
Eugene Robinson ,Columnist with the Washington Post



Eugene Robinson ,Columnist with the Washington Post
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.’”
Source : National Post
Special thanks to Hieronymus Bosch
Before Liberals get too excited about Mark Carney, they should remember Michael Ignatieff
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Canada’s public health data meltdown https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadas-public-health-data-meltdown/
Canada’s health technology is, charitably, a decade out of date.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 Many crucial reports are still submitted by fax: Where fax has recently been phased out, they have been replaced by emailed PDFs.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
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.
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.
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.“
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.”
You can’t make deals with a virus
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 Capitalist Who 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 Capitalist Enterprise 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.”