Free Republic

Canada’s Conservatives, after nearly eight years of power, have become the country’s Establishment Party. Traditionally viewed as a collection of misfits who couldn’t keep power once they achieved it — and who stabbed each other in the back during opposition — the Tories are now a political powerhouse. But can they win a fourth-straight election, in 2015? The last time a Conservative prime minister did that was in 1891, under Sir John A. Macdonald. Expect Wednesday’s throne speech to be focused on this goal.

Rubin rose before Chief U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Portland, where she pleaded guilty to a dozen crimes – in Colorado, Oregon and California – as part of the underground Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. ... Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen F. Peifer recounted Rubin's crimes as part of the largest group of eco-saboteurs ever taken down by the FBI. They called themselves The Family and committed an estimated $40 million in damage from 1996 to 2001. ... the terms of the highly structured plea agreement sets limits on the number of years Rubin will spend in prison....

Montreal — The Quebec college of physicians has issued a warning to doctors to stop performing virginity tests, a practice linked to bridal purity and family honour. Gynecological exams for virginity certificates contravene the profession’s code of ethics on several grounds, including breaching patient confidentiality, said Charles Bernard, president of the Collège des médecins, in an interview. The practise is outrageous, repugnant, irrelevant and unacceptable, he said. “Imagine a doctor who does a gynecological examination with the sole purpose of … it goes beyond the imagination. And it’s degrading to women,” Dr. Bernard said. The College was responding to a...

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011. Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for...

A new academic study based on the Canadian census suggests that a married mom and dad matter for children. Children of same-sex coupled households do not fare as well. There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated...

Canadian writer Alice Munro won this year's Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. The Swedish Academy, which selects Nobel literature winners, called her a "master of the contemporary short story." She's the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious $1.2 million award since Saul Bellow, who won in 1976 and left for the U.S. as a boy. Munro's writing has brought her numerous awards. She won a National Book Critics Circle prize for "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage," and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize, Canada's highest literary honor.

There’s a heated debate in Canada over Québec’s proposal to ban symbols of religious faith such as Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans, Muslim head scarves and large crucifixes from public work places. The proposed ban is part of what the Québec government calls its “charter of values.” It has divided the province of 8.1 million and mobilized the opposition. …

The Quebec bureau chief for Rabble.ca, the 12-year-old “progressive” Canadian website backed financially by labour unions, has quit in a public letter, citing his discontent with the firing of the site’s editor. Ethan Cox said Rabble’s editor, Derrick O’Keefe, was “terminated, without cause.” Cox also said he wasn’t paid for the last 10 months.

On Oct. 31, students at McKay Public School in Port Colborne, Ont., will have to spend the day pretending it’s not Halloween. The annual tradition has been replaced by “a more inclusive Spirit Day,” in which the kids are invited to dress in black and orange (yay!). The school dance has been cancelled, too. The Canadian Martyrs School in nearby St. Catharines has implemented a similar policy. Students in Grade 4 and up will not be allowed to wear costumes. Grade 3 students, on the other hand, will be allowed to dress up in the afternoon (they must have a...

Charlie Delorme tells me to hold on for a second. He needs to check his bankbook to confirm what his current bank balance is because he has been writing a lot of big cheques lately and, he says, he is not done writing them yet. Mr. Delorme is on a donation spree, a goodwill binge, sprinkling bucks around to all the organizations in Yellowknife that he believes in. The Yellowknife Salvation Army got $5,000, another $10,000 went to the Stanton Territorial Hospital Foundation and another $2,000 to the Sidedoor Youth Centre. Every time Mr. Delorme leaves his front door and...

Stephen Harper’s brand of diplomacy tends to use more vinegar than oil — notably, when he told Barack Obama he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer on the Keystone pipeline. But his decision to be the first leader to say he will not attend the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka this November over human rights concerns, as he did Monday, is entirely justified. There will be accusations that the Prime Minister is playing domestic politics — dumping on the Sri Lankan government to win the support of the large Tamil constituency in Canada. But Mr. Harper...

**SNIP** Dobrev captioned the image, “Im Canadian. We have healthcare for all. If you dont have insurance go to [HealthCare.gov] and#GetCovered ,Because w/o it, youre naked.” More than 90,000 people have “liked” the picture.

A Canadian tech firm that has provided service to that country's single-payer health care system is behind the glitch-ridden United States national health care exchange site healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is a subsidiary of Montreal-based CGI Group. With offices in Fairfax, Va., the subsidiary has been a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov. The "CGI" in the parent company's name stands for "Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique" in French, which roughly translates to "Information Systems and Management Consultants." However, the firm offers another translation: "Consultants to Government...

What are your kids studying in school today? Public schools from California to Florida are celebrating LGBT History Month, where they highlight a homosexual or lesbian each day. Today, America’s school children are learning about Edward-turned-Gwen Araujo, who was intimate with men who allegedly beat him when they discovered that he was not a woman. “If parents think our school children should be focused on science and math, not sex and murder, they need to talk to teachers, principals, and school boards to ensure that this program is stopped,” cautions Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The sexual...

TORONTO - Scott Anders, of Scooters Catering, had hoped to be able to sell his hot dogs, gently smoked pulled pork and St. Louis style ribs at some of the venues during the 2015 Pan Am Games. Anders thought himself a perfect fit. After all, events like this are bread and butter for his Milton-based company. When I spoke to him earlier this week, he was just winding down from a busy summer operating his food trailer at the Honda Indy, the Live Nation tour at Ontario Place, as well as a variety of weekend festivals. But when he went...

Today we took a beating from the jury who heard the case of Richard Warman v. Fourniers and John Does. Their decision was completely unexpected (at least by me) so now we must re-evaluate our position.

EDMONTON - Experts are calling a dinosaur fossil unearthed in northern Alberta this week one of the “most complete finds in this part of the world in a long time.” Brian Brake, executive director of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said the fossilized remains of a hadrosaur were discovered at an energy company’s work site near Spirit River. Officials from the pipeline firm contacted the museum, which sent paleontologists to assess the find. “What we have is a totally composed tail,” Brake said. “It’s beautiful.” The Currie Museum contacted its counterparts at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, which...

CALGARY — The Somali community in Calgary is reeling upon hearing the news that a former city cab driver has been arrested for beheading his four children. “That’s unheard of,” said Mohamed Jama, president of the Somali Canadian Society of Calgary. “The community is very shocked, very shocked,” he said. “I don’t know whether the guy is insane and we don’t know what’s behind the story.” A Mogadishu-based journalist for All Voices, an online news website, reports that Omar Shire Hussein, 60, beheaded his four children. The kids, ranging in age between 11 and 6, were reportedly killed just outside...

In his 63 years ranging cattle at Pine Butte Ranch in Wycliffe, Ray Van Steinburg has never had grizzly bears take down a cow. That is, until earlier this month, when he and other ranch workers found the carcasses of two cows about 100 feet apart on the 15,000 hectare property. The cows weigh about 1,400 pounds each. They set up a motion-detected camera at the site of one of the kills and caught amazing footage of not one but two grizzlies approaching the kill, feeding on it, and even wrestling with each other. Van Steinburg said that while his...

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” on Sunday, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Syrian and Iranian leaders are behaving “more rationally” than “House Tea Party Republicans.” “It, to me, it is mind blowing this week that we see leaders of our most, biggest global adversaries, Iran, Syria, to your point, acting more rationally than the House Tea Party Republicans,” said Granholm. …

MONTREAL — Successive waves of grief have already come crashing down on Isabelle Gaston and, this week, she is bracing for another impending calvary. The Quebec mother lost her two young children who were stabbed to death by their father, the cardiologist Gaston was married to. After those 2009 slayings, each gory detail was sifted through in a highly publicized trial that served as gossip fodder in Quebec. Gaston then watched as her ex-husband was found not criminally responsible of the crime in the summer of 2011. He was eventually deemed fit for release from a mental institution, where he’d...

MONTREAL -- The Aurora Borealis, those beams of light that dance across the northern sky may look pretty, but a Canadian satellite is about to study a nasty side lurking behind that beauty. The small hybrid satellite, with a multi-purpose mission, blasted off on Sunday from Vandenberg in California on board a Falcon 9 rocket developed by SpaceX, a commercial space company. The Canadian Space Agency became one of SpaceX's first customers when the agency decided years ago to use the private U.S. rocket to deliver the satellite at a reduced cost of $10 million. It cost the space agency...

OTTAWA — The Harper government is set to propose a number of new measures to close the U.S.-Canada consumer price gap, including the possibility of extending the tariff relief offered on sports equipment in the last budget to consumer electronics and other products. Internal documents obtained by the National Post reveal the government’s concern at prices it says are, on average, 15% higher than those paid by U.S. consumers before taxes. The policy deck, marked “secret,” said an analysis by the Finance department suggests “country pricing” by multinational companies — the attempt to maximize profits by boosting prices in different...

A decision this week by Shell to shutter its oil shale operation in Colorado to pursue other ventures in Jordan and Canada highlights the difficulties faced by developers in the state as they wrestle with uncertain rules under the Obama administration. Royal Dutch Shell was one of the most successful companies in the state in its efforts to develop a cost-efficient technique to extract oil from shale rock. But the final act of Ken Salazar as Interior secretary earlier this year to rewrite industry rules left companies in limbo with undeterminable royalty rates, and blocked them from obtaining leases for...

North America will become energy independent by 2020 because of booming oil and gas production, which will have consequences worldwide, according to an analysis from Wood Mackenzie. “The decline, and eventual reversal of North American net trade will have complex impacts on global energy flows, some of which are already becoming apparent,” said Paul McConnell, senior analyst for Wood Mackenzie’s global trends service, in a statement. The region that will feel the largest impact of declining North American demand for imports will be the Middle East, the Houston research firm said. “The Middle East is the most sensitive to changes...

Alberta’s carbon dioxide pipeline project has nailed down solid dates for construction as its main gas supplier, the new Redwater bitumen refinery, gets rolling. Enhance Energy needs to time its project to match the North West Redwater Partnership’s $6 billion bitumen-to-diesel refinery, which was officially kicked off last week on a large patch of former farmland. The refinery is a bit behind its original schedule, and is expected to open in mid-2016. For Enhance president Susan Cole, that sets her Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) on a firm timeline. “We will be ready when North West begins, but we don’t...

New construction technology, stringent and continuously improving regulations, and years of industry experience make Canada's oil shipping industry well-equipped to accommodate increased tanker traffic on the West Coast should new pipeline projects proceed, concludes the leading independent consulting firm IHS CERA. In addition, should an incident occur, Canada has access to more than $1.3-billion in ompensation, exceeding what is generally available internationally, says the IHS CERA report, Assessing Marine Transport for Oil Sands on Canada's West Coast. "There have been a great many questions from the public asking what it would mean to ship more crude oil off Canada's West...

'Toronto 18' member Ali Mohamed Dirie reportedly died in Syria Ali Mohamed Dirie died in Syria after 2011 prison release, informant tells CBC

Stephen Harper should lose sleep this week, as the Danish-owned Nordic Orion becomes the first cargo vessel to use the Northwest Passage as an international shipping route – at no little risk to Canada’s environment and sovereignty. Last week, the crash of a Coast Guard helicopter in the Northwest Passage underlined how very dangerous Arctic waters can be. The three men on board were wearing survival suits. They escaped the aircraft before it sank but froze to death in the hour it took for the icebreaker Amundsen to reach them. Although the Nordic Orion is ice-strengthened, Arctic storms, shallow waters...

WASHINGTON (JTA) – On a Saturday night following Shabbat, Nick Muzin arrayed on his dining room table what would turn out to be the winning strategy to elect the first black Republican to Congress from South Carolina in more than a century. The next night at the same table in his Charleston, S.C., home, Muzin hosted his weekly Talmud class. Associates say the duality typifies Muzin, the 37-year-old Orthodox Jewish dynamo now leading the effort by House Republicans to expand the party’s appeal following Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama last November. The ascension of Tim Scott from the South...

head brothers gun FacebookTwitter A+- By William Marsden, Postmedia News September 19, 2013 WASHINGTON — Adam Head and his brother Victor, two gun-toting plumbers from Pueblo, Colo., were sitting around Victor’s living room with a few friends last March pondering their next move.The two brothers had spent weeks campaigning against a proposed state law that would ban gun magazines larger than 15 rounds and would impose universal background checks on all private purchases at gun shows. But to no avail.The Colorado legislature had just voted to pass these restrictions into law and the Head brothers were on the warpath.While...

Quebec’s separatist government is betting on broad popular support with a proposal that prohibits public workers from wearing headscarves, skullcaps and other religious symbols, yet it is dividing the movement that advocates independence from Canada. The proposal, unveiled by the ruling Parti Quebecois last week, plays with the explosive issue of minority rights in a part of Canada, a country that prides itself as being a tapestry of immigrants rather than a U.S.-style melting pot. The government’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values would ban teachers, doctors and other public workers from wearing highly visible religious symbols, including yarmulkes, headscarves and...

NAIROBI, Kenya — Two Canadians, including a diplomat, were killed alongside at least 37 others in a terrorist attack in a shopping mall in Kenya, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office said Saturday in a release. “Canada condemns in the strongest possible terms this cowardly, hateful act that apparently targeted innocent civilians who were simply out shopping,” said Harper ine a statement issued early Saturday evening.The Canadian diplomat killed in the attack was identified by the government as Annemarie Desloges, who was posted to the Canadian High Commission as a liaison officer with the Canada Border Services Agency. The other Canadian...

By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada. (Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.) But...

Sixteen-year-old Noah Graham of Solway is lucky to be alive after being attacked without warning by a wolf while sitting at a campfire with friends last month on Lake Winnibigoshish near the town of Bemidji in far northern Minnesota. ... the willingness of the Clinton administration to accede to the demands of DOW and other environmental groups, wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1994 and quickly spread over a 500-mile radius to all corners of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Earlier this month, a pack of wolves stampeded 176 sheep — two were bitten and killed; one was half...

Witnesses to a fatal train crash involving an Ottawa city bus describe a scene of chaos and confusion as it appears the bus failed to stop at the rail crossing and crashed into the side of the train, killing six people and injuring as many as 30 others. Officials are still trying to piece together what happened prior to the devastating crash, which occurred shortly before 9 a.m. near the intersection of Woodroffe Avenue and Fallowfield Road.

A sixth person has died in hospital after a horrific collision between a Via Rail passenger train and an OC Transpo bus Wednesday morning Family members who are looking for people who may have been involved in the collision just before 9 a.m. are asked to call 613-580-2400, or go to the Nepean Sportsplex, where a victim crisis unit has been set up. The crash occurred at a level crossing on the Transitway line which runs between Barrhaven and Hunt Club Rd. The front of the bus was sheared off by the force of the collision with the westbound train,...

In his new job as head chaplain in the military, Brig.-Gen. John Fletcher will be overseeing the religious needs of Canada’s troops, shoring up what the Defence Department calls its chaplaincy’s “inclusive, welcoming culture.” As an openly gay member of the military and Anglican priest for more than two decades, it’s an environment Fletcher has benefitted from firsthand. His recent appointment is in sharp contrast to past military policy, which allowed discrimination against gays and lesbians. Fletcher said he came out not long after a landmark court decision struck down the rule in 1992, alleviating his fears about what could...

EDMONTON – An Edmonton woman received a photo radar ticket for speeding, but she says her vehicle was at a shop for repairs when the infraction occurred. Sheila Taschuk took her Honda Element to Boyd Autobody & Glass in West Edmonton for some warranty work. Her vehicle was there for about two-and-a-half weeks. While it was in for repairs, Taschuk received a surprising delivery in the mail. “I got a speeding ticket in the mail, and noticed that the ticket wasn’t nearby Boyd’s shop,” she explains, “so I phoned Boyd and questioned them on the ticket, and they denied that...

OTTAWA - At least 27 fraudsters had their Canadian citizenship yanked since the federal government announced it was expanding its crackdown on citizenship fakers last September, QMI Agency has learned. "Between 1976 and 2011 we did 60 of these (revocations)," Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said Saturday. "In one year, essentially, we have done close to 30, so the pace is picking up because we have taken a much stronger stand in saying that Canadian citizenship is not for sale." Canada's crackdown on up to 1,800 citizens who'd never set foot in Canada or received their citizenship with false documents began...

The Mexican ambassador to Canada says his country is “really mad” at the Harper government for the continued imposition of a visa on its travellers here. Ambassador Francisco Suarez told The Canadian Press in an exclusive interview that Mexico is so upset that if the issue isn’t resolved by next year, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto might have to postpone a planned visit to Canada. That would cast a shadow over the festivities that Mexico and Canada are planning for 2014 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 70th anniversary of bilateral relations....

The remains of two air force pilots missing nearly 72 years since their plane crashed in a cottage country lake north of Toronto have been recovered. British Royal Air Force Flight Lt. Peter Campbell, 24, and Royal Canadian Air Force Leading Aircraftsman Theodore "Ted" Bates, 27, were recovered in Lake Muskoka in October 2012. Officials said they didn't reveal the recovery operation until Friday as they didn't want the wreckage to be disturbed and wanted to make arrangements for the plane. "This particular dive operation will certainly stay with the team forever," Lt. Greg Oickle, the acting commanding officer of...

or Clothing Should free speech and religious rights be restricted the moment a person begins working for the government? This is the very question that some politicians in Quebec, Canada, are asking. Leaders in the province could soon make a definitive decision that would essentially ban public workers from wearing discernible religious symbols. The regulation would be part of the proposed “Charter of Quebec Values,” a set of laws that would ensure a strict line is drawn between church and state. In what can only be described as sweeping, civil servants, teachers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, police and public day care...

Atheists groups are demanding once again that a city in British Columbia remove a pro-life banner authorized to fly on city-owned polls this week, saying that it violates city policy on street banners. But like last year, the city is again refusing to budge. City administrator David Trawin confirmed on Tuesday that the banner meets the city’s criteria, since it does not contain any offensive words or messages. The blue banner, hoisted on behalf of the Kamloops Pro-Life Society, includes a silhouette of a baby, young girl, and elderly woman standing beneath a tree. The text reads, "One life can...

A move by Quebec’s ruling Parti Québécois to ban public workers in the province from wearing ostentatious symbols has drawn fire from other Canadian leaders, and even created an internal division within the group. The so-called “Charter of Quebec Values” forbids state employees from wearing large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps or Muslim headscarves to work. …

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

The Canadian government said on Tuesday it had a deal to sell nearly a quarter of its common shares in General Motors Corp (GM.N), part of a longer-term plan to shed the stake it acquired when it helped bail out the automaker. It said the shares were sold at the closing market price on Tuesday, minus a small discount. GM shares finished the session at $37, putting the value of the stake at about $1.11 billion. The governments of Canada and the province of Ontario, the heartland of the country's auto sector, became shareholders of GM in 2009 when they...

CALGARY • An anti-Keystone XL pipeline commercial funded by President Barack Obama supporter and hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer confirms what many Canadians have long suspected — American anti-oil activists have gone mad. The commercial was intended to be aired Tuesday evening on WRC-TV, an affiliate of NBC in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the president’s appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The commercial is so offensive the station refused to air it. While intended as a parody, it insults TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling, whose company is proposing Keystone XL; it’s a low blow to Canada; and it...

Full title: ‘Keystone oil will travel through America not to America’: Billionaire steps up anti-Keystone campaign with US$1M ad blitzThe author of the piece is with Bloomberg so it can not be posted on FR. However, the title says it all. Financial guru and billionaire Tom Steyer has re-invented himself as an anti-Keystone campaigner. He is sponsoring ads in a four-part, US$1 million advertising campaign to convince viewers the Keystone XL pipeline will hurt the economy and communities and should be blocked. Coincidentally (or not so) he is one of Obama's biggest campaign supporters and fund raiser. His activities aren't...

The science is settled unsettling. Comedian Lewis Black said it best on his White Album when he asked, “Do you know what Meteorologist means in English? It means liar.� It seems that we now have more science to settle atop the mountains of previous science which all purports to prove one thing or another. You can decide on the reasons for yourself, but the arctic ice sheet is back with a vengeance. A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of...