Doctors And Engineers

Watch out for those “Richmond Hill homes” my friends, because you never know what they’re up to.

Three missing Quebec girls have been found in a Richmond Hill home, and police have charged a man and a teenage boy for allegedly trafficking them.

York Regional Police said officers received information on Tuesday that the missing girls may be in the area and that they were maybe being sexually exploited.

Within a few hours, police identified and attended a residence of interest in Richmond Hill.

”Shortly after arriving, two female youths were seen leaving the residence with an adult male in a vehicle,” police said in a news release on Friday.

Officers stopped the vehicle and arrested the man.

Police said they then entered the home “under exigent circumstances” and located the third missing girl along with a 17-year-old boy who was subsequently taken into custody.

The adult suspect has been identified as 23-year-old Shaikh Sabahat from Toronto. The teenage suspect cannot be named under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

All cultures are equal, except yours.

When Stephen Taylor read a CBC Nova Scotia story about the imminent closure of Parks Canada’s Canadian Register of Historic Places website, he knew he had to act.

The register is a national searchable database of historic places recognized by federal, provincial, territorial and local governments.

It contains about 13,500 listings and is slated for decommissioning this spring.

“Reading into it… I felt it would be a tragedy to lose that resource,” Taylor said.

“I felt there was a huge urgency to preserve it, ironically preserving our history, even though that was the point of the original website.”

As a partner and chief technical officer at Shift Media Strategies, Toronto-based Taylor knows a thing or two about web technologies.

That weekend, Taylor used artificial intelligence tools to download all of the data on the old Parks Canada site and rebuild it using modern web standards.

Pretty sure he’ll be arrested.

If Wishes Were Mortgages…

Mortgage broker Ron Butler goes off on the concept of “blanket appraisals” in the Canadian mortgage market. Basically, they’re a form of fraud that allows lenders to pretend that mortgages on their balance sheets are worth much more than they actually are.

“…I bought it for a million… My lender says it’s only worth 820 and I don’t know what to do. Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry. We have this… uh, developer loan bank. Yeah. No, no, we can get it done. Don’t worry…”

Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?

One wallet snaps shut and the whole deck collapses?

The United Nations is at risk of “imminent financial collapse” due to member states not paying their fees, the body’s head has warned.

He wrote in a letter to all 193 member states that they had to honour their mandatory payments or overhaul the organisation’s financial rules to avoid collapse.

It comes after the UN’s largest contributor, the US, refused to contribute to its regular and peacekeeping budgets, and withdrew from several agencies it called a “waste of taxpayer dollars”. Several other members are in arrears or are simply refusing to pay.[…]

At its headquarters in Geneva, signs warning of the situation have been put up everywhere. In an almost desperate attempt to save cash, the escalators are regularly turned off and the heating turned down.

CPC Leadership

Pierre Poilievre wins leadership review with 87.4% approval, Rosemary Barton hardest hit.

Poilievre waltzed into that redneck rodeo town and the whole room of racist trucker-hat-wearing western deplorables lost their minds cheering like he just invented beer or something. He crushed that leadership review with 87% or whatever the hell it was, the party faithful slobbering all over him, screaming like it’s the second coming. Pathetic.

That was the easy part. But the rest of Canada? Please. These un-Canadian clowns don’t speak for the country—they’re just the loudmouth Maple MAGA fringe who love Donald Trump and think affordability means more oil subsidies. He still hasn’t convinced normal people he’s fit to run anything bigger than a backyard BBQ. Hammered the same tired lines about prices and taxes, sure, but dodged anything real that might scare off his adoring hicks.

They say more details are coming, he’s gonna tour and talk. Yeah, sure he is. If he wants anyone outside that echo chamber to take him seriously as PM material, he better start sounding like he wants pandas from Beijing instead of pandering to those yahoos. God, it makes me sick—he was supposed to crash and burn, and instead these idiots propped him right back up.

OK, so I took liberties.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

Blacklocks: 889 foreign students hired by Gov’t of Canada in 2024

• tour guides & gift shop assistants at fed museums
• researchers @CBC
• kitchen staff & stagehands @CanadasNAC
• clerks & IT staff @CanRevAgency
• @NRC_CNRC hired 135 foreign students
• @CMHC_ca hired 30 foreign students

@TBS_Canada: “The Public Service Employment Act gives preference to eligible veterans first, then Canadian citizens and permanent residents for all external advertised appointments provided that merit is met.”

Jobless rates for Canadian students increased after 2023 order allowing 1,040,985 foreign students unlimited access to the workforce.

When a diversity workforce does the hiring, they hire uniformity.

Alex, I’ll take UniParty for $500!

OMG this is ridiculous:

IMO any Western Canadian who thinks that the federal Tories are their solution to a better future is seriously deluding themselves.

Related: There appears to be a “Bad Optics” list.

January 31, 2026: Reader Tips

An Irish-Canadian gentleman from Montréal shaped my political views from a young age. His name was Pat Burns and he was a prominent voice on the airwaves of Vancouver for many years. Here’s a snapshot of his career: Hotline Radio Talkshow from December 1986.

Bonus: Two of my favourite Canadian vloggers, Kelsi Sheren & Tajana Cekic, have a great conversation.

Got some hot takes on recent news events? You know where to share ’em!

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