because we can…

There’s one simple reason why private companies and public bodies can keep violating citizens privacy: the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in charge of overseeing privacy laws in Canada, has no enforcement power to punish them.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has no power to penalize anyone for proven privacy violations.

Privacy laws are useless if they can’t be enforced

Source: OpenMedia

cross border gifters…

Conservative Senate Leader Don Plett voiced support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election during debate in the Red Chamber Wednesday.

Plett, a past president of the Conservative Party, said he’s hoping Republican senators are re-elected to a majority position in the U.S. Senate when all the votes are in next Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Delivery of portrait commission to Trump Hotel

Another senator, former Conservative Lynn Beyak — who was booted from that caucus in 2018 after she made controversial comments about the residential school system — sent $300 to Trump’s party in May.

She provided a non-existent New York address and postal code when making her donation.

News source: CBC News

Delivery of portrait commission to Trump Hotel

Court Painter in studio with completed : Cross Border Gifters

H2O…

NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon


Meanwhile back on earth, Nestlé takes what should be a shared public resource and packages it in single-serve bottles that the company sells for outrageous profits. These plastic bottles then clog and pollute our landfills, lakes and oceans.

Court Painter predicts corporate source of future shareholder profits
Nestle looks to the sky for future shareholder profits!

tussle

tus·sle/ˈtəsəl

  1. a vigorous struggle or scuffle, typically in order to obtain or achieve something.
Court Painter attempts to capture the complexity & sweat of a parliamentary tussle

Firestorm…

“We all have a tall order here, one that has been 21 years in the making, so we all need to work to calm the current tensions, bring the perpetrators of these actions to justice and act wherever possible with patience and understanding of each other,” 

Sipeknek’katik Chief Mike Sack ,Regarding West Pubnico Facility Fire and Arrests

The Prime Minister watches firestorm from safe distance!
Court Painter with newly installed painting of PM & Firestorm,October 17,2020

What happens when Mi’kmaq exercise constitutional Treaty rights?

Lobster Catch Destroyed, Van Burned As Tensions Rise With Illegal protests over Legal Indigenous Fishery In N.S.

The RCMP were present for some of the incident but did not have official comment Wednesday morning on what happened.Which seems par for the course when dealing with illegal infringement of Indigenous rights!

HALIFAX — The chief of a Mi’kmaq First Nation says an angry group of non-Indigenous people damaged lobster pounds holding his people’s catch and burned a vehicle on Tuesday night. 

Video being circulated on social media shows a van being set alight in West Pubnico, N.S., during one of the tense encounters.

Chief Mike Sack of Sipekne’katik First Nation says damage occurred at two locations, one in West Pubnico and the other in the Weymouth area, and lobster caught by the Indigenous fishers was removed from lobster pounds.https://www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=1806607939771

“Local fishermen attacked two lobster buying facilities and did a lot of damage, burned vehicles, took lobsters,” Sack said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “Whatever they wanted to do, happened.”

Sack said two Indigenous harvesters were at the lobster pound in West Pubnico when people broke a door, a van was burned and their catch was taken away.

“My reaction is, I can’t believe how they are getting away with these terrorist, hate crime acts and the police are there,” he said.

Source Canadian Press

In the words of Mi’kmaw Senators Brian Francis and Dan Christmas:

Canada must fully embrace the spirit and intent of the ruling of the highest court in the lands in respect of Moderate Livelihood. Unless and until this occurs any sense of meaningful reconciliation cannot be realized.

stranded assets…

Excepted from Tyee article by Andrew Nikiforuk  ,October 9.2020

The Australian Invasion: Big Coal’s Plans for Alberta

Speculators from Down Under aim to carve up the Rockies with a chain of open-pit mines amid growing revolt.
Premier Jason Kenney

Two Australian billionaires and four coal mining companies with names including Atrum and Montem plan to industrialize nearly 800 square kilometres of the southern Canadian Rockies to supply steel-making coal for Asian and Brazilian markets.

Jason Kenney’s government ,in addition to rescinding the Coal Policy, has sent letters of support to Australian mining speculators offering them less red tape and lower corporate taxes. As well, it has promised speedy permitting. And it has staffed the Alberta Energy Regulator, which will review each coal mining project, with people whose pasts are aligned with resource extracting corporations. One is the self-described “political activist” John Weissenberger, who worked on Jason Kenney’s election campaign. 

Court Painter with painting : Stranded asshole Robin Campbell

Coal Association Canada president Robin Campbell lobbied to achieve what Australian mining companies wanted, the killing of Coal Policy restrictions on open-pit mining in sensitive areas of the Rockies. He’d previously served as Alberta’s environment minister

Revolt in Alberta’s ranchlands

The government’s cozy relationship with Aussie coal miners and speculators has alarmed and outraged landowners and ranchers who graze cattle in the eastern slopes, used for that purpose since the turn of the century. 

Water scientist David Schindler, a noted professor at the University of Alberta, called the mine proposals short-sighted and foolhardy. 

“The best example of why you shouldn’t mine in mountain watersheds comes from Appalachia where mountaintops have been pushed into streams, aquifers have been destroyed and selenium and other toxic trace metals contaminate the watershed.” 

He sees a lesson in Alberta’s experience with the oilsands, now losing investors as analysts predict that globally climate change regulations and low prices will render bitumen mining projects “stranded assets” incapable of breaking even.

If the Australian invasion is given free rein, “the coal will not be used for long,” said Schindler, “so again Alberta will be left with stranded assets,” along with a legacy of degraded landscapes.  [Tyee]

Court Painter with painting,Stranded Assholes.