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Monday, July 7, 2025

200 groups call on broadcasters to drop 2022 Beijing Olympics

A group of 200 global campaign groups have written a letter to the television networks that will be showing the 2022 Beijing Summer Olympics, asking them to cancel their broadcasting deals. 

“All of your companies are at serious risk of being complicit in China’s plan to ‘sport wash’ the severe and worsening human rights abuses and embolden the actions of the Chinese authorities,” reads the letter. “By broadcasting Beijing 2022 your companies will legitimize these abuses and promote what is being widely described as the ‘Genocide Games.’” 

The letter reads that while many of these television networks have stood up for human rights, their efforts will be “overshadowed by the abuses going on away from the cameras” if they go on to broadcast the 2022 Beijing Olympics. 

Human rights commitments are pointless if they are not accompanied by meaningful action, according to the letter. 

The Chinese government has stated the 2022 Beijing Olympics will be “open and inclusive,” create a “harmonious world” and promote “social progress.” 

For people living in China, the campaign groups write, daily life does not reflect these principles. 

Outlets have reported that at least two million Muslims are being held in “re-education camps” in China where they are tortured. Freedom House ranked China-occupied Tibet as the least free place in the world for civil and political rights. 

Pro-democracy activists have also been rounded up and imprisoned for protesting in Hong Kong, while China has been intimidating Taiwan in recent months. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it would take action if China did not meet its promises to uphold human rights. 

The campaign groups write that the Chinese government has backtracked on the human rights pledges they made to host these Olympics, and there has been no accountability by the IOC and international organizations. Their letter claims China has been given “a free pass to wantonly violate human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 

A letter from Human Rights Watch to the IOC said the 2022 Beijing Olympics will be held in “a human rights environment significantly worse than that of 2008.” 

The letter from the human rights groups said the reputations of the television networks participating in the upcoming Olympics risk being tainted if they go ahead with their partnerships. 

“Genocide must be a red line that cannot be crossed, no matter the cost,” reads the letter. 

Canada will be holding a “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. This means politicians will not attend the event, but athletes can continue to compete. 

“We are extremely concerned by the repeated human rights violations by the Chinese government,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when announcing the measure. 

Liberal MP punished for travelling outside of Canada despite travel advisory

Liberal MP Yves Robillard has been censured for defying the party’s non-essential travel advisory, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. 

Robillard has been stripped of committee assignments after contravening party orders by travelling outside of Canada. 

Chief Government Whip Steven MacKinnon said in a statement to The Canadian Press that he is “profoundly disappointed” Robillard left Canada. 

Liberal MPs have been told to avoid non-essential international travel because of the Omicron variant. 

The travel order mirrors the Canadian government’s advice to members of the public not to travel abroad to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant. 

MacKinnon said to The Canadian Press that while Robillard is fully vaccinated, his trip has been considered non-essential, and he will be removed as a member of the standing committee on national defence. 

MacKinnon, who did not mention Robillard’s destination or reason for travelling, intends to talk to him about his decision to leave Canada when Parliament resumes. 

In 2020, a number of Canadian politicians were caught travelling abroad despite rising cases of COVID-19. 

These politicians included former Ontario finance minister Rod Phillips, Liberal MP Kamal Khera and NDP MP Niki Ashton. 

As stated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and public health officials at press briefings, federal public health advice at the time discouraged all non-essential travel outside of Canada. 

Robillard could not be reached for further comment in time for publication. 

Four in ten Canadians say Trudeau belongs on Santa’s naughty list

A sizable number of Canadians believe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deserves to be on Santa’s naughty list this holiday season, according to an Ipsos poll conducted for Global News. 

Ipsos asked Canadians to look at a list of high-profile public figures and choose whether they belonged on Santa’s naughty list or on his nice list. 

The poll found 40% of respondents said Trudeau should be on Santa’s naughty list. This was compared to 18% who believed the Liberal leader belonged on the nice list. 

Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker said in an interview with Global News that “Justin Trudeau is right up there, in terms of the notoriety and difficulty that he has with Canadians right now.”

There were 26% of Canadians who believed Chinese President Xi Jinping should be on the naughty list. Only about 3% said Xi should be on the nice list. 

Xi was involved with detaining Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for more than 1,000 days. The Chinese government has also been accused of committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims. 

“It’s probably just a lack of awareness of who (Xi) is,” Bricker told Global News. “(Of) the people who do have an opinion of him, the percentage that put him on the nice list is way lower than the percentage that puts him on the naughty list.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin beat out Trudeau for the top spot on the naughty list, with 44% of respondents saying he belonged there. 

While Putin and Trudeau took the top spots, other public figures also scored high in terms of naughtiness. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg came in third place with 32% putting him on the naughty list, followed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford at 29% and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at 26%. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney earned 19%.

Referring to major technology companies such as Meta and Amazon, Bricker says they used to be well-respected. However, he says, “their motivations and the effect that they have on the world (are problems) people feel that they haven’t been as accountable for as they should be.”

Bricker added that Ford and Kenney might be ranking high on the naughty list because of how they have handled the Omicron variant. 

The poll found Canada’s health care workers are the most likely to find themselves on Santa’s nice list, with 54% of respondents saying they deserved to be there. Bricker said health care workers are ranked high because Canadians “see them as the champions leading us through this crisis.” 

Actor Ryan Reynolds came in a distant second for the nice list with 29% support.

The Queen came in third place, with 1 in 4 Canadians saying she has been good. Bricker said the Queen often “does really well” in these rankings.

The poll was conducted between Dec. 10 and 15 with a sample size of 1,001 Canadians aged 18 and up surveyed online. The poll is accurate within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 

“I pray everyday for Justin Trudeau. I pray that he will resign” (Ft. Rev. Majed El Shafie)

On a special Christmas edition of The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by Rev. Majed El Shafie. Majed is a refugee who survived torture and persecution in Egypt because of his Christian faith. He now runs One Free World International, a Canadian human rights organization that saves persecuted Christians. 

Christians remain the most persecuted religious group on the planet. So why do politicians like Justin Trudeau and the legacy media ignore their plight?

Majed has some choice words for our Prime Minister — he says it’s time to ditch political correctness, stop pandering and start defending our values and helping people in need, regardless of their creed or faith. 

We encourage all of our listeners and viewers to support Majid and the important work that he does. Learn more here: https://ofwi.org/

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LEVY: Ontario and Florida could not be more different

They’re uncanny, the differences between Florida and Ontario. 

While seniors and other people down here are enjoying normal freedoms, my mother is locked away in an Ontario retirement home.

I noticed the difference – the logical easing of draconian restrictions – as soon as I crossed the border into the United States a month ago and started driving south. In most places where I stopped – from West Virginia to Charlotte, North Carolina to Savannah, Georgia – masks were not a must unless we took an Uber.

After nearly two years of being entertained primarily by online apps and virtual concerts, it has been so refreshing — so free — to take in a Broadway show, a live indoor concert and a movie where we could sit and munch on popcorn while sipping diet Coke.

As ridiculous as the measures were before I left Toronto, they have become outrageously draconian and cruel with the onset of the Omicron variant – a highly contagious strain of COVID that presents as mild in the vast majority of cases, particularly those who are fully vaccinated.

Some long-term care and retirement homes have gone into complete lockdown (à la 2020) over one case of Omicron. One such home is where my 88-year-old mom resides.

The residents are not allowed to leave their rooms, the home or – to my great surprise – the country. My mom was supposed to come down to Florida next week for some relief from the winter and the over-the-top, bordering-on-communist-China-type rules in Canada. Last year was horrible for her, as it was for many other seniors. I was planning to fly up next week to fetch her.

Her bags were already packed.

I’ve been threatened with fines if I dare try to take her out of the home and down south.

Seniors like her have already lost two years of their life to COVID restrictions. Heaven forbid Toronto Public Health officials should have some compassion and try to compromise.

Weak-willed politicians – ruled by unaccountable and power-mad medical officers of health and Twitter doctors – have once again become hysterical nincompoops preying on people’s fears. 

Most have lost all credibility.  They have repeatedly moved the goal-posts from assuring us we’d be free to resume our lives after two vaccines, to peddling the third booster, to telling COVID-lockdown-weary Torontonians and Ontarians it would be best to enjoy Christmas virtually or to meet with a very small number of people.

I have to laugh at the stories of rapid test kits being snatched up at LCBO stores and shake my head at the fact that many Torontonians will have to wait two months to get their boosters.

While an ordinary lab can get testing results turned around in 30 minutes for rapid antigen tests and within 36 hours for the PCR test, TPH – complaining that they don’t have enough highly paid bureaucrats to handle the backlog – is taking 72 hours or more.

When we arrived in Florida, we got our Moderna booster within days at a neighbourhood pharmacy. The whole process was quick and efficient.

It is a relief to walk into grocery, clothing and drug stores where someone isn’t standing at the door warning us to wear our masks, or having a fellow shopper chastise me for not standing exactly six feet away from him or her.

They’re only a couple days’ drive apart, but in terms of freedom Ontario and Florida seem like different worlds.

But that’s largely because our Canadian politicians are weak-willed and have passed the buck to unelected and power-hungry medical officers of health.

They’re too tone-deaf to recognize that people are tuning them out.

Are social conservatives losing the culture war?

As Andrew Breitbart famously said, politics is downstream of culture. Yet at times it feels like conservatives are losing the big cultural and political battles. In this edition of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew talks to pro-life activist Jonathon Van Maren about social conservatism, pro-life politics, and Erin O’Toole’s leadership as well as the state of the Conservative Party of Canada.

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Alberta boots show the human toll of compulsory vaccine mandate

Nearly 800 pairs of empty shoes and work boots met Calgarians crossing the Peace Bridge on Wednesday. Beneath each pair was a piece of paper telling passersby about the professionals who had once worn them and how long they had held those jobs.

“Primary Care Paramedic, 20 yrs,” one sign read. “Canadian Armed Forces, 17 yrs.”

“RN 24 years – Covenant Health,” read another. “We will not be silenced.”

Their owners – workers in health care and emergency services – have all been forced from their jobs by Alberta Health Services’ (AHS) mandatory COVID vaccination policy. They include physicians, nurses, midwives, firefighters and many more.

A sign standing over the display read, “11,682 years of service represented here.”

Organizer Kate King was a primary care paramedic for ten years before being forced from her job after refusing to comply with the COVID vaccine mandate. She started the Alberta Boot Project just over a week ago to raise awareness of the human toll of the job losses – a toll often overlooked amidst the numbers and the divisions caused by the vaccination issue. 

“We want people to be aware of the human cost these vaccine mandates have taken,” King told True North. 

When asked which display struck her the hardest, King gave the example of a midwife of 29 years whom she recognized as having delivered her own little sister. 

“We had her sign and her shoes displayed at the legislature two days ago, and so many people recognized her that they started bringing roses and putting them down on her sign, and by the end of the day there was a mound of roses.”

King describes the reactions of passersby as “a mixture of shock, tears and aggression.”

Some workers who have come by to see their own shoes on display broke down in tears. Others were blown away by the extent of the display.

However, not all passersby had a positive reaction to the display. “I’ve had other people cussing at us, and calling us a blight on humanity – which can be a great way to open a conversation,” King says.

“I’m a chronic optimist, so I’m pretty hopeful,” she adds. “I think what it’s going to take to see a change in our province is for the tide of public opinion to start to change.”

King estimates that somewhere between 5,000 and 11,000 workers have been affected by the AHS mandate. She says that the number of 1650 given by AHS drastically misrepresents the true toll.

“The number the AHS released is very craftily worded,” she told True North. “It’s actually the number of people who were offered testing as an alternative and declined it. It’s not the number that was put on LOA (leave of absence).”

To create a legitimate database, King has launched a website that invites health professionals who have been affected by the mandate to check in with their stories. The survey can be completed anonymously.

AHS has also come under fire for allowing rapid testing in facilities with “low uptake” but denying the option to workers in other facilities.

The Alberta Boot Project’s volunteers set up their first display on Monday in front of the Edmonton legislature. They will move to Red Deer on Thursday before going province-wide in the coming weeks.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that “Canadians have shown we’re there for our neighbours, we’re there for our most vulnerable, and we’re there for our frontline health workers.” However, he neglected to mention the thousands of health care workers that have been sacked due to COVID vaccine mandates.

Quebec municipal transportation data ends up on dark web forum after cyber attack

Cyber criminals posted massive amounts of data illegally obtained from a Gatineau public transport provider onto the dark web. 

Société de Transports de L’Outaouais (STO) was the subject of a recent ransomware attack – a form of malicious software that locks data until the victim pays an agreed-to ransom. 

According to the Ottawa Citizen, the criminals shared the information they had stolen in a dark web forum after STO refused to pay their price. 

Journalists were able to independently confirm the data leak after accessing the dark web using a specialized web client called TOR. The dark web, unlike the surface web or “clearnet,” is not accessible by ordinary web browsers.

“The attack was very severe,” STO CEO Patric Leclern said at a conference in September pertaining to the data breach. “To put it simply, it’s as if the attackers put a lock on our systems to prevent us from using them … Following the STO’s refusal to pay the demanded ransom, the cyber attackers published files on the dark web.” 

Hackers involved in the breach told the Ottawa Citizen that they had demanded $3 million USD from the STO before they would remove the data from the internet. 

According to Ontario Provincial Police cyber crime unit detective sergeant Vern Crowely, cyber attacks of this nature are at an all-time high. 

“The number of data breaches, today, it’s hit its peak — not to say that it’s going to go down,” said Crowley. 

Crowley’s concerns were echoed by head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security head Sami Khoury. 

“The number of cyber actors is rising and they’re becoming a lot more sophisticated,” Khoury told the Ottawa Citizen

A number of other government organizations have been the target of similar cyber attacks. 

Soon after the Quebec government unveiled its vaccine certification system, it was immediately breached, and the personally identifiable QR codes of some of Quebec’s top political leaders were stolen. 

Canadians should have “zero trust” after feds spied on 33M devices: privacy expert

Ontario’s former privacy commissioner and Executive Director of Global Privacy and Security by Design Ann Cavoukian told True North that Canadians must demand accountability from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) for tracking their devices without consent.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, PHAC secretly spied on 33 million mobile devices of unsuspecting Canadians to monitor its lockdown measures. The details of the plan were revealed on Monday. 

Cavoukian told True North that Canadians should have “zero trust” in what the government is telling them.

“They are collecting all of this mobile data,” she said. “33 million mobile devices and mobile devices are usually linked to personal identifiers, and you have to take some measures to remove them and de-identify the data in a strong way so it can’t be reidentified. We have no assurances to that effect whatsoever.”

“I don’t trust any of this. Zero trust, that’s where we have to start and we have to have some privacy commissioner’s office go in and take a look at this under the hood. Audit what they’re doing.” 

Part of the project involved collecting the cell tower locations of devices and other mobility data. Experts have pointed out that such data can be used to identify sensitive location information. 

“Due to the urgency of the pandemic the Agency collected and used mobility data such as cell tower location data throughout the Covid-19 response,” said PHAC spokesperson Mark Johnson. 

“It was to help understand possible links between the movement of populations within Canada and Covid.”

PHAC revealed the initiative this week, claiming to want to “be open and transparent” with the Canadian public. In reality, a federal contract was circulating prior to the announcement that revealed the federal government was hoping to make cell tower tracking a permanent feature of its research. 

“That is what is outrageous,” Cavoukian told True North. “If that hadn’t been caught onto, this could have continued for any length of time without anyone knowing it was happening. Completely unacceptable.”

Last year, the federal government introduced the COVID Alert app to track COVID-19 exposure. However, the app failed to pick up with a majority of Canadians after a study found that only 25,552 had opted to use it. 

According to Cavoukian, the PHAC data sweep was a convenient way to get around requiring consent from individual users to track their movements. 

“They wanted to find some other way they could do it, and this was the easiest way because they haven’t attained any approval for anything they just did,” Cavoukian told True North.  “And that’s what is so unbelievable to me that they could just do this and access the data of 33 million mobile devices and track it.”

“I just want to remind people how important privacy is. It forms the foundation of our freedom, and if we want to preserve our free and open society then we have to preserve strong privacy and object vehemently when we see surveillance models like this and the tracking of the population’s activities.”

Taxpayer watchdog releases annual ‘Naughty and Nice List’

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) published their yearly Taxpayer Naughty and Nice List on Wednesday. 

CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano said in the press release that former governor general Julie Payette tops this year’s naughty list. 

“Payette lands herself in Santa’s bad books because she’s still eligible to bill taxpayers for her pension and lifetime expense account even after she left a reportedly grinch-style workplace,” said Terrazzano. 

Claridge CEO Stephen Bronfman was on the naughty list for asking Quebec taxpayers to pay up to $300 million for a part-time professional baseball team. 

MPs were on the naughty list for giving themselves two salary increases during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole made the list for changing his position on carbon taxes. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau secured his place by committing to raising taxes. 

As for who was good this year, Terrazzano said some politicians made the nice list for running budget surpluses, improving transparency and giving up extras. 

New Brunswick Finance Minister Ernie Steeves found a place on the nice list for running a $38 million surplus during the pandemic. 

Former speaker of the British Columbia legislature Darryl Plecas was on the nice list for investigations into misspending that led to audits, police involvement, criminal charges and mandatory reporting of expenses for politicians. 

Former Calgary city councillor Jeromy Farkas saved taxpayers $308,234 by turning down his pension and transition allowance. 

The Bloc Quebecois made the nice list for being the one party in the House of Commons that refused the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. 

“Some politicians and political parties managed to land themselves on the nice list this year, so let’s hope taxpayers see some more good behaviour in 2022,” said Terrazzano. 

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