Section 13 ('hate' speech provision) removed from the Human Rights Act.

Senate approves bill:

... A private member’s bill repealing Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is known as the “hate speech provision,” passed the Senate this week and received Royal Assent.

... The bill from Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth passed the House of Commons last summer, but needed Senate approval. It will take effect after a one-year phase-in period.

Good riddance!

Obama's climate rhetoric "makes flat earthers look like Charles Darwin"

Greg Gutfeld on The Five, hilarious, but true!



Dana Perino: "President Obama today I think did something very wimpy. He went to Georgetown University to give this speech. What would have been really bold would be if he had gone, let's say, to North Dakota or West Virginia, all the places we are expecting to supply us with all the energy we have until the Unicorn dream of Solyndra is realized. ..."

Comedian Guy Earle loses appeal of BC "Human Rights" Tribunal ruling

National Post:

In a ruling that could carry implications for comedy clubs across Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the right of a bar patron to receive five-figures in damages from a comedian whose performance she alleges gave her post-traumatic stress disorder.

... ruled Justice Jon Sigurdson, while comedy clubs may swirl with “offensive, irreverent and inappropriate” language they are not operating in “zones of absolute immunity from human rights legislation.” [You mean "fake human rights" legislation, don't you judge?]

... In addition to Mr. Earle’s $15,000 penalty, the restaurant was also ordered to pay $7,000 to Ms. Pardy on the grounds that since the owner had given Mr. Earle a small bar tab to host the event, the comedian was legally an employee. Restaurant owner Salam Ismail had already spent at least $13,000 in legal fees defending himself before the tribunal. ...

Thereby, sadly, upholding the fake "human right" not to be offended, strengthening the mandate of "Human Rights" Commissions and Tribunals to continue punishing those who allegedly hurt others' feelings, and encouraging sensitive souls and opportunists to file more complaints.

Update:

David Suzuki: Alberta floods may not be due to global warming ... but

 David Suzuki, writing in the Huff-Po, tries to appear even handed but inevitably blames "climate change" absolutely:

"... caused by global warming? Maybe not but we can say we should expect more of the same - and worse if we don't do something to get our emissions under control."

Thanks to the likes of Suzuki, "climate change" has become the go-to excuse for all bad weather and related damage (it would never be mentioned in connection with a bumper crop).  Last night, for example, CTV's National news story on the Alberta floods had an 'expert' opinion from hydrologist, John Pomeroy, who predictably pointed his finger explicitly in that direction.

The worst of it is that "climate change" has been so thoroughly drilled into the public consciousness by an uncritical media and academia that it's accepted "wisdom" at all levels of government where you would be hard pressed to find a single plan or program that doesn't address it as a key issue.   Any citizen who tries to object or criticize is met by  'officialdom' with anything from a blank stare to the derision due a "denier".
 
Getting rid of this mass psychosis is going to be a long uphill grind.

[Via]

It's 'for the children': Obama to unveil plans to fight "climate change"

Next Tuesday Obama will unveil his  next steps towards ruining the U.S. economy and with it the global economy:

President Barack Obama is preparing to unveil his long-awaited national plan to combat climate change in a major speech, he announced on Saturday.

“There’s no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change,” Obama said in an online video released by the White House. “But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can.”

... key issue hanging over the announcement — but unlikely to be mentioned on Tuesday — is Keystone XL ... A concerted campaign ... to persuade Obama to nix the pipeline appears to be an uphill battle. The White House insists the State Department is making the decision independently [knowing that opponents are free to use litigation to block KXL indefinitely].

Via WUWT where Anthony Watts notes that the announcement has, so far, been received by the world "with a collective yawn".

New BoC Governor, Stephen Poloz, a breath of fresh air after Carney

Peter Foster:

... first public speech on Wednesday as Governor of the Bank of Canada ...
 
... Mr. Poloz came off as more appropriately modest than his predecessor Mark Carney ...

... former head of the Export Development Corporation, revealed a markedly less hectoring and arrogant style.

... also demonstrated a welcome new humility in noting that macroeconomic models were inadequate, and that the bank had consistently got its growth estimates wrong since the start of the crisis.

...Only on one occasion did Mr. Poloz stray into Mr. Carney’s area of high intellectual allusion.

... Generally, he made all the right noises on Wednesday. Above all he did not come across as somebody who imagines he is the star of the Canadian economy rather than, more appropriately, its Zamboni driver, whose job is to provide the flat surface on which the entrepreneurs and managers can show their creative talents. ...

Laura Ingraham slams O'Reilly for supporting immigration bill

O'Reilly insists the bi-partisan "Gang-of-Eight" bill is a good one, Laura explains why it's laughable, "dead-in-the-water" and based on a "phony, fraudulent narrative":



At the end, O'Reilly looks a little ill, but insists on endorsing the bill - Laura just rolls her eyes.

Hannity and Coulter:  "Republicans are suckers".

Politico.

Thomas Mulcair is a loon - he's "proud" of helping terrorists keep their Canadian citizenship

Perhaps not surprisingly, The Toronto Star agrees with Mulcair (or is it the other way around?):

Stephen Harper’s government is wrong to consider stripping Canadian dual citizens of their citizenship for committing treason and terror. ... 

... The Tory model would set up an odious and hard-to-justify distinction between Canadian-born criminals whose citizenship can’t be revoked even for treason and terror, and naturalized citizens whose citizenship can be lifted. ...

Justin Trudeau shamed into refunding charities he ripped off.

Justin Trudeau says he’ll compensate any charitable group that paid him a hefty speaking fee to participate in fundraising events.

Only two days ago he was refusing to refund any part of his fee.

Excellent work, Jason Kenney!

FP's Annual Rubber Duck Awards for Junk Science

Dishonoured for contributions to Junk Science:

Rick Smith for Lifetime Achievement
... the inspiration for the Rubber Duckies, which are named in his honour. Mr. Smith, as president of Environmental Defence Canada, co-authored of a remarkable piece of junk science literature, the 2009 Slow Death by Rubber Duck.

New York Times
... the NYT has aimed much of its junk at Canada...oil sands and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline ... similar canards were regurgitated in a paranoid piece by Canadian academic and zero-growth fan Thomas Homer-Dixon ... On the double-standard beat, the paper nobly refused to reproduce the “private” Climategate emails ... but couldn’t wait to publish Wikileaks

The Ontario Medical Association
... Since 2003, the union managed to boost average doctor salaries by 75% to $385,000
... hectoring the public and policy makers on issues to which the OMA brings no particular expertise ... Bill to ban indoor tanning ... restaurant menu labeling for calories and salt ... Doctors are prescribing too many antibiotics to too many people ...

Bill Gates
... his father headed Planned Parenthood ... Gates plans to reduce the global population by 10% to 15%, or about one billion people through reforms including reproductive health (abortion) ... Gates says we need to get down to zero-carbon to spare us from global warming. ... he’s working to correct “the failure of capitalism,”

For Happiness economics
Rubber duckies to the government of France, Joseph Stiglitz, the United Nations Human Development Report and anti-growth activists everywhere ...

Well deserved awards, congratulations.

Prime Minister Harper's address to the British Parliament

Via the CPC:

Epic climate model failure, biased science

Roy Spencer:

... The modellers and the IPCC have willingly ignored the evidence for low climate sensitivity for many years ... The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue … just one that is becoming more glaring over time.

... Forgive me if I sound frustrated, but we scientists who still believe that climate change can also be naturally forced have been virtually cut out of funding and publication by the “humans-cause-everything-bad-that-happens” juggernaut.










The UNIPCC definition of "climate change":

"A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods."

The UN is only interested in human factors. And, the definition implicitly assumes that natural variability is well understood ('...nothing to study here, move along..'). The whole game is rigged from the get-go in favour of proving humans are responsible and ignoring natural variability.

Junk statistics used to justify quotas for women on corporate boards

Terence Corcoran:

Rona Ambrose, federal Status of Women Minister, says she is leading a new committee of business executives to study the issue of women directors.  Aiming for bold action, Ms. Ambrose told The Globe and Mail “I [told the committee] I  wanted action-oriented recommendations for the government to immediately act on,” she said. “We’ve had enough studies and enough reports.” [That's quite an admission.  Why bother with her phony, loaded committee?]  
 
Laurel Broten, Ontario’s Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues.  “The statistics are very clear,” Ms. Broten told a CBC Radio audience ..."... Improved financial performance is what you see in a company that has more women on their board.”

Only junk statistics could possibly justify such an obviously junk idea as quotas for women on corporate boards, or quotas for women in any other role for that matter.

And why in the Hell do we still have Ministers responsible for "women's issues"?  Talk about junk politics and a waste of taxpayers' money!

Price fixing hypocrisy - criminal charges laid against chocolate companies

The charges, laid Thursday, come ... after Canada’s Competition Bureau ...  found evidence suggesting that a price-fixing cartel collaborated, agreed or arranged to set the prices of chocolate products.

... Criminal charges have been laid against candy makers Nestlé Canada Inc. and Mars Canada Inc., and ITWAL Limited...

... “We are fully committed to pursuing those who engage in egregious, anti-competitive behaviour that harms Canadian consumers,” said John Pecman, interim commissioner of competition, in a statement.

I agree, price fixing is, or should be, a crime.  Yet, ironically,  the milk used by those chocolate companies is produced by dairy marketing cartels that engage in egregious, anti-competitive, consumer harming, price fixing with full government approval.

Maybe right 90% of the time but scumbags 100% of the time

George Jonas on the ethics of his fellow journalists:

...“‘Think dirty, and 90% of the time you’ll be right.’” ...

Reading what some of my colleagues have been saying about public-figures-turned-media-targets ... makes me wonder ... Perhaps they’ll score in the end, for thinking dirty may well make one right 90% of the time, but the parallel fact is that thinking dirty is disgusting 100% of the time. [And at least 10% of the time they're guilty of defamation].

... publishing before the evidence is in, commenting on the basis of allegations as if they were proven facts, smearing people on the basis of rumours and innuendos, piling on, attacking like a pack of jackals an unfashionable target, going after someone who seems wounded and unable to defend himself — that’s disgusting, and not made less disgusting by a subsequent consensus or endorsement by public opinion. It’s especially ugly to calumniate people, then hide behind a climate of slander that the original calumny helped create. ...

Bravo! Well said, George!

Media Party circles the wagons in defence of crappy journalism

In yesterday's National Post there were columns by Andrew Coyne and Chris Selley discussing, in part, the journalism surrounding Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's alleged crack smoking.  At least the focus is on the real problem - the media, instead of the steady stream of innuendo about Ford .  But, to me, both columns are just more of the Media Party's circling of the wagons around their own, spinning their biases into a transparent rationalization of crappy journalism.

Towards the end of Coyne's column he says that the alleged Ford video couldn't have been faked because some alleged tech experts have said so. That's a highly dubious assertion. Such a video can indeed be faked, at least one sufficiently good enough to dupe gullible reporters on the prowl for dirt on Ford, who viewed it on a tiny screen in the back of a dope dealer's car, at night. The hard part about faking such videos is making them good enough to avoid detection on close inspection. Could this be the reason the video hasn't surfaced? This is precisely why the Star should not have published the story. They didn't have the video in their possession and were therefore unable to have it technically authenticated.

Coyne also yaps about the alleged sterling reputations of the Star reporters asking whether they'd risk them, along with possible "heavy financial losses", if they didn't have grounds to believe their story to be true. 

Here's a clue for Coyne: why don't you review the case of that once reputable, highly acclaimed journalist DAN RATHER?  You know, the one where Rather let his biases and enthusiasm for screwing George W Bush get the better of him when he published a smear based on a phony memorandum.  Sounds very similar to the Star story on Ford, doesn't it?

Near the end of Selley's column he defends the Star's ethically dubious journalism:

"Journalistic standards are important; but are the ones that journalism schools are teaching still appropriate? Much of the criticism the Star itself has endured — speak to standards that non-mainstream outfits can very profitably ignore, while greatly furthering the public interest."

Really?! How does publishing smear stories based on unverified, possibly unverifiable, videos "greatly further the public interest".  No doubt Selley believes Ford is guilty -  where there's smoke (generated by "reputable" journalists) there's inevitably fire. No evidence required.

Selley, like Coyne attaches significance to the reputations of the Star and its reporters. But there's nary a peep (by either) about the damage being unjustly done to the reputation of their victim, Rob Ford.

Corruption in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) + nitwit mayors and useless media

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is holding its annual conference in Vancouver this year.  This is the conference attended by Mayors and municipal staff to share ideas (collude) on stuff like, you know, "green" plans, "sustainability" initiatives and "climate change" strategies (aka wasting wads of cash ripped off from taxpayers).   Ezra Levant describes it as a lobby group that received $550 million in taxpayer funds from the federal government. 

Ezra also pointed out in this segment how and why corrupt thugs from FCM blacklisted a Montreal contractor from its tradeshow for having the temerity to advocate more efficient, open and honest tendering of municipal acquisition contracts:



And where's the Media Party?  One wonders whether or not this FCM corruption was a topic of discussion at the conference, at least informally among attendees.   Also, was the corruption in Quebec discussed?  There's real corruption in the FCM and real corruption in Quebec municipalities, so you might think the media would give their reporters an assignment to ask some relevant questions.   Well, there was no sign of it on my local CTV news last night.  The one and only topic they saw fit to cover was: "Rob Ford criticism bubbles up at Canadian mayors’ conference".  [The mayors were all atwitter, like giddy schoolgirls sharing hot gossip.  Note that one scumbag mayor, Frank Leonard of Saanich, BC, skated close to slander by suggesting Ford should be in jail.]   A worthless media sinks farther into irrelevance.