31 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. We all remember the day when Justin Trudeau was elected. ”We got our old Canada back” was reverberating all over this land.
    I sent a cheque to a bank last week. Distance, 42 miles. 10 days later, the cheque has not arrived. With almost all postal rates on the rise, and a decreasing number of homes that no longer have door to door delivery, and now have mail box delivery, one would think that service should have improved greatly. Total opposite!
    Yup Mr. Trudeau, the old Canada is back. Thanks for nothing!

  2. Globe and Mail, Friday, July 14. There are some journalists who still stand up for freedom of speech. Marcus Gee is one of them.
    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/outrage-over-groups-use-of-toronto-library-threatens-freedom-of-speech/article35680999/
    A lawyer named Barbara Kulaszka, who defended persons on the “far right” such as Nazi sympathizers, passed on a month ago.
    MG: “This week in Toronto, a small group held a memorial service at a public library branch for a lawyer who had defended Holocaust deniers and other figures on Canada’s far-right fringe. Spokesmen for Jewish groups said they were outraged that the Toronto Public Library would provide a platform for such a gathering. Mayor John Tory was ‘deeply concerned.’ Members of city council said they were shocked. ‘Those tied to hate and bigotry have no place in our libraries,’ Councillor James Pasternak said.”
    The library did the right thing. The rules concerning public gatherings like this should be the same for everybody. The “far left” has just as much hate, but the difference is that its hate is targeted by class (real or imagined) rather than by race. It is not a stretch to place the likes of the late leftist darling Jack Layton in this category, although admittedly he was more statesmanlike as federal NDP leader than he ever was while serving on Toronto council.
    MG: “What would it say to the many Canadians who suffered under communism if someone who denies the crimes of Stalin or Mao wanted to hold an event and was denied?”
    That is the right question to ask. No, the supporters of these villains can’t be denied use of a meeting room either, on principle. But the left is not interested in principle, and it revels in its hypocrisy.
    MG: “Critics of the event seem especially upset that it took place in a ‘public space,’ under the roof of a publicly funded institution. It is not hard to see where that dangerous argument could lead. If people whose opinions are deemed beyond the pale are to be kept out of the public libraries, why not the public parks, the public squares, the public streets?”
    Yes, this censorship would be unacceptable. The proper answer is to privatize these “public institutions”. Then the private owner could decline to host such an event.
    Those outraged don’t even seem to like the idea of the “far right” having access to a lawyer, even though it is axiomatic that everyone has the right to obtain one.

  3. Toronto Star, Friday, July 14. Four people died in government-run housing last year. This is the aftermath.
    https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/07/13/toronto-community-housing-fined-100000-in-2016-fire-that-killed-four-residents.html
    “The guilty plea comes with a $100,000 fine — the maximum penalty for the charge of failing to implement a fire safety plan in the blaze at 1315 Neilson Rd. on Feb. 5, 2016.”
    Question: Who is actually going to pay this fine? I strongly suspect that taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook, presuming that Toronto Community Housing gets its funds from the city.
    This is further reason to privatize all provision of goods and services. Then the owners can pay the fines out of their own pocket. Leave government to its proper function of protecting individual rights through police, military and courts.
    Of course, had the “social housing” actually been private, the howls for government to take it over following the fire would have been deafening.

  5. I know how you feel.
    Back in the spring, I had an accountant prepare my late father’s income tax return for last year. The chap filed it electronically, but Canada Revenue claimed it never received it. Because I didn’t have a confirmation number, nobody in the government was willing to help me track it down, with some people being rather snarky about it.
    Guess who’s going to be on the hook for it?
    Yup, Canada’s back, complete with a useless and arrogant civil service.
    This is just one of the headaches I’ve had in settling my father’s estate and my miseries are far from over.

  7. This is my favorite REM song – and I’ve listened to most of their prodigious output over the years. I seem to recall reading that it also was the song that they were most proud of. Their lyrics often had a degree of thoughtfulness and sophistication that seems to be in scarce supply in the currently most popular musicians.
    “Turn around backward so the windshield shows
    Every streetlight
    Reveals a picture in reverse.
    But still it’s so much clearer ….”
    And isn’t that always the case? 10, 20 years on, we can see things so much better than we could at the time. (Sigh.)

  8. Friday, July 14, 2017
    America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges
    Posted by Daniel Greenfield
    “…Federal courts have been unconstitutionally treating states like this for far too long, intervening in everything from elections to prison populations, but now they’re using the general anti-Trump hysteria to assert judicial supremacy over the elected branches of government.
    If this judicial coup is allowed to stand, anything that any White House official or member of Congress says at any time in the past, can and will be used by Federal courts to seize control over any policy.
    And then we will be living under a permanent reign of judicial terror…”
    http://sultanknish.blogspot.ca/2017/07/america-is-not-nation-ruled-by-judges.html
    ———————————————————————————-
    Questions of whether Parliament and legislatures govern Canada or if not then the S.C.C. does. This is as important a question that can be asked.
    That is, if anyone has the hutzpah to do it here.

  9. At this rate, newborns will soon be a “choice” as well…
    —————————————-
    WINNIPEG — A Manitoba woman who hid the remains of six infants in a rented storage locker has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison.
    Medical experts testified the infants were Giesbrecht’s and were likely to have been born alive, but the remains were too decomposed to determine how they died.

  10. Libraries are not profit making institutions. They are a public service, so I don’t think privatizing would work too well. Like you,I am glad the library stuck to its principles. The same issue arose a couple of years ago in Ottawa with the Archives building which is regularly rented out. Again, lefties tried to shut something down that they did not agree with. The “solution” here so for the political left to begin respecting freedom of speech/expression. All of us pay taxes that go for things we disagree with.

  12. “But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men.”
    http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506?page=show
    “It took a while for the pattern to be recognized because, until recently, western European media deliberately refrained from identifying an assailant’s refugee or asylum status, or his country of origin. Only when the correlation became so dramatic that it was itself newsworthy did this policy change.”

  13. AGW RIP.
    …-
    “Snow in the middle of July in Schefferville”
    “Ontario fields tell a sorry, soggy tale
    The headline – “Great weather if you’re a duck” – makes light of the situation, but the fields tell a sorry, soggy tale. “Soybeans have probably never looked as sad.””
    “If they tell you CO2 is dangerous, tell them to stop breathing”
    “Coldest July 13th in Saint John in at least 146 years”
    …-
    “Ontario farmers on brink of disaster – Wettest summer in 150 years
    Cool, rainy spring and summer. So much rain that the hay is soggy.”
    https://www.iceagenow.info/

  14. Linked at Powerlineblog.com, this article by Candice Malcolm (of the Toronto Sun) appears in The Weekly Standard:
    http://www.weeklystandard.com/a-jihadist-hits-the-jackpot/article/2008843
    The second half or so of the article, which breaks new ground from what I have seen, discusses in a methodical and professional tone, the myths associated with Khadr’s saga, leading to its unacceptable conclusion at the hands of our own government.
    Actually, “conclusion” is the wrong word; it’s more of a waypoint: the whole article articulates, in clear terms, the threat to national and global security resulting from this sorry episode in Canadian life: Canadians (60%+ in the Angus Reid poll) are right to be concerned about this particular aspect of the issue.

  15. “The “solution” here so for the political left to begin respecting freedom of speech/expression.”
    This will never happen, especially when they feel they are on the verge of totally taking over the country. Ask the Russians of early 1918 when freedom of expression and anti-left newspapers were shut down. Pretty sad when even so-called conservative leaders like Tory want to suppress freedom of speech.

  16. B A – there’s something odd about your saga. I’ve filed a lot of tax returns electronically, and there is ALWAYS an acknowledgement page – with the confirmation number – which I equally ALWAYS print. In addition, the program itself retains the number so I can always retrieve it – just have to know where to look. So your accountant should be able to give you that number.
    It could be that the accountant hit the “send” button and assumed all was well, but there was an error which prevented the return going through. I’ve seen that happen where the little notice popped up with an error message, but the preparer didn’t read it and assumed the return had gone through.

  17. I’m assuming that the accountant might not have noticed that there was a problem. Unfortunately, the government has me at a disadvantage as I’ve always submitted my returns on paper, along with any supporting documents.
    I’ll be speaking with the accountant next week as I don’t need this issue hanging around.

  18. I have had this problem with CRA. My accountant filed electronically, CRA claimed I never filed but took several months to notify me – the notification was a letter demanding payment with interest.
    I contacted my accountant and he sent along the confirmation. Silence from CRA for another several months and then a letter showing a balance of $0.00.
    If your accountant filed electronically he/she will have the confirmation and should resend. You contacting CRA directly is a hopeless task. They rarely lift a finger to make things easier on you. Until you prove otherwise, they think you have done something wrong.

  19. I recently received an update from MSF(medicins sans Frontieres) talking about their programs particularly their active pursuit of bringing refugees from Africa. I have now cancelled my monthly donation to MSF and they did not even ask why and I’ve been donating to them for years.

  20. *
    according to medusa magazine…
    “It’s important not to make assumptions about what gender your animal is
    based off of its sex.”
    kate, as someone uniquely qualified to comment on this terrible societal ill… i
    have to ask… exactly how many of your present terrier clan are claiming to
    be trans-gendered?
    *

  21. What you described sounds familiar. I found out about the missing tax return when I inquired about the refund. Aside from the usual bureaucratic waffle and bafflegab, I was sent around in circles.
    That incident only confirmed to me that government offices don’t talk to each other, even in the same department. What I described was at the federal level. It often becomes worse with the provincial and city governments.
    It always amazes me how anything ever gets done in this country with a bureaucratic system like that.

  24. I managed to reach a real live human person at CRA. Unfortunately, he had a speech impediment that made him all but unintelligible. I have no doubt that it was a deliberate action on their part.

  25. Beothuk Indians: RIP.
    Micmac Indians, aka Mi’kmaq Indians, are guilty of genocide.
    Micmac Indians, aka Mi’kmaq Indians, slaughtered/annihilated/exterminated Beothuk Indians.
    …-
    “Protesters celebrate as statue of controversial Halifax founder is draped in tarp”
    “Cornwallis, as governor of Nova Scotia, founded Halifax in 1749 and soon after issued a bounty on Mi’kmaq scalps.
    The Mi’kmaq have long called for removal of tributes to Cornwallis, some calling his actions a form of genocide.” (570news)
    …-
    “Beothuks or Red Indians of Newfoundland”
    “… the French, in the middle of the 18th century, offered a reward for every head of a Beothuk Indian. To gain this reward, and to obtain the valuable furs they possessed, the more numerous Micmac hunted and gradually exterminated them as an independent people.”
    http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/encyclopedia/Beothuks.htm

  26. Horrible quadruble murder including torture in Calgary. But does anyone else find it bizarre that these two women in their early thirties had 16 children and some grandkids and there seems to be no mention of any fathers?

  27. PET POT Cemetery Report.
    cc: Liberal Justine.
    …-
    Googoo:
    “‘We Don’t Have Any Gays.’ Chechen Leader Denies Persecution of Gay Men”
    “Chechen president and MMA promoter says gays are
    ‘devils,’ should be taken to Canada”
    “We don’t have any gays’: Chechen leader denies gay purge”
    …-
    “Trudeau jumps from praying in a mosque to attending Pride Parade”
    https://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/trudeau-jumps-from-praying-in-a-mosque-to-attending-pride-parade/

  28. Nice REM selection Lance ! However, I have to answer with my all time favorite:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgPFcyOMGho
    Eddie Vetter is a nice guest vocalist. This tune and lyric just always grabs some deep emotion inside me … don’t know what it is … but probably has something to do with losing my only brother at age 28 to a rare cancer that cut him down without warning in a matter of months. It is really hard for me NOT to cry like a baby when I hear this tune.
    … even though Michael Stipe is a complete and total nutter.

  29. So the whiny Micmacs exterminated the Beothuk. That doesn’t fit the poor innocent Indian narrative. They allied with the French and tried to exterminate the English but Cornwallis handed them their asses. Winning a war just isn’t fair. Maybe if they hadn’t fought like girls they would still have their dignity.

  30. ” … human person at CRA. Unfortunately, he had a speech impediment that made him all but unintelligible >>> ”
    Was that speech impediment a pseudo-French accent any chance?

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