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I was quite surprised today to see an announcement from the Ontario Ministry of Health that they will provide free counselling for persons suffering from anxiety and depression. Right now one of 4 Canadians is off work at some time due to anxiety or depression and it costs billions in lost income each year due to work absences. This government has been accused of being harsh, insensitive, etc., but has just done something very progressive and enlightened. Right now if you have depression or anxiety you have to wait months to see a psychiatrist under OHIP. The psychiatrist is usually so over-booked the best he or she does is give you a brief 15 minute interview and sends you back to your your gp who may have to give you anti anxiety or anti depressant medication. The medication itself may or may not help but without adjunct (associated, attached) cognitive therapy the medication in itself may not be as effective as monitoring the medication and also guiding individuals how to identify triggers for negative behaviour. Now for many this will not be noticed but its huge (excuse the Trump word) in terms of implications. It will intercept numerous domestic violence scenarios and prevent them. It will intercept persons who might otherwise act out with violence or driving drunk or skipping work or committing suicide or crimes. In the short term it costs for the counsellors to be funded but in the long term it deals with an actually wide spread issue that costs medical care in the long run more than it will prevent with the short term immediate funding expense. Its something the supposed left wing NDP and Liberals never considered. Very far sighted. Next time someone blasts this government as uncaring it may want to think twice. This government has taken a lot of heat over issues dealing with disability issues particularly the cost of autism programs mainstreaming disabilities in schools that it has not created but is trying to fairly deal with. I applaud this constructive announcement.

Where is our PM voice in this entire issue, instead we have a small but brief explanation by the Minster DND as he should after all he did contribute to the Afghanistan mission.. i guess i was expecting a stronger response... Instead Retire Gen Hillier stepped up to defend soldiers honor... not afraid to tell it as it is.. I get the whole fact politicians have to treat each other with kid gloves and double speak... so not to offend anyone..... But one would think that our PM would atleast say something .... On a side issue, this news of how the American government thinks about Canada and it's Department of Defence or the lack off is nothing new, even Obama has had talks with our governments to encourage them to atleast put some effort into DND, .... But it stings when the country hears it, we the soldiers know these remarks are not about us.... they are about our lack of federal government actions on the defence file, in everything about our entire security apparatus. To bad the left could not give a rats ass about our entire security apparatus and would rather it burn to the ground than spend one tax dollar on fixing the problems that plague DND.

What we see today is the end game for liberals. People should reject them now as political chandala, with resounding conviction. They have become their own opposite, a sign that their political philosophy has collapsed in on itself. Need to get rid of them, asap and restore civil law and order. These problems they have gotten people all worked up about, are not deserving of the destructive response on display! Clearly it is used an excuse for some to commit violence. But more despicable is the politicization of it, as some do present it against conservatism. I already indicated my plan. Step one: Bring in the batons and billy clubs. Step two: Lets talk meaningful reform, not bullshit displays on TV. Step three: All liberals to be detained for questioning and fingerprinted.

OK, but Canada was not directly involved in the Vietnam War until its conclusion. Canadians who wanted to fight did so with other nations. However, Canada was very interested in making billions of dollars for war materials destined for the war. Which brings us back to Navarro's comments....the Chretien, Martin, and Harper governments did seek political and economic favour from the U.S. based on military commitments and cooperation in Afghanistan, but that was not the primary policy reason vis-a-vis the WOT. Example: Canada made a big political point of not "directly" joining the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but still sought lucrative oil-services contracts post invasion based on continuing allied cooperation in Afghanistan. Bush had banned Canada from bidding on those contracts, but ultimately relented.

It isn't a contest; it is a team. We just don't want to put in the effort our ally sees as neccessary. Canadian reluctance in Defence policy grew out of the anti-war movement during the Viet Nam war. Since the only nation with any viable ability to successfully invade Canada is the US, Canadian taxpayers don't see the value of spending money on an effective military. I have advocated for re-building the Canadian Forces for fifty years. Nobody wants it. We are the neighbour who drops in just as dinner is on the table.

You should be able to appreciate that ideas are hardly the same thing as ideology - in spite of the etymology. I have a fair bit of experience with people who have entered academia to pursue academic excellence and expand the base of knowledge and end up running away from the extreme leftist political environment that destroys any academic ethics that might be trying to survive. This is hardly a new thing. My wife encountered ultra-racist academics over 40 years ago in a faculty of education where aboriginal students were given a pass on the academic requirements for both entry and graduation - ending up with the same qualifications as those who actually DID the work and legitimately passed the exams. An engineer who worked for me became a good friend, and his wife (a genuine maritime liberal) insisted that our views on that subject (after we had lived in the North for a decade) were very racist, so she enrolled in a class at our nearby university in aboriginal studies. She was (is) a "type A" personality/student and was stunned to see her marks come in middle of the pack when she knew fully well she had aced the course content while people who should never have been given a passing grade were granted top rank. She was a lot less liberal/Liberal after that experience and her prof went on to become an NDP cabinet minister. Fast forward a couple of decades and our eldest was teaching and in grad school (sciences at same institution) and was the ONLY fluently anglo (her second language) person in her group and required (by faculty supervisor) to review all papers published in her department as the English was so bad that it would reflect on the ratings of their faculty. In reality she found that not only was the English unacceptable, but the science wasn't all that good either. The political component of the failure of our academic, cultural and economic world is very significant and very real.

Yes...seriously. Would you like some more 3M masks with those orders for U.S. made vaccine ? ...and fries ?

It will be remembered as the start of the paradigm shift from capitalism to network society. The big scarcity isn't capital anymore, it's attention. Attention can't be artificially inflated beyond what can be achieved with some multitasking. Whoever grabs the most attention controls the world. Those who think the social medias are for free and willingly give it their attention without compensation are the new underclass, the consumertariat. They only consume information and products placed before them by the algorithms. At the top we have the netocrats. The people who have the attention of the most others. The Internet is the network that connects everybody in the world. The MSM will continue to decline just like the landed gentry did during the industrial revolution. So will academia like the church did in that time. Government income will be less than before due to the mobility of capital and people not working as much as before, and their failure to tax the gig and sharing economy. That will enforce the decline in relevance of traditional political power that is already under pressure from the fact that the support systems of academia and media are failing. The 2010s will be remembered as part of the last stable period when we could get the benefits of the new technology while still having the stability of the old paradigm. The coming decades will be a bumpy road when the old elites will struggle to retain some of their power. Hyper biased news, ideological dogma in academia and populism in politics will just increase and it all started in the 2010s.

canada got burned by China...so Trudeau has turned to Trump's evil 'murica instead, not France or U.K. 'Murica sucks !!" (unless Canada wants something)

They are now...and Canada has lined up for vaccine doses, since the CanSino fiasco blew up in Trudeau's face. You're welcome....

All of Canada's COVID vaccine contracts are part of Trump's Operation Warp Speed. https://www.prpeak.com/canada-has-contracts-for-up-to-four-covid-19-vaccines-but-they-won-t-be-mandatory-1.24195046

Canada recently received another slap in the face from China when they abruptly pulled out of a similar deall to provide us with vaccine. The Canadian government needs to figure out who our friends are. Please Sir, can we have some more vaccine?

The Trudeau government has completed a deal to buy millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses from U.S. pharma companies that are developing and manufacturing under Trump's "Operation Warp Speed". Canada does not have the capability to manufacture enough vaccine doses domestically. ...but Trump and 'murica still suck ! https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-1.5706067

I agree that these violent nutjobs are the modern day version of the Brownshirts.It should also be a giant red flag that Democrats are overwhelmingly not condemning Antifa/rioting,looting etc. That speaks volumes about the heart and soul of the current Democratic party. MSNBC,CNN and their kind are alternatively lapdogs for the Democrats and attack dogs towards the Republicans. The goal of the media should be only to tell the truth,not to push their own narrative. I'm currently reading The Liberal Media Industrial Complex by Mark Dice. Very good so far.

I wouldn't presume it purely political, if the objective is to have a level playing field with how others count it. That could be the very issue at heart here with US data, but again I wouldn't presume. My position stands, In summation, anyone who politicize information about the virus is a jackass. Anyone...

I guess your not listening to my counterargument. Let's try this way, 1) Actual management of health and safety is at the grass-roots level. It's the physicians, medical health experts who advise for the policy of a region, same or similar to how it is managed in Canada. Mr. Trudeau didn't do much directly. They provide overll broad guidelines and money, and equipment. The are a resource for the grass-roots health administrations who deal with the minutia, and have the expertise. 2) "Politicizing information about the virus is a foul action indeed." - OW

Yes, but I think Navarro's comments have an even more narrow context for Trump administration policies and rhetoric specifically directed at trade and different nation state interests. Early on, Canada's Operation Apollo (Nov 2001) & Anaconda were pitched as the alternative and proper contribution compared to the invasion of Iraq (war of aggression). So it was certainly politicized with domestic spin to garner support. I am not surprised that Trudeau would not respond to Navarro's reported comments, as he has been burned several times in the past trying to play Trump's low-ball game, and Trudeau is on shaky ground right now. Canadian Forces vets were not awarded medals for the Afghanistan mission and awards from the U.S. military were hidden from the Canadian public, including Bronze Stars for the record sniper shot with a McMillan Tac-50. https://globalnews.ca/news/3760685/afghanistan-vets-slam-canadas-military-failure-award-service-medal/ https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/why-did-canada-refuse-natos-afghanistan-medal-for-its-troops https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/we-were-abandoned/

Who exactly decides when 2 individuals are equally qualified ? Is it Harvard that has a system with different averages for different groups ? Which genius from the sociology department developed an algorithm to ensure a transparent process is in place ? In the few instances that Artificial Intelligence was used for hiring, Amazon had one, it was shut down quickly when the results were not politically correct. Here is an idea, sensitivity classes for the Artificial Intelligence. Martin Luther said that humanity is like a man mounting a horse who always tends to fall off on the other side of the horse. What is funny is your focus on using minorities and women to hint that because I stand for a strong individual focus system I am being discriminatory. Qualified and hard working individuals from these groups don't need spokespersons to defend them. They get up and they earn it ! I had someone confide in me one time that they were afraid that people would think he got his job because of affirmative action. The conversation was short and to the point. I just reminded him of his high grade that he achieved and that rarely he picks up his phone because he is constantly working. If you excuse my mediocrity, will search for those cites soon when I will have some time, right now my white immigrant privilege woke me up after 3 hours of sleep to begin another 12-15 hours work day.

And this is what the Left has been doing for the last half dozen or so years in particular, stoking fears of some great right wing, white supremacist conspiracy attacking the world. Every year we hear shrill warnings about the dangers of the far right, about the dangers of allowing anyone to promulgate 'hate' (defined by the Left as disagreement with the Left) and all of it is used to force silence on their opposition, and to force government and industry into censoring those who disagree with them. The fear mongering has all been on the Left for quite some time.

Sometimes it seems like a lost cause with very few options out there, the left does not want to compromise on anything they deem important, and they hate anything the right proposes just because it came from the right.......it seems all that is left is to eradicate everything that is left

If harmful thinking is the disease then you fight back against harmful thinking. Or we can just let it take over everything as you seem cool with. Universities are about discovering knowledge. Facts aren't racist.

This is another habit of the left. When someone points out an issue with something, propose the most extreme solution you can think of and pretend the person who raised the issue is behind that. It's another method of dismissing points without debating them.

To say the least. I mean, when law professors are afraid to teach about rape because that might 'trigger' people, and when professors are being hired on race alone while the curriculum is watered down so that affirmative action students can pass, that's a pretty sad indictment of the whole system. The test for whether a norm is white and thus illegitimate is whether it has a disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics. Given the behavioral and academic skills gaps, every colorblind standard of achievement will have a disparate impact. The average black 12th-grader currently reads at the level of the average white eighth-grader. Math levels are similarly skewed. Truancy rates for black students are often four times as high as for white students. Inner-city teachers, if they are being honest, will describe the barely controlled anarchy in their classrooms—anarchy exacerbated by the phony conceit that school discipline is racist. In light of such disparities, it is absurd to attribute the absence of proportional representation in the STEM fields, say, to bias. And yet, STEM deans, faculty, and Silicon Valley tech firms claim that only implicit bias explains why 13 percent of engineering professors are not black. The solution to this lack of proportional representation is not greater effort on the part of students, according to social-justice and diversity proponents. Instead, it is watering down meritocratic standards. Professors are now taught about “inclusive grading” and how to assess writing without judging its quality, since such quality judgments maintain white language supremacy. https://www.city-journal.org/social-justice-ideology

At least you're honest, which many others here fail at.

Yes, that's right Michael, is all based on my experience and interactions with other individuals in society. I could definitely browse the internet for hours and find you links but I am not an activist or in the alt right camp to really care about changing anyone's mind, especially yours. Here is some links so you can feel better: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/academic-extremism-comes-to-canada/article33185073/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html The good news is that the movement of mediocrity did not make it yet to the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology or the Mathematics Department in which I received my degree, with honors, after hard work. Now, with the help of individuals like yourself that love to talk but not put their money where their mouth is, I have no doubt that with time those departments as well will be conquered. I am going to produce goods and services for customers now, you have a great day, I recommend chamomile tea for your phobia and paranoia regarding the alt right.

We're not quarantined, never were except some returning travellers. We're isolating ... and distancing when we go out, where possible. You're ordering a mass quarantine by Sunday? That'll cause a huge shopping rush! Lol

I'm so with you on that.

What is the "economy" anyways? Just exploiting and destroying the environment to increase our numbers beyond the 8 billion mark at the expense of all other species? F* the economy!

There is no news now. What we have today is just a medium for leveraging panic, fear and mind control. Now stay inside you fool, do as you've been told.

Let's put credit where credit is due. Good news from the Ford government.