one week in January alone saw 27,937 shifts unfilled. The province has continued to follow through with public-sector terminations despite these crippling shortages in healthcare personnel.
B.C.’s Ministry of Health has reported that approximately 2,582 employees in public healthcare settings have been fired over the vaccine mandate. This includes 927 employees from the Interior Health region, 474 from Fraser Health, 393 from Island Health and 304 from Northern Health, where the shortage was reported to be most critical.
Despite provinces including Alberta having already welcomed unvaccinated healthcare workers back to their jobs, B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has reiterated that B.C. requires them to be vaccinated. This requirement comes even as Henry had suggested during the Omicron wave that vaccinated healthcare workers who tested positive for COVID might still go to work with “very mild or asymptomatic cases.”
Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer Charlene Le Beau spoke to True North on behalf of a group of nurses and other healthcare professionals who were fired for not complying with B.C.’s vaccine mandates.
Pointing out that the evolving science does not support the mandate, Le Beau added that hiring foreign-trained nurses to replace those fired over COVID shots continues the callous and unfair treatment of terminated healthcare workers in B.C.
“There may have been a healthcare worker shortage in B.C. prior to the vaccine mandate, but the province exacerbated the problem by unnecessarily mandating the vaccine on the healthcare workers,” she said. “They were faced with an ultimatum– either submit to coercion and take this new vaccine, or lose their jobs.”
“Perhaps the province’s money would be better spent on taking care of the healthcare workers in its own backyard before looking further afield to replace the ones whose positions they so callously terminated.”
She added that the province’s approach didn’t make financial sense either, with some of the B.C. Health authorities hiring contract healthcare workers to fill the gap and paying these contractors more than the fired employees they replaced.
Le Beau’s clients have filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court, asking it to strike down the vaccine mandate over Charter rights violations and because Henry “has failed to provide a meaningful process for exemptions.”
One of Canada’s most trusted journalists, Paul Wells, left Maclean’s magazine last month after nearly 20 years with the magazine. This week, he announced that he would not be joining another legacy outlet – instead, he launched his own independent newsletter on Substack.
On today’s episode of the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by the man himself, Paul Wells, to talk about what prompted this big decision at this point in his career.
They discuss the state of journalism in Canada, the changing media landscape and how it hurts local journalism, the benefits of independent media, and the impact of government subsidies in the legacy media. They also discuss the Trucker convoy, the divisive political climate in Ottawa and across Canada, Justin Trudeau’s legacy, and the often lack of accountability for this government.
We don’t always agree with Paul Well’s take on things (and vice versa) but we appreciate his willingness to come on our show and have a civil discussion about the issues of the day. We encourage everyone to support independent journalism and check out Paul’s newsletter at www.PaulWells.substack.com.
The latest GDP outlook by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that Canada’s economic growth will continue to lag.
A global forecast released on Tuesday revealed that Canada’s GDP is expected to grow by only 3.9% – only slightly higher than the global average rate of 3.6%.
The figure is 15% lower than 2021’s 4.6% projection by the IMF. At the peak of the pandemic, Canada saw a GDP contraction of 6.6% in 2020.
Due to the repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and associated sanctions, many countries around the world saw an economic hit that the IMF predicted will “propagate far and wide.”
“Beyond 2023, global growth is forecast to decline to about 3.3 percent over the medium term. War-induced commodity price increases and broadening price pressures have led to 2022 inflation projections of 5.7 percent in advanced economies and 8.7 percent in emerging market and developing economies—1.8 and 2.8 percentage points higher than projected last January,” wrote the IMF.
“Multilateral efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis, prevent further economic fragmentation, maintain global liquidity, manage debt distress, tackle climate change, and end the pandemic are essential.”
On Canada, IMF researchers cited “withdrawal of policy support and weaker external demand from the United States” with regard to trade as a contributing factor to Canada’s economic decline.
They added that countries including China, Spain, Saudi Arabia and India are expected to fare much better than Canada in the coming year.
In 2023, the IMF is projecting that Canada’s GDP growth will further decline to a mere 2.8%.
Earlier this month, the Liberal government unveiled $56 billion in new spending in the 2022 budget. The budget claimed to make investments to grow Canada’s economy.
“In the face of uncertainty, business investment can be paralyzed by a “wait-and-see” approach,” the document read. “But to succeed in an uncertain world, Canada must invest in its future now, or risk falling behind. Over the medium term, investments that expand Canada’s supply capacity will allow the economy to grow while mitigating future inflationary pressures.”
Critics including Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano blasted the spending spree as being irresponsible given Canada’s trillion dollar debt.
“Freeland is giving taxpayers another credit card budget with no plan to pay the bills on time and chip away at the $1-trillion debt,” said Terrazzano.
“Freeland is taking the wait-and-see approach to the government’s credit card bills and hoping the economy can grow faster than its borrowing, but that’s not a good bet with its track record of runaway spending.”
