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Russias current invasion in Ukraine happened because the world didnt do enough to respond when they did it before, former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Friday in Ottawa.

And failing to stop Russia now would also be disastrous in terms of unleashing Chinese aggression, she said.

It is in our interest to stop them, Clinton said, as a keynote speaker at the Liberal policy convention in Ottawa.

Clinton was sharing a stage with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland for a wide-ranging discussion that heavily focused on the threats to democracy and human rights in both Canada and the United States.

Clinton said when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, we all sat him down, we gave speeches about it.

We, you know, expressed our absolute opposition, but nobody really did much. Think of the lesson Putin took from that.

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Then he invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014, and again it was Oh my gosh, we wish he wouldnt do, its really fortunate, but weve got other things weve got to focus on, other places that we have to pay attention to.

And the message Putin took from that was that he can get away with invading other countries and interfere with elections and buy his way to influence all in his great quest to restore Russian greatness.

The only solution, she said, is Ukraine has to win and that means like-minded nations must send everything they can to Ukraine to help them do that.

Freeland agreed and said its not just about Russia.

The single strongest message of deterrence we can send to China is a decisive Ukrainian victory that says to all the worlds dictators, You know what, democracy is prepared to fight back and democracy can actually win.

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1:16Putin on wrong side of history, Freeland warns China amid Xis meeting in Moscow

Clinton also brought with her warnings that Canada will not be immune to the attempts to turn back the clock on human rights, and in particular, reproductive rights, that are happening in the United States.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade abortion rights ruling that allowed for legal abortions.

Make no mistake about it, in our country there is a very significant historical struggle going on, about whether we move forward or the clock is turned back, said Clinton.

And she said some of that debate is being fuelled by misinformation and disinformation campaigns, including by politicians who have started to see democracy as a nuisance to getting what they want.

And I would predict that youre going to have some of that, you know, in the next election whenever it is for you because there are forces in your own country that are trying to figure out whether they can tinker with the clock and maybe turn it back a little, said Clinton.

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Clinton was enthusiastically received by the crowd of about 3,500 people in town for the Liberal convention. Another 500 or so were expected online.

It is the first in-person policy convention for the Liberals since 2018 and likely the last before the next election. Many Liberals wanted the convention to help the party regroup and recharge after an exhausting and difficult few years.

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They got some of that Friday from former prime minister Jean Chretien, who before Clinton took the stage, led the Liberals on a walk down memory lane of the legacies Liberal governments have left.

He listed medicare, official language rights and gun control laws among them, but got the largest and loudest ovation for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Liberals, said Chretien, must never lose their social conscience.

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When you stick to your values, you cannot go wrong, he said. That has been my experience all my life.

The Liberals inclusion of Clinton on the program came in part as a way to draw more people to the convention, and give them a sense they got their moneys worth.

4:57Survey suggests Liberals and Conservatives tied in popularity

But the day before Clintons speech, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau borrowed from some of Clintons messaging as a presidential candidate in 2016, attempting to draw a sharp contrast between what he said was a positive, progressive Liberal vision for Canadas future and the darker, more divisive one offered by his main political rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

That narrative echoes the Democrats approach to challenging former president Donald Trump, who beat Clinton in the 2016 election and is now running for the Republican ticket again.

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Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan, who introduced Clinton and Freeland, said Clintons appearance came because Freeland called to invite her personally. Freeland and Clinton have been close since they met when Clinton was secretary of state.

She has inspired a lot of women to get involved in politics to really have their voices heard and that will speak to a lot of women at the convention, said Bendayan in an interview.

Trudeau was absent from the evening Friday, boarding a plane to fly to London for the coronation of King Charles on Saturday.

© 2023 The Canadian Press

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Hillary Clinton brings warnings on Russia, human rights to Liberal convention - Global News

The most rapid growth in public-sector employment was at the federal level. Government of Canada data indicate the federal public service now employs more than 336,000 people. As Jack Mintz, Presidents Fellow at the University of Calgarys School of Public Policy and former president of the C.D. Howe Institute, wrote in theFinancial Post in January, annual compensation of federal employees has risen from $38 billion to $58 billion since the Justin Trudeau government gained office in 2015 a 52 percent increase that far exceeds the growth in the number of federal employees. And still these workers and their unions want even more.

A study by the Fraser Institute using data for the pandemic year 2021 found that government-sector workers enjoyed a 5.5 percent wage premium over private-sector workers even after controlling for differences in age, gender, education, work type/experience, unionization and other labour market factors. Just two years later, the studys most recent edition finds, the disparity had jumped to 8.5 percent. That was before this weeks deals.

Mintzs own calculations based on Statistics Canada data suggest that the average full-time federal employee makes $75 per hour nearly $150,000 per year in wages and benefits. That is unbelievable, Mintz said in a recent interview with C2C. By contrast, he notes, Oil and gas workers and mining workers, manufacturing workers, make an average $40 per hour.

The public/private disparity in job-related benefits is much larger than the mere wage difference. More than 86 percent of government workers are covered by a registered pension plan compared with just 23 percent of private-sector workers. Government workers are much less likely to lose their jobs. They have longer paid vacations and take an average of five more days off per year for personal reasons than private-sector workers. Moreover, they typically retire more than two years earlier, most likely thanks to their generous pensions.

PSAC was determined to increase that public/private compensation disparity by wresting wage increases of 4.5 percent in each of the next three years. Even that wasnt enough for the CRA workers, who demanded 20.5 percent more over three years plus a one-time adjustment of another 8 percent, for a total of over 30 percent. Presumably this enormous increase, aptly described as unprecedented and crazy, was intended to compensate them for taxing their brains pushing the keys on an almost fully automated tax return system.

No wonder Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre observed during a recent Question Period that, Its one thing to increase the size and cost of the public serviceand another thing to be faced with a massive strike by public servantsbut it is an especially incredible achievement of incompetence to do both of those at the same time.

PSACs excessive demands would normally be tempered by the possibility of back-to-work legislation most recently used in 2021 but the NDPs support of PSACs goals reduced the chances of that to virtually nil. Passing back-to-work legislation with the support of Poilievres Conservatives, though technically feasible, was unthinkable for it would have ended the Liberals de facto coalition deal with the NDP. That put the Trudeau government between the proverbial rock and a hard place: either leave government services that people count on shut down or agree to a settlement that adds many more billions to already perilously high deficit spending.

In the end, the unions demands were met for the 120,000 Treasury Board workers, but dressed up in slightly different clothes. Rather than receiving the demanded 13.5 percent increase over three years, PSAC settled for a nominal 11.5 percent over four years, but retroactive to 2021 and with a 0.5 percent special adjustment added for 2023. The unions website shows a total wage increase of 12.6 percent compounded, with 10.1 percent coming immediately. This is not only higher than what the federal government originally offered but higher than the Public Interest Commission recommended.

Thats not all. According to the unions triumphant press release issued on Monday, PSAC members will also receive a pensionable $2,500 one-time lump sum payment that represents an additional 3.7 percent of salary for the average PSAC member. Moreover, the union also gained new protection against contracting-out with a provision designed to protect public service jobs and reduce contracting out in the federal public service. Federal workers will also be paid to attend training in diversity, equity and inclusion, i.e., radical left-wing ideology. And Indigenous federal employees will get paid time off to go hunting. Its true PSAC is bragging about all of it. On Thursday, the CRA workers tentatively settled for the same deal, considerably less than their original demand, but still a large increase.

Its hard to comprehend how the settlement could have been worse, both for taxpayers and in how it increases the already-dangerous disparity between public and private-sector workers. As government workers try to justify their excessive wage demands, the rest struggle with the rising cost of groceries and other necessities. These are the same private-sector workers whose taxes pay the cost of the public service. But it has become quite clear that PSAC workers and union bosses just dont care. This is a shamefully selfish attitude that tears at the fabric of our nation.

Continued here:
Incredible Achievement of Incompetence: How the Liberals ... - C2C Journal

Norton Lovolds recent letter to the editor should be eye-opening to those of you that agree with him. He shows how brainwashed he, himself, is by the extremist leftwing news media which includes CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR government broadcasting. And others

He believes FOX is a brainwashing arm of the right. Does any of the leftist media amount to brainwashing or propaganda? Where is the truth to be found?

In my experience (at least as experienced as Lovold due to his timeframe references), I have found that most fear and distrust is based on the left. Climate change crisis has been so for over 50 years of my life, and Earth-ending dates by these leftist extremists keep moving outward as to where we will all be dead long before the Earth has been destroyed by us. But we have to follow them today or perish. There's no real science involved, only predictions based on non-science proven conditions. How else do these predictions never, ever come close to reality?

Government education should not be based on right or left propaganda but on real things, like being able to read, write and know some mathematics. Real history the good, the bad and the ugly - should be taught, not propaganda written by people who have a grudge to grind or a narrative to perpetuate.

Slavery has been a worldwide condition primarily driven by totalitarian governments Socialist, Communist, Islamist.

Steve Johnson is a resident of Fargo.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

Link:
Letter: It's the liberals who've been brainwashed - INFORUM

The reigning sentiment in this moment of the coronation is the absurdity of Australians being invited to chant and pledge allegiance to the King and his heirs and successors. The British do pomp and ceremony very well and long may that continue for Australians to enjoy, ignore or have distant interest in as they wish but the time for this country to have its own head of state cannot come soon enough.

That view is not widely shared within our political opposition, which has become embedded in an anachronistic world, such that the phrase modern Liberal Party is an oxymoron. Not just with respect to the partys stance on women, inclusion and diversity, and climate change action but in its relationship with the business world. Their claim to being the party for business has become less and less credible, as their political process has skewed further from democratic to a coronational approach.

When Georgina Downer lost the Mayo byelection in 2018, her father and former Liberal leader Alexander Downer declared, in an embarrassing spectacle, Our family have been nation-builders nation-building is in our blood. He expressed confidence that she would win in the 2019 election, as if this proclamation, dynastic in tone, would garner votes and support. Georgina Downer lost not just once but twice to the indefatigable Rebekha Sharkie, who was also once, like me, a Liberal.

And like the Downers, Liberals who lost to the teal independents behaved in the lead-up to and throughout the election campaign as if they would be re-elected by divine right. During and after the campaign, Alexander Downer had much to say and in one opinion piece which read more like a pronouncement from on high complained that these so-called independent candidates could rob the incumbents of their opportunity to become truly great men.

But since were talking about nation-building Danny Gilbert, who is co-chair of the Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, director of the Business Council of Australia and managing partner of the law firm Gilbert + Tobin, recently and correctly said: This is a nation-building moment. Corporates are corporate citizens, and they are part of the social economic and political infrastructure of this country. They employ a lot of people and have an interest in building astrong, healthy, inclusive democracy.

Gilbert of course was talking about the Voice a proposal that business leaders from the NAB, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, along with BHP, Rio Tinto, Wesfarmers, Woolworths and Coles support, as prominent corporate advocates of the Yes campaign for the referendum. So are many of Australias largest law firms, including Allens, Baker McKenzie, Ashurst, Herbert Smith Freehills and King & Wood Mallesons, to name a few.

Most of them are no doubt frustrated by the Coalitions No approach to everything, from their refusal to negotiate on the safeguard mechanism to the Voice.

Just as the Liberals self-description as a broad church is now patently wrong, given the dominance of the regressive right wing, so is its self-description as the party for business. Since the coup against former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull a highly successful businessman outside politics the partys move to the right has coincided with a stark downward slide in its relationship with the business community, not least because the bulk of the remaining Liberal members of parliament, staffers and ministers are political clones of Turnbulls successors in the Liberal leadership. The careers of both Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton have been enmeshed in politics outside the real world for most of their adult lives. One of the standout demonstrations of their disdain and disrespect for business leaders was when Morrison bellowed on the floor of parliament, with reference to the highly respected former Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate, She. Can. Go.

Both Liberal leaders, and most of their cabinet ministers, have trotted out talking points that are now meaningless variations of we understand business. They say this in practised tones that land like clichs to help them meet their goal for political donations. They are not seeking to understand, learn and grow with the business community with a view to establishing good policy for a strong economy.

When I had a seat in the Liberal party room, Id regularly feign tolerance over the ignorance of some of the so-called political leaders of Dutton and Morrisons ilk. Whether the debate was about climate change, marriage equality or business and the economy, I would often reflect that many of them wouldnt survive two weeks in a good corporation.

Too often when the corporate sector has tried to point the way to a more successful future for business and for the Liberal Party itself it has been condescended to by Dutton in the most cringeworthy way.

In 2017 there was a massive, unified push in favour of marriage equality from corporate bosses across industries and major sporting bodies. Senior executives from the likes of Apple, AGL, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Westpac, Qantas, Telstra and Wesfarmers were all supporters. Peter Dutton, then a government minister, admonished and patronised them, saying those in the CEO world who are on big dollars need to concentrate on their business and frankly on the improvement in the economy. As for social issues, they were to leave that up to the politicians, to the leaders, to talkback hosts like yourself, to normal people who can have those discussions without the millions of dollars being thrown behind campaigns, he told a Radio 2GB presenter.

Yes, he actually included the talkback hosts. Unsurprisingly, business leaders from corporations, law firms and other organisations around the country responded that marriage equality was not only good for their employees and customers but also for Australias global reputation. These experienced, successful business leaders know that companies that embrace diversity perform better than those that dont.

It was eminently predictable that disunity and division within the Liberal Party would get worse upon Dutton declaring support for the No campaign on the Voice. Though the lead-up was frustrating enough, with the constant demands for more detail which already existed on the internet and insistence on seeing the legal advice. The solicitor-generals advice could not have been clearer: the Voice enhances the system of government, is advisory only, has no power of veto, doesnt impede executive government, would not clog up the courts and would not slow down government processes. In a predictably tiresome response, Duttons ministers called for the earlier legal advice to cabinet, ignorant or unaware of the cabinet in confidence protocol.

Since then, Dutton, his deputy Sussan Ley and Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor have embarked on a listening tour around the country. This could have been described as their magical mystery tour, because Dutton and his ministers seem mystified by what theyre hearing from the business community and no doubt the feeling is mutual. After their travels, the best they could come up with was to declare business leaders were being played for fools and to reprimand them for advocating publicly on social causes. Dutton offensively rationalised that corporations are signing up for social causes to satisfy some craving popularity on social media.

Moreover, in relation to energy policy, Dutton said business leaders should be staring down the extremes of ESG, or environmental, social and governance. What does that even mean? Perhaps Dutton and Co need to have it explained to them that stances among corporations on issues such as climate change, corporate governance, integrity and social issues are not only critical in many contexts they are mandatory, as part of a companys risk management and duty to shareholders.

The Liberal Partys blinkered vision and ability to dismiss the strategic and business experience of leaders around the country let alone the legal advice from the solicitor-general is appalling. Their inability to say or do anything meaningful within the body politic is based on their striving for power and control, for the sake of power and control. The Liberal Party has no grasp of how good leaders make their decisions and it cannot read the boardrooms across Australia. This is not about the body politic against the body corporate its just what the Liberal Party has become.

As for nation-building, the Voice wouldnt be the first such opportunity Dutton has missed. He sought to justify his appalling walkout on then prime minister Kevin Rudds apology to the Stolen Generations from his perspective as a young policeman in Queensland seeking practical solutions for Indigenous people. I failed to grasp the symbolic significance, he said.

Yes to the Voice referendum will be more than symbolic it will be a foundational moment for our country, as will the Yes, in a referendum further in the future, to Australia becoming a republic. The right-wing conservatives of the Liberal Party are typically staunch monarchists and theyll be celebrating the coronation chanting and proclaiming at related events. But the Liberal Party has demonstrated its members and MPs are not nation-builders. The party is not modern, not inclusive and certainly no longer the party for business. The party is over.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper onMay 6, 2023 as "No business in the party".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australias leading writers and thinkers.We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth.We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care,on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers.By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential,issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to accountpoliticians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this.In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world,it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

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The Liberal Party is failing business - The Saturday Paper

A horrific recent trend of mass shootings has severely polarized Americans on the topic of firearms. At the center of this heated controversy lies the policy question of gun control: Should the government impose restrictions on firearms and other dangerous weapons to protect the public?

Conservatives turn to the Second Amendment to argue that the Constitution's right to bear arms is sacred; liberals will argue that conservatives are misinterpreting the Second Amendment and that gun control policies have been proven to save lives. The conservative rejoinder to gun control, of course, is that good people with guns can protect the public from bad people with guns.

Yet several recent studies have revealed the exact opposite: In regions dominated by pro-gun politicians, the number of gun deaths is far higher than in areas controlled by pro-gun control politicians.

The pattern of blue regions being safer than red regions held even when analyzing the two most common specific types of gun-related deaths, suicides and homicides.

Foremost among these studies is one produced by the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and first reported on inPolitico. After analyzing gun violence statistics from America's different cultural regions from 2010 to 2020, the authors found that the areas with the highest rates of gun deaths were consistently those run by Republican politicians. Compared to a national rate of 11.4 gun deaths per 100,000 people, the Deep South had 15.6, Greater Appalachia had 13.5, New France (including the heavily French areas of Louisiana) had 19.8 and the Spanish Caribbean (the heavily Latino areas of Florida) had 11.6. Similarly the First Nation (referring to the heavily indigenous areas of Alaska) had 27.6 (by far the largest of any region studied) and the Far West had 12.2.

This is a stark contrast to those regions in the predominantly Democratic Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states: Yankeedom, consisting of New England, upstate New York and the northern parts of the Midwest, has a rate of 8.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people; the "New Netherlands," which consists of New York City and its metropolitan area, has a rate of 3.8; the Left Coast has 9; Greater Polynesia, or Hawaii, has 3.5; El Norte, or the American Southwest, has 10; and both the Midlands and Tidewater regions, which include the Delaware River valley and Chesapeake Bay areas as well as parts of Virginia, then stretching through the Ohio River Valley and other parts of the Midwest, have rates of 10.9. (It is important to note that some of these regions are much more highly populated than others.) All of those gun death rates are lower than the national average of11.4 gun deaths per 100,000 people.

"The Deep South is the most deadly of the large regions at 15.6 per 100,000 residents followed by Greater Appalachia at 13.5," explained Colin Woodard, director of the Nationhood Lab, in his Politico article breaking down the significance of the results."That's triple and quadruple the rate of New Netherland the most densely populated part of the continent which has a rate of 3.8, which is comparable to that of Switzerland. Yankeedom is the next safest at 8.6, which is about half that of Deep South, and Left Coast follows closely behind at 9."

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"Studying these laws are difficult compared to, say, studying the impact of a single law related to child booster seats, or bicycle helmets, or seat belt laws."

The author also noted that the pattern of blue regions being safer than red regions held even when analyzing the two most common specific types of gun-related deaths, suicides and homicides. For gun-related suicides, the New Netherlands was the safest of the highly populated regions (1.4) while Greater Appalachia and the Far West were the deadliest (9.2 and 8.8, respectively); for gun-related homicides, the New Netherlands was the safest highly populated region (2.3) while the Deep South was the least safe highly populated region (6.8).

This is not the first study to suggest a correlation between political leadership that regulates guns and fewer gun-related deaths. In a study published by the journal JAMA Surgery, researchers analyzed two decades worth of gun-related deaths by county by dividing the counties they studied based on how rural or urban they were. They found that during the first decade of the 21st century, "the two most rural county types had statistically more firearm deaths per capita than any other county type, and by the 2010s, the most urban countiescitieswere the safest in terms of intentional firearm death risk."

It is important to note that these statistics often refer to suicides and not homicides. Indeed, the JAMA Surgery study revealed that between 2001 and 2010, America's most rural counties had 25 percent more overall firearm deaths than America's most urban counties and a 54 percent higher rate of gun suicides, but a 50 percent lower rate of gun homicide deaths. They also pointed out that during the 1990s, researchers had not noticed any difference in total intentional firearm deaths between America's most urban and rural counties. This divide only became apparent in the 21st century and appears to be increasing, "with rural counties bearing a great deal more of the burden."

Over the last few decades there have been a number of gun control studies, and over time they have fleshed out a statistical consensus on the efficacy of gun control laws. Studies have established a correlation between loweredviolent crime rates and laws like prohibiting firearms to those associated with domestic violence, mandatory waiting periods, forcing those banned from owning firearms to surrender them andimposing child-access prevention laws. Similarly, studies have repeatedly linked drops in suicide rates to child-access prevention laws, minimum age requirements and mandatory waiting periods. Increases in violent crime, tragically, were linked to concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground laws.

The challenge in analyzing all of this data is that establishing correlation (that two variables are consistently connected to each other in statistics) is very different from establishing causation (that one variable's results caused the other variable's results).

"Studying these laws are difficult compared to say studying the impact of a single law related to child booster seats, or bicycle helmets, or seat belt laws," Dr. Eric Fleegler, who has extensively written about firearms legislation and teaches pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Salon in January. "They're using, 'Hey, we had a change in something, a law, and we look to see if there's a change in something, some outcome fatalities, and we say, 'Yes, these things correlate with each other.' The causation is a much more challenging thing."

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Conservative America has far more gun deaths than liberal America, study finds - Salon