Quotulatiousness

January 8, 2026

Minnesota in the news

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

Like most people, I don’t normally pay much attention to news from Minnesota unless it involves my favourite NFL team. Thus far, thank goodness, the Vikings seem to have avoided being entangled in the latest scandals, starting with YouTuber Nick Shirley’s exposé of blatant fraud in daycare centres in and around Minneapolis that triggered Governor Tim Walz to end his re-election campaign. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Andrew Neil summarizes the situation so far:

The usual suspects have been claiming on X that the Minnesota fraud scandal is no big deal and that it was racist to place Somalis at the centre of it. They lie. Some facts:

The fraud scandals in Minnesota are a very big deal, involving (so far) the theft of over $1 billion in taxpayer funds across multiple schemes, primarily from federal and state programmes meant for child nutrition, autism services and daycares during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federal prosecutors have already charged almost 100 people. Dozens convicted or pleading guilty. Investigators suggest the total could exceed $9 billion in fraudulent claims.

It is already the largest pandemic-related fraud case in US history, with money siphoned off for personal luxuries like expensive cars and real estate, rather than the intended recipients — like low-income children.

The majority of those charged (around 85 out of 98 defendants in the core cases) are Somali-American. Why? Because the fraud often involved networks of Somali-owned “nonprofits” and businesses inflating claims or billing for nonexistent services.

Governor Tim Walz labeled the scandal being inflamed by “white supremacy” In fact, systemic fraud was enabled by his state’s lax controls. Walz now so discredited he won’t run for Governor again. His political career is over. How this bozo ever passed Kamala Harris’ vetting procedures to be her running mate is a mystery.

At PJ Media, Matt Margolis discusses the latest Nick Shirley video release:

Shirley’s new video dials things up to 11.

David Hoch, co-founder of Minnesotans for Responsible Government, joined him on the ground in Minneapolis, revealing an insane truth: this fraud hits hundreds of billions nationwide. Minnesota’s slice? At least $80 billion. Layers of shell companies obscure the cash trail, including 1,200 medical transport outfits in the area that do nothing while collecting taxpayer dollars.

Hoch swears by his evidence. “I have been to many of these transportation companies, and I’ve been time-stamping my photographs for a whole year at one facility in Minneapolis, and those vans in that parking lot had not moved one inch in an entire year. They’re all still sitting there.”

Hoch also revealed a widespread ballot-harvesting operation tied to Somali communities in Minnesota, claiming the scale of the activity is “way beyond anybody’s imagination,” adding that “the state doesn’t even know” and “the feds don’t even know”.

Shirley asked Hoch why a judge would allegedly defer to what he described as the “head of the Somali mafia”. Hoch responded that the influence stems from raw political power. He described the Somali community as a unified voting bloc that has effectively held Minnesota Democrats hostage. “What they say is if you do something to go against our community, we’re gonna vote for, and they all vote together, and there’s ballot harvesting, I’ve seen them do it, that, ‘We’re gonna vote for your opponent, unless you do what we tell you to do’.”

“And so it’s all purely for votes?” Shirley asked.

“Yes,” Hoch replied.

The conversation then turned to Cedar Riverside, a massive apartment complex in Minneapolis. Hoch said it was just one of many similar developments. “You’ve got 20 more just like this around the Twin Cities, and they’re all Somali,” he said. Hoch estimated “probably 100,000 or more people,” claiming they live rent-free and receive taxpayer-funded benefits. “They’re driving a vehicle that you paid for. They’re eating food that you paid for. Everything they do is, is something that you paid for,” he said.

Hoch also described how he claims the voting process works within the bloc. He alleged that a single individual collects ballots for large numbers of residents, with little oversight. “They’ll have one person go there and collect all the ballots and nobody tracks,” Hoch said. He added that apartments can claim inflated numbers of residents: “They could say they have nine people living in an apartment. They’re gonna send them nine ballots,” which are then gathered by a designated collector.

Later on Wednesday, an altercation between organized protesters and law enforcement resulted in the death of a woman after she tried to run down an ICE agent, who shot her in self-defence. The mayor of Minneapolis (Mogadishuapolis?) responded as you might expect:

The debate over this incident breaks down on the usual partisan lines. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Kurt Schlichter summarizes the pro-law enforcement position:

On the other hand, it’s the lockstep belief of the anti-Trump politicians and activists that the agent shot a “legal observer” in the performance of her peaceful, completely legal duties:

January 3, 2026

America’s secret UBI programs

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

On his Substack, Glenn Reynolds puts the Somali daycare scandal into its proper perspective: it’s not old-fashioned graft but something far bigger and far more destructive to the pillars of western society:

The explosive unveiling of the wildly extensive Somali-run daycare scams in Minnesota has drawn attention to a huge shadow economy, and not just in Minnesota. America, it turns out, is full of people, companies, and organizations that basically live off of fraud. We’re not talking old-fashioned waste, like $600 hammers or $1200 toilet seats. We’re talking about entities whose sole reason for existence consists of being a conduit for taxpayer money to flow directly to the people controlling them, with some of the proceeds being diverted to politicians and political organizations.

People are noticing.

This reverses an old joke told by my Nigerian relatives. A Nigerian visits his rich relative in the United States and is awed by the penthouse apartment, the limo, the private jet and so forth. “How did you make so much money?” he asks. The relative points out the window. “See that bridge? 15%. See that shopping mall? 15%. See that train station? 15%.”

The visitor, inspired, returns home to Nigeria and becomes fabulously wealthy. His rich cousin from America visits and says “How did you make so much money so fast?”

“You see that bridge over there?”

“Nope,” responds the confused relative. The Nigerian cousin points at himself and says “One hundred percent!”

Well, this joke has now been turned around. Leaving aside that we don’t really even build train stations, bridges, or even shopping malls in this country anymore, now it’s America where people are pocketing one hundred percent and not even trying to actually deliver any goods or services. That the people doing this are mostly Africans only adds to the irony.

But what happened?

Well, several things. At base, people defraud the government for the same reason that dogs lick themselves — because they can. One of the things you find in these programs is that there are virtually no controls to ensure that the recipients of the money are legitimate, that the money is spent as promised — in essence, that the bridges get built. (Or, in the case of California, the high speed rail lines.) That lack of controls, of course, is no accident. The systems are designed to promote fraud and to make it hard to catch or punish.

Second, the culture is weaker. In a high trust society, people get angry when there is fraud and move to punish and ostracize the perpetrators. In a low-trust society, people expect it.

Older generations of politicians used to engage more in what George Washington “Boss” Plunkitt called “honest graft”. He defined honest graft as legally exploiting insider knowledge and opportunities from one’s position for personal financial gain, while also benefiting the public or party. A classic example he gave was learning about upcoming public projects (like a new park or bridge) and buying nearby land cheaply before the plans became public, then selling it at a profit to the city. He famously summarized it as: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em,” comparing it to savvy stock trading on Wall Street. In contrast, dishonest graft involved outright illegal acts, such as blackmail, embezzlement, or extortion (e.g., shaking down gamblers or saloon keepers).

God knows what he would have said about simply taking money for nothing. Would his reaction have been horror? Or admiration?

December 31, 2025

Do you want tribalism? Because this is how you get tribalism

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

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, InfantryDort asks the key questions about where our “elites” are taking us:

What’s the point? No, tell me, what’s the point?

What’s the point of laws if judges reinterpret them until they protect everyone except the people who obey them?

What’s the point of defending a nation if the same system refuses to defend your family from criminals it imported on purpose?

What’s the point of paying taxes if they fund fraud, reward deception, and subsidize parallel systems that never owed this place loyalty?

What’s the point of working, building, serving, if your labor is redistributed to those who broke the rules to get here?

What’s the point of accountability if paperwork matters more than reality, and intent matters less than optics?

I’ll tell you what the point is. The point is that any human with a brain is going to retreat to whatever group rewards his values and sacrifice. If it isn’t the nation, it becomes the tribe. And when it becomes the tribe, this American experiment is over.

A warrior can endure hardship, loss, and some long odds. What he cannot endure is betrayal by design.

When a nation stops enforcing its boundaries, its laws, and its obligations to its own people, it doesn’t just lose control, IT BURNS THE VERY WILL REQUIRED TO DEFEND IT.

I want something to defend that I believe in. We all do. I take the oath deadly serious. But one begins to wonder after awhile if that makes for a patriot or a sucker.

If a Soldier can follow it and die in defense of his country, but on the other side of the coin, there is a politician who can spit on it and get rich while importing and funding pirates … it really makes one wonder: What’s it all for?

@POTUS we know what problems you face. It’s not lost on us. But we are running out of time sir.

One of the things that makes these kinds of scam viable in western culture is that we are high-trust cultures with default assumptions that most people are not trying to exploit kindness and charity. This breaks down quickly once you introduce enough people from low-trust and tribal cultures:

The fraudulent spending of taxpayer dollars we are seeing uncovered nationally all rotates around the essential goodness of the American people.

Daycare for children? Of course — we don’t want our children or parents to suffer because Mom has to work.

Foodbanks? We don’t want anyone to starve. Our nation is better than that.

Homeless shelters? Homelessness is a scourge upon the American dream. We’re better than that.

Home elder care? The generations before us deserve dignity and respect. How could anyone oppose that?

Deep down we are a charitable and giving nation unlike most others. That sense of goodness and charity has been hijacked and exploited by foreign predators for their own material gain.

We need to wise up and toughen up, and understand that not every siren song of charity is on the level, particularly when our tax dollars are involved.

(Also, this reality gives an added layer of meaning to the concept of “suicidal empathy”.)

Ian at The Bugscuffle Gazette explains that importing the third world means that you need to expect your culture will start becoming more like the third world:

It says something1 about he state of Legacy Media when a 20-something kid with an iPhone can do a better imitation of 60 Minutes than 60 Minutes can.

No, Gentle Readers, I am not — in any way — surprised that Somalian immigrants in Minnesota are happily committing fraud — remember, do, that I grew up in Africa.

One of the things that endear Americans — and Western Europeans in general — to me is the sheer naiveté displayed by same. The ability of the average American to remain convinced that the entire World is just like them is rather cute.2

Folks, fraud and bribery is the norm in the Third World. In tribal cultures fraud and bribery are not only the norm, but are the rule.

If the average American reader takes nothing else from this essay, please understand that fraud and bribery are not crimes in the Third World; that fraud and bribery are not only not crimes in tribal society, but they are expected, required, and a perfectly acceptable part of every day tribal life.

And Somalia is not only Third World, but it is excessively tribal.

So, I’m not really mad at the Somalis. You can’t get mad at a gopher for digging up your yard. Gophers got to dig, and tribal cultures got to tribal.

That by no means signals that I don’t think the fraudsters should be excused. Hell, no. Public trials, and if found guilty — maximum sentences. Those lacking in U.S. citizenship, once the full prison sentence is completed, loaded onto a C-5 Galaxy and bodily pitched off of the ramp onto a random Somalian airport tarmac.3

What has stoked my ire is the fact that the Somalis used one of the most heavily-regulated industries to commit their fraud — that should have everyone up in arms.

Childcare is the responsibility of at least one Minnesota State agency — probably more — and will have mandated State-level inspections and audits.

Let me re-state that: Minnesota government employees would be legally-required and paid to walk their happy little arses into those businesses and use their Mk1 Mod 0 Eyeballs to look around at least once a year. If you were an inspector for whichever Minnesota agency(ies) regulates child care facilities, and you never filed a “Hey, something ain’t right” report, it’s time for a Come-To-Jesus Meeting in a brightly-lit room with humour-impaired law enforcement types.

If nothing else, the fact that one of these allegedly fraudulent pre-schools not only mis-spelled “Learning” as “Learing”, but mis-spelled the name of the street in the publicly-posted address should have been a red flag to someone.4

This sheer dollar amount of fraud, over this amount of time, and using this many separate corporate entities means that multiple people in the Minnesota State government knew something stunk to high heaven.

Minnesota government employees who knew of this fraud need to do the maximum allowed felony time.

  1. Not, you know, anything good.
  2. The ability of the average American leader — who is supposed to know better — to do the same is aggravating and dangerous.
  3. Bringing the aeroplane to a full stop during this process not absolutely required.
  4. Us cynical retired law enforcement types call this a “clue”.

December 23, 2025

Suspicious work-permit activity in Saskatoon

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

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Darshan Maharaja links to a detailed Reddit post that reveals some pretty shady stuff operated out of a small office in Saskatoon:

The Reddit user, /u/SimonBirchDied, says this is the result of only fifteen minutes of investigation:

Like countless others, I’ve grown disheartened and disillusioned with the hiring process in Saskatoon and Canada as a whole. Some of you may have seen more attention around job postings on JobBank offering seemingly great wages, yet applying for LMIA’s due to no suitable local candidates. This post is simply meant to expose what appear to be obvious scams in Saskatoon, so please don’t let it devolve into derogatory racial or immigration issues. This is about the exploitation of both immigrants and the Canadian working class.

Looking at Saskatoon on lmiamap.org, which is a webmap that takes data from JobBank showing businesses that have been approved for LMIA permits, you can see business that have been granted LMIA’s to hire temporary foreign workers. A permit given “>only if no suitable Canadian citizen or permanent resident is available to fill the position. The process is designed to ensure that Canadian workers are considered first for available jobs.”

For example, in 2024 Road Rex Trucking Inc. was granted 5 LMIA permits. When you search Road Rex Trucking Inc., their company address is 2002 Quebec Ave, which is a small generic office building home to the likes of the famous MLM “World Financial Group”. Oddly enough, from one angle on Google Street View the building is blurred, which means someone has specifically reached out to Google and requested it be blurred for privacy.

When you look at their website, https://roadrextrucking.com/team-2/, their “Team” has very generic, obviously stock photos with names that, on the surface, don’t seem to match.

Oddly, the website makes no mention of the sole registered director of Road Rex Trucking Inc, Jaspreet Singh Dhaliwal. There is only one result for that name in Saskatoon, and here is his Facebook account, flexing in front of fancy cars and on vacations. Some of his pictures appear to match the buildings in the Saskatoon neighborhood of Road Rex Trucking Inc’s corporate registered address.

When you Google the name of their founder, Alaxis. D. Dowson, there’s dozens of websites with the exact same template as Road Rex Trucking Inc, with the same layout and “team members”, but for different businesses like electronics, solar panels etc., and listed in all sorts of locations from Edmonton to Dubai.

As they say on the interwebs, Read the whole thing.

December 14, 2025

Where does all the money go for so many First Nations bands?

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

Earlier this month, I shared a long thread highlighting some incredible findings from the audit of a single First Nations group in Saskatchewan (here). On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, @Martyupnorth discusses how the federal government has gone out of its way not to ensure that First Nations funding is transparent:

    Cory Morgan @CoryBMorgan
    The Siksika reserve got $1.3 billion a few years ago and the housing is still predominantly shit.

    It’s not lack of government funding folks.

    It’s a broken system of racial apartheid.

    This ruling won’t help a bit.

Let’s talk about transparency in First Nations reserve finances in Canada. It’s topic that’s sparked a lot of debate.

Back in 2013, the Harper government passed the First Nations Financial Transparency Act (FNFTA), which required chiefs and councils to publicly disclose their salaries, expenses, and audited financial statements. The goal? To ensure accountability for the billions in federal funding going to reserves, empowering community members to hold leaders responsible and curb potential corruption.

But the Act was controversial from the start. Critics, including many First Nations leaders (no surprise there), called it paternalistic, imposed without proper consultation, and an infringement on Indigenous sovereignty. Some argued it violated privacy by forcing the public release of sensitive financial details, like personal remuneration schedules.

Enter Justin Trudeau. During his 2015 campaign, he promised to repeal the FNFTA, saying it wasn’t “respectful” to First Nations and needed replacement with a co-developed approach. Once in power, his government didn’t formally repeal the Act, but effectively reversed it by suspending enforcement. They stopped withholding funds from non-compliant bands, halted court actions, and reinstated frozen money. Compliance rates plummeted afterward, with fewer bands disclosing info publicly.

See the screen shot below. The Siksika Nation, to whom Cory refers to, hasn’t dislosed financial data since 2013.

The Liberals’ rationale? Building “mutual accountability” through partnership rather than top-down rules, addressing privacy concerns and respecting self-governance. But a decade later, as of 2025, the Act remains on the books unenforced, while polls show most Canadians still want transparency in how reserve funds are mis-managed.

What do you think? Does ditching enforcement help or hinder real accountability?

Update: At some point, the audits have to start and the government and the courts will then have their hands full:

December 9, 2025

Auditing where the money goes, First Nations edition

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

I don’t think many Canadians would argue with the government providing funding to First Nations groups in remote areas so they have access to services and amenities that most of us take for granted. But the government has been giving so much money for so long with very little evidence that the money is actually making a difference. Surely, a regular system of audits would show what happens to the money after the feds cut a cheque and why conditions in First Nations communities aren’t improving? Well, on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, @The Reclamare shares a thread detailing some of the findings of a recent audit of a First Nations NGO and it’s kind of disturbing:

Where our taxes go, First Nations Edition

KPMG audited the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) representing 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan

They analyzed spending between April 2019 and March 2024

Hang on🧵

#1 – COVID Funding

$26 million was audited
KPMG found $23.5 million was questionable
** an 89% failure rate**

– no records
– missing contracts
– missing invoices

# 2 – Travel expenditures

$800K of travel spending was audited
$316K was flagged by auditors, a 39% failure rate

Half the travel bookings couldn’t be justified, either policy violations or they couldn’t explain the purpose. And one Vice Chief was billing personal trips

# 3 – Executive Pay Raises during Covid

On November 5, 2020, a briefing note went to FSIN’s Treasury Board recommending:

$60,000 pay raise for the Chief
$40,000 pay raise for each Vice Chief

Retroactive 8 months prior

(more…)

December 3, 2025

Like him or loathe him, Trump’s response to the DC shootings was “spot on”

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

In The Conservative Woman, Richard North makes the case that US President Donald Trump is the only western political leader who can stop the migration crisis:

Like him or loathe him, question his inconsistencies and his many other flaws, but in my view Donald Trump’s response to the shooting of two members of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington DC by an Afghan migrant was spot on.

There was none of the pussyfooting “my thoughts are with …” etc. Without equivocation, he immediately branded the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror”, adding: “It was a crime against our entire nation”.

Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a tweet declaring: “President Trump’s State Department has paused visa issuance for ALL individuals travelling on Afghan passports. The United States has no higher priority than protecting our nation and our people.”

Attached was an official tweet from the Department of State making it clear that the ban was of immediate effect, with the Department “taking all necessary steps to protect US national security and public safety”.

This added to the ban in June when Trump imposed restrictions on citizens from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, but that ban did not revoke visas previously issued, and holders of Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) were exempt.

Now Trump has gone further. In a Thanksgiving message posted on X, he offered a salutation which, in Trumpian style, didn’t mince words. It started with: “A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the world, for being ‘politically correct’, and just plain STUPID, when it comes to immigration …”

That was only the start of a very long and quite extraordinary tweet which, if nothing else, can be criticised for a complete absence of paragraphs and sentences which rivalled in length those in a Dickens novel.

With his opening out of the way, Trump asserted that the official United States foreign population stands at 53million, most of whom, he averred, “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels”.

“They and their children,” Trump continued, “are supported through massive payments from patriotic American citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape or form”.

Warming to his theme, he declared: “They put up with what has happened to our country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 [£27,000] with a green card will get roughly $50,000 [£38,000] in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher.”

Pressing his point, he stated what none of Starmer’s motley crew will admit.

“This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc)”, the Donald wrote.

In a passage which might have got him arrested had he posted in the UK, with refreshing candour, the President gave the example of “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia” who were “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota”.

Somali gangs, he said, “are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone”.

No matter which country they end up in, Somalis tend to be bad news. There are multiple reports stretching back to 2007 of a plague of criminal gangs among the 32,000 Somalis who have settled in Minnesota.

Recently the Minnesota gangs have been associated with a series of massive welfare fraud schemes, the proceeds of which may have been funnelled to the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabab.

The largest fraud scandal involving Somalis was the “Feeding Our Future” scheme. Prosecutors racked up 56 criminal convictions in what they alleged was a plot to steal $300million (£270million) from a federally funded programme meant to feed children during the covid event.

November 29, 2025

“There comes a point where government waste stops looking like incompetence and starts looking like treason”

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

Canadians must be literally the most passive and forgiving people on Earth. It’s the only thing that can account for how we are governed by incompetents or idiots, yet keep re-electing them despite all the clear signs of failure and opportunistic crony looting of the public purse:

Image from Blendr News

There comes a point where government waste stops looking like incompetence and starts looking like treason. Canada has long passed that point. What we are witnessing now is not mere mismanagement or bureaucratic drift — it is the systemic looting of a nation by the people meant to serve it. Billions vanish with no oversight, no accountability, and no shame. The numbers have grown so grotesque that one struggles not to call this what it is: organized theft.

Take Stellantis. Ottawa handed the automaker $15 billion — the largest corporate subsidy in Canadian history — and the industry minister didn’t even read the contract before approving it. This, despite Stellantis shifting Jeep production to the U.S., delaying its employment targets at the Windsor battery plant, and refusing to appear before Parliamentary Committee hearings. Honda received a major subsidy without full Treasury Board review. Volkswagen hid its cost estimates. Northvolt was showered with subsidies and then slipped into insolvency. Each scandal blurs into the next until you realize the pattern is not incompetence but a business model.

Then there’s the LNG project in British Columbia. The main industrial partner is an American firm. The terminal will be built overseas, floated to Nisga’a land, and subsidised by Canadian taxpayers. In other words: Canadians take the risk while the profits flow abroad and the jobs go to Korea or Japan.

Or consider Telesat. They received $2.14 billion to connect rural Canadians to high-speed internet — with no obligation to connect a single home, no penalties for failure, no clawbacks if the project collapses, and no enforced timelines. Three years later, the network still does not exist. Meanwhile, Starlink already worked, already served rural communities, could have done it for half the cost, and offered immediate deployment — but was rejected because Elon Musk is “polarizing”.

ArriveCAN? $54 million spent on an app worth $80,000, much of it funnelled to GC Strategies, a boutique firm that admitted it didn’t actually build anything. Then the Sustainable Development Fund — the so-called green slush fund — where $400 million flowed into Liberal-friendly firms.

The State tells us its creed is “responsible governance”. Yet almost every act defies that claim. What we have instead is a system run by well-dressed operators who treat the public purse as their own. Canada is now a nation run by criminals, for criminals.

October 26, 2025

“Canada’s elections used to mean something. Now they’re a joke”

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

Dan Knight on the recent presentation by former Elections Canada head Jean-Pierre Kingsley and current Quebec electoral officer Jean-François Blanchet to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee in Parliament:

“2019 Canadian federal election – VOTE” by Indrid__Cold – CC BY-SA 2.0

What we just witnessed in Ottawa last Tuesday wasn’t a hearing, it was a slow-motion autopsy of Canadian democracy. The Procedure and House Affairs Committee gathered to talk about the so-called “Longest Ballot Committee,” a group of self-styled activists who decided to “protest” the electoral system by flooding ridings with hundreds of fake candidates, turning the act of voting into a bureaucratic endurance test. And what did the political class do about it? They shrugged. They nodded solemnly. They said “shared responsibility.”

In other words: nothing.

Former Elections Canada chief Jean-Pierre Kingsley and Quebec’s electoral officer Jean-François Blanchet were the adults in the room, the only people who seemed to understand what’s actually at stake when you weaponize procedure to destroy trust. Kingsley, who’s been overseeing elections since before most MPs had a LinkedIn page, didn’t mince words: “The Long Ballot Initiative is unjustified and exceedingly disruptive“. In other words, a circus.

He called voting the act that “establishes the very legitimacy of Parliament”. That used to mean something in this country. Now? It’s a joke being played on the people who still believe their vote matters.

Blanchet gave the numbers that should have every Canadian furious, 40 candidates in one riding, 91 in another, 214 in a third. Two hundred and fourteen names. That’s not democracy, that’s sabotage. He called it “a movement to challenge the voting system, not to get candidates elected”. Exactly. It’s the bureaucratic version of an online troll farm.

He told MPs what voters already know: “Overly long ballots irritate voters”. You think? Imagine trying to fold a sheet the size of a blueprint just to cast a vote for your MP. And yet, for this — for actively undermining elections — no one’s been charged, fined, or even reprimanded.

Then Conservative MP Blaine Calkins finally asked the question everyone else was too polite to touch: Should there be penalties for those who make a mockery of our electoral system? Kingsley didn’t hesitate: “Yes“. He said it should go to a court of law, not a bureaucrat, not some anonymous commissioner. A judge. A real trial. Because that’s how serious this is.

Meanwhile, the Liberals on the committee did what they always do, changed the subject. Instead of talking about ballot fraud, they went off about “AI misinformation” and “deepfakes”. Liberal MPs Élisabeth Brière and Arielle Kayabaga wrung their hands about artificial intelligence like it was the Terminator coming for democracy. Never mind that the real problem was sitting right in front of them: a political culture that treats fraud as performance art.

October 14, 2025

QotD: The trade in fake doctor’s notes

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Business, Health, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A suspended doctor in England is running a company that sells people sick notes to excuse them on medical grounds from their work. “When you’re ill,” said an advertisement for the company, “our prices will make you feel better”.

A reporter for the Daily Telegraph newspaper managed to obtain a certificate from the company to excuse him from work for five months, because he claimed (falsely) to be suffering from the long-term effects of COVID. He obtained the note without providing any medical evidence whatsoever.

The only thing that surprised me about this was that anyone thought that it was necessary in Britain to buy or pay for such a certificate. I thought of the famous lines of Humbert Wolfe, the otherwise all-but-forgotten England man of letters:

    You cannot hope
    to bribe or twist,
    thank God! the
    British journalist.
    But, seeing what
    the man will do
    unbribed, there’s
    no occasion to.

The same might almost be said of British doctors, many of whom, I suspect, issue such certificates incontinently, for one of two reasons: fear of their patients, and sentimentality.

Not surprisingly, doctors do not like unpleasant scenes in their consulting rooms, and refusal of requests for time off sick can easily lead to such scenes, and occasionally to threatened or actual violence.

Naturally, no doctor likes to think of himself as a coward, the kind of person who caves in to such threats. The best way to avoid so humiliating a thought is never to risk having to think it, that is to say by granting the patients’ wishes in this matter immediately.

But in order to do this without feeling self-contempt, it is necessary to rationalize, that is to say to find supposed reasons for why everyone who wants a certificate should be given one. The English philosopher F.H. Bradley once said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, adding however that it was a human propensity to do so. In like fashion, we could say that doctors find bad reasons for giving sick certificates when they suspect that not to do so might lead to a confrontation with a patient.

Thus they convince themselves that if a person tells them that they are unfit for work, for whatever reason, it would be wrong to question it. No one would make a claim to be unable to work unless he were in some way discontented, unhappy, depressed, anxious, stressed, in a word suffering, and it is the object of doctors to reduce human suffering.

The doctor is aided in this train of thought by the looseness of psychiatric diagnosis, so that practically all forms of distress can be fitted into the procrustean bed of diagnosis. Even outright faking can now be construed as an illness or disorder, provided only that it goes on for long enough or is deceptive enough.

Does this mean that the patients seeking sick notes are all faking it? The matter is more complex than this would suggest. There is, of course, conscious, outright fraud, but this is comparatively rare. Just as doctors don’t like to think of themselves as cowards in the face of their patients, so patients don’t like to think of themselves as frauds.

Distress can be conjured out of almost anything and is not necessarily proportional to whatever causes it. Dwelling on the ill treatment one has suffered — and who has not suffered ill treatment at some time in his life? — can magnify something minor into something major, to the point at which it seems almost to have ruined one’s life. And it is certainly capable of rendering a person unfit for work in his own estimation — though in fact continuing at work would be a remedy for, rather than an exacerbation of, the problem.

However, where economic loss is not too severe when stopping work on medical grounds is possible, medical grounds will be both sought and found. In the days of the Soviet Union, the workers had a saying: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” In our kinder and more enlightened societies, we pretend to be ill, and they pretend to treat us — except that the word “pretend” does not quite capture the subtlety of the transactions between doctor and patients.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Make Me Sick”, New English Review, 2025-07-04.

September 12, 2025

Canada’s temporary foreign worker programs

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

At Acceptable Views, Alexander Brown calls for the end to the Canadian federal temporary immigration scam programs:

It’s not hyperbole to say that Canada has built an entire economy on exploiting cheap, foreign labour through TWFP, as well as the International Mobility Program (IMP). These are two slightly different programs that allow foreign nationals to work in Canada, with most going to Ontario. But contrary to its name, there is nothing “temporary” about the TFWP. Its original purpose was to remedy proven labour shortages while Canadians were hired and trained to eventually do the jobs in question. Meanwhile, the IMP allows international students to work—with or without a proven labour shortage—while they’re studying in Canada.

Between 2019 and 2023, the TFWP increased by 88 percent and the IMP increased 126 percent. They account for close to 1.58 million work permit holders, equal to roughly 7 percent of Canada’s labour force.

Taken together, the results of the TFWP and IMP are deplorable. The TFWP allows foreign nationals to be recruited abroad in vast numbers, brought to Canada, housed in degrading conditions, paid the minimum wage, forced to work long hours, pressured into not joining a union, and required to work for only one employer. Yes, the IMP is more flexible, but it’s more pernicious because it does not even pretend to address labour shortages.

Both schemes are also of course bad for Canadians themselves. The problem is especially grievous for young Canadians trying to get started in the labour market. Canada lost 40,800 jobs this past July, the unemployment rate is now 6.9 percent, and youth unemployment (those between 15 and 24 years old) is now 14.6 percent.

Both the TFWP and IMP are used as business models. Hiring foreign nationals at minimum wage keeps prices low and profits high—most notoriously in the hospitality and trucking sectors, but no industry seems untouched now.

Addicted to cheap foreign labour

The use of the TFWP in the healthcare sector, for example, has grown by an appalling 1,700 percent since 2000. That dramatic rise has no doubt been abetted by the absence of uniform standards and credential recognition among Canadian provinces. If medical personnel could move easily from one province to another, shortages could be filled by Canadians. But historically this has not been possible, and so medical institutions have had to turn to the TFWP. Ontario’s recent determination to solve this problem by speeding up recognition of 50 “in-demand” professions from other provinces is a step in the right direction, and hopefully not too little too late.

Meanwhile, the IMP is a vehicle for outright fraud, ranging from fake acceptance letters from bogus “colleges” to elaborate human-trafficking schemes. Not long ago, nearly 50,000 holders of foreign student visas were working and attempting to settle here, rather than studying at any Canadian university or college. Most were migrants from India, and some were trying to cross the border illegally into the United States. The RCMP is now working with Indian law-enforcement to investigate alleged links between dozens of “colleges” in Canada and two “entities” in India allegedly facilitating passage into the U.S. When we reflect that an astounding 4.9 million temporary visas are set to expire this year, we have reason to believe that this abuse, exploitation, and fraud are on a much larger scale that we understand.

The consequences for young Canadians

Both the TFWP and the IMP serve to keep wages artificially low and profits high, and to price Canadians out of the job market. It wouldn’t be wrong to view these programs as distortionary government subsidies or welfare for unproductive businesses. The effects disproportionately harm younger Canadians who are priced out of the labour market, given that temporary workers overwhelmingly earn less than the median wage. And yet, we’re constantly hectored about labour shortages, Canadians’ “unwillingness” to do certain jobs, and the need for foreign workers.

It shouldn’t take much intellectual effort to see that the use of foreign labour and the difficulties of employing younger Canadians are two sides of the same ugly coin. Foreign workers are more cooperative because they are bound to their employers like serfs. They face normally insurmountable barriers to joining unions and have no attachment to the community in which they’re expected to work. In comparison, the domestic population is generally better educated and rooted in the local community.

Young Canadians can afford to be discriminating and should rightly expect higher wages than foreign nationals. Employers should instead work harder to invest in and reward their domestic workforce. In any other era, this would have been obvious. But now there is little incentive for businesses to look beyond cheap, foreign labour.

To get an idea of the magnitude of our collective failure here, consider the following fact. A 2024 study by RBC Economics revealed that Canadian businesses are sitting on a stockpile of cash worth almost a third of our country’s GDP. In other words, Canadian companies have the means to invest in hiring and training Canadians, but simply refuse to do so. The results of this refusal are stagnant wages, structural unemployment, and a de-skilling of the domestic population.

September 5, 2025

End the “temporary” foreign worker scam!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the National Post, Chris Selley explains why Pierre Poilievre and the federal Conservatives should be hammering their demand to eliminate the much-abused temporary foreign worker program:

Youth unemployment stands at 14.6 per cent, according to Statistics Canada’s latest release. That’s the highest non-pandemic July figure since 2009 (15.9 per cent), at the nadir of the Great Recession. It makes nothing but good sense that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would position himself, as he did on Wednesday, foursquare athwart bringing in any more temporary foreign workers to fill positions that certain employers swear blind they cannot fill with younger Canadians at any conceivable price.

“Why is (the government) shutting our own youth out of jobs and replacing them with low-wage temporary foreign workers from poor countries who are ultimately being exploited?” Poilievre asked, rhetorically, on Wednesday. By rights it ought to be a solid populist pitch to Canadians, and no-brainer policy besides.

Companies who use TFWs will insist it’s not about finding “cheaper” help, but about finding any help. Tim Hortons defended itself Wednesday noting that less than five per cent of its national workforce were TFWs — which seems like a very high number, right? It’s not just me? — and those hires tended to be clustered “in small towns and communities where local candidates are not available”.

But an odd sort of small town or community, surely, that can’t live without a Timmy’s, but that doesn’t have enough people to work at it. And it’s an odd sort of remedial program, surely, to bring in employees not from other parts of Canada but rather from halfway around the world. Especially since groups like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) swear blind they’re not after an hourly wage discount, just anyone who’s willing and able to fill the position. It was certainly a very odd kind of fishing resort, it struck me, that claimed this summer it couldn’t find any Canadian employees and needed the TFW program instead.

Didn’t kids used to flock en masse cross-country to take outdoorsy jobs every summer? Have I not read 150 tiresome baby-boomer op-eds on the topic?

The special pleading sometimes beggars belief. And unemployed young Canadians aren’t free to you and me, after all — whoever’s fault it is, if anyone’s, they’re an anchor on the economy. A Deloitte study commissioned by the King’s Trust Canada, published in November, estimated “that under the right conditions, overall real GDP could increase by $18.5 billion by 2034 — more than Canada’s entire arts, entertainment and recreation sector — and (Canada could) add an additional 228,000 jobs in the process” if “youth engagement in the workforce” significantly increased.

August 29, 2025

Memories of Bournemouth

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s nearly sixty years since my family emigrated, but I still have golden memories of the family trips to the seaside, although my family went to Scarborough, Whitby, and Redcar rather than the Bournemouth of Pimlico Journal‘s childhood:

“Harvester at Durley Chine” by David Lally is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

At every possible opportunity in the summer weekends of my childhood, my father would take our family down to the coast. Our route to the sea was normally through the medieval city of Salisbury, across the chalk downs of Hardy’s Wessex, and into the piney moors of the New Forest. The destination would nearly always be Bournemouth, the prim, stately model of the British seaside town, perched magisterially on Dorset’s sandstone cliffs, above a long golden strand lapped by the warm waves of the Channel.

Our favourite beach was at Durley Chine, where we could park (for free, greatly appealing to my father) among obscured mansions in the shade of thick-smelling conifers, and make our descent to the shore, where the chine gives way to the rows of huts that line the promenade, and a reassuringly lower-middle class Harvester restaurant. We would while away the hours on the sand until the sky was orange, my mother reading, my father swimming, and my brother and I playing whatever games we could devise, mostly involving the throwing of sand. The day would end with fish and chips under the pines, watching the sun sink over the jurassic cliffs past Poole harbour, the gateway to King Alfred’s stronghold at Wareham.

These were among the most precious times of my early life, and the sights and sounds and smells of that part of the world and the accompanying hazy, worriless bliss are cherished sensations. Though the beach is public, it was one of those places that felt special and individual to my family, as if we had somehow carved out our own summer fief on the crowded shore.

It was on Durley Chine beach, on 24 May 2024, that two innocent women, Amie Grey and Leanne Miles, were attacked by Nasen Saadi, a criminology student from Croydon of Iraqi and Thai heritage. Saadi murdered Grey and left Miles in critical condition, and was sentenced this year to thirty-nine years in prison for his crimes. The incident was part of an escalating pattern of violence, particularly sexual violence, in the Bournemouth area over the past few years, with the beach as the focal point, a pattern which had begun in July 2021 with the brutal rape of a 15-year-old girl by Gabriel Marinoaica, a young man from Walsall who dragged his victim into the sea to commit his attack. Another notable incident occurred eight months later. Afghan asylum seeker and convicted killer Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai (he had shot two fellow Afghans while living illegally in Serbia in 2018, before fleeing to Norway, where his asylum claim was rejected, then travelling to Britain and successfully claiming asylum by pretending to be an unaccompanied fourteen-year-old, despite being an adult) stabbed Thomas Roberts (a local man and qualified precision engineer who had recently applied to join the Royal Marines) to death outside a Subway in the city centre, in a dispute over an e-scooter.

The news stories become relentless from that point. Among many depravities are the sexual assault of a 17-year-old boy by a group of Asian males on 17 June 2023, accompanied the same day by an attempted assault on a 16-year-old girl outside the fish and chip shop on the seafront. A week later, two girls, aged just 10 and 11, who would have been in primary school at the time, were sexually assaulted while swimming in the sea. As far as I can tell, none of these crimes have yet been prosecuted.

Two months after the murder of Amie Grey, on 19 July 2024, a day of delirious warmth culminated in violent clashes between youths, many coming in from London, on the seafront — clashes which were filmed and circulated on social media. In the chaos, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted. Jessica Toale, the freshly-elected Labour MP for Bournemouth West, a seat which had been Tory since its creation in 1950, said after the events of 19 July that crime and anti-social behaviour had become a ‘huge issue’ in contrast to the safe Bournemouth she remembered as a girl, stating that ‘… parents had told [her] that they are concerned about letting their daughters go to the town’. These are almost reactionary words from a Labour MP, and reflective of the mood of anxiety and decline that seems to have enveloped the city, a mood founded on the series of despair-inducing events plaguing residents and visitors. On 30 June, disorder similar to that witnessed in July last year returned to the seafront, with police making arrests across the country in the aftermath.

A week later, on 6 July, a young woman was raped in a public toilet adjoining the beach. The police have charged Mohammed Abdullah, a Syrian asylum seeker living in West London, with the crime.

August 18, 2025

Canadian grocers are “maple-washing” products to hide their actual origin

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

Sylvain Charlebois on the new phenomenon of grocery stores going to great lengths to pretend that items for sale are Canadian when they’re not — “maple-washing”:

Image by Troy Media via Todayville

Canadian grocery retailers are misleading shoppers about where their food really comes from. Behind the patriotic packaging lies a growing problem: “maple-washing” — using Canadian symbols to suggest products are homegrown when they’re not. It’s eroding consumer trust and must end.

That’s why more Canadians are paying closer attention to what labels actually mean. Awareness around origin labelling has grown as people learn the difference between “Product of Canada”, “Made in Canada”, and “Prepared in Canada”. The Food and Drugs Act requires labels to be truthful and not misleading. A “Product of Canada” must contain at least 98 per cent Canadian ingredients and processing. “Made in Canada” applies when the last substantial transformation happened here, while “Prepared in Canada” covers processing, packaging or handling in Canada regardless of ingredient source.

The differences may seem technical, but they matter. A frozen lasagna labelled “Prepared in Canada”, for example, could be made with imported pasta, sauce and meat — packaged here but not truly Canadian. These rules give consumers the clarity they need to make informed choices.

Armed with this clarity, many Canadians have become more selective about what they buy. That vigilance has emerged alongside a surge in consumer nationalism, spurred partly by geopolitical tensions and anti-American sentiment. Even with U.S. giants like Walmart, Costco and Amazon dominating Canadian retail, many shoppers are deliberately avoiding American food products. The impact has been significant: NielsenIQ reports an 8.5 per cent drop in sales of American food products in Canada over just a few months. In an industry where sales usually shift by fractions of a per cent, such a drop is extraordinary. It shows how quickly Canadians are voting with their wallets.

That kind of shift, rare outside of crises, caught many grocers off guard. The sudden change left supply chains long dependent on U.S. products under pressure, and store-level labelling grew inconsistent. Early missteps — like maple leaves displayed beside imported goods — were excused as logistical oversights. But six months later, those excuses no longer hold. Persisting with misleading displays and false origin claims has crossed the line into misrepresentation. Instances of oranges or almonds labelled as Canadian, with prices quietly adjusted after complaints, show the problem is systemic, not accidental.

June 25, 2025

QotD: Marie Antoinette and the “Diamond Necklace” scandal

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

Today, the Diamond Necklace affair has been relegated to the status of sensational footnote in history books about the French Revolution. Throughout the 19th century, however, the scandal was widely believed to have been a major factor in the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy. Decades after the French Revolution, Napoleon observed from the vantage point of his post-Waterloo exile: “The Queen’s death must be dated from the Diamond Necklace trial”. […] And here’s the irony: While the Diamond Necklace affair was the scandal that most tarnished Marie Antoinette’s reputation, it was one in which she was almost certainly guiltless.

The origins of the affair stretched back to Louis XV, who wished to lavish on his mistress, Madame du Barry, a splendid diamond necklace containing 647 stones and weighing 2,800 carats (worth roughly $15 million today). But Louis XV died before the sale of the necklace was concluded. And when young Louis XVI took the throne, the Paris jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge hoped the new king would purchase the same necklace for his own queen, Marie Antoinette. However, she refused to accept a piece of jewelry that had been created for the previous king’s mistress.

Meanwhile, a socially ambitious minor aristocrat named Jeanne de la Motte was plotting to get her hands on the necklace. Married to the Comte de la Motte, she was also the mistress of Cardinal de Rohan, former French ambassador to Marie Antoinette’s native Austria. Madame de la Motte managed to convince Cardinal de Rohan not only that Marie Antoinette wished to possess the necklace, but that she was acting on the Queen’s behalf. He could ingratiate himself at court, she insisted, by obtaining it. Cardinal Rohan foolishly purchased the necklace on credit, under the naive belief that he’d be repaid by Marie Antoinette. The scam concluded with Madame de la Motte stealing the necklace from the cardinal and, using her husband’s louche connections, selling it in pieces through fences in England.

This tawdry business was closer to comic opera than an affair of state. But when the fraud was discovered, the scandal gripped Parisian society. Louis XVI was so infuriated that he had Cardinal de Rohan arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille, which only heightened public interest. Marie Antoinette was already being caricatured in pamphlets as a depraved nymphomaniac. It was now open season.

In some caricatures, she appeared as a wild beast, a tiger feeding on the French nation. In others, she was depicted as an ostrich, a French wordplay with her home country Autriche, for Austria, which reads like autruche for ostrich. Even worse, she was depicted in pornographic postures, legs open and genitals gaping, cuckolding her obese husband with a succession of lovers, including lesbian trysts. Allusions to her sexual appetites suggested a carnal relationship with Satan. Robespierre’s publication Le Journal des hommes libres described her as “more bloodthirsty than Jezebel, more conniving than Agrippina”. The pamphlets blamed Marie Antoinette for all the nation’s misfortunes, including economic recession. She was so hated by the French public that there were serious concerns for her physical safety.

[…]

Cardinal de Rohan, meanwhile, was tried for his role in the Diamond Necklace affair. Astonishingly, he was acquitted. The scheming Madame de la Motte met a different fate. She was found guilty of theft and sentenced to be whipped and branded on the shoulder with the letter V for voleuse (thief). She was also incarcerated in the Salpêtrière prison in Paris, but escaped to London. In 1789, she published a book, Mémoires justificatifs, a scathing tell-all memoir about Marie Antoinette. It was a good year to attack the French monarchy, for the revolution was just getting going. Madame de la Motte was never returned to France to face justice. Exiled in London, she died in 1791 after falling from a window, apparently fleeing debt collectors. She was buried in St. Mary’s Churchyard in south London.

Matthew Fraser, “Marie Antoinette: Figure of Myth, Magnet for Lies”, Quillette, 2020-06-24.

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