At least 7 companies committed indictable offences in bread-price fixing scandal: Competition Bureau

At least $1.50 has been artificially baked into the price of a loaf of bread during a 16-year-long bread price-fixing conspiracy involving the country’s largest bakery wholesalers and grocery retailers, the federal competition watchdog alleges in court documents released Wednesday.

The Competition Bureau alleges that Canada Bread Company Ltd. and George Weston Ltd.’s senior officers communicated directly to raise prices at least 15 times, with an average increase of 10 cents per loaf passed on to consumers, between about 2001 and 2016.

According to previously-sealed information to obtain documents, the pattern became colloquially known as the 7/10 convention — with an average seven cent price increase at wholesale and 10 cent price bump for the consumer in stores, resulting in an average margin increase of three cents per loaf for retailers.

The conversations around raising prices on baked goods including bread, buns, bagels, naan, English muffins and tortillas started months before the increase would hit the shelves, according to the documents.

After agreeing on a price increase, the suppliers allegedly met individually with their retail clients — including Loblaw Companies Ltd., Walmart Canada Corp., Sobeys Inc., Metro Inc. and Giant Tiger Stores Ltd. — to get their approval for the price hike. The retailers agreed to the boost on the condition their competitors would follow suit and demanded that the suppliers actively manage the process to ensure all retailers were co-operating, the documents said.  (more...)

At least 7 companies committed indictable offences in bread-price fixing scandal: Competition Bureau

Background:

Take Loblaw’s Hush Money, But Don’t Keep Quiet

Flat-pack billionaire who never lived down his Nazi past

In 1994, the Stockholm newspaper Expressen revealed that Kamprad had joined
a Swedish fascist party in 1943 and was a proud member in 1950

For a multi-billionaire, Ingvar Kamprad appeared to live an ostentatiously frugal life. He drove a 15-year-old white Volvo, wore second-hand clothes, bought fruit and vegetables late in the afternoon so he could haggle the prices down and only had his hair cut when travelling in developing countries, as it was cheaper.

There was no private jet — he flew economy — and he stayed in budget rather than swanky hotels where he would abstain from costly mini bars.

There were extravagances, but even they were slight — a pinch of snuff or a dollop of Swedish fish roe. And, if he was feeling devilish, a nice new shirt and cravat.

It seems a strange life for a chap who, in 2004, overtook Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man, but his domestic austerity chimed beautifully with his business ethos.

Kamprad — who has died aged 91 in his sleep at his bungalow in Smaland, Sweden — was the founder of Ikea, the low-cost flat- pack furniture company that brought stylish living to the masses, caused endless marital flare-ups (who has not been close to blows when tackling a set of his ‘simple and easy to follow’ assembly instructions?) and which is now worth about £51 billion.

Ikea’s success was achieved, Kamprad maintained, by frugality, building warehouse-type shops on cheap land, buying materials at a discount, packaging items in boxes to be assembled at home by the buyer and keeping things simple and affordable.  (more...)

Flat-pack billionaire who never lived down his Nazi past

Related:

Per Engdahl and Euro Fascism

Mississauga gymnastics coach charged with sexual assault

Scott McFarlane, 28

A Mississauga gymnastics coach is facing charges after a 15-year-old girl alleged she was sexually assaulted over a four-year period.

Peel police said the victim contacted them on Jan. 22 to report sexual incidents with her coach.

Following a sexual assault investigation, a Canada wide arrest warrant was issued for the man on Jan. 26. Police said he surrendered on Monday.

Police said the man was an active gymnastic coach in the Peel Region, Ottawa and in Western Canada.

Gymnastics Ontario executive director Dave Sandford told the Star that the victim initially filed a complaint against her coach to the organization late last year. He would not comment on the nature of the complaint.

“[The initial complaint] was not to this level. Peel police were not involved,” said Sandford.

He said the coach was suspended for three months in October, following an independent review panel investigation.

“The hardest part is these young athletes coming forward because the people they’ve trusted have broken their trust,” said Sandford.  (more...)

Mississauga gymnastics coach charged with sexual assault

The institutional deflowerment of our youth continues apace:

Former Calgary arts school worker pleads guilty to sex offences against students

Church organist from Toronto and surrounding area charged with sexual assault

Canada’s financial system is less transparent than Russia’s, report says

Spot the beneficial owner

Canada has one of the most secretive financial systems in the world, according to a new report, less transparent than Russia and China, and offshore tax havens like Cyprus, Bermuda, and Barbados.

Financial experts say this is an indication Canada is, effectively, one of the world’s more attractive “onshore tax havens.”

The Tax Justice Network (TJN) — an independent international research and advocacy network focusing on tax evasion and tax havens — released its Financial Secrecy Index on Tuesday.

The index, produced every two years, measures the extent to which a country’s legal system facilitates global financial crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion.

Canada is No. 21 on the list, slightly higher than its 2016 ranking at No. 23. The higher the ranking, the more financially secret a country is.

“It’s a bad exam grade on the state of the country’s financial secrecy laws,” said Arthur Cockfield, a tax law scholar and policy consultant at Queen’s University. “It means that if you’re a crook or a super rich person who wants privacy, then you can use our corporate laws to hide the identity of the ultimate owner of the shares (of your company).”  (more...)

Canada’s financial system is less transparent than Russia’s, report says

Related:

Feds flag signs of cash linked to fentanyl scourge in new alert

Who's corrupt kleptocrats really interfered in American politics?

Made in Canada: Clinton Foundation Got $100M From ‘Blood Minerals’ Firm

Prescription Games: Money, Ego, and Power Inside the Global Pharmaceutical Industry

The major pharmaceutical companies, according to John le Carré – who has based his novel The Constant Gardener on their depredations – “are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country.” Jeffrey Robinson can back up that charge.

In Prescription Games, Jeffrey Robinson exposes the yawning abyss between the claims to altruism made by pharmaceutical companies and the harsh reality of their everyday practice. When the industry claims that the enormous markup they charge for new drugs pays the cost of developing new ones, they don’t say that as much as 80 per cent of R&D money is actually directed at developing drugs designed to compete with existing brands, or at creating variations on drugs whose patents are about to expire – expenditures only the industry itself (and its shareholders) will benefit from.

Within the industry, there are “blockbuster” drugs that create vast wealth for the companies that manufacture them. Most are designed to treat conditions that are endemic among prosperous, western populations that can afford them. But there are no blockbuster drugs to treat diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria that ravage the Third World, because Third World countries can’t afford the prices. People in Africa and Asia die from new strains of tuberculosis while people in Europe and North America are offered expensive treatments for obesity, hair loss, and sexual dysfunction.

In this hard-hitting exposé, Robinson also examines the extension of patent protection, the end of generic drug competition in Canada, the Nancy Olivieri scandal (how a drug manufacturer fought to conceal research findings that would damage sales of its product), the illicit drug trade, and espionage among drug manufacturers.

Quotes:

“The branded drug companies hate us. They have private investigators on us all the time,” Mr Sherman told Robinson in the book. 

“The thought once came to my mind: why didn’t they just hire someone to knock me off? For a thousand bucks paid to the right person, you can probably get someone killed. Perhaps I’m surprised that hasn’t happened.”

And in The Sunday Times:

“He was absolutely hated,” Robinson told The Times. “Nobody liked Barry Sherman. He was so frigging litigious. He was constantly at war with everybody. In business he was a prick, so there might have been people who would like to have done it.”

Related:

Sherman murders: Billionaire predicted his own murder in 2001 book

This Student Newspaper Let A Nazi Sympathizer Write For Them

A student newspaper in New Brunswick published a largely uncritical interview with a Nazi sympathizer in which he praised Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, downplayed the horrors of residential schools, and claimed white supremacy was a myth invented by Jews. The paper also published a separate opinion piece by him in which he spread a slew of anti-Indigenous and anti-Semitic tropes.

Michael Thurlow describes himself as the president of the National Socialist Canadian Labour Revival Party (NSCLRP), a group that took credit this month for racist posters on the University of New Brunswick campus in Fredericton. The Baron, which is published at the University of New Brunswick's sister campus in Saint John, interviewed Thurlow about his beliefs and published a "complete, unedited, uncensored" transcript, which included numerous false and ahistorical claims about Indigenous peoples and residential schools.

Thurlow's opinion piece, which he submitted as a letter to the editor, was also published "unedited [and] uncensored," according to an editor's note. In the piece, Thurlow praises residential schools — where generations of children were systematically stripped of their language and culture as well as physically, emotionally, and sexually abused — as an attempt to "civilize" Indigenous people. He also espoused the anti-Semitic idea that Jews are a conniving and treacherous people who secretly control the world.  (more...)

This Student Newspaper Let A Nazi Sympathizer Write For Them

Related:

New Brunswick Student Paper Laughs Off Critics Of Nazi Op-Ed

Forgotten Bolsheviks: The Warning Signs of Fascism on Campus

Racist cyberattacks at U of T highlight barriers to addressing anti-Blackness

They will pile corpses that high

VW chairman promises investigation into ‘absurd’ test that had humans inhale diesel fumes

German carmakers condemned experiments that exposed humans to diesel fumes, promising to investigate the tests whose disclosure threatens to open a new phase in an emissions controversy that’s dogged the industry since 2015.

The study was supported by a little-known group founded by Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG, and carried out by Aachen University in Germany. Reports of the tests, following a New York Times account of similar experiments on monkeys in the U.S., triggered political recriminations and had automakers scrambling to distance themselves.

“I’ll do everything so that these events will be fully investigated,” Volkswagen Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said in an emailed statement. He said the practices were “incomprehensible” in every way.

The bombshell revelations mark a fresh blow to German carmakers’ once-stellar reputation for engineering prowess and no-nonsense efficiency. The actions further undermine diesel’s image, steepening an increasingly uphill battle to rescue the technology amid worsening political headwinds.  (more...)

VW chairman promises investigation into ‘absurd’ test that had humans inhale diesel fumes

Old habits die hard:

Nazi Medical Experiments and the Pharmaceutical Industry

There is something very strange afoot in Germany:

The German current account surplus: Much larger than officially reported?

Journalists go to court over Germany's 'unrestrictive' surveillance laws

UK: Conservatives' LGBT group linked with paedophile ring after former chairman is jailed for sharing child porn

Matthew Sephton

New Tory chairman Brandon Lewis was urged last night to investigate claims that the party's lesbian and gay rights group was infiltrated by a paedophile ring.

The allegation was made after the former chairman of the Conservatives' LGBT group was jailed on Friday for sharing the 'most horrendous child abuse images imaginable'.

Primary school teacher Matthew Sephton, 42, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of possessing and distributing indecent child images.

The court was told that Mr Sephton, also an ex-Conservative Parliamentary candidate and Trafford councillor, was a member of groups that shared child abuse images.

Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Tory Bow Group, said yesterday he had told Conservative chiefs three years ago of fears that its gay rights group, formerly known as LGBTory, was linked to a wider paedophile scandal. (more...)

UK: Conservatives' LGBT group linked with paedophile ring after former chairman is jailed for sharing child porn

Related:

Fabulous Blue Tent: LGBTory activists say now is the time to change party’s policies on same-sex marriage

PC? ‘It will mean more coming from us’: Queer Tories push for acceptance amid leadership race

Time to talk about John Baird?

Meanwhile:

Interim PC Leader Vic Fedeli ‘disgusted’ at sex assault allegations against Rick Dykstra

Is that ALL you're disgusted with? John Baird doesn't raise your bile? What is this, a homofascist coup?

Ireland is a tax pirate stealing the base from other nations, says Dutch MEP

Dutch MEP Paul Tang, a rapporteur on European tax policy, appeared before the Oireachtas finance committee and said Ireland has not taken into account the impact its corporate tax rate has on its European partners

He described countries like Ireland and Luxembourg as “tax pirates” because of tax measures taken to attract multinational companies: “A small country like Ireland has more foreign investment than Germany or France — that’s weird.”

Ireland’s investment is down to “loads of paper constructions” to avoid taxes, he said. Big corporations “pay hardly any tax”, he said, and have avoided €5bn tax in Europe: “It’s about fairness. Where they generate profits is where they should pay taxes.”

He described the tax arrangements of multinationals as “paper constructions to avoid taxes”. They don’t affect the “real economy, or jobs or factories”.

The problem is that it is not known what the impact such tax rates have on other countries, said Mr Tang: “Ireland doesn’t take into account the impact of its actions on its European partners. My claim is that you’re stealing the tax base from other countries.”  (more...)

Ireland is a tax pirate stealing the base from other nations, says Dutch MEP

Related:

Ireland's tax rate 'a joke' according to Davos speaker

'That's a joke', 'stealing': Ireland's low corporate tax rate criticised at Davos

Ireland to collect €13bn Apple tax bill despite Irish Goverment's refusal

Poland will line up against Ireland in Apple tax appeal

CEO of Apotex, Barry Sherman-founded company, resigns amid allegations of trade secret leaks

TORONTO -- Apotex Inc. president and CEO Jeremy Desai resigned from the generic drug giant Friday while facing a lawsuit alleging he and the company accepted trade secrets leaked from a competitor.

The lawsuit from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. accuses Barinder Sandhu, who worked as a senior director of regulatory affairs for Teva's U.S. generics division, of leaking trade secrets and other confidential information to Desai while being in a romantic relationship with him.

The allegations have not been proven in court and Apotex, Sandhu and Desai have filed motions to dismiss the complaint.

The lawsuit, filed last July in a Pennsylvania federal court, alleges Sandhu used email and USB drives to send Desai confidential information including the regulatory status of drugs and information on the development of a new generic drug.

The legal filings accuse Sandhu of uploading some 900 Teva corporate files to a cloud-based storage system between October 2014 and August 2016.  (more...)

CEO of Apotex, Barry Sherman-founded company, resigns amid allegations of trade secret leaks

Related:

Police investigation into Sherman double murder focuses on realtor’s 'lock box'

Barry and Honey Sherman Were Murdered, the Toronto Police Say. By Who?

Former student says he routinely had sex with teacher in her van, school office

A Calgary music teacher had frequent sexual encounters with a ninth-grade boy in her school band office and her vehicles, the former student testified at a hearing Tuesday in Edmonton.

The teacher smoked marijuana with the teen and his friends, bought him clothes, jewelry, a bong and other gifts, and regularly supplied him and a friend with alcohol and cigarettes, the former student, who is now an adult, testified Tuesday.

The then-14-year-old was drinking so much alcohol, he’d sometimes wake up shaking the next morning, he told an Alberta Teachers’ Association conduct committee hearing.

The student’s father, who also testified Tuesday, said his son’s relationship with the teacher had a “diabolical” effect on their lives, accelerating his addiction and mental health problems. He has been in and out of an addiction treatment program, and did not complete Grade 10.

The association has charged the teacher with five counts of unprofessional conduct, including having an inappropriate sexual relationship with the student, and using drugs.  (more...)

Former student says he routinely had sex with teacher in her van, school office

Background:

Calgary teacher accused of sex with student, buying teens alcohol, cigarettes

CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Program Using Roman Catholic Church

David A. Wemhoff discusses his book John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition: How the CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Changed the Catholic Church. David is a lawyer practicing in South Bend, Indiana. His website is

The American Proposition

An Arm of US Soft Power — The Catholic Church

Ontario government vows to crack down on sexually abusive teachers

Education Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris, left, is pledging to make changes that
are similar to ones the province has already made for the health professions.

The Ontario government plans to amend its definition of sexual abuse by teachers “as soon as possible,” to make licence revocation mandatory for more offences — an announcement that follows a Star investigation into transfers of abusive teachers from school to school.

“Sexual abuse in our schools is unacceptable. Our schools must be safe, inclusive and welcoming places for our students,” Shazia Vlahos, a spokesperson for Education Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris, wrote to the Star Wednesday evening.

“Our government plans to update the definition of sexual abuse resulting in mandatory revocation in alignment with our government’s recent changes to the Regulated Health Professions Act.”

The changes for health-care professionals came after a Star campaign last year and made revocation of a licence mandatory if an individual engaged in forms of sexual touching or groping of patients. Currently, those are not grounds for automatic revocation of a teacher’s licence in Ontario.  (more...)

Ontario government vows to crack down on sexually abusive teachers

Background:

Teachers who commit certain forms of sexual abuse allowed to keep their licences

The Conservative Self-Demolition Machine

Why Liberals skate unopposed

The gift that keeps on giving

"The problem with conservatism is that you eventually run out of other people's kids."

Conspiracy Theorists Are Trying To Link The Deaths Of A Billionaire Canadian Couple To The Clinton Foundation And It's Nuts

The mysterious deaths of a wealthy Canadian couple have inexplicably become part of American conspiracy theories involving the Clinton Foundation and even Pizzagate.

Barry and Honey Sherman's bodies were found in their Toronto mansion on Dec. 15, 2017, by a real estate agent. The police deemed the deaths "suspicious" and are still investigating. Private investigators hired by the family say they were murdered by a team of killers, according to reports by the Toronto Star and CBC.

Their deaths led to an outpouring of sympathy from many prominent Canadians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who attended the couple's funeral in December. Barry Sherman was the founder of Apotex, Canada's largest generic drug maker.

So what does their murder have to do with the Clintons? Nothing, according to current information from police and the family's own investigators. But a conspiracy theory is being spun thanks to the fact that Apotex previously donated medicine to aid initiatives linked with the Clinton Foundation in Haiti and elsewhere. Those same relief projects included many other companies.

Thanks to that old and tenuous connection, the Shermans' deaths became fodder for right-wing claims about the "Clinton body count." According to this decades-old conspiracy theory, the Clintons have ordered the deaths of dozens of people who allegedly had incriminating information about them or stood in their way. And as is true of conspiracy theories more generally, new events are continually distorted to fit the preexisting narrative — no matter how flimsy the logic.  (more...)

Conspiracy Theorists Are Trying To Link The Deaths Of A Billionaire Canadian Couple To The Clinton Foundation And It's Nuts

Americans ARE nuts, and it's contagious:

Focus on the fringe: They Asked Me To Join The Militia

My money's on the Nazis.

Paradise Papers firm worked for bank linked to terrorist financing and organised crime

The firm at the heart of the Paradise Papers leak provided offshore services to a bank accused of facilitating terrorist financing, transnational organised crime and the Syrian government’s chemical weapons programme.

Appleby represented the Cayman Islands holding company of FBME Bank for at least a year after the US Treasury published an extraordinary roster of allegations against the bank, and acted as its agent for more than a decade beforehand.

FBME, which was banned from the US financial system last year, denies all the allegations against it. It said Appleby regularly carried out full compliance checks on FBME Ltd, which it took on as a client in 2004.

Revelations from Appleby’s internal files, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, were exposed in the Paradise Papers investigation last year.

The investigation was praised by politicians and campaigners for shining a light on tax havens and revealing the myriad ways in which companies and individuals can avoid tax using artificial structures.

The Guardian revealed how Appleby was repeatedly criticised by inspectors in multiple jurisdictions for failing to apply regulations designed to guard against money laundering and terrorist finance in secret reports by offshore regulators.

Appleby is suing the BBC and the Guardian over the Paradise Papers investigation, arguing that none of the articles published were in the public interest. In a statement issued at the time it denied wrongdoing but said it was “not infallible” and always acted quickly to “put things right”.  (more...)

Paradise Papers firm worked for bank linked to terrorist financing and organised crime

Related:

Appleby said to retain well-known QC to ‘block further publication’ of docs

'Reputation laundering' is lucrative business for London PR firms

Focus on the fringe: They Asked Me To Join The Militia

Conspiracies! They’re out there… and Vice Canada‘s Mack Lamoureux is getting to the bottom of them.

You name it, he’s covered it: The Berenst(a)ein Bears. Hollow Earth Theory. Iraq Stargate…

But what happens when these twisted narratives stop being just kooky, and start getting scary? As extremist right-wing groups grow their presence in Canada, and around the world, there’s a personal cost to covering conspiracists.

Mack’s eight-months-long investigation into Canada’s armed, anti-Islamic “patriot” group — ‘the III%ers’— is alarming:

“Connected to the anti-Islam sentiment is a sense of paranoia in the group, one that is reinforced by the sharing of debunked news stories and far-right wing commentary from sites like Rebel Media or Infowars. The members of the group, like their counterparts worldwide, are distrustful of mainstream news and often stray into extreme conspiratorial territory.”

Source:

They Asked Me To Join The Militia

Croatia's Far Right Draws Strength from Diaspora

Argentinian Croats protesting against former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna
Pusic statements on post-WWII crimes committed by anti-fascist Partisans.

Scattered over almost two centuries across the globe – in Germany, the US, Canada, Argentina and Australia – most members of the Croatian diaspora are still closely linked to their homeland.

The Croatian state responds in kind; it pledges to take “special care” of Croats living abroad, a pledge outlined in the country’s 1990 constitution. Subsequently, Croatia has set up the Central State Office for Croats Abroad, as well as a government body, the Council for Croats Abroad.

More controversially, some in the diaspora maintain close ties with the extreme right in Croatia, pushing a very sympathetic view of the Fascist Ustasa movement that ran the so-called Independent State of Croatia, NDH, under German-Italian patronage during World War II.

In late December, the appointment of Ante Juric, a prominent representative of the Croat community in Australia, to the government’s Council, attracted media attention.

Controversy arose after Juric told a Croat-language TV show on Australia’s SBS radio that the NDH was not a reviled Nazi satellite state but “a Croatian state, and I’m glad it was – while [its leader, Ante] Pavelic was for me one of the greatest Croats in history”.

Germany is home to the biggest Croat community in Europe, numbering some 440,000 people – equal to just over 10 per cent of Croatia’s total population.

Searching for better life, many Croats left what was then Yugoslavia for Germany back in the 1960s, and this trend has continued, increasing after Croatia joined the EU in 2013.

Danijel Majic, a German-Croat journalist who writes about right-wing extremism in Germany for the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, says the connections between parts of Croatian diaspora in Germany and the far right in Croatia are well established.

Croatia’s conservative Christian values NGO, “In the Name of the Family”, has a de facto branch in Germany. This was the NGO that pushed successfully for a referendum in Croatia in 2013 on marriage, defining it as an exclusively heterosexual union and effectively blocking the path to legalised gay marriage.

The NGO also helped file a successful plea for the legal rehabilitation of Filip Lukas, an intellectual close to the Ustasa regime. In July, the Zagreb County Court quashed the verdict passed decades ago by Yugoslav courts, rehabilitating him in full.

Majic says the Catholic Church provides important help for rightist movements among the émigrés.

“The only serious infrastructure among the Croat émigrés in Germany are the missions of the Catholic Church there … Since they the only ones that can offer venues for different political rallies or debates, almost exclusively for rightist politicians and NGOs,” he says.  (more...)

Croatia's Far Right Draws Strength from Diaspora

Related:

The Neo-Catholic Money Trail: A Bloody Legacy

Michael Davies: The Last Interview

German nurse charged with killing 97 more patients at hospitals

BERLIN—A German nurse who is already serving a life sentence for two murders has been charged with killing 97 more patients over several years at two hospitals in northwestern Germany, prosecutors said Monday.

The new indictment against Niels Hoegel was expected after officials said in November that he may have killed more than 100 patients in total. He worked at a clinic in Oldenburg from 1999 to 2002 and in nearby Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005.

Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders in Delmenhorst and was given a life sentence.

During his trial, Hoegel had said he intentionally brought about cardiac crises in about 90 patients in Delmenhorst because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them. He later told investigators that he also killed patients in Oldenburg.

Those statements prompted investigators to carry out toxicological examinations on dozens of other patients who died at the hospitals, leading to the new charges.  (more...)

German nurse charged with killing 97 more patients at hospitals

Related:

German nurse may have killed more than 100 patients, prosecutors say

Nazi Medical Experiments and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Making a comeback?

The Cure that Kills You: Rockefeller Medicine

As Americans fret about the Obamacare website and wonder how the country became enslaved to the highest healthcare costs in the world, we turn back the pages to look at how the modern medical paradigm came together in the early 20th century, courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation and their cronies. Join us this week as we explore the real history of modern healthcare and the real motivations behind the family that brought it to you.

Show notes and related links:

Rockefeller Medicine

Nazi Medical Experiments and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, sources say

Teachers who commit certain forms of sexual abuse allowed to keep their licences

Bill 37, the Protecting Students Act, "should be strengthened," said MPP Peggy
Sattler, NDP critic. "Very serious and egregious sexual misconduct can take place
that doesn't fall into those specific acts and should be grounds for revocation of a
licence."

The messages came in from her high school teacher, sometimes until 2 a.m.

“I want to see you naked,” one read. “Please don’t leave me.”

“If I lose you, I’ll die.”

The teacher was Richard S. Buckley, and he taught the girl in Ontario’s Bluewater District School Board, south of Owen Sound. When her vice-principal was tipped off and began to investigate what was going on in the spring of 2014, Buckley contacted the girl in a panic.

He was going to kill himself, he told her, according to an agreed statement of facts in his case. He pleaded with her not to tell administrators what happened between them.

Though Buckley later pleaded guilty to psychological and sexual abuse of his student in a November 2016 disciplinary hearing at the Ontario College of Teachers, his teaching licence was not revoked.

Ontario law doesn’t require teachers who have committed certain kinds of sexual abuse to lose their licences.  (more...)

Teachers who commit certain forms of sexual abuse allowed to keep their licences

Background:

‘One wrong just creates another wrong’: How the quiet transfer of teachers over disciplinary issues has led to patterns of abuse in schools

‘Justice is long overdue’ for training school survivors, says MP who spent three ‘painful’ years at one

MP David Sweet, who represents Flamborough-Glanbrook, stands in front of
the former site of St. Joseph's Training School in Alfred, Ontario, this month.
Sweet is speaking out about the abuse he suffered, and witnessed at the school,
now a French-language college, while he lived there in the early 1970s.

David Sweet walks slowly down a snow-covered laneway cutting through the campus of what used to be St. Joseph’s Training School, a residential reform institution for boys deemed “delinquent” or “unmanageable” decades ago by the courts.

It’s early January and Sweet, a federal Conservative Member of Parliament, is walking a reporter and photographer through the site of the former school, located in the small town of Alfred, Ont., about 70 kilometres east of Ottawa. It was here that Sweet says he spent three “painful” years between the ages of 13 and 15 in the early 1970s, after being sent to the school for running away from his home in Kingston and stealing a few cars.

Sweet, who is the National Conservative Caucus Chair, is now going public with his experiences at St. Joseph’s, he says, to lend his voice to a growing number of former training school students telling their stories of abuse. He is also calling for a public inquiry into that abuse.

Sweet decided to tell his story after a Star investigation revealed last month that the government has secretly settled more than 200 lawsuits alleging historic sexual, physical and emotional abuse by teachers and staff at provincially run secular training schools. The investigation also revealed that two provincial officials sounded alarms in the 1970s about the abuse, but that the province appeared to have ignored those warnings.  (more...)

‘Justice is long overdue’ for training school survivors, says MP who spent three ‘painful’ years at one

Background:

Class action suit launched against Ontario over alleged abuse in ‘training schools’

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, sources say

It’s double murder, not murder-suicide. Barry and Honey Sherman were killed in what looks like a professional, contract killing. That’s the conclusion of a variety of experts who have been hired by the family to probe the case.

Here’s the new information: There are markings on the Shermans’ wrists, an indication that at some point their hands were tied together, though no rope or other ties were found near the bodies. Toxicology tests on their bodies reveal no sign of drugs that would have contributed to their deaths. Men’s leather belts found around their necks were the cause of the “ligature compression” that killed them. A top forensic pathologist who did a second autopsy determined this was a double homicide, barring any new information that surfaces.

Meanwhile, the Toronto police would not provide any new information or comment on the findings of the family and maintain their classification of the deaths as “suspicious.”

People providing information for this story are not identified as they were not authorized to discuss the case.  (more...)

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, sources say

Related:

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered by multiple killers, private investigators believe: source

Barry Sherman’s death is forcing the lobbying commissioner to make a tough decision

Barry Sherman’s donations sometimes used to wield political influence

Meet The 'Assassination Market' Creator Who's Crowdfunding Murder With Bitcoins

Tax Havens and the Other Paris Agreement

It’s not clear whether the Bill Morneau/Tax Revolt saga that roiled the media and Parliament throughout the last half of 2017 will continue in 2018, but it looks likely.

By mid-December pundits and politicians were calling for the Finance Minister to resign over conflict of interest charges connected with his shares in Morneau Shepell (his pension management company). Moreover, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) was complaining about the lack of clarity in tax changes to be introduced in January.

This brouhaha all started on July 18 when the Trudeau government announced plans to close three tax loopholes available to small business owners who incorporate their businesses as personal corporations, called Canadian-Controlled Private Corporations (CCPCs) – affecting quite a few upper middle-class professionals, from doctors, lawyers, and accountants to farmers and owners of small businesses. They were not about to take this lying down.

The CFIB took up their cause and put its own spin on things, arguing that business owners don’t have the “huge” salaries and pensions enjoyed by civil servants to rely on for retirement. On September 5, the CFIB delivered a petition to Ottawa with nearly 14,700 signatures.

Interestingly, it was later revealed that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is a client of Morneau Shepell.

There’ve been some funny moments in all the heated rhetoric, especially on September 19 when Trudeau faced questions about his own finances since he became party leader. He said, “I no longer have dealings with the way our family fortune is managed,” which prompted Conservative MP Lisa Raitt to tweet: “Here’s a tip – if you want to be seen as a man of the people try not to refer to your assets as ‘my family fortune’.”

Behind all the sound and fury, something else has been going on. In order to see it, we have to look at the timeline of events. And that leads to what I call “the other Paris agreement” – not the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change but another Paris agreement, one few Canadians have heard about.  (more...)

Tax Havens and the Other Paris Agreement

Background:

$500M recouped worldwide from tax cheats due to Panama Papers — but none of it in Canada

Why Montreal Was a Hotbed for Neo-Nazis in the 90s

Not-so-vintage photos of neo-Nazis parading through in Montreal started making the rounds online earlier this month, shedding new light on a dark and somewhat forgotten period in Quebec history.

In the past few years, fringey far-right groups like La Meute and Soldiers of Odin have continued to gain ground in the province and across Canada—vocally opposing issues such as immigration and the “Islamisation of Canadian values.” Incidents such as the January 2017 mosque shooting, along with several cases of Islamophobic vandalism and harassment and anti-immigration protests also demonstrate increased racial tensions. In this context, the photographer behind the nearly 30-year-old images now hopes his photos serve as a cautionary tale.

“People forget that this existed in Montreal,” Montreal-based activist André Querry told VICE. “I want to show the dangers of that era and remind people that we have to fight against these dangerous ideologies.”

The early 1990s were a turbulent time in Quebec, with the Oka crisis—a standoff between Mohawks and the military over a proposed golf course development on sacred burial ground—and ongoing constitutional negotiations exacerbating racial and linguistic tensions.

In the midst of all this turmoil, different neo-Nazi groups—including a chapter of the Klu Klux Klan—emerged in Montreal, attracting more than 100 members who targeted black and Jewish people and members of the LGBTQ community.  (more...)

Why Montreal Was a Hotbed for Neo-Nazis in the 90s

Um.... that doesn't really answer WHY? Is this grass roots, or is it AstroTurf? Who funds these people?

Another Concordia creative writing prof faces harassment allegations from former students

At least two former students in the creative writing program at Concordia University in Montreal have filed formal complaints of sexual harassment with the school against a professor who remains in the English Department, CBC News has learned.

The allegations date back to the 1990s.

The two former students have told CBC that the professor would routinely switch appointments with female students from his office to his home or to another off-campus location, and then make sexual advances.

The professor is not one of two whose classes were reassigned last week.

Mary-Jo Barr, a spokesperson for Concordia University, said the professor in the latest case is not currently teaching.

In the most recent allegations, one of the former students, who is not being named by CBC News to protect her privacy, said she was uncomfortable with meeting the professor at his home, as he had requested, but he routinely refused to discuss her work in class, so she felt she had no choice.

She said she was even more uncomfortable once she got to the man's house.

"He had the table set for two," the former student alleged. "The first thing he showed me was his bed, which he told me was very convenient.

"He showed no interest in speaking about my work. He just said, 'Yes, yes, it's great. Keep going as you are.'

"I was very uncomfortable. He offered me alcohol. I said no. He didn't like that. I started getting more and more nervous, and he started talking about women's dirty underwear," the former student said.

She said at that point, she told the professor she had to leave, and he got angry, demanding to know why. Finally, she said, she was able to get away.

"I felt sick to my stomach. I felt disgusting; I felt sick; I felt gross. I felt violated by this man."  (more...)

Another Concordia creative writing prof faces harassment allegations from former students

Related:

‘The interest is in sex, not writing,’ says one Concordia creative writing grad

Professors, power and predators: why student-teacher relationships should be banned

This has been so routine, for so long, that one wonders why it didn't blow up long ago.

Creative writing teaching manual?

Your Ward News Publishes New Edition, Continues Attacks Against Jews

Bernie Farber hasn’t held a leadership position in the Jewish community since just before the demise of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 2011, yet he continues to live rent-free in the mind of accused anti-Semitic hatemonger James Sears.

As has often been the case, Farber’s image made another unsolicited appearance in Your Ward News, dressed in a black hat with payot and depicted in a cartoon montage as “an eternal victim,” while addressing Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi in a derogatory manner.

The cartoon is one of several in the Winter 2018 edition of Your Ward News, whose editor in chief, Sears, and publisher, Leroy St. Germaine, were charged in November with promoting hatred of Jews and women.

In the current edition of the free paper, Sears doubles down on a number of anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Its cover features a bottle of Chateau Rothschild wine decorated with a star of David, with the caption, “Essence d’Enfant,” a reference to the historic blood libel that claimed that Jews consumed the blood of gentile children.

And the anti-Semitism doesn’t stop there. In a cartoon speech bubble, Jewish investor George Soros gives Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructions on advancing a “zio-globalist” plan, with the prime minister responding by saying, “I’ve followed your orders” – suggesting Jewish control over political figures.

“The man (Sears) is just a hatemonger. There’s no other way to describe him,” said Farber. “It’s the kind of things you’d see in Stormfront, the neo-Nazi website in the United States.”  (more...)

Your Ward news Publishes New Edition, Continues Attacks Against Jews

Related:

Leaving Extremism: A Canadian racist leader’s journey out of hate

Loblaws in $400M tax fight with CRA over claims it set up bogus offshore bank

A senior judge warned Loblaws and the federal government this morning that she would not look kindly on any further procedural delays in a $400-million battle the two sides are waging in Tax Court.

Loblaws and the government were in a Toronto courtroom in one of the biggest offshore corporate tax-avoidance cases in the country, with authorities alleging the grocery conglomerate set up a bogus foreign bank to avoid tax on hundreds of millions of dollars in investment income.

The case has been brewing since 2015 and is slated for a full trial in April — more than a year after the originally scheduled start date, due to a series of procedural squabbles.

"I do not want to have to adjourn this again," Associate Chief Justice Lucie Lamarre cautioned both sides on Wednesday.

At stake for Loblaws is a huge potential tax bill: $404 million, including interest, penalties and provincial income tax, according to documents related to the case.

"These are all big numbers," said Peter Baek, a Toronto tax litigator and former senior CRA auditor experienced with offshore tax rules. 

Loblaws is facing scrutiny on other fronts as well, including its recent admission to a price-fixing scheme on the sale of bread in Canada, as well as revelations in the Paradise Papers exposing the company's use of offshore havens to shield profits.  (more...)

Loblaws in $400M tax fight with CRA over claims it set up bogus offshore bank

Related:

Take Loblaw’s Hush Money, But Don’t Keep Quiet

More than 12,000 Canadians call on finance minister to raise corporate taxes, close loopholes