Politics in 2017

[jollyjacktar]

I'm sure these sickos who took part in real like Saw-movie style tortures will be upstanding members of our society again.



http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/sajjan-trumpets-canada-s-increased-role-on-the-geopolitical-stage-1.3682666

Wouldn't you with an extra $10.5M!  That seems to be the going Liberal rate.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Ralph Goodale highlights how we're going to deal with ISIS returnees.

"What we're doing with the analysis that we've conducted is, in fact, build a series of  podcasts and counter-narratives through art-based pedagogy and poetry ..."

Some Shakespeare outta work lol

 

[jollyjacktar]

What a bunch of fucking knobs.  :facepalm:

 

[McG]

Well, at least we know he is not closely monitoring the internet where, painfully on display, is the remarkable ability of people to not see facts, arguments, narratives, & messaging that are inconsistent with preconceived opinions ... else he might have picked a different recourse.

 

[larry Strong]

Except their count is 2 years old.....they have no clue to how many are back I would wager..........

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-liberals-count-of-60-canadian-jihadists-is-a-two-year-old-number

FUREY: Liberals' count of 60 Canadian jihadists is a two-year-old number

The terrorist situation in Iraq and Syria is a continually evolving phenomenon. So why is the Liberal government using two-year-old data about terrorists and trying to pass it off as current?

This has been an issue for several years now — the return of Canadian ISIS fighters to home soil. And during that time it’s taken a lot of guesswork to piece together just how many jihadists we’re talking about.

It’s a tough slog, putting it all together. Not just for journalists and parliamentarians, but for the CSIS and RCMP officers assigned the task.

How many ISIS fighters are walking about freely in our country? Dozens. Potentially, well over a hundred. We don’t know the exact number, but we’ve got the evidence to wager it’s more than the Liberals are letting on.

On Monday, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel accused PM Justin Trudeau of hiding the number of fighters who have returned, asking for an exact count. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stood up to offer the response: “in the order of 60.”


That was the number that hit the headlines and got Canadians talking. But it’s far from accurate. The first clue comes from reading Goodale’s full remark: “As the director of CSIS indicated before a parliamentary committee some months ago, the number of returns known to the Government of Canada is in the order of 60, and they are under very careful investigation.”

Some months ago? Try more than a year and a half ago. Goodale appears to be referring to CSIS director Michel Coulombe’s March, 2016, testimony before the standing Senate committee on national security and defence. It was there that Coulombe offered the 60 count.

However, when Postmedia asked Goodale’s office where it got that number from, it cited a government report compiled as of year-end 2015. This tells us two things: 1) That Coulombe offered Senators a figure that was four months stale; 2) That Goodale answered Rempel’s question with a figure that’s a full two years old.

In response to a question on this seeming discrepancy, Goodale’s spokesperson Scott Bardsley told Postmedia on Wednesday that “the figures haven’t changed.” Likewise, multiple media requests made to CSIS by Postmedia over the past two years requesting updates on the figure have either referred to these same figures or have simply gone unanswered.

It’s unclear what it means to say the figures haven’t changed. Is it that CSIS and the government just haven’t tabulated new numbers for public release? Or does it mean that the number has been static at 60 for two years?

The latter is hard to believe. Back in October 2014, CSIS deputy director of operations Jeff Yaworski testified before the same Senate committee that the number at that time was 80. How did it drop by 20 in two years?

That question was actually put to Coulombe in his 2016 appearance. He explained that in some cases people have come back to Canada and then returned again for round two of fighting, dropping off the list of those with firm footing on home soil.

In other cases, some people who were on the list were later found to be travelling abroad but not for terror purposes so shouldn’t have been on it in the first place. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, this suggests that the numbers publicly presented just this week have remained more or less static not just since spring 2016 but since the fall of 2014. It’s hard to take this seriously, at least without further explanation.

This is largely because over the past couple of years, we’ve been told several times that there are close to 200 extremists abroad who have yet to return home, with around 100 of them based in Iraq and Syria. Are we to believe that none of these 100+ individuals have returned since December 2015, even since the recent fall of the caliphate? What happened to them? Where did they go? We know of a few who were killed, but all of them?

Putting these numbers together is an art not an exact science. And even though Goodale was responding to a question about ISIS fighters, the number he gave actually covers all extremist groups operating in the broader region. From that perspective, we should cut our security services a degree of slack. But we should still expect them to be forthright as much as possible.

Instead, they’re being misleading. The question is whether they’re also misleading Goodale and Trudeau or if our politicians do have a more accurate picture of the count and that they are in turn misleading the public.

Cheers
Larry

 

[Jarnhamar]

I wonder what kind of poems they'll learn.  Maybe Haiku's?

terrorists come home
a raging, feral, creature
liberals slap backs

 

[FJAG]

I wonder what kind of poems they'll learn.  Maybe Haiku's?

terrorists come home
a raging, feral, creature
liberals slap backs

:rofl:

:cheers:

 

[jollyjacktar]

Or

liberals pay bucks

 

[Jarnhamar]

Motivating captivating articulate responses to hard questions by our PM.

https://youtu.be/uQ_2vrPG8TU

 

[jollyjacktar]

The only tools l see are the ones sitting and speaking in that video.

 

[ModlrMike]

No better example of why they call it Question Period instead of Answer Period.  :facepalm:

 

[Jarnhamar]

No better example of why they call it Question Period instead of Answer Period.  :facepalm:

Yup. If the guy can memorize quantum computer theory from a Wikipedia page and regurgitate it to a reporter (who didn't even ask about it) the least he can do is memorize the poetry policy and not read a canned response from a piece of paper. 
What a joke. The stupid poetry & reintegration shit is volunteer too  :

I'm waiting for those murderers to show up at the hospital claiming PTSD and go for some kind of disability.

 

[Gunner98]

I have always found it interesting that Question Period is like a badly rehearsed SNL sketch where the participants have to read from prepared notes and not even the feeble facade of teleprompters.  It would be much more convincing if this was a spontaneous Q&A in which the participants had to know what they were talking about and not reading possibly for the first time something their staffers wrote. 

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Using a scenario/Briefing note covering a highly complex issue that is 20 years in the making, summed up by people that don't have a clue about the issue into 3 pages at most. What could possibly go wrong....

 

[ballz]

I gotta say though, I think that's the first time I've seen a Prime Minister, questioned by the Opposition leader, actually stand up with a piece of paper in the House of Commons and blatantly read a pre-written answer. Something about that seems absolutely perverse to me, but since it's not making more news maybe every PM has done it and I just never saw it?

 

[Good2Golf]

Folks, QP is entirely scripted.  The opposition and other parties get X questions to ask, and they are written out and provided to the government days before QP itself.  The only thing that goes unscripted is the follow-up portion of the question.

Thus why for me, QP is... op:

G2G

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Parliament is political theater, the real work takes place in committees and they can be like watching paint dry.

 

[Journeyman]

....first time I've seen a Prime Minister....blatantly read a pre-written answer.

When reading, is his every third word still "uh"?  ;D

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Folks, QP is entirely scripted.  The opposition and other parties get X questions to ask, and they are written out and provided to the government days before QP itself.  The only thing that goes unscripted is the follow-up portion of the question.

Thus why for me, QP is... op:

G2G

Actually incorrect, G2G.

In Canada, the Question Period is unscripted and no questions are tabled in advance. However, since every body has a pretty reasonable idea of what the questions will likely touch on, the Government participants are briefed in advance on the "talking points" by subject expected to be raised and/or for those they do properly answer (there are some, even though not much) get briefs from their officials in preparation for QP. 

There is a second method to ask questions of the Government that is Written Question, but those are answered in the daily order of business process, not during Question Period.

It's all in here, from the House of Commons own site:

http://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure-book-livre/Document.aspx?sbdid=3F818022-AD6E-411C-B495-EC000CF32935&sbpidx=1&Language=E&Mode=1

 

[a_majoor]

Moving to immigration, another hot button topic, Margaret Wente has some observations that most people would prefer to ignore. But we either talk about it sensibly now, or have a screaming match (followed by some even more unpleasant events) later:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-talk-canada-needs-are-we-importing-inequality/article37098625/

The talk Canada needs: Are we importing inequality?
Margaret Wente 
4 hours ago
November 28, 2017

Earlier this month, the United Way of Toronto and York region issued a disturbing new report. The Greater Toronto area has become the inequality capital of Canada. Income inequality has leaped beyond the city to the surrounding regions. The problem is worst in Peel, a sprawling region northwest of the city. More than half of Peel residents are now considered low-income earners. Back in 1980, the number was just 2 per cent. "This kind of inequality blocks too many people from getting ahead – and threatens the values of fairness and opportunity that Canada is built on," the report warns.

How did middle-class Peel suddenly become poor? Neither the United Way nor the stories by the Toronto Star and the CBC offered any explanation.

But to anyone who knows the place, it's no mystery at all. At the centre of Peel is Brampton, which is growing at three times the rate of Canada. Brampton, now the ninth-largest city in Canada, is a magnet for new immigrants. Back in the 1980s, it was small and white. Today, it is large and brown. More than 44 per cent of the population is South Asian, and 73 per cent belong to visible minorities. (You'd never know this from the Star, which illustrated its piece on struggling Brampton with a white single mother.)

Just to be clear, this is not going to be an anti-immigration screed. The immigration story in Canada is a happy one. But if we want to keep it that way, we need to open the door to candid conversations about the downsides. The story of imported inequality is one example.

Many people will argue that low income among immigrants is due to discrimination against newcomers and fraying social safety nets. But it is also due to insufficient language skills, poorer credentials (even if they seem good on paper), and the lack of social networks and local knowledge of a culture that take years to establish. As the economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, it takes immigrants a long time to catch up. Meanwhile, in the short term, a heavy influx of newcomers creates new demands for housing, schools and social services that are a strain on the system. But it's not polite to say those things, and so people don't.

The idea that more immigration is always better has taken firm root among the upper reaches of the liberal intelligentsia. In their view, much higher immigration rates are essential to drive prosperity, pay for the staggering cost of aging boomers, and provide the entrepreneurial vigour that Canadians seem to lack. Justin Trudeau's brain trust (led by Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey & Co.), thinks we should aim for a population of 100 million people by the end of the century. For the moment, the Liberals have settled on a more modest target of 340,000 a year by 2020 – still a big hike from previous levels.

Is that a good idea? I don't know. What I do know is that more immigrants will bring more inequality. "Poverty is rising among immigrants at a time when poverty rates for native-born Canadians have been declining," said a recent piece in Policy Options, co-authored by University of British Columbia economist W. Craig Riddell and two others. Their article is a balanced appraisal of the economic impacts of immigration.

Bottom line: there's a lot we don't know. But what we do know isn't quite as rosy as the 100-million crowd would like us to believe.

For example, immigration can't offset the problems of population aging, for the simple reason that immigrants get old too. Nor is there any clear evidence that immigrants either depress or boost overall prosperity. But there is plenty of evidence that increased immigration is costly, at least in the short run. "Second-generation immigrants do well," the authors write, "… but the initial impact of a large increase in immigration should be expected to be an increase in taxes, a decrease in service, an increase in deficits, or some combination of the three."

These writers aren't anti-immigration. They're just pro-evidence. They don't even delve into the challenges of integration – a subject that liberals tend to think will go away if they repeat the word "diversity" enough. The trouble is, diversity tends to be divisive. That's just human nature. If given their preference, people prefer to live in settled communities with other people who are a lot like them. "A too-rapid inflow of immigrants weakens bonds of solidarity, and, in the long run, erodes the affective ties required to sustain the welfare state," the British political economist Robert Skidelsky writes. "Liberals' anxiety not to appear racist hides these truths from them."

Can we talk about these issues in Canada without appearing to be racist? I honestly don't know. What I do know is that if we suppress them, other people will do the talking for us. And as we know from Europe, what they have to say could be very disagreeable indeed.