National
Canadian mayor has bank account garnished after standing up to LGBT activists
From LifeSiteNews
The garnishment was issued by the court and delivered to the CIBC in Emo, which is the only bank in that community.
LGBT activists aren’t used to politicians refusing to do what they say. That’s why Mayor Harold McQuaker of Emo, Ontario—population 1,200—has become a source of their ire.
As I reported previously, in 2020 Emo’s town council voted not to issue a “Pride Proclamation” or fly the LGBT flag. The town hall doesn’t even have a flagpole. In response, Borderland Pride sued the town, and last month the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered the township to pay the LGBT group $10,000, and McQuaker was ordered to personally pay $5,000 and take a re-education class called “Human Rights 101.”
The town council has yet to vote on whether to pay the fine or appeal, but McQuaker told the Toronto Sun that he would not be “extorted” and thus would not be paying the fine, attending the re-education classes, or sanctioning “Drag Queen Story Hour” in the local library—one of the events Borderland Pride is calling for.
In response, Borderland Pride went around the mayor and requested that $5,000 be taken directly from his bank account. The request granted, they went on a victory lap on social media. “Sure, sex is great, but have you ever garnished your mayor’s bank account after he publicly refused to comply with a Tribunal’s order to pay damages?” the group posted on Facebook. The “damages,” of course, were the mayor declining to proactively endorse their ideology.
“Mayor McQuaker’s comments in the Toronto Sun and other media were very clear that he did not respect nor intend to comply with the Tribunal’s orders,” Borderland Pride told the Sun. “Consequently, it was apparent he would not voluntarily make payment of the damages ordered. We took immediate action to garnish his bank account. The garnishment was issued by the court and delivered to the CIBC in Emo, which is the only bank in that community.”
“There is no hearing or application to issue a notice of garnishment – it is a service provided at the court counter or online once a person has an order for the payment of money,” Borderland Pride stated. “Orders of the Tribunal can be enforced in the same manner as any civil judgment for the payment of money. We intend to ensure the Tribunal’s orders are complied with.” Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun sounded the alarm:
Cancel culture is cancelling this mayor and digging into his personal savings too. On a weak premise that there is discrimination of LGBT people there, the enforcement is harsher than most violent criminals receive. It seems like a heavy-handed, undemocratic move, not to mention a violation of personal finances, and cruel and unusual punishment. It’s also a slippery slope. The state using legal instruments to take from one person and give to others amounts to communism and authoritarianism that should scare every citizen. First, we saw government and banks freezing accounts of pandemic lockdown protesters, seizing donations to crowdfunding sites, and now in woke Canada comes word they can raid bank accounts, too.
Despite Borderland Pride’s insistence that they are mere enforcers of tolerance, their Facebook page features post after post mocking those who object to the fact that their mayor and their community is being bullied. It also includes images like this:
The meaning of that picture is pretty clear—and just imagine if the roles were reversed. What would Borderland Pride say if a Christian posted a photo of a steamroller with a cross on it, chasing screaming people labeled “LGBT values” and “same-sex ‘marriage’” on it? I think we know. They would say that it was threatening and inappropriate. Yet a rainbow steamroller crushing screaming people labeled “Traditional Family” and “Christian values” and “Sanctity of marriage” is just fine. This isn’t just a double standard—it is a new standard, where the values of LGBT activists take precedence over those of everyone else.
Borderland Pride’s celebratory posts about garnishing the bank account of a 77-year-old great-grandfather tell us precisely who they are—many of the posts and comments from LGBT activists are frankly too vile to publish (suffice it to say they refer to performing sex acts in public). Canada is also getting a good look at the agenda of LGBT activists once again. They do not want “tolerance,” or to “live and let live”—they want their flag hanging from government buildings, politicians obediently proclaiming a celebration of their activities, and drag queens in local libraries.
It was never about tolerance.
From the Fraser Institute
By: Jake Fuss and Tegan Hill
Two federal cabinet ministers criticized the report because it “fails to properly acknowledge that CEBA was designed and delivered during a global pandemic.” Translation—taxpayer money can be mismanaged so long as it’s delivered quickly, and we can use an emergency as an excuse for wasteful spending
According to a new report by Canada’s auditor general, in another of example of mismanagement and waste during the COVID pandemic, nearly 10 per cent—or $3.5 billion—of the federal government’s Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans went to ineligible businesses.
The report said “the program was not managed with due regard for value for money” and the government “did not effectively oversee the CEBA program.”
In response, two federal cabinet ministers criticized the report because it “fails to properly acknowledge that CEBA was designed and delivered during a global pandemic.”
Translation—taxpayer money can be mismanaged so long as it’s delivered quickly, and we can use an emergency as an excuse for wasteful spending. Accountability to the public is evidently an afterthought.
Of course, this is only the latest revelation of Trudeau government mismanagement during COVID. The government spent huge sums of taxpayer money on expensive programs such as the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). But a substantial share of this spending was simply wasted.
For example, an earlier report in 2022 by the auditor general found that ineligible individuals received $4.6 billion in CERB payments and other benefits. Ineligible recipients included 1,522 prisoners, 391 dead people and 434 children too young to be eligible. And 51,049 employers incorrectly received $9.9 billion in wage subsidies even though they did not have a sufficient drop in revenue to be eligible for the subsidies.
The federal government also spent billions on Canadians who probably didn’t need the money. An analysis published in 2020 by the Fraser Institute estimated that $11.8 billion in CERB payments went to eligible young people (ages 15 to 24) living with their parents in households with at least $100,000 in income. And an estimated $7.0 billion in CERB payments went to spouses in families with at least $100,000 in household income.
COVID-related programs were not only poorly targeted, but many payments surpassed the level required to restore the regular income of many recipients. According to the auditor general, the lowest-income Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) recipients could take in more money from government benefits than from working, and the program “represented a disincentive to work, which impacted some labour markets at a crucial time when the need for employees was trending upwards.”
The total costs of fiscal waste during COVID are difficult to nail down. But our 2023 study estimated that one in four dollars of federal pandemic spending was wasted. That amounts to at least $89.9 billion in total fiscal waste. For context, that’s roughly what the British Columbia government spends annually in its entire budget for health care, education, social services, infrastructure, etc.
Finally, because the Trudeau government borrowed money to finance its excessive and wasteful COVID spending, Canadians will pay an estimated $21.1 billion in debt interest costs (over a 10-year period) that are directly attributable to this fiscal waste.
The new report by the auditor general is the latest proof of mismanagement by Ottawa during COVID, to the tune of billions of dollars in waste. Unfortunately, the government continues to scoff at the bill it’s handed to taxpayers for the waste it produced.
Jake Fuss
Tegan Hill
Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
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TikTok challenges Canada’s decision to shut down its operations, citing its role in combating “misinformation” as a reason the government should let it stay in the country.
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In Canada, TikTok is attempting to get the authorities to reverse the decision to shut down its business operations by going to court – but also by recommending itself as a proven and reliable ally in combating “harmful content” and “misinformation.”
Canada last month moved to shut down TikTok’s operations, without banning the app itself. All this is happening ahead of federal elections amid the government’s efforts to control social media narratives, always citing fears of “misinformation” and “foreign interference” as the reasons. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was accused of – via its parent company – representing “specific national security risks” when the decision regarding its corporate presence was made in November; no details have been made public regarding those alleged risks, however. Now the TikTok Canada director of public policy and government affairs, Steve de Eyre, is telling the local press that the newly created circumstances are making it difficult for the company to work with election regulators and “civil society” to ensure election integrity – something Eyre said was previously successfully done. In 2021, he noted, TikTok initiated collaboration with Elections Canada (the agency that organizes elections and has the power to flag social media content) which included TikTok adding links to all election-related videos that directed users toward “verified information.” And the following year, TikTok was invested in monitoring its platform for “potentially violent” content, during the Freedom Convoy protests against Covid mandates. More recently, TikTok was also on its toes for “foreign interference and hateful content” related to Brampton clashes between Sikhs and Hindus. This approach, Eyre argues, is now jeopardized because TikTok employees are not present in Canada, who would be able to inform the platform’s decisions in terms of the political and cultural “context” in Canada. And the political context is that of the Trudeau government playing the election misinformation card indirectly and directly, to put pressure on social sites. Even though the decision regarding the company’s business operations has been described by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly as “a message to China” – it’s really a message to TikTok, since the app remains available, but has been “put on notice.” |
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