Quotulatiousness

May 30, 2019

Doug Ford versus the Ontario neo-prohibitionists, progressive temperance snobs and other social control freaks

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

During the last Ontario election, it was common to disparage Doug Ford as being “Trump-like”, and now that he’s the Premier, it turns out to be true in at least one aspect: Ford does have a Trump-like ability to induce a form of hysteria in his opponents. Ford’s crusade to liberalize Ontario’s alcohol market is a case in point. In the Toronto Star, all the old arguments against liberalization — usually portraying Alberta’s long-since liberalized market as a dystopian hell-hole of alcohol-shattered lives — are being dragged out again:

The key is that the Ford team doesn’t actually care about wine that will be sold in corner stores and more supermarkets. It’s a sop to tourists, which seems reasonable.

No, it cares about beer because beer is a social marker, a shorthand. Wine is considered urban but buck-a-beer is rural/semi-urban. Men drink it. Men with beerbellies drink it. To a government mysteriously seeking a vote that it already has, drinking beer is a signal that a man is a regular guy. But Ford is not a regular guy. He doesn’t drink. He’s not anxious. He’s not renting.

It is very much a problem that any government in power would believe this of the regular guy vote. Alcohol causes hospitalization, crime and early death. It destroys families and jobs, and eventually its victims drink to block out what they lost by drinking.

[…]

They may not know it, they may be doing it instinctively, but it is still madness. Alcoholics are costly to treat and they suffer terribly. Courting their vote comes courtesy of a report by a former health minister in Alberta where booze is sold in private liquor stores.

The problem, as Albertans know, is you’re too afraid to buy it. These stores are often shabby places that are magnets for violence. Watch out, Premier Ford, it’s Ontario and there’s going to be NIMBY.

I am aware that I’m writing like a preacher. Preach on, sister. Anyone over 30 learns to distinguish between people who drink for pleasure and those who cannot cope with it. We are horrified. We offer help.

Back in 2013, Colby Cosh neatly summarized the Ontario neo-prohibitionist rhetoric:

Albertans find it instructive to watch Ontario politicians debate the privatization of liquor retailing, which Klein’s cabinet bulldog, Dr. Stephen West, executed almost overnight in 1993. It was perhaps the representative policy move of the Klein era, the best symbol of his approach to government. Today one will hear Ontarians telling themselves the most bizarre things about Alberta in order to support the idiot belief that booze is a natural monopoly. “You can’t even get red wine there! All they have in the stores is various flavours of corn mash and antifreeze! The streets resound with the white canes of the blinded!” Talk to the saner residents and you rapidly discover the real root of Ontarians’ positive feeling for the LCBO, which is esthetic. It’s just nicer to buy a handle of Maker’s Mark from someone who makes a union wage and has a vague halo of officialdom. You leave the shop feeling okay about your vice.

Klein was liked by Albertans, not because of some mythic popular touch, but because there wasn’t an ounce of tolerance for this sort of thing in him. Alcohol was something he understood very well. (Too well.) People do not need liquor to be flogged to them any harder than the manufacturers already do; put a man in prison and he will make the stuff in the toilet starting on day two. What the old ALCB was really marketing to the public, and what the LCBO markets now, was itself — its own role as social protector/moral approver/tastemaker. Klein identified that part of the system as a parasitic growth, a vestige with no function but its own preservation; and he had West ectomize it with the swiftness of a medieval barber.

May 29, 2019

Trudeau’s Liberals consider running on “more taxes” platform for fall election

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Are you ready for more taxes? Justin Trudeau seems to think you are, and internal Liberal Party documents indicate that several “revenue enhancement” tools are among the ideas being considered for inclusion in the party’s election campaign:

Are you ready for a tax on pop?

That is what some Liberals want to run on in October’s election.

Well, that and a carbon tax, a plastic tax, a tax on selling your home and more.

When it comes to taxes, Liberal like them all.

Lest you think I’m picking on Liberals, this actually comes from an internal party document that was first reported by the Liberal-friendly CBC.

“Ontario Liberal MPs want to pitch voters on a “sugar sweetened beverages levy — more commonly known as a soda tax — in the coming federal election campaign,” reported CBC over the weekend.

The information came from a series of policy proposals put forward by Ontario Liberal MPs that were to be considered for both the budget earlier this year and as potential policies for the upcoming election.

“We have a problem with sugar sweetened beverages being too readily available at too low a price and it is massively contributing to the obesity epidemic,” Liberal MP Mark Holland wrote in support of the proposal.

The Liberals want a tax of 20% on any sugar sweetened beverage believing it could bring in an estimated $1.2 billion a year or $29.6 billion over 25 years and health-care savings of $7.3 billion over 25 years.

May 28, 2019

Rumours of a pending gun ban fuel panic buying at Canadian gun stores

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

During the Obama years in the US, fears of new government restrictions on firearms helped create a booming market for firearms and the same thing is happening here in Canada as the Trudeau government is said to be contemplating some draconian revisions to existing gun laws, especially for handguns and AR-15 style semi-automatic weapons:

Colt Canada’s model SA20, a commercial version of the Canadian C7A2 rifle.
Image from the Colt Canada website.

Federally licensed sport shooters are snapping up $3,000 guns on concern Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will ban new sales to win votes in the October election.

The website of Firearms Outlet Canada showed all AR-15s “Out of Stock” today at 3 p.m. in Toronto. At Al Flaherty’s Outdoor Store, all but 2 of the 17 versions offered online were “Sold Out.” The website of Wolverine Supplies said most are “Out of Stock.”

The Ontario and Manitoba companies are among the biggest independent gun shops in Canada.

“We are completely sold out of AR-15s, AGAIN…except for what’s on consignment,” Select Shooting Supplies in Cambridge, Ontario, said today on Twitter.

[…]

All guns are banned already for everyone who doesn’t have a firearm licence authorized by the federal police.

Anyone who buys, sells, owns or travels with a firearm in Canada is severely restricted by law. They must pass courses, tests, background checks, reference checks and obtain spousal approval to get police permission for a licence. They must disclose breakups and job losses.

More Controls

People who own AR-15s and handguns endure even more controls.

They need special police permission to buy each gun or to take one to another province. They can go to prison for having a standard-capacity AR-15 ammunition magazine, for shooting anywhere besides one of the 1,400 government-approved target ranges, or for taking a detour on the way to the range.

As we all know, crime involving weapons — especially firearms — is widely reported in the media, and many Canadians seem to have the belief that the majority of these criminals are somehow going to be deterred from using firearms if we just pass one more law. Urban Canadians generally have little or no contact with legal gun owners, and tend to assume that gun crime is directly linked to legal guns (often through the totally nonsensical “gun show loophole” that doesn’t exist in Canada).

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.

May 24, 2019

Ontario universities’ “quarter-million dollar club”

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Being a tenured university professor is generally a well-paid job, even in Canada. But thanks to an unintended interaction between pension legislation and retirement policies, older tenured professors are required to draw their pensions (which are pretty damned good by themselves) and their salaries from the university, which boosts many of them well into the quarter-million a year range:

University College, University of Toronto, 31 July, 2008.
Photo by “SurlyDuff” via Wikimedia Commons.

Ontario is a weird place sometimes. One month ago, the government announced that it was implementing a performance-based funding plan which – if you took the government’s half-thought-out comments seriously – raised the possibility that hundreds of millions or perhaps even billions of dollars currently projected to be spent on institutions might be snatched away if institutions failed to hit some ill-defined targets in a type of contract-based funding system. You’d think this would be a big deal, something people would want to talk about and discuss.

But no. Somehow, this is not what is currently obsessing the Ontario university sector. Instead, apparently, we need to talk about how it’s a human rights violation for professors to be asked to enjoy their retirement on a six-figure annual pension.

Crazy? Well, yes. Here’s the deal. Time used to be that universities could tell professors to retire at age 65 or 67 or whenever. Over the course of the 2000s, provinces gradually got rid of mandatory retirement; in Ontario this occurred in 2006, when the provincial government amended the Human Rights Code to that effect. It should have surprised absolutely no one that more and more full professors, who towards the end of their career routinely make over $180,000 per year, decided to delay retirement not just past 65 but pretty much forever. In 2011, only 6.7% of professors were over 65 and 0.9% 70 or over. Just five years later in 2016, that was up to 10.2% and 3.3% respectively. At the time, I estimated that the compensation costs for the over-65s amounted to $1.3 billion, or enough to hire about 10,000 new junior faculty. The share of that going to the 70-pluses would amount to a little north of $400 million.

But here’s the thing: federal pension legislation requires individuals to start drawing down their pensions at age 71. You can’t opt-out. And so as a result you get individuals who are in what Carleton University economist Frances Woolley recently called the “quarter-million dollar club” (do read Frances’ piece – everything she does on higher education is excellent, but she is extra-excellent on this one). Even if you understand the legislative path that led us here, you probably – rightly – think this is an outrageous sum, particularly in light of the fact that research productivity tends to decline over time and teaching loads among full professors are not all that onerous.

On the other side of the pond, a recent tribunal ruling at Oxford’s St. John’s College points in a very different direction:

Oxford and Cambridge universities can force old professors to retire in order to boost diversity, a tribunal ruling suggests.

Prof John Pitcher, a leading Shakespeare scholar and fellow at St John’s College at Oxford, claimed that he had been unfairly pushed out at age 67 to make way for younger and more ethnically diverse academics.

He sued the College and university for age discrimination and unfair dismissal, claiming loss of earnings of £100,000 – but Judge Bedeau dismissed both claims.

Ottawa chooses boring names for their new light rail trains

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

OC Transpo, the Ottawa area transit authority, ran a contest for children to suggest names for their new light rail trains. Being bureaucrats, they carefully avoided choosing some rather clever names the kids suggested:

Ottawa O-Train leaving St.Laurent Station tunnel, January 2018
Photo by “Saboteurest” via Wikimedia Commons.

When commuters and tourists finally do step on to the $2.1 billion light-rail system – already more than two years behind schedule – they’ll ride Maple Taffy, Snowbird or Northern Lights, when they could’ve boarded Shania Train or Roberta Bondcar, a witty nod to Canada’s first female astronaut.

Culled from entries restricted to children 16 and under, winning selections that consisted largely of Canadian clichés favoured by the City of Ottawa, was not due to a lack of overall creativity from the youth who participated.

Zooming Poutine, The Queensway Cruise and Sir Chuggsalot were overlooked for winning selections Poppy, Totem and Tundra. Galloping Goose, Tunnel Beaver and The Speed Beaver were also overlooked by judges, who preferred The Canada Goose, Majestic Moose and Nanuq/Polar Bear.

Even Ottawa professional sports teams and fan-favourites like former Senators’ stars Daniel Alfreddson and Erik Karlsson – The Alfie and Karlsson Express – didn’t make the cut, while Rocket Richard, the Montreal Canadiens legend, will rub this in at every stop his train makes.

[…]

But perhaps the most glaringly overlooked multiple-entry from the more historically-minded youth was Thomas Ahearn, a local inventor and founder of the Ottawa Electric Railway Company which built the city’s original streetcar system.

Judges also denied Justin Traindeau and The Jimmy Wagon (a wink at current Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson), and weren’t keen on Sorry, NIMBY Express, Taxed To Death and Da Sink Hole from the more politically sardonic kids; the latter a jab at the huge pit rail construction opened up on Rideau Street.

May 23, 2019

The Supreme Court of Canada goes on a roadtrip

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Carpay explains why the Supreme Court’s junket in September isn’t a good idea:

While hearing two cases in Winnipeg rather than Ottawa is a friendly gesture, the Court’s choice of which groups to meet with – and not meet with – in Winnipeg is necessarily a political choice. If you thought the Court would meet with Ukrainians and Germans (Manitoba’s two largest non-English ethnic communities), prisoners, seniors, taxpayer groups and English language rights activists opposed to official bilingualism, you would be wrong.

In fact, the Court has announced that it will meet with “indigenous communities, the francophone community, the legal community, and students.” What message does this send to the Canadian public, which wants an impartial court deciding on aboriginal claims? What does meeting with the francophone community in Winnipeg say in relation to the Court hearing a case about minority language educational rights? And what if university tuition payments were at the heart of a case that came before the SCC, with its Justices having met only with students, but not with taxpayers?

As Canadians, the Supreme Court judges already interact with the public in their private lives, in Ottawa and elsewhere. One could reasonably assume that the nine lawyers appointed to this Court each meet individually with various people regularly, on the basis of friendship, shared interests, or family obligations. The people with whom any one judge meets over the course of a year would likely not form a perfect microcosm of Canadian society, in terms of race, religion, political views, income, and level of education. This is to be expected, and there is nothing wrong with it, because the personal connections formed by any one judge are not publicly endorsed by the Court. Not so for these meetings of “the Court” as a whole in Winnipeg, which is what makes the Court’s exclusion of many groups worrisome.

Chief Justice Wagner would no doubt respond to the above by saying that he and his colleagues will do their very best to decide all cases impartially, regardless of which groups they chose to meet with (and not meet with) in Winnipeg. And he would be right.

But that doesn’t solve the problem. The Court has made a political decision to meet with francophones, not English language rights activists; lawyers not prisoners; students not seniors; aboriginals not Germans or Ukrainians. In view of the ancient and centrally important legal maxim, “Not only must justice be done; justice must be seen to be done,” the Court should not be making these political decisions in the first place, in order to avoid even the appearance of possible bias.

It’s bad enough that the Prime Minister is seen to be putting a thumb on the scales of justice, but much worse if the highest court in the land is perceived to be doing the same thing.

May 22, 2019

Climate change, no, climate crisis, no, climate catastrophe, no, we mean climate APOCALYPSE!!!

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The official marching orders for journalists now insist that the language to use around what was formerly “global warming” or “climate change” will now be described in starker, more frightening terms. Canada’s Liberal Party, under Justin Trudeau, has been virtue signalling for pretty much its entire term in office on the climate issue and with a fall election coming into view, the rhetoric will become more extreme and shrill. Jay Currie discusses climate change and the Canadian election:

I suspect this divide between people who think “doing something” about climate change (no matter how futile) and people who do not accept the urgency of dealing with something they really don’t believe in will inform politics in the West for the next few years. Most particularly, it will inform the next Canadian federal election.

The Liberal Party of Canada has been going all in on its “tax on carbon pollution” (a fine bit of wordsmithing managing to attach “carbon” to “pollution”). Led by the remarkably scolding Catherine McKenna, the Libs seem to think that purporting to “do something” about climate change is a vote winner. So McKenna tours the country speaking to uncritical school children and assorted environmentalists about how important having a “carbon tax” is. The Liberals tax will save the planet, ensure sea level rise stops (easy because sea level is not actually rising), save the Arctic ice cap (already saving itself, thank you), keep polar bears from extinction (also easy because virtually all polar bear populations are growing) and reduce or eliminate climate change “caused” weather events. Plus, Canada will honour its Paris Accord commitments (we won’t) and serve as a beacon to lesser nations like China and India in their efforts to combat climate change (as if).

The Liberals think that the fact that a carbon dioxide tax in Canada will have a rounding error effect on worldwide emissions and no detectable effect on world temperature does not matter politically. What matters politically is that the Liberals believe that there is a large constituency out there which urgently wants to “do something”.

The NDP is fully on board and, of course, the Greens have been banging the climate change drum forever. Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives seem to be on the fence. Like the Coalition in Australia, the Conservatives endorse the “climate change is a problem” line and very few are willing to challenge the underlying science or economics for fear of being branded uncool “climate change deniers”. But the Conservatives seem to be, prudently in my view, dragging their feet on “doing something” about CO2.

Political virtue signalling on the climate file is the easy part. All that is really required is the abandonment of any sort of scientific judgement (easy when you are told that all the scientists agree that climate change is real and primarily human caused) and policy skepticism (we don’t need a cost benefit analysis, this is an emergency!). The hard part occurs when you try to “do something”. Because doing something means that people are going to see their expenses rise without actually seeing (in any tangible way) any actual benefit. In fact, as Ontario’s wonderfully disastrous adventure in wind energy demonstrated, tax dollars can be wasted and consumer prices increased all without making any difference at all to the climate.

May 20, 2019

QotD: Victoria Day

Filed under: Cancon, History, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Happy Victoria Day, the day we honour an old queen by giving her not a moment’s thought. A year or two back, some professor thought we should change Victoria Day to Heritage Day to “strengthen our heritage.” We strengthen our heritage by obliterating it, apparently. … She was our first wholly constitutional monarch, and thus a critical figure at a critical time: She embodies the principle of peaceful evolution that distinguishes the Britannic world from … well, pretty much everywhere else, come to think of it.

Mark Steyn, “Victoria Day”, The National Post, 2002-05-20.

May 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau expects more than just ordinary loyalty from civil servants

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Post Millennial, Mika Ryu summarizes Trudeau’s un-statesman-like behaviour through the Admiral Norman persecution — including his decision not to be in the house when a motion was passed apologizing to Norman — and offers an explanation for Trudeau’s oddities:

… according to a Globe and Mail report published around 6am on Friday by their Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife, who also broke the SNC-Lavalin story in February of this year.

In the new bombshell report, Mr. Trudeau is alleged to have been furious about the leak that prevented the Liberal government from cancelling a massive ship building contract that was already well on its way to being executed.

The prime minister is alleged to have felt “betrayed” by the leak, after “all he had done” for the public service after a decade under Harper. This is very similar to the reason why he yelled at MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes when she told him that she would not run for re-election.

It is becoming clear that defeating Harper has turned Trudeau into a hero in his own mind, for which the entire country and all of its citizen owe him an infinite debt.

It was already known that the Privy Council Office had called in the RCMP to investigate the person behind the collapse of a would-be sweetheart deal for the well-connected “Rockefellers of Atlantic Canada”. This was a very unusual move, which was supported by alleged “Irving’s Boy”.

It continues to paint a troubling picture of the prime minister, a man who perhaps might not have “been so forward” with his corruption if he knew that the national newspapers would report on it, even in the face of the state’s increasing use of sinister carrots and sticks in the run-up to the election.

6 Wartime Foods | British Pathé

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Food, History, USA, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

British Pathé
Published on 20 Sep 2016

BON APPETIT – FOOD MONTH ON BRITISH PATHÉ (SEPTEMBER 2016): 6 Wartime Foods.

War and postwar changed the perception of foods that we now may consider as ordinary and basic. Here is a list of 6 Wartime Foods.

Check the newsreels used to make this video here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Music:
The Show Must Be Go (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

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BRITISH PATHÉ’S STORY
Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.

Now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.

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British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 120,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1979. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website.

May 17, 2019

QotD: Mark Steyn and the “Human” “Rights” Tribunals

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s statements like these that have landed Steyn on various hit lists, including, most famously, those of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which are strange quasi-judicial bodies that were stirred to action a decade ago by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Between 2005 and 2007 the weekly news magazine Maclean’s published eighteen articles by Steyn, including an excerpt from America Alone, that were all deemed “Islamophobic” by the human rights tsars. Without going into excruciating detail about the various legal jockeying that took place — who knew one country could have this many commissions and tribunals that could all attack simultaneously? — Steyn and Maclean’s were charged with inciting hatred against Muslims, setting in motion an endless process of discovery and hearings.

“We were trying to lose,” said Steyn. “We wanted them to find us guilty so that we could appeal to a real court, hopefully the Supreme Court, and prove that these hate-speech laws are more absurd than any laws outside North Korea. Before I came along, these human rights tribunals had a 100 per cent conviction rate! The fact that we fought back meant that I became an albatross around their neck. The Thought Police were exposed to massive unrelenting publicity for the first time, and they didn’t expect that. They didn’t expect us to push back. But free speech is on the retreat, and this was not a time for a faint-hearted defence.”

The Canadian Human Rights Commission eventually bowed out of their part in the imbroglio, saying the articles were “polemical, colourful and emphatic” but failed to satisfy the definition of writings “of an extreme nature” as defined by the Supreme Court. But the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal was not so sure, holding a five-day hearing during which the Canadian Islamic Congress presented evidence that twenty articles in Maclean’s presented Islam as a violent religion and Muslims as violent people, with the Islamist lawyer using words like racist, hateful, contemptuous, Islamophobic and irresponsible. Mahmoud Ayoub, a Harvard historian of religion, testified that Steyn didn’t understand the meaning of the word jihad and that, of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, less than a million interpreted jihad to justify violence against non-believers. (I don’t know of any other religion in the world that has merely a million devotees willing to kill, but that’s what the man said.)

Mark Steyn, interviewed by John Bloom, “Mark Steyn, Cole Porter and Free Speech”, Quadrant, 2017-05-11.

May 16, 2019

Boys Anti-Tank Rifle: Mk I and Mk I* Improvements

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 11 Apr 2019

These rifles are lots #1087 and #1088 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/boys…

The Boys Anti-Tank Rifle was adopted by the British military in 1937, and remained in production until 1943 when it was replaced by the PIAT. During that time more than 114,000 were made, both in the UK and in Canada. Canadian engineers at the John Inglis company devised a number of improvements to the rifle in 1942, which were adopted as the Mk I* pattern that year. Today we are looking at these improvements with examples of each type side by side. They are a new style of muzzle brake, simplified rear sight, and improved bipod design.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

May 14, 2019

Is Canada ready for a New Green Democratic Party?

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ali Taghva explores the notion of the federal NDP and Green parties joining together:

With fundraising and polling numbers in sharp decline at the same time that experienced MPs and staff leave the party, it is evident, even the base of the NDP is beginning to lose faith in the current direction led by Jagmeet Singh.

Worryingly for every single NDP member in the country, this is occurring even when Justin Trudeau’s post-election honeymoon has long ended.

As a result, it appears that the Green Party has become the progressive vehicle gaining the most federal momentum. Their fundraising numbers are on the upswing, and if the trend in the latest by-election in B.C. holds up, they may be the preferred refuge for disenfranchised Liberal voters.

While the Green Party does have momentum, it will not be able to push forward as Canada’s progressive alternative, at least not alone.

The party is still astronomically behind the Conservatives and Liberals when it comes to fundraising, quality of candidates, and polling support.

Even in comparison to the NDP, the Greens are still behind in fundraising and polling, although the distance between the two parties is far more negligible.

With both parties too far back to do anything other than reducing the Liberal vote, ensuring a Conservative majority, it may be time for Canadian progressives to seriously consider a merger between the Green party and the New Democrats.

Okay, but why now? What would be the big draw … oh:

Perhaps most interestingly though, a united alternative progressive party could easily bring on-board the two highest-profile individuals who still have no declared party for the federal election, Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould.

With most Canadians believing Jody Wilson-Raybould’s account over that of the Prime Minister’s, her entrance into the race along with Jane Philpott’s could be the final piece which catapults the party into contention for the role of governing party.

Of course, of course … the old celebrity candidates trick. That always works. Well, in urban downtown ridings, anyway.

The Broad Fourteens – Royal Navy Motor Torpedo Boats In WWII

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

PeriscopeFilm
Published on 20 Sep 2017

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Made in 1945, THE BROAD FOURTEENS is one of the excellent, dramatized accounts of WWII made by the Ministry of Information for morale purposes. The film shows the first posting, and eventual first action, of a newly-trained motor torpedo boat (MTB) crew. (‘The Broad Fourteens’ is the name given to a patrol area of the North Sea off the Dutch coast.) The film joins the boat and crew at the end of their training (probably HMS Bee, the Coastal Force working up base at Weymouth). The boats featured include 70’ Vosper 1942 class boats, 70’ British Power Boat motor gunboats and MTB 210 — a J Samuel White-built 70’ Vosper which later joined the 13th MTB Flotilla at Dover. The fictional MTB 181 is probably MTB 352, commanded by Lieutenant John M Moore RNVR which joined the 11th MTB Flotilla at Felixstowe after completing her work up. Also featured is MTB 354, commanded by Lieutenant Roland Plugge RN which was the SO’s boat, 5th MTB Flotilla, at Dover. The German flak trawler is in fact an RN Isles Class trawler standing in.

(0:48) Introduces the viewer to how the “broad fourteens” came to exist. Navy training is depicted (2:15). At the training commander’s office (2:25) the film shows the commander and the captain conversing about torpedo and battle experiences and strategies. [Note that they emphasize that Lieutenant Howard is Canadian, although clearly serving in the Royal Navy, as he doesn’t have a “Canada” patch on the shoulder of his uniform.] The crew is shown going through their regular activities. They discuss the previous battles as they are called together. The commander and the captain (5:10) discuss the boat’s impending departure. 5:40 shows the operational base as crews and the commander busily arrive the base. (6:48) operation room as a crew brings a report to the commander. The captain talks about his crew alongside another (7:28). At mark 8:00 the film shows the crew’s residential life. The crew are shown prepping for the first operation as their boats head offshore (9:15) and into the deep sea. The captain is shown calculating the boat’s navigation on his map (10:20). A communication link is established (11:18) and the captain discusses how much longer it is till they get to the operation site. Back at the base (12:20) the crews left converse. The crews are seen at the starmouth arms (14:30), they enjoyed listening to their music at (15:00). The crew takes care of their ship (16:05).

The commander converses with the captain (16:45). The crew are shown in their rooms (17:18). (17:27) is the Starmouth Arms where the crew talk among themselves. The Starmouth Arms manager receives a call which got all crews back to their base (18:40). The commander gives a report (19:20) on the mission and key targets. The meeting closes (20:00) as all crew member are set as they start their engine and move on (21:15). On the deep sea is the navigation map (21:50). At mark 22:20, the crews stops for awhile and takes a break. They move on (22:53). The key target is seen (23:10) and the troops get ready for firing. All crew on set as they wait on the captain to give the go ahead to shoot (23:50). The captain makes the key calculations as the crew stands by for the torpedo release. He gives the go (24:47) and the torpedo is launched out. The torpedo engages the target (25:06). Reports about the operation are documented (25:30) as they proceed to rendezvous point. Two German gun boats are sighted (25:47) as they appear and fire at the crew (26:03). Firing continues till 26:45. There is alarm about fire at the cargo base as a crew is injured (27:00). The fire is attended to as firing continues (27:50). The report about the casualty and the op is documented (28:30). Explosives are launched across the sea towards the enemy gun boats (29:15) as they cool down the heat on them.

Meanwhile back at the base, the film shows the commander (30:00) receiving a visit from his superior, who asks about the mission report as he looks towards the map (30:40). At the battle front, the captain asks about news on the gun boats (31:11) as his underlings all wait in anxiety. The gun boats are sighted (31:38) as they closes on fast towards the crew. At mark 31:53, they opened fire against the boat. A crew is hit (32:15). A gun boat comes in their rescue (33:00) and defeats the enemy boat. Gregory and Johnny are shown wounded. The gun boat (34:00) makes reports and request the course as they depart for home port.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

May 13, 2019

The political persecution of Vice-Admiral Norman

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Conrad Black on the recently stayed prosecution of the former Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman:

The RCMP, the same Palooka force that brought us the ghastly fiasco of the trial and resounding acquittal of Senator Mike Duffy, alleged that Vice Adm. Norman was the source of press leaks, and searched his house with a warrant in January 2017, a fact that was also mysteriously leaked to the press. He was suspended with full pay, and finally, in March of 2018, he was charged with a criminal breach of trust. The government barred him from the benefit of the loan of money for legal fees to accused government employees pending judgment, a capricious attempt to starve him into surrender.

Neither the media, usually pretty quick to jump on the back of any defendant, nor any other serious observers, believed the defendant, who started in the navy as a diesel mechanic and rose for 33 years to commander of the fleet and then serve as vice-chief of the defence staff, would do such a thing, or that the RCMP had any real evidence. It didn’t, inciting the suspicion that the Mounties, if they can’t raise their game, should stick to musical rides and selling ginger ale, and reinforcing the view that the Armed Forces should be funded properly, and not just in phony announcements every few years of naval construction and army and air force procurement programs that don’t happen. And It is, in any case unacceptable that police corporals get warrants to search the home of the second highest military officer in the country on grounds that are eventually shown to be unfounded.

It appears to be clear that exculpatory evidence was withheld by the prosecutors, deliberately or otherwise. Outgoing Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary Lt. Gen. (Rt.) Andrew Leslie (a grandson of two former defence ministers, Gen. Andrew McNaughton and Brooke Claxton), had announced he would testify on behalf of Vice Adm. Norman. The prime minister ducked out of question period for two days as this contemptible abuse of prosecution collapsed. Instead, he should, if conscientiously possible, have blamed it on the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould. That would have been believable, given some of her other antics in that office.

If he can’t do that, then this rotten egg falls on him and could be a politically mortal blow. The SNC-Lavalin affair was an attempt to save jobs in Canada and avoid over-penalization of a successful international company where there is a legal right for the justice department to choose between a fine and criminal prosecution. It was bungled, a ludicrous amateur hour that brought down senior civil servants and led to expulsions of ex-cabinet ministers as Liberal MPs, but it was not a show-stopper unless the prime minister lied to Parliament.

This appears to be a malicious and illegal prosecution of a blameless senior serving officer, who fought his corner as a brave man must. If that is what it is, heads should roll, not of scapegoats, token juniors, or fall-guys, but of those responsible for this outrage.

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