Tag: politics

THE BAFN MYSTERY

Who are the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN?

To the uninformed or less-informed eye, the title suggests an aboriginal group of some sort, more than likely a First Nation.  The word Bonnechere suggests a group who calls elements of, or the entirety of the Bonnechere River watershed their home, their ancestral home.  And if you’re from around this part of the 613, you might understandably conclude that they have some affiliation with, or are actually part of the Algonquins of Golden Lake, or Pikwakanagan.

And although BAFN and Pikwakanagan are both listed as members of the AOO, or Algonquins of Ontario, the two barely talk to one another, if at all.  Phone calls to the Band leadership in Golden Lake were initially warm and friendly, until I mentioned BAFN as my point of enquiry.  

There’s been no communication since.

So who are these mystery people and what’s the reason for my interest in them?

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COUNCIL EXHIBITING HR PERPLEXION

Town Council has been struggling with the composition of an HR — Human Resources — committee, or panel, or tribunal, or whatever other term they might come up with to adequately describe a small group of people tasked with representing the town in grievance procedures involving town employees.

There are a plenty of big-ticket, red-seal, five-alarm topics and issues that our seven elected politicians can grapple with, and disagree over, some involving millions of dollars, even tens of millions of dollars.  But it’s this HR issue, a veritable fart in a mitten, that has them contorting themselves with lines of reasoning that shift as easily as the tall verdant grass in a jaunty spring  breeze.

Ma-Te-Way, the Town Hall renovation, construction overages, lights for ballfields, integrity investigations, demands for resignations, demands for defenestration from committees, all of this pales in comparison with the steep and rocky slope that leads to the top of Mount HR.

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CANADIAN WOMAN ARRESTED TRYING TO RE-APPLY FOR U.S. VISA

Jasmine Mooney is a Canadian actress and sometime entrepreneur.  The thirty-five year-old woman from British Columbia, while born in Canada, has spent the last several years working in the United States, in California to be specific.

Then they arrested her.

They being federal U.S. agents — U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents — as she attempted to renew an expired work visa.

Her previous visa was now invalid since the health beverage she was promoting contained hemp, and that’s verboten in America, where they cling to the notion that cannabis and its derivatives are threat to national security.  This in a nation where you can buy milk, guns, and ammunition at the same store.

Jasmine persevered though, getting another job, this one located as well in the United States, and representing another health beverage of some sort, this one hemp-free.  With optimism at what she considered to be a routine visit, she arrived at U.S. Customs with the job offer and her visa paperwork to get herself a revised and up-to-date visa.  Piece of cake.

No such luck.

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CANADIANS SHOW DISPLEASURE WITH TRUMP

You may have noticed recently that there are a fair number of people expressing their displeasure with U.S. president Gotfried Schitzinpantz and his whole gang down in Mar-A-Lardo, Florida.

Displeasure is too polite of a word, of course, but we’re Canadians and being polite is supposed to be a national trait.  That said, it appears Canadians are really really mad with the president, and rightly so.

And we seem to have our own way of exhibiting this anger, unique to us, and somewhat Canadian to a core.

I was driving along the highway last week and saw a black flag fluttering from a flagpole along the side of the road.  It looked to me to be one of those F**k Trudeau flags, although it did cross my mind that maybe the owner of the property hadn’t heard yet that Trudeau had stepped down.  Maybe he was just being prudent and attempting to get the full value for the flag, since he paid good money for it on Amazon, and by Christ he was gonna fly it nevertheless.

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FEDERAL ELECTION APRIL 28, 2025

April 28, 2025.

Not long ago, I shared my thinking on the political lay of the land federally, and in my view, it was pretty bleak.

The wolves outside were huffing and puffing, puffing and huffing, and there was a very real prospect that they were going to blow the entire bloody house down.

Trump in the White House again, and a massive Conservative majority government led by Pierre Poilievre up north, where we are.

Poll after poll after poll as much as confirmed the scenario, until the polls started to change, and not even incrementally really, but dramatically.  But those changes in polling results are something I’ve seen plenty of times before, so I wasn’t ready to go out and buy party balloons and streamers.

And then poll after poll after poll started to come together to form what appeared to be a verifiable trend, that the Liberals were closing ground on the Conservatives, in many cases bouncing back from a 20+ point deficit to within 6-7 points of the leading Tories.

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DID TESLA “GAME” THE FEDERAL REBATE SYSTEM?

Elon Musk is a lot of things, and almost every one of them is not a positive, at least in my mind.  Must I now consider that he might be a crook on top of everything else?

I’m not even entirely sure if the guy is actually human or some lab stunt that got away from the boys and girls who toil down in the Black Ops department.  That’s a gate we want to fix, real fast.

Comedian Mike Myers captures it best when he does his Musk impersonation on Saturday Night Live.  Like a lot of things with Myers, he sort of over-does it, and he may have as well with his Musk schtick, but there’s one part that he seems to nail bang-on.

The part where, in mid-impersonation, he suddenly stops, makes some unnatural body movements, and facial expressions, then says “glitch” followed by “buffering,” as if the insufferable little puke was some sort of Cyborg operating on Dollar Store AA batteries that just ran out.

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CANADA STRIKES BACK: SAAB GRIPEN INSTEAD OF THE F-35?

The Locheed-Martin F-35 is an impressive piece of technology.

The single-engine stealth fighter was identified as being an integral part of the future of the RCAF, or Royal Canadian Air Force.  So much so that the government has moved ahead with the purchase of 88 of the creatures, with the first sixteen of them due to be delivered as early as next year.

This, as presently constituted, is the Cadillac of warplanes, and there’s a reason why Israel bought a truckload of them, because Israel has no choice but have the most formidable airforce in its neighbourhood, if not the best in the world pound for pound.

But there’s a difference between Canada and Israel then it comes to air power.  Foremost is that the Israelis utilize a lot of attack missions, or offensive operations, in which the need for stealth — the ability to approach targets without being detected by enemy air defences — is absolutely essential.  Often, as in almost always, the Israelis need to sneak through hostile and contested airspace to even get close to their targets, let alone return successfully from missions.  The stealth package, therefore, is absolutely essential to their function and mission set.

Canada requires an attack capability as well, of course it does, but our mission-set is mostly air defence of our home territory and air superiority as part of a combined arms approach on the battlefield.  While stealth is an important component to those tasks as well (hell, it’s never a bad thing to be invisible when you’re a warplane), it’s not as vital as it would be to our friends in Israel.

But in the F-35, we’d have it anyways, so what’s not to like?

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A CEASEFIRE WITH RUSSIA?

That Donald Trump desperately wants to win the Nobel Prize for Peace shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.  I’m surprised he hasn’t awarded himself the presidential Medal of Freedom but there’s still time for that, right along with pardoning himself in perpetuity, you know, just in case there’s any discussion that he might have done anything illegal somewhere along the way.

This clown wants the peace prize so badly that he has no care for how many people will have to die for him to achieve it, or for him to be given it, upon his own personal demand, lest he threaten to invade Norway, the home of the award.

He will sell anyone out to get it.  If Melania were to be the last remaining obstacle, I wouldn’t like her chances for longevity in the White House.

After ambushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office with the help of VP Vance and that odious boyfriend-reporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it appeared that Ukraine was in a bit of a rough spot.  Kicked out of the white House unceremoniously, and told that he was being “disrespectful,” Zelenskyy headed for the airport and found himself surrounded by supportive NATO members the very next day, with our own prime minister Justin Trudeau in attendance and among them.  In fact, Trudeau went to Ukraine himself in a demonstration of solidarity which was somewhat ironic, as Trudeau, and the country he led, have been significantly disrespected by Trump and Vance themselves recently. 

It seems that, for the Americans, disrespect is a relative thing.

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BUILDING HOMES TO BEAT TARIFFS

Ontario’s municipalities want to build houses.  Lots of them.

They also want to tackle the problem of housing by taking existing buildings and infrastructure and bringing them up to speed so as to enhance efforts to add to affordable and supportive housing in the province.

All of this is ambitious, and all of this costs money, plenty of it.  And in the face of an economic downturn brought about by reckless and negligent trade policies originating south of the border, it may seem to be a hill with a slope that’s too tough to climb.

But that’s the point.

The Association of Municipalities in Ontario, or AMO, believes that this is precisely the time to beef up investment in housing starts and housing completions, along with upgrades to existing stock and buildings that seem to be lacking purpose.

The municipalities feel that this proposed injection of stimulus money, over and above current levels of funding, is just what the province and its citizens need in the face of troubling economic times.

It’s not a new concept, and it has worked before.

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THOSE DAMNED CAMERAS

I was right, in that I knew I was wrong.

At least partially.  Maybe even more than partially.  But even with the tiniest sliver of potential accuracy, I still seemed to be way out in front of just about everyone other than staff when it came to those bloody cameras.  I have no idea about the car, as in how many, what type, where it/they might be, and what the plan, if any, might be moving forward.

To me, it was almost as if most of council had no idea about much to do with these cameras, certainly already purchased, and that car(s), almost as if they were hearing about it for the first time.

It’s disconcerting.  After watching in disbelief as they waded through a can of crushed armpits on the HR Liaison issue, another treat lay in front of me, as well as the edge-of-the-couch crowd watching live on YouTube, a number that may well have approached the teens.  Not the kids, but the numbers.

Along came the the cars and camera thing.  And while the discussion was much more lucid, it was a discussion where there was a dearth of information available for Council to make a responsible decision.  And I get that.  There’s plenty of detail not included, or not forthcoming, or just plain not there.  So on this point, I’ll grant them a political mulligan, just out of a sense of trying to be a good sport.

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