Quotulatiousness

June 16, 2024

“What the hell is going on in Canada?”

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

If you’re not Canadian or have any Canadian friends, you may not understand just how badly broken the country is — and the federal government is still desperately pretending that we’re all onboard with the Net Zero/Carbon Tax/”you’ll own nothing” bullshit and piling on the long-term debt:

One of Canada’s intelligence agencies, a couple of months ago, sent a memo to the Liberal federal government informing them that, in the near-future years to come, they are worried about revolutionary activity. I believe Canada is a good case study because it seems the country has been a sociological testing ground for the powers that be to see what happens. Canada is a surreal twilight zone where it feels like every psyop known to man is hurled its way. Canada unquestionably has the worst demographic and immigration issues, the worst housing issues, the worst social stability, and upwards mobility issues, all adjusted and proportional to its population and size, of course. For our purposes, I believe Canada serves as the worst-case scenario of how bad the dating market can be, and how bad it will continue to get.

Canada has some of the lowest upward social mobility among developed nations, especially for young people, particularly within the OECD and G8. This means that young people in Canada find it relatively difficult to move up the economic ladder compared to their parents.

In 2022, Canada’s population growth was significantly driven by immigration. According to Statistics Canada, approximately 95% of the population growth in that year was attributed to immigration. This includes both permanent and temporary residents, with a notable influx of international students, temporary workers, and permanent residents. Only a meagre 5% of Canada’s population growth, including recent immigrants, was from organic growth and childbirth. Below are the national origins of immigrants over the last twenty-four years. The combined total number of people entering Canada per year, including international students, temporary foreign workers, legal immigrants, and refugee claimants, is approximately 1,133,770 individuals officially. In reality, the government over the last four years has lost count.

As of April 2024, the average home price in Canada is approximately CAD $703,446. This is €477,121.93 and USD $511,466.93. Would you like to see what $703k CAD can get you in France? Hint: a lot more than in Canada.

This has been noticed so much by Canadians that it is now a meme, with Conservative Party and opposition leader Pierre Poilievre pointing it out in the House of Commons. You can compare the price of homes and the cost of living with Canadian wages. You can also compare how far those meagre wages would go in other first-world countries like France, Germany, or Sweden. The answer is much farther. Much, much farther. There is currently no hope, short of radical action by the government unheard of in Canadian history, for this situation to be rectified. The only other option is best left unsaid.

“Educated” Women Lead

In Canada, among ethnic Canadians, a significant portion of the female population is more educated and makes more money than Canadian men. Canadian men make, on average, CAD $48,500, while women make CAD $42,000. However, only 56% of men have post-secondary education, while 68% of women do. Men have completed higher levels of high school, and women have completed higher levels of college or university. This has led to a massive gap in socioeconomic status between men and women. It gets worse when you include non-ethnic Canadians. Completed levels of post-secondary education for men remain at 56%, while women’s rise to 73%.

We know that in our post-industrial world, resources translate to money. Money and completed levels of education translate to status. Women are 50% more likely to divorce men when they make more money. When women are already the initiators of divorce 70% of the time, it starts looking pretty ugly, fast.

June 14, 2024

When propaganda wins over historical facts, Ontario public schools edition

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

To someone of my generation (late boomer/early GenX), the history of the Residential School system was taught, at least superficially, in middle school. Along with the early settlement of what is now Canada by the French and later the English (with a very brief nod to the Vikings, of course), we got a cursory introduction to the relationships among the European settlers and explorers and the various First Nations groups they encountered. It wasn’t in great depth — what is taught in great depth in middle school? — but we got a rough outline. In my case, details about the Residential School system came more from a “young adult” novel about a young First Nations student running away from his school and trying to find his way back to his home and family. My best friend in school had First Nations ancestry, so I felt a strong desire to understand the book and the system and culture portrayed in it.

Kamloops Indian Residential School, 1930.
Photo from Archives Deschâtelets-NDC, Richelieu via Wikimedia Commons.

If, in the early 1970s, the Ontario school system taught at least a bit about the history of the First Nations peoples, how is it possible that they stopped doing so and my son’s generation were utterly blindsided by the sensationalist treatment of the students at a particular Residential School in British Columbia? And as a result, were far more credulous and willing to believe the worst that the “anticolonialist” propagandists could come up with.

“Igor Stravinsky” is a teacher in the Ontario school system who writes under a pseudonym for fairly obvious reasons, as he’s not a believer in the modern narrative about the history of First Nations children in the Residential School system:

This will be my last instalment of this series. I have attempted to shed light on the poor quality of information students are receiving in Ontario schools with regard to Indigenous history and current issues. It is important to note that this is being done intentionally. It is to the advantage of the leaders of the Indigenous Grievance Industry to characterise Canada and the pre-Canadian colonies of this land as genocidal oppressors, and our politicians have exploited this situation for crass political gain. This was perhaps epitomised by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s photo op of himself holding a teddy bear in the proximity of a soil disturbance in a field at the site of a former residential school in Cowessess First Nation, Saskatchewan on Tuesday, July 6, 2021:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holding a teddy bear in Cowessess First Nation, Saskatchewan.
July 6, 2021.

Are there actually human remains there? If so, of whom? Is this evidence of any kind of foul play? These are questions he was not about to bother to ask. Why would he, when such a golden opportunity to score political points presented itself?

We now know all this murdered Indigenous children stuff was a big hoax but don’t hold your breath waiting for Trudeau to issue an apology for staining the international reputation of Canada and triggering a knee-jerk vote by our Parliament declaring Canada a genocidal state and adopting the The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (more on that below). Undoing all this damage will be a herculean task.

Just as students are fed simplistic, misleading, and false information about the past with regard to Indigenous people (the focus being the Indian Residential Schools) they are being presented with the point of view that human rights violations against the Indigenous people are ongoing, and are the reason for the poor quality of life in which such a disproportionate number of Indigenous people find themselves.

The claim of generational trauma

On Apr. 27, 2010, speaking as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and for the people of Canada, Sinclair told the Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation.”

This lie is promoted in the schools. It is the foundation of the generational trauma claim but in fact, during the IRS era, perhaps 30% of Status Indians (you can cut that figure in half if you include all people who identify as Indigenous) ever attended, and for an average of 4.5 years.

Even if it were true that most Indigenous people who attended the IRS suffered trauma, there is no evidence or logical reason to believe that trauma could be transferred down the generations. If generational trauma is a thing, why have the descendants of the victims of the holocaust been doing so well?

If there is generational trauma, the culprit is alcohol. Alcohol abuse has been a major problem in Indigenous communities since first contact but rarely comes up these days, certainly not in schools. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), which occurs when a mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy, is also a major problem and the children born with it suffer from mental and emotional challenges throughout their lives. It impacts their social life, education and work. Girls who suffer from the condition all too often end up drinking during pregnancy themselves and the cycle continues.

June 13, 2024

Fun new family game – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?

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

In the National Post, Tristin Hopper presents the rulebook for an exciting new family game literally “ripped from the headlines” – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?

“To simulate what it’s like to go to work in a national parliament secretly housing foreign agents, the National Post presents a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual to play this group game: Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
Photo by Brice Hall”

WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAY:

  • One large writing surface, such as a chalkboard, whiteboard or flip chart (THE ORDER PAPER)
  • 20-70 note cards
  • A timer

SETTING UP PLAY:
Gather at least five of your closest friends and have them sit in a line facing the ORDER PAPER. They will be divided into two categories: The WITTING AGENTS and the CREDULOUS NAIFS.

To choose who among them will be the WITTING AGENTS, prepare a stack of IDENTITY CARDS equal to the number of players. On every fifth card, mark the symbol for the Chinese yuan (¥). In the case of five players, mark a single card, for 10 players, mark two, etc.

Shuffle the IDENTITY CARDS and distribute them among the players. Anyone receiving a “¥” is now a WITTING AGENT.

Set aside another stack of note cards to serve as MANDATE LETTERS. The text for each card is below. Shuffle the MANDATE LETTERS and place them face down.

RULES OF THE GAME:
Each round begins with a CANADA IS NOT BROKEN phase in which all players close their eyes, put their thumbs in their ears and bury their face for two minutes (the elapsed time to be marked with a timer). During this phase, the WITTING AGENTS open their eyes, stride over to the ORDER PAPER and write down a piece of binding public policy that damages Canada to the advantage of a hostile government (suggestions below).

Once this act of treachery is done, the WITTING AGENTS return to their seats will pretend to wake up alongside them as if nothing happened.

Now begins the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phase. First, players must pull a MANDATE LETTER card that will determine conditions of discussion. Now, the parliamentarians must decide who among them is the foreign cat’s paw who has defaced their ORDER PAPER with disloyal policy. Uncomfortable questions are asked, accusations are made, and at the end of the round the players vote on who among them will be ejected as a traitor.

Only after the accused traitor is exiled will they show their IDENTITY CARD, revealing whether the accusations have been true, or whether they have been unjustly maligned.

Ejected players are then exiled to THE SENATE, a separated area of chairs where they are served port, ginger ale and black liquorice. They continue to participate in the CANADA IS NOT BROKEN and the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phases, but they no longer have a vote.

June 12, 2024

“Treason never prospers” … except in Canadian politics, apparently

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

Justin Trudeau and his unindicted co-conspirators in Canada’s federal parliament don’t think the names of Members of Parliament who have been acting as enablers or actual agents of foreign powers — that is, possible traitors — should be made public. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) Even the least cynical may be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t what a mature country would do in similar circumstances:

The cover of the NSICOP special report on foreign interference (PDF here)

… MPs have an obligation to protect the institution that is the House of Commons. Every MP is required as a condition of taking their seats, to swear the following oath: “I, [name], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third, King of Canada, his heirs and successors. So help me God.”

The violation of that oath, or the suspected violation of that oath, is absolutely arguably contempt against the House of Commons. We don’t have a ton of precedent for that, because MPs who have been alleged to have collaborated, even unwittingly, with a foreign power in the past usually have the good sense to resign. But MPs should absolutely be allowed to pass judgment on the actions of their colleagues, with the express intent of expelling from the House any members who have transgressed against their oath to King and Country. This isn’t just their duty, it is a duty that they are uniquely positioned and obligated to perform. Until we know exactly which parliamentarians we’re talking about, a spectre hangs over all 400-plus of them. That very much compromises the public’s opinion of Parliament and has a demonstrable impact on their ability to do their jobs as parliamentarians.

Once upon a time, children, ministers of the Crown would offer their resignations for mistakes made by members of the civil service in the ministry for which he or she held responsibility, never mind mistakes of their own. In modern times, of course, it’s rare to find a minister resigning voluntarily until the RCMP is literally knocking on the door, and sometimes not even then.

Second, we are a large and multicultural country. MPs are expected to represent members of any diaspora community which may exist in their constituency. If you’re a Tibetan or Uyghur activist, how can you be represented by an MP who’s demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the government of the People’s Republic of China? If you’re an Iranian democracy and reform activist, how can you be represented by an MP who has close ties to Iran’s diplomatic and intelligence operation?

The answer, of course, is that you can’t be. The government has a greater responsibility to the democratic rights of those Canadians than it does to protecting the identity of any single unscrupulous or otherwise compromised parliamentarian. With every day that passes, Ottawa looks more like it has an interest in partisan butt-covering than it does in maintaining the long-term faith that democracy requires for our institutions to survive.

A good Member of Parliament recognizes the responsibility to the constituents — whether they voted for that particular MP or not — and would keep that responsibility as faithfully as possible. On that reckoning, we have fewer good MPs than we should have … and if the intelligence turns out to be fully supported upon full investigation, there should be a lot of open seats to run by-elections for (even if no formal charges of treason are ever laid).

Finally, I accept that intelligence is not evidence. I also accept, as noted in the Globe by Philippe Lagassé and Stephanie Carvin, that we must be cautious to not compromise intelligence sources and methods, or compromise ongoing investigations. Parliamentarians should not replace the criminal justice system or undercut our defence, but they what they are capable of doing, and indeed are required to do because no one else can do it for them, is broadly defining what the acceptable behaviour for parliamentarians should be. If an MP or a senator has engaged with a foreign power’s diplomatic or security services and they do not believe they have crossed the line for what we deem to be acceptable behaviour, they will be more than welcome to go on Power and Politics, or take to social media, or show up at what I’m sure will be many committee hearings, and make their case.

It is not a hardship to ask them do so. They are not being hard done by. The question here is not whether what they’ve done is criminal. It wasn’t criminal when Bev Oda billed the taxpayers for her juice. It wasn’t criminal when Bill Morneau forgot to leave a cabinet meeting where a decision was made that was a perceived conflict of interest. But both of those parliamentarians were forced to accept that their behaviour had failed the people they were sworn to represent. They resigned.

And the idea that orange juice crosses the line, but aiding a foreign intelligence service — even “semi-wittingly” — does not, will fail to pass the smell test with a very large number of Canadians. And that is entirely correct. The public is well ahead of the politicians on understanding this.

Public trust in politicians has been ebbing for quite some time and was fading even before the pandemic exposed so many of them as would-be dictators, poltroons, and idiots. There is no deep reservoir of respect for politicians that can be drawn on at this point. Swift action is the only thing that Parliament can do and by “swift”, I don’t mean setting up a Royal Commission with a multi-year remit to bury the issue until after the next federal election.

June 10, 2024

Elite contempt for democracy is fuelling anti-immigration “far right” sentiment in the west

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Even for people who are generally happy with robust immigration, the numbers being recorded (or, more likely, under-recorded) in Canada, the United States and Europe are far too high to pretend that the new arrivals will quickly integrate into their new countries, and they are generally not being encouraged to do so anyway. Complaints to the people who have enabled these massive inflows — at best — are waved off or ignored, but often are seized upon as examples of hateful far-right xenophobia to be punished and suppressed:

Not so long ago, as many of us reeled from the political earthquakes of Brexit and Trump, it seemed sensible for responsible mainstream political parties to adopt tighter immigration control to keep the populist right at bay. Mass migration in Europe had led to a far-right resurgence; in the US and UK, Trump and the Johnson-era Tories seemed to grasp this and moved to co-opt the anti-immigrant fervor. Democracy was working to accommodate a shift in the public mood.

Or so it seemed. Nearly a decade later, something else has happened: an immigration explosion. In response to a volatile public mood, Western elites actually intensified their policy of importing millions of people from the developing world to replace their insufficiently diverse and declining domestic populations.

The recent figures from the US, UK and Canada are mind-blowing. The graphs all look like a hockey stick, with a massive spike in the last three years alone. Under Trump, the average number of illegal crossings a year was around 500,000; under Biden, that has quadrupled to two million a year — from a much more diverse group, from Africa, China and India. To add insult to injury, Biden has also all but shut down immigration enforcement in the interior; and abused his parole power to usher in nearly 1.3 million illegal migrants in 2023 alone. The number of undetained illegal migrants living in the US has thereby ballooned under Biden: from 3.7 million in 2021 to 6.2 million in 2023, according to ICE. If a fraction of those millions turns up for asylum hearings, I’ll be gob-smacked.

Canada has seen something similar. For much of the 21st century, Canada had around 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants a year; but in the last two years, this has nearly doubled. In Britain, the same story. In 2015, the year before Brexit, net migration (the numbers of people immigrating minus the number emigrating) was 329,000; in the last two years, it has more than doubled to over 700,000. And whereas most immigration before Brexit was from the EU, today, immigrants from the developing world outnumber European immigrants by almost 10 to 1. For those Brits who voted for Brexit to lower the number of foreigners in the country, it’s been surreal.

If you want to understand why Biden keeps trailing in the swing states, why the Tories are about to be wiped out in a historic collapse, and why Trudeau is at all-time low in approval at 28 percent, this seems to me to be key. As the public tried to express a desire to slow down the pace of demographic change, elites in London, Ottawa, and Washington chose to massively accelerate it. It’s as if they saw the rise in the popularity of the far right and said to themselves: well now, how can we really get it to take off?

This week, CNN ran a poll on Biden and immigration. Here’s what they found: in May 2020, only one percent of Americans put immigration as their top concern — in 15th place among issues; in May 2024, 18 percent put it first. In 2020, Biden edged Trump by one percent on who was best to tackle the border crisis; four years later, Trump is ahead on the issue by 27 points. As a coup de grâce, CNN also found that foreign-born Americans preferred Trump to Biden on immigration by 47 to 44 percent. Turns out that this immigrant’s worries are widely shared by my fellow new Americans.

Biden, of course, is now desperately scrambling to salvage something from this disaster. This week, he contradicted himself by saying he has the unilateral capacity as president to shut down the border, and attempted to blame the GOP for the problem. Yes, the GOP was unhelpful and cynically political earlier this year — but that won’t muddy the waters for most voters who have been conscious for the past three years. But I am grateful nonetheless to hear the president echo what the Dish has been saying for years now, and for which I was routinely called a racist:

    To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now. The simple truth is there is a worldwide migrant crisis, and if the United States doesn’t secure our border, there is no limit to the number of people who may try to come here, because there is no better place on the planet than the United States of America.

Now that didn’t hurt, did it? But why did he keep telling us there was no crisis for the last three and a half years? And why would anyone trust a re-elected Biden to enact this if he had a Congressional majority? I sure don’t.

Even under Biden’s “crackdown”, he is still prepared to admit at least 1.75 million illegal immigrants a year! Last week, Chuck Schumer declared that the ultimate goal was to legalize every single illegal immigrant — because Americans are not having enough children. Without open borders, of course, our economy wouldn’t look so good: in the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, foreign-born workers gained 600,000 new jobs, while native-born Americans lost 300,000. But don’t you dare mention the “Great Replacement Theory“!

June 8, 2024

Eco-terrorism – it’s all over Canada

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

Elizabeth Nickson on the strong likelihood of any given wildfire in Canada being not just man-made but deliberately set for political reasons:

“Forest fire” by Ervins Strauhmanis is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

A Google Earth satellite video is making the rounds on twitter. it shows the moment an arc of fires began in northern Quebec, the smoke rising. It looks like people calculated the prevailing winds so that the smoke would blow south. Then connected via sat phone, they lit them. It’s another psy-op from our gracious overlords. We aren’t afraid enough, despite every nasty limiting idiotic play they have visited upon us in the last four years. Monkey Pox failed, more plague warnings were greeted by a shrug. But this one, the world bursting into flame? Be very very afraid.

Justin Trudeau lost no time in announcing that the fires were from “climate change” and the carbon tax, which is impoverishing everyone not in government or on lush pensions, is just the beginning of the restrictions he must institute or we are all gonna die.

The stupidity and cruelty of this is almost unimaginable. But fires have worked over and over again to terrify people into quiescence. The rumours that they were deliberate were the stuff of fantasy until people started getting arrested. Alberta shows that almost 60 percent of fires in that province are human caused. And in Canada, as of today, we have arrested dozens. They will be released, their bails paid by a high-priced lawyer because most of them act as agents of the hyper-rich, paid through a cascade of environmental NGOs. The richest people among us are burning the forests in order to force compliance.

When I moved back to the country 20 years ago, the movement adopted me because I was writing for the Globe and Mail and Harper’s Magazine. I interviewed hundreds of local activists, the ones who, with the inspiration of RFK, Jr. had shut down the biggest industrial forest in the world in an action called “The War of the Woods“. They were mostly ordinary people, socialists and scientists of one stripe or another and deeply profoundly committed to saving the earth. The fact that they had eliminated the principal source of funding for health care and education — forestry — their own in fact, went right over their heads. It didn’t matter. “Climate Change” was an existential threat and those trees must stand to suck up “carbon”, or CO2, as it used to be known.

I met Denis Hayes too, the founder of Earth Day, head of the Bullitt Foundation in Seattle, founded by the heiresses to Weyerhaeuser. He excitedly told me how he created the storm of protest that led to Bill Clinton shutting down the western forests of the U.S., during the same period that Clinton was giving away American manufacturing to China. The result was devastation in forested communities from northern California to the Canadian border. Hayes, a tall, attractive Ivy Leaguer married to a woman whose father won a Nobel in chemistry, slithers through every institution. When I hung out with him, his target was Bill Gates’ climate initiatives and clearly, he has succeeded.

His “work” turned the forests into a tinderbox. Today, the 9th of June, 2023, a full thirty years too late, the Wall Street Journal editorial board finally acknowledges that sustainable forestry management may be the principal cause of the forests burning down. Holly Fretwell, a fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, and professor at Montana State, gives, in this book, a thoroughgoing analysis of how wrong-headed and destructive “green” has been in the forests. Also this book by me, and a follow-up policy paper, also by me. These were not popular opinions, but they were, in fact, right. It is not “climate change” burning down the forests, it is government in the hands of brutal greens, in pursuit of an impossible goal.

Battlefield Normandy – The battles for Norrey, Bretteville & Putot

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The AceDestroyer
Published Jun 27, 2019

Hello, welcome to The AceDestroyer and welcome to the third and final episode of the Battlefield Normandy Series. In this episode we follow the Canadians defending Putot-en-Bessin, Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse and Norrey-en-Bessin. In the two days of heavy combat with the 12th SS Hitlerjugend, the 7th Canadian Infantry brigade managed to hold on to all three towns. Find out how in this episode …
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June 7, 2024

Since 2015, the Trudeau Liberals have done a fantastic job of suppressing the Canadian economy

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

If Canadians elected Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party to make major changes from what had gone on under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, then they got their wish in so many different ways, but especially economically:

Reports of Canada’s dismal economic outcomes seem never to end. Why should they? For years Canadians have had the same federal government delivering the same deleterious economic policies and the same expansion in regulatory initiatives and spending that have invariably depressed economies and reduced standards of living whenever and wherever they are imposed. Therefore, until the federal government or its policies change, we should not expect the miserable results to materially improve.

The latest negative report is the release of Canada’s 2024-Q1 GDP numbers on Friday, which again showed sluggish growth relative to population, resulting in yet another quarterly decline in real GDP per capita. Relative to 2015-Q3, the last full quarter before the Trudeau government took office, cumulative real GDP per capita is up only about 0.7 per cent. A recent RBC Economics analysis showed from around 1991 to 2015, cumulative real GDP per capita growth in Canada approximately tracked with the U.S., but not since Justin Trudeau took office. Compared to 0.7 per cent growth in Canada from 2015-Q3 to 2024-Q1, real GDP per capita is up 15.7 per cent in the U.S. in the same time period.

Where the 0.7 per cent comes from matters, too. In real per capita terms, some components of GDP — mainly government — expanded while others contracted. Alarmingly, business investment, which drives productivity and standards of living, is down 13.9 per cent. This includes real per capita reductions of 15.2 per cent in residential structures, 18.4 per cent in machinery and equipment, and 19.3 per cent in non-residential structures, with an increase in intellectual property investment not nearly enough to offset the reductions in other categories.

To understand why business investment and economic performance in Canada are so poor under the Trudeau government, let us consider the following representative example of its economic strategy.

The government believes many families struggle with the cost of caring for young children, which is a legitimate concern. A reasonable solution, which the Harper government implemented in 2006, is to send money to families with young children and let parents buy for their children what they need. After the Liberals expanded that program, they could have left it at that, but what have they done instead? The government initiated a national takeover of child care, effectively expropriating child care entrepreneurs’ businesses by flooding their sector with public money and then controlling private companies’ revenues and operations. The result is child care entrepreneurs’ investments have been wiped out or severely reduced, control of their business operations have been wrestled away by government, and they are unable to properly serve their customers (the families), as evidenced by the drastic reduction in parental options and widespread shortages.

Battlefield Normandy – The battle of Authie D-DAY + 1

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The AceDestroyer
Published Dec 20, 2018

June 7, also known as D-Day +1 marked the first battle between the Canadians and the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend during the Normandy campaign. When the Canadians attacked Authie, the German 12th SS counterattacked and a large tank on tank battle commenced. The first encounter between the two divisions was immediately a bloody one. The battle unfortunately had a barbaric end as members of the SS murdered several Canadian POW’s in cold blood. Here’s the battle of Authie.
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June 6, 2024

The reason Germany failed on D-Day (Ft. Jonathan Ferguson)

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Imperial War Museums
Published Jun 5, 2024

Adolf Hitler was looking forward to D-Day. His plan was simple. Reinforce the western defences, launch a furious counterattack, and “throw the Allies back into the sea”. After that, he could turn his full strength against the Soviet Union and end the war. For Hitler, the outcome of this campaign would be decisive.

In the previous episode of our D-Day series we looked at the air battle for Normandy. This time IWM Curator Adrian Kerrison covers the fighting on land. Why were some beaches bloodier than others? Why did German counterattacks fail? And why did it take so long for the Allies to breakout?

To help us answer some of those questions we’ve brought in the Royal Armouries’ Jonathan Ferguson to look at some of the most important weapons of D-Day.
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80 years ago

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Battlefield Normandy – The Battle of Juno Beach 6 June 1944

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The AceDestroyer
Published Nov 18, 2018

Hello and welcome to the first episode of my Battlefield Normandy series. This part is all about the landings at Juno beach on June 6 1944, and what happened on the first day of the Allied landings in Normandy. In this episode we will take a look at all the landing beaches and the subsequent fighting. You can find the maps on my Facebook page. The next episode will be about the battle of Authie on June 7, when the Canadians first met the 12th SS Hitlerjugend. I hope you’ll enjoy this video and find it helpful.
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June 5, 2024

HMCS Charlottetown: A formidable submarine-hunting force in Nato’s fleet

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

Forces News
Published Mar 1, 2024

Conceived in the middle of the Cold War era, the Canadian Royal Navy frigate HMCS Charlottetown has evolved over three decades of service, becoming one of the most capable and adaptable ships in Canada’s navy.

After setting sail for Nato’s Exercise Steadfast Defender in the North Sea, she made a stop in Edinburgh en route to participating in the alliance’s largest training mission since the Cold War.
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June 4, 2024

Snipers in World War 1

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Italy, Military, USA, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Great War
Published Feb 9, 2024

In fall 1914, the British and French armies on the First World War’s Western Front were wrestling with a problem: unseen German riflemen were picking off any man who showed himself above the trench. Something had to be done about it – and the result was the birth of the modern sniper.
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June 3, 2024

Decoding Nigel Farage’s “hidden agenda” … that isn’t actually hidden at all

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I’ve been theorizing that the reason Nigel Farage didn’t plunge immediately into the British election campaign was that he was expecting Rishi Sunak to do his very best Kim Campbell impersonation and utterly destroy the Conservatives as a viable political party. It turns out that that’s pretty much exactly what he’s doing:

Nigel Farage at the ULEZ protests in London, 30 August 2023.
Image from JoNova.

The biggest question of all, however, is what Farage wants to do after polling day. For months now, a growing band of Conservative MPs have been agitating openly for him to be admitted to the party; even Rishi Sunak now says he “respects” him.

Close friends of Farage believe his real plan is to wait for the Tories to implode, and in the aftermath arrive as a saviour in waiting. “He doesn’t want to be the person who puts the bullet in the back of their heads, why be seen to alienate Conservative voters?” said one, while a second, a senior Tory, said: “Our party needs to be able to come back with people like Nigel, where we basically go back to be that authentic Thatcherite party — his natural home.”

[Reform UK leader Richard] Tice says he wants to destroy and replace the Conservative Party, but when asked if he feels the same, Farage says: “I certainly don’t have any trust for them or any love for them”. So does he want to change it? “I want to reshape the centre-right, whatever that means.”

Asked directly if his friends are right and he wants to join the Tories, he adds: “Why do you think I called it Reform? Because of what happened in Canada — the 1992-93 precedent in Canada, where Reform comes from the outside, because the Canadian Conservatives had become social democrats like our mob here. It took them time, it took them two elections, they became the biggest party on the centre-right. They then absorbed what was left of the Conservative Party into them and rebranded.”

I suggest this sounds a lot like he’s floating a merger. “More like a takeover, dear boy,” he replies, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

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