Omar Khadr: One Too Many Apologies - This One May Actually Cost the Liberals

Will The Justin and his merry band of self-righteous, feel-good Liberals apologize for apologizing too much?  This time, was not only the subject of the apology a controversial figure; but the payout was an astronomical amount that reminds one of the phrase "does crime pay?"

Not only did the apology raise eyebrows throughout the country the wife of the deceased US soldier that was killed rightfully so wanted to appeal and block this payment, yet the Liberals, under the dark of night, handed the funds over already (unconfirmed, but where there is smoke, there is fire) avoiding any legal repercussions, and giving the US President real evidence (the opposite of fake news) to point the finger of blame, softness and unaccountability at Canada for the way it handles traitors.

In a country (in particular, certain provinces) where the Liberals can do no wrong, no matter approval ratings, costly green initiatives, massive energy and power gaffes, reduced military and foreign policy initiatives, never ending tax increases, ad scams, forgetting provinces' names (yes, Alberta)...voting Canadians every time drink the kool aid and forgive and forget, usually voting this band of incompetence in again.

However, this one Canadians may remember for a while.

http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/government-has-already-paid-omar-khadr-10-5m-source/wcm/a3f3e172-d72a-4bf4-8cfc-fb6ce3bd163c

The Justin's Messaging and Responses Must be Better Designed by his Puppeteers

I cannot believe the childish (and these were of course rehearsed) answers that the Justin and his advisors have decided to roll out knowing these questions are going to be asked.

Not only are the Liberals "governing by undoing", but now the construed answers and turned around responses must even make Liberal voters cringe.....


http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/justin-trudeau-electoral-reform-broken-promise/wcm/213e6355-448d-4b97-b633-865159102643

Canada's 150th Birthday: 150 of my Favourite Things....

My 150 Greatest (and Favourite) Things about Canada (no particular ranking, other than alphabetically)....

1 1967 (Canada's 100th, Leafs win the Stanley Cup, Expo....)
2 "Eh"
3 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
4 Affordable college and university education (ok, settle down Quebec)
5 Alexander Graham Bell (b. Scotland)
6 Algonquin park
7 All Four seasons
8 Almost every Conn Smythe trophy winner (~95% are Canadian)
9 An anthem that has two languages and are entirely two different songs
10 April Wine
11 Arctic Char
12 Backs of cereal boxes in two languages
13 Banff Naitonal Park
14 Bay of Fundy
15 Beaver tails (yes the pastry)
16 Beavers
17 Bilingualism/le Bilingualisme
18 Blackberry
19 Bob and Doug McKenzie
20 Bruce Trail
21 Butter tarts!
22 Canada Day in Ottawa (or anywhere!)
23 Canada Goose (the animal and the parka)
24 Canada-Russia ‘72 Summit Series
25 Canadian Club rye whiskey
26 Canadian Pacific Railway and the "Last Spike"
27 Canadian spelling
28 CANDU reactor technology
29 Canoes and kayaks (preferably inflatable)
30 Carnaval de Quebec (Quebec)
31 CFL
32 Chateau Frontenac (Quebec)
33 Cirque de Soleil
34 CN Tower
35 Cod tongues
36 Colbie Smulders (hubba hubba)
37 Concept of Standardized Time zones (thanks Sir Sanford Flemming – the travel industry loves you when they push their jet lag and 7 day minimum trips)
38 Confederation Bridge
39 Cottage country
40 Cross Country Skiing
41 Curling
42 Cycling through Eastern Townships
43 Darryl Sittler (hey I met him!)
44 Don Cherry
45 Downhill skiing (Whistler, Mt. Tremblant, Big White, Cypress, Grouse Mountain, Blue Mountain)
46 Drinking a Ceasar
47 East coast lobster dinner…in a church basement in PEI
48 Every province and territory
49 Five dollar note with the kids playing hockey on the back
50 Geddy Lee
51 George street festival (St. John’s)
52 Giant nickel in Sudbury
53 Gordon Korman (author)
54 Gordon Lightfoot
55 Green Saskatchewan Roughrider fans
56 Grey Cup week….in any Canadian city
57 Hockey
58 Hockey Hall of Fame
59 Hockey Night in Canada
60 Hotel de Glace (Quebec)
61 Hudson's Bay Company (the world's oldest incorporated company)
62 Incredible camping!
63 incredible hiking! (Joffre Lakes, Elphin Lakes, Whistler)
64 Insulin (Banting and Best)
65 Jacques Cartier (honorary Canadian)
66 Kitsilano Beach
67 Klondike Gold Rush
68 La Citadelle de Quebec
69 La Francophonie
70 Lacrosse
71 Lake Louise
72 Long and McQuade
73 Manon Rheaume
74 Maple Syrup
75 Maple syrup festival (Elmira)
76 Marcia McMillan (hubba hubba)
77 Member of the Commonwealth and yes, we have a Queen for that
78 Montreal “establishments”
79 Montreal smoked meat
80 Moosehead beer (the last of the Canadian independents)
81 Mountain Equipment Co-Op
82 Mr. Dee
83 Newfoundland accent
84 Niagara falls
85 Northern lights
86 Okanagan wine (LCBO please wake up!)
87 Our banks (great dividend payers)
88 Outdoor skating…on a pond
89 Pacific and Atlalntic Salmon
90 Parliament Hill (although I don't always agree with what goes on there or who is running it)
91 PEI Potatoes
92 Pierre Berton's books
93 Pizza Pizza
94 Plentiful and cheap electricity (until Wynn f$%&ed it all up)
95 Polar Bear viewing in Manitoba
96 Portaging from lake to lake (in Algonquin)
97 Poutine
98 Rideau Canal
99 Roch Carrier
100 Rush
101 Saguenay River Fjord (Quebec)
102 Saint Joseph’s Oratory (Montreal)
103 Samuel de Champlain
104 Santa in the North Pole = Canadian
105 Screeched in (Nfld)
106 Shinny hockey
107 Signal hill, St. John's
108 Silver Dart
109 Sir Alexander Mackenzie
110 Sir Julian Byng (although British), Lady Byng (as in the trophy) and more importantly "Byng's Boys" whom he lead at the battle of Vimy Ridge
111 Skating on the Rideau Canal, Ottawa
112 Snow shoeing
113 Some really really really Great Lakes
114 Sortilege maple whiskey, Pinnacle Ice Cider, Coureurs du Bois maple Irish Cream, Caribou or any booze from Quebec
115 St. Hubert
116 Stanley Cup
117 Stompin' Tom Connors
118 Street hockey
119 Sunsets in Whitehorse
120 Swimming in a lake (cold or not)
121 Swiss Chalet
122 Tecumseh
123 Terry Fox
124 Thanksgiving (and although the Americans may not like to hear it, Sir Martin Frobisher may have held the first in 1578 in Nfld.)
125 The ability to one day be a “Snowbird”
126 The Avro Arrow
127 The Blue nose
128 The Calgary Stampede
129 The Canadian Flag
130 The Group of Seven
131 The names of our change
132 The Rocky Mountains
133 The Tragically Hip
134 The Trailer Park Boys
135 The Trews
136 Tim Horton and the franchises with his name on them (there is only one Tim Horton, but for some reason it is pluralized)
137 Time zones invented by Sir Sanford Flemming
138 Toques and the word “Toque” (I just love saying it)
139 Toronto Argonauts - North America's OLDEST professional sports team
 140 Toronto patios (well, anywhere really)
141 Tourtiere
142 Trans Canada Highway (amazing road trips and a lot of nothing)
143 Uranium (yes I said it, we are good at mining it and using it properly)
144 VIA Business class between Toronto and Montreal
145 Vimy ridge
146 Wayne Gretzky (I met him!)
147 We have a Queen (like it or not!)
148 Wheat fields of Saskatchewan
149 Whistler
150 White water rafting near Ottawa (Forrester's Falls)

....and a whole bunch of others I left out.

BANANA and NIMBY Groups: The World Wants Canadian Oil and Gas...If this was the Marijuana Industry, Government Would be Bending Backwards

If any industry in the world (nevermind the controversial marijuana industry) had i) such positive demand and positive supply economics, ii) the word's best practices and standards, iii) the rule of law and lowest political risk for foreign and domestic investors, iv) high barriers to entry and v) was producing such a non-luxury product that fuelled transportation, energy, heating homes, manufacturing and GDP, governments would be bending over backwards to foster that industry.

As an example to measure the standard of "bending over backwards", I would use the provincial Liberals in Ontario of what yoga experts they are in "bending over backwards" to shut down coal fired plants, cancelling contracts, instigating wind energy at all costs (and all tax breaks), approving less-than-cost power agreements with NY and other neighbouring jurisdictions and saddling all Ontarians with bills that are five to eight times larger than what they need to be thanks to unnecessary debt charges and delivery charges on top of the cost of electricity and over a decade of energy gaffes, starting with its previous leader Dalton McGuinty.

But nooooooo, the vocal and persistent leftist BANANA ("Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Nobody") and NIMBY ("Not In My BackYard") groups have head-locked, if not tricked, the media into siding with the "big, bad, dirty" side of anything not on their approved list and as such whenever someone mentions oil on a news cast, the accompanying image behind the broadcaster is one of shock and horror.

Of course, the answers from the naysayers to this would be "But IF and WHEN there is a spill...we should not have new pipelines and reliance on oil".  Based on this argument, we should not have roads because there are cars that can have accidents and spill their chemicals on the road and burn into the air; we should not have airports, because "what if there was an accident?" like crashing into an urban centre, we should not have railways, because if the train derails that could kill dozens of people or the train's cargo may spill.  LET'S STOP ALL TRANSPORTATION AND GO BACK TO HORSE AND BUGGY BASED ON "WHAT IF THERE WILL BE AN ACCIDENT".

From the article, "...let’s build the safe, clean infrastructure we need to transport products that are essential and in demand. And let’s allow the whole world to benefit from Canadian energy and expertise."  For an unbiased contemplation on this statement, remove "energy"from the sentence, and it is purely the Canadian thing to do.  

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/a-new-poll-shows-the-world-prefers-canadian-oil-and-gas-over-other-exporters-so-lets-start-getting-it-to-them

Conservative Leadership Race: Maxime Bernier the Only Bilingual Candidate of the Group that Can Take on The Justin

Like many years in the CFL where the West Division has been so dominant and the Calgary Stampeders should have been awarded the Grey Cup after about week five, tonight we will see Maxime Bernier awarded the Conservative party leadership in order to take on The Justin in  2019. 

As evidenced by the bilingual debates (the only comparable real life experience for the eventual spot in the House of Commons), there were only one to two candidates out of the 13, none making it more of a mockery than Kevin O'Leary's post French debate entrance and early exit from the race and Deepak Obrai's nonsensical candidacy.

We'll see if there is a 2016 Ottawa RedBLACKS upset victory.

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/five-key-moments-from-the-conservative-party-leadership-campaign-plus-a-handy-timeline&pubdate=2017-05-27

Hong Kong: If You Can Figure out Directions There, You Can Make It Anywhere...

(Originally drafted May 12th, 2017; however, was not able to be posted through Blogger and was subsequently copied and pasted here)

After my enjoyable Singapore Airlines flight, I managed to clear customs and receive my checked baggage quickly then discovered where the shuttle desk was located. 

An hour later and HK$150 (about C$30), I arrived at the Dorsett Wan Chai, a  4 star hotel booked on Hotwire.  As I was early, the room was not ready and was offered to check in earlier with a room with two single beds. As I had been flying for almost an entire day I seriously thought about that trade off of getting into a shower and a bed earlier. Regardless, a friend of mine from Vancouver was in town and I ventured out to TST to meet him in the hopes of catching the last period of the Senators versus Rangers game (easy math on time zones when only 12 hours apart). 

As he had been there before (and the Senators defeated the Rangers already) he quickly introduced me to the Statues of Stars (where of course I had to have my picture taken in fight pose with Bruce Lee). From there we wandered  TST where he introduced me to 7-11 "travellers" as beers in a bar are way too expensive. Regardless, we ended up at Ned Kelley's, Hong Kong's oldest pub. HK$75 for a pint, or about $15.  So back to the 7-11 we went for round three. 

We explored a little more of TST eventually settling into lunch at Wollomoloo steakhouse for a salad and pizza (overpriced). He later took off to head to the airport while I walked along the main boulevard and headed back on the Star ferry for a magnificent although hazy view of the city. 

Once at the the hotel, I checked into my room, finally decided on the original queen bed (at least that's what Hotwire said). Arriving there, the Queen bed was the smallest queen I've seen (more for bedding show room demos) and the room smelled like new paint. My patience wearing thin, I requested a room change and was given a larger room without a view. I immediately discovered the washroom was large due to its  wheelchair accessibility.  It was not a problem for me and thought it would be good for the next two days. 

After a long awaited shower, I discovered the shallow tiled barrier on the floor was breached somewhere and the water spread all over the bathroom floor. The towels I had were all used to mop up the floor. As I was eager to explore I simply notified the front desk as I was leaving fr the day in hopes it would be fixed or I would have a new room upon my return. 

The happy hour scene in Hong Kong is much sought after as it is an expensive city and any break on food and drinks is welcomed.  My friend earlier in the day pointed out a place called Stone Nullah that had a happy hour called "Beat the clock".   Starting at 5 pm drinks were around HK$5 and doubled in price every hour. Unfortunately the rules had changed, and when I arrived it was now HK$109 for as many drinks the bartender could keep up with and as many chicken fingers and strips of bacon the kitchen could crank out. I met up with a couple of the ex-pat university students from Los Angeles and London. They passed on tips for areas to go see, live music and the in-city horse racing track. 

After having had my fill (remember I haven't slept since since Monday morning, and it's now Wednesday evening Hong Kong time) I headed back to the hotel for a free shuttle to pier 9 from where I could see some of the office towers light show put on Nightly (lasers, graphics , bright lights etc...I'm sure Premier Kathleen Wynne would be salivating at the Hydro bill these buildings would be paying if they were along Bay street). After a wander around the piers, the large ferris wheel and lion's heads I caught the shuttle back to the hotel. With the hopes of a recommended area to go see,  I could barely keep my head up as I slouched in the shuttle bus chairs. Coming back to my hotel room, the hotel merely gave me new towels and ignored the sloppy mess that was there. A phone call to the front desk, wait five minutes , catch up on the Bloomberg US television, cleaning staff arrives, everyone knows about this now (but if course not repaired), then I immediately turn in. 

The next day I awoke after a great sleep. I took the hotel shuttle to Causeway Bay this time and questioned why this place ranks so high of all the areas to see in Hong Kong. If shopping and labels are your thing, then it is a mecca. After WiFi hopping, I searched for buses on Google maps to Stanley Markets and luckily was standing very near the #40 bus stop. With almost the correct change (HK$10.80) I took a pleasant and scenic 40 minutes bus ride South. A much hotter and sunnier day, the overhead stall canopies were a welcomed shade beak. 

After being followed by a short, chubby, crazy lady yelling at me, claiming she was going to call the cops and that I should delete the pictures from my phone, I went searching for lunch.  As I perused the overpriced water front  restaurants, guess who found me and was continuing to yell at me? As she could not even keep up with a  normal walking pace I headed to the Stanley Plaza where I found a grocery store and had lunch there (bananas and something from the pastry section). Afterwards I walked back along the waterfront, expecting to run into my new friend again, I found a hole in the wall ("Gaucho 's Cafe") and had a cold Corona overlooking the water. It was back to the #40 bus stop, to the hotel and drop off my market purchases.

From there I had to figure out the subway system going back to TST and to the Eye Bar, a rooftop restaurant and patio overlooking the island side. Once again happy hour was the strategy, which meant beers were a somewhat normal price in C$ terms. After conversing with a few like minded tourists around me and taking in the light show firm a different view point of the city, I headed out for live music as suggested by the ex pat stirrers the night before. I headed back to Wan Chai to a place called "The Wanch" , an ex pat hangout. A decent band paying the odd Aussie tune I was looking for something more lively and headed back to a place I heard on the way. A fantastic cover band playing Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Cream like covers was filling the street from this open window bar. After a couple of Coronas I realized the females around were a little more scantily dressed than the millions of others I had seen in the city and realized I was on a part of Lockhart st that had "other entertainment".  As I walked back to the hotel, there was no shortage of invites to come into their neon lit establishments, one older lady even going so far as to grab my arm to motion me in. All taken in stride (yet discouraged at paying C$15 for a beer no matter where you went), I entered my new " deluxe upgrade" room (with a non-flooding shower) and fell asleep after another full day. 

The city is a must see despite its craziness and chaos.  Every space is used and what would be used for homeless people under a bridge in Toronto, is an entire market in Hong Kong.  Directions are never simple ("just over there" or "by the big brown hotel building" to someone never turned out that easy for me in navigating through the city).  Just arriving after 23.5 hours of commuting, did not leave me in the "sampling all food mood", as such will have to be another trip. After all it was only two days. Be warned, it is an expensive city (food, drinks, shopping); however, sticking to such simple delights as a Star Ferry ride or a bus ride to a further destination will allow you to have a good perspective of the city. The transportation (ferries, buses, ferries) is excellent and very reasonable (all my trips were no more than HK$14). The MRT subway trains are a marvel to see   - efficient, clean, timely and long.  Not only that but about four shopping levels below ground. The traffic is an opposite and should be considered when returning to the airport on a shuttle or taxi. As in my return, the shuttle to the airport that was 20 minutes late. 

Next up, Bali...

Around the World...in 15 Days

(Originally drafted May 8th, 2017; however, was not able to be posted through Blogger and was subsequently copied and pasted here) 

Thanks to an uncertain employment situation, a recent move back to Toronto, a (somewhat) less expensive deal that was offered from Flight Centre, I am on my way "around the world" on a set of long haul flights.  Although the cities were pre-selected, the flights with exception of Toronto to San Francisco, are all on Singapore Airlines, of which I have read and heard a lot of positive things.  I have never flown before with this airline (and thankfully, part of the Star Alliance for Aeroplan points!).  

The successive cities are as follows: Hong Kong, Bali, Singapore, Frankfurt and New York. All are cities/countries I have never travelled through before (with exception of New York), which was another reason in taking on this travel schedule.  

As I leave from Toronto (YYZ), I have a connection in San Francisco (SFO) before the 14 hours and 20 minutes flight to Hong Kong.  Currently I'm on the only Air Canada leg to San Francisco, and as I normally do on Air Canada flights I try to watch the film choices under Franco Cinema (some to improve my listening ear, others are in English sub titles so I can fall asleep with ear plugs in and not the crappy ear phones to listen).  The movie I caught was called "Votez Bougon" and even in English sub titles the outrageous political themes and concepts will strike a nerve.  The movie is about a motley family on welfare with variously checked they pull to "increase their wealth" on a temporary basis. After much whinging and complaining at the TV, the always dishevelled, Molson Export drinking M. Bougon suddenly finds himself on a talk show spewing his complaints of political corruption coming from a place of real life experiences and mops up a long time serving Quebec politician on a well known talk show. From there a blue collar party was formed, an intentionally phallic party name chosen and his unlikely election campaign results in him becoming premier. 

A few words about the SFO on the 14 hours and 20 minutes flight to Hong Kong....