About drug decriminalization is how removing the “stigma of illegality” is drawing addicts into recovery.
Revolutionary Occupation
It would have been interesting to see how this judge would have ruled had he been asked for an injunction against the Ottawa trucker protest two years ago. My guess is that he would have meted out a harsh punishment for such counter-revolutionary activity.
A Quebec Superior Court judge has rejected a provisional injunction request by McGill University to remove pro-Palestinian encampment activists from its front lawn in downtown Montreal.
St-Pierre opened his ruling by saying that the injunction request comes amid a wave of pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses across North America connected to the events in the Gaza Strip, where “dozens of thousands of Palestinians are dead, injured or displaced by the Israeli army.”
Stacked
National Post- How a Trudeau-appointed Senate could blockade a future Poilievre government
By the anticipated date of the 2025 federal election, only 10 to 15 members of the 105-seat Senate will be either Conservative or Conservative appointees. The rest will be Liberal appointees. As of this writing, 70 senators have been personally appointed by Trudeau, and he’ll likely have the opportunity to appoint another 12 before his term ends.
What this means is that no matter how strong the mandate of any future Conservative government, the Tory caucus will face a Liberal supermajority in the Senate with the power to gut or block any legislation sent their way.
You Will Live In Pods, Eat Bugs, Own Nothing And You Will Like It
Calgary city council votes against the wishes of 75% of Calgarians…
The vote comes after more than three weeks of public presentations in council chambers, 736 in total, either in person or on the phone. Additionally, the city received 6,101 written submissions, with roughly 75% of all submissions against the implementation of blanket zoning. The city also says 50,000 people watched the proceedings on its webcasts.
However, the city knew it was unpopular based on written submissions received ahead of the April 22 public hearings.
A total of 4,347 submissions were received, with 3,812 saying ‘no’, 399 saying yes and 136 saying they were neutral. According to the city, duplicate submissions made by a single person were counted as one submission
The blanket zoning bylaw will eliminate areas with zoning for only single-family homes, allowing multi-family homes, including four-plexes, each with two additional suites, in those areas.
Of course, 75% of Calgarians sit on their hands through municipal elections, so there’s that.
Liberties Taken
There is no way that you can say to a man who identifies as a woman, insists he is a woman, that, fine, he can do what he likes, but he can’t actually come into women-only spaces – and that you reserve the right to say that the reason is because he’s a man – that doesn’t offend him…
What has happened is that a lot of women have seen their willingness to be polite absolutely taken advantage of… What it’s come down to is that people who don’t identify as their sex have taken other people’s politeness as license to override other people’s desires, needs, rights, and boundaries…
Helen Joyce on transgender overreach, exploited politeness, and belated pushback.
Central Planning -It’s Harder Than It Looks
Read the whole thing.
Peter Menzies- Hey, feds, how are those broadcasting reforms going?
In summary, one year after the act was passed, the CRTC has incurred one related court appeal, dropped two proceedings, added five more and still hasn’t published any decisions from the three-week marathon hearing held last November and December.
No one outside the CRTC knows for sure why the brakes have been so firmly applied to what appeared to be a hell-bent-for-leather process. But it is probably the fact that they now must grapple with the consequences of their decision to treat the internet like traditional broadcasting. Those are many, but among them is that any actions taken by the CRTC are likely to increase costs and reduce choices for consumers.
Whatsisname’s Britain
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and raising the flag ain’t what it used to be;
How did the UK military evade the ban on spying on UK citizens? A whistleblower from the 77th Brigade, who spoke to Big Brother Watch on condition of anonymity, said it did so by pretending that the British citizens who UK soldiers were spying upon could, perhaps, be foreigners
“To skirt the clear legal issues with a military unit monitoring domestic dissent,” the whistleblower told us, “the leading view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, which is, of course, vanishingly rare, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game to flag up.”
By “flag up,” the whistleblower referred to the process by which UK government officials sent content to social media companies that they thought should be censored.
Losing Your Cool
In an effort to combat rising temperatures, the Environmental Protection Agency is going to raise the cost of beating the heat. I guess it’ll all balance out in about 150 years, right?
“They’re stopping the production of the current refrigerant, R-410A. Those systems will no longer be produced after December 31 of this year…”
The Environmental Protection agency wants to replace the refrigerants with more eco-friendly alternatives.
“They’re trying to get to the lowest global warming potential number that they can. Unfortunately, it’s going to drive costs significantly up, and it’s going to impact homeowners,” Howard said.
I Don’t Want To Do My Job
Blacklocks- Weary Of ArriveCan Scrutiny
The lone New Democrat on the Commons public accounts committee complains MPs are having too many meetings investigating the $59.5 million ArriveCan program. “I am getting more concerned about the cost to taxpayers that these surprise meetings are having,” said MP Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach).
The Commons public accounts committee is mandated to scrutinize federal waste. The committee last year spent a total $13,541 on 44 meetings according to a Committee Activities And Expenditures report.
The committee last year met a total 83 hours, heard testimony from 237 witnesses and published 17 reports. Costs do not include salary for MPs, clerks, translators and technicians who are paid regardless of whether the committee meets.
Y2Kyoto: The Expendables
Over the weekend, Bill McGuire, an Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, set X/Twitter afire with the following Tweet, which foresees the “culling of the human population” as the “only realistic” way to address climate change — a Tweet which he later deleted…
Inch by Inch
Telegraph- Motorbikes face net zero ban
The sale of new petrol-fuelled motorcycles is set to be banned from 2040, under plans due to be announced by ministers as part of its net zero crackdown. The move would affect all vehicles classed as “L3” and upwards, including scooters and light, medium and higher-powered motorcycles. There are around 1.3m motorcycles registered in the UK.
A Shirtless Man With Long Hair Is Not, In Fact, A Woman
When a mother and her baby are assaulted, and the media and police are not entirely frank:
Happily, passers-by assisted the alarmed mother, and Mr Beekmeyer, who was shirtless at the time, was overpowered and arrested shortly afterwards, before being charged with assault. Unlike the police and several news outlets, including the Vancouver Sun and the CBC, witnesses to the crime were quite comfortable using the words he and man when referring to Mr Beekmeyer.
Then, it has to be said, things get a little strange.
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
The Future Is Neuter
You keep using that word: New versions of the iconic Swiss Army Knife could soon be missing a key component: an actual knife.
It’s Probably Nothing
Paul Vieira- According to World Bank data on Canada, net outflows of foreign direct investment, at 4% of GDP, outstrip net inflows of FDI, at 2.2% of GDP.
World Bank- Foreign Direct Investment, Net Outflows (% of GDP) Canada
National Bankruptcy
I personally know some people who would choose to be a care-giver to their XBox if the math of Universal Basic Income worked out for them. In all likelihood, it would do so in many cases. At least enough to send us over the cliff into default and an inflationary currency collapse.
Sen. Kim Pate and NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced bills S-233 and C-223, respectively, in a bid to create the first national framework to provide all people over age 17 across Canada, including temporary workers, permanent residents and refugee claimants, a guaranteed livable basic income.
Based on Ontario’s basic income pilot project, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the basic gross cost of guaranteed basic income(opens in a new tab) nationally would range between $30.5 billion and $71.4 billion from November 2020 to March 2021…
Biden’s America
He Admires Their Basic Dictatorship
Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn (29:57) – like somebody in Canada went ‘what if we try East Germany again with way better tech’ and they came up with this thing
Too Much Freedom
As Terence Corcoran notes, it’s no longer debatable that the productivity of the Canadian economy has taken a beating recently. The problem is that most analysts seem to believe that the problems arose from too little government oversight over the economy, not too much.
Faced with the medical pandemic, Ottawa ordered unprecedented social and economic closures to “flatten the curve” of contagion. To offset the inevitable economic decline, government spending soared and the Bank of Canada unleashed a major monetary expansion, claiming at the time that it could do so with minimal inflationary disruption. The Bank was wrong.
In Road to Freedom, Stiglitz argues that post-pandemic shortages, inflation and unemployment were the product of free-market failure rather than state interventions and bungled monetary policy. When COVID struck, everyone turned to the government to save the economy “and it worked remarkably well.” Therefore, he says, we need more government. “It wasn’t a one-time thing,” he claims. “As the world faces the existential crisis of climate change, there is no alternative but government action.”
The Honourable Member From Air India
@FoodProfessor – Always wondered why Jagmeet Singh doesn’t criticize Metro instead of Loblaw, the most profitable grocer in the country. Pierre Poilievre made it clear today in Parliament…
h/t marc