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PM’s pre-election shuffle eyes border, trade and bruising provincial relations

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OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau has unveiled his pre-election cabinet in a shuffle designed to showcase new faces and to address increasingly troublesome files — from border security, to trade promotion, to the potential for bare-knuckle scraps with the provinces.

In Wednesday’s shuffle, the prime minister gave new portfolios to six ministers and expanded his cabinet by promoting five other MPs to his front benches. The shakeup will boost the profiles of more members of Trudeau’s team, which has long relied on his personal brand, ahead of next year’s federal election.

The moves also look to reinforce possible weak spots.

In one key change, Trudeau confidant and long-time MP Dominic LeBlanc moved from fisheries to intergovernmental affairs, elevating him into a higher-profile role that’s destined to become particularly turbulent. 

As a result, Canadians should expect to see a lot more of LeBlanc. At the helm of the unpredictable provincial relations file, the sometimes-pugnacious politician will have more bureaucratic powers at his fingertips with support from several departments.

The federal-provincial dynamic is set to become more confrontational for Trudeau’s Liberals following the recent election of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Doug Ford. Over the coming months, there’s potential for more conflicts if Quebec and Alberta elect right-leaning governments of their own.

The new cabinet lineup has also been crafted to handle Canada’s complicated relationship with the United States. Following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, Ottawa has faced growing challenges related to irregular border crossers and big unknowns surrounding Canada-U.S. trade, including an escalating tariff dispute and the difficult renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“I think there’s no question that the international context is constantly changing,” Trudeau said Wednesday after announcing his new cabinet at Rideau Hall.

“There is certainly a level of clarity for Canadians, for businesses, for everyone across this country that we need to diversify our markets, we need to ensure that we are not as dependent on the United States.”

To expand Canada’s trade interests beyond the U.S., Trudeau moved natural resources minister Jim Carr into the international trade portfolio. Carr’s job will be to re-energize stalled efforts towards a trade deal with China, to promote the Canada-EU free trade agreement among European countries that have yet to ratify it and to continue to push for deeper economic integration into Latin America.

The shuffle will also raise the profiles of five Liberal MPs entering cabinet for the first time.

The newcomers include Bill Blair, who was named minister of the new portfolio of border security and organized crime reduction.

The former Toronto police chief will be responsible for the thorny political issues of border management and a surge of migrants at unofficial entry points, as well as gun violence and the complex process of cannabis legalization.

Other new ministers include Mary Ng, who oversees small business and export promotion. The Toronto-area MP was an adviser to Trudeau before her byelection win last year.

Filomena Tassi, a Hamilton MP and former high-school chaplain, assumes the new cabinet file dedicated to the needs of seniors.

Jonathan Wilkinson, a North Vancouver MP, is taking over from LeBlanc as minister of fisheries, oceans and the Coast Guard. The Rhodes Scholar served as parliamentary secretary to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.

Mandate letters for the new ministers are expected later this summer.

In Quebec, veteran MP Pablo Rodriguez will succeed Melanie Joly, a fellow Montrealer, as heritage minister. The move will position Rodriguez as a key minister responsible for selling the Liberals to Quebec, a critical electoral battleground for the party.

Joly, who struggled at times in her role as heritage minister, was shunted to tourism, official languages and la Francophonie.

Trudeau put the controversial pipeline file in the hands of Amarjeet Sohi, who represents an Edmonton riding. Sohi, who will take over Carr’s natural resources portfolio, handed off his infrastructure file to Francois-Philippe Champagne, the former international trade minister.

The responsibilities of five existing ministers were also revamped. Many cabinet members with key roles stayed put, including McKenna, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt said Trudeau’s shuffle highlights areas where the government has failed to deliver on its promises.

“They’re failing in trade, they’re failing in pipelines, they’re failing in infrastructure and as a result those ministers have been moved to other portfolios — this is desperate attempt to hit that reset button,” Raitt said.

“If Justin Trudeau had thought the last two-and-a-half years had gone well, he wouldn’t be making these kinds of changes.”

Raitt also said she’s concerned about Ottawa’s decision to have LeBlanc — whom she described as “extremely partisan” — and Blair deal with the provinces. Blair sparred with the Ford family during his time as police chief.

Ian Brodie, who served as chief of staff for former prime minister Stephen Harper, said in a tweet that Blair’s appointment shows the Liberals are worried Ontario’s Ford government can hurt them over border security and the migrant issues. Brodie believes Blair will make things personal for Ford and the Liberals will hope the premier “gets unhinged.”

Indeed, the Liberals will have to manage a progressively vexing provincial landscape.

Provincial ballots are coming in Quebec this fall and Alberta next spring, and Ottawa already has a difficult relationship with British Columbia’s NDP government over federal support for the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline. 

At the moment, there’s also risk the Ottawa-Ontario relationship could be severely strained over key issues, including the federal carbon-pricing plan and management of the migrant influx.

— with files from Lee Berthiaume, Janice Dickson and Mike Blanchfield

Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press

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Environment

New must-see documentary exposes climate alarm as an “invented scare”

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From the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL).  

Founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist  Marcel Crok, CLINTEL‘s main objective is to generate knowledge and insight into the extent, nature, causes and consequences of climate change and the climate policy related to it.

From CLINTEL on YouTube

This film exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that mainstream studies and official data do not support the claim that we are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events – hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and all the rest. It emphatically counters the claim that current temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 are unusually and worryingly high. 

The film includes interviews with a number of very prominent scientists, including Professor Steven Koonin (author of ‘Unsettled’, a former provost and vice-president of Caltech), Professor Richard (Dick) Lindzen (formerly professor of meteorology at Harvard and MIT), Professor Will Happer (professor of physics at Princeton), Dr John Clauser (winner of the Nobel prize in Physics in 2022), Professor Nir Shaviv (Racah Institute of Physics), professor Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph), Willie Soon and several others.

The film was written and directed by the British filmmaker Martin Durkin and is the sequel of his excellent 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. Tom Nelson, a podcaster who has been deeply examining climate debate issues for the better part of two decades, was the producer of the film.

Follow @ClimateTheMovie and @ClintelOrg for updates.

Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that reports objectively on climate change and climate policy and aims to be a voice of reason in the often overheated climate debate. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout  and science journalist  Marcel Crok . CLINTEL’s main objective is to generate knowledge and insight into the extent, nature, causes and consequences of climate change and the climate policy related to it. CLINTEL also wants to participate in debates on climate science and policy, as well as in decision-making processes in this regard.

To this end:

  • The foundation tries to communicate clearly and transparently to the general public what facts are available about climate change and climate policy and also where facts turn into assumptions and predictions.
  • The foundation conducts and encourages a public debate on this matter and carries out investigative journalism work in this area.
  • The foundation aims to function as an international meeting place for scientists with different views on climate change and climate policy.
  • Will the foundation also conduct or finance scientific research in the field of climate change and climate policy?
  • The foundation participates in decision-making procedures regarding the climate, climate communication and climate policy, in particular legislative and regulatory processes, but possibly also legal procedures regarding climate policy of governments, companies or other parties.

CLINTEL wants to take on the role of ‘climate watchdog’, both in the field of climate science and climate policy.

CLINTEL was made possible in part by a start-up donation from real estate entrepreneur Niek Sandmann. The foundation is very grateful to him for this. Several people have already indicated that they would also like to contribute financially to the foundation. This can also be done anonymously if desired. You can support us by becoming a Friend of CLINTEL or making a one-time donation .

The foundation strives for as few overhead costs as possible, so that almost all resources can be spent on investigative journalism, scientific research and public information. CLINTEL will work on an extensive national network of “friends” and “ambassadors”. To this end, meetings ( CLINTEL Chambers ) will be organized throughout the country . CLINTEL also has a youth organization, Young CLINTEL .

CLINTEL is located in Amsterdam and can be reached via [email protected].

Channel details

www.youtube.com/@clintel628

 

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Health

Radio-Canada journalist defends report exposing ‘gender clinics’ for ‘transitioning’ children

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide revealed that concerns from parents were what originally sparked her investigative report on the gender ‘transitioning’ of children in Quebec.

Radio-Canada journalist is defending her investigative report that exposed a “gender” clinic in Quebec for prescribing potentially sterilizing hormones to an actress posing as a young teen in less than ten minutes. 

In a March 3 interview on Tout le Monde en Parle, Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide  revealed that concerns from parents were what originally sparked her investigative report on the gender “transitioning” of children, and that she stands by her work despite backlash.   

“Parents began writing to us last summer, when there was a bit of a controversy about names, pronouns, all-gender bathrooms, etc,” said Turbide in French.  

“But the letters we were getting were not about those issues, they were talking about medical transitions,” she explained.   

According to Turbide, the parents who contacted Radio-Canada revealed that their children, who believed they were “transgender,” were being offered sterilizing “puberty blockers” in the name of care.

“We started to look into it, and we easily found fifteen to twenty people who were all telling us more or less the same story,” said Turbide. “They were often very open-minded parents, open to homosexuality, open to all sorts of things but were panicking at the speed of the transgender healthcare system.”  

The documentary, published by Radio-Canada, the French arm of the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), delved into the dangers of giving children “puberty blockers” as well as the regrets of detransitioners, the term for people who have undergone irreversible surgeries in an attempt to “change” their gender but now regret it.   

The report also followed an actress posing as a 14-year-old patient at a private “gender clinic” in Quebec where she was prescribed testosterone and advised on life-altering mutilating surgeries during a consultation that lasted a meagre nine minutes.  

During her interview, Turbide exposed the dangers of taking puberty blockers, especially considering many of the side effects are still unknown.   

“Girls take testosterone, boys take estrogen and that’s semi-irreversible,” Turbide added. “Some things don’t come back even if they stop. One’s voice will stay changed most of the time. The face of their shape is another thing that’s affected. You can become infertile if you are a girl. It’s not yet clear how far it can go.”  

Turbide further pointed out that some Scandinavian countries are seeking to ban the irreversible treatments for children.  

The documentary went viral online the same week leaked internal communications show doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer. 

Journalist Michael Shellenberger released the internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which “is considered the leading global authority” on so-called “gender medicine,” despite being an LGBT activist group. 

The “WPATH FILES” include emails and messages from an internal discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.  

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.   

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including  cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots,  infertility,  and  suicidality.    

There is also  overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.   

Indeed, there is proof that the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.   

A new study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.    

Additionally, LifeSiteNews compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against transgender surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.    

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