I am Groot

Where is it getting this cash? From children. No, it's bribing them with their children's and grandchildren's money given so much of that is being borrowed.

So I guess you don't believe foreign influence is a thing in Canada. I mean, where's the receipts? Where's the evidence? Why has no one been charged?

I feel the same. And yet, as anyone who has watched this unfold knows, the people most determined to push this stuff on us are... women. It is the women, the feminists, and especially lesbians, who are pushing this stuff, even though it harms them in the end, as per this article. Btw, Michael Hardner, here is that definition of 'woke' you were looking for. “Wokeness” has been described as everything from a political epithet for a bogeyman of the extreme left to a catch-all for any cause whatsoever that concerns itself with the well-being of an identifiable group. A more reasonable definition, borrowed from political scientist Yascha Mounk, is that wokeness is a version of social justice based on what he terms “the identity synthesis.” It views human beings not as individuals, but as a collection of group identities that are either oppressed, or oppressive. And to be oppressed is to be virtuous; to be a victim is to hold precious social cachet. The more oppressed one is, the better a person they are. Amy Hamm: Wokeness hurts women. Why do so many support it? (msn.com)

It's only a 'medical issue' for a tiny subset of those who call themself 'trans'. That is, the ones who actually suffer from gender dysmorphia. The bulk of them, including, I suspect, all the activists, are playacting due to a variety of emotional and psychological issues.

And it only works if everyone joins in. And so far maybe two dozen out of two hundred countries are doing much about it. So it might as well be unilateral. Er. damaging. Not my math. It was in the cited piece. Bjorn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Institute, has calculated, using one of the UN’s own models, that all policies from the Paris Agreement would “likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17 degrees Celsius in 2100,” an impact which would be imperceptible.

Well, 80% of our trade is with the US and China, and neither of them have a carbon tax. So we're daming our own economy while instead directing orders to factories in the US and China that don't care about carbon production. Just for a start. Second, does it make sense to spend ten trillion dollars in order to ease the future cost of not doing it by two trillion dollars? And even that's an estimate. The costs of this effort to reduce emissions in hopes of lowering our presumed temperature in a hundred years by 0.17 degrees seems absurd.

The waste and pointlessness of the carbon tax, and the whole fight against CO2 emissions, which is damaging Canada's economy and making us all poorer for almost ZERO benefit to the world climate. There is agreement among most economists that a carbon tax is potentially the most efficient way to reduce emissions. There is also agreement among many economists that, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. For this economist, the details are: the current level of the carbon tax is very likely already too high compared to the net costs of greenhouse gas emissions; it has been implemented in the most inefficient way possible; emissions are a global problem and Canada by itself can make a negligible contribution to reducing emissions; and the carbon tax is hurting the competitiveness of Canadian companies in domestic and foreign markets. Understanding the reasoning for these conclusions means being able to make informed decisions at the ballot box and informed criticisms of proposed policies. https://thehub.ca/2024-03-26/steve-ambler-the-carbon-tax//

So about those Palestinian protests. Why they're so well-organized, and how they can keep turning out so many people week after week for months on end. After the horrors of Oct. 7 — and after the pro-Hamas crowd started showing up in big numbers, with professional-looking organizers and signage — suspicion grew. In the past, anti-Israel protests were rag-tag efforts, and few and far between. The post-Oct. 7 protests were anything but. They were big, they were noisy, and they were causing chaos from the island of Manhattan to the island of Vancouver. They looked like the sort of rallies that professional political parties put together. Did that many people really hate the Jewish state? No. Because if you’re getting paid to be there — effectively just an actor — then you’re just playing a role. Which suggests that the anti-Israel protests are as phony as a three-dollar bill. https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/kinsella-who-is-behind-funding-for-pro-palestinian-protesters

Not anymore. That is the Canada of the past. The way it works now is if people can find a way to avoid it they will, regardless of how fair. You have to make them unavoidable, inescapable, or you'll wind up with a huge black market and people hiding money everywhere they can. The population can't be trusted to do the right thing or we wouldn't have Trudeau as PM.

It didn't used to be when conservatives were in charge. Kids sat up straight and paid attention or got detention, and then yelled at by their parents. Now they curse out the teacher and getin fights in classrooms, and there isn't a thing the teacher can do about it. They're not even allowed to touch them, even to break up a fight. And you better believe the students know it, too. Almost everyone who wants police removed from schools has no kids in those schools. Or else they do, but it's THEIR kids who terrorize the rest of the students and tell the teachers to F off. And when the school calls they tell the school to F off too, and call them racists to boot. Glen Loury went to school in South Chicago back in the sixties and talks about how good they were then. And now they're shit. Thomas Sowell says the same thing about the public schools he attended in Harlem in the 50s, and how terrible they are today. Both school boards spend a ton of money and get miserable results. Why? Because they're controlled by the Left, and operate under rules established by the Left.

You don't really think people are going to report all the stuff they buy, do you? They want a new winter coat, they'll go down there, buy one, dump the old one, and wear the new one home. Same for boots, shoes, shirts, pants, etc. How much would buying an Iphone down there save vs here? Or getting some new tires for your car? The last time the C$ was significantly higher than the US$ we had tons of people going down there for shopping.

Because cross-border shopping would explode.

Anyone know what happened on or around 2016 that might have changed things?

Israel has set a new standard of care for civilians during urban warfare. It has put far more effort into protecting Palestinian civilians from harm than any military has in any campaign in history. The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside. None of this meant anything to Israel's critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn't call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties. In their criticism, Israel's opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

It certainly doesn't come as a surprise to me, particularly as we've made no attempt to screen incoming immigrants, nor to encourage them to adapt or adopt Canadian ways. To integrate, in other words. The Prime Minister of the UK, the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany might all admit multiculturalism has been a failure but Canada's elites continue to trumpet it as the perfection of the human condition. It's bad, yes. The concern is it will get worse and spread, particularly since there appears to be no pushback from the state, from the police, no punishment, no attempt to reign it in. Everyone is just cowering, afraid they'll get violent, or worse, won't vote for them.

Seems like a big nothingburger to me. After three-and-a-half-years, Durham indicted three men. One was an FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email that was included in a June 2017 application for a surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign aide; he was sentenced to probation. The other two men were tried and acquitted. In both trials, Durham alleged the defendants had deceived the FBI but did not allege the FBI acted improperly toward Trump.[8][9] According to conservative lawyer Andrew C. McCarthy, the alleged deception was "only about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself."[10]

Why are you bringing up irrelevancies? The only thing that matters is Trudeau gets to appoint another 'first'. This is 2025, you know!

Who says it shouldn't have happened? A Trump special prosecutor appointed by Trump's attorney general. Others disagreed, like the Justice Department Inspector General. Unrelated to the Trump investigation. Hey, the guy spent four years and millions investigating. He had to come up with SOMETHING! Yes. The FBI is a large organization. Well, Durham's own report found no political motivation. So what more do you want?

She does introduce herself at some point as a lawyer with the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

I don't need to as there's no square. You're using Republican talking points that cherry-picked incidents of little relevance. A few FBI agents didn't like Trump. They texted each other. And then they did... nothing about it. The FBI were contacted by a foreign government about possible Russian involvement with people on Trump's campaign. They HAD to open an investigation on that. A few of the people on the large team were unhappy no charges were laid. The rest - were not. And no the FBI did not break 'the law'. That's what Trump did.

I'm aware of the historical nature of discrimination/prejudice/bigotry/racism and how it thrived throughout the world throughout history, and is still pretty much the norm in non-Western societies today. But the cultural norm of this country that I like is the absence of it. And as I wrote above, Jews are the canary in the coalmine given the long, long, long history of animus directed toward them since biblical times.

It was interesting, though it dealt almost entirely with the underage sex pics and revenge porn aspect of the bill. What he talked about was bad enough, though. The idea some government agency can just send people into your business any time they want, without warning, without a warrant, and seize anything they feel they should is outrageous. The requirement for the social media companies to record and catalogue every take-down request and report they get, along with their response, and submit regular reports sounds like it would be quite costly. And the social media companies are supposed to fund this government organization too? How many will just shut Canada out? I found this about the second part of the bill, the hate part, and it's just as ridiculous. It makes me think this bill was never intended to pass constitutional muster but is just virtue signaling by the Trudeau government. It's a conservative leaning organization but the bare particulars it gives are clear enough.