She won't say

Bob Fife, one of Canada's pre-eminent journalists, always responds to my questions within minutes.  I'm serious.  Maybe he googled me?  The first time it happened I was surprised at the rapidity, I mean, how many people get in touch with him?  Anyway, my latest question was about the hullaballoo over Chinese interference in the last federal election.  I wanted to know why we hear absolutely nothing from either the Chief Electoral Officer, or the Commissioner of Elections?  Isn't that what they are supposed to be looking into?

Bob wrote back and said that Christine Simard, the commissioner, said she wouldn't say if she had been told, or was looking into it.  Whaaaat!@$@#$!???  She had to wait to be told?!!  That is her one and only job!  Here's her mandate:

"The Commissioner and her staff work to ensure that political entities, third parties -- hello China! -- and other individuals and entities engaged in the electoral process do so in compliance with the rules."

Would you not think she would be loudly and publicly on top of this serious breach of Canada's democracy?  How she stonewalls Bob Fife is beyond me?!  (Sorry for all the exclamation points, but that's me yelling!)  Here is the well-paid, secretive, affirmative-action appointee Ms. Simard:

Next we have Stéphane Perrault, the chief electoral officer -- another one not doing his job.  His mandate is almost identical.  He's paid to, among other things, "Monitor compliance with electoral legislation."  He's also supposed to earn and maintain the public trust.  Judging by the front-page headlines and numerous TV panels crying foul over China, Stéphane's not doing too well on the file.

What astounds me is that not one journalist has mentioned neither Simard, nor Perrault to ask what the h-ll they are doing about China's proven interference in our last two elections!  There was even a panel, headed by over-her-head, affirmative-action appointee, Janice Charette, charged with looking into possible interference.  Lo and behold, the panel found that the Chinese government had indeed meddled, but they did not release this finding for fear of targeting and upsetting Chinese Canadians.  This was the same situation with COVID, let's not upset the Chinese by blaming them.  I kid you not!!!   

I know I keep banging on about my days as a journalist in Toronto, but my editors would never have let me write about this mess without doing the research into who should be held responsible -- you know, the old "who, what, when, where, why" of Journalism 101.  

The only guy speaking out is ex-chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley.  He is demanding Trudeau call a Parliamentary inquiry.  Trudeau has said we don't need one.  Well, naturally he'd say that because Chinese interference and campaign contributions are what got him elected!  CSIS should also be on this hard.

It's appalling and I'm glad Bob Fife keeps writing about it.  But he has to call Simard and Perrault out, as I suggested to him yesterday.  Both of them are sitting pretty tightly on their integrity, falsely claiming "confidentiality" and basically using their mandates as scratch paper.  In other words, they are thumbing their noses at Parliament, which they cannot do.  Let's see if Bob steps up.  

Epilogue:  He did.  Both his column and the editorial in 'The Globe and Mail' come down hard on Simard and how she is not doing her job.  Naturally, I am taking a little credit.  

  

 

Woke-ism run amok

For telling the truth, a teacher in the Abbotsford School District has been summarily fired, destroying a 40-year career.  What truth did he tell?  He told his students that the majority of children who attended residential schools died of disease.  He actually had the temerity to say they were not tortured and murdered by evil priests and buried in unmarked graves.

This caused hysteria among the woke gang and within a hour of making the statement, this teacher was fired and frog-marched off the premises.  Never mind the statistics which affirm what he said.  No, the storyline was murder and that's what he was supposed to say.  Salem Witch Trials anyone?

How can this stand?!  

This is what happened to BC teacher Jim McMurtry at the hands of the head of the district, Kevin Godden.  McMurtry further transgressed by refusing to be silent when he was suspended. He criticized the school board, the process and the people behind his suspension.

It is quite likely that McMurtry would have a job today if he had agreed to be muzzled, if he had abrogated his right to free speech and if he had followed orders.  But because of his refusal, Godden canned him on the spot.

After he was fired, somebody thought they better quickly throw together a report to justify the mess.  The conclusion?  His sacking stands.  “Given Mr. McMurtry’s assertions that he will not be ‘muzzled,’ that he has a democratic right to speak, that he will not follow directions, it is clear that Mr. McMurtry’s employment can no longer continue,” says Putin, er, Godden.  

WTF!!??  This is education.  This is truth.  How can the head of the district shove it aside and promote lies?  

The long and rocky road that led to McMurtry’s dismissal hearing began in 2021 during a Grade 12 classroom discussion in Abbotsford, B.C., concerning the just announced news of 215 unmarked graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School.  As we know, the parents of these native students asked that they be buried on school grounds because they could not afford to bring the remains of their children home.  But that's not the woke line, which claims the graves were hidden on purpose.  

A student said priests had murdered and tortured the children at the school and then left them to die in the snow.  McMurtry pointed out that most children at residential schools died from disease, primarily tuberculosis.  I have blogged this outrage many times and the stats bear this out.  Google them, they're all there.  I was a journalist, I do my homework.

But what would McMurtry know?  He only holds a master’s degree in the history of education and a doctorate in the philosophy of education with a specialty in Indigenous history.

“I’m a Canadian,” McMurtry. “I’ve a right to freedom of conscience.  I don’t understand any of this. How can they do this to me?”

McMurtry said “woke dogma” was dominant in schools and needed to be challenged.  “This woke indoctrination is as offensive as any totalitarian ideology that has ever been pushed. People use ideologies to further their own interests, this isn’t new. What is striking is that in schools they are presenting only one side."

Do race and affirmative action have anything to do with this?  I bettcha.  Mr. Godden is Black and you can be sure he sides with the woke; it's in his DNA.  It's absolutely shameful that the head of an educational district ignores facts.  The guy makes more than $200,000 a year and this is what he preaches.  Here he is.  Shame, shame:

Canadian Constitution 101

I think a lot of people have no clue how this country works -- or doesn't these days.  And I'm including not only foreigners, but also most Canadians.  We are a Constitutional Monarchy in the Westminster model -- just as is Britain.  This means that King Charles is our Head of State and as such, King of Canada.  All executive power is formally vested in the King through the constitution, but the authority flows from the Canadian people.  Our King:  

Although he holds no real power, he embodies how our government works.  Canada is not a republic, in spite of the many factions wishing it were.  We can't just say, "Dear King, you're fired."  To get rid of the King as Head of State would necessitate endless, fraught negotiations with the provinces and Indigenous peoples.  It would also mean abolishing the governor general and all the lieutenants governors, so frankly, it'll never happen.

Justin Trudeau's strategy is to pretend we don't have the King as Head of State and to play down the reality that we are a Constitutional Monarchy.  He has even gone so far as to disgracefully remove all formal portraits of the Monarch from federal public buildings and institutions.  The fact that history and civics are no longer taught in Canadian schools makes pretending we don't have a king an easy dodge for him.  Trudeau has set himself up as the de-facto King of Canada, with courtiers and sycophants ensconced in his ever-expanding office now bulging with over-paid friends and consultants.  Not our King:

King Charles III is to be crowned (not "coronated" as many write) in May and many of us are wondering how Canada plans to mark this momentous occasion here at home?  So far, nothing has been announced and I bet all that will happen is that Trudeau, the GG and a retinue of hangers-on will attend the ceremony.  Let's hope he doesn't get drunk in the lobby bar of his $6,000/night hotel suite and disgrace us all over again.  BTW, he will not admit he stayed in the suite and a freedom of information challenge has been issued by 'The Globe and Mail' to prove it.  Oh, and did I mention every other head of state stayed in his/her embassy, including the president of the US?  

Many Americans think because 'Rolling Stone' magazine featured Trudeau in jeans on its cover a few years ago that we have a cool prime minister.  We don't.  Canada differs from the US in that we aren't restricted to two parties.  We have two main and five in all and most Canadians frequently change allegiance, depending on the issues and level of elections, i.e., federal, provincial or municipal.  Within families there is also no uniform alliance for one party or another.  Parents may vote one way, children and relatives another.  We also have appointed senators, judges and police chiefs, making things less complicated at many levels.

_________________________

Speaking of how Canada works, why did mediocre pop singer Jully Black think it was OK to arbitrarily change the words to our national anthem when she sang it a the NBA All-Star basketball game?  Instead of, "Oh Canada, our home and native land....." Black inserted, "Oh Canada, our home on native land..."  That's what she had the nerve to do.  Public opinion, for and against, predictably aligned along race (Jully is Black) -- not along right or wrong, as usual it was race.  Jully needs to stay in her own pedestrian singing lane and work on getting ahead -- not get all political and preachy.

Bad move.  

              

More letters...........

Wrote a couple that haven't appeared in 'The Calgary Herald'.  In case they don't, here they are:

Dear Editor,

 Apparently, unamed Canadian delegates to the Queen’s funeral stayed in a $6,000 per night luxury hotel suite for the event.  Following on the heels of Governor General Mary Simon’s $100,000 in-flight catering fiasco, one wonders what the chatter of the recipients might have been while wining and dining in opulence?  Marie Antionette’s famous remark comes to mind:  “Let them eat cake.”

 Nancy Marley-Clarke

 _______________________

"Dear Editor,

 "Since the 2010 earthquake, Canada has given $1.8 billion in funding to Haiti, including recently more than $12.5 million in humanitarian aid.  Yet, the country remains mired in such a gang-ridden mess, the main agenda item on the Caribbean conference is the desperate state of Haiti and what to do about it?

"Naturally, Haiti wants more money, but evidence suggests throwing more funding into the country will not help, given that lawless gangs continue to run amok.  Seems to me, aid money seldom gets to where it’s needed.  Canada claims it wants a “Haitian-led solution” to the situation.  So far, how has that worked out?  It hasn’t.

"Yours truly....."

Just when I thought Canada would stand firm in not sending more money to burn to Haiti, Trudeau recently said he will be sending more.  Along with the billions we are giving to the Ukraine, how many more will we be dumping into these black, insoluble holes?  How much more ridiculous virtue-signaling is Trudeau capable of?   

  (Note:  They did publish my letter Feb. 22, see below.)

 Nancy Marley-Clarke

$13.7 million about to go down the drain

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Her Worship, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, with her PhD in "Woke" (officially known as Urban Sociology) is about to dump $13.7 million into affordable housing initiatives.  

What a mistake.

Has she not heard of the ill-fated Dozois Project?  That mess occurred in the fifties in Montreal when then-Mayor Jean Drapeau and a bunch of like-minded woke councillors (Drapeau wasn't woke; he smelled money, but the others were) decided to tear down a slum neighbourhood in the centre of the city and replace it with modern, affordable housing for the poor.  So, they dumped millions into building new apartment towers into which they re-located the local residents.  The thinking was that if you just gave people nice, new homes, they would cease destroying and vandalizing the ones they were living in.

Guess what happened?  They promptly destroyed and vandalized the new housing.  And as an added bonus, it became a hotbed of prostitution and youth crime -- the latter at the rate of 10 times the city average.  One report states that, "The social disintegration of a sector is linked to its physical disintegration."  So, as the development became more and more vandalized, crime rose proportionately.  

I would have thought that when Mayor Gondek was studying for her PhD, the mistakes and disasters of the Dozois project would have figured prominently in the syllabus, no?  Guess not because she is now poised to dump $6 million into Indigenous housing, $7.5 into non-profit housing and the rest into joint projects with the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the United Way and other well-meaning, but hopeless, projects.  Oh, and it also includes the waiving of the first and last months' rental payments, meaning that when the units are ultimately trashed, Calgarians will be paying even more for clean-up and repairs.

"This makes us, together with our community partners, nimble and responsive to the needs of our neighbours who require supports to access dignified and affordable housing," bragged the starry-eyed, delusional Gondek.  You would also have thought Ms. Gondek would have been aware that many homeless people don't want to move off the streets; their paranoia makes them comfortable staying there.  Guess not.  Frankly, I'd like to know what the subject of her thesis was.  On second thought, maybe I wouldn't. 

Gawd, I'm glad I no longer live in Calgary, where taxes are being raised with gay abandon to cover the whims and charitable notions of a misguided, woke council.  

The sad demise of the office romance

No one is having any fun anymore at the office.  As I have blogged, people fall in love and have affairs at the office all the time and a lot of it is welcomed -- by both parties.  I used to sympathize with the young guys I worked with in later years because they couldn't even say a woman looked nice because that would have been an automatic "sexual harassment" charge.

No it isn't, but fear has killed the delightful, flirtatious workplace art of parlance and parrying.  I remember a guy I worked with in the seventies once saying how good I smelled.  He was complimenting my Oscar de la Renta scent of course, but can you imagine a man uttering that today!  Jail time would follow.  

Phobe Maltz Bovy had a great column in 'The Globe and Mail' yesterday, lamenting, "The unfortunate death of the office romance".  She was writing about Toronto Mayor John Tory's resignation after revelations he had had an affair with a younger staffer.  In my world, that's a "so what!"

"If any of Tory's cavorting got in the way of his fixing public transit, for instance -- more specifically, if his thirst somehow prevented him from reinstituting the streetcar up and down Roncesvalles Avenue -- then I'd be angry," she writes.  "But if the reporting doesn't bear that out, should we really care if this was a fairly standard office romance?"

No, we shouldn't.  Who knows what the state of Tory's marriage is?  I don't and I don't care.  #MeToo has unfortunately killed any hope of finding love -- or lust -- at the office and that's too bad.  I found both my husbands at the office.  Was I sexually harassed?  Absolutely not.  But I did find myself in somewhat of a sticky wicket when a minister of the Crown, for whom I worked as a freelance speech writer, made a job-threatening pass at me.  It was between marriages, so I could have said yes, but I didn't find him particularly attractive.  Problem was he had the power of my job in his hands.  I won't divulge how his attempt at an evening of horizontal mambo turned out; I am only recounting the clever balancing act I had to maintain to keep both him happy and my job secure.  

Let's face it, it's not exactly a boon to feminism to infantilize women of consenting (or not) age and assume all passes are assault.  Women have the power.  We can say "yay or nay".  It's the exploitation that's the problem, not the sex itself, so let's all grow up here.

__________________________

A word about Brenda Lucki.  As you know, I have blogged countless times about the many messes she has made on numerous files over her four-year catastrophic term as head of the RCMP.  Trudeau's ludicrous Affirmative Action appointments have led to all kinds of screw-ups and Lucki was just another in a long line.  In fairness, she was parachuted in over the heads of much more senior, better-qualified officers and was just not up to the job.

She blundered through the Nova Scotia mass shooting, mishandled the trucker's convoy mess, actually claiming at one point she wasn't familiar with how the Emergencies Act worked!  I could go on, but realizing the Rouleau Report on the calamity with the truckers is to be released this week, Lucki knew she was in for a public shellacking and hard time in the stockade in the public thoroughfare.  So she ducked out in the nick of time.  

Like Julie Payette -- another botched AA appointment by Trudeau -- Lucki has put one more nail in the feminist coffin.  Payette was the first and only governor general to have had to resign or be fired because of gross incompetence, staff bullying and harassment.  I am pissed off when women f-ck up.  Some of us worked very hard many years ago to get you to where you are, so why do you keep blowing it?!

      

    

Hearts strike fear in the hearts of Ontario principals

Well, this tops it.  Many schools in Ontario have cancelled Valentine's Day.  First it was Christmas, then Easter, so you knew St. Valentine would get it in the neck sooner or later.  Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce, has folded and is letting this outrage happen.  

What is happening in this country?!  According to the talking heads interviewed on TV, some kids felt left out because they weren't Christian; others because they didn't get many valentines.

OMG!  Poor, old St. Valentine.  Not even love can save him.  Now it's being turned into a "learning opportunity," said one weak-kneed principal, "About how other cultures celebrate love."  In my world, love is pretty much a universal emotion, isn't it?  OK, not in the case of arranged marriages, but everywhere else love is love.

I remember Valentine's Day in my elementary school.  It was a day of excitement, when you received valentines from friends and a few admirers.  The most thrilling were from secret admirers, when we spent the day blushing and giggling with our girlfriends trying to figure out who our secret admirers were.  Pretty heady stuff!

It's actually a feast day in many religions and in other cultures it's a day to celebrate love.  Now it seems love is a taboo.  How pathetic.  Rest in Peace, St. Valentine.