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Trudeau Popularity - or not (various polling, etc.)

Cocaine or meth?
Going off of Freeland's "cute quirkiness" as they call it... (I'm assuming they get theirs from the same source)

Definitely coke.


She smiles like a meth addict, but ticks like a cokehead.



EDIT - Plus Cocaine on his plane (allegedly) and too coked out on arrival to attend the dinner on his last trip to India
 
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He must be popular with a few contractors out there ;)

When folks start to realize the plan isn't to deliver quality service to Canadians oe invest our dollars to get a return - but rather to destroy the country from the inside out and that includes bankrupting us...then everything else starts to make perfect sense

Only 24% of the contractors did any work?



Like Jarn says, that's pretty good for this lot!
 
When folks start to realize the plan isn't to deliver quality service to Canadians oe invest our dollars to get a return - but rather to destroy the country from the inside out and that includes bankrupting us...then everything else starts to make perfect sense

Only 24% of the contractors did any work?



Like Jarn says, that's pretty good for this lot!
That's not what the report says.

It says that 76% of individuals proposed were substituted. That is a problem, but a different one.
 
STAFF POST

Just a reminder that we don't like to do dirt on army.ca. Lets keep the conversation above board, no need to play in the mud to get points across.

[did I use enough cliches?]
Bruce
army.ca staff
Damn. I could have used you when you I was on my 6A course digging a 1,00 trenches. It would have been nice not play in the mud
 
When folks start to realize the plan isn't to deliver quality service to Canadians oe invest our dollars to get a return - but rather to destroy the country from the inside out and that includes bankrupting us...then everything else starts to make perfect sense

Only 24% of the contractors did any work?



Like Jarn says, that's pretty good for this lot!

I'd suggest it's more of a Dunning-Kruger, than Machiavelli-De Medici, moment for those in power these days:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias[2] in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.

 
That's not what the report says.

It says that 76% of individuals proposed were substituted. That is a problem, but a different one
Sorry, I was going off the wording at the top of the tweet about "Watchdog finds 76% of listed ArriveCan subcontractors did no work"

"Only 24% of listed subcontractors did any work" is saying the same thing...



Like I said, I was purely going off of the title - I barely even skimmed the article. My bad.
 

Canada is back!

Some snips:

It is remarkable how much attitudes about Canada have shifted, both here and abroad, over the past 10 years.

In a 2003 cover story, The Economist touted the prospects for “cool Canada,” following up in 2006 that Canada’s relative economic performance made it a “superstar” as the “only country running both current-account and budget surpluses.”

That was then. Today Canada’s reality is much different than people were expecting before 2015. Its finance sector is known for being “an ATM and safe deposit box for money laundering,”
Instead of buoyant economic growth, the OECD last year downgraded Canada’s prospects to 2060 to dead last out of 38 nations.

Nothing has damaged Canada’s economy and global stature more than the obstacles governments have deployed to hamper our energy industry

The harm from discouraging oil and gas development was fully revealed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Canada was unable to answer Europe’s desperate need for oil and gas. When German Chancellor Scholz visited Canada to plead for more natural gas, our prime minister claimed there was “no business case” to support LNG exports to Europe. Meanwhile, since March 2022, American firms have signed now fewer than 57 supply agreements with Europe for 73 million metric tons of LNG annually, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.
 

Canada is back!

Some snips:

It is remarkable how much attitudes about Canada have shifted, both here and abroad, over the past 10 years.

In a 2003 cover story, The Economist touted the prospects for “cool Canada,” following up in 2006 that Canada’s relative economic performance made it a “superstar” as the “only country running both current-account and budget surpluses.”

That was then. Today Canada’s reality is much different than people were expecting before 2015. Its finance sector is known for being “an ATM and safe deposit box for money laundering,”
Instead of buoyant economic growth, the OECD last year downgraded Canada’s prospects to 2060 to dead last out of 38 nations.

Nothing has damaged Canada’s economy and global stature more than the obstacles governments have deployed to hamper our energy industry

The harm from discouraging oil and gas development was fully revealed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Canada was unable to answer Europe’s desperate need for oil and gas. When German Chancellor Scholz visited Canada to plead for more natural gas, our prime minister claimed there was “no business case” to support LNG exports to Europe. Meanwhile, since March 2022, American firms have signed now fewer than 57 supply agreements with Europe for 73 million metric tons of LNG annually, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.

We are now wasted potential.
 
We are now wasted potential.
It drives me crazy that wasted potential in this country.

We were given the greatest gifts of any country on this earth. And yet we strive for the mediocre. We could be the richest, free, and happiest country in the world. First we have natural resources galore, in minerals, in energy, in beautiful places and just plain space. Second free access to the greatest market in the world, and then the most important of all we were given the greatest gift ever given from one people could give to another, British Common Law and everything that entails from the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights and most important Private property rights. As historian Naill Ferguson called it the civilization super APP. Many South American countries have much the same but are missing the super APP of Common Law, and everything else that entails so they fail or have more problems.

Our wasted potential is on us. Even now we could turn it around, but with every passing day it gets harder and harder.

Some of it started with our one founding half as United Empire loyalist anti-republicanism and the other a French minority just trying to save there culture and power. Add in Scottish frugalist and pinch of other traditions and we get a very risk adverse society. We are scared of the elephant beside us but are the spoiled child that did not grow up because of over protective rich parents (British Empire) that we then moved in with even richer older brother (US) that pays the rent.

But because of all that we feel ashamed of the older brother paying the rent we bite the hand by teaming up with everyone else that doesn't like the big brother, the UN, the WEF, etc etc.....but then in the end after making a big show of it we crawl back to big brother and the family.

But imagine if we didn't retard our industry, didn't stifle business, over regulate or just even got out of the way. If we allowed provinces and then even cities do things the way they want. I am all for letting them go be inventive or stupid. Example the new Quebec sign mandates....sure have at it. let them see if it works out or not for them. But don't make others pay for it. Healthcare let the provinces do what they see as best for their populations. etc etc...
 
Hard time Strong people that make good tires
That makes soft people
9725ca20fe7d7d3dd5611f5f30c97e25.jpg
 
And the government wonders why we have trust issues with them.


Readers should be warned that today’s post will take the form of a “shaggy dog story,” the term of art for a very long joke whose punchline is underwhelming. The point of such a joke is that you stick with it for what seems like forever, following all the complications, relishing the mountain of detail, only to get to a conclusion that is so unspectacular it makes you wonder why you bothered. Then, ideally, you notice yourself feeling like you’ve wasted your time, and that noticing is the source of the joke’s humour.

So, for example: A guy has an extremely shaggy dog. His friends can’t get over how shaggy the dog is. It is a subject of heated conversation. He is increasingly ostracized by people who can’t stand how shaggy his dog is. His wife leaves him: “I can’t live with a dog this shaggy!” His boss lets him keep his job, but only if he swears he will never bring the dog to the office: “That dog is too shaggy, I say!” He realizes there may be some advantage in having such a shaggy dog. He enters the dog in the local Shaggy Dog Contest, he wins, he goes to the regionals, the nationals. All along, many shaggy-dog-related adventures occur. He gets caught in a blizzard. Someone says, “You call this a blizzard? I can barely see your dog! He’s too shaggy!” Etc., etc. Finally he goes to the World Shaggy Dog Championships in Tibet. The judges walk down the line, taking careful notes. Finally the head judge studies his dog thoughtfully, takes notes, continues to the next dog, keeps going all the way to the end of the line of stupendously shaggy dogs from around the world. Finally he comes back to our guy. Points at the dog. “I mean, he’s not that shaggy.”

That’s it. That’s the joke. I love this kind of joke. Ask me sometime about the Old Man On the Mountain.

All of which is the prelude to the strange tale of Dr. Mark Walport.

Dr. Walport is one of the leading medical researchers in the world. He ran the Hammersmith Campus of Imperial College (the Brits have better names for things; don’t fight it) and then the Wellcome Trust (I’m sayin’) before becoming the UK’s Chief Science Advisor and then the Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation, during Theresa May’s stint as prime minister if I’m not mistaken.

His name arises because late this spring I wrote a series of posts arguing for a formal Canadian investigation into the Trudeau government’s handling of COVID-19. I was agnostic about the format such a thing might take, what its mandate would be, whether it would hold public hearings or not. But I figure a serious government should do a stock-taking, because the pandemic was a serious thing, and you can even be proud of the federal government’s handling of the pandemic while agreeing that it wasn’t perfect and must therefore be more nearly perfectible. In this post in particular, I quoted people who have run previous investigations of previous outbreaks, and whose advice would only have been more helpful if later governments had paid it closer attention.

My advice is never guaranteed to be correct, but I knew it wasn’t nutty from the response those posts received from epidemiologists, biomedical researchers and public servants. A lot of people, including the editorial board of one of the world’s leading medical research journal’s, agreed with my general line of thinking.

So imagine my surprise when I was corresponding with a prominent Canadian medical researcher later this summer, and this person wrote to me:


Understand that when I received this email, on Aug. 5, it was only hearsay. Weirdly specific, as rumours go, but uncorroborated by any public announcement.

So I sat and waited for the announcement. Which never came. There has been no statement by any Canadian government official about any work that Dr. Walport might be doing on Canada’s COVID-19 response.

Walport is not, as you might suspect given his prominent leadership roles, for which he was knighted in 2009, a shy fellow. Here is the complete record of his testimony and archival correspondence as tabled at the UK’s COVID-19 inquiry, which was very public, ordered by another of that country’s assorted recent prime ministers, and the fodder for many front-page newspaper stories and chat-show discussions in the UK, which has its problems but is, refreshingly, still a country where people say stuff out loud.

I decided that surely there was no announcement of Walport’s appointment because, for whatever reason, he had not been appointed. Cold feet, change of plan, yet another cabinet shuffle, whatever.

So imagine, again, my surprise, again, when my correspondent told me Walport has been in Canada, hearing testimony from public servants and subject-matter experts, and that my correspondent knew this because he himself had spoken to Walport about Canada’s COVID response.

I puzzled over this for a while, and then sent the government a query. For reasons that will soon become apparent, asking the government of Canada any question is not normally an enterprise that sparks joy, but in theory I’m supposed to be some sort of journalist, so off I went.

On Friday, Nov. 10 — 12 days ago, as I write this — I sent this email to the media-relations account for Health Canada:


The answer came back swiftly:


I felt like a goof. Forgetting Remembrance Day is a bush-league oversight, and since my deadlines are entirely arbitrary — whenever I get the information is when I can write, because I don’t need to shout “stop the presses” to anyone, I should have specified a date a day or two later.

But note also that every one of my questions would have been super-easy to answer, if anyone felt like answering them. “Hi Paul: You’re getting bad information. Dr. Walport hasn’t been in any kind of contact with our department.” Or, “Dear Mr. Wells: Yes, Dr. Walport is doing some work for us. I’ve attached his terms of reference. Have a good weekend.” Or whatever. Again, for comparison’s sake, here are the very public terms of reference of the UK’s very public COVID inquiry, to which Dr. Walport himself testified in public.

On Nov. 16, six days after the initial reply email, I got this new reply from Health Canada:


Late on the afternoon of the 17th, I sent another email checking in on their progress. I got this reply:


That was five days ago. Early this morning, in a fit of insomnia, I sent this email to the same Health Canada address:


This afternoon I received the following email, which was the first I’ve received with the signature of a person. I’ll leave that signature out; I’m sure the decision to treat my query the way it has been treated was made by a large number of people. Anyway here’s what they wrote:


So there you have it. The dog’s not that shaggy.

Look, I get that there are sensitivities here. Preston Manning’s Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel in Alberta, which I take not to be his finest hour, has been the subject of considerable controversy. Surely the Trudeau government would prefer to avoid adding to its burden of controversy on a polarizing issue. And it must be a pain in the butt to learn that a reporter has caught wind of work they would rather keep low-key.

But at some point, the way this government treats information sinks into self-parody. To take 12 days and, plainly, a very broadly-dispersed work plan to handle three questions that don’t exactly need the staff of the Hammersmith Campus of Imperial College to answer, is to be terrified of saying simple things to the Canadian people.

I wish Dr. Walport great success in his review, and a safe return home, to a country where it is more widely assumed that adults can handle basic information about the way they are governed. If you’re wondering, I did write directly to him to ask what he’s up to. He didn’t reply. He clearly learns quickly.
Paul has an update:


To me it appears the government is doing this probe because it has to not because it wants to do it.
 
To me it appears the government is doing this probe because it has to not because it wants to do it.
Few organizations, let alone governments, willingly have their actions critiqued. Many will go through some motions that give the appearance of it, but it is typically 'busy work' and the results largely ignored (after the awarding of the appropriate performance bonuses).

I enjoy Paul Wells. I used to read him regularly when we got McLeans. His description of the government response letters made me laugh. For a time, a unit I worked in included the Minister's 'correspondence unit'. I had nothing to do with it but the lengthy and convoluted process of crafting the perfect letter - one that says absolutely nothing of substance - was a thing to behold.
 
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