CANADA BANS ISLAMIC BURQAS & NIQABS DURING CITIZENSHIP OATHS

MONTREAL (The Blaze/AP) — Canada’s immigration minister says new Canadians will have to remove any face-coverings, such as the Islamic niqab or burqa, while they take the oath of citizenship. The controversial ban on these religious garments will begin immediately.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Monday he‘s received complaints from lawmakers and citizenship judges who say it’s difficult to ensure that individuals whose faces are covered are actually reciting the oath.

Kenney says it’s also a question of values. He says new Canadians should be taking the oath in view of their fellow citizens. According to CBC News, he said that such a pledge is a ”public declaration that you are joining the Canadian family and it must be taken freely and openly.“ He went on to call it ”bizarre” that women were previously  allowed to take oaths with face veils. CBC has more:

Kenney said he doesn‘t accept that it’s a religious obligation to wear the veil, explaining that when Muslim women perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required by their faith, they are required not to cover their faces.

“It’s a cultural tradition, which I think reflects a certain view about women that we don’t accept in Canada. We want women to be full and equal members of Canadian society and certainly when they’re taking the citizenship oath, that’s the right place to start,” Kenney said in an interview on CBC News Network.

The location of the announcement was not without symbolism. The French-speaking province of Quebec has had debates over how much should Canada bend to accommodate newcomers.

Taxpayer $$ now helping Canadian *green energy* companies to fail

HT~http://conservative-outlooks.com/2011/11/10/taxpayer-now-helping-canadian-green-energy-companies-to-fail/

Seen from a commenter on a news source today:

Why are the Republicans always picking on *green energy* projects?

Well, if the *shoe fits* SIR, they absolutely should be.

We know about the Solyndra debacle and other taxpayer-funded *green energy* projects which have gone belly-up. But I’d be willing to guess most have not heard about this one that could bite the dust as well: MATL, or theMontana-Alberta Tie-Line Project. And this one is a Canadian project. Picture below:

MATL is a 300-megawatt (MW), 230-kilovolt (KV) electrical transmission line allowing the movement of power between Alberta and Montana. This is a 214-mile line which is supposed to use wind-generated power to provide electrical energy between the western U.S. and Canada.

It has also received a *loan* of $161 million from the taxpayers via the 2009 stimulus under the Western Area Power Administration, or WAPA, a division of the Department of Energy.

This project also happens to be two years behind schedule and is in deep financial trouble.

Republicans from the House Natural Resources Committee are pressuring the Department of Energy’s Chair Steven Chu to immediately halt any borrowing authority through WAPA. In a letter to Chu dated November 9 from House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on power tell Chu:

The DOE Inspector General’s [Gregory Friedman] report of November 7, 2011 “Management Alert” on WAPA’s borrowing authority is deeply troubling. The Alert makes it abundantly clear that WAPA not only lacks the qualifications and internal controls to carry out this program, but also points out that officials “encountered pressure…to spend Recovery Act funds expeditiously.”  The end result is that WAPA contributed $161 million or 75%, of American taxpayer funds towards a Canadian company’s project [emphasis mine] that later experienced “significant delays and cost overruns” and is now at a “standstill.”

So not only is the U.S. taxpayer helping green energy companies in the U.S. to fail, it is also assisting those companies north of the border, to fail.

If you wish, you can read the 15-page Inspector General’s report here. I have to take a small amount of satisfaction that someone in Obama’s own Energy Department is very critical of what is going on there. Among the findings are:

• WAPA failed to get timely information updates from MATL.
• WAPA didn’t require MATL to fund a reserve for cost overruns.
• WAPA’s lack of lending experience contributed to MATL’s problems.
• MATL encountered legal difficulties with securing rights-of-way for the land.
• Work quality, safety and contract interpretations issues negatively impacted work progress.
• As/of October 2011, WAPA concedes it will not be able to meet the $70 million in cost overruns.

I could go on, but I know everyone knows the drill. Even more troubling is the fact that the underlying statute, according to Reps. Hastings’ and McClintock’s letter is:

If at the end of a useful life of a project, there is a remaining balance owed to the Treasury under this section, the balance shall be forgiven.

Which translates to folks, we ain’t getting any of our money back.

The House Natural Resources Committee back in October introduced a bill, authored by McClintock, to stop WAPA in it’s tracks. Let’s hope they are successful.

FYI last month the project was acquired by Canadian company Enbridge.

Caught on Tape: Canada's Loch Ness Monster, "Ogopogo"

A possible sighting of Canada’s version of the Loch Ness monster at a lake in British Columbia has stirred up the legend of the sea creature long-rumored to reside there.


A man visiting British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan claims he filmed video of what could only be the elusive monster, known to locals as Ogopogo. The 30-second video shows two long ripples in the water in a seemingly deserted area of the lake.


“It was not going with the waves,” Richard Huls, who captured the scene on camera during a visit to a local winery, told the Vancouver Sun. “It was not a wave, obviously, just a darker color. The size and the fact that they were not parallel with the waves made me think it had to be something else.”

Ogopogo is the Canadian version of Scotland’s famous Loch Ness monster. The first recorded sighting of the alleged creature in Loch Ness was nearly 1,500 years ago when a giant beast is said to have leaped out of a lake near Inverness, Scotland, to eat a local farmer. Since then, the legend has taken on a life of its own through first-person accounts of those who claim to have seen it and in public imagination. Read More