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Here is video of Canadian Prime Minister Brian Harper showing off his musical talent as he sang a Beatles song with help from famed cellist Yo Yo Ma at the National Arts Centre in Canada. . . . (VIDEO)

The architect of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise concert performance with superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma at an Ottawa gala Saturday was not a Conservative spin doctor, campaign strategist or image consultant. The executive producer credit goes to his wife, Laureen, who was the honorary chair of the event and says there was “no big strategic thinking� behind his vocal rendition of the Beatles' anthem, With a Little Help from My Friends.

MORE NIGHTMARISH NEWS FROM THE NORTH MULLAHS MAKE NEW FRIENDS bythelastcrusade.orgIran is attempting to acquire clandestine shipments via Canada for its nuclear program. Canadian customs officers have confiscated everything from centrifuge parts to programmable logic controllers that were headed to Iran, George Webb, head of the Canada Border Services Agency's Counter Proliferation Section, told the National Post. The increasing number of cases involves Canadian entrepreneurs, who want to make a quick buck from the Iranian mullahs, and state-sponsored cells, such as Hezbollah, which thrive throughout the Canadian provinces. The goods are not shipped directly to Iran, but to neighboring...

OTTAWA (AFP) -- Iran is attempting to acquire clandestine shipments via Canada for its nuclear program, a senior customs official said Thursday. Canadian customs officers have seized everything from centrifuge parts to programmable logic controllers being shipped to Iran through third countries, George Webb, head of the Canada Border Services Agency's Counter Proliferation Section, told the National Post. The increasing number of cases involves entrepreneurs and state-sponsored cells, Webb told the daily, in comments that were confirmed to AFP by a spokeswoman for CBSA.

A fast-food restaurant in this western Ontario city served cheeseburgers to a Canadian Forces pilot Thursday — while his helicopter was parked outside. Michelle Patterson said Friday she thought something was wrong when she looked out one of the windows of the A&W restaurant. All she saw was flying dust. "I thought, 'Oh gee,' and I went over to the side of our building and there was a helicopter there with a police car," she said. Moments later, the helicopter pilot walks into the restaurant. "He said he was here to pick up some supper before taking off again," said...

I have a friend in Canada who asked me about American Healthcare and how it was supposed to help the less well off. He cites for me a case that I've never heard of. Maybe you can help me answer him ... This is his question : =============================================================================== You seem to have millions of people who are against the government helping the less well off when they can't pay of their healthcare without going bankrupt. Where was America's medicare or medicaid when someone I know, an American citizen living in New York had to borrow money to pay for the...

Next week, investigative journalist and author Dr. Paul L. Williams will be tried in a foreign court for his investigative work on reports of al Qaeda terrorists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. But he broke no American statute and his alleged violation of Canadian law took place not in Canada, but at his home in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Paul L. Williams & Hamid Mir Dr. Paul Williams Goes on Trial in Canadian Court by No Compromise Media Next week, investigative journalist and author Dr. Paul L. Williams will be tried in a foreign court for his investigative work on reports of al Qaeda terrorists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. But he broke no American statute and his alleged violation of Canadian law took place not in Canada, but at his home in Pennsylvania.Williams got into a legal jam with the Canadians while discussing his book The Dunces of Doomsday on the nationally syndicated “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio...

I suppose I should have been tipped off by the fact that the surgeon who performed my 84-year-old Mom's angioplasty on Friday at Toronto General Hospital couldn't be bothered to check up on her afterward. This same surgeon discharged her Saturday morning from TGH - by phone.

SNIPPET: "Saad Gaya, a 21-year old, admitted Monday that he was part of an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to build fertilizer-based truck bombs and explode them in downtown Toronto." SNIPPET: "With Mr. Gaya, Mr. Khalid, and Mr. Dirie having pleaded guilty in recent weeks, only seven adult accused are headed to trial at this point. More pleas are possible."

Namouh was arrested in September 2007 for engaging in more than 1,000 online conversations and producing videos praising violent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as helping distribute ransom demands for kidnappers of a British journalist in Gaza. In online postings, he also touted his explosives expertise and threatened future attacks in Germany and Austria because of their military roles in Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Namouh was a member of the Global Islamic Media Front, which is said to be involved in propaganda and jihad recruitment for Al-Qaeda. He faces possible life in prison.

With NASA Administrator Charles Bolden taking tentative steps toward more free market possibilities for America’s space program—and even mentioning the once-unspeakable topic of “space tourism”—a clown from Canada is already orbiting the Earth. An Associated Press story entitled “Canadian circus billionaire heads to space station” notes that "a Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe Wednesday on a journey to the International Space Station." The AP account continues: A Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe...

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act. But based on a report leaked to the...

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

Note: Photo included. "2 Canadians slain in Mexico tied to drug trade: police 3 gunmen believed responsible for shootings" Last Updated: Monday, September 28, 2009 | 9:56 PM ET The Associated Press SNIPPET: "Gang investigators in British Columbia say two men gunned down in Mexico were involved in the drug trade, and had been on the radar of gang investigators before they were found shot to death in a Puerto Vallarta condo complex."

SNIPPET: "SPOKANE -- Authorities in North Idaho are reporting that sometime early Tuesday morning a small airplane was stolen from the Boundary County Airport. The Boundary County Sheriff confirms they received a report regarding the theft of a 2005 Cessna T182T aircraft around 7 AM Tuesday morning. The aircraft, with tail number N2183P, is a white and blue fixed wing single engine aircraft. It is believed the aircraft was taken from the airport around 5:45 Tuesday. They're not sure in what direction the plane was flown from the airport." SNIPPET: "Authorities are working to confirm if the theft is related...

TORONTO (Reuters) - The White House is expected to exempt Canada from a provision in the U.S. stimulus package that gives priority to American-made products used in public works projects, CBC News reported on Tuesday. In return Ottawa will offer U.S. companies guaranteed access to procurement contracts awarded by provincial and municipal governments, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported on its website, citing Canadian government sources.

These videos from what I had just heard on the Sound Off Connecticut show with Jim Vicevich on WTIC AM/Streaming today, the audio parts of these videos. Clearly heartbreaking. Three stories of the fantastic Canadian National Health Care system. The first report describes the growing Canadian health care underground. The operative line comes at the end of the first video from Fox News yesterday morning. Says Fox reporter Dan Springer … the Canadian health care system works well for people who are not all that sick. Indeed.

BRUSSELS -- A reassessment of the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan is heightening uncertainty over the international military mission in the country among America's European allies, who already face strong domestic opposition to their role in the conflict. European nations provide the bulk of the 35,000 non-U.S. foreign troops in Afghanistan -- compared with the 60,000 U.S. troops -- as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's force in the country. In many countries, the mission has been unpopular, and opinion polls suggest it is becoming more so: even in the traditionally supportive U.K., almost two-thirds of the public want...

BULLETIN -- NEW YORK POLICE AND FBI RAID HOMES IN QUEENS IN TERRORISM INVESTIGATION.6 minutes ago from BNO Headquarters

OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has asked the federal privacy commissioner to investigate whether the RCMP abused the personal information of gun owners by handing their names over to a pollster to use for a survey. "This use of long-gun owners' personal information was offensive and inappropriate," Van Loan said in a statement Thursday. The Conservatives have pledged for years to abolish the contentious long-gun registry for rifles and shotguns, created by the former Liberal government as part of a 1995 gun-control package passed in the wake of the Montreal massacre, in which 14 women were shot...

.... The terms “Bountiful” and “marriage,” when used together, often conjure up a distinct image. One probably envisages a couple united by a cult leader in a short, secretive, and seedy ceremony. The bride would be imagined as young (perhaps underage), naïve, quiet and unworldly. Her husband would be depicted as older, savvier and lecherous, married already to a number of existent wives. This image does not emerge from thin air. The popular press has gone to lengths in casting Bountiful and other communities of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) as places marked by two predominant features:...

An Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, man witnessed and took photographs September 17, 2009, of a low flying UFO overhead in Scarborough, according to a statement released by Paul Shishis. The photographed object does not fit standard UFO descriptions of disc and triangle-shaped objects, but appeared to "morph" in shape, according to Shishis. He said the object was 100 yards away and between 300 and 500 feet in altitude, when it appeared to "open up," and then "looked like a long sheet of some material - that was approximately 10 to 15 feet in length."

If this isn’t the perfect evidence of why any freedom loving western citizen should be against gun registries, then you can’t make the case at all. Over the last few weeks the police in Toronto, Canada have been stormtrooping through the homes of average, everyday Torontonians that have had the misfortune to have appeared on the area’s gun registry and confiscating their legally owned guns. What has been the pretext for this massive gun confiscation program? Unfortunately, the restrictive gun laws in Canada allow authorities to stomp through any citizen’s home and demand to see where that citizen stores his...

It caused a weird and unfamiliar feeling – pride. That was the sensation of standing up for what is right. It was the touch of fortitude and courage to stand against what is most definitely wrong on the international stage. It was the feeling of growing a pair.

Canadians are bullish on giving government officials permission to restrict personal freedoms in a flu pandemic, with half of those surveyed agreeing that violation of a quarantine order would be tantamount to manslaughter. As well, 90% of Canadians surveyed for a research report in pandemic ethics believe doctors and nurses have an obligation to report to work during a pandemic, provided safety precautions are in place. Almost half -- 48% -- say that health care workers who do not show up for work without a legitimate excuse should be fired or lose their professional licenses. The survey, conducted for the...

Two weeks ago, I was seated at a lunch counter minding my own business, for a change, when a reflexive liberal began to parrot the administration’s talking points on healthcare. These vapid clichés are likely to figure somewhat prominently in the upcoming legislative debate on the need to create a national healthcare system. When the Obama enthusiast began praising the virtues of the government sponsored healthcare programs in Canada, I began to become a trifle restless and eventually I had to challenge the speaker’s wildly optimistic assertions. When I interrupted the cheerleader who had disturbed my meal two weeks ago,...

... Canada's government is to be roundly congratulated for not putting up with this farce. As reported by Canwest's Steve Edwards, Canada will walk out on Ahmadinejad when he rises to share his thoughts at the UN: Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon will be at the world body to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly's annual debate, but officials signal he and other members of the Canadian delegation will vacate the Canadian seats when the Islamic republic's President approaches the podium. "President Ahmadinejad's repeated denial of the Holocaust and his anti-Israel comments run counter to the values of the...

Canada, who participated in the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944 now has another great moment in foreign policy. Our northern neighbor, usually seen as restrained and friendly, has now adopted a stronger anti-Iran approach than the United States.

Canada will boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations today, saying his outbursts about the Holocaust and Israel are "shameful." Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon will be at the world body to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly's annual debate, but officials signal he and other members of the Canadian delegation will vacate when the Islamic republic's president approaches the podium.

OTTAWA -- The recession in Canada is only over in a technical sense because the recovery is extremely fragile and there are still problems in the job market, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday. "We've got (Federal Reserve) Chairman (Ben) Bernanke and others saying the recession is over but I think that's only in a technical sense," Mr. Harper told a televised news conference in Guelph, Ont. "As long as we continue to have challenges in the labor market that affect Canadian families on the ground, then I don't think we can truly say the recession is over. So...

The United States has an opportunity to learn from Saskatchewan's leading work in carbon-capture technology, a prominent U.S. politician said Friday, as he offered support to a Saskatchewan-Montana project seeking American government funding. Saskatchewan, like the U.S., relies heavily on burning coal for power. But U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) said the province appears to be "ahead of, quite frankly, the world" with carbon sequestration, the process of capturing the gas and storing the CO2 underground. "What we want to try and do is find out what is working in the area of carbon sequestration, because when you look...

Army staff and National Defence headquarters officials were told in 2007 that young boys had allegedly been sexually abused by Afghan security forces at a Canadian base in Afghanistan, but the concern at the time was that the incident might be reported in the news media, according to military records obtained by the Citizen... The newly released records raise questions about a military investigation that earlier this year concluded that allegations about sexual abuse of Afghan children by members of the Afghan army and police were unfounded. The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service also stated that its thorough investigation concluded...

TORONTO - Canadian Parliament will consider a bill introduced Thursday that would allow American and other war resisters to stay in Canada. The bill, introduced by the Liberal Party's Gerard Kennedy, would allow other countries' military deserters to stay in Canada if their refusal to serve is based on sincere moral, political or religious objections. Parliament has already voted twice to support war resisters, but those were non-binding motions. Kennedy's bill would be binding because it would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Cryptozoologist to search Cameron Lake for monsterWESTERLY NEWSSEPTEMBER 17, 2009 Cryptozoologist John Kirk is anxious to find out more about an elusive lake creature people have reported seeing in Cameron Lake for years. "Our organization has received reports coming from Cameron Lake since 2004," Kirk said in a release. "Witnesses have been describing what looks like a dark creature in the lake." He will get his chance to find out on Saturday, Sept. 19, when he and his crew plan to look for scientific evidence of a creature -- traversing the lake and attempting to lure it to the surface...

Jane Fonda expresses regret over film fest protest Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press Jane Fonda is expressing regret over endorsing a protest letter that targets an Israeli film spotlight at the Toronto International Film Festival. The celebrity activist appears to back away from the controversy in a column posted Monday on the Huffington Post website just as big-name performers including Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman and Sacha Baron Cohen added their names to a growing list of the protest's critics. "I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn't exacerbate the situation...

A woman martial arts expert knocked out a Coldstream Guardsman and attacked another squaddie's wife at an Army Christmas ball in a row over soldiers pretending to be gay.

A traditional West African drum troupe played at the opening assembly, and students, parents and teachers sang both the Canadian national anthem and Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing , also known as the black national anthem. Maryann Scott enrolled her two youngest children, a son who started junior kindergarten, and a daughter who started Grade 4 yesterday. Ms. Scott has two teenaged children who went through the public school system. “It failed them, and I knew right away this would be a good thing for my younger two,” she said. “I think it's important that students know their history, and...

Border agents in north-central Montana say they caught 39 pounds of cocaine being smuggled into Canada.

Unlike Naomi Klein, I am not a professional agitator and I don't write political missives for a living. I am, however, a filmmaker and I have a very long history with the Toronto International Film Festival, which I have had the honour of opening 10 times. I write this from the set of Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version, whose hero, Barney Panofsky, would share my view that enough is enough! The difference between most people and professional liars is that the latter have no shame. They will proclaim as the gospel truth, without blushing and without the slightest hesitation, any falsehood...

A 19-year-old Canadian must wait two years before she can return to the United Kingdom to be reunited with her husband after a law meant to protect vulnerable young women from forced marriage helped tear them apart. The newlyweds have become the unintended victims of changes to British immigration law meant to discourage Britons and their families from bringing young, unwilling brides from overseas and forcing them into often abusive marriages.She entered the country on a six-month visa with plans to leave again a month later, but she fell in love and decided to marry and begin a life in...

I received a frantic call from one of my sisters at 8:46am, September 11, 2001. She was yelling into the phone: “A plane just smashed into the Twin Towers - It’s on fire.” She was so distressed, on the border of being hysterical, that the rest of her conversation was nearly incomprehensible. And how could she not have been, since her only daughter worked as a junior manager straight out of university for the Marriott Twin Towers Hotel. I ran to our 62-inch television to see the horror-show for myself, listening to the CNN anchors report that “it looks as...

Toronto's first Africentric school is set to open on Tuesday with 85 students. On Tuesday, when hundreds of thousands of Ontario students head back to school, a lot of attention will be focused on one particular school in Toronto's north end. It only has 85 students, but hopes are high for the Africentric Alternative School, which will open its doors near Keele Street and Sheppard Avenue West on Sept. 8 for the very first time. The Toronto District School Board voted narrowly to approve the controversial school in January 2008. It's an attempt by educators to combat the disproportionately high...

Here's something you may not have heard for a while: "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages." Credit for this historical observation goes to an ad hoc committee of artists and filmmakers heaping scorn on the Toronto International Film Festival for daring to program a Tel Aviv segment, as Israel's biggest city marks its 100th anniversary. In an open letter – "The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation" – the signatories condemn TIFF for showcasing Tel Aviv, comparing it to the way a propagandist would sanitize "white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid."

September 7, 2009 Mass murder at 30,000 feet: Islamic extremists guilty of airline bomb plot Philippe Naughton Three British Muslims were found guilty today of conspiracy to murder thousands of passengers and crew in an unprecedented airline bomb plot that could have proved as deadly as the 9/11 attacks. After a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court, jurors found the ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed, and two other men, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, guilty of plotting to use liquid bombs to blow up airliners en route from Heathrow to the United States. Another defendant, Umar Islam, was found guilty of a more...

.... Apparently, Michael Ignatieff messed up his talking points. He says William Hutt's performance in King Lear in 1972 was a life-changing experience. But wouldn't you know it? He got the year wrong -- by nearly a decade! .... .... I'm sorry, but who gets it wrong by eight years? Especially something that was life-shaping experience that he has referred to over and over and over again through the years. In 1964, Michael Ignatieff was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, working part-time as a reporter for The Globe and Mail. In 1972, he was at Harvard working towards...

It could be all that fresh mountain air. Or maybe it's the altitude, a different time zone or even jet lag. Otherwise there's no excuse for what makes tourists ask the dumbest questions. There are some real gems, and it happens all the time. Just ask the patient and good-natured folks who make a living showing tourists around Banff National Park. "We get a broader range of people (in summer)," says Daymon Miller, general manager of Discover Banff Tours. "They're coming from a broad range of urban centres with generally no concept of the wilderness." When the speak-before-thinking zinger is...

Canada added a better-than-expected 27,100 jobs in August, one of the biggest gains since the recession began in the country last fall. But according to Statistics Canada all of the jobs are part-time. The agency said Friday that Canada's unemployment rate edged up to 8.7 percent from 8.6 percent in July, as more Canadians began looking for work.

The Times Colonist, a newspaper in British Columbia, is reporting bad news from the Victorian Island Health Authority for residents seeking an MRI. Though already overwhelmed with demand, the health authority is looking to reduce usage of the expensive diagnostic device to make up a $45 million deficit: The cuts likely mean patients will wait in pain even longer for treatment and surgery -- and already they are waiting twice as long as last year. VIHA spokeswoman Shannon Marshall said patients are being booked for March, six months away, for elective MRI scans. Last year, wait times for MRI scans...

The fight over global warming and Canadian oil is heating up, and Minnesota, which gets 80 percent of its oil from Canada, is sitting on the griddle. A group of oil companies and big industries launched a TV and radio ad campaign this week to try to snuff out rules that might raise the cost of piping Canadian tar-sands oil through the Dakotas to refineries in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, environmentalists on Thursday appealed a federal decision that allows construction of another major pipeline across northern Minnesota to bring in even more tar-sands oil from Alberta.