Layman’s thoughts on all the handwringing over Canada’s GDP per capita.
It’s just a number. A ratio. The denominator is population. Increase population fast via high levels of immigration and the denominator will grow. New arrivals will inevitably not be as productive in … 1/5 their early years of settlement, so GDP growth (the numerator) may well lag growth of the denominator. So the ratio’s growth slows or might even fall. But that doesn’t mean people who’ve been here for their whole lives necessarily have lower standards of living (subject to … 2/5

So, piffleswipe @PierrePoilievre, proponent of lean, mean government, has a shadow cabinet with, um, 78 members.
Let’s take a look at some of the leading, uh, lights. …
1/12
conservative.ca/team/shadow-ca… Melissa Lantsman, Deputy PM in Waiting, would certainly qualify for the mean gene. Posted English empty grocery shelves photo as Canadian. Former Walmart lobbyist. Former advisor to Stephen Harper and Doug Ford. Conservative since adolescence. Nice hair though. …
2/12

🧵To summarize, piffleswipe @PierrePoilievre would:
▪️End $10/day childcare
▪️End pharmacare
▪️End denticare
▪️Cut child benefits and bring back child poverty
▪️Restore OAS to age 67 where he and Harper put it
▪️Fire Governor of Bank of Canada
▪️Encourage cupboards full of … assault-style style weapons in every Canadian parent’s bedroom
▪️Impose Charter-banned cruel and unusual punishment in Canadian prisons via the notwithstanding clause
▪️Deny accused persons Charter-protected reasonable access to bail via the notwithstanding clause
▪️Chip away …

If a group of police officers charge someone with murdering one of their colleagues, get together afterwards to collude in writing up their notes of the incident in question, and at the bail hearing a Superior Court judge tells the Crown their case is weak, …1/4 and then at trial the police officers all testify under oath that the killing happened in a way consistent with both their collusive notes and with an intention to kill, and then the Crown itself calls an expert witness who testifies that it couldn’t have happened that way, 2/4

🧵Here we go again, another anti-#MAID activist in academe spouting the usual intellectually dishonest misread of Canada’s assisted dying laws, trying to convince the lay public there’s something grievously wrong.
There isn’t.
Here, the @globeandmail’s learned contributor
1/13 employs the usual semantic trick of claiming the law is self-contradictory by suggesting ‘intolerable suffering’ is the key legislated criterion for MAID. By definition, the sophistry goes, suffering can’t ever be “intolerable” because the consenting adult is …
2/13

🧵 A seldom mentioned fact about @jordanbpeterson is that before he became a “public intellectual”, he tried to run a different gig … alongside his then-professorial duties at the University of Toronto, presenting as an “expert” for litigants in various court cases.
Under forensic examination, he did not fare well. Judges are notoriously polite in their choice of language when commenting on experts, but …

Let’s see now: was one right to start calling out the emerging neofascism of 🍁Conservatives several years ago?
▪️Piffleswipe @PierrePoilievre encourages #KuKluxKonvoy
▪️ Michael Cooper MP appears in front of Nazi flag on Parliament Hill without apology
▪️Dep. Leader Leslyn … Lewis et al have German neo-Nazi to lunch without complaint from the piffleswipe
▪️The piffleswipe publicly publicly endorses the intellect of neofascist Jordan Peterson
▪️ The party is a proud and leading member of Orban, Modi and Trump’s IDU
▪️The piffleswipe orders his MP’s …

🧵Re this whole Johnston “conflict of interest” nonsense, our loyal opposition and media buffoons have managed to bamboozle us.
The issue is not one of conflict of interest at all.
It is whether there is a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of the special rapporteur. (Unless one wants to accuse the former Governor General of actual bias, which only the extreme commentators have ventured to do.)

🧵In the matter of @ABDanielleSmith’s attempts to interfere with the prosecution of a criminal case, the Alberta Ethics Commissioner’s report yesterday points out that early in the piece, the Premier had actually invited written advice from Ezra Levant, of all people: Despite Levant’s legal training, his advice, unsurprisingly, was dead wrong and had to be countermanded by government lawyers who actually knew how the administration of justice works in a democracy.

🧵🧵🧵
So, as promised yesterday, I attended Question Period today, thanks once again to the kindness of Canada’s best constituency MP, @TurnbullWhitby of my old home town.
Observations and thoughts:
1. We the public have spent a fortune providing sumptuous temporary … quarters for our House of Commons while their real home undergoes years of renovations. It’s a complete and utter waste of money, thanks to the determination of @PierrePoilievre’s braying black shirts to pervert what should be a place of serious and honest debate …

🧵 It’s always amusing to see people like @anthonyfurey (Toronto Mayoral candidate) appeal to @jordanbpeterson as an authority on anything.
A seldom mentioned fact about Dr. Peterson is that before he became a “public intellectual”, he tried to run a different gig … alongside his then-professorial duties at U of T, presenting as an “expert” for litigants in various court cases.
Under forensic examination, he did not fare well. Judges are notoriously polite in their choice of language when commenting on experts, but they were scathing …

🧵 This letter writer makes the common mistake of claiming that health care falls exclusively within the jurisdiction of the provinces within which the feds may not constitutionally legislate.
The practical reality is that health care is an area of concurrent jurisdiction. … In this regard, it’s helpful to look first at the British North America Act division of powers under sections 91 and 92.
Immediately apparent is the fact that nobody in 1867 was thinking of a comprehensive, publicly funded health care system at all.
Here’s what the feds and …

🧵So, Steve, what’s all this stuff about bargaining in good faith?
Well, Doug, the lawyers tell us we have to do it. But I hate it as much as you do.
Lookit, Steve, just keep making ridiculous low ball offers we know they’ll never accept.
OK, Doug, consider it done. … And Steve, meanwhile I’ll get my lawyers to draw up some back-to-work legislation we can use once they serve a strike notice.
But Doug, if you do that, we’ll end up in binding arbitration and we’ll have to give them what they deserve.
Not with me, Steve. No commie arbitrator…

🧵Let’s be clear. Ever since the days of Mike Harris, the Conservatives in Ontario have had one ambition: to dismantle the province’s public sector piece by piece.
The Ford/Lecce regime has a singular focus on that now.
Their first objective is to crush the public sector unions.. starting with the education sector, at the bottom pay grade. Once they’ve finished off the teachers and set up voucher-funded private schools everywhere, they plan to do in the universities, turning them all into colleges of business and trades. After that, they’ll take public …

🧵To a lawyer, the Emergencies Act Inquiry is fun to watch just to see counsel working with the witnesses using different styles.
But stepping back as a Canadian, one has to wonder what kind of dictatorship declares an emergency, kills no one, injures almost no one, revokes it … days later, and then conducts a minute examination of it, in public and on television, with lawyers for every conceivably affected party allowed to cross-examine all the police leaders engaged in the operation from every conceivable angle, with gazillions of the authorities’ …

🧵 Did the Conservatives even read the transcript of the new audio?
It’s clear 1. nobody was insisting make and model of the Portapique guns be announced; and 2. the local RCMP were apologizing to the Comm’r for not including general info on the guns as they’d promised … Unlike the @globeandmail, The National Post at least published the transcript (excerpts below👇🏻), so we can all read in black and white the @RCMPNS’s admissions of continuing internal and external communications bloopers. …
@BillBlair @marcomendicino
nationalpost.com/news/politics/…

🧵This horse has regrettably already left the barn, but there is much misunderstanding abroad regarding the legislatively intended scope of the inquiry now getting underway into the emergency declaration last winter. … The Emergencies Act expressly calls for the reasons behind any emergency declaration to be reviewed, not 6 months later by a judge, but within 7 days of the declaration by *Parliament*. If Parliament disapproves, the declaration automatically dies.

🧵A great thing about how our court system deals with science is that professed experts take an oath and are subjected to cross-examination and close judicial scrutiny.
Over and over again, anti-vaxx “experts” are exposed as fringe players at best, and charlatans at worst. … The most recent Ontario example of the former is found in a case brought by some unvaccinated Seneca College students seeking to stop enforcement of a vaccine mandate for the current academic year.
They relied on an “expert” from the University of Guelph who was …

🧵I’ve finally figured out Little Peter Popinjay’s appeal to his followers.
It’s certainly not that he’s the guy they’d love to go out for a beer with, or that they love his sense of humour, or even, God forbid, his hair.
What drives them is… pure and unadulterated Trudeau hatred.
They don’t actually care about policy.
All they want in a politician is someone who can, in their estimation, destroy Justin Trudeau, metaphorically speaking.
The milquetoast wannabe tough guy, Andrew Scheer, failed miserably…

🧵In today’s @globeandmail, Mr. Clark has it right in his headline point on what the Emergencies Act question is *not*, but wrong on what it *is*.
It is not a simple question of ‘when no other law can deal with the crisis’. … Under the Act:
17 (1) When the Governor in Council *believes*, on *reasonable grounds*, that a public order emergency exists and necessitates the taking of special temporary measures for dealing with the emergency, the Governor in Council, after such consultation as is required…

Long 🧵 on threats posted on Twitter with impunity against the @CanadianPM.
After watching the Jan. 6 proceedings yesterday regarding Trump’s Twitter incitements to violence, one reflected on analogous incitements in 🇨🇦Canada by like-minded people… .@globeandmail @TorontoStar @CBCNews @ConsumerSOS @globalnewsto @atRachelGilmore #cdnmedia