Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland , the first woman to take on the powerful position, rolled out the Liberal government’s first budget in 2 years.Suffice to say it was about a large sweeping tsunami of spending billions on Canadians.YIPEE!
Freeland in addition to juggling ,tightrope walking, chair balancing and unicycle hijinks also bats cleanup for whatever crisis the government finds itself in and is often called upon as the designated hitter ! (no hockey analogies were available at the time of posting)
In other news: NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter Ingenuity rose from the planet’s dusty red surface into the thin air Monday, achieving the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
The demo could lead the way to a fleet of Martian drones in decades to come, providing aerial surveillance views, transporting packages to the thousands of tech millionaires expected to inhabit the planet sooner if not later and also serving as scouts for astronauts and security forces.
Erin O’Toole has committed the Conservative party to putting a carbon levy on fuel, while insisting it can’t be called a tax because the money doesn’t go into government accounts. The climate plan would be implemented without a consumer-based carbon tax and Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax would be repealed, omitting the fact O’Toole would still impose a new $20-per-tonne carbon charge on consumers.
O’Toole claims his own fuel charge — which would stop rising at $50 per tonne — isn’t a carbon tax because the money goes into a personalized savings account that consumers can spend on government-approved, environmentally-friendly purchases. (Oh Erin that sounds like the Nanny State tsk. tsk.)
With this explanation the Conservative base of anti carbon tax supporters breathed a sigh of relief….NOT!
Climate policy experts celebrated the fact that all major political parties now endorse carbon pricing. But they derided the carbon savings account as a bizarre, administratively-complex mechanism concocted for purely political reasons. noting that you get more money to spend if you burn more fossil fuels — the opposite of a low-carbon incentive.
O’Toole will have a tough sell with his party’s base that he’s not implementing a carbon tax. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is already gearing up for a campaign against it, citing this pledge signed during the leadership race: “I, Erin O’Toole promise that, if elected Prime Minister of Canada, I will: Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and, reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.”
The Post Millennial, a right-wing media outlet is now filled with headlines opposing the climate plan. “O’Toole’s ‘government-knows-best’ carbon tax scheme is anti-Conservative Party,” says one. “Trudeau Environment Minister calls new Tory climate plan the ‘O’Toole carbon tax,’” says another.
Edited from Ottawa Citizen article by Brian Platt: Apr 17, 2021
The carbon price isn’t just about dollars and cents, it’s a culture war thingy.
Ontario will be “setting up checkpoints” along its borders with Manitoba and Quebec in a bid to limit the spread of the third wave of the coronavirus across the province, Premier Doug Ford announced Friday.
Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said the changes along the provincial borders would take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, April 19. Jones said incoming travellers not meeting a list of prescribed exceptions will be turned back.
It was also announced Friday that Ontario will extend an existing stay-at-home order to last six weeks, instead of the planned four — a move a panel of experts had publicly recommended earlier in the day.
The province is also giving police new powers to enforce public health orders, with police having the authority to ask anyone outside their residence to indicate their purpose for leaving home and to provide their address. That includes stopping vehicles.
The new police measures drew immediate condemnation from civil liberties activists
On Monday April 12, Maxime Bernier, leader of the fringe People’s Party of Canada, addressed a crowd at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton, where someone held a Western Independence Party flag, and protesters chanted “lock her up!” in reference to Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health.
Bernier has been touring British Columbia and Alberta, calling for an end to lockdowns. He said the protest is a “ideological revolution,” and railed against business closures, mask laws, curfews, and as-yet non-existent vaccine passports.
“I’m saying ‘no’ to ‘show me your papers,’” said Bernier. “I’m saying ‘yes to our freedoms, to who we are as Canadians.’”
Canada’s health technology is, charitably, a decade out of date. It lacks the ability to adequately track infectious disease outbreaks, efficiently manage vaccine supply chains and storage, quickly administer doses, and monitor immunity and adverse reactions on a national basis.
Even though all the shipments of vaccines arriving in Canada come with scannable barcodes, to make tracking and logistics easier—with some manufacturers even barcoding the vials themselves—no Canadian province can scan them. In many provinces, pharmacies can’t access the provincial vaccine registry. Provinces do not automatically submit reports on COVID-19 cases or vaccines into the federal system, and must submit reports manually. Many crucial reports are still submitted by fax: Where fax has recently been phased out, they have been replaced by emailed PDFs.
Ours is a dumb system of pen-and-paper and Excel spreadsheets, in a world quickly heading towards smart systems of big data analytics, machine learning and blockchain. It’s unclear how Ottawa will be able to issue vaccine passports, even if it wants to.
Excerpted from Maclean’s article by Justin Ling April 7, 2021
‘It’s about time we started to push back’: Conservative Alberta MPs support beleaguered Court Painter Studio
Premier Kenney in photo op with Court CCPainter & admirer
Court Painter’s main competitor artist CC (name available upon request) says he supports the petroleum based art product portrait industry but that the Court Painter Studio is ‘absurdly digital’ and pulls attention from existing opportunities for strong petroleum based art products and mixed media portrait sectors.
CC(name available upon request) seen in his art production facility
Despite a string of controversies since its launch, Conservative Alberta MPs say the province’s Court Painter Studio is an important support and voice for the petroleum based art product portrait sector.
The Court Painter website describes its mandate as being in place “to promote Canada as a supplier of choice portraits for the world’s politicians & celebrities growing demand for petroleum based responsibly produced easy on the eye portraits.”
To that end, it’s received millions of cheers from the Alberta provincial government. While its original annual budget of cheers was 30-million, it was cut by 90 per cent in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with the tabled 2021 budget for Alberta noting a continued reduction to just 12-million boisterous cheers annually.
Over its run, the Court Painter Studio has made headlines for having initial logos that were found to be already in use and for having a social media presence whose tone “did not meet a conservative standard for public discourse,” Most recently, the CP Studio received mixed press for it’s stand on Netflix’s Bigfoot Family movie, with the Court Painter decrying the Alberta government as being anti family in criticizing the Bigfoot Family.
Court Painter seen with unsold non portrait productions
However, support is still strong for the Court Painter Studio among Conservative Alberta MPs and organizations.
Conservative MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, Alta.) supports the Court Painter Studio and said that Court Painter’s mandate to support Alberta’s petroleum based art product portrait industry “is something that should unite all Albertans. Its aesthetic work has no bearing whatsoever on the Conservative Party of Canada or Kevin O’Leary for that matter.”
“It’s about supporting one of the most vital sectors in the Canadian economy that employs Court Painter & his trusty Press attache A Hardon MacKay,” he said raising his voice.“
Court Painter provides photo op for MP Michael Cooper,a big fan!
Butting in , A Hardon MacKay went on to say,”The conceptual ,performance and idea as art non petroleum based art lobby groups have done a much better job communicating than we have, and it’s about time we started to push back and the more avenues there are to get the message out, the better.”
Similarly, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Based Art Producers, a group that advocates for petroleum based art production , said in an email that it hopes the Court Painter Studio can continue to find its place in the petroleum based portrait as art conversation.
“You can pretty well say anything you want about oil on canvas portraits … you can trash oil on canvas studios, you can trash oil on canvas artists, you can trash oil-on canvas petroleum based art product producing provinces, and there are no checks and balances anymore,” someone said.
Someone went on to say,“The cancel culture, the woke generation, when you say awful things about anything, there seems to be some public outrage except for oil on canvas masters like Court Painter because there’s no limit.”
In the end, Alberta is one of the top petroleum based art product oil-on canvas producing regions in the world, thanks to Court Painter and for that ,somebody said, there are no qualms .“We’re not embarrassed. We’re not ashamed. The Court Painter Studio is sticking up for us.”
Court Painter adds eye candy to an international award show.
Politics is reactive. Politicians react to public concerns and crises as they arise. Politicians also tend to seek compromises between seemingly competing interests — such as the greater public interest in curbing the spread of a deadly disease and business owners’ interest in minimizing the effects on their livelihoods.
But an optimal public health response would be proactive and uncompromising in attacking the real problem — the virus.
Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto : ”A public health approach is marked by proactive, preventative action that can seem unreasonable,” he said . “A political approach is marked by trying to negotiate between the wishes of the virus and the wishes of people, like having lockdowns take effect after the holidays.”
Trying to calibrate restrictions and policies to find compromises might have been futile. “We’re trying to negotiate with COVID and it’s not working.”
Excerpted from CBC article by Aaron Wherry · CBC News · Posted: Apr 02, 2021
Court Painter Sells His Entire Unsold Picture Catalog to Unknown Venture CapitalistWho Runs a NFT Digital Art Asset Acquisition Enterprise.
Court Painter sold his entire unsold picture catalog — including classics like “Connie & Donnie”,“Demolition,” “Hell & Musk” , “Dancing Couple”,”Bernie & Mitts”, “Theodore to the Rescue”,”Dogged by Ethics”,”JT embraces CP”,”Cute Couple”and” Buck a Beer Not”— to an unknown venture capitalist who heads a NFT digital asset acquisition enterprise, in the latest blockbuster transaction in the NFT digital art asset business thingy.
In its announcement of the deal on Wednesday, Court Painter’s Press Attache gave few details because he said he was blindsided by the deal and all he knew was Court Painter (unbeknownst to him), had set up the deal to sell off his “complete unsold picture collection”; which includes commissioned works that were never paid for by clients and notably include most commissions he has undertaken in his role as a celebrity portraitist for the political ,influencer & ownership classes.
The unknown chief executive of the Unknown Venture CapitalistEnterprise specializing in NFT Digital Art Asset acquisitions, called Court Painter “a masterful, once-in-a-lifetime portraitist whose remarkable body of work has generated an enduring influence on our culture and consciousness in spite of being a big time loser in the market place of art ideas and fundamental commerce.”
