National
The Queen visited Canada more than any other country during her long reign
By Michael MacDonald in Halifax
It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the Queen held a special place in her heart for Canada.
As an ardent world traveller, she visited this country more than any other during her reign, and she was in the habit of referring to it as home.
If you include overnight visits and aircraft refuelling stops, the Queen visited Canada no less than 31 times since her coronation in June 1952, according to the Canadian Heritage Department.
In second place is Australia with 18 visits, including stopovers, according to the The Royal Family’s official website.
“I think she really developed a warm affection for us,” says Barry MacKenzie, a spokesman for the Monarchist League of Canada. “She’s done a marvellous job of taking advantage of all of those opportunities to meet Canadians and to develop a taste for life here.”
Here are some highlighfts from her visits:
1. Fall 1951
Royal watchers say the Queen’s close relationship with Canada started even before she acceded to the throne.
On Oct. 8, 1951, Princess Elizabeth arrived at Montréal–Dorval International Airport, where she was met by 15,000 people on the tarmac.
Over the next 33 days, the princess and her husband, Prince Philip, travelled across the country and back again, visiting a total of 60 communities and every province.
She took in hockey games in Montreal and Toronto, made a side trip to Washington, D.C., to visit U.S. President Harry Truman, and square danced at Rideau Hall.
The quiet, 25-year-old princess and the gregarious prince were met by large crowds wherever they went, with some reports suggesting that one million people turned out to see them in Toronto and even more showed up in Montreal.
“It was an incredible feat of stamina,” says MacKenzie, a history instructor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S.
“People recognized that this young woman was next in line …. And she also had the added bonus of having a husband who was a war hero. They were young. They were beautiful.”
At the end of the tour, in a farewell radio message broadcast from St. John’s, N.L., Princess Elizabeth referred to Canada as her “second home.”
“Wherever we have been throughout the 10 provinces … we have been welcomed with a warmth of heart that has made us feel how truly we belong to Canada.”
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2. Fall 1957
The Queen’s first official visit to Canada was a high-profile, four-day tour that included her first ever televised speech, broadcast live from Rideau Hall on Oct. 13, 1957.
The next day, she officially opened a new session of Parliament by reading the speech from the throne in the Senate chamber, with Prince Philip at her side.
It was the first time a reigning monarch opened the Canadian Parliament. The speech was also carried live on television.
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3. Summer 1959
The longest royal tour in Canadian history was a gruelling, 45-day marathon that started on June 18, 1959 in eastern Newfoundland.
The highlight of the visit was the official opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway on June 26, when the Queen was joined by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia at the lift-lock near St. Lambert, Ont.
Five days later, on Canada Day, the Queen delivered a televised address from a sunny veranda at Rideau Hall.
“If I have helped you feel proud of being Canadian, I shall feel well satisfied, because I believe with all conviction that this country can look to a glorious future,” she said.
The Queen and Philip travelled to every province and both territories, logging 24,000 kilometres.
“This is the first time since she became Queen that everyone in Canada had the opportunity to see her,” says MacKenzie. “And it’s the last time that we see one of these huge undertakings.”
The official itinerary included a trip to the Calgary Stampede, where Philip donned a cowboy hat, and numerous stops along the Great Lakes, including a trip to the World’s Fair in Chicago.
On the last leg of their tour, the young couple made an unscheduled stop in eastern New Brunswick to meet the families of fishermen who died on the night of June 20-21 when a hurricane roared over the Northumberland Strait. The brutal storm capsized more than two dozen fishing boats, killing 35 men and boys — most of them from the village of Escuminac.
At Pointe-du-Chêne, N.B., the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh met with 16 grieving widows and their families on July 29.
Among them was a “tiny grey-haired woman in black, surrounded by 12 of her 18 surviving children,” The Canadian Press reported at the time.
“(She) sat on a Northumberland Strait wharf …. and blinked back the tears as she received a sympathetic smile and kind word from Queen Elizabeth.”
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4. Summer 1967
The Queen and Prince Philip spent six days in Ottawa and Montreal to celebrate Canada’s centennial.
Under bright sunshine on Parliament Hill, 50,000 people watched as the Queen cut into a gigantic birthday cake decorated with the coat of arms of each province and territory.
And in Montreal, the Queen rode the automated monorail that was part of the Expo 67 international exhibition.
That brief visit was marked by tight security as organizers wanted to avoid what happened in 1964 when the Queen’s visit to Quebec City was marred by waves of police using truncheons to round up separatist protesters who were shouting slogans and singing irreverent songs.
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5. Spring 1982
A four-day tour of Ottawa culminated in a ceremony on a sleet-soaked Parliament Hill, where the Queen joined Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act
The act gives the Canadian Parliament the right to amend the constitution without the approval of the British Parliament.
The Act’s passage, marked by royal assent from the Queen on April 17, 1982, signalled the last stage of Canada’s political evolution from colony to fully independent state.
But it did not signal the end of the monarchy in Canada. Far from it. The Queen remained Canada’s head of state and she retained her title as Queen of Canada.
“She wasn’t signing a document and giving us our freedom,” says MacKenzie. “This was the Queen of Canada signing an act that had been passed in her name in the Canadian Parliament …. It was not a declaration of independence.”
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6. Summer 2010
On the Queen’s final visit to Canada, she told a crowd in Halifax exactly how she felt about this vast part of her realm.
“It is very good to be home,” she said on June 28 as she started a nine-day tour that would also take her to Ottawa, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Ont., and Toronto.
“My mother once said that this country felt like a home away from home for the Queen of Canada …. I am pleased to report that it still does.”
In Ottawa, she celebrated Canada Day with a crowd of 70,000 on Parliament Hill, where she took a more wistful tone in her speech.
“During my lifetime, I have been witness to this country for more than half its history since Confederation,” she said. “I have watched with enormous admiration how Canada has grown and matured while remaining true to its history, its distinctive character and its values.”
In her book, “A Royal Couple in Canada,” author Allison Lawlor says that on each of the Queen’s many visits to Canada, she “succeeded in gracefully lifting Canadians out of their everyday lives for a few moments.”
“Not only has she witnessed the growth of Canada, but generations of Canadians have watched the progression in her life as she moved from being their beautiful princess on her first visit in 1951, to a young mother raising four children, to a dignified Queen, and … as an elder, worldly stateswoman.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2022.
espionage
China bragged it meddled in 41 candidates’ campaigns in Canada’s 2019 election: report
From LifeSiteNews
Toronto area ridings, including one in the city of Markham which saw Trudeau personally campaign in, are now under investigation by the ongoing Commission on Foreign Interference.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) boasted it successfully managed to get no less than eight of some 41 preferred candidates elected in Canada’s 2019 federal election, an investigative reporter’s findings have revealed.
Investigative journalist Sam Cooper, who works for The Bureau, recently made known that he was able to obtain an analysis published in February 2021 by a CCP-run group called All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), which included the shocking revelations.
The 2019 federal election saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government re-elected to a second term. In that election, there were no less than 41 “distinguished Chinese candidates” who were officially endorsed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in Toronto-area ridings that saw Trudeau personally campaign.
According to the ACFROC report, which is the main agency of the CCP’s United Front, a political group that connects mainland China to Chinese in other nations, “Trudeau Jr. personally went to seek votes at a Chinese supermarket in Markham, an area of Toronto where Chinese people live, demonstrating that Chinese votes play an important role in the general election.”
As it stands now, the Toronto area ridings, including one in the city of Markham which saw Trudeau personally campaign in, are now under investigation by the ongoing Commission on Foreign Interference. A report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) has shown that there are no less than 11 candidates known to have been directly influenced by China.
The main goal of the ACFROC is to “mobilize diaspora networks” that are in line with the will of the CCP, as noted by Alex Joske, author of the 2022 book Spies and Lies.
The report said that popular Chinese app WeChat was used to mobilize voters, going all the way back to the 2015 and 2011 elections.
According to Charles Burton, an expert in the Chinese language who looked at the ACFROC report for The Bureau, the use of the term “distinguished” to refer to the Chinese candidates who were nominated “implies identification of candidates potentially useful to the United Front’s aims.”
“This article clearly aims to guide the agents of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department in their strategic work to gain leverage for China by placing persons of Chinese origin into the Parliament of Canada,” noted Burton.
LifeSiteNews recently reported that Cooper unveiled how four politicians along with one government advisor were named as allegedly being involved in a scheme backed by the CCP to purposely interfere in Canada’s electoral process.
The Foreign Interference Commission was convened to “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.”
The commission is headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who had earlier said she and her lawyers will remain “impartial” and will not be influenced by politics. In January, Hogue said that she would “uncover the truth whatever it may be.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, documents from a federal inquiry looking at meddling in Canada’s past two elections by foreign state actors show that agents of the CCP allegedly worked at Elections Canada polling centers during the 2021 campaign.
To date, Trudeau has been coy and has never explicitly stated whether he was ever told by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that CCP agents’ actions were in breach of the nation’s Elections Act.
A few months ago, the head of Canada’s intelligence agency testified under oath that he gave Trudeau multiple warnings that agents of the CCP were going after Conservative MPs, yet the prime minister has denied receiving these warnings.
Business
Claiming the Carbon Tax is Not Inflationary Defies Belief – So Do Media Reports About Inflation
From EnergyNow.ca
By Jim Warren
Back in March 2019, the average price for a pound of lean ground beef at five major chain grocery outlets in Regina was $4.71. In September 2024 lean ground at the five big chain outlets averaged $7.90 — a 68% increase over the past five years… these price increases are a far cry from the official statistic for accumulated inflation of 21% over the same period.
Kudos to the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA). They have provided us with some valuable insight into the inflationary effects of Canada’s carbon tax.
This past August, the CTA published a brief to the federal government which among other things called for a moratorium on the carbon tax for diesel fuel.
In commenting on the brief, CTA president Stephen Laskowski said, “The carbon tax on diesel fuel is currently having zero impact on the environment and is only serving to needlessly drive up costs for every good purchased by Canadian families and businesses. The carbon tax needs to be repealed from diesel fuel until viable propulsion alternatives are available for the industry and the Canadian supply chain to choose from.”
The CTA estimates that as of 2024 the carbon tax on diesel adds an extra cost for long-haul truck operators of $15,000 to $20,000 or around 6% of per truck in annual operating costs. The brief to government claims a small trucking business with five trucks, “is seeing between $75,000 and $100,000 in extra costs due to the carbon tax.”
Obviously, truckers striving to remain solvent will be doing their utmost to pass carbon tax costs on to their customers. If the cost of the tax can’t be recouped by some trucking companies, we can bet there will be fewer of them operating over the coming years. As Laskowksi said, the carbon tax increased the cost of virtually every product transported by truck—which means pretty well every physical good consumers purchase.
In light of the political beating the Liberals have been taking over the carbon tax, the Trudeau government has taken a tiny feeble step toward relieving the pressure on businesses. In October 2024 federal finance minister Chrystia Freeland announced the government’s intention to provide carbon tax rebates to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. That means many of Canada’s trucking companies will be eligible to recoup some of the carbon tax they have been paying since fiscal 2019-2020. Freeland says the cheques will be in the mail this December.
It sounds okay until you look at the fine print.
The payments will not reflect the amount of fuel a business uses or how much carbon tax it has paid over the past five years. The rebates will be based on the number of people a company employs and will be paid only in provinces where the federal fuel charge applies. An accounting business with 10 employees will receive the same carbon tax rebate as a small trucking business with 10 employees. A CBC news report pulled the following example from Freeland’s press release, “A business in Ontario with 10 employees can expect to receive $4,010…”
Freeland boasted, “These are real, significant sums of money. They’re going to make a big difference to Canadian small business.”
Freeland’s statement is patently false when it comes to trucking companies.
Let’s say that the 10 employee business is a long-haul trucking company based in Ontario. After paying the carbon tax on five or more trucks for five years, the business would receive a paltry $4,010 rebate. That light dusting of sugar won’t make the carbon tax any more palatable to the trucking industry. According to the CTA’s estimates, if the 10 employee long-haul trucking firm had just five trucks the carbon tax will have cost it approximately $400,000 in operating costs over the past five years.
Carbon tax costs are not the only inflation related frustration affecting Canadians. The way the federal government and its friends in the media describe inflation presents people with a warped view of what is happening to the cost of living. Media reports on inflation rarely reflect the lived experience of people trying to pay the mortgage, feed their families and drive to work.
Governments, and their media apologists, in both Canada and the US have been taking victory laps over the past year because the rate of inflation has decreased. It’s as though people have nothing to worry about because the cost of living this year isn’t increasing as fast as it was last year. Changes in the inflation rate may be important for statistical purposes but they don’t reflect reality for people who have been coping with increases in inflation over several years. Most people measure the difficulties caused by inflation by comparing how much more things cost today than they did three to five years ago. The figure regular civilians, as opposed to statisticians, use to assess increases in the cost of living is accumulated inflation. However, we still need to be cautious about the accumulated inflation rate that we get when using government data.
If we calculate the rate of accumulated inflation based on official annualized inflation rates from 2019 up to the midpoint of 2024. The accumulated increase over that five year period is around 21%. And, it is true that this number better reflects people’s perception of inflation than a statistical comparison indicating the rate of inflation fell from 3.9 % in 2023 to 2.61% by the mid-point of 2024. The problem is the 21% number still does not accurately reflect increases in the cost of many necessary goods and services that are impacting households. This is why according to political polls voters in Canada and the US aren’t buying government propaganda when it comes to inflation.
The economy, and by extension, the high cost of living was a major issue in the recent US federal election campaign. The Democrats did not do themselves any favours claiming Bidenomics had wrestled inflation to the ground simply because it wasn’t increasing as fast as it was a year ago. A large number of voters in the US embraced former US president Lyndon Johnson’s maxim, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
But wait, it gets worse. The basket of goods and services the Canadian government uses to calculate the cost of living index and the inflation rate fails to identify high increases in the prices for specific household essentials including many grocery staples. Similarly, official calculations for statistically weighted national average consumption of various products used to calculate the Consumer Price Index are skewed in favour of big urban centres. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are over represented. There is no way that the average annual consumption of gasoline for a household in downtown Montreal comes anywhere close to the amount used in most of Canada where public transit is scarce and distances are great. The result is the official accumulated inflation rate fails to show what many people are experiencing in most regions of the country.
Here is a good example of how published statistics don’t reflect the inflation shock that consumers experience at the grocery store. Back in March 2019, the average price for a pound of lean ground beef at five major chain grocery outlets in Regina was $4.71. In September 2024 lean ground at the five big chain outlets averaged $7.90 — a 68% increase over the past five years. The price of rib eye steak increased by even more. Rib eyes averaged $14.91 per pound at the five stores in Regina in March 2019. This September, the average price for rib eye steak was $29.40 – a 97% increase over five years. Obviously, these price increases are a far cry from the official statistic for accumulated inflation of 21% over the same period. (FYI: the data presented here was derived from Beef Business magazine published by the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association. Each bimonthly edition of Beef Business features a retail beef price check)
Assuming we can find similar rates of accumulated inflation for other staples like dairy products and fresh vegetables it’s no wonder smart shoppers have been incensed over what’s going on with grocery prices and the cost of living (not to mention price increases for fuel, rents house prices and mortgage interest). Consumers have discovered today’s prices of $6.50 for a four litre jug of milk and $7.00 for a pound of butter aren’t going to be reduced simply because the rate of inflation has decreased form 3.69% to 2.61% over the past year. Using history as our guide, with the exception of rare periods of deflation such as the depression of the 1930s, it is unlikely we’ll see the price increases of the past few years come down other than for sales or loss leader strategies. And, while a 72 cent dollar might boost sales for some of our exports, it will add more than 25% to the cost of imported fruit and vegetables this winter,
Furthermore, the impacts of inflation are being more severely felt by Canadians today than they would have been a decade ago. This is because our per capita national income (using GDP as a proxy for national income) has been shrinking since 2014. That was the year oil prices fell into an eight year depression and the last full year before Justin Trudeau became Prime minister.
According to a 2024 Fraser Institute Bulletin authored by Alex Whelan, Milagros Placios and Lawrence Shembri, “Canadians have been getting poorer relative to residents of other countries in the OECD [a club of mostly rich countries]. From 2002 to 2014, Canadian income growth, as measured by GDP per capita, roughly kept pace with the rest of the OECD. From 2014 to 2022, however, Canada’s position declined sharply, ranking third lowest among 30 countries for average growth over the period.”
Canada’s per capita GDP/national income for 2024 is projected to be $54,866.05. According Whelan, Placios and Shembri, that is lower than per capita national income in the US, UK, New Zealand and Austrailia.
Only one US state, Mississippi, the poorest state in the union, has a per capita GDP/national income less than Canada’s. Mississippi’s total is $53,061. Other states considered poor by US standards such as Alabama and Arkansas have higher per capita GDPs than Canada. On average, Canadians have increasingly less money with which to buy more expensive goods and services.
The challenges Canadians have faced as a result of the high cost of living have coincided with the eight plus years that Justin Trudeau has been prime minister. The decline in per capita national income also occurred under Trudeau’s watch—in conjunction with Liberal policies designed to stifle growth in Canada’s petroleum and natural gas industries. What did the Trudeau Liberals think would happen to growth in per capita national income after they handcuffed our single most important export industry?
In the final analysis it’s a tossup. Do we have an inflation problem or is inflation just a symptom of our Trudeau problem?
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