Disagree with gender transition practices? Ontario just passed a law that will allow them to seize children of parents that are not supportive of their child’s “gender identity” or “gender expression.” The Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act of 2017, or Bill 89, was approved by a vote of 63 to 23,

SOURCE: THEGUARDIAN.COM

One of Canada’s biggest pension funds has quietly divested from two private prison operators responsible for the detention of thousands of migrants along the US-Mexico border.

Late last year, the Guardian reported that the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) held nearly US$8m in stock in Geo Group and CoreCivic, which between them hold the lion’s share of contracts to manage Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facilities in the US.

The CPPIB, which manages C $392bn (US $299m) in pension funds on behalf of 20 million Canadians, did not make a public statement when it dropped the two companies from its list of foreign public equity holdings, but the change was spotted this week by the federal MP Charlie Angus, a member of the opposition New Democratic party.

The decision not to roll over the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) if Britain crashes out of the European Union without a deal on October 31 could have a huge impact on businesses selling goods to the Canadian market. Britain has insisted Canada roll over CETA, even in the event of a no deal Brexit, but the North American country is awaiting the outcome of any further talks between London and Brussels before making a final decision, a source at the Department for International Trade told BuzzFeed News. The same source told the news website British trade officials are “furious” at the embarrassing rejection, having spent the best part of a year trying to convince Canada to extend CETA.

Canada is a major trading partner of the UK, accounting for 1.6 percent of the country’s exports.

An advanced U.S. Navy combat ship that is slated to be commissioned as the U.S.S. Billings collided with a berthed freighter in Montreal on Monday, FreightWaves reported. Both ships were damaged as a result, but their crews were safe. The U.S. Freedom-class littoral combat ship hit the M/V Rosaire A. Desgagnes at about 2PM on Monday, according to Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, a Navy spokesperson.

The Billings is 378 feet long and sustained damage below the waterline as a result. The damage to the 452 foot dry bulk vessel it collided with has not been fully assessed yet. The bulk vessel is owned by Quebec-based Transport Desgagnés.

The U.S. Navy is reportedly still investigating the incident and despite the fact that the Billings was "capable" of making it to its Florida homebase, it is being kept in Montreal for additional damage assessments.

Whereas the OCLA and the BCCLA (and the CCLA) are distinct and separate organizations, the OCLA nonetheless also opposes the international campaign to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is targeting all levels of government in Canada, as well as universities, police, and other authorities.

In this context, the OCLA opposes the “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code. The said provisions are distinct from the “threat of violence”, “harassment” and “coercion” provisions, are contrary to international law, remove the State’s onus to prove actual harm to any actual specific victim, and are incompatible with democratic values. Further, the said provisions are susceptible to erosion and practical abuse from political campaigns such as the IHRA campaign.

On 13 June, the Toronto Raptors won the National Basketball Association (NBA) Championship. A few days earlier, news had broken in the Israeli media that one of the team’s billionaire co-owners, Larry Tannenbaum, announced in April that if the team won, he would take them on a trip to Israel. Tannenbaum is one of the founders of the leading pro-Israel lobby group in Canada, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) It is interesting to note how the Zionist lobby seamlessly merges Israel and Jewish. The reaction by progressive fans to this proposed trip was initially shock, and then a commitment to push back on such a blatant attempt to sports-wash Israel’s war crimes. The Canadian BDS Coalition started a petition on 14 June, calling on team members not to be part of such an infamy; it has already gathered over 3,000 signatures.

The spiraling diplomatic row between Ottawa and Beijing "lies entirely with Canada," the Chinese foreign ministry said Thursday — suggesting for the first time that its leadership won't speak with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau until Canada drops extradition proceedings against a Chinese telecom executive.

CBC News reported Wednesday that Beijing ignored a personal attempt by Trudeau earlier this year to arrange a conversation with China's premier in order to intervene on behalf of Canadians detained in China. Trudeau's office confirms that the prime minister requested the meeting, but China ignored and ultimately rejected his request.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told CBC Radio last month she also sought a meeting with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, but was unsuccessful.

Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler was on stage as one of several “inspiring thought leaders” talking about “pressing human rights issues” at Montreal’s Concordia University on Monday.

But one issue the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights was in no hurry to talk about is Israel’s massive and systematic violations of Palestinian rights.

Cotler was the focus of a disruption that sought to raise the question of Palestine in a place where members of Canada’s liberal elite preferred silence.

As the video above shows, lawyer and activist Dimitri Lascaris jumps up on the stage and challenges Cotler directly, pointing out how Israeli snipers have deliberately killed journalists, medics and unarmed protesters during Great March of Return protests in Gaza over the last year.

David Menzies of The Rebel spoke to author Mark Steyn after he testified (or tried to) before Canada's Justice Committee. The Trudeau Liberals are clearly planning to bring back Section 13, the internet censorship provision under which Steyn was prosecuted 10 years ago.

The thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have been killed or have vanished in Canada in the past decades are victims of a "Canadian genocide," a report obtained by CNN partner CBC says.

The violence these Indigenous victims have faced over the years occurred through "state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies," CBC reported, quoting from the leaked report of a national inquiry.

The report, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, includes testimonies from more than 1,400 family members and survivors and 83 knowledge-keepers, experts and officials, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls said in a statement last month.

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA.COM
A cargo ship carrying tonnes of rubbish dumped in the Philippines by Canada more than five years ago, causing a festering diplomatic row, has left the Southeast Asian country, as nations in the region increasingly reject serving as dumpsites for wealthier states.

The 69 shipping containers of rotting waste were loaded onto the M/V Bavaria at Subic Bay port in the early hours of Friday, before embarking on a 20-day journey to Vancouver, in southwestern Canada.

"Baaaaaaaaa bye, as we say it," Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin wrote on Twitter, along with images of the vessel leaving.

Baaaaaaaaa bye, as we say it. pic.twitter.com/VetL4fP4Nj

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) May 31, 2019
Environmental activists, including those from Greenpeace and EcoWaste Coalition, welcomed the Bavaria's arrival at Subic Bay, and on Thursday sailed on board a small outrigger with a streamer reading, "Philippines: not a garbage dumping ground!"

The Philippines has followed through on its threat to send 1,500 tonnes of illegally dumped rubbish back on a boat to Canada, ending a six-year dispute between the two countries.

Wilma Eisma, administrator of Subic Bay freeport, confirmed that the 69 containers of garbage had been loaded overnight on the container ship M/V Bavaria, which left on a 20-day journey to the Canadian port city of Vancouver, via Taiwan.

Eisma said the the move ended a “sordid chapter in our history”.

The dispatch of the Canadian rubbish, which had been sitting in two Philippine ports since 2013 and 2014 while Canada refused to acknowledge the issue, was a cause for celebration in the Philippines.

China says Canada needs to be aware of the consequences of aiding the United States in a case involving the Chinese tech giant Huawei that is believed to have sparked the detentions of two Canadians in China.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang's comments Friday came after U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Chinese authorities detained Spavor, a businessman, and former diplomat Kovrig on Dec. 10, shortly after Canada arrested China-based Huawei's Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, on a U.S. warrant.

In terms of market action, trade fears really seem to have settled in as the dominant theme on markets. But if markets are simply wondering when there will be a solution, then they may be waiting for the wrong thing. While the mood remains negative as the market waits for a US/China agreement/resolution, maybe the new long-term reality is an increasingly and deliberately bifurcated global economy? The US and its allies vs China. If it sounds familiar – it should in terms of 1945-89. The West won the last Cold War on the same basis – and the economic benefits accrued to the free capitalist states, a theme the Neo-coms are increasingly banding around. You just imagine the scene in the war room: “This is time Mr President..”

The nation of Canada has been giving us a chilling vision of what it looks like when a western nation completely succumbs to the dangerous ideology of multiculturalism, the cultural Marxism that always inevitably restricts the rights of some to pave the way for the rights of others.

There is no equality in multiculturalism.

Christians have faced increasing adversity in Canada as of late, but new proposed legislation that would make it a crime to publicly express one’s faith is a chilling new low.

In the proposed legislation, it would become illegal for Christians to make any public displays which are deemed hateful to Muslims, LGBT people, and other victim groups as designated by the left. The bill has been dubbed “Prohibiting Hate-Promoting Demonstrations at Queen’s Park Act, 2019,” is part of Canada’s anti-hate laws and would give the government complete freedom to ban all things Christian.

A Canadian court is hearing a lawsuit against a decision to allow wines made and manufactured in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to be labelled “Product of Israel”.

According to a report in Middle East Eye, David Kattenburg, a Jewish-Canadian activist based in Winnipeg, has applied to the Federal Court of Canada for an order “declaring unlawful” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) directive.

In 2017, the CFIA “ordered liquor stores across the province of Ontario to de-shelve two Israeli settlement wines that were being sold with the label ‘Product of Israel’”, before promptly reversing its stance after “widespread public pressure from pro-Israel groups in Canada”.

“What [the CFIA’s decision] amounts to is an acknowledgement and endorsement of Israel’s de facto annexation of the settlements,” Kattenburg told Middle East Eye earlier this month.

First Nations in Ontario have run out of patience. For 43 years, the forest industry has been conducting aerial spraying of glyphosate herbicide on Indigenous lands – a “rain of death” used in forest management practice that has slowly been killing off a wide range of animals, plants, fish and insects. First Nations have tried to stop this practice since the 1990s through a variety of measures including meetings with logging companies and government officials, protests and reports, but all to no avail. The “rain of death” keeps coming.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a telephone conversation with Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó on Tuesday. Trudeau’s office said Guaidó “conveyed his commitment to holding free and fair elections as soon as possible, in line with the Venezuelan constitution.”

“Canada remains committed to free and fair elections in Venezuela, and we’re working with the Lima Group to strengthen international support for Venezuelans,” Trudeau said on social media after the phone call.

The Lima Group is a coalition of Latin American states and Canada organized in 2017 to find a resolution to the Venezuelan political crisis. The group has expressed support for Guaidó and urged the Venezuelan military to stop propping up socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. The Lima Group’s February declaration of support for Guaidó was not signed by three of its members, namely Guyana, St. Lucia, and Mexico.

Quinn Nystrom was expecting the worst.

She thought the U.S. Border Patrol would want to search her car. That she would be bombarded with questions. That they would demand she show her prescription for insulin.

Worst of all, she was worried they would confiscate the small, cold vials of a life-saving drug that she had crossed the border to buy at a pharmacy in Fort Frances, Ont.

But it didn't happen. Not for Nystrom, not for anyone in her small group from Minnesota — calling themselves the Caravan to Canada — who were on a mission last weekend to buy insulin at one-tenth the price of what it's listed in the United States.

A system to transfer money online — used over a million times a day in Canada — is not as safe as it advertises, says a Royal Bank customer who had $1,734 stolen during an e-transfer.

The theft occurred after Anne Hoover of Peterborough, Ont., e-transferred money from her RBC account to her friend Fran Fearnley, only to have a fraudster intercept the transaction and divert the money to his own account at another bank.

"I always use e-transfer," says Hoover. "I thought it was a safe way to send money."

As insulin prices soar to new heights, some Americans have decided to cross the Canadian border to obtain cheaper medication.

People from Minnesota who are part of the #Insulin4All initiative organised a "Caravan to Canada", driving five hours to purchase insulin for $30 (£23) a vial rather than the $300 they would pay in the US.

It may have taken a while, but now that housing prices are starting to crash in Vancouver, BC legislators are finally starting to get wise to the fact that the province has been a hot bed for money laundering. It was an easy problem to ignore with prices on the way up, but on the way down - not so much.

And so an independent report released on Thursday concluded that an astounding $7.4 billion was laundered in British Columbia in 2018, out of a total of $46.7 billion laundered across Canada throughout the same period. The report was published by an expert panel led by former B.C. deputy attorney general Maureen Maloney.

Canada's claim over the Northwest Passage is "illegitimate," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday in a major speech to the Arctic Council that Canadian experts called both provocative and frequently inaccurate.

Pompeo offered his characterization during a wide-ranging speech in Finland in which he also warned against China's increased Arctic presence, saying it threatens North American security and could be harmful to the environment.

The evacuation comes after the Canadian capital Ottawa declared a state of emergency last Thursday, ordering 400 troops to be deployed to the city to help fight massive flooding which hit the east of the country.

More than 10,000 people have already been evacuated from their homes in flood-ravaged New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, according to CTV News.

The evacuation comes as Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said that the situation in Ontario was “potentially worsening”, while in Brunswick, around 9,200 residences and cottages remain flooded along with 7,000 other properties.

An anti-Semitic attack on a kosher cafe in Canada that police described as one of the “worst” they had seen has been revealed as a ruse by the owners. A vigil and a fundraising campaign had been set up to support the family.
The fake attack saw the BerMax Caffe and Bistro in Winnipeg spray painted with anti-Semitic graffiti and “severely vandalized.” A woman was assaulted and taken to the hospital for treatment, CBC reported at the time.

Police charged the owners with public mischief after an investigation involving 25 police officers and 1,000 hours of work revealed it to be nothing more than a scam. “In the end, we found evidence of a crime. It just wasn’t a hate crime,” Police Chief Danny Smyth said, Global News reports.

Ottawa imposed sanctions on 43 Venezuelan officials Wednesday, according to a statement by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

While the statement did not specify the names of those targeted, Freeland indicated that they were “high-ranking officials” or “governors.”

“Canada is committed to supporting the peaceful restoration of constitutional democracy in Venezuela,” she added.

Previous Canadian sanctions had targeted a total of 70 Venezuelan officials.

The measures by the Trudeau government come on the heels of successive rounds of sanctions imposed against Caracas by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). After sanctioning Venezuela’s oil, mining and banking sectors, Washington has recently gone after vessels and cargo companies involved in Venezuelan oil shipments. The latest round targeted four shipping companies and nine vessels on Friday.

Liberal’s Hypocrisy When It Comes To Refugees – This Is Hilarious!!! From warm and fuzzy soft headed bleeding hearts in an instant to cold hard hearted hypocrites – what a transmogrification! It’s a disease called Hypocrisa-nimbyitis – in short, not in my back yard no matter how hypocritical I have to be.

Earlier, Canada became one of the first countries to join the United States in recognising self-proclaimed 'interim president' Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate leader, with Caracas and its allies slamming Guaido's actions as an attempted foreign-backed coup d'etat.

Canada has imposed additional sanctions against "the Maduro regime", targeting over three dozen officials and others close to the Venezuelan president, Global Affairs Canada has announced.

Formed in the years immediately following World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), then comprised of Canada, the United States, and ten European powers, was presented to the world as a defensive pact, wherein an attack on one member is an attack on all. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains that NATO was established and conceived as “a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II.”

Today, seventy years after its founding, the Soviet Union is no more. NATO has increased its military involvement in theatres around the world, including the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Mediterranean, and Libya. Many of these missions were framed as ‘humanitarian interventions’ or disaster relief as opposed to aggression.

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

More than a million people, for no reason other than their ethnicity or religion, are held in concentration camps in what Beijing calls the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and what traditional inhabitants of the area, the Uighurs, say is East Turkestan. In addition to Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs are also held in these facilities.

Families in this troubled area, shown on maps as the northwestern portion of the People's Republic of China, are being torn apart. The children of imprisoned Uighur and Kazakh parents are "confined" to "schools" that are separated from the outside by barbed wire and heavy police patrols. They are denied instruction in their own language, forced to learn Mandarin Chinese. The controls are part of a so-called "Hanification" policy, a program of forced assimilation. "Han" is the name of China's dominant ethnic group.

Try as he might to convince the Canadian people that he was merely looking out for the jobs of thousands of Quebecois, the Canadian Press and Parliament keep poking holes in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's story in a corruption scandal that has tanked his poll numbers and stoked calls for his resignation.

The latest blow landed on Friday when a parliamentary committee published a clandestine recording made by former Canadian Justice Minister and AG Jody Wilson-Raybould of a phone call with former top bureaucrat and Trudeau advisor that clearly substantiates her story that she was "hounded" by Trudeau and his political henchmen, who subjected her to "inappropriate" political pressure over her decision to move ahead with the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec-based engineering firm accused of taking bribes from the Libyan government.

Our friends at Environment Canada have put off spring yet again with a freezing rain warning in effect for at least Saturday.

This covers both the Ottawa North (Kanata to Orléans) and Ottawa South (Richmond to Metcalfe) weather regions.

In short, freezing rain is expected today.

In more detail, it should start snowing early Saturday morning with a few centimetres of accumulation possible. Winds will be out of the east.

Snow had changed to ice pellets by the noon hour, and it was expected to mix with or change to freezing rain.