Thursday 20 September 2018

Saving Your Money - Cars

Cars are nice. I like driving. I also hate repair bills.

Would you like to spend $40 and save hundreds on repair bills?

Would you like to spend $60 - $80 and save THOUSANDS on repair bills?

How?

1. Subscribe to Consumer Reports and it is like asking thousands of people how they liked their .....(kind of car or truck). It is cheaper in the U.S. However in Canada you can subscribe for one year for $39.95 OR you can subscribe just to the website which I believe (have not checked) is $19.95. If you are a U.S. citizen subscriptions are cheaper. (This needs checking to be absolutely sure about prices.)


2. Buy Lemonaid by Phil Edmonston - he has info that only 
car dealers receive about "secret warranties" that you never get told about unless your dealer particularly likes you. Ha!


3. Check out these sites below:

APA - Automobile Protection Association - This consumer organization allows you access to all kinds of reviews on vehicles, on buying used or new vehicles, on the fair pricing of used vehicles and a host of other benefits. 

They also can give you a group rate on Home and Car insurance. On top of that, for an extra fee of $50 (2018 - April checked) roadside service similar to CAA. The cost of membership in 2018, April was $77 which gives you access to all parts of the website plus many other benefits.
 
They also have a list of approved auto service centres! Just think about what $77 buys you in auto repairs :) Not much! So look into this if you need help with anything auto! It's a bargain!

Also checking the sites below may help you as well!


Car Reference Sites

 Description
AutoRecenze.cz
Reviews written in Czech

CarREVIEW.com
North American car and car accessories reviews - Used and New


Carsurvey.org
comments by owners of various vehicles on their experience with particular vehicles & replies by other individuals.

Edmunds.com
Evaluate your car in U.S.

Epinions.com Car Reviews
North American car and motorsports and car accessories reviews

Parker's Owners' Reviews
UK car reviews

Review Centre Car Reviews
UK car reviews by consumers


Viewpoints.com Auto Reviews -

 North American car and car accessories reviews

Kelly Blue Book

Canada Black Book
 Private Best-Used-Cars-Trucks

Canada Boating Operator's License

Hello!
Just bought a used sailboat this year. Registered it but discovered because it has an outboard engine (in case of there being NO wind, that you need a Transport Canada Approved boating license that you can get many places including Canadian Tire Corp.

The price is usually $49.95 for one boating license including access by only one person. If several people sign up then the fee is reduced for each one to as little as $9.95 per person.

However not being satisfied that this was necessary for a sailboat I checked online and shucks they are correct.

So I looked for a cheaper way to get it and just found Boatin'Bob at https://www.boatnbob.com/ operated by Betterboating.ca.

While others reduce the fee above by a few dollars, Better Boating reduces it to only $26.99 plus tax and guarantees that this is the best price! So do you see why a few minutes of searching can save you over $20??? :)

Info from the course ....

Do I Need A Boating Licence In Canada?


YES! Excluding the Northwest Territories or Nunavut, all persons who operate a recreational motorized pleasure craft in Canada must carry a Transport Canada Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC) commonly referred to as a boating license or equivalent proof of competency on board.




Get Your Boating Licence in 3 Easy Steps.



Step 1

Get Your Boating License Today! BOATNBOB.COM

Boater Registration

  • Our course is Transport Canada Approved and was designed with you in mind. It is our intention to provide you with the best online safe boating educational course available.
  • The One-time fee of $26.99 plus tax includes:
  • Full access to the Online Study Guide.
  • Access to the OFFICIAL Transport Canada PCOC test.
  • Your electronic and printable temporary PCOC certificate.
  • Mailing of your PERMANENT LIFE TIME PCOC.
  • There are no additional or hidden fees!
  • When prompted for payment, we accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards
  • TRY THE FIRST FEW VOYAGES FOR FREE! ►
  Okay enough, now I must do the course.

Oh by the way if you want a booklet with all the info for permanent reference, CTC has the BoatSmart! Study Guide booklet for only $16.99.

Now on to the course!
WELL READY TO SAVE EVEN MORE? At  the Boatnbob.com site you can download a FREE MANUAL in pdf format and print it out if you wish! Hey later today I am going to take this CTC manual back and get a refund for my $16.99 plus tax!!!

I love saving money! :)
It pays to do a bit of research!
-cp



Friday 24 August 2018

Problems with Theory of Evolution

Problems with Theory of Evolution- David Berlinski

David Berlinski - Reference Wikipedia  -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berlinski

David Berlinski (born 1942) is an American author and academic who opposes the scientific consensus on the theory of evolution. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.[1]

Evolution

A critic of the theory of evolution, Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think tank that is a hub of the intelligent design movement. Berlinski shares the movement's disbelief in the evidence for evolution, but does not openly avow intelligent design and describes his relationship with the idea as: "warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives."[1] Berlinski is a scathing critic of evolution, yet, "Unlike his colleagues at the Discovery Institute,...[he] refuses to theorize about the origin of life."[1]

Berlinski appeared in the 2008 film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he told interviewer Ben Stein that "Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Nazism but I think it's certainly a necessary one."[10] He also says:

It'd be nice to see the scientific establishment lose some of its prestige and power...Above all, it'd be nice to have a real spirit of self-criticism penetrating the sciences.[10]
In his 1996 article, The Deniable Darwin, published in Commentary, Berlinski says he is skeptical of evolution for a number of reasons, claiming:


  1. An appearance "at once" of an astonishing number of novel biological structures in the Cambrian explosion
  2. A lack of major transitional fossils
  3. A lack of recent significant evolution in sharks,
  4. The evolution of the eye, and 
  5. A failure of evolutionary biology to explain various phenomena ranging from the sexual cannibalism of redback spiders to why women are not born with a tail.

[11] The article was described by science historian Ronald L. Numbers as "a version of ID theory". 

Views on religion

Berlinski describes himself as a secular Jew.[12] Berlinski's views towards criticism of religious belief can be found in his book The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (2008).[12] In summary, he asserts that some skeptical arguments against religious belief based on scientific evidence misrepresent what the science is actually saying, that an objective morality requires a religious foundation, that mathematical theories attempting to bring together quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity amount to pseudoscience because of their lack of empirical verifiability, and he expresses doubt towards Darwinian evolutionary theory.  

Many see the rabid believer in evolution as being part of a group of religionists which has the god of science as their reference for life.  

Saturday 4 August 2018

Hatred Against Jews from our Postal Workers Union and Students?


[We believe that since the Jewish people have undergone many atrocities against them and unintelligent criticism of the Jewish state that this news article needs to be preserved so that people can understand what undying hatred there is on the part of many who without thinking are actually agreeing with Adolf Hitler's policies attempting to exterminate the Jewish race and the state of Israel even now! On the contrary, Israel has more accomplishments toward helping others than any other country large or small, a strange neglect on the part of the supposedly-intelligent most of whom have NEVER set foot in Israel! The editor has been there twice and knows that Robert Fulford is writing the truth and informing us of the stupidity of this collusion between postal workers in Canada who we pay, with Palestinian postal workers. Sad that there is such ignorance in high places!

This form of negativism was how Hitler started raising his nazi forces to hate Jews. Now it is not just coming from from  brutal people but from Unions which we allow and  students who are in many cases funded by OUR TAX-PAYER DOLLARS!

 - Editor]

Robert Fulford: Canada's postal workers jump on the Israel-bashing bandwagon

From the Irish senate and Britain's Labour Party to university students, just about everyone feels entitled to throw rhetorical rocks at the Jewish state


A man participates in a "wear a kippah" gathering in Berlin, Germany, to protest anti-Semitism, on April 25, 2018.Carsten Koall/Getty Images

The Irish senate recently passed a bill forbidding the purchase of goods produced in the West Bank of Israel. Readers with a fairly sophisticated sense of the Middle East were baffled by seeing Israel’s and Ireland’s politics linked in the same sentence but they shouldn’t have been. Just about everyone from everywhere now feels entitled to throw rhetorical rocks at Israel, even if they have never seen the place, learned its history or listened to a few of its arguments.

Readers who know a little about Israel are nevertheless aware that it has many enemies. Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic opinions (sometimes they are identical) appear regularly in a deafening barrage of criticism focused on the Jewish state.
Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic opinions (sometimes they are identical) appear regularly in a deafening barrage of criticism

The denunciation comes from all the usual suspects, including the congenitally bigoted. But they also emerge nowadays from truly unexpected sources. Last week the three largest Jewish newspapers in England united to run the same front-page editorial, heralding what they call a clear and present danger to Jewish life — the leader of the Labour Party, and possibly the next prime minister of Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, “a man who has a problem seeing that hateful rhetoric aimed at Israel can easily step into anti-Semitism.”

People protest anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British Labour Party in London on April 8, 2018. Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
A horrified article in Britain’s left-wing New Statesman magazine sees the same themes emerging on the left in “the fervent loathing of Israel.” There are people, they write, who disingenuously describe themselves as “critics” but in fact “seek themselves, or side with those who seek, Israel’s dissolution or destruction.” The New Statesmen notes that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, yet “the rhetoric and premise of the two things, by which Jews and Jewish institutions are singled out as uniquely malevolent and dangerous, are so frequently indistinguishable as to make the distinction vanish.”It’s impossible to be neutral about Israel. When foreigners make innocent, apparently non-political donations to the Palestinians, they may find themselves caught up in a tragic propaganda war. Belgium, in its foreign aid, funded a public school for Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority later decided it should be named Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School, to honour the woman who allegedly led the 1978 bus hijacking that killed 37 Israelis, 12 of them children. Belgium protested against its gift being connected to terrorism, but the martyr’s name still stands on the front of the building. Palestinian Media Watch, which studies the area from outside, reports 31 Palestinian Authority schools are now named after terrorists.

Protesters demonstrate in London’s Parliament Square against anti-Semitism in the
British Labour Party on March 26, 2018.
 
Union members, in Canada and elsewhere, must pay attention lest they, too, are swept into Israeli politics — and on the wrong side. The 50,000-member Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has acknowledged that it’s joined with the Palestinian Postal Service Workers Union to “build greater solidarity between our two unions.” When told about this arrangement, Alon Katzakevich, an Israeli-Canadian member of CUPW who lives in Winnipeg, said he was “shocked and concerned.” 
The Palestinian union supports the total annihilation of the Jewish State, rather than a two-state solution.But in the army of Israel opponents, the most reliable, the smuggest and the most pestilential are university students. North American students pour out endless bulletins declaring that Israel must be Boycotted, Divested, and Sanctioned (BDS). They sponsor the insulting Israel Apartheid Week every year, they invite on-the-road Palestinian press agents to exchange praise with them, and they create anti-Semitic environments that affect at least a few students attending university. 

There’s no evidence that all this activity rattles Israel’s economy or its status in the world, but for the organizing students it must be satisfying and at least gives them an international credit to put on their CVs.
In the army of Israel opponents, the most reliable, the smuggest and the most pestilential are university students
The flat uniformity of all these Israel critics must dismay their teachers. After all, people go to university to develop their own ideas, not to march in procession. Their activities raise another question: Why should Israel, and only Israel, be blessed by this ocean of free advice from academe? As one Jewish commentator wrote this summer, “Israel is the only nation universally demonized, delegitimized, and held to a double standard on campuses.”

Why only one? Shouldn’t students be upset about North Korea, Syria, Iran, Russia and Yemen? And what about Tibet?
• Email: robert.fulford@utoronto.ca


Thursday 28 June 2018

Alcohol Use & Cancer

[From the American Cancer Society at https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/diet-physical-activity/alcohol-use-and-cancer.html]

Alcohol Use and Cancer

Most people know that heavy drinking can cause health problems. But many people might not know that drinking alcohol also can raise their risk of getting cancer.

Cancers linked to alcohol use

Alcohol use has been linked with cancers of the:
Alcohol may also increase the risk of cancers of the pancreas and stomach.
For each of these cancers, the more alcohol you drink, the higher your cancer risk.
Cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, and esophagus: Alcohol use clearly raises the risk of these cancers. Drinking and smoking together raises the risk of these cancers even more than drinking or smoking alone. This might be because alcohol can help harmful chemicals in tobacco get inside the cells that line the mouth, throat and esophagus. Alcohol may also limit how these cells can repair damage to their DNA caused by the chemicals in tobacco.
Liver cancer: Long-term alcohol use has been linked to an increased risk of liver cancer. Regular, heavy alcohol use can damage the liver, leading to inflammation and scarring. This might raise the risk of liver cancer.
Colon and rectal cancer: Alcohol use has been linked with a higher risk of cancers of the colon and rectum. The evidence for this is generally stronger in men than in women, but studies have found the link in both sexes.
Breast cancer: Even a few drinks a week is linked with an increased risk of breast cancer in women. This risk may be especially high in women who do not get enough folate (a B vitamin) in their diet or through supplements. Alcohol can also raise estrogen levels in the body, which may explain some of the increased risk. Cutting back on alcohol may be an important way for many women to lower their risk of breast cancer.

Does the type of alcohol matter?

Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic drinks, whether they are beers, wines, liquors (distilled spirits), or other drinks. Alcoholic drinks contain different percentages of ethanol, but in general, a standard size drink of any type — 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor — contains about the same amount of ethanol (about half an ounce). Of course, larger or ‘stronger’ drinks can contain more ethanol than this.

Overall, the amount of alcohol someone drinks over time, not the type of alcoholic beverage, seems to be the most important factor in raising cancer risk. Most evidence suggests that it is the ethanol that increases the risk, not other things in the drink.

How does alcohol raise cancer risk?

Exactly how alcohol affects cancer risk isn’t completely understood. In fact, there might be several different ways it can raise risk, and this might depend on the type of cancer.

Damage to body tissues

Alcohol can act as an irritant, especially in the mouth and throat. Cells that are damaged by the alcohol may try to repair themselves, which could lead to DNA changes that can be a step toward cancer.
Bacteria that normally live in the colon and rectum can convert alcohol into large amounts of acetaldehyde, a chemical that has been shown to cause cancer in lab animals.
Alcohol and its byproducts can also damage the liver, leading to inflammation and scarring. As liver cells try to repair the damage, they can end up with mistakes in their DNA, which could lead to cancer.

Effects on other harmful chemicals

Alcohol may help other harmful chemicals, such as those in tobacco smoke, enter the cells lining the upper digestive tract more easily. This might explain why the combination of smoking and drinking is much more likely to cause cancers in the mouth or throat than smoking or drinking alone.
In other cases, alcohol may slow the body’s ability to break down and get rid of some harmful chemicals.

Effect on absorption of folate or other nutrients

Alcohol might affect the body’s ability to absorb some nutrients, such as folate. Folate is a vitamin that cells in the body need to stay healthy. Absorption of nutrients can be even worse in heavy drinkers, who often have low levels of folate. These low levels may play a role in the risk of some cancers, such as breast and colorectal cancer.

Effects on estrogen or other hormones

Alcohol can raise the levels of estrogen, a hormone important in the growth and development of breast tissue. This could affect a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

Effects on body weight

Too much alcohol can add extra calories to the diet, which can contribute to weight gain in some people. Being overweight or obese is known to increase the risks of many types of cancer.
Along with these effects, alcohol may contribute to cancer growth in other, unknown ways.

Other long-term health effects from drinking alcohol

Most people know about the short-term effects of drinking alcohol, such as its effects on mood, concentration, judgment, and coordination. But alcohol can also have longer-term health effects. These can vary from person to person.
For some people, alcohol is addictive. Drinking can become heavier over time, leading to serious health and social problems. Heavy drinkers who suddenly stop drinking can have physical withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, confusion, hallucinations, seizures, and other serious problems over the next few days. In some people these can be life-threatening. This doesn’t mean that heavy drinkers should not stop drinking. It does mean that heavy drinkers should talk with their health care team about the safest way to stop drinking.
Over time, heavy drinking can cause inflammation (hepatitis) and heavy scarring (cirrhosis) in the liver. This can lead to liver failure. Heavy drinking can also damage other organs, such as the pancreas and the brain, and can raise blood pressure. It also increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
In pregnant women, alcohol use, especially heavy drinking, may lead to birth defects or other problems with the fetus.
On the other hand, low to moderate alcohol use has been linked with a lower risk of heart disease in some people. Low to moderate use is usually defined as 1 or 2 drinks a day for a man or 1 drink a day for a woman. The potential benefit of lowering heart disease risk has to be weighed against the possible health risks for each person.

What does the American Cancer Society recommend?

As part of its guidelines on nutrition and physical activity for cancer prevention, the American Cancer Society recommends that people who drink alcohol limit their intake to no more than 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink a day for women.
The recommended limit is lower for women because of their smaller body size and because their bodies tend to break down alcohol more slowly. These daily limits do not mean it’s safe to drink larger amounts on fewer days of the week, which can still lead to health, social, and other problems.
Alcohol use has been linked to several types of cancer and other health risks, but this is complicated by the fact that low-to-moderate alcohol intake has been linked with a lower risk of heart disease. Still, lowering the risk of heart disease is not a compelling reason for adults who don’t drink alcohol to start.
There are many ways to reduce heart disease risk, including avoiding smoking, eating a diet low in saturated and trans fats, staying at a healthy weight, staying physically active, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol.
According to the 2010 US Dietary Guidelines for Americans, some groups of people should not drink alcoholic beverages at all. These include:
  • Children and teens
  • People who cannot limit their drinking or who are recovering from alcoholism
  • Women who are or may become pregnant
  • People who plan to drive or operate machinery
  • People who take part in other activities that require attention, skill, or coordination or in situations where impaired judgment could cause injury or death
  • People taking prescription or over-the-counter medicines that interact with alcohol
  • People with certain medical conditions (such as liver disease or pancreatitis)

Alcohol use during and after cancer treatment

Many studies have found a link between alcohol intake and the risk of developing certain cancers. But it is not clear whether alcohol use after treatment might increase the risk of these cancers coming back (recurring). In theory, it’s possible that alcohol use might raise the risk of recurrence. For example, alcohol can increase the levels of estrogens in the body, which might increase the risk for breast cancer recurrence. But there is no strong evidence from studies to support this.
In people who have already been diagnosed with cancer, alcohol intake could also affect the risk of developing a new cancer.
There are some cases during cancer treatment in which alcohol clearly should be avoided. For example, alcohol – even in very small amounts – can irritate mouth sores caused by some cancer treatments, and can even make them worse. Alcohol can also interact with some drugs used during cancer treatment, which might increase the risk of harmful side effects. It’s important to talk with your doctor about this if you are being treated for cancer.
But for people who have completed cancer treatment, the effects of alcohol on cancer recurrence risk are largely unknown. It’s important to discuss this with your doctor. Factors that can be important include:
  • The type of cancer
  • Your risk of recurrence
  • Your treatment(s) 
  • Your overall health
  • Other possible risks and benefits of drinking

The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and master's-prepared nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.

Alcohol Consumption & Cancer?

Is There a Correlation Between Alcohol Consumption and Cancer Risk?

September 06, 2017
too-many-drinks.jpg (1) Many people know that excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages can lead to numerous health problems. However, some are unaware that researchers have linked heavy drinking to an increased risk of several types of cancer, including cancers of the mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, breast, pancreas and stomach.
Additionally, a research study performed at Moffitt Cancer Center has shown that men who consume excessive amounts of alcohol have a greater risk of becoming infected with human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that has been found to contribute to the development of a number of cancers in women, including cervical, vaginal and anal cancers.
But, that is not the whole story. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), low-to-moderate alcohol intake can actually lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Even so, given the known risks of alcohol consumption – cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, alcoholism and accidents, to name a few – the AHA does not recommend that people start drinking alcohol solely for its protective effect on heart health. Instead, the AHA advises people who choose to drink to do so in moderation and to make other lifestyle changes, such as exercising, that can provide cardiovascular benefits.
Similarly, as part of its cancer prevention guidelines, the American Cancer Society recommends that people who drink alcohol limit their intake to:
  • No more than two alcoholic drinks per day for men
  • No more than one alcoholic drink per day for women
Different guidelines apply to men and women because women tend to be more vulnerable to the adverse effects of alcohol. That’s because women generally have a lower body mass than men, and their bodies also have a tendency to break down alcohol more slowly, meaning that a higher concentration of alcohol is absorbed into the blood.
If you have questions about alcohol consumption and cancer risk, you can arrange to talk with an oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center by calling 1-888-663-3488 or completing a new patient registration form online. No referrals are necessary.

This data came from the Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida
Moffitt Logo

Monday 25 June 2018

Letter to Pelham Voice:Compassion

It is sad but interesting that writer Julie Mannell is compassionate to all except Sam Oosterhoff because she makes assumptions about his beliefs without actually talking to him. At least I will assume that she has not talked to him as she has him pegged by modern stereotypes, which are still stereotypes.

Why cannot Julie have compassion for one of the least accepted groups in our society, people who believe like Sam?
Is he anti-anything? How do we know? We only know from talking to an individual. I believe Sam might shock her as a very compassionate person. Just because someone may disagree with someone else does not make them wrong nor does it make them evil. And yet Julie has proclaimed him as such. Maybe taking a positive approach would be more compassionate. What is he for? Doesn’t he have any redeeming qualities?

And at the same time, she has proclaimed that the majority who voted for Sam are also hateful evil people. After all, if they voted for Sam, then they must be just like him.

Julie, it really is time that you are compassionate for all, even those you disagree with. Selective compassion is not compassion at all. It is just making choices in our beliefs as to who we should care about. Your choices are not any more correct than anyone else’s.

Assumptions we should realize lead to beliefs that are false and judgemental, not objective and true. The very heart of liberalism used to be an acceptance of all. I guess that day is past just like the Comfort Maple is passing as well.


Charles G Pedley BA MSED MUI

Sunday 10 June 2018

Minimum Wages Rise = Unemployment!

[From the Fraser Institute Forum -
Of course Wynne lost the election last Thursday, June 7 and will be replaced by Doug Ford. Hopefully Ford has done some research in this area! - Editor]

Wynne and other liberal do-gooders think that there are primary wage-earners making very little money such as those at Tim Horton's, McDonalds etc.

But having done NO RESEARCH which is the liberal way of taking gut-feelings and making laws about them, of course it results in unemployment!

[Below the Fraser Institute shows the consequences of unresearched pay-raise blundering. - Editor]


When the Ontario government announced its plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour last month, Premier Kathleen Wynne made a glaringly false statement about the reality of minimum wage earners. Specifically, she said:
“Millions of workers in Ontario are finding it almost impossible to support their families on a minimum wage that just doesn’t go far enough.”
Let’s clarify the facts.

For starters, Ontario has 633,000 minimum wage earners in the province—not “millions,” as Premier Wynne claims. There’s not a slight difference between reality and what the premier claims. At the very least, we’re talking about an overstatement of more than three times—or 216 per cent!

But who are these 633,000 minimum wage earners in Ontario and are they actually struggling to support their families on a minimum wage job, as Premier Wynne suggests?
Thankfully, they generally are not.

According to Statistics Canada data , most minimum wage earners in Ontario are not the primary or sole earner in their household. In fact, 60 per cent are teenagers or youth aged 15 to 24, the vast majority of which (86 per cent) live with their parents or other relatives.
Another 19 per cent of minimum wage earners in Ontario are married with employed spouses, nearly all (90 per cent) of whom earn more than the minimum wage or are self-employed.

Just two per cent of minimum wage earners in Ontario are single parents with a young child.
Given all this, it shouldn’t be surprising that the vast majority of minimum wage workers—85 per cent , in fact—do not live in low-income households, as defined by Statistics Canada’s low income cut-off , a common measure of low income.

Yet even though most minimum wage earners in Ontario do not belong to households classified as low-income by Statistics Canada, some may still think raising the minimum wage is a good idea because it could help many low-wage workers make ends meet. But as we’ve written before , and despite good intentions, it is not. And that’s because of unintended consequences from the policy that reduce employment opportunities for the most vulnerable and least-skilled workers.

When you combine the facts on who actually earns the minimum wage—generally not people who are primary or sole breadwinners in their families—with the negative consequences on employment for the least-skilled workers, it becomes abundantly clear that the minimum wage is an ineffective policy for helping the most vulnerable.
Premier Wynne should get her facts straight.
Blog Category: 
Charles Lammam Hugh MacIntyre

Fraser Institute Forum

Sunday 1 April 2018

A Man Died that Hostages Would Be Saved

From the National Post, Saturday March 31, a Hero has Come

The news from France, this time Trèbes, was depressingly familiar. A jihadist terror attack, again. A radicalized Muslim man known to police on a rampage, again. Civilians about their daily business under siege, again.


It happens a few times a year, and the president of France, and the French security services, and the friends of France abroad issued their customary statements, again.
Except that this time it was not the same. Something different happened amid the terrorist routine in Trèbes.

Lt.-Col. Arnaud Beltrame of the French Gendarmerie nationale was on the scene at the supermarket in Trèbes. The terrorist had already killed two people, and was holding hostages inside. Beltrame was the right man. Second-in-command of the region’s police, he was a decorated veteran of the French special forces and esteemed by all as the best of the Gendarmerie.
It was an act of both outstanding courage and tactical brilliance
The lieutenant-colonel then offered to take the place of a female hostage. It was an act of both outstanding courage and tactical brilliance. The jihadi agreed to the swap, and so Beltrame was able to draw close, leaving his mobile phone on so that the police outside could hear what was going on. When they stormed the supermarket, Beltrame was stabbed and shot by the jihadi, and died of his wounds the next day.
His widow noted that he died the day before Palm Sunday, when Holy Week begins. In these holiest of all days for Christians, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is recalled, made present again. All that was somehow made present in the death of Arnaud Beltrame.

His widow insisted that his sacrifice could not be understood apart from his Christian faith, nourished by the monks at the nearby Abbey of Lagrasse. It was one of those monks who attended to Beltrame in hospital, administering the last sacraments before he died.
When her Friday morning began, she did not think that she would need a saviour that day
We have not heard the account of the woman whose life was spared when Beltrame took her place. When her Friday morning began, she did not think that she would need a saviour that day. She was going to buy groceries. But she found herself held hostage by a murderous terrorist. And she needed to be saved.

We might imagine that she desperately thought about how that might happen. Might the jihadi get distracted so that she could make a run for it? Might the police outside manage to take him out with a sniper’s bullet? Might the other shoppers somehow subdue him?

Did she imagine that deliverance would come from a member of the Gendarmerie offering to take her place? That her mortal peril would be relieved by Arnaud Beltrame himself assuming that same peril? That she would not go to an early grave because he was willing to do so?


Did she think, even for a moment, that the man who was ready to kill her would let her go, because Lt.-Col. Beltrame had come? What did the jihadi say to her?
Perhaps: “You may go; he has come.”

You can see why Arnaud Beltrame’s wife, mourning her husband, was thinking about Holy Week. Is that not what happened then, long ago in Jerusalem?

That is what Christians mark on Good Friday. A terrible estrangement between God and man had been wrought by sin, and the wages of sin are death, as St. Paul teaches. And so because of sin we die.

Can that estrangement be overcome? Can the debt of our transgression be repaid? Can all that sin has destroyed be restored? After the fall of man, Christian theology considers the human race to be held hostage as it were, in mortal peril because the reality of death cannot be overcome.

You may go, He has come
Then comes the One who can overcome. Jesus is man, the faithful believe, but also God. And the hostages are freed, not freed by overwhelming power, but because there is One to take their place.

On Good Friday, Christians look to the Cross and hear just that: “You may go, He has come.”

The good news of a Saviour is only good news to those who know they need saving. On that Friday morning in Trèbes, the people did not think they needed a saviour until they needed one. On that Friday morning in Jerusalem, the people did not think they needed a Saviour, even though one was at hand.

Christians celebrate the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ because it means that a Saviour has come. Holy Week — whether in Jerusalem or France or Canada — is a reminder that the world needs one.

To all our readers, a Happy Easter!

Thursday 1 February 2018

Sharp Bus Drivers

Closing down the Facebook Group - Sharp Bus Drivers as it served not useful purpose and it may be confused with the actual Sharp Bus Niagara Facebook page! 

So here is the alternate:
Have any bus driving tips?
Have any scary driving stories?:

Oh ya? You have?

How about these roads?