During 2023 Canada's state broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), warned of a $125 million deficit, announced plans to cut 10% of its workforce, was bailed out with an extra $95 million from the Liberal government – and (it turns out) also handed out more than $25 million in raises and bonuses.
March 12, 2024 - "According to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), the CBC distributed a staggering $14.9 million in bonuses throughout 2023. This revelation has drawn sharp criticism, particularly in light of the broadcaster's announcement just weeks before Christmas, 2023 that it planned to lay off hundreds of employees. Since 2015, the CBC has issued a total of $114 million in bonuses.
"'CBC President Catherine Tait is wrong to hand out bonuses while announcing hundreds of job losses and begging the government for more taxpayer cash,' said Franco Terrazzano, CTF [Canadian Taxpayers Federation] Federal Director, condemning the actions of CBC leadership. Terrazzano further urged Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge to intervene and halt the distribution of bonuses in the face of ongoing layoffs.
"The disclosure indicates that 1,143 CBC staffers received bonuses in 2023, with costs to taxpayers totaling nearly $15 million. However, this number could potentially rise, as the data provided is current only up to October 26, 2023....
"Tait defended the bonuses, citing them as a crucial component of the total compensation package for non-union staff. Tait's remarks came during her appearance before a parliamentary committee in January 2024, where she faced questioning on executive bonuses and the planned workforce reductions.
"Further scrutiny revealed additional financial expenditures at the CBC, including $11.5 million in raises for the 2023/24 fiscal year, benefiting 6,575 employees, representing 87% of its workforce. These raises, obtained through separate access-to-information records, bring the total sum of pay raises since 2015 to $97 million. Moreover, data indicates that the number of CBC staffers earning six-figure salaries has surged by 231% since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assumed office in 2015.
"Despite Tait's assertions of 'chronic underfunding,' the federal government recently announced a substantial increase in funding for the CBC, totaling $96.1 million. This boost brings the broadcaster's taxpayer funding for the 2024/25 fiscal year to $1.4 billion....
"Tait's annual pay, which includes salary, bonus, and other benefits, falls between $472,900 and $623,900, according to CBC's senior management compensation summary."
February 29, 2024 - "Former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, who left the GOP in 2019 after calling for the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, announced a Republican bid for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat Thursday. Amash represented Grand Rapids from 2011 to 2021, and he becomes the third former U.S. representative to join the Republican field vying for Michigan’s open Senate seat. Former U.S. Reps. Mike Rogers and Peter Meijer have also announced Republican campaigns....
“'I’m convinced that no candidate would be better positioned to win both the Republican primary and the general election,' Amash said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. 'That’s why, today, I’m making it official: I’m joining the race for United States Senate in Michigan'....
"Amash left the party to become an independent. He had been the lone House Republican to support a Trump impeachment inquiry in 2019. He opted not to seek reelection to Congress after his fifth term and to instead pursue a Libertarian nomination for president. At the time, Amash said that millions of Americans do not feel well represented by either major political party.... [H]e promised in his announcement to be 'an independent-minded senator prepared to challenge anyone and everyone on the people’s behalf,' if elected.
"Amash, whose father is Palestinian and his mother Syrian, was the first Palestinian American lawmaker to serve in the U.S. Congress. Earlier this year, Amash said on social media that several relatives were killed when an Israeli airstrike struck a church in Gaza City.
"Michigan’s U.S. Senate race is expected to be the lone competitive open seat in the country this year. Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced last January that she would not seek reelection after having served in the upper chamber since 2001....
"Amash and Meijer — who are both from Grand Rapids — will each face the difficult task of overcoming past support for impeachments of Trump. Meijer was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 after the deadly mob siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump wields significant influence over Republicans in Michigan, and his endorsement for the U.S. Senate seat has the potential to dramatically impact the outcome of the race.
"The GOP has not won a Michigan U.S. Senate race since 1994. Defending the Michigan seat could prove crucial for Democrats in their effort to maintain the Senate, where the party holds a 51-49 majority and also faces tough headwinds as they defend seats in Republican-leaning states from West Virginia to Montana and Ohio."
March 8, 2024 - "Some prominent Ontario activists who attended outdoor anti-lockdown rallies in 2021 have had their tickets stayed with help from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
"On May 8, 2021, former Member of Parliament Derek Sloan attended an outdoor anti-lockdown rally, organized by No More Lockdowns Canada. That rally attracted close to 1,000 participants.... On May 30, Pastor Henry Hildebrandt of the Church of God in Aylmer, Ontario participated in a similar outdoor rally in Woodstock, ON, attended by an estimated 350 people.
"Both rallies were peaceful. There were no criminal charges, only tickets for violating the Reopening Ontario Act, which placed a total ban on indoor and outdoor gatherings during the spring of 2021, although there was no evidence to show that outdoor gatherings were significant contributors to the spread of COVID-19.
"Sloan had faced charges for participating in peaceful protests across Ontario, in Stratford, St. Thomas, Chatham and Woodstock. All charges have been either stayed or withdrawn at the request of the respective prosecutors.... Hildebrandt spoke at many peaceful outdoor rallies during the lockdowns and was charged more than six times in the first half of 2021 with violating the Reopening Ontario Act.
"Pastor Nathaniel Wright of the nearby Crossroads Alliance Church was charged with holding a church service on May 2, 2021. All charges against him were stayed in the same jurisdiction, Woodstock, on February 15, 2024. Wright was also involved in the resolution of the Trinity Bible Chapel case, where all charges against him were stayed for protests in Kitchener-Waterloo. The Justice Centre provided lawyers to defend these pastors who received tickets for exercising their Charter freedoms. All cases involving Sloan and Hildebrandt are now resolved....
"Hildebrandt previously pled guilty to defying the Reopening Ontario Act by holding an outdoor church service on June 6, 2021.... As a result of Hildebrandt's guilty plea in August 2023, related charges against him, his family, the Church of God, other church members and former politicians Sloan and Randy Hillier were dropped. Hildebrandt had to pay a $52,000 fine and a $13,000 victim surcharge."
March 8, 32025 - "An Ontario Crown attorney has withdrawn all criminal charges against William Laframboise, an alleged leader of the Windsor protests that blocked the Ambassador Bridge in February 2022. While the Crown attorney stated that there were triable issues, he also explained to the court that it was not in the public interest to prosecute Laframboise given the evidentiary challenges of the Crown’s case and other serious matters that were vying for trial time in a backlogged court system.
"The Democracy Fund (TDF) litigation director, Alan Honner, stood beside his client, LaFramboise, as the charges were withdrawn before Justice Campbell. 'Mr. Laframboise has always maintained his innocence,' says Honner. 'He insisted on his right to trial and we believe he would have been acquitted had the charges not been dropped.'
"A six-day blockade at the Ambassador Bridge that links Windsor, ON to Detroit, MI took place in February of 2022....
"Laframboise was arrested approximately six months after the fact. His arrest was the result of an ongoing police investigation which sought to identify an organizer of the protests.... Nycole Dicredico and William Laframboise were charged with mischief in connection with leading the blockades. However, Dicredico's charges were dropped in November shortly before trial at the Ontario Court of Justice."
Two researchers whose work was cited in the book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy say that their findings were misrepresented, and accuse the book's authors of "academic malpractice".
March 7, 2024 - "A new book, White Rural Rage, paints white rural Americans, a small and shrinking minority of the country, as the greatest threat to American democracy. The authors, political scientist Tom Schaller and journalist Paul Waldman, try to buttress this argument by citing scholarly publications. We are two of the scholars whose work they cite, and we cry foul.
"The overarching argument of White Rural Rage is that ruralness can be equated with racism, xenophobia, conspiracism, and anti-democratic beliefs. But rigorous scholarship shows that rural identity is not reducible to these beliefs, which are vastly more numerous outside rural communities than within them. To get to a conclusion so at odds with the scholarly consensus, Schaller and Waldman repeatedly commit academic malpractice....
"In several instances, the authors misinterpret what the academic research they cite says. For example, they use a report by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats to argue that 'rural Americans are overrepresented among those with insurrectionist tendencies.' But the actual report concludes exactly the opposite: 'The more rural the county, the lower the county rate of sending insurrectionists' [sic] to the January 6 Capitol riot. Moreover, when a peer-reviewed article in the journal Political Behavior compared rural and non-rural beliefs on whether politically motivated violence is a valid means for pursuing political change, it revealed that rural Americans are actually less supportive of political violence.
"Another example comes when the authors rely on a report from the Public Religion Research Institute on QAnon conspiracy theories. The report has its own fundamental problems, including a suspect measure of QAnon support in the first instance, but what Schaller and Waldman do with those data is more egregious yet.
"First, the authors do not even interpret the model output correctly, writing that the results mean that 'QAnon believers are one and a half times more likely to live in rural than urban areas.' But the report presents odds ratios, which means that living in a rural area increases the likelihood by just 30 percent.
"Inaccurate interpretation aside, if they were more statistically literate they would see this is probably not a model worth citing. On the exact same page, the model output suggests that, compared to white Americans, being black increases the likelihood of believing in QAnon by 90 percent! Weird results like this are red flags that should make us ask questions, not confirm our priors.
"Beyond issues of sparse and selective citing, the book misrepresents the findings of multiple scholars who have built careers conducting research on rural politics and identity. The authors characterize the academic concept of rural resentment (the less headline-grabbing academic term that Schaller and Waldman have apparently rebranded as 'rage') as necessarily including racial resentment as a constitutive component. But academic work on rural identity has overwhelmingly shown that these two are distinguishable. They are different concepts.
"Indeed, as we have painstakingly demonstrated in our own work, rural resentment involves perceptions of geographic inequity. Many rural people see inequity in who politicians pay attention to, which communities get resources and which don't, and in how different types of communities are portrayed in the media. This is not racial prejudice by another name. Schaller and Waldman favorably cite our research showing that there is a modest correlation between rural resentment and racial resentment, a commonly used attitudinal measure of negative racial stereotyping. What they fail to note is the only statistically and intellectually sound conclusion that could be drawn from our data: While this slight correlation exists, rural resentment is an attitude distinct from racial prejudice.
"In another peer-reviewed publication that Schaller and Waldman erroneously cite, we found that rural resentment strongly explains rural preferences and behavior even when one controls, statistically, for a litany of factors, including racial resentment, that Schaller, Waldman, and others conflate with it. The value of our academic work has been to elucidate the place-based dynamics of American politics — to say that there is much more than rage and rebellion in the heartland. It's distressing to see a book citing our work to support misleading arguments.
"At a time when trust in experts is on the decline throughout America, flawed analysis like the ideas in White Rural Rage may be a greater threat to American democracy than anything coming from the countryside. It is popular these days to say 'follow the science.' Well, the science shows that there is no mystery to rural rage: Years of neglect, abandonment, and scorn have driven rural America to view 'experts' like Schaller and Waldman as the enemy."
January 23, 2024 - "Economists at the National Bank of Canada released a report recently arguing that Canada is caught in a 'population trap'. But what exactly does that mean and how does a country get out of it?...
"The Oxford dictionary defines population trap as an economic 'situation where no increase in living standards is possible, because the population is growing so fast that all available savings are needed to maintain the existing capital-labour ratio.' In layman’s terms, this means there are so many new people, that all our investment capacity is getting used up incorporating them into the economy and getting them up to speed — there is nothing left over to actually increase the overall standard of living.
"Stéfane Marion, one of the National Bank economists who authored the report, described a population trap as something akin to a toolbox not big enough to hold all the tools people need. 'If you invite three people into the country and you only have two hammers, the third person is lacking capital and can’t be as productive (as the other two),' he said....
"Canada’s rapidly rising population, a result of recent immigration policies, appears to be mimicking that effect of high birth rates. Immigration is good for Canada’s potential gross domestic product, said Marion, but 'all good things have their limits.'
"Canada’s population increased by more than 1.2 million people or 3.2 per cent in 2023, five times higher than the average for nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The economists said this population growth is extreme relative to the absorptive capacity of the economy, given that the workforce is not aging faster than the OECD average. This absorption challenge is most evident in Canada’s housing market, where the supply deficit reached a new record of only one housing start for every 4.2 people entering the working-age population, compared to the historical average of 1.8 ratio, they said.
"The economists say Canada lacks the infrastructure and capital stock to adequately absorb current population growth and improve the standard of living. While the housing shortage has attracted the most attention, capital stock includes components of everything from infrastructure, hospitals, schools, machinery, equipment to software. 'Given that we’re running a current account deficit in this country, the only way that we can grow our capital stock is to attract foreign capital at the same time,' said Marion.
"The economists said Canadian policymakers should set population goals against the constraint of Canada’s capital stock, which goes beyond the supply of housing. They estimate that to escape this trap, total population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000 a year."
March 7, 2024 - "Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather and Marco Mendicino have condemned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to resume and increase payments to an alleged Hamas-affiliated relief program. 'We are deeply troubled by the allegations that United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,' they said.
"Ottawa had paused UNRWA funding in January due to allegations 12 of the organization’s staff had connections to Islamic terror group Hamas, which is also the head of the Palestine government. However, the Trudeau Liberals this week announced they will resume, and increase, relief payments to the UNRWA. The next payment, $25 million, is scheduled for April, with additional funding to come....
"Housefather and Mendicino published a joint statement to social media Thursday, criticizing their own party’s funding of the UNRWA, despite the organization's 'contribution to the spread of violence, disinformation and hate.' They also warned 'funds (sent to Palestine) will be misappropriated by Hamas.'
"The MPs said that while they strongly support 'efforts to deliver life saving humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,' they 'encourage Canada to find new ways to provide' resources to suffering Palestinian civilians. 'We did not believe that this aid should flow through UNRWA and strongly support Canada's recent decision to suspend funding, as did our G7 partners and other key allies,' wrote the MPs....
“'In addition, UNRWA employees have been sanctioned in the past for facilitating terrorist activity and for using antisemitic materials in educational textbooks,' the statement continues. 'This misconduct has contributed to the spread of violence, disinformation and hate.
"'Given its history, we believe that UNRWA lack sufficient governance and internal controls to ensure that humanitarian aid delivered by Canada will be reliably delivered to those who actually need it and that there is a serious risk. Funds will be misappropriated by Hamas....
“'In the meantime, we have recommended to the federal government that Canada work in lockstep with the US and other allies to leverage alternate partners and to create new vehicles of humanitarian aid that will meaningfully reach the civilians of Gaza in the short term.'"
British Columbia MLA Selina Robinson has resigned from the governing New Democratic Party, claiming antisemitism within the party and silence from the leadership in the face of it.
March 6, 2024 - "A month after being made to step down as British Columbia’s post-secondary education minister over controversial comments she made about Israel, on Wednesday MLA Selina Robinson announced she is leaving the ruling NDP.
"During an online panel hosted by B’nai B’rith Canada on Jan. 30., Robinson said Israel was offered to Jews who were displaced from their homes. 'They don’t understand that it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it. You know, there were several hundred thousand people but other than that, it didn’t produce an economy'.... Despite later apologizing and offering to get anti-Islamophobia training, Robinson never regained her place in the NDP. [see vudeo]. Here is the ... letter she wrote to the NDP caucus to announce her resignation:"
My colleagues,
You broke my heart – not just on February 5 when the Premier told me that after the caucus talked about me he did not see a way back, that folks were wondering why I hadn’t already resigned and that the only path forward was a resignation. Resigning was not my choice but I told the Premier that if this was what he wanted and what caucus wanted I wouldn’t fight him on it....
You actually broke my heart in the days after October 7 – the day terrorists went into Israel and brutally murdered, slaughtered, raped, mutilated, killed and kidnapped 1200 civilians. These terrorists didn’t target the military, they killed children, concert goers, grandmothers, peace activists and a young British Columbian named Ben Mizrachi. The Jewish community was in shock.... I had offered to the Premier that as a member of the Jewish community, I could speak at a vigil that was being planned a few days after the massacre – this was my community and our two Premiers had tasked me with strengthening the NDP relationship with the community. I put out the call for you to join me.... Two maybe three responded – that’s it.... In the end there were 7 or 8 of us....
And then, within days of the massacre, Aman [Singh] and Katrina [Chen] decided that it was appropriate to ‘reply all’ to my initial email asking folks to stand with the Jewish community in grief and mourning.... We just witnessed the slaughter, rape, mutilation and murder of 1200 mostly Jews. We watched as the terrorists celebrated this horrific act. Ben Mizrachi hadn’t yet been buried. The IDF hadn’t yet taken any action. The world was stunned. And two of my colleagues wanted to move quickly past what had happened.... But it wasn’t their antisemitism that broke my heart. It was your silence to their antisemitism that hurt the most. Not a single one of you responded to their insensitive, disrespectful and inappropriate email.... Your silence ... spoke volumes to me and suggested that either you agreed with them or that you just didn’t want to deal with it....
How eager you all are to join in the #NeverAgain campaign – that the crime of being Jewish that resulted in the death of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis should never happen again. That we should fight against Jew hatred – a hatred that repeats itself over and over and over again throughout history... – yet when the hordes gather and chant 'from the river to the sea' – a Hamas mantra referring to their desire to destroy Israel and the Jews, you are no where to be found.... Where are you when protesters, their faces covered, march through our campuses intimidating young Jewish adults who now hide their Jewish identity? Where are you when young Jewish students who get trapped in bathrooms on campus because the marching is happening in hallways, and they are afraid to step out into the hall for fear of becoming a target of their hate? Where are your ideals of a broad, inclusive society? How have you been standing up for your declared values?
Almost 300 Jewish physicians signed a letter calling on UBC medical school to address antisemitism on campus. Students are bringing their hate into healthcare and they were speaking on behalf of their Jewish patients and their families. In fact, it was so bad that Ted Rosenberg, a prominent physician quit, citing a toxic work environment and antisemitism in the Faculty of Medicine.... It was a public leaving and I heard nothing from any of you – not the Minister of Health who committed to more physicians in the system, not the Premier – no one.
In December the four Tri-Cities MLAs received a letter from the Coquitlam Teacher’s Association rife with rhetoric, misinformation and lies about the modern state of Israel. The letter was also posted on their website (which has since been taken down). Jewish parents in SD 43 are now considering pulling their children from public schools because they don’t have faith that teachers in the district will keep their Jewish children safe. I asked Fin [Donnelly] if he received the same letter. He did and when I asked him what he was planning to do with it he said, 'nothing – I am going to ignore it'....
In January the Vancouver Police Department publicly shared a startling report about the dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents since October 7. And what was government’s response to this report? Silence....
"I reached out to the Attorney General as the racism file is under her ministry ... at the end of January two months after she became the designated point of contact for a community that is experiencing a spike in antisemitism, a community that is grieving and fearful. It turns out that the community leadership hadn’t even heard from her.... Her response to my query was a response you would give the opposition. There was no acknowledgement of my personal connection to the community or how my contacts and relationships could be useful. There was no sense of understanding that this community is feeling threatened, that people are afraid, that antisemitism was on display in civil society, that Jewish parents don’t want to send their children to public school, that Jewish post secondary students are being terrorized on campus, that Jewish owned businesses need additional security, that holocaust survivors are reliving trauma, that plays with Israeli content that actually help to provide dialogue about the conflict are being silenced, that hundreds of Jewish physicians are calling on UBC leadership to address antisemitism on campus, that members of our own public service have started incorporating the Palestinian flag in their email signature and even making a Palestinian land comment when doing a First Nation land acknowledgement at the beginning of meetings resulting in discomfort and fear. No acknowledgment and no action.
Over the past five months a few of you have reached out after caucus discussions about me without me in the room, the first right after Aman and Katrina sent their emails and then again after the February caucus meeting, offering hugs and heart emojis. My response to many of you is that I don’t need your hugs and your emojis. What my community needs however is for you to stand up to antisemitism.... Antisemitism is calling for the destruction and annihilation of Israel where half the world’s 15.8 million Jews live. Antisemitism is making Jewish people afraid to show their identity. Antisemitism is silencing an openly identified Jewish person who is speaking out about anti-semitism....
Anti-semitism is the double standard that we have consistently shown. When any of my colleagues have made anti-semitic remarks it was expected that apologies should suffice.... When an elected person says something that harms the Jewish community whether the comments or position is intended or unintended, the expectation is that a simple apology is sufficient. But when a Jewish elected person says something she ‘has deep work to do’ according to the Premier and is no longer trusted. This double standard is antisemitism....
It is with all of this in mind that I am leaving caucus to sit as an independent. I can no longer defend the choices this government is making, and I need to mend my broken heart and I can’t do that when you simply offer me hugs and heart emojis but don’t care to educate yourselves or understand the fear and anguish of being Jewish in this moment. Silence is not leadership – it’s cowardice. And I cannot be silent.
