Time to fix Canada’s anti-Palestinian tax code
By Yves Engler | December 26, 2023
At the start of the month Sylvan Adams gave US$100 million to Ben-Gurion University. During a Toronto gala for the university’s Canadian fundraising branch the Canadian billionaire announced the money for “rebuilding and strengthening the south … in the wake of the Oct. 7th attack against Israel’s southern border communities.” Over the past ten weeks United Israel Appeal Canada has raised $100 million. After a recent Jewish National Fund of Canada fundraiser the registered charity’s executive Director Jeff Springer said, “We raised money for the war during this event.”
Throughout its history flare ups in Israeli violence have prompted an outpouring of financial assistance from Canadian Zionists. A significant share of that money has been underwritten by the public.
The Canadian tax code has long been used to subsidize projects in Israel and pro-apartheid groups have received large amounts in public grants. While little discussed, the ‘Zionifaction’ of charitable status is Canada’s most significant contribution to Palestinian dispossession.
Canadians provide a massive, unique, subsidy to Israel. Close to hundreds of million dollars a year in public money is funneled to a country that has long committed the crime of apartheid and tens of millions of dollars more goes to groups promoting anti-Palestinian policies within Canada.
Benefiting from the ability to grant tax credits covering as much as half of a donation, registered charities finance projects in Israel as well as Canada’s apartheid lobby. Additionally, many Canadian apartheid lobby groups receive direct government grants.
Over 200 registered Canadian charities finance projects in Israel. It’s difficult to quantify exactly how much they funnel to a country with a GDP per capita equal to Canada’s, but Just Peace Advocates research has put it at around a quarter billion dollars annually. A third of that sum would be covered by taxpayers through charitable write-offs.
Most years United Israel Appeal Canada is the largest single source of charity funds for Israel, sending between $50 and $110 million. It’s overseen by the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada. In addition to the funds raised by United Israel Appeal, the Jewish Federations raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Some of those funds are sent directly to projects in Israel.
The Federations organize Toronto’s Walk with Israel and Montréal’s annual Israel Day Celebration. The Federations also operate Israel Engagement initiatives that host Israeli teens who defer their military service for one year to volunteer to “teach about Israel through creative programs and challenging discussions.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Canada’s most influential apartheid lobby group, “is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations across Canada”. The Federations fund many other apartheid lobby groups and Israel ‘lobby sustaining’ organizations, which are pro-apartheid but not principally focused on Israel campaigning.
Beyond benefiting from charitable status, the federations receive tens of millions of dollars in direct federal, provincial and municipal grants. Last December Ottawa put up $25 million for the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, which includes an “Israeli Department” and is adorned with Israeli flags. Similarly, Montreal’s Sylvan Adams YM-YWHA received $8 million in federal funding in March. The facility operated by the Montréal Federation is named after a billionaire who has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigning for Israel. In 2012 UJA Toronto received $30 million in federal and provincial funding to build a new community centre.
The Federations receive tens of millions of dollars more in government grants for various initiatives ranging from security assistance to educational projects. Overseen by Federation CJA, the Montréal Holocaust Museum recently received $40 million in provincial, municipal and federal funding for its expansion (as well as a similar amount in tax subsidized donations). But the Museum is a sponsor of the ongoing Montreal Israeli Film Festival with the Israeli Consul General, Israel Bonds and other groups. The Holocaust Museum says it “is proud to have taken part in the Canadian delegation” that helped develop the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism. When the Project Montréal municipal government refused to heed the apartheid lobby’s push to adopt the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism in 2020, the museum released a statement criticizing the party headlined “The Montreal Holocaust Museum regretfully notes the Montreal Mayor’s refusal to support the definition.”
In the last federal budget the Liberals provided $2.4 million for the Toronto Holocaust Museum, which is overseen by that city’s federation. An advocate of the IHRA’s anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism, the Toronto Holocaust Museum also received half a million dollars in provincial funding. At the June launch of the museum speakers stood in front of Canadian, Ontario and Israeli flags.
The Federations provide funding to a slew of Israel lobby sustaining organizations from private schools to Hillels. One of those groups is Birthright Canada, which spends over three million dollars a year paying for young Jews to go to Israel. A dozen campus based Hillels are also among the federation assisted Israel lobby ‘sustaining’ registered charities. So are Israel studies and pro-apartheid Jewish studies programs established at universities by donors receiving generous tax credits.
As part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia, David Azrieli spent $5 million to establish Israel studies at that Montréal university (as well as $1 million on Jewish studies). More than $10 million in tax-deductible donations were made to the University of Toronto to establish the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies. Millions more were donated to launch similar initiatives at the University of Calgary, York, McGill and other universities.
Probably the most significant cog in the lobby ‘sustaining’ wheel, private Jewish schools generally indoctrinate young minds into worshiping a violent far away state oppressing millions. TanenbaumCHAT, Bnei Akiva and more than a dozen other registered charity schools raise around fifty million dollars annually in donations. With Québec offering unique support to private schools, pro-apartheid Jewish schools receive around $10 million in direct public grants annually.
After CIJA, B’nai B’rith is the second most influential Israel lobby group. The registered charity raises about ten million dollars a year (through multiple arms). Another influential charity lobby group is Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre with a $7 million budget.
Honest Reporting Canada, StandWithUs Canada and Hasbara Fellowships Canada are almost entirely focused on apartheid campaigning. These registered charities have a combined annual budget of $2 million.
Israel lobby and ‘sustaining’ organizations receive upwards of $100 million a year in direct government grants. Additionally, registered charities funneling money to Israel or Canadian apartheid lobby organizations raise half a billion dollars a year (around a third covered by taxpayers).
The ability to secure significant public assistance obviously reflects Israel lobby power. Simultaneously, it strengthens the lobby’s power as well as apartheid in Israel.
The subsidies must be countered. The first step to upending Canadian assistance to apartheid and the Israel lobby is to map it, which Just Peace Advocates is doing. Additionally, anti-apartheid forces should state clearly their opposition to the Jewish Federations receiving government grants so long as they funnel money to Israel and sponsor CIJA. While that demand will garner little immediate political traction, it’s an essential step towards politicizing the federations.
More immediately relevant are ongoing efforts to press the Canada Revenue Agency to apply its own rules regarding charities its empowered with special tax status. The CRA currently forbids registered charities from supporting foreign militaries, explicitly racist organizations and West Bank settlements yet a slew of Israel focused charities do just those things. Over the past year complaints have been submitted to the CRA detailing about a dozen different charities’ – with over $100 million in revenue – violating these rules. (CRA investigations and audits are confidential so the status of the complaints is unclear.) Many other charities should be challenged and more campaigning is needed to press the CRA to take action, which they have done with Israel-focused charities. (In recent years the CRA has revoked the charitable status of a dozen organizations providing funds to Israel.)
Removing groups’ charitable status and dampening the flow of public funds to the apartheid lobby is paramount, but there’s also an ideological value to the campaigning. While apartheid apologists complain incessantly about Israel being unfairly “singled out”, pushing the CRA to apply its own rules towards massive subsidies highlights how Israel is in fact singled out for special treatment. No other wealthy, faraway, country receives a remotely comparable amount of charity fundraising.
In essence, Canada’s tax code and government grant system are structured to enable a wealthy, apartheid state, committing genocide in Gaza at the expense of the colonized Palestinians. Whether through legal or political channels, it’s imperative to push back against the staggering sums of public funds subsidizing Israel and sustaining the apartheid lobby in Canada.
Canada Reports 300% Increase in ‘Unspecified Causes’ of Death, Sparking Calls for Investigation
By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | December 13, 2023
As life expectancy plummets in Canada, a new government report claims “unspecified causes” have become the fifth leading cause of death in the country after cancer, heart disease, COVID-19 and accidents.
According to the Statistics Canada report, “unspecified causes” in 2022 passed strokes, aneurysms, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, Alzheimer’s and suicide as causes of death.
Statistics Canada, also known as StatCan, released the report on Nov. 27 in The Daily, the agency’s online news bulletin.
The report generated a slew of nearly identical headlines — provided by Canada’s national news service — in Canada’s leading newspapers along the lines of this one in the Toronto Sun : “Life expectancy for Canadians fell for third straight year in 2022, StatCan says,” followed by the subhead: “More people died of COVID-19 in 2022 than in any other year since the pandemic began, report says.”
Andre Picard, health columnist at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada’s newspaper of record, called the life expectancy drop — to 81.3 years in 2022 from 82.3 years in 2019 — “a big deal.”
“It’s only the second time this sharp a drop has happened in Canada in the past century,” Picard said. “In fact, life expectancy has been climbing steadily for decades: 71 in 1960, 75 in 1980, 79 in 2000 and 82.3 in 2019.”
COVID-19 deaths in Canada decreased to 14,466 in 2021 from 16,313 in 2020, the report shows. Canada is on track for about 7,000 COVID-19 deaths in 2023, Picard said.
COVID-19 deaths can’t account for Canada’s 7.3 % increase in total deaths in 2022 compared with 2021 — or for the country’s 17% increase in total deaths over the historic norm of 2019, or the historic drop in life expectancy in Canada and worldwide, Picard said.
Like many mainstream journalists and public health officials in the U.S. examining the U.S. drop in life expectancy, Picard blamed chronic diseases, drug overdoses, opioid deaths, smoking, unhealthy diets and “indifference” for the decline in Canada. “There are virtually no mitigation measures like masking any more, and vaccination rates have fallen sharply,” he wrote.
But Drs. Pierre Kory and Peter McCullough told The Defender they believe the most important and startling fact contained in the report is the 300% increase from 2019 to 2022 in “unspecified causes” of death in Canada.
McCullough, a highly published cardiologist who developed a widely used early treatment protocol for COVID-19, said the dramatic rise in deaths from “unspecified causes” in Canada represents a seismic and disturbing shift in Western medicine.
“Prior to the pandemic, death in Western countries was well understood,” McCullough said, with 40% due to known cardiovascular, 40% due to terminal neoplastic disease (cancer) and 20% due to other known causes such as homicide, suicide, drug overdoses and accidents.”
He added:
“Since the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines, we have witnessed unprecedented deaths without antecedent disease. A large autopsy series published by Hulscher et al, found that 73.9% of the deaths after COVID-19 vaccination were due to problems caused by the shots.”
McCullough cited the hundreds of studies examining post-vaccine, spike-protein-related injuries and deaths and the millions of deaths and injuries reported by citizens in the U.S. and Europe to their governments following mRNA vaccination.
“All deaths should be categorized according to the doses and dates of COVID-19 vaccination,” McCullough said. “Unless proven otherwise, ‘unspecified death’ should be attributed to a fatal COVID-19 vaccine injury syndrome,” McCullough said.
Kory, the former University of Wisconsin professor of medicine and president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender the evidence is overwhelming that the COVID-19 mRNA shots caused more deaths and injuries across the Western world than any prior drug or vaccine in history.
“The answer as to why ‘unspecified causes’ are now a leading cause of death is plain and simple,” Kory said. “That cause is the one medical intervention that the world’s governments and media have championed since the start [of the pandemic]. … The mRNA platform technology is and has been a colossal failure in both efficacy and safety.”
Kory and journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer on Tuesday published an opinion piece in The Hill calling on governments and public health officials to study and address the problem of a global historic rise in mortality thus far not recognized by officials and not reported by mainstream journalists.
On Dec. 13, the essay was trending as the first or second most popular story on The Hill’s website, which claims 32.5 million monthly unique visitors.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf on Nov. 30 published an extraordinary thread of posts on X (formerly Twitter) calling for a society-wide “all hands on deck” approach to solve the problem of the “catastrophic” decline in U.S. life expectancy.
“JAMA Internal Medicine published earlier this month that our overall life expectancy has dropped to 76 years, and remarkably, that male life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped to 73 years,” Califf wrote.
But Kory said the FDA commissioner’s post, “which hit on smoking, diet, chronic illness and healthcare, ignored the obvious: People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent.”
The FDA and mainstream media are ignoring the fact that life insurers have been “sounding the alarm over these unexpected or, ‘excess,’ deaths, which claimed 158,000 more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019,” Kory wrote.
“That exceeds America’s combined losses [wounded?] from every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.”
Amy Kelly, COO of DailyClout and the program director of the Pfizer Documents Analysis Project, said that for an autopsy to reach a proper diagnosis of an mRNA-vaccine-caused death, “histopathological examination of tissues from all over the body is necessary. Most of the time, even if an autopsy is performed, the histopathological examination of tissues is not.”
She cited an interview with Dr. Arne Burkhardt, who describes the types of testing the coroners must perform but seldom do.
Dr. Robert Chandler, a Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon who taught at the University of Southern California medical school, identified “entire new disease categories” he calls “CoVax Diseases” in his study of Pfizer’s 450,000 pages of COVID-19 vaccine documents, documents the FDA was forced to release via a court order, Kelly said.
“It makes sense that the unspecified causes of death have increased so much,” Kelly said. “When a patient dies with either multiple diseases all at one time or with a previously unseen disease state, both of which happen with ‘CoVax Diseases’ Dr. Chandler has identified, I would imagine many doctors and/or coroners don’t know how to categorize those causes of death. That would lead to ‘cause unknown’ categorization of deaths.”
According to Naomi Wolf, author of “Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith and Resistance in a New Dark Age,” “In the preindustrial world, people died mysteriously. But in the modern Western world, there are no mystery deaths. Every death has a death certificate which by law must identify a cause of death.”
“A minor rise in unattributed deaths is a problem that needs investigation,” Wolf said. “A major rise, such as you’ve identified, does not indicate a mass mystery to doctors and coroners, but rather it is evidence of a problem with state record-keeping — some bureaucratic malfeasance at a grand scale.”
Mike Capuzzo is a reporter for The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Canadian mayor backs Israel’s actions no matter how many children die
RT | December 12, 2023
The mayor of the Montreal suburb of Hampstead Jeremy Levi has said that, regardless of the number of children’s lives taken, he would continue to support Israel in its ongoing offensive in Gaza.
More than 18,200 people have so far died in the nine-week bombardment of Gaza, health officials in the besieged enclave said on Monday, as Israel’s retaliatory campaign in response to Hamas’ October 7 cross-border attack continues at pace. Israeli officials say that 1,147 of its citizens were killed in the October assault, while another 240 were seized as hostages.
But as international condemnation of Israel’s siege of Gaza swells, Levi – who was elected last year to govern the predominantly Jewish Hampstead community – has said that Israel’s military offensive must continue until “good” prevails over “evil.”
“I’m not calling for a ceasefire,” Levi said in a video posted to social media on Monday by Yves Engler, a vocal critic of Israel. “I want the hostages home, but I’m not calling for a ceasefire.”
The mayor added about the increasing death toll in Gaza, particularly deaths of children: “I would never support [the killing of children], it’s terrible. But Israel has to do whatever they have to do to protect the security of their own people.”
The Palestinian ministry of health has said that about 70% of those killed in the enclave since Israel’s offensive began are women and children under the age of 18. United Nations humanitarian officials said late last month that about 160 children are being killed each day in Gaza, or one child every ten minutes.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder added to reporters in Geneva in November that conditions are deteriorating further, and forecasted a deepening humanitarian crisis “if youngsters continue to have restricted access to water and sanitation in Gaza.”
“Hamas must be eradicated completely,” Levi continued in his video clip. “[The collateral death toll] is terrible, but there is no other way. My heart goes out to all the innocent people who have suffered great loss in this tragedy, but good needs to prevail over evil.”
Asked if he would continue to support Israel if 100,000 children were killed, Levi said: “You can give me all sorts of numbers, my answer is going to be the same: Israel needs to eradicate Hamas.”
Last month, Levi imposed a bylaw in the Hampstead community which would see anyone who tore down a poster of missing Israeli citizens fined CAN$1,000 – with the money being donated directly to Israel.
What Sort of “Caring” Do Zionist Medical Faculty at U of T Teach?
By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | December 11, 2023
An exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement, hubris, chutzpah, racism while claiming victimhood and massively flawed thinking are the descriptors that come to mind when considering the 555 doctors at the U of T who signed an Open Statement to the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) from Jewish Physician Faculty.
The statement is an endorsement of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, which has been “catastrophic”, according to the WHO, for its healthcare system and killed 200 medical workers.
The opening declaration is: “We affirm the right of TFOM faculty to be openly Zionist and to support the right of Israel to exist and defend itself as a Jewish state and for those faculty to be free of public ostracism, recrimination, exclusion, and discrimination in the TFOM.”
In plain language, the doctors want to promote Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and not be challenged by (disproportionately) racialized and younger students and colleagues.
The statement effectively brands all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. It declares “that accusations against Israel as ‘apartheid’, ‘colonialist’, or ‘white supremacist’ or committing genocide are mendacious and aim to promote the argument that Israel should be dismantled as a Jewish state, making such accusations themselves antisemitic.” Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Al Haq, B’tselem and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinians have all labeled Israel an apartheid state. Many Zionist pioneers described their aims as “colonial” and hundreds of experts in the field believe Israel is currently committing genocide in Gaza.
While framing themselves as victims, the letter threatens colleagues. “We believe that academic freedom is not absolute. In particular, leaders in academic medicine with power over learners and faculty, who in some cases are the sole leader responsible for thousands of learners and faculty, should not be issuing statements which collide with equity, diversity and inclusion for Jews or which make Jews feel unsafe and unwelcome in the TFOM and which are unrelated or unessential to their core academic role, research, and publishing of results.”
But it’s the many openly racist signatories who have authority over students, as Ghada Sasa’s followers showed on X. The new medical collective Combat Online Harassment concluded, “1 in 5 signatories to the University of Toronto medical school’s proud Zionist letter with active Twitter accounts have posted racist, hateful, or harmful materials!”
This includes Sandy Buchman justifying massacres against Palestinians since Gaza is a “sociopathic society full of murderers”. Another Zionist letter signatory Gideon Hirschfield liked a tweet threatening all Palestinians in Gaza with “immediate and complete destruction” and Dr. Leslie Shulman called for deporting darker skinned teenagers who protested against genocide in Toronto. “Expel. Them. Now. Reason… failure to show evidence of being human.”
Combat Online Harassment, a group of North American healthcare workers, says it was formed in response to “increasing amounts of racist anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic behavior from our colleagues. Simultaneously, we’ve observed an unsettling trend where physicians expressing pro-Palestinian views find themselves unjustly targeted with baseless accusations of antisemitism, resulting in detrimental consequences for their careers. Our work aims to highlight the double standard in the policing of voices; clearly racist and hateful views (ones we post), if coming from Zionists, face little to no repercussions.”
Jewish Zionist doctors have succeeded in punishing anti-genocide voices for making them “feel” uncomfortable. The most high-profile and egregious case is University of Ottawa doctor Yoni Freedhoff who targeted resident Yipeng Ge, leading to his suspension. Over 95,000 people have signed a petition calling for Ge to be reinstated. Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar noted, “Several Ontario doctors tell me they are being hauled up for supporting Palestinian rights including for signing a ‘don’t bomb hospitals’ petition. Higher-ups have told them there were complaints and accused them of making Jewish colleagues feel unsafe.”
The Zionist letter highlights the power dynamic in medicine and TFOM. A year ago I wrote about a big Israel lobby and media brouhaha over a ‘report’ on purported antisemitism at TFOM. It concluded: “As Black and Indigenous — and to a lesser extent Latin American, South Asian and Arab — communities struggle for positions within the elite institution, many Jewish and politically Zionist faculty members complain that expressing solidarity with Palestinians discriminates against them. Their pressure led to the appointment of a Special Adviser on Anti-Semitism who published a spurious ‘report’, which outside groups amplified and the dominant media covered widely. This reflects power, not oppression.”
When 555 Jewish doctors openly support Israel’s killing of 17,000 Palestinians this confirms that analysis.
And it makes one wonder what sort of education the ‘caring professions’ at U of T are receiving.
Unexplained deaths skyrocket in highly covid vaccinated Canada
By Rhoda Wilson – The Exposé – December 8, 2023
A report released by Statistics Canada (“StatsCan”) on 27 November showed that the number of covid deaths in highly vaccinated Canada rose by 36% last year.
The largest increase was in Atlantic Canada, where the number of covid deaths per 100,000 population in 2022 was more than seven times higher than in 2021. Atlantic Canada also had the highest uptake of covid “vaccines.”
As well as soaring covid deaths, Canadian government data reveals a staggering 135% death spike classified as “other ill-defined and unspecified causes of mortality.”
The report also reveals that Canadian life expectancy dropped for the third year in a row. The falling life expectancy trend coincidentally started in 2020.
According to StatsCan, the nation recorded a record number of covid deaths, despite high vaccination uptake and the pandemic having ended.
As of 10 September 2023, 83% of Canadians have had at least one dose of the covid injection.
Except for Nova Scotia where 83% of the population had at least one dose, Atlantic Canada – which makes up less than 7% of Canada’s population and comprises the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island – had higher vaccination uptake than the national average of 83%: New Brunswick (87%), Newfoundland and Labrador (96%) and Prince Edward Island (90%).
According to StatsCan, Atlantic Canada also had a seven-fold increase in covid deaths last year; 59.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2022 versus 8.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2021.
Despite the clear safety signal of increased deaths, the Government has an autumn booster campaign recommending that Canadians get “an updated covid vaccine dose.”
Maxime Bernier, the leader of the conservative People’s Party of Canada (“PPC”), broke the story on Twitter about “more shocking data on the number and causes of deaths” in Canada released by StatsCan. He tweeted:
In a PPC newsletter dated 5 December, Bernier delved into the implications of the report, saying, “These deaths have almost TRIPLED since 2020 from 6,841 to 16,043 in 2022.”
“What happened in 2021 that could have caused this explosion of unexplained deaths over the last 2 years? An experimental pharmaceutical product was rushed to market and forced on Canadian society, is what happened. They told us it was ‘safe and effective’ but over the last few years we have learned more and more about how that covid shot was neither,” Bernier said.
The PPC leader then accused the establishment of ignoring such a significant development, saying this breaking news was “ignored by all of our crooked establishment politicians and the dishonest corporate media.”
Sources for this article include:
- Canada Reports 135% Spike in Deaths from ‘Unspecified Causes’, Slay News, 6 December 2023
- StatCan report reveals 135% increase in deaths due to “unspecified causes”, The Counter Signal, 5 December 2023
- These Numbers Should Be Front Page News: Canada Reports 135% Spike in Deaths From ‘Unspecified Causes’, Lioness of Judah Ministry, 7 December 2023
IMF Head Wants World Wide Carbon Taxes
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 7, 2023
IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva has called for every government to implement some form of carbon taxes or “carbon pricing” in the near future.
Yes, we’re into week two of the UN’s COP28 climate change summit, and the hits just keep on coming.
For example, yesterday it was announced sixty-three world governments have pledged to reduce the emissions from air conditioners and electrics fans.
[You can read a detailed breakdown of the other pledges made during COP28’s first week here.]
Speaking at COP28 in Dubai, and repeated in an interview with the Guardian, Georgieva extolled the virtues of “carbon pricing” and heaped praise on the EU and Canada for their implementation:
When you put a price on carbon, decarbonisation accelerates. The Europeans introduced the emission trading scheme [in 2005] and they have been growing and yet emissions went down by 37%. You see the same thing in Canada with their carbon tax.”
While both the speech and interview discuss the proposed carbon taxes in terms of corporations as “major polluters”, any tax applied to big business would be directly passed onto private citizens via price increases.
The Guardian acknowledges this, but of course, decides to add a weasel-word qualification [emphasis added]:
However, attractive though a carbon price may be in economic theory, in practice governments are reluctant to impose such explicit prices and taxes, because they can easily be attacked, and because they hit poorer people hardest, if badly applied.
“If badly applied”, sure.
The truth is economic destruction, designed to lower the standard of living for ordinary people, is the whole point of “carbon taxes”. just as it was the point of lockdowns.
Deceptive language aside, the undeniable fact that any carbon tax – corporate or individual – would directly harm the poorest is clearly understood by the people who would seek to enforce them.
Not that they have a problem with that, you understand, their concern is merely that purely public rage and/or civil disobedience makes direct taxation difficult to implement. The Guardian article gives the game away by referencing France’s Gilets Jaunes protests as an example.
So, even as Georgieva names carbon taxes the “perfect” solution to climate change, she recognizes the need to rely on more indirect methods.
Yes, the best way to introduce implement carbon prices [is] a carbon tax…But it is not politically feasible in some countries … We can also use regulatory compliance in which standards lead to implicit prices on carbon.”
These “regulations” and “implicit” prices would not be “carbon taxes” in name, but they would very much be so in spirit.
Again the Guardian cites an example, the EU’s recent “carbon border adjustment mechanisms”, which charge more import duties on goods coming from countries with “lax” emissions policies.
A global version of those rules is likely just one of many such measures we can expect moving forward since, according to Georgieva, the world’s biggest financial institutions are all working together on this issue:
[T]he IMF, World Bank, OECD and World Trade Organization [have] set up a taskforce to examine the different carbon prices that are implied in countries around the world by their carbon policies and regulations.”
The head of IMF has spoken, and the World Bank and World Trade Organization are all on board: Carbon Taxes are inevitable. The only question is what they decide to call them.
All the world’s biggest financial heavy-hitters are coming together to figure out the best way to scam people out of their hard-earned money… for the good of the planet, obviously.
Citizen Inquiry Report Blasts Canadian Government Response to COVID
‘We Cannot Allow This to Happen to Our Children and Grandchildren’
By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | December 1, 2023
After months of hearings in nearly every province, Canada’s National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) on Tuesday released its final 643-page report on the country’s COVID-19 response, addressing the societal impacts of lockdowns, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates and other measures.
The report, compiled by four independent commissioners, included nearly 5,000 additional pages of testimony from hundreds of people who experienced adverse vaccine reactions, destruction of their livelihoods and education, diminished mental health, damaged reputations, professional discipline and/or censorship, according to True North.
The report contained over 80 pages of recommendations for lawmakers, public institutions and citizens, and called for the establishment of a National Crisis Oversight Council that would serve as an “independent, multidisciplinary body tasked with monitoring, policing and investigating government actions during crises,” including pandemics.
In an online press conference announcing the report, NCI commissioners and others discussed the division and suffering the pandemic measures caused, the failure of institutions to serve citizens and the overreach of government authority that violated rights and freedoms.
They emphasized the importance of unity, open dialogue, accountability and active democratic participation to heal as a nation.
In his opening comments, NCI Commissioner Ken Drysdale, an expert in forensic engineering and investigations, said, “Our lips may be bloodied, and we may be shamed. But we cannot turn away from the horrors of the past three years. We cannot allow this to happen to our children and grandchildren.”
Commissioner Bernard Massie, Ph.D., author of 138 peer-reviewed papers and owner of 12 patents, said, “One of the greatest dangers to democracy is the tyranny of the majority that has forgotten the primordial importance of truth and liberty grounded in the individual responsibility that cannot and should not be outsourced to the administrative state.”
NCI administrator Ches Crosbie, former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, called out Health Canada for approving the COVID-19 vaccines without determining they were safe and effective.
“The expression ‘safe and effective’ is a marketing slogan and a deceptive one,” Crosbie said, adding, “Beyond dispute is that [the] vaccines are adulterated … by the presence of foreign DNA fragments and a sequence from a monkey virus called SV40, suspected of causing cancer.”
Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., co-director of CORRELATION Research in the Public Interest in Canada, told The Defender the NCI report “is a masterful in-depth examination of the COVID response in Canada and the world.”
“Through hundreds of testimonies and thousands of exhibits, the picture that emerges could not be more clear,” he said, adding:
“The entire COVID campaign — from CIA–military planning, to initial Wuhan false flag, to the WHO [World Health Organization] declaration of a ‘pandemic,’ to medical institutional responses, to general lockdowns and impositions on personal behavior, to unprecedented censorship and media alignment, to mandatory vaccination accompanied by dismissals from workplaces, to delicensing medical and legal professionals, to completely biased court rulings, to covering up vaccine harm and deaths, to egregious isolation and mistreatment of vulnerable populations, to shredding of constitutional protections, to criminalizing dissent and demonstrations, to locking away political prisoners, and on and on, in a total blanket of actual totalitarianism in Canada and many countries — has been an outright unjustified vicious assault against people, freedom and democracy.”
A citizen-organized, citizen-run, citizen-funded initiative
The NCI — “funded and staffed by volunteers who believe in a better Canada,” said Crosbie — was established in response to the government’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic and because “no Canadian government has shown an appetite for a fulsome review of the measures implemented,” according to the report.
Hearings took place over 24 days between March and May in eight cities, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. More than 300 sworn testimonies from both experts and citizens were collected.
NCI heard expert testimony from doctors, scientists, lawyers, economists, teachers, psychologists, morticians, risk management analysts and experts in public policy, emergency management, occupational health and safety, aviation safety, pharmacy, policing and journalism, according to True North.
Among the 147 experts testifying were Rancourt, known for his analysis of all-cause mortality during the pandemic; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya; Dr. Jessica Rose; Dr. Didier Raoult, the French doctor who promoted early treatment with hydroxychloroquine at the beginning of the pandemic; Dr. Sabine Hazan; Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research ; Catherine Austin Fitts; James Corbett; Dr. William Makis; Dr. Charles Hoffe; Edward Dowd; J. Jay Couey, Ph.D., staff scientist for Children’s Health Defense; Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute; Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation; and Dr. Jordan Peterson.
The commissioners invited testimony from representatives of all provincial/territorial and federal levels of government across Canada — including “sixty-three members of government, regulators, and authorities” — but none accepted or testified.
However, NCI was able to obtain records of government positions from court proceedings, policy statements, press conferences and other evidence of their actions, and incorporate these into their hearings and findings.
NCI considered testimony on pharmaceutical interventions (use of drugs, vaccines and other treatments) and non-pharmaceutical interventions (masking, lockdowns, closures of public facilities and quarantines), and analyzed their impacts in the following categories:
- Social — including restricted public meetings, movement and ability to interact and meet with other people.
- Civil — the abridgment of rights and freedoms, the imposition of restrictions and forced mandates, assessed at the personal, institutional and organizational levels.
- Economic — the shutdown of businesses and the characterization of “nonessential” businesses, restrictions to employment and overall impacts.
- Health — forced medical procedures, lack of access to patients due to mandates, doctors treating virtually; injuries resulting from forced medical procedures and isolation.
“These testimonies provide irrefutable evidence that an unprecedented assault has been waged against the citizens of Canada. Not since World War II has the nation experienced such a devastating attack on its people,” Drysdale told True North.
Commissioner Janice Kaikkonen, an educator and public policy researcher, said at the press conference that her experience with NCI had been “quite the journey,” and that “the picture being painted was much deeper, all more devastating and divisive, and the response from our public institutions on every Canadian far more destructive” than she expected.
Kaikkonen said society still needs to address “the impact on … children of being isolated from their friends and their social networks and their structures being taken from them.”
“The juncture Canadians face in moving forward must include exposing the forces that willingly subscribed to destroying our beloved country from the inside out,” she said.
Breakdown of legal system
NCI heard extensive evidence that Canadian courts failed to uphold the rule of law during the pandemic, leading to “a breakdown in confidence and an erosion of trust in a Canadian legal system,” according to the report.
None of the legal experts who testified or consulted with NCI reported success in any court across the country against the measures or mandates.
Similar to the U.S., the Canadian system of government is comprised of executive, legislative and judicial branches. However, during the pandemic, “much of the rule-making power in Canada coalesced into the executive, which resulted in unelected public health offices across the country ruling as petty tyrants, without accountability or oversight,” the report stated.
The report attributed this in part to the “overgrowth of the administrative state,” resulting in “Canadian courts … pay[ing] more and more deference to the powers of unelected administrative bodies,” leading to “a perfect storm” where unelected officials who are “not subject to oversight through an election” have “powers over Canadians” that are “largely unchallengeable in court.”
The most obvious example of administrative overreach — enforced by professional bodies that regulate various health professions — was the public health orders, the report stated, which “subvert[ed] rights on the premise of ‘protecting the greater good.’”
Commissioner Heather DiGregorio, senior partner in an Alberta law firm, said during Tuesday’s press conference that her position as a lawyer made her pay particular attention to the testimony about the Canadian legal system, the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“By guaranteeing that the government cannot tread on my neighbor’s rights, we guarantee our own,” she said. “This is never more important than when things are difficult in times of fear and uncertainty.”
The evidence gathered from the NCI hearings “all points one way: to a significant breakdown of Canadian institutions,” DiGregorio said.
She cited such undesirable pandemic outcomes: “The division of our society. Neighbors pitted against neighbors. Families torn apart. Individuals suffering grievous injuries that their own doctors won’t acknowledge. Feelings of isolation. Depression. Suicides. Pain and grief.”
“Canadians have been left with a feeling that there is no person to protect them from government overreach,” the report stated. “This is worrisome evidence of a breakdown of the rule of law.”
Despite the grievous lapses in the legal system during the pandemic, DeGregorio said, “Seeing the strength of ordinary Canadians, even in the darkest times of their lives, gave me renewed hope.”
Proposals, outlook going forward
In addition to the establishment of a National Crisis Oversight Council — which the report said should include enforceable subpoena powers — the NCI report called for a full judicial investigation of the COVID-19 vaccination authorization process in Canada, leaving open the possibility of criminal liability under existing Canadian law.
It also called for an in-depth review of how Canadian courts handled all pandemic-related cases to “rebuild public confidence in the justice system.”
Citing the need to ensure “proper checks and balances,” the report recommended examining and reforming the extent of executive authority during emergencies and establishing laws that require administrative bodies “to demonstrate their expertise and rationale for decisions, particularly when those decisions infringe on individual rights.”
Regarding healthcare, the report called for establishing a clear framework for oversight of public health authorities’ decision-making processes during emergencies, and an “independent, multidisciplinary inquiry into the governance of professional colleges, especially those governing medical professionals,” to ensure transparency, accountability and adherence to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
During the press conference, DiGregorio called for “accountability for the actions of others,” but said we also need to “look at our own actions and take accountability for the part that each of us have played.”
Kaikkonen called for “Each and every one of us saying we’ve had enough, this is not going to happen again, and we’re going to stand with people who say no, who have that strength,” and with “people who are being shamed publicly or abused or trodden over.”
Voicing his hopes for the report, Drysdale said, “In the end, it is not the report itself that wields the power of transformation. … It remains just a tool, lying dormant on a shelf … until thousands or millions of people choose to wield that tool.”
Massie said it’s going to take time before things change, but that “it’s not going to take the majority of people to wake up to make a difference. … You just need a critical mass of people … to move [on the] political front, provincial, federal, [and in] court.”
Rancourt told The Defender :
“Canadians may have produced the most comprehensive report, which is an historic landmark. Now, will there be accountability? To what degree, and what form will it take?
“Every citizen’s awakening is one unit of the needed accounting, and this report has been a process that catalyzed more awareness.”
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Canada pushing unwinnable war harms Ukrainians
By Yves Engler | December 1, 2023
The Liberals and elements of the dominant media are criticizing the Conservatives for their insufficient commitment to Ukraine. But it’s those who have promoted the NATO proxy war that have damaged the country.
The prime minister and Liberal ministers have denounced the Conservatives for not voting for the Canada-Ukraine free trade deal. They are seeking to paint Pierre Poilievre as not serious or influenced by Donald Trump, which may be true. Trudeau stated, “the real story is the rise of a right-wing, American MAGA-influenced thinking that has made Canadian Conservatives — who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I’ll admit it — turn their backs on something Ukraine needs in its hour of need.”
The Conservatives countered days of criticism by seeking to amend a foreign affairs committee report on Ukraine to add a call for Canada to send more arms.
Irrespective of the merits of the trade deal, the notion that NATO proxy warriors are ‘supporting’ Ukraine simply doesn’t hold up. With Washington, Ottawa has pushed a client state to fight a horrific and ever more obviously unwinnable war, as a series of recent revelations underscore.
As Reuters reports the Ukrainian military is having increasing difficulty finding fighters with many seeking increasingly elaborate ways of bypassing conscription. As a result, they’ve largely run out of new men, which is forcing troops to stay at the front for longer periods. Morale is collapsing.
As recently confirmed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation in Ukraine-Russia peace talks this could have been avoided if the US and UK hadn’t scuttled a deal in the spring of 2022. David Arakhamia, who is now parliamentary leader of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said Russia was prepared to end the war if Ukraine agreed to neutrality, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky not to sign the peace deal. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Vladimir Putin and others have echoed this account of the initial peace negotiations.
Arakhamia’s revelations confirm that Ukraine is a Western client state. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Maidan protests that greatly exacerbated Ukraine’s subordination to the West. An elected, if corrupt, president that drew support largely from the Russian speaking east and south of the ‘cleft country’ was deposed in a violent foreign-promoted insurrection. Recent revelations from the trial of the Maidan Massacre confirm that far right forces shot Maidan protesters. University of Ottawa professor Ivan Katchanovski noted, “Maidan massacre trial verdict confirms that Maidan snipers massacred many Maidan protesters and police and shot at ARD and BBC TV journalists.” The massacre led to the ouster of elected president Viktor Yanukovych.
Canada played a significant part in stoking opposition to Yanukovych who promoted Ukrainian neutrality. Immediately after he won an election, which Canadian observers found to be fair, Ottawa began to undermine him. Canadian officials’ criticism of Yanukovych grew and early in the three-month Maidan protest movement, foreign minister John Baird visited Maidan square with Ukrainian Canadian Congress head Paul Grod to support the demonstrators. At the height of the protests opposition forces, including the far-right C14, used the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv, which was immediately adjacent to Maidan square, as a staging ground for a week in their bid to topple Yanukovych. After Yanukovych was ousted, Baird immediately “welcomed the appointment of a new government”, saying, “the appointment of a legitimate government is a vital step forward in restoring democracy and normalcy to Ukraine.” But the country’s constitutional provisions dealing with impeachment or replacing a president were flagrantly violated.
The coup spurred right-wing violence, Russia’s intervention in Crimea and a war that left 14,000 dead in the east. The smoldering conflict contributed to Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which contravenes international law but was provoked by NATO’s efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.
Ten days ago, defence minister Bill Blair declared that Canada would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes, with whatever it takes.” Last week Ottawa announced another $60 million in arms, including over 10,000 assault guns and 9 million rounds of ammunition, for Ukraine.
Even if NATO maintains the political support for continuing to pump in weapons, there’s little chance Ukraine will regain most of the territory it has lost. There’s a greater chance it will lose more territory.
The country would have been far better off to accept the deal offered a month into the invasion (or adhere to the Minsk II agreement prior to the invasion). But the Anglosphere prioritized weakening Russia so they bolstered ultra-nationalist Ukrainian forces wanting to fight. Tens of thousands of dead later Ukraine has little prospect of garnering the deal that was previously on offer. It is also far more dependent on outside forces.
For Ukrainians the situation is a disaster. As an Economist headline recently admitted. “Putin seems to be winning the war in Ukraine—for now”.
Ontario Cop Appeals Conviction For Freedom Convoy Donation
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 29, 2023
Constable Michael Brisco, a highly respected officer of the Windsor Police Service, found his professional reputation threatened for making an online donation to a protest in support of civil liberties.
Armed with no previous disciplinary records, Brisco has been thrust into a legal tussle over his $50 donation to the Ottawa Freedom Convoy’s peaceful protest via GiveSendGo on February 8, 2022.
Get the background on this case here.
Importantly, this occurred within the permissible boundaries set by an Ontario Superior Court Judge, allowing people to participate in the protest in Ottawa, provided their advocacy did not include honking. Brisco, who chose to fund the peaceful protest anonymously and not in his capacity as a police officer, now finds his actions punished.
The crux of this issue surfaced when the GiveSendGo donor list was compromised and fell into the possession of the Ontario Provincial Police Service.
Brisco’s name was flagged in the data breach and subsequently forwarded to the Windsor Police Service, gently illustrating the porous safety afforded by digital privacy. Brisco now stands accused of what the Windsor Police Service deems “discreditable conduct.”
Brisco’s legal team maintains their client’s donation was not evidence of his support for the Ambassador Bridge blockade in Windsor, Ontario. They argue the prosecution’s attempts to link Brisco’s anonymous contribution with allegedly unlawful protests was threadbare, relying solely on newspaper commentaries by several officials, including Ontario’s premier and the prime minister. Specifically, no video, photograph, or indisputable evidence supports the accusations against Brisco.
Get more information on this case at the Justice Center For Constitutional Freedoms.
