Ahead of Statistic Canada’s monthly consumer price index report, economists are warning Canadians that things are about to get even more expensive if inflation levels show an anticipated 30-year-high.
“The list of factors driving inflation is so long that it’s easier to name the few things that aren’t escalating. Relative to last year, there aren’t many categories where prices look tame,” CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld told the Toronto Star.
Prices are expected to rise anywhere between 5.5% and 6% compared to last year, slightly higher than January’s spike of 5.1%.
Several regions throughout Canada saw fuel at the pumps reach an all-time high as the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia placed a strain on the industry. In March, gas in Metro Vancouver surpassed $2 per litre, while gas in Toronto reached $1.67 per litre.
Grocery prices have also surged, and industry groups have warned that the high costs of transportation and fertilizer will mean that farmers will have to pass the difference onto consumers.
Trucking and cross-border vaccine mandates are also an issue according to Quinton Woods, Chair of the Trade and Marketing Working Group at the Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC)
“One of the most important challenges—and very timely, based on recent events—is the availability of trucks and truck drivers,” said Woods. ”These shortages were there before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the introduction of the new border measures further reduced the supply of available truck drivers to haul our goods across international borders.”
Additionally, the price of common ingredients used by food companies has spiked by 80% in the last year according to Carla Ventin, Senior Vice-President of Government Relations at Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada.
“The cost of commonly used ingredients for food companies has increased up to 80% in the past year,” Ventin told the Commons agriculture committee on March 3.
Without gas and food costs, the index is still 3.5% which BMO economist Douglas Porter called the highest Canadians have seen in decades.
“That figure doesn’t sound too high, compared to everything else, but historically speaking 3.5% is still one of the highest growth rates we’ve seen in decades,” said Porter.
Former NDP MPP and “Queer Evangelist” Cheri DiNovo has apologized for remarking on Twitter that the entrance to the Queen Street Viaduct in Toronto looks like the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“I know it wasn’t intended but doesn’t this remind you of the entrance to Auschwitz?” said DiNovo in a since-deleted tweet on Monday.
DiNovo included a photo of the entrance to the Queen Street Viaduct, which has lettering reading “The river I step in is not the river I stand in” and a clock.
The infamous entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland shows a gate reading “Arbeit macht frei,” or “work sets you free.”
Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland
Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin condemned DiNovo for the comparison.
“This is a beautiful entrance to a part of the city I love,” said Dabrusin. “As a Jewish person I find the flip remark offensive.”
Quillette associate editor Jonathan Kay also mocked the former MPP’s remark.
“We are living in a golden age of idiotic nazi comparisons,” said Kay.
DiNovo apologized for her tweet on Tuesday.
“It was stupid,” she said. “I apologize and the tweet was deleted almost immediately.”
As to my comment on the Queen Street Bridge. It was stupid. I apologize and the tweet was deleted almost immediately
DiNovo works as a minister at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church (TSP) and Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts.
True North reported last week that TSP is one of several Ontario churches that has stated that it will be requiring vaccine passports for people entering the church until Mar. 21.
The church has also stated it will require congregants to wear masks past this date despite Ontario repealing the mask mandate for most indoor settings on Mar. 21.
“While we are hopeful that things are starting to get better, we acknowledge that we are still in a pandemic with potentially dangerous consequences for some and we are taking a safety-forward and conservative approach to reopening,” said TSP general manager Aaron Dawson in a statement in February.
Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga is now offering a course teaching the controversial subject of critical race theory to high school students.
The course, titled Contemporary Black Studies,is described as exploring “contemporary black culture in Canada, through the lens of Critical Race Theory.”
Other topics on the syllabus include examining “Black experiences and their impact from the perspective of Black Lives Matter.”
Critical race theory, also known in its short form as CRT, is an ideological lens positing that Canadian society and laws are systemically racist and inherently based on white supremacy.
Although the theory and its associated practices originated in the legal field, it has since expanded into education, workplaces and elsewhere.
Proponents of CRT often promote associated concepts such as anti-racism and equity, which include practices such as race-based hiring and teaching children that they have white privilege.
Applewood Heights is a publicly funded school and a part of the Peel District School Board (PDSB). As reported on by True North columnist Sue-Ann Levy, the PDSB has been awash in far-left ideas for some time now.
Several municipalities in the US and most recently the state of Florida have taken action to prohibit the teaching of CRT to young students.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has even unveiled legislation that would give parents the power to sue educators for pushing CRT on their kids.
Although more attention has been devoted to CRT in American schools, a recently proposed law in Ontario has Canadian parents concerned that it has also taken deep root in Canada.
Bill 67, which is likely to pass in the Ontario legislature, has been slammed by critics for potentially enshrining CRT in the province’s Education Act. If implemented, the bill could see people fined up to $200 for “subconscious” racism in the classroom, and would mandate anti-racism training for educators.
CRT has even found support at the federal level despite education being a provincial jurisdiction. In December, Liberal MP Janica Atwin told the House of Commons that Canadian kids should be studying critical race theory when they return to school in 2022.
“I want Canadian kids to feel good about going back to school and about planning their futures,” Atwin said.” We need them to study engineering, science, sustainable agriculture and critical race theory. We need them to embrace their role in the transition that is under way.
“I want them to trust in their government and feel comfort in our demonstrated actions.”
The legacy media in Canada is every bit as dishonest and corrupted as you and I suspect. Last month when True North broke the story of Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland holding a Nazi banner at a Ukrainian rally in Toronto, a handful of legacy media reporters picked up our scoop.
Most wrote their stories according to Freelend’s Liberal spin – that Freeland had done nothing wrong, the any critics of the Liberals were spreading “Russian disinformation” and that True North’s journalists were to blame for writing this story.
So much for holding a powerful politician accountable for her reckless actions.
The legacy media didn’t even bother to point out the hypocrisy given that the Liberals accused the Conservatives of “standing with those who wave Swastikas” at the Trucker rally.
One rare and honest legacy media story came from iPolitics, who accurately recounted the events and blamed Freeland for her blunder.
Interestingly, a few hours later, iPolitics issued a “correction” and changed the tone of the story to reflect the legacy media groupthink. Blame should not be aimed at the powerful woman holding the Nazi banner, it should be aimed at those talking about it!
True North has learned that the “correction” was issued after interference from Freeland’s office – who “pressured” iPolitics to change the story.
The Liberals said “jump”, the legacy media ask “how high?”
This caused the reporter who wrote the original story, Rachel Emmanuel, to resign out of principle. She now writes for the independent outlet the Western Standard, and she wrote an opinion column describing the ordeal.
Today on the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by Rachel Emmanuel, who recounts the story and talks about the fundamental problems facing the media and why trust in journalists is at an all time low.
A new poll suggests that 31% of Canadians strongly disapprove of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s pandemic response, while only 14% strongly approve.
The survey conducted by Angus Reid from Mar. 1 to 4 used responses collected online from 2,550 Canadians 18 and older who are members of the Angus Reid Forum.
Of the different regions polled, voters from Alberta and Saskatchewan were most disappointed with Trudeau’s performance, with 45% in both provinces saying he has done a very bad job.
Canadians in British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces were most approving of Trudeau’s handling of the pandemic, with 62% and 70% respectively saying he had done a good or very good job.
The poll also looked at support for Trudeau’s performance along party lines.
A majority of Bloc Quebecois, Conservative Party of Canada, and People’s Party of Canada (PPC) voters found that Trudeau did a bad or a very bad job, with the disapproval being strongest among PPC voters at 95%.
Support for Trudeau’s pandemic response was strongest amongst Liberal voters with 88% approving followed by 67% of NDP voters.
The poll also looked at Canadians’ satisfaction with their premiers’ and provincial governments’ performances, again showing the least satisfaction in the Prairie Provinces and the highest approval in B.C. and the Atlantic provinces.
Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl said the results seem to confirm the political divide that many Canadians were already aware of.
“Sometimes it’s a confirmation of a trend … it just tells us where we are as a country,” Kurl told CBC News.
A probability sample of the poll’s size would comparably carry a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The new poll comes after a survey last week found that 82% of Canadians say they believe the pandemic has “pulled people further apart,” with nearly 80% of those polled saying the pandemic has “brought out the worst in people.”
At the start of the pandemic, Trudeau experienced high approval ratings as Canadians rallied around the prime minister during uncertain times.
Over time, however, and due to issues including botched vaccine procurements, hotel quarantine scandals and poor handling of the Freedom Convoy, the prime minister’s popularity has plummeted, especially among traditionally conservative regions and voters.
A new bill likely to be passed by Ontario’s legislature is seeking to enshrine critical race theory and its associated beliefs and practices in law.
Bill 67, otherwise known as the Racial Equity in the Education System Act, was first proposed by NDP MPP Laura Mae Lindo in 2021.
Much of the law has to do with assigning school boards the responsibility of spreading anti-racist ideals. Concepts such as anti-racism, decolonization and critical race theory are in vogue among the progressivist left, but they serve a much darker ideological purpose.
Critics including Florida governor Ron DeSantis have accused critical race theory of being a form of race essentialism – the idea that your character and value is determined by your skin colour or ethnicity. Critical race theory has also been called a thinly veiled form of racism by US journalist Christopher F. Rufo.
Meanwhile, proponents of critical race theory in Canada hold the belief that treating everybody equally is actually racist, and one must actively work to rid oneself and others of inherent racism. In an institutional form, anti-racist measures include race-based hiring, teaching children that they have white privilege and mandatory re-education sessions.
At its core, Bill 67 would amend the Education Act and five other laws.
As a piece of legislation, the bill is vaguely worded and leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which could easily translate to an abuse of process. For example, it defines racism as “the use of socially constructed ideas of race to justify or support, whether consciously or subconsciously, the notion that one race is superior to another.”
Those who are found to be guilty of committing the above in the classroom could face a fine of up to $200, not to mention the social and reputational repercussions that come with such a charge.
“Every person who disrupts or attempts to disrupt the proceedings of a school or class through the use of racist language or by engaging in racist activities is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable to a fine of not more than $200,” the bill reads.
In effect, the bill allows the government to punish “subconscious” racism and police thought. Instead of basing the definition of racism on discriminatory or hateful actions, the law relies on “socially constructed ideas” – a novel definition not found in reputable dictionaries or existing institutions including the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
The law also legislates mandatory training where teachers and administrators will be forced to be reprogrammed and purged of all of their supposedly racist biases and thoughts. Just to become a teacher in Ontario, one would have to partake in “prescribed examinations and training in anti-racism in order to be issued a certificate of qualification and registration.”
Government funding for education would also be tied to whether or not an institution mandates this form of re-education.
In reality, many of these training practices are already in place. Many school boards already require teachers to undergo anti-racism training and have anti-racist and equity committees built into their structures.
Parents are rightly concerned about the impacts such legislation will have on their children’s education and worldview, commentators including Barbara Kay have noted.
“The result of Bill 67 will be to divide students by encouraging grievance and resentment in designated victim groups and by compelling guilt in white students. White students will be too nervous to enter any discussion that comes near race or gender or indigenous matters with anything approaching frankness or even curiosity,” writes Kay.
World-renowned author and psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is also among those who have raised alarm bells about Bill 67’s implications. Peterson recently said that if legislated, the law “threatens the integrity of all the systems that will educate all the young people in Ontario for decades to come.”
“A warning to citizens of Ontario and Canada: Bill 67, which purports to be nothing but an ‘anti-racist’ bill, is in fact the most pernicious and dangerous piece of legislation that any Canadian government has attempted to put forward,” said Peterson.
The bill is currently being read in the legislature and has been ordered to be considered by the Standing Committee on Social Policy.
Conservative MP and leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis joined True North’s Andrew Lawton for an interview about her campaign to replace Erin O’Toole as leader. In this candid conversation, Lewis said it’s important the next Conservative leader respects people with whom they disagree both inside the party and outside of it. She says she’ll do that, and also that she’s not afraid to stand on her principles, from opposing a carbon tax to being pro-life.
Parliamentarians convened a first-of-its-kind inquiry into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act on Monday, the same day the Assembly of First Nations national chief expressed concerns over the act’s ability to label activists as criminals.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, MPs called for the inquiry to be as transparent as possible and not to hold meetings off camera “without good reason.”
“In my opinion, our discussions should be in public when they can be,” said Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin.
Five of the 11 members on the panel are all Liberal-appointees including Senator Gwen Boniface, Senator Peter Harder, MP Yasir Naqvi, MP Arif Virani and MP Rachel Bendayan.
“The responsibilities of this committee are very, very serious. We all recognize that,” said Conservative MP Glen Motz.
In a separate committee later that day, MPs were warned by Assembly of First Nations national chief RoseAnne Archibald that the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act had had wide-reaching consequences and implications.
Archibald told the Commons public safety committee that when she was given advanced warning that the Act would be invoked by Liberal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller, she expressed serious concerns.
“Minister Marc Miller called me I believe the day before. There had been talk for a number of days about the Act being invoked. The day before he actually called me and said this was going to be happening,” said Archibald.
“I am concerned and did express that concern very immediately with Minister Miller when he called me that I was concerned about the long term implications of this.”
Archibald said that her concerns were rooted in her time as a former activist who was been involved in protests.
“My concern is the Act is a tool and the tool itself can actually name and can actually place labels upon people,” said Archibald. “The implications of the Emergencies Act are far and wide and that is why I am standing before you. I am a former activist myself, and I have been involved in civil actions and charged.”
Trudeau declared the emergency over on Feb. 23, only days after it was approved by the House of Commons. By that time, police in Ottawa had already cleared out protestors who were demonstrating against COVID-19 measures.
The Emergencies Act gave the government powers to freeze the assets of Freedom Convoy participants and donors as well as arrest anybody who attended the demonstrations after they were declared illegal.
According to the law, the government has exactly one year to produce a report to justify the use of the act.
As the leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) deepens, candidates Pierre Poilievre and Patrick Brown have started butting heads hard.
The furor seems to have started when political adviser Jenni Byrne, who is currently working on Poilievre’s campaign, released an attack ad against Brown on Sunday.
The two-minute ad posted to Twitter concerns Brown’s time as leader of the Ontario PC Party, a position he held from 2015 to 2018, when Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were still in power in the province.
Brown’s leadership of the party came to an abrupt end after CTV released a story detailing two allegations of sexual misconduct. Brown, who denied the allegations, successfully sued the broadcaster for defamation.
CTV said in a statement on Mar. 9 “details provided to CTV for the story were factually incorrect and required correction.”
Byrne’s ad claims Brown “will do and say anything,” highlighting his flip-flopping on the carbon tax and a promise to repeal Ontario’s controversial sex-ed curriculum.
The ad also touches on allegations of rigged nominations, voter fraud and ballot stuffing that took place in the Ontario PC Party under Brown’s leadership.
It brings up an investigation that found Brown had breached ethics laws, as well as an allegation that he had inflated Ontario PC Party membership numbers.
Finally, the ad brings up “questionable spending and contracts for Brown loyalists” as well as controversies that have occurred during Brown’s time as Mayor of Brampton.
Patrick Brown fired back on Monday by releasing an old clip of Poilievre talking about Stephen Harper’s policies regarding the niqab.
If this Conservative leadership race is going to be a battle for the soul of the party, we should fight the real reasons why our party hasn’t won in over a decade.
Yesterday Pierre Poilievre asked for a fight. He’s got one.
Brown also released a statement, which reads, “Pierre Poilievre supported two discriminatory policies from the 2015 Conservative Party election campaign; the niqab ban and the barbaric cultural practices tipline.”
“He has never once spoken out against these policies.”
The statement adds that “Pierre has no credibility announcing any sort of policy which largely impacts minority communities, such as immigration, because he’s never publicly stood against policies that disproportionately impact them, like the niqab ban, the tipline, or Bill 21.”
Poilievre responded to Brown’s statement the same day by releasing a statement of his own, in which he accused Brown of lying.
Patrick Brown is lying in his attacks on the Harper government.
But that's not much of a surprise, because Patrick Brown lies a lot.
“Patrick Brown is lying in his attacks on the Harper government. There was no Niqab ban. I would never support that, nor did Mr. Harper,” the statement reads.
Poilievre added that “Patrick Brown lies a lot.”
“He lied about his position on the carbon tax. He was found guilty twice for breaking Ontario’s Integrity Act. He lied about his position on the Ontario sex-ed program. And now he’s lying to attack Stephen Harper’s government and to divide our party.”
Poilievre said that “lying and dividing is no way to win.”
Brown responded to Poilievre by posting screenshots of posts related to the Niqab issue by Poilievre’s campaign supporters Tim Uppal and Melissa Lantsman.
Your campaign co-chair and key endorser did a brave, good, thing and called out the niqab ban. With your statement below are you calling them liars too? https://t.co/SPXWgBlVjgpic.twitter.com/zGnvf2o49y
“Your campaign co-chair and key endorser did a brave, good, thing and called out the niqab ban. With your statement below are you calling them liars too?” Brown tweeted.
While infighting is common in partisan politics, the barbed exchange between Poilievre and Brown has been criticized by other conservatives, who say the candidates should be focused on fighting the Liberals, not each other.
“The attacks … will be hard to heal if the nastiness continues. Which makes it more difficult to win in the general election, especially after you’ve written the Liberal attack ads yourself,” wrote Lilley.
Meanwhile, strategist Michael Diamond called out Brown on Twitter for his attacks on Harper policies, saying that it seemed silly of him to malign the last Conservative prime minister in a race for CPC leader.
Poilievre’s team has also been going after CPC leadership candidate and former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest, who introduced a carbon tax and raised sales taxes while he ran Quebec.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland met with the co-founder of a far-right fascist party in Ukraine, which was styled off of Hilter’s Nazi Party, True North has learned.
Andriy Parubiy served as the equivalent of the legislative speaker of Ukrainian Parliament from 2016 to 2019, and during that time he personally met with Trudeau and Freeland several times.
Freeland met with Parubiy in May 2019 for the second time, and posted about it on her official Facebook page.
Earlier in his career, Parubiy was an influential member of Ukraine’s far-right neo-Nazi movement. In 1991, he co-founded the Nazi-styled Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) – a party focused on “racial nationalism” that even adopted the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo.
In 2004, it was renamed to the Svoboda Party and efforts were made to remove Nazi imagery and expel extreme fascist members from the party. Within the Ukrainian political context, the party is still described as “ultranationalist” and part of Ukraine’s “far-right.”
According to a report from the Jerusalem Post, as recently as 2016 Parubiy made antisemitic comments. He accused Jews of sending convicts to settle Eastern Ukraine and trying to destroy the genetic memory of the Holodomor.
Parubiy first rubbed shoulders with Trudeau in 2016 while a part of a visiting delegation to Ottawa. The Ukrainian Embassy to Canada detailed the meeting, which also included the then-Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan.
Parubiy first rubbed shoulders with Trudeau in 2016 while a part of a visiting delegation to Ottawa, which also included the then-Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan.
“During his visit to the capital of Canada, Mr. Parubiy held a number of fruitful meetings with Canadian government officials and politicians,” wrote the Embassy of Ukraine to Canada on Feb. 26, 2016. “First Deputy Speaker had a brief meeting with Canadian Prime Minister the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau and Minister of Defence the Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan.”
Trudeau met with Parubiy again in July of that year while visiting Kiev, according to the embassy. Freeland was also present during this junket and is photographed signing an official agreement.
Freeland met with Parubiy again in May 2019, and posted about it on her official Facebook page.
“Met with Andriy Parubiy, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, and discussed the role that Canadian election monitors played in Ukraine’s presidential elections and will play again parliamentary elections later this year,” noted the message from Freeland.
“Canada stands with Ukraine and its vibrant democracy!” she exclaimed.
Conservative MP James Bezan and former interim leader Rona Ambrose also met with Parubiy in 2016, as did former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
The party Andriy Parubiy founded, the SNPU and its offspring Svoboda, have been described by numerous legacy media sources as a “fascist” and even “neo-Nazi” party.
Trudeau met with Parubiy again in July 2016 while visiting Kiev, according to the embassy. Freeland was also present during this junket and is photographed signing an official agreement.
According to the left-leaning magazine The Nation, the longest running weekly news magazine in the U.S., Parubiy also cofounded the far-right group Patriot of Ukraine “whose members would eventually form the core of Azov,” Ukraine’s officially sanctioned neo-Nazi battalion.
The Nation questions whether Parubiy has adequately renounced his neo-Nazi past.
“Although Parubiy left the far right in the early 2000’s, he hasn’t rejected his past,” writes author Lev Golinkin.
“When asked about it in a 2016 interview, Parubiy replied that his ‘values’ haven’t changed. Parubiy, whose autobiography shows him marching with the neo-Nazi wolfsangel symbol used by Aryan Nations, regularly meets with Washington think tanks and politicians; his neo-Nazi background is ignored or outright denied.”
There are several photos of Parubiy marching in a Nazi-styled uniform as a young man, and one such photo was even featured on the front cover of a book alleged to be about white nationalism in Eastern Europe.
There are several photos of Parubiy marching in a Nazi-styled uniform as a young man.
According to the mainstream U.K. outlet Channel 4 News, Parubiy’s party was a “fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.”
Parubiy has not been shy about his affiliations with and adoration for the far-right. In 2017, he sang the praises of Nazi collaborator and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) leader Roman Shukhevych.
“On June 30, 2017 there was a 110th anniversary of the Legend’s birth – that was the date when a legendary warrior, a true military leader of the fighting Ukraine at times of World War II, a general of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych had been born 110 years ago,” Andriy Parubiy was quoted as saying by the Verkhova Rada of Ukraine.
In 2011, Parubiy also said that he was “disenchanted with” a decision by the Ukrainian courts to not give Nazi collaborators like UAP founder Stepan Bandera “hero status.”
In February 2022, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused MP Melissa Lantsman – who is Jewish and the descendent of Holocaust survivors – of “standing with those who wave swastikas.”
This was in reference to the Conservative Party’s defence of the Trucker Convoy’s right to peaceful protest. On Day One of the rally, a still-unidentified provocateur walked near the rally with a Nazi flag.
Neither Lanstman, nor any Conservative MP stood with or posed for photos with the Nazi flag guy. Trudeau, Freeland and Sajjan did with Parubiy.
