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WINNIPEG — Manitoba exported a cache of guns worth $1.2 million to Saudi Arabia last year, but the federal government won't say who sold them, who bought them, or what they were used for. According to international-trade data available on the Industry Canada website, Manitoba exported a total of $3.1 million in "arms and ammunition" to foreign countries last year. That could include anything from flame-throwers to shotgun cartridges to rocket-launchers, and it's double what the province exported in 2004. Except for Manitoba's guns, Canada sold virtually no other weapons or ammunition to Saudi Arabia last year. Ontario was the...

In his recent speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama counseled Americans to beware "dire warnings about socialized medicine and government takeovers; long lines, and rationed care; decisions made by bureaucrats and not doctors." Unfortunately for the president, there are a few Cassandras whose warnings are worth heeding. Chief among them are the millions of Canadians who have received substandard care at the hands of a government-run health system. Before America emulates the Canadian model with a new trillion-plus-dollar health plan, it's worth examining whether government-run systems are all they're cracked up to be. As a Canadian by birth,...

ONE evening last week, almost every seat was occupied at Au Cinquième Péché, a bistro in the bustling neighborhood called the Plateau. And almost every table was sampling an appetizer plate that included a specialty of the restaurant’s French-born chef, Benoît Lenglet: a seared, rare loin, dark red in color, with a texture and taste akin to beef tenderloin. But the meat was not beef. It was seal. Across town, at Les Îles en Ville, Andrée Garcia, an owner and chef, has elevated seal from an occasional specialty to a regular feature. The most frequent preparation there, Ms. Garcia said,...

Canada's in the spotlight as debate on health care reform rages in the U.S.Published Thursday July 2nd, 2009 Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS WASHINGTON - It's rare that anything to do with Canada is front and centre in the minds of Americans, but the Canadian health-care system has been a hot topic of discussion over the past few weeks as Capitol Hill legislators work on a massive health-care overhaul. From hair salons to hospital waiting rooms and Georgetown dinner parties, Americans have wanted to know: "What's health care really like in Canada?" "Is it true no one can get a...

The left continually holds up the Canadian socialized healthcare system as the best example, one we should strive to emulate. But as each week passes we find more and more reason to doubt the panacea in the Great White North. Last week news came out that Canada forced an infant to flee its country and into our own to get life saving treatment. A baby was born 13 weeks premature in Ontario, Canada but there were no neonatal intensive care beds open for the child there... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom: And Whereas such a Union would conduce to the Welfare of the Provinces and promote the interests of the British Empire: ... Be it therefore enacted and declared by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and...

Bermuda and the Cayman Islands may have some competition for Barack Obama’s vitriol over tax havens if Canada keeps on its low-business-tax course. The Harper government in Ottawa has quietly dropped its corporate tax rate and has pressed the provinces to do the same in order to get to a low combined tax rate for businesses. American companies pressed by the threat of the Obama administration to tax overseas profits have begun to notice: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "In a clear indication that Canada is starting to be considered a low-tax place to do business, Tim Hortons Inc. announced Monday plans to shift...

Tim Hortons Inc., the quintessentially Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, wants to become even more Canadian. The company has filed a notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stating that it wants to reorganize itself as a "Canadian public company" in order to take advantage of decreasing Canadian corporate tax rates. The reorganization would regroup the company's U.S. and Canadian business units under a single entity incorporated under Canada's federal company statute, the Canada Business Corporations Act. The new company would maintain the name Tim Hortons Inc. The federal government is whittling down the federal corporate income tax rate...

Protests by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) forced the Canadian province of British Columbia to remove from its website a “loaded bomb” question that illustrates how anti-Zionism infiltrates into the educational system that often tries to rewrite history. A question prepared for a history examination in the province was posted on the website as part of a practice test until the CJC got wind of it.

My friend Michael Stickings links to a story of bureaucratic outrages involving an acutely ill premature baby, but only focuses on one particular outrage while excusing the other. Because Canada does not have the capacity to deal with the demand for neo-natal intensive care for premature births, the single-payer system sent the critically ill child to the United States for treatment. Unfortunately, the parents do not have passports which are now required for crossing the border, and the US refuses to allow them into the country without them: A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo,...

As I have done several times, an instructive way to learn about what might happen if we are so foolish as to institute a national healthcare program like the one president Obama wants is to look to those unfortunate nations that have already trod that path. To understand what could happen here we need to hear from those leaders elsewhere that once thought they had the solutions that Obama seeks. One such man is Claude Castonguay of Canada, a man that championed national healthcare for his country when that nation first began to explore the concept. It was full speed...

Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms. "If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.'' Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.

They've got a bite like a hornet's sting, leave an itch as bad as poison ivy and are smart enough to learn to avoid insecticide. It sounds like a B-movie scare but this invasive species of ant is a real and growing concern in Nova Scotia. European fire ants have been turning up in new areas and there are localized infestations so bad that yards are unusable and people mow the lawn wearing protective gear. Halifax is holding a briefing Monday night on how residents can protect themselves from these insects, which have appeared in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario...

Five-to-40-year-olds and Canada's aboriginal communities should be the first to get vaccinated against human swine flu, experts say as Canadian officials decide who gets priority for the flu shots. Under Canada's official pandemic plan, the entire population would ultimately be immunized against the H1N1 swine flu. But the vaccine will become available in batches, meaning the entire population can't be vaccinated at once. It might take four or five months to get all the vaccine we're going to get, during which time a second wave of swine flu may well be underway. The Public Health Agency of Canada is working...

"Rockford woman killed in train derailment Teen in critical condition with burns, 2 others hurt" SNIPPET: "Several cars from a Canadian National Railway Co. train smoldered Saturday near Rockford as federal investigators continued to probe whether standing water from heavy rains was a factor in a Friday night derailment that left a 41-year-old woman dead and three others injured."

A Canadian journalist working in Iran was arrested without charge on Sunday and has not been heard from since. Maziar Bahari, 42, a correspondent for Newsweek magazine, has been reporting on Iran for the past decade from his base in Tehran, where he was born. His most recent article for Newsweek, published in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election, examined opposition supporters’ concerns that groups loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were staging violent incidents at their rallies to undermine support for their movement. “Newsweek strongly condemns this unwarranted detention, and calls upon the Iranian government to release him immediately,”...

SNIPPET: "This is not a song from Hamas television in Gaza, nor is it a Hizballah anthem. "When We Seek Martyrdom" is the latest hit from a production house called Birds of Paradise. It is racking up millions of hits on Arabic and worldwide websites. Birds of Paradise, which appears to be based in Jordan, is quickly becoming one of the most popular children's groups in the Arab world." SNIPPET: "Youtube, has dozens of editions and edits of the video, ranging from Arab parents having their children parrot the lyrics to Jihadists using it as background music in terrorist videos....

http://twitter.com/lotfan URGENT:Fellow Canadians: email our visa office in Tehran,ask them to open doors to help the wounded: Teran@international.gc.ca #iranelection 4 minutes ago from TweetDeck CONFIRMED: Canadian Embassy is NOT accepting injured protesters!! #iranelection 6 minutes ago from TweetDeck RT @leiyers Canadian Embassy is NOT accepting injured protesters!! #IranElection 7 minutes ago from web http://hashtags.org/search?q=Canadian&page=1 Way to go, Canada RT @PCZ : RT @jeffjaafar CONFIRMED: Canadian Embassy is NOT accepting injured protesters!! #iranelection 19 minutes ago @petersantilli@Nicotone CONFIRMED: Canadian Embassy is NOT accepting injured protesters!! #iranelection (Typical coward Canadians) 19 minutes ago @kouroshfCanadians - call Foreign Office to request opening of...

Canadian mother Maureen Lee has fought off a cougar that leapt onto her daughter during a walk in the woods with her bare hands. Seeing her child pinned she dove between the two and threw the large cat off before scooping up her child and running. Her three-year-old daughter, who thought the animal just wanted to play, is recovering nicely from puncture wounds on her head and arm. The cougar fared less well - conservation officers located it and killed it.

Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect AdmitsBy DAVID GRATZER Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:30 PM PT As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few. But no one will mention Claude Castonguay — perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades. Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however,...

It's not exactly Big Brother and the overall intentions seem to have the public's best interest at heart. But many are very uncomfortable about a proposed new law being introduced in the House of Commons on Thursday that could affect anyone using the Internet in Canada. The bill, with the unwieldy name of "An Act Regulating Telecommunications Facilities to Support Investigations," would allow police to force your ISP to hand over any records of your emails, chat room conversations, website history or surfing habits to authorities without a warrant. Police across the country contend it's a necessity because the Worldwide...

Prepare for Canadian Health CareJune 17, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Windsor, Ontario, Ed -- this is in Canada -- great to have you on the program, sir. Thank you for waiting. CALLER: Yes. Thank you for taking my call. RUSH: Yes, sir. CALLER: I have a concrete example of the effect of the Ontario, Canada, health care system on one family unfortunately. Today's Windsor Star newspaper, page five, this gentleman, he's 30 years old, husband, father, has been in the system treated for cancer, but it's come back. He has stage four melanoma. He has inoperable tumors on his heart...

The Lower Mainland's health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.'s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints. Critics say the payments mean the government's strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding. "You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency," NDP health critic Adrian Dix said. "That just doesn't make sense." The Fraser Health Authority will pay $616,000 in carbon tax this year, rising to $821,000 next year, officials there...

Divisions, based mostly on historical events and stereotypes, have become entrenched in the very fabric of our culture. West versus East, English versus French, Native Canadians versus the federal government, Quebec versus Ottawa, Alberta versus everybody… Tough love being what it is and all that, here’s five ways to save Canada – or at least make it better.

They say the Mounties always get their man. But do they sometimes get the wrong imam? This is one of many questions coming out of the second annual "Muslims of Tomorrow 2009" conference sponsored in part by Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police on June 13. A product of efforts by the RCMP National Security Program in British Columbia, and something called the "RCMP National Security Youth Advisory Council (BC)," the initiative reflects the shaky history of the Force's involvement in Islamic outreach. Mounties rushed into outreach following 9/11, and the results were not always pretty. The former head of the...

When we stopped, an officer grabbed me, pinned my arm behind my back and led me into the bowels of the Interior Ministry headquarters - where so many Iranian dissidents 'disappear' Mistaken for a protester in Tehran, Globe freelancer George McLeod was captured and beaten by riot police. This is his story. Riot police had driven off anti-government demonstrators and the sting of tear gas in the air was fading yesterday when the heavy-set man in a camouflage uniform grabbed me, shouting in Farsi, and pushed me into a throng of riot police. They shouted while I waved my hand...

NEWARK, N.J.—An Indictment was unsealed today against three individuals who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the United States and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. announced. In conjunction with the unsealing of the Indictment, Italian law enforcement conducted searches of approximately 10 locations in four regions of Italy and arrested the financiers of the hacking activity. Those financiers allegedly used the information to transmit over 12 million minutes of telephone calls valued at more than $55 million...

As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one. Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems. Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact...

'Shakedown' author Ezra Levant Canadian Human Rights Commissar Jennifer "I Love to" Lynch (Pic)

Israeli archeologist and professor Dan Bahat... a lecturer in the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology department at Bar-Ilan University and the former district archeologist for Jerusalem, addressed hundreds who gathered at Beth Tikvah Synagogue on June 3... "When I speak about the caves in the Judean desert where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, actually, all the scrolls we're talking about come from 11 caves only," Bahat said. He said the discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 was made on Nov. 29 -- the day the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine... all that was yielded...

The Lower Mainland's health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.'s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints. Critics say the payments mean the government's strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding. "You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency," NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.

An American, a Japanese and a Canadian were sitting naked in a sauna when suddenly there was a beeping sound. The American pressed his forearm, and the beep stopped. The others looked at him questioningly. “That was my pager he said. “I have a microchip under the skin of my arm.”

Part of President Obama’s healthcare plan includes the making of electronic health records. The major purpose of what the trendy call “e-records” is to provide instant access of everyone’s medical history to doctors, hospitals, pharmacists and any 14-year-old hacker who might be curious. In September 2008, after playing around with electronic health records for awhile, the province of Ontario created a new agency, not surprisingly called eHealth Ontario. This group replaced a previous organization, Smart Systems for Health Agency,that spent $647 million without showing any noticeable results. The primary goal of eHealth Ontario is to provide electronic medical records for...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes. The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period. "This is the first time we've identified structures like these on the lake bottom," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology and professor in the Department of Anthropology. "Scientifically, it's important because the...

A Canadian Forces soldier was killed by a bomb explosion in Kandahar Monday morning, during a mission to save civilians and soldiers from just such attacks. Private Alexandre (Pelo) Péloquin of the Vandoos, aged 20, was killed during a foot patrol. The explosion occurred in the Panjwai, a rural area southwest of Kandahar that soldiers sometimes refer to as the Heart of Darkness, because it is a hotbed on insurgency ~snip~

You would think that a show about a telepath in this day and age would be somewhat of a downer. You might even presume the lead character has had enough of his curse and become jaded and negative, perhaps even turning to alcoholism in an attempt to shut the voices up. Take the show Cold Case, for example. First let me say that I love it. Cold Case is a first class production with really good stories. But let's face it people - (clip)

Canada has turned down a request from the U.S. government to take in a number of Chinese Muslims currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and deemed by Washington to be members of a terrorist group. Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, acknowledged Thursday that they received an inquiry from the Obama administration about taking in some detainees. "The government had a previous request from the Bush administration and in both cases the government's position is that we’re not interested in taking detainees from Guantanamo Bay," Teneycke said. "In the case of other detainees who...

Jury finds 24-year-old woman not guilty of first degree murder in death of her female lover's long-time boyfriend Amid a torrent of emotion, a Toronto woman accused of using an axe to bludgeon to death her lesbian lover's possessive boyfriend walked free from a downtown courtroom yesterday afternoon, acquitted of first-degree murder. The verdict from the seven-woman, five-man jury capped more than three days of tense deliberations. Ashleigh Pechaluk, 24, and her parents embraced tearfully before stepping out into the bright sunshine to face a bank of microphones and television cameras. Arrested the day of the murder, she spent more...

The driver who witnessed a schizophrenic behead a fellow Greyhound bus passenger last summer has been gripped with panic attacks, while those who mourn the victim say they can’t sleep and have developed a deep sense that justice hasn’t been done, a review board heard Monday.

Health minister characterizes reports of 20% to 30% error rates as highly exaggerated Questions about a possible high rate of errors in breast cancer testing done in the Canadian province of Quebec surfaced last week. Government health officials were forced to publicly acknowledge that they had received a report in April of a limited study that indicated an error rate of between 15% and 20% in hormone receptor testing, and an error rate as high as 30% in HER2/neu testing. Following the first news reports of this situation last Thursday, Quebec health officials scrambled to respond to public concerns. In...

ATLANTA (AP) — Armed with a handheld video camera, a Georgia university student drove with a friend in April 2005 to Washington, D.C., and captured scenes of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other locations. Investigators say Syed Haris Ahmed, now 24, wasn't a tourist but a wannabe terrorist who wanted to send the videos of potential terror targets to an overseas contact. He was attending the Georgia Institute of Technology at the time. The charges, along with an allegation that Ahmed went to Pakistan and tried to join a terrorism group a few months later, are central to a federal...

THE RULES OF RURAL N.B. ARE AS FOLLOWS Listen up City Slickers & out of province Tourists 1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot. 2. Turn your cap right, your head isn't crooked. 3. Let's get this straight; it's called a 'dirt road.' I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way. 4. They are cattle. They're live steaks. That's why they smell funny to you. But they smell like money to us. Get...

Here's my Op-Ed from today's Toronto Star: At its convention this Sunday, the Canadian Jewish Congress will honour Prime Minister Stephen Harper with its Saul Hayes Award. It's unusual for the CJC, many of whose members have long favoured the Liberals, to give an award to a Conservative Prime Minister. But in Harper's case, it's well-deserved. No world leader has been as clear as Harper has been in his support for Israel's right to defend itself. Just weeks after becoming Prime Minister, Harper single-handedly stopped a surprise resolution at the Francophonie summit that would have scapegoated Israel for its war...

TORONTO (Reuters) – Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton traded jokes about life after the Oval Office and took turns defending each other as they shared a stage in Toronto on Friday to discuss global affairs. In a sold-out event billed as their first conversation on stage since they left office, Bush and Clinton disagreed politely about a couple of issues, backed each other on others and refused to criticize anything current President Barack Obama was doing. Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, has emerged as one of Obama's toughest critics and the staunchest defender of the Bush...

Security was tight Friday as people filed into a downtown Toronto convention centre to hear what was billed as a "moderated conversation" between former American presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As he took to the stage, Clinton said the event felt like a "21st-century colosseum" in that the audience might want to see him and his Republican counterpart "devour each other." He went on to thank Canada for sending troops to Afghanistan and sacrificing so many soldiers' lives to help bring peace to a troubled region.

Canada and the U.S. signed an agreement Monday designed to increase border security by allowing the RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard to team up and ride in each others' vessels during border patrols. Known as the Shiprider program, the new rules intend to improve security and eliminate jurisdictional grey areas in Canada-U.S. waterways. Without the new program, vessels must stop at the border and call upon the other country's officials for help. The Shiprider program has been used as a pilot program over the past few years to catch smugglers and criminals on joint waterways. Public Safety Minister Peter...

Boeing, Eurofighter bid to usurp F-35 for Canadian fighter deal By Stephen Trimble Boeing and Eurofighter have launched a public challenge to Lockheed Martin's widely presumed control of a next-generation fighter contract in Canada. Both challengers unveiled the outlines of a new push to respectively market the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Typhoon to Ottawa as replacements for the Canadian air force's Boeing CF-18 (F/A-18A/B) Hornets by the end of the next decade. As a member of the nine-nation Joint Strike Fighter programme since 2002, Lockheed executives have described Canada as a likely buyer for up to 80 F-35s, although the...

Canada’s York University, celebrating its 50th anniversary, is allowing a pro-Arab group to stage a conference questioning Israel’s right to exist. University president Mamdouh Shoukri, a Muslim and a native of Egypt, defended the event as a matter of “academic freedom.”

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says there are legitimate security concerns along the Canadian border that require tough new measures, and Canadians should realize that both sides will benefit. But she would not comment on specific groups or individuals who may pose a concern, or whether suspected terrorists have been apprehended along the border without the public's knowledge.