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Fringe Minority, Eh? TK Partners News2Share take a balanced look at the Canadian protests

In the above video, TK Partners News2Share do a fantastic job of doing what the conventional press mostly hasn’t done with the “Freedom Convoy” story, asking the right questions about who’s participating, what their concerns are, and how the event is being received on the ground.

As Ford Fischer demonstrates in his narration, the protesters are a mix of people who see themselves as politically liberal, and politically conservative. There are some whose objections seem to be purely about mandates. “I’m double-vaccinated,” says one speaker. “To think… I will show my papers to buy a sandwich? Hell, no!”

For others, the issue is the vaccine itself:

“They said, ‘Get your booster…’ If it doesn’t work once, it doesn’t work twice, maybe it’ll work the third time. You know who does that? Gamblers. People who play blackjack!”

The scenes outside the Super Bowl, meanwhile, look quite different. Although trucker protests have gathered steam in too many countries around the world to count by now, the U.S. version has so far failed to produce the large numbers Canadians have seen. The News2Share footage also shows a crowd that looks and sounds different from the ones in Ottawa.

Stories like the Freedom Convoy are exactly why we like the idea of having Ford and his shooters just let the cameras run for a while at heavily covered events. The idea is to let audiences watch longer pieces of footage with minimal contextualization, so they may draw their own conclusions. Hopefully, News2Share’s pictures from Ottawa and L.A. shed some light.

An earlier version of this story contained an extraneous quote at the bottom of the page. TK apologizes to readers, and to News2Share, for the error.

Ottawa’s “Freedom Convoy” Protesters Dig In As Canadian Government Suffers ‘Alex Jones’ Moment

February 16, 2022

Ottawa’s “Freedom Convoy” Protesters Dig In As Canadian Government Suffers ‘Alex Jones’ Moment

Facing nearly a dozen separate “Freedom Convoy”-inspired protests that seemed to be springing up faster than police and his government could disperse them, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked a national emergency to implement sweeping police powers late Monday.

Yet, protesters and their supporters continued, as protesters in Ottawa “dug in”, while new demonstrations sprung up in Alberta and Manitoba, but by Tuesday, Trudeau and his government had clearly had enough. They needed a new scapegoat. Enter, 13 “demonstrators” who were arrested purportedly due to their involvement with the Coutts blockade. Police claimed they seized “13 long guns and a large quantity of ammunition in an early-morning raid targeting three trailers that were part of a blockade”.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino said as much during a press briefing on Tuesday.

“There have been those who have tried to characterize these illegal blockades [as being] about vaccines and mandates and fatigue with the pandemic. That is not what is driving this movement right now,” Marco Mendicino, Canada’s Public Safety Minister, said at a news conference Tuesday.

“What is driving this movement is a very small, organized group that is driven by an ideology to overthrow the government through whatever means they may wish to use,” he said.

In what sounded like the preamble to another “Alex Jones” moment, some “national security experts” have asked the Canadian government to provide more “clarification.”

Mendicino’s comments led some national security experts to call on the government to provide clarification. “I do think that it behooves the government to explain themselves, to the extent that they can, while maintaining national security,” said Leah West, a national security expert at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Just remember that the “threat of violence” is integral to Trudeau’s argument for his national emergency order.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Bypassing the democratic process’

February 16, 2022

‘Bypassing the democratic process’

A Q&A on the Emergencies Act with Noa Mendelsohn Aviv of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association

A truck outside parliament in Ottawa, February 14. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

It’s a moment unlike any I’ve experienced in my 20-year journalism career, or, indeed, my lifetime. In response to the ongoing trucker protests, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act, which became law in 1988 and has never been used.

As the government prepares to take this to the House of Commons and Senate for a vote, a number of questions are being raised: Has the government met the legal standard for invoking this act? What does this move mean for our democracy? What does it mean for rights and freedoms? And: What precedent does this set?

To explore these questions — and this remarkable time in Canadian history — I reached out to the new executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv.

For readers who may not be aware, what is the Emergencies Act, and what powers does it give the government?

The Emergencies Act is a piece of legislation replacing an earlier, similar law called the War Measures Act. It allows the government to make decisions and take action — essentially bypassing the democratic process — where there is an urgent and critical need to do so in the case of a national emergency. Imagine a war, or flooding, or an ice storm that wipes out infrastructure. It’s not possible to get a legislature together and do things in an ordinary, transparent, and accountable democratic way. But things have to be taken care of; people have to be evacuated. That’s what the Emergencies Act is about, and that’s more or less how it describes itself on its terms.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2 Predictions

February 16, 2022

2 Predictions

René Magritte The voice of blood 1948 (woodblock)

1/ If the US truckers manage to organize themselves anywhere close to the way their Canadian brethren have, in projects like Convoy To DC 2022 or American Freedom Convoy 2022, they will cause absolute mayhem stateside, and the Biden admin will very rapidly lift the -announced- vaccination mandates for truckers. This will force Canada to do the same. Of course the demands of the Canadian truckers are now much broader than their own vaccines, and US truckers may well go that way too.

Already, the Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ has forced the shutdown of General Motors and Ford automotive plants, among others. On both sides of the Ambassador Bridge, Detroit and Windsor carmakers have large plants, and the present standstill comes on top of global supply chain and local staffing issues.

Justin Trudeau won’t be able to tow the trucks on the bridge away. He also won’t be able to send in the military against his own people (neither will Joe Biden). If the truckers persist, they win. It really is that simple. They are serious, as the mayor of Windsor ON understands:

“You have a number of people who are … part of the protest group who have openly stated … they feel such a passion for this particular cause that they are willing to die for it,” Mayor Drew Dilkens told reporters on Wednesday. “If you have people who hold that sentiment, the situation can escalate and get very dangerous for police and those members of the public in very short order. It’s fair to say we don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trudeau Will Freeze the Bank Accounts of All Protestors

February 16, 2022

Trudeau Will Freeze the Bank Accounts of All Protestors

Desperate and unwilling to speak directly to the truckers, Justin Trudeau is now vowing to freeze the personal and business bank accounts of those involved in the Freedom Convoy. Trudeau is drunk with power and passed the emergency order despite the premiers of Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta stating it is an unnecessary move. Only Ontario’s Doug Ford supports the extreme measure. Quebec Premier Francois Legault believes the emergency order will “throw oil on the fire.”

This is the first time that a Canadian prime minister invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act, which is intended for an “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians.” Deeming a peaceful protest an act of terrorism is an act of free speech oppression. Trudeau believes he deserves praise for refraining from deploying troops to end the protest through violence. “We are not suspending fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedom. We’re not limiting people’s freedom of speech. We are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly. We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally,” Trudeau said while speaking at Parliament Hill on Monday.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told reporters, “We would prefer that the emergency act not be invoked. But if it is, we would very much prefer that it not be applied to Alberta. It’s not needed. It could make the situation even more complicated.” Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe stated that the police already have the tools required to remove illegal blockades, therefore, “Saskatchewan does not support the Trudeau government invoking the Emergencies Act.” NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh supports Trudeau’s decision but said it points to a larger problem with the Trudeau Administration. “The fact that the Prime Minister is resorting to this measure is proof of a failure of leadership…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trudeau To Unleash Never-Before-Used ‘Emergency Powers Act’ To Counter Protests As US-Canada Bridge Reopens

February 14, 2022

Trudeau To Unleash Never-Before-Used ‘Emergency Powers Act’ To Counter Protests As US-Canada Bridge Reopens

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has learned that Prime Minister Trudeau “will inform the provinces he will invoke the Emergencies Act to give the government extra powers to deal with the protests across the country. But in a meeting with the Liberal caucus, the PM said there were no plans to deploy the military.”

The move follows a meeting Sunday of the federal cabinet and its Incident Response Group (IRG).

Trudeau tweeted late Sunday that the IRG discussed “further actions the government can take to help end the blockades and occupations.”

Earlier that day, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live that the federal government has discussed invoking special emergency powers to deal with ongoing protests in Ottawa.

Blair described the attitude around invoking the Emergencies Act as “appropriate caution” rather than “reticence.”

As CBC concludes, the law gives the federal government carte blanche to cope with a crisis, including the ability to enact emergency powers that allow it to prohibit travel within a specified area or remove personal property, while imposing fines or jail time on people contravening new orders.

This is basically the ability to unleash ‘selective’ martial law on Canadians.

This comes after reports on Sunday, Canadian officials cleared the roadway and arrested “Freedom Convoy” demonstrators who held the line and blocked the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing for nearly a week. Canadian officials confirmed the bridge reopened earlier Monday morning as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to invoke emergency powers to squash protesters around the country.

Traffic cameras on Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Canadian automotive plants with Detroit, show increased traffic flows around 0930 ET in both directions, into the US, and into Canada.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Case Study of Fossil-Fuel Depletion

February 13, 2022

A Case Study of Fossil-Fuel Depletion

A few months ago I received an intriguing email from researcher and activist Regan Boychuk. For the past 15 years, Boychuk has been studying the oil-and-gas industry in Alberta (Canada) and he wanted to know if I would join his project. I immediately said yes.

Some backstory. You can think of Alberta as the Texas of Canada. Alberta is endowed with a vast trove of oil that it has been exploiting for the past 75 years. And like Texas, Alberta’s politics are dominated by the oil industry.

Oh, and Alberta is where I grew up.

Back to Regan Boychuk’s work. Boychuk has a vision for an Alberta in which the oil industry goes extinct by being forced to clean up its own mess. As it stands, Alberta has about 300,000 oil-and-gas wells waiting to be cleaned up at the oil companies’ expense. The problem is that oil companies are not forced to save for the clean-up expense, and accounting tricks allow them to make the clean-up liability look negligible in their corporate accounts.¹ It’s an open secret (implicitly endorsed by the Alberta government) that defunct wells will never be cleaned up. If they were, the oil industry would go bankrupt.

And that’s exactly what Boychuk wants. His dream is to kill 3 birds with one stone:

Show that the oil-and-gas industry is insolvent;
Clean up every well in Alberta;
Fund full employment and a transition to a sustainable Alberta economy.

To hasten this big-picture goal, Boychuk asked me to help by estimating production curves for every oil-and-gas well in Alberta. After much head scratching and many lines of code, that’s what I’ve done.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great International Convoy Fiasco

February 12, 2022

The Great International Convoy Fiasco

As America puts the Canadian Prime Minister’s unmentionables in a vice over a truck protest, it’s clearer than ever: the world’s leaders have forgotten how to govern

The White House issued a statement Friday, after Joe Biden chatted with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

The two leaders agreed that the actions of the individuals who are obstructing travel and commerce between our two countries are having significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods… The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law, and the President thanked him for the steps he and other Canadian authorities are taking to restore the open passage of bridges to the United States.

Translation: Biden told Trudeau his testicles will be crushed under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle if this trucker thing is allowed to screw up the Super Bowl, or Biden’s State of the Union address. Trudeau’s own statement that day came off like the recorded video message of a downed pilot:

I’ve been absolutely clear that using military forces against civilian populations, in Canada, or in any other democracy, is something to avoid having to do at all costs.

An anxious Trudeau promised to deploy law enforcement in a “predictable, progressive approach” that would emphasize fines and other punishments. Because demonstrators will see that the “consequences” for those continuing to engage in “illegal protests” are “going to be more and more extensive,” he said, “we are very hopeful” that “people will choose to leave these protests peacefully.”

Switching gears just a bit, he then added, “We are a long way from ever having to call in the military.”

Such a move, he said, would only be a “last resort.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadian Police Arrive To “Remove” Freedom Convoy Protesters From Ambassador Bridge

February 12, 2022

Canadian Police Arrive To “Remove” Freedom Convoy Protesters From Ambassador Bridge

Following Friday’s ‘state of emergency’ declaration in Ontario, which empower police to finally clear the protesters blocking the Ambassador Bridge (of course, the Canadian government could have just rolled back the COVID restrictions that inspired the protests to begin with, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has used some truly bizarre rhetoric in its defense), Canadian police have moved in early Saturday to start making arrests and breaking the protest.

Protesters at the busiest land crossing between the US and Canada staunchly remained overnight despite the threats of violence from the Canadian government. The blockade has forced auto makers in the US to shutter production due to a shortage of parts (while some have been forced to fly parts across the border).

According to the AP, a city bus and school bus with the police arrived on scene Saturday morning, and officers got in formation to start clearing out the protesters.

A city bus and school bus arrived at the scene Saturday morning and police moved in formation toward them. But the protesters remained defiant.

Windsor police immediately warned that anyone blocking the streets could be subject to arrest and their vehicles could be seized.

The news was met earlier with defiance by protesters.

At the Ambassador Bridge, an unidentified person grabbed a microphone and addressed the crowd, asking if they wanted to stay or leave when the deadline rolled around. By a show of applause, it was agreed they would stay. “OK,” the man said. “Let’s stand tall.” The protesters responded by singing the Canadian national anthem.

Using a megaphone, one of the protesters alerted the others that police were coming for the demonstrators. Video of the situation quickly made its way online courtesy of @JackPosobiec.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Life on Earth Can’t Handle the Chemical Industry’s Onslaught

February 2, 2022

Chemical companies have produced more chemicals — including plastics — than the planet can safely sustain without potentially causing irreversible harm to the environment or human health, says a team of international researchers.

Canada and most other countries do not have the capacity to monitor how chemicals like plastics, pesticides and fertilizers are impacting people and ecosystems faster than they can heal. With industry projecting skyrocketing demand, the scientists warn that governments must immediately curb the production of new chemicals until adequate monitoring and regulatory systems are in place.

It’s a new approach to research the global environmental and health impacts of chemicals, which typically examines a single type of chemical, like neonicotinoid pesticides, at a time. But with hundreds of thousands of chemicals in circulation and new ones going on the market daily, countries can’t keep up, explained co-author Miriam Diamond, a professor at the University of Toronto.

“There’s no way we can actually figure out a planetary boundary for each (chemical),” she explained. Instead, the team looked at the pace of chemical production and development and whether governments’ environmental and health regulations and monitoring can keep up.

“The answer is a resounding no. We are so far behind on our ability to assess and understand these entities, we can’t keep up.”

For instance, plastic output increased by almost 80 per cent between 2000 and 2015 alone and production is expected to triple by 2050. Because about 99 per cent of plastics are made from fossil fuels and their production is tied into a complex web of fossil fuel derivatives like solvents and fertilizers, the output data are useful tools to track the production of a suite of other harmful chemicals…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Are All Canadian Truckers Now!

January 31, 2022

We Are All Canadian Truckers Now!

We all remember where we were when the Berlin Wall came down. While it may have seemed that communist rule would go on forever, when the people decided that they had enough suddenly the wall fell. Just like that.

Thus it is after two years of Covid authoritarianism that in Canada the largest truck convoy in history has smashed through the Berlin Wall of tyranny. I have watched as the Canada I once respected as a haven for antiwar Americans in the 1960s turned into one of the most repressive countries on earth. I wondered how a freedom-loving people could allow themselves to be abused by these mini-Stalins without a peep.

But then Canada stood up and showed the rest of the world that freedom can triumph over tyranny if the people demand it. As I say, no army can stop an idea whose time has come.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had been basking in his ability to terrorize the population in the name of fighting a virus. He was so confident in his seemingly unlimited power that he felt he could ridicule any Canadian with different views. The prime minister said in a recent interview that unvaccinated Canadians were “extremists,” “misogynists,” and “racists.”

When the Canadian truckers stood up to his tyranny and began their historic convoy to Ottawa, he thought he could continue ridiculing people. The truckers and their supporters were just a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views,” he confidently claimed. For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an “unacceptable view.”

Less than a week later, as tens of thousands of trucks began entering the capital with millions of supporters behind them, the “brave” Canadian prime minister had fled the city and shuffled off to an undisclosed location.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada ranked 6th-most miserable country by think tank

January 19, 2022

Canada ranked 6th-most miserable country by think tank

Toronto’s Lakeshore Boulevard pictured during a snowstorm in February 2007 (Colin McConnell/Toronto Star)

Due to its high rates of inflation and unemployment, a conservative-leaning think tank has ranked Canada the sixth-most miserable country in the world.

On Tuesday, the Fraser Institute revealed where 35 countries rank on its Misery Index, an economic measure based on inflation and unemployment rates.

With its Misery Index score of 10.88, Canada was the sixth-most miserable country, thanks to its 3.15 per cent inflation rate and 7.7 per cent unemployment rate in 2021.

Spain was the most miserable, with a score of 17.61, followed by Greece with 15.73, Italy with 11.96, and Iceland with a score of 11.26.

Japan and Switzerland were the least miserable countries, with scores of 2.61 and 3.57, respectively.

France, the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. were all deemed less miserable than Canada.

“Canadians are rightly concerned about the country’s high inflation and unemployment rates, and, when compared to other developed countries, Canada is not doing well,” said Jason Clemens, the Fraser Institute’s executive vice-president.

Ideally, a healthy economy scores six to seven per cent on the Misery Index, according to Balance, a personal-finance website.

The index fell out of Canadian favour in the 1990s after the country brought inflation under control, the Fraser Institute says.

“The fact that we are again discussing the Misery Index and Canada’s high ranking on it is bad news for all Canadians, who will suffer as a result,” Clemens said.

“Governments across Canada, particularly the federal government, should prioritize policies that will make Canadians less miserable by lowering inflation and unemployment,” he continued.

In 1991, Ottawa and the Bank of Canada introduced inflation-control targets. The bank’s job is to either raise interest rates to cool inflation or cut them to encourage spending and borrowing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s offshore wind resources are huge

January 17, 2022

Canada’s offshore wind resources are huge

Nuclear energy is not the solution to achieving Canada’s emission reduction targets. Offshore wind power is safer, less costly, and carries none of the risks of nuclear technology.

Canada’s offshore wind could deliver more energy than nuclear power. The aging CANDU nuclear reactors are being refurbished at substantial cost in an effort to keep them up and running for a few more years. But this is only a stopgap measure.

The six reactors at Pickering will be shut down before 2024; the reactors at Bruce, Darlington and Lepreau will continue to generate power for perhaps a decade or so; but the era of power generation from the CANDU reactors in Canada is drawing to a close.

Canada has committed to reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, and to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The federal government has made it clear that it considers nuclear power essential for meeting these goals. In 2020, minister Seamus O’Regan, at that time the minister of natural resources in the federal government, stated in a keynote address to the Canadian Nuclear Association, “Our government understands the importance of nuclear energy in meeting our climate change goals…We are placing nuclear energy front and centre.”

But the nuclear technology the federal government is pinning its hopes on is not the CANDU design. The concept now being strongly promoted by the government is small modular reactors (SMRs). An action plan has been launched; the obligatory roadmap has been drafted and published.

At the present time, this action plan is more wishful thinking than a realistic scenario. No prototype SMR has been constructed; the final design has not even been selected from the ten technical proposals currently under consideration. The government’s claim that SMRs will help Canada meet its 2030 emission reduction targets is simply not credible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

100 Million Americans In Path Of Dangerous Winter Storm

January 16, 2022

100 Million Americans In Path Of Dangerous Winter Storm

A massive winter storm could impact upwards of 100 million people across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast during the latter part of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

National Weather Service (NWS) issued winter storm warnings for 19 states, with some areas over the Appalachians could experience a snowfall rate of 1-3 inches per hour.

“A major Winter Storm will impact the eastern U.S. on Sunday into Monday. The highest snowfall totals are expected along the spine of the Appalachians as well as across the lower Great Lakes. The most significant icing is expected over the Carolinas this morning. Significant impacts to travel across these regions are expected,” NWS warned.

Winter storm warnings have been issued for these states: New York, Ohio, Vermont, Virginia, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Arkansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and the District of Columbia.

AccuWeather expects 6-12 inches of snow along the Appalachians and even into Ohio and western New York. There’s a strong likelihood that snow accumulations of 3 feet could be seen at higher elevations in the Appalachians, Adirondacks, the Green and White mountains, and parts of southwestern New York near Lake Ontario.

Pittsburgh, Johnstown and Scranton, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany and Syracuse, New York; Morgantown, West Virginia; Cleveland; Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Burlington, Vermont; and Caribou, Maine; all face accumulating snow through Monday. As for metro areas along the I-95 corridor, expect 1-3 inches of snow, with a mixture of ice and rain. The heaviest snowfalls will be in the interior Northeast.

On Friday, weather models forecasted the heaviest snowfall would be west of the I-95 corridor — so far, they’re right.

New report outlines how Canada’s top CEOs raked in “boundless bonuses” in 2020

January 11, 2022

New report outlines how Canada’s top CEOs raked in “boundless bonuses” in 2020

The report recommends five policy solutions to tackle extreme wealth inequality. —

No 2810 by fw, January 10, 2021 —

“Every year we [Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives] examine trends in CEO compensation in Canada. General trends show that compensation for the highest-paid CEOs in Canada is impervious to external shocks, such as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the highest-paid 100 CEOs in Canada had the second-highest average compensation levels in this country’s history during the pandemic. Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs got paid an average of $10.9 million in 2020, which is higher than their pay in 2019. As a result, those 100 CEOs now make, on average, 191 times more than the average worker wage in Canada. Before lunch hour on the first working day of 2022, January 4, Canada’s highest-paid CEOs will have already racked up the same amount of pay that will take the average worker the entire year to accrue.” —David Macdonald

David Macdonald is a senior economist with Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ National Office, and the author of CCPA’s new report titled: Another year in paradise: CEO pay in 2020.

Hands up those who believe that Trudeau’s neoliberal Liberals, friends of Big Business and The Ruling Class, will, without delay, propose policy actions to tackle extreme wealth inequality in Canada.

Here is the Table of Contents of the 25-page report.

Page Topic

4          Executive summary
6          Introduction
9          A third of CEO millionaires benefited from public subsidies
11        Boosting bonuses through formula changes
13        Top CEO pay
15        CEOs and the glass ceiling
16        Recommendations
18        Methodology

23 Notes

My repost, presented below in two short pieces, begins with a copy of a brief January 4, 2022 news release titled: Canadian CEO pay hits second-highest level in history: report, followed by a two-page Executive Summary, excerpted from the full 25-page report.

To read the complete, original versions of both documents, just lick on their linked titles below.

**********

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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