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The opioid crisis in Canada is real and it is getting worse fast.

Dealing with this crisis is going to take efforts on multiple fronts.

Safe consumption sites are one facet which has been making the news a lot lately. We need to try and keep these addicts alive long enough to hopefully get them off of the drugs permanently. Unfortunately while they have reversed overdoses at these sites the placement of these sites has led to increases in crime and social disorder wherever they are located. Hopefully this can be sorted out over time as we work to mitigate the loss of lives while not turning neighborhoods into dangerous slums.

We need more resources directed to mental health and addiction treatment.

Aside from the moral aspect, even the most heartless of fiscal conservatives should be able to support this dedication of funding. Treated addicts save us all when we look at the reduced weight on our justice and health systems.

If we don’t couple consumption sites with aggressive treatment options though, we are only facilitating the problem.

Something often lost in the discussion is the prevention of addiction in the first place. Again, mental health resources can help with this as it may prevent people with disorders from trying to self-medicate with opioids.

Another issue which is creating untold numbers of opioid addicts is the ever increasing wait times for treatment in our medical system.

Our stubborn adherence to our failing model of health care has cause wait lists to become interminable for specialized procedures and emergency care. We canonize Tommy Douglas and constantly increase spending on our system while outcomes continue to get worse and worse.

The trend is undeniable. This is not conjecture or ideology, this is simply stats.

When compared to 11 other comparable nations which provide universal health coverage, we rank 11th when it comes to wait times.

My wife Jane just got some much needed back surgery done last month. That is well over two years since her very first visit to a general practitioner with back pain. As the pain increased over time while waiting for treatment, the prescriptions for pain relief increased. What else is a doctor or patient supposed to do? Now Jane’s back is much better but she is still in the process of weaning herself off of the pain medication.

Everybody knows somebody with a similar story in Canada. Knee issues, hip issues or back problems, they are all debilitating and all have huge backlogs of patients waiting for treatment. Pretty much all folks waiting for these kinds of treatments are given pain medication to tide them over until they can get surgery. Unfortunately, many find themselves being hopeless addicts by the time they finally get treated (thankfully Jane is coming off the meds well).

We often hear than many kids begin their addictions through finding opioids in their parent’s or grandparent’s medicine cabinets. In that case, lets address why so many medicine cabinets are full of painkillers!

The proliferation of painkillers in general and the creation of many addicts can be directly related to people being medicated while awaiting medical treatment so lets look at doing something about it.

We need to reform how we provide health care rather than continue to toss dollars at an overburdened. Of those 10 nations listed above, all of which provide universal care (nobody is indebted due to health costs), all of them provide more private treatment options than Canada does!

Lets look at outcomes rather than ideology for a change. We know 100% that simply spending more money has not and will not reduce medical waiting times. That means that provision has to change. The biggest handicap Canada has with provision is our ridiculous banning of so many private provision options. It drives desperate patients along with their dollars out of our country for treatment and it costs us specialists. Let’s bloody well start looking at the nations that are doing better than us (most of them) and emulate what they are doing. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel here.

The longer somebody is on painkillers, the higher the chance of them developing a dependence. This also means more time with these medications being accessible in their households. Reducing the time on waiting lists will reduce both addiction rates and proliferation of the drugs.

It is going to take initiatives on a number of fronts to take on this national opioid addiction crisis. We can’t afford to overlook problems and solutions based on ideology. One area that we are not speaking of enough is where these addicts and the drugs are coming from and the growing waiting lists for medical treatment are a large factor in this.

Lets get on it!

I am not a supporter of Bernier’s “People’s Party of Canada”.
I am not terribly enthusiastic about Andrew Scheer either but having recently endured the horrors of what a conservative vote split can produce in Alberta, I am resigned to supporting what I see as the lesser of the evils at this time.

Bernier has a tough row to hoe.

I have worked within fringe parties for years. It is tough to get them off the ground and into the mainstream.

With a limited number of members, an often hostile media and little funding, it can be difficult to get broad exposure and to get messaging out.

This week with a handful of billboards Bernier’s PPC managed to get national exposure in a way that they never could have purchased outright. Every media outlet in the nation is covering the erecting and removal of a few billboards in the country. Max’s smiling face is in every newspaper today and in every TV news outlet.

What has also happened is that the PPC have made progress in cornering support on an issue that the mainstream parties are too cowardly to approach. It is fast becoming a reality that the social media mob will descend on any politician who dares question immigration levels and accuse them of white supremacy.

It is not unreasonable to question our immigration policies. Perhaps we need more immigrants, perhaps we need fewer, perhaps we need more stringent controls on immigration or perhaps we need less. What we can’t do though is let these conversations become taboo.

The billboards ambiguously called for an end to “mass immigration”. I guess the only thing that can be fully presumed is that they want less. What is debatable is how much less. All the same, it wasn’t that outrageous a statement until the hysteric left took up the cause.

Rational Canadians don’t see such a simple statement as necessarily being so odious. We have seen immigration issues with uncontrolled illegal crossings in Quebec and Ontario causing local issues for years. If you don’t think Bernier’s messaging isn’t gaining support in those border regions you are highly mistaken. He won’t win the election but he can certainly gain enough steam this way to impact it.

The billboards weren’t put up directly by Bernier’s party but by a third party group in support of them. I presume they will get at the least a partial refund as Pattison backed off on their contract.

If this whole chain of events was by design it means that they have some pretty bright strategists within their ranks. Good work!

If this was a fluke, well it paid off in spades for the PPC all the same.

People had best stop underestimating the impact that Bernier and his party may have. He is speaking to a growing group of people who feel that nobody is speaking for them. Again, it won’t win the election but it can sure as hell ensure that Scheer doesn’t win it if this tend continues.

Amanda Soper and her little band of extremists are getting bold and who can blame them? They feel that they are above the law and if the actions of the RCMP over the last year are any indication, they may be right.

Soper and her crazed associates set up an illegal road block near Blue River BC over a year ago and things are escalating fast.

Background on this issue can be found here along with videos of confrontations between local residents and Soper’s illegal camp.

A few weeks ago, an enraged local aboriginal man tried to use the public road and was forcefully turned away by Soper and gang. The man vowed to come back with a rifle as can be seen in the video below.

This is getting extremely dangerous people,

I can’t think of things more dangerous than a man provoked to the point of planing to get a firearm. The RCMP will surely swoop in and deal with this situation right?

Nope. As can be seen in repeated videos, the RCMP act like cowed puppies and slink away rather than deal with the problem.

Soper and friends tell the police to fuck off and call for a “pig roast”.

Like spanked children, the cops move on.

This has to be so humiliating for a police force that was once respected worldwide.

Below we can see Soper and company chasing the police away a few months ago.

Mall security guards apparently have more ability to enforce the law than the RCMP and it seems they command more respect too.

So lets recap.

Amanda Soper (known criminal with multiple convictions) sets up an illegal blockade with some of her pals over a year ago.

Despite multiple complaints to police and ever increasing confrontations with locals, the police still refuse to enforce the law.

Its little wonder that locals are threatening to take the law into their own hands.

Somebody has to.

This confrontation is going to end one of two ways.

Either the bloody cops are going to do their job and dismantle this illegal roadblock, or locals are going to do it themselves.

The second option has a high likely hood of ending in violence and possible tragedy.

Which one is it going to be? Procrastination is only making it worse.

There are no two ways about it, the equalization system has been screwing Albertan’s for decades.

The image above demonstrates rather starkly how Canada has essentially acted as a big funnel which takes billions of dollars from producing provinces and pours them into Quebec. Alberta doesn’t even make up 1% on the receiving end despite enduring multiple downturns over the decades. Quebec meanwhile takes a heaping helping of over half of the equalization payments in Canada despite making up only 23% of the population. Quebec doesn’t need equalization but they aren’t stupid. Of course they will say yes to accepting these interprovincial welfare cheques which are being cut to them to try and gain political favor.

Equalization is only the most evident way that Canada screws other provinces in favor of Quebec. Bilingual hiring requirements, massive corporate welfare payments to Quebec companies and all manner of transfer payments help feed Quebec’s insatiable desire for the fruits of neighboring provinces.

Equalization is the most visible and odious of these bribes given traditionally to La Belle Province.

If Equalization is supposed to be some sort of hand up rather than a hand out, it is pretty clear that it has been a catastrophic failure. Quebec is as dependent and entitled as they ever have been despite decades of money being tossed at them by the rest of the nation. It is clear that they will never become self-sustaining through equalization so we may as well dump it. Call it tough love if you like.

The recent Alberta economic downturn really drove home just how deeply equalization screws us. Years of recession, business closures and record unemployment numbers have now plagued Alberta. Surely this is just the sort of situation where equalization should kick in and help out the province which has so generously helped the rest of the country for generations right?

Wrong!

We get nary a nickel while Quebec continues to engorge on billions.

The tall foreheads and supporters of equalization pooh pooh the unwashed Albertans when we dare speak up on this gross inequity. “You don’t understand how equalization works.”

I contend that most Albertans understand exactly how equalization works but will concede that many if not most don’t fully understand the mechanism of it.

There is no cheque that Alberta cuts and gives to the federal government which we could simply stop writing. The feds simply take taxes from Alberta and give us a disproportionately small return on it when compared to pretty much every province (especially Quebec). So while we aren’t cutting a cheque specifically for equalization, every time we pay a federal tax we are getting screwed on the services that we should see in return for it.

What better way to fix all these misconceptions than to hold a referendum though? A campaign of months where equalization can be truly discussed, debated and dissected for the pubic. If it is such a great deal for us, surely we will vote overwhelmingly to continue with this fine program of wealth redistribution.

Yes, I understand that no matter what we vote in a referendum that it can’t and won’t force the nation to change equalization. It sure would register our discontent in a formal way though. If the vast majority of Albertans voted to shitcan equalization, how long could the federal powers that be ignore this? How long would Albertans wait until asking for a referendum under the Clarity Act which would indeed force national change?

A referendum won’t be too costly when coupled with a municipal election. We are going to the polls anyway. One more ballot isn’t that tough to fill out. Nearly 60% of Calgarians came out to tell Nenshi where to go with his Olympic bid idea. Referendums help engage voters and that is a good thing no?

A referendum on equalization in Alberta won’t fix the system which continually screws us. It will be an important step in the direction of a better deal for Alberta though whether within or outside of the confines of confederation.

Kenney promised it and I am looking forward to the campaign.

Bring on the referendum!

Canada has a ball problem.

At times we either have an excess of balls or a lack of balls.

We are fast becoming an international laughingstock due to our ball imbalance.

Let’s start with the excess balls.

Jonathan (Jessica) Yaniv has an excess of balls which is causing a problem.

Jonathan feels that women should be forced by law to handle his balls upon demand and has taken 16 of them to the BC Human Rights Commission in order to force these women to touch his nuts.

Alas, the BC Human Rights Commission lacks balls. They could have dismissed this request to essentially have state enforced sexual assault but instead have victimized these sixteen women for the better part of a year now as they refuse to render a decision.

In Edmonton, a single father seeking a babysitter dared to ask if an applicant was male or not. He has now will be dragged before the Alberta human rights commission.

It is not unreasonable to be concerned about whether or not your babysitter has balls when it is considered that according to Stats Canada 97% of sex offenders are male and are usually young.

Babysitting and balls simply don’t mix if a concerned parent wants to play the odds in the favor of their children’s safety.

Alas, asking about balls is off limits when it comes to choosing who you will leave your children alone with.

Next we come to where Canada is suffering due to a lack of balls in a place where we dearly need them.

I am speaking of between the legs of our Prime Minister.

In the Islamic world, women risk torture, imprisonment and even stoning deaths for daring to do such things as leave their hair uncovered or trying to choose who they may marry. Their feminists have some very difficult and important work to do.

In the Western world, feminists have declared “manspreading” as the biggest threat to their gender well being.

“Manspreading” for those who are not immersed in the bizarro world of social justice enough to have heard of it is the terrible masculine offense of a man daring to sit with his legs apart.

Such gross displays of masculinity are unforgivable to dedicated feminists.

What women don’t understand though is that there is a reason that men sit with their legs apart.

WE HAVE BALLS BETWEEN THEM!

I will spare the specific details but when men sit with their legs squashed together or crossed, we experience some discomfort issues. Not agony but not comfortable.

Unless of course one doesn’t have balls.

In the case of full emasculation, a person no longer feels the need to keep their legs apart.

While a literal lack of balls can be disfiguring, the absence of figurative balls is a terrible problem as well.

It will take a politician with balls to take on the insane human rights commissions in Canada.

It will take a politician with balls to take on the current trade war with China.

It will take a politician with balls to face down extreme environmental protesters in order to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built.

It will take a politician with balls to stand up and tell terrorists like “Jihadi Jack” that we won’t have him in our country.

Pretty much every tough and necessary task that needs to be done by a Prime Minister requires figurative balls.

Sadly the office has had a testicular deficit for nearly four years now and it shows.

Let’s hope that the imbalance of balls within Canada is corrected this October.

This ball problem is simply getting to costly to endure much longer.

Calgary has not seen such a dysfunctional, inept Mayor and city council in generations.

This collection of vain imbeciles has lurched from scandal to squabble to a fiscal catastrophe as they pursue their myriad of personal vanity projects while city administration muddles along rudderless.

Downtown Calgary has languished under a crippling 30% vacancy rate for years while Calgary Economic Development has focused on idiotic campaigns such as sidewalk chalk drawings in Seattle, the vain pursuit of an Olympic bid and the disbursement of a $100 million corporate welfare fund that hasn’t drawn any significant corporations.

Taxes and fees continue to rise at record rates while citizens watch their dollars pissed away on some of the ugliest, foreign sourced public “art” projects on the planet.

Traffic congestion continues to rise as streets are narrowed for an ever growing but barely utilized network of bike tracks.

The vision of a hipster’s paradise in the “East village” which will draw residents, enterprise and tourists has never materialized despite years of disproportionate focus of tax dollars and attention to eastern downtown.

Satellite communities such as Airdrie, Cochrane and Okotoks are experiencing a boom as people and businesses continue to flee the overbearing tax and regulation of the city of Calgary driven by a collection of disparate ideologues on council and in city administration.

Don’t just take my word for it. Lets look at the words of some poor souls who have had to cover the antics at Calgary city hall for 30 years.

Rick Bell never pulls punches and speaks rather bluntly to say the least. He couldn’t find a rating lower than “F” to use for them.

Or how about Don Braid? He usually isn’t too colorful and stays on the diplomatic side.

It really takes a piss poor city council to convince a seasoned columnist to call for a move so extreme as having the provincial government to intervene and fire them.

I don’t agree with provincial intervention in this case but in watching the collection of clowns in city hall this last few years I can certainly understand the sentiment.

So what to do?

Well to begin with we need to democratically fire most if not all of city council in the next election. Incumbent advantage coupled with voter apathy led to having every incumbent councilor re-elected in the last election. We need to create the means and environment where we can decisively flush these people from council chambers en masse.

Beyond electoral accountability, we need to work to ensure that the Mayor and council remain accountable between elections as well.

We need to have councilors with strong guidance from electors rather than having them drift along on their ideological or whimsical paths. The personal vanity projects and pursuit of legacies needs to end and a holistic approach to governing needs to take hold.

We need councilors who actually campaign honestly. No more pretending to be conservative only to become shameless spenders upon getting a seat.

We need councilors to work together on projects rather than bickering and cutting deals behind closed doors.

Finally we need policy guidance and the will to follow through with it.

To help achieve all of these goals what we need to do is create a municipal political party. Rest assured, that won’t make things any more partisan, it will simply bring the partisanship into the open where it belongs.

A party system isn’t a panacea of course but then nothing is. The only thing worse than an official party guiding things is having unofficial alliances and parties guiding things and that is what we are witnessing now.

We need to clean city hall out and only with an organized party will we be able to break loose those entrenched council mushrooms such as Ray Jones and Dianne Colley-Urquhart who have built careers spanning decades in city chambers while really accomplishing very little.

Incumbents in city hall hold a tremendous advantage in going into an election. They have name recognition and maintain an organizational system from past elections along with data that they can acquire while in office which helps in their re-election campaigns.

A party will provide candidates who are challenging incumbent councilors (and the Mayor) with the resources required to unseat the entrenched councilors.

To begin with, a party can provide training for their selected candidates before an election. Campaigning is a learned art form and many challengers have never run in or seriously worked on an election campaign before. They may potentially be excellent mayoral or council material but if they don’t know how to campaign they will never win the seat. An integral part of that training is the nomination process. If a person can’t defeat challengers for the right to run, they won’t be able to beat an incumbent city councilor. A party nomination process will weed out the weak and bring the winners to the forefront.

Following nominations, the party can hold training sessions for candidates and volunteers leading up to the election.

In a field overloaded with independent candidates, it is nearly impossible for a candidate to stand out. Incumbents are thrilled when a pile of people run against them in an election. It splits the vote 6 ways and the incumbent can win comfortably even with a minority of voters. Just ask Druh Farrell.

A candidate endorsed by a party will stand out. They will have standardized branding shared by 14 other candidates around the city. The party logo alone will make the candidate unique in their ward race.

With standardized branding, candidates can also take advantage of economies of scale which helps make the best use of those ever scarce campaign funds. Printers will give much better prices to a party which approaches with an order for hundreds of thousands of literature pieces and thousands of signs versus independents with small orders. Social media and website development can be created where candidates work with templates rather than paying individual web designers. Campaign office spaces can be shared as well.

A party can help provide and build the requisite database management training and be an organizational hub for prospective volunteers.

If we want to remove the bulk of incumbents on city council, a party will bring about the means to finally do so.

Once in office, councilors sharing a partisan bond will have a sense of unity and direction. Unlike the our current batch of councilors, they will be able to agree on general principles and get things done. There should be a degree of independence among the councilors but in the broader issues they will be far better in working together as fellow party members rather than a ramshackle collection of self serving independents.

A leader elected by a party will help in guiding this unity as well. Nenshi as a Mayor has been a complete failure in providing any sort of cohesion in city council. Nenshi is there for Nenshi and it shows. If a Mayor has won a party leadership process, it indicates that they already have an understanding of leadership and how to build coalitions.

Between elections, a party can bring accountability to councilors as well. Party members in a ward can keep their councilor in check and if the councilor deviates too far from their electoral base, they will lose their nomination for the next race. Fake conservatives such as Shane Keating or Ward Sutherland won’t make it past one term. Councilors will have to remain engaged with their wards if they want to keep their jobs.

Policy development can be a painful and drawn out process to say the least. I remember my terms as VP Policy for the Wildrose Party. The process is critical however. A party can provide the study and critique necessary in order to build a comprehensive policy set. While an individual may come with some expertise in a couple of fields, they can never cover everything. With the combined effort of a party, policies can be built to cover most city needs.

In having a party study policies, councilors won’t be as beholden to city administration for policy development. Countless millions are pissed away in the cottage industry of studies and commissions formed by city hall as councilors kick policy questions down the road to city administration rather than try to take them on themselves. A party can do much of this and at no cost to taxpayers. Administration driven policies invariably are modeled to benefit members of the administration rather than the taxpayers footing the bill. Lets take that role out of the hands of bureaucrats.

Calgary is heading down an ugly road with no end in sight right now. If we don’t change how we take on the next election, the outcome of the election will be no different. The incumbents will return and Calgary can look forward to four more years of dysfunctional squabbling and idiotic pet projects from councilors while core needs continue to be neglected. The massive tax and fee increases will continue as well.

A party system isn’t perfect but it beats the hell out of the mess that Calgary is enduring right now. The time to get this party going is yesterday. It will take two years to get this up and running in time for the next election. It won’t be easy to pull off but nothing worthwhile is.

Nobody can afford the status-quo any longer.

Ethics laws are fine and dandy but they have to have teeth if they are to be of any effect on the behavior of politicians.

At the end of 2017 Justin Trudeau was awarded the dubious honor of being the first sitting Prime Minister in Canadian history to be found in contravention of the Conflict of Interest Act. Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson ruled that in accepting a lavish vacation on a private island along with a private helicopter ride Justin Trudeau had clearly broken the law.

What was the punishment for Trudeau’s arrogant disregard for conflict of interest laws though? A finger wagging.

Today Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion has concluded that Justin Trudeau has broken the Conflict of Interest law yet again when he tried to use his position as Prime Minister to bully Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Mario Dion:
” I find that Mr. Trudeau used his position of authority over Ms. Wilson-Raybould to seek to influence her decision on whether she should overrule the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision not to invite SNC-Lavalin to enter into negotiations towards a remediation agreement.

Because SNC?Lavalin overwhelmingly stood to benefit from Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s intervention, I have no doubt that the result of Mr. Trudeau’s influence would have furthered SNC-Lavalin’s interests. The actions that sought to further these interests were improper since the actions were contrary to the constitutional principles of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law.

For these reasons, I find that Mr. Trudeau contravened section 9 of the (Conflict of Interest) Act.”

What does this mean though?

Diddly squat unfortunately.

When commoners such as ourselves are found to be breaking laws, we are fined or imprisoned.

When Prime Minister Trudeau is found breaking laws, he gets a scolding.

There is only one way that Trudeau can face consequences for his flagrant disregard of Canadian laws while in office as Prime Minister and that is for the electorate to remove Trudeau from the office of Prime Minister.

Canadians have an opportunity just over two months from now to act as judge, jury and executioner on Justin Trudeau in the general election. They likely will not get such an opportunity for some years to come.

Let’s hope that the electorate lashes out and removes this scofflaw from office this fall.

If you think Trudeau’s arrogance is bad now, just imagine if the electorate gives him a second mandate despite his multiple breaches of the law. He will feel empowered and justified in using his office to pressure anybody for anything that appears to be in his personal interest.

If re-elected, Justin Trudeau will see himself as being above the laws of the land and unfortunately he will be right.

Look, I am not one of those people who whines when a media personality shows bias. Talk radio hosts would be boring as hell if they didn’t lean one way or another as would columnists of course. The engagement between a host and a guest when the host has some defined views and is willing to debate them makes for good, informative listening.

I don’t care which way a bias goes as well. If it is too far out there for me to endure, I simply choose not to listen/watch/read whatever was produced.

Adler of course has the right to hold whatever views he pleases and to bring those views into his radio show and into social media as much as he wants. I would never want it any other way.

What I am going on about is the radical shift in bias and approach that seems to have taken over Adler in this last few months. It has been striking to say the least.
Charles Adler is a well established broadcaster who has been working in the field in a number of roles for decades. As a longtime listener, if I were to describe Adler’s leaning I would say center-right. He has never been a strong social conservative but has usually been treading the waters of a fiscal conservative with a moderate social stance.

I had been a guest on his TV show a time or two when he was with the Sun News Network and I think once on his radio show. They were fun interviews. Adler was prone to bouncing about while making jovial yet pressing questions and commentary that keeps you on your toes. I liked that style in listening to him as well.

People’s views evolve and change over time. That is natural. It is not normal for folks to go damn near 180 degrees over the course of a few months though and that somehow has happened to Adler.

Adler’s anti-conservative campaign has been sudden, fervent and almost obsessive. It seems to have begun during last spring’s Alberta election campaign. Adler brought Jason Kenney in on what can only be described as a brutal ambush interview. Adler used every one of the Notley talking points which had been mercilessly (and ineffectively) used to try and paint Kenney and the entire UCP as being backwards bigots. Kenney took the unexpected pummeling well but it was painful to listen to. Probing questions and debate are fine but that interview was a prolonged attack.

After that interview, Adler brought Rachel Notley on not to give her a grilling on her campaign and policies but rather to spend another half hour double teaming Kenney and the UCP to drive home further the notion that this was somehow a party of neanderthals as can be seen in the program description below.

For the remainder of the campaign Adler stuck to throwing rocks at Jason Kenney and puffballs at Rachel Notley. Thankfully it appears to have had utterly no impact on voter intentions.

Adler’s sights are now turned on Andrew Scheer. From having economists on who speak to how well Trudeau has managed the economy to implying that Scheer is a homophobe because he hasn’t done any campaign stops in gay bars Adler is outdoing himself on his crusade.

In just going through Adler’s social media scroll from just these past few days the pattern is rather more than evident.

Adler constantly demonizes both Doug Ford and Jason Kenney. He then works his utmost to try to make the case that Andrew Scheer will be controlled by these conservative monsters!

There is utterly no evidence anywhere that Scheer is somehow a puppet of Jason Kenney. Why and how on earth would he be? This is getting into deep conspiracy theory territory but Adler is shameless in his trying to perpetuate this myth.

If the Kenney controlling Scheer conspiracy isn’t enough, Adler is working to point out that Doug Ford is actually controlling Scheer. Twins? Really?

At least in that tweet Adler came right out and advised folks to vote Liberal this fall.

The tweet above is the one that inspired my rant today.

Where the hell did this question come from? Scheer suddenly has to decry Alberta separatism? Scheer who is a federal leader who isn’t even from Alberta is somehow secretly an Albertan separatist?

Adler is hoping dearly to draw Scheer into a narrative that has utterly nothing to do with him.

The question is why?

There is an election pending. There are countless questions and opinions to explore in coming days and months. Why dive down the rabbit hole of Liberal campaigning in trying to paint conservatives as homophobes/separatists/extremists etc? Adler knows damn well that this is simply shallow, lazy commentary at best which again is what makes his transformation so mystifying.

I am not alone in wondering. Other broadcasters and politicians are starting to speak up on this as well.

The list of folks asking what happened to Charles is growing.

Perhaps we will never know but I suspect that the obsessiveness and overt Liberal campaigning from him is only going to get worse in the next couple months.

That is sad indeed.

How absurd does it have to get?

How many victims need to shutter their businesses?

How much stress should defendants have to endure with this ridiculous case?

How much more international embarrassment should Canada endure over this?

I am of course speaking about the bizarre and ongoing saga of Jonathan (Jessica) Yaniv and the ludicrous claims brought before the BC Human Rights Tribunal.

The question is: “Should a woman be forced by law to handle a man’s balls upon demand.”

I am not making things up. That is what this entire circus boils down to.

This sham is not harmless and the damage is only amplifying for Yaniv’s victims in this case. Some have settled, others have shut down their businesses and the rest are confused and unimaginably stressed while the clowns at the BC Human Rights Tribunal sit on their hands with this idiocy.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal has the means to dump this sham right now. They have had the means to end this injustice since it began over six months ago.

From the BC Human Rights Tribunal page:

” Reasons the Tribunal may dismiss the complaint under section 27(1)(c)

The Tribunal is not deciding the complaint or any defence. Instead, it is deciding whether a hearing is not warranted because there is no reasonable chance that the complaint will be successful at a hearing.

The Tribunal may dismiss the complaint if it determines that:

• there is no reasonable prospect that the complainant will prove one or more of the parts of discrimination at a hearing, or
• there is no reasonable prospect of success because a defense would be proved at a hearing.”

The key word here is “reasonable” and it has been used multiple times. The members of the tribunal have a degree of discretion in these cases though they refuse to use it. Nothing about this entire travesty or Yaniv is reasonable.

One can see why Yaniv initially tried to remain anonymous when all this began. Under the light of public scrutiny, Yaniv has been exposed as a very odious person who at best is a simple scam artist and at worst is a child predator. There is some pretty clear evidence of both.

On the scam artist front it is evident that Yaniv is hoping to get compensation from these actions whether from rulings of the tribunal or from settlements from those just wanting to free themselves from this legal limbo. Apparently a couple of Yaniv’s victims have already settled though it is unknown what Jonathan may have gotten from them. This is extortion and Yaniv is using B.C.s gormless human rights commission very effectively in order to do so.

The more disturbing revelation is Yaniv’s predilection towards young girls. Jonathan is setting trans rights back as he does exactly what opponents of trans rights claim will happen if we have trans people using washrooms in their new gender. He is entering the ladies rooms in order to take surreptitious pictures of young girls.

His communications online with young girls and apparent creepy discourse on menstrual issues is distressing and may be indicative of a dangerous, predatory man.

Yaniv’s blatant racism in many of his communications have hardly made him endearing either. Perhaps his motivation in targeting these woman had racial motivations rather than fiscal.

It is not beyond reason to speculate that Yaniv is not actually a transgender person but is purposely identifying as such in order to perpetuate his numerous scams.

As media pays attention to Yaniv, it becomes clear that he is quite unstable and possibly dangerous to others as he brandishes illegal weapons during interviews.

Yaniv travels in a handicapped scooter when in public.

This appears to be part of another of Yaniv’s scams however as he proved himself to be rather agile when he wants to be.

Yaniv sure sprinted quickly upon realizing that his “handicapped” farce was being exposed on camera.

Despite all this, the luminaries at the BC Human Rights Tribunal think it may take them 3 more months to rule on Yaniv’s vexatious claims.

How bad does it have to get before a dismissal is applied?

The BC Rights Tribunal is as complicit as Yaniv himself in the victimization of these innocent, immigrant women who simply didn’t want to handle a man’s genitalia.

The means are there for the tribunal. This punishment of innocent women can be brought to an end tomorrow. There is no excuse to drag this out any longer.

Are the fools running the BC Human Rights Tribunal capable of applying simple reason though? Sadly it looks unlikely and this is an embarrassment to us all.

Alberta has never fared well when a Trudeau holds power in Ottawa. It took over a decade for the energy sector to recover from Pierre’s National Energy Program and it has languished stagnant under Justin’s tenure.

Justin Trudeau has all but killed Alberta’s energy sector through legislation such as Bills C-48 and C-69 which have caused an investment exodus from the province along will killing Energy East and the Northern Gateway pipeline. Trudeau’s inept dithering led to Kinder Morgan bailing on the long planned Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion which led to a hasty and ill planned purchase of the pipeline by the federal government. To date not a gram of dirt has moved in the construction of that line.

While the oil and gas sectors in Texas, Pennsylvania and even Kazakhstan are booming, Alberta’s industries remain in stasis due to lack of pipeline capacity and lack of investment. We are losing millions daily and Trudeau couldn’t care less.

This fall we have another federal election and while we should be looking forward to this as an opportunity for the betterment of Alberta it looks like things may become far worse.

While people have tired of Trudeau’s infantile antics and his shallow governance, Andrew Scheer has so far remained incapable of capitalizing on that weakness for the Conservatives. A lot can change politically in a few months but as of this writing things are not looking good.

The Liberal Party under Trudeau appears locked into position to win a minority government this fall and that will be nothing less than an unmitigated disaster for Alberta’s already damaged economy.

In a minority situation, Trudeau will be forced to form a coalition with the NDP and or the Greens in order to remain in power.

BC is providing a live example of a weak leader who is being controlled by a Green Party leader who holds the balance of power in the province. Horgan is Premier in name only while Weaver with only a few seats is calling the shots in that province.

Trudeau is too weak and gormless to maintain control in a coalition situation so we have to look at who will actually govern Canada by proxy should we see a Liberal minority.

Will Elizabeth May gain enough seats to hold the balance of power? Sour Liberals in lower mainland BC and select Eastern ridings may indeed switch to Green and give her those seats.

How would life with Liz holding the levers of power in Alberta look? Not very damn good.

One can hope that she sticks to her more loony pet projects such as banning WiFi but we know in reality that she will set her rheumy sights on Alberta.

May is speaking openly about shutting down Alberta’s entire fossil fuel sector and she will eagerly get to work on doing exactly that if given the chance.

The TransMountain expansion will surely be dead in the water. May would demand that in order to support Trudeau immediately.

Liz just enjoyed a token arrest while protesting that expansion last year. I wonder if she got to sample any prison hooch during her short time in holding?

The other person that Trudeau will wheel and deal with in order to hold power is Jagmeet Singh.

Singh isn’t a lot brighter than Trudeau is but he is an anti-energy ideologue and he will demand a stop to the Trans Mountain expansion as well and will be sure to push for Canada deeper into a socialist leaning mire. Justin will be way too weak to withstand that pressure.

The future looks bleak. One can hope that Scheer finds sudden strength and national appeal in short order but it is a lot to hope for. Polls certainly aren’t always accurate but they have been pretty consistent so far.

Alberta and Saskatchewan can be counted on to vote Conservative but we know quite well that our votes don’t really matter on the federal scene in the end.

Things are bad for Alberta right now but they can always unfortunately get worse.

We will do all we can in leading up to the election but I think that we had best get to work on our post-election contingency plan as well.